“Mrs. Henry—” he began, but was cut off.
“Ah! Good.” Penelope’s voice was shrill, but that didn’t bother her particularly. The important thing was that she was heard back in the plush quiet where the three remaining Schoonmakers doubtless persisted in uttering a deafening nothing. “My husband is coming back, as you know, but it will be necessary to set up a separate bedroom, as I am still much too weak to have my bed invaded. Make it far away from mine, perhaps on the east side of the house. Please have his luggage put there, and kindly inform the staff that I am not to be told of his doings. You can have the prince of Bavaria’s gift put by my dressing table now.”
Then she turned and walked with haughty fire back to her own quarters. Having been robbed of her first prospect of a good time in months smarted, and she was not about to make it easy for anyone even slightly complicit in the humiliating captivity her marriage had become.
Eleven
Sometimes ends are in fact beginnings; beginnings ends. Or that is how a few parties I have gone to fare, which is another reason I never travel without a varied wardrobe.
——MRS. L. A. M. BRECKINRIDGE, THE LAWS OF BEING
IN WELL-MANNERED CIRCLES
DIANA WATCHED THE SKYLINE OF HAVANA DRAW away from her as though it were the coast of utopia, from which she had been banished forever. The baroque domes of the churches grew tiny and it began to settle in for her, rather darkly, that she would never again walk the arcades of the old town while the rain pelted the squares, or collect palm fronds in the hinterlands, or watch the sunrise over cobblestones after she had worked till dawn. Instead, it would be New York, a place she had left in the dead of night, where her lover’s wife waited armed with all the secrets of all the bad things Diana had ever done. Still, for all that, she couldn’t feel too sorry for herself. Henry was just behind her, his arms wrapped around so as to shield her from the wind up high on the hurricane deck.
Behind him stood two members of Colonel Copper’s brigade, charged with escorting the society girl back to her mother. There had been much haranguing and pleading that morning, but in the end the colonel had not budged from his position that he would be failing his country if he did not insist on Miss Holland’s leaving the foreign port of which he was, after all, among the most senior American military personnel. He had wanted Henry to remain in Cuba, but Henry had insisted that it would be improper for a girl not to have the protection of a family friend, who was after all a married man, on such a long sea voyage. And since the colonel’s argument had been for propriety all along, he had been forced to acquiesce.
Henry wore his complete uniform that day, with all the buttons done up. Diana would remember him that way for a long time, she thought—his handsome face in a serious composition, his dark eyes alive with emotion, his shoulders broad under the blue jacket. Neither of the banished pair had spoken much since they’d been discovered in bed that morning. The enormity of what lay before them was almost too much to address. Anyway, they had first grown infatuated with each other when Henry was still engaged to Diana’s older sister, though that seemed so long ago, and their love had never been the kind where communications were easily exchanged.
“I am sorry, my Diana,” Henry whispered into her hair, which blew up around her face. They had passed out of the bay by then, and the ocean, which was growing choppy, yawned infinite beyond the ship’s rail. “I ought to have been more careful.”
She pushed her head back, so that his lips pressed faintly against the crown, and stroked his hand with her fingers. There were no accurate words for what she was feeling, and the rocking of the boat had put a sick twist in her stomach.
“I always ought to have been more careful,” he went on, bending forward a little so that he could put the side of his face against the side of hers, and his lips against her cheek. “In Havana, in New York, after I was married, before. Especially before. If I had been more careful, I might not have been married at all.”
Diana smiled a little at the memory of the morning after they first slept together. It was the only time he had slept in her bedroom. She’d given up her girlhood to him the night before, an act she’d never once regretted. But her maid, Claire, had come in through the door and seen them—she must have told her sister, Lina, and from there it had gotten to Penelope, who’d threatened to inform all the staid people who were the Hollands’ supposed friends and relatives if Henry didn’t marry her. Diana’s ruination was the thing Penelope had traded to call herself Mrs. Schoonmaker; that was the bargain that had so effectively parted Di from the only man she’d ever loved.
“I was the one who was incautious,” Diana replied after a minute, and laughed a little.
“But I was the older, the more experienced one,” he persisted with a weary sigh. What he’d said was true, of course, but she couldn’t help but think—without quite knowing how to express it—that she was older now, too, and that she had in fact traveled more than Henry at this point in their lifetimes. She could perhaps outdrink him now, too. The bones of her back rested against his chest, and so she felt how hard he swallowed before he spoke again. His tone, when he did, had the ring of destiny. “I’ll never be so careless with you again.”
She inhaled sharply. “It feels more true than ever now, doesn’t it?”
“Yes.” The sun would be gone from the sky soon, and for a while they watched the darkening sea smash up against the sides of the ship. They had rooms below—separate, of course—but neither wanted to go down under when the city where they had been so happily reconnected was even the slightest bit visible on the horizon. “It is truer. I can’t imagine what my life was before. I can’t imagine ever being without you for very long again.”
The unsteadiness of being high up over rough waters became, in the next moment, confused with the particular dizziness that was for her so closely associated with Henry’s attention when it was focused in her direction. She leaned against him for support and reminded herself to breathe. There was firm resolve in his voice, something new—there was power in it, and the beginning of a promise she had longed to hear for months.
“I can’t stand the idea of going back to how things were, not after we’ve been together like this. Diana…it’s you I always wanted. You I should call my wife.”
The nausea faded at the sound of the word wife. The crisp sea air, which filled her nose and chilled the edges of her ears, was like cool clarity. Her insides felt dusted with sugar, and she opened her round little mouth to whisper sweetly back at him. “Once upon a time you gave me a piece of jewelry with the inscription ‘For my true bride.’ I took that seriously, you know.”
“Yes, I know.”
She turned away from the rail, twisting in his arms so that she could look up at the clean lines of his sun-touched face. The wind was harsh on his skin, and the outdoor light made slits of their eyes. “Anyway, it won’t feel the same, not after we’ve been together like this. Not after I found you, one soldier of thousands, in a foreign city. How could it?”
Henry shook his head and exhaled gloomily through his nostrils. “But there are so many difficulties.”
She half turned her face away from him, but held his dark gaze, and let her mouth curl up a little. She had never, even for an instant, seen Henry unsure of himself like that, unable to imagine how it would be for him, especially not over a girl, and one who’d known so little of love as she. It rather changed her world, for Henry was such a famous rake, and she was merely the second-best-loved of the Holland sisters.
“Henry…,” she whispered in her most caressing tone, as her hands reached for each other around his torso.
“Yes?”
“We neither of us can go back. Not to Havana, nor to the way things were before, not even if we wanted to.” She was laying her words out carefully, each coming to her just before she said them. “We couldn’t bend to all of New York’s stringent ritual now if we tried. There are many difficulties, but how could any of their pieties or judgments ke
ep us from seeing each other? We’re in love, after all.”
“Di…” He swallowed hard again—this time it was a sadness going down, and anguish was plainly visible in his face over all he had done. “I don’t want you to be just my mistress.”
The ship rose and fell with the water and, a little beyond them, across the blond boards of the deck, the two soldiers watched the scene of the huddling sweethearts as though, even now, they might take their chances overboard. But Diana had never felt steadier, surer. The sick feeling was completely gone now, and she knew she must be a great deal older for seeing, all of a sudden and so clearly, how men could be the weaker sex. Even a fellow like Henry was too sensitive in moments like these, and she understood that it was she who had to be brave and lay out how it would be.
Now Diana’s smile was one of patience. She went on as though she were telling him a story: “But it won’t be forever, nothing ever is, and anyway I don’t mind being a mistress so much if I’m your mistress.” They leaned in to each other, so that their foreheads touched. Suddenly the prospect of sacrificing any amount of dignity for him, for the whole grand romance, seemed very heroic. “How could I mind being your mistress, when I love you so?”
He only nodded, their heads bobbing against each other to the rhythm of the ocean. A gull swooped, cawing, just behind her, and Diana found she was surprised that they were still close enough to land for all that. The sea was green-gray around them, and the place they were leaving was obscured by streaky clouds through which a few blades of fading sun shone for the last time that day. Or any day, as far as they were concerned. The place they were going, the stares they were in for—well, she couldn’t imagine that yet. She clung to Henry in the in-between place, and found there was plenty of joy all over her little person right where she was.
Twelve
Elizabeth,
A most miraculous, most unforgivable event has occurred. Your sister has just been returned to my care, by two army men, arrived this day from Cuba. She will be punished, of course, and not all owed out of the house or my sight. I am relying on you to show her the error of her judgment. We are coming to your home for dinner this evening, and I want you to impress upon her how poorly your adventures outside of New York indeed proved.
Yours, Mother
IN THE CAIRNS BROWNSTONE, ON AN EMINENTLY respectable stretch of Madison, everything was in its place and an air of prosperous well-being floated throughout the rooms. The cook was preparing dinner, for all the Holland women would be dining there that evening. Elizabeth had had a busy week, but she’d finally managed some rest that afternoon, and now that order had been established, and the place was looking so much more like a home, a healthy aspect had returned to her cheeks. So Elizabeth thought, anyway, as she lingered a little while longer in front of the ormolu mirror with the embossed ribbon detail in her bedroom. Behind her in the frame were the white-canopied bed and garnet-colored wallpaper. Her complexion had always been pale, but as she studied her reflection, she thought she detected a hint of the pinkness that Will used to like, too. Ever since she had heard about the success of his oil field, she had been wearing black in a secret act of devotional widowhood, but it did not—she couldn’t help but notice—make her look any smaller.
Soon Diana would be coming through the door—Elizabeth could almost imagine how her soft little arms would be thrown wide in the expectation of an embrace, as she cried out: “But you’re so gigantic!” Despite the tenor of their mother’s note, Elizabeth knew that the old lady was relieved, as she was, to have Diana back. That was the main thing, and Elizabeth felt extra lucky to have such a nice home to welcome her little sister into. She had not paused the hectic business of making a household all week, and she was glad that she hadn’t, now that she knew what a homecoming it would be.
Of course there was another, barely conscious reason for her constant busyness, which was that whenever she paused too long her thoughts turned to the document that linked her and Will’s names long before they were actually married. How had her father realized, she would have liked to know. Had her first love confided in him? But she would never have answers to questions like that. The two men who could answer them were gone from her. And then there was the issue that turned her stomach a little sour, which was that her husband—the one whose name she was called by in public now, the one currently pledged to protect her, the one who she’d most recently promised to serve—had known of it for so long, and not told her. There was a tiny voice in the back regions of her mind, insisting that Snowden should get his hands off what had been intended for her and Will to share.
Elizabeth gazed at her reflection a long time, like the vain girl she used to be, and not the mother she’d soon become. When the bell rang below, she tucked a few stray hairs back into the twist rising from the nape of her neck and tried to pinch some color into her cheeks. How had it grown so late?
But when she came—hurrying, and yet not particularly fast—out into the hall, which joined the second floor rooms and ended at the steep stairs into the foyer, she saw the sun streaming in through the stained glass fanlight and realized that it was far too early for her family to be arriving. She came onto the landing and looked down. The carpet, which she had chosen at the beginning of the week for its handsome oriental design of burnt sienna and teal woven threads, spread from below the landing to the front entryway. She couldn’t help but pause, now, and feel a touch pleased with the choice. Presently Mrs. Schmidt walked across it and greeted the afternoon caller. Elizabeth stepped forward and rested a hand on the banister, but she couldn’t see who was there; a hanging lamp obscured her view.
“I’m sorry, but he’s not in,” Mrs. Schmidt was saying.
Elizabeth stepped left gingerly so as to peek at the housekeeper’s interlocutor. She felt an instinct, not yet fully comprehended, to be silent and secretive, even though it was her own house. As the man’s face emerged beyond the intrusive porcelain shade, pockmarked and swollen, she was glad of that instinct. For she knew him—but how? He was large, and neither poorly nor richly dressed. He was not a man of her class, but he did not appear to be a servant, either. Snowden had a retinue of men who worked for him when he was leading explorations, but this fellow was none of these.
His face was not handsome, but it was not exactly ugly, either. There was something large and boyish about him that did not seem to warrant reproach. But for Elizabeth, that face and that man had a distinctly awful quality about them. It made her feel cold all over—and for weeks now she had been enduring the kind of heat that ceiling fans were useless against.
“I’ll see he gets it,” Mrs. Schmidt said, and then she placed a note on the pink marble-topped cabinet to the left of the entry. The door closed, and Mrs. Schmidt walked toward the back of the stairs without once looking up.
Above, on the landing, Elizabeth sucked in air. The man was gone, but his face hovered in her mind. She could not begin to understand what it was about him that made her want to cower and hide, or why she now felt so nauseated. The note he’d left remained idle on the table. It was just a little thing, folded and white, and yet she was drawn to the scrap of paper as though it had some gravitational power. She descended—slowly of course, one hand clinging to the banister, the other rested against her protruding belly. The sunlight in the foyer, when she stepped off the final stair, was momentarily blinding.
“Mrs. Cairns—are you all right?”
Embarrassment stuck in Elizabeth’s throat as she turned, startled, to see Mrs. Schmidt standing in the shadows of the hall. Shame over her intention to read her husband’s private correspondence, as well as any black notions she might have allowed herself to harbor, swept over her. The fatigue must have done it, she decided. She was so tired she was only half capable of logical thinking.
“Can I do something for you?” The older woman came out from the shadows. She wore an apron over the heavy black dress she donned, even now, during the extreme heat.
Elizabeth drew hersel
f up with what dignity she could manage, and smiled softly. “I heard someone at the door—” she began in a feathery voice.
“It was a caller for Mr. Cairns. He left a note. Perhaps you—”
“Ah, good,” Elizabeth replied with strained lightness. “Then I shall not have anything to worry about! I think I will go try to rest a little before my family comes.”
Mrs. Schmidt turned away her face in subservient acknowledgment of her mistress’s intention, and Elizabeth tried to maintain a superior mien as she moved heavily back up the stairs.
When she reached her room, she crossed to the bed, unable to meet her own eyes in the mirror again. She was, in truth, relieved that she had been interrupted before some nonsensical emotions led her to snoop in her husband’s mail, for she had never wanted to be that kind of wife. Though she did lie down, she did not in the end manage to fall asleep.
Thirteen
If you’re concerned about another
run-in like the one we had at the
opera, I would be more than
happy to make arrangements
face-to-face at the place and
time of your determination.
Affectionately,
I. W.
CAROLINA STEPPED INTO THE FIFTH AVENUE HOTEL in a cloud of expensive perfume, under a broad hat bedecked with cloth flowers, and felt the poetry of her selection of a meeting place. Her mission that afternoon gave her nerves, but she was wearing a fitted jacket of ivory-and-rose pin-striped linen and a matching skirt, both of which fit her exquisitely as only really expensive clothes do, and proved how far she’d come since the afternoon when she was run out of this very hotel by an unkind concierge. Now she knew better than to be intimidated by the Fifth Avenue, which faced Madison Square. It was not as modern or as fine as the New Netherland, where she had lived for a time, or the Waldorf-Astoria, which carried its royal associations in its name. In fact, she’d never returned because it had ceased to seem fancy to her long ago—and not because of any lingering fears about the concierge.
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