Rumors

by Anna Godbersen

  Lina went over and sat down beside him on the settee. She perched on the corner, not wanting to come too close, and tried to meet his gaze. “Don’t be angry at me, Tristan,” she said in a quiet voice. “I couldn’t stand that right now.”

  “I’m not angry at you. In fact…” Here he paused to laugh, as one laughs at absurdity rather than humor. “I have something to confess to you.”

  Lina’s nerves were tender and her pulse was now frighteningly quick. She tried to draw her lips back in a smile to match his. “Oh, yes?” she prodded.

  “You see, I’m not what I seem either.”

  “Oh?” Lina was still attempting lightness, but she knew that her smile had gone brittle. “You mean you don’t work at Lord and Taylor’s?”

  “No…no, of course I work there. But you see, I’m just like you. I’m from nothing, and I decided nothing wasn’t good enough for me. You aren’t the first heiress I’ve known—you’re just the first fake heiress I’ve known. There’s a lot to be gained from being kind to ladies like you—or the kind of lady you were pretending to be. That’s my racket, my pretty girl.”

  “Oh” was all Lina could manage in reply. She was now feeling intensely stupid. It occurred to her for the first time that the fallacy of her claim to be an heiress did not protect her in the least from being preyed on, as true heiresses were. That would be funny someday, she imagined. “Well, good-bye, I guess,” she went on eventually. She didn’t want to be alone, but she supposed it was what she deserved. “There’s nothing to be gained for you here.”

  Tristan pushed himself up and looked out the window. Her view showed the façade of another hotel, with all its little picture windows into other peoples’ ambitions, and down below the carriages depositing the kind of ladies she’d aspired to be like on the walk. They would soon be off to yachts on the Mediterranean or weekends at Tuxedo, and their hats had all been imported from France. “Oh, I wouldn’t say that.”

  Lina flushed. “There’s really nothing more to take.”

  Tristan’s hazel eyes moved slowly back to meet hers. “I don’t want to take anything from you, Carolina. But as far as I can make out, you’ve got quite a nice little con going already. You have the interest of Carey Lewis Longhorn, not to mention Mr. Gallant.”

  Lina didn’t think the columnist’s surname was really Gallant, but she was in no position to correct anyone just then.

  “You’d need my help, of course. For protection and guidance. You have been doing an all right job so far, but you would have tripped up and revealed yourself soon. For instance, you’re going to have to be careful about only being seen out with perpetual bachelors. If you don’t make friends with a girl or two, the ladies will never accept you, and that will mean certain social death.” Tristan paused and put his mouth against a contemplative fist. “That’s priceless advice,” he went on in a moment.

  “But for now what really matters is that Mr. Longhorn is rich and he likes you. This means jewels and presents will follow, and those are just as valuable as any inheritance….”

  The beginnings of hope were branching through Lina’s mind, but she was still wary. She had believed recklessly before, and look where that had gotten her. “I wouldn’t have to…?”

  “No! No, no, no.” Tristan moved closer to her on the settee and gave her a reassuring look. Down below, people who could not afford to stay in the hotel but still wanted to look grand were arriving for luncheon. “That would be a bit like killing the golden goose, wouldn’t it?”

  Lina blinked thoughtfully, turning this over. It still seemed too wild. She had labored since childhood to win the attentions of a boy who worked in a carriage house—how on earth would she hold the interest of a man whose love life was the stuff of gossip columns? In a few days, no less. “But how can I go on without any money? The bills you brought me alone, not to mention I’ll be removed from the hotel on Friday when I can’t pay….”

  “You are too easily defeated. That we will have to cure you of. I really should have caught you earlier and saved you from yourself—nobody pays on time. They must consider you a very eccentric heiress indeed here at the New Netherland! This is one of the chief characteristics of rich people: that they don’t know what things cost and forget all the time that they are supposed to pay for them. With just a little gall you will be able to put them off long enough to find yourself in a position where Mr. Longhorn is footing your bill. And then you—and I—will really be in the money.”

  Lina nodded, a little confusedly. She couldn’t help but feel somewhat nervous and exposed listening to this plot. But it was some kind of relief that Tristan was still there, even though he knew her real identity. She didn’t mind entertaining his schemes, however crazy they were, just for a little while. It made her feel not entirely destitute, listening to his ideas for her, and she began to feel that perhaps there was a way for her to get just a little of that money back. Not all of it, just enough to buy a ticket west. Then she would go off to find Will, and leave all of her mistakes behind her in New York.

  Twenty Four

  Property has ever been a fluid concept—just ask the wife of the Wall Street speculator who writes her party invitations on Marie Antoinette’s escritoire.

  —MRS. L. A. M. BRECKINRIDGE, THE LAWS OF BEING IN WELL-MANNERED CIRCLES

  THE WHISTLE BLEW, AND LOUD SHOUTS OF “ALL aboard!” could be heard up and down the platform. Inside the simple wooden waiting room, in the small mountain town where Will and Elizabeth had disembarked, benches emptied and hats were clutched as travelers ran for the lumbering iron beast that was preparing to depart again. The table between Will and Elizabeth had uneven legs, and every time one of them put an agitated elbow on its unvarnished top, their glasses of lemonade threatened to spill over. Finally the train left the station, causing all of the windows to shake in their frames but bestowing some quiet on Elizabeth’s thoughts.

  Will stood first and went to the window, where he took his time assessing the length of the platform and anyone who remained on it. He waited until the steam cleared and then he turned to where Elizabeth sat, folded into the camel wrap with flannel lining that she had worn the day she left New York. He stretched his long, taut arms over his head before moving his hands to the back of his neck, where he collected his overgrown hair and tucked it into the collar of his plaid shirt.

  Will made a whistling sound of relief and smiled so that his fine, strong teeth showed. “He’s gone, Lizzie,” Will called, “so you can stop looking so frightened.”

  Elizabeth tried to smile. She stood and went to him, and then looked out the window as though Will’s statement needed some kind of verification. She did feel less frightened, but it hardly settled her mind. On the other end of the room the lunch-counter workers, who had been selling pie and sliced-chicken sandwiches, were closing up. The newsagent was counting his take.

  “Thank goodness,” she said finally, wishing her relief didn’t sound so thin.

  “And now we have twelve hours before the next train comes. Just time enough to find a little chapel and get hitched, I’d say.” Will laughed, although she knew he was at least partially in earnest. That moment back in New York when he had knelt to propose to her—this was just after she had become engaged to Henry—was still wincingly fresh in her mind. “You could be Mrs. Keller for real on the next car we ride.”

  Elizabeth lowered her eyes and swallowed, the sound of which was unbearably loud in her own ears at least. A few days ago this would have seemed a very romantic suggestion, but at the moment it brought back all the old feelings. The old guilt, from the days when Will was so desirable and true and she was the hypocrite favorite of New York’s ruling class. She put her hand into her pocket and folded it around the ring.

  “Or we could go on living in sin.” His voice was softer this time, but had not entirely lost its humor.

  “No, I—”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “It’s that I don’t know what we’ll find in Ne
w York. Or how Mother really is or what kind of trouble Diana has gotten into.” Elizabeth had to close her eyes to keep herself from crying. She drew the wrap closer around her with one hand and tightened her fist over the ring with the other. “I’ve been imagining the worst. And I’m worried about money. What if we get there and they’re going to be thrown out of the house, and they can’t afford any medicine, and—”

  “Hush. There’s no reason to think things are so bad. All we know is what the papers say, and you know that they exaggerate. And anyway, I have some money.”

  “I know, but Will…” Elizabeth looked at him and then shifted her eyes to the rough-hewn floorboards. She ran her fingers along the table that they had just been sitting at. “I have something I didn’t tell you about. Something I was planning on selling, in Oakland. Something that might make all the difference to my family.”

  She looked up at Will, who was watching her and waiting. Besides the faint chatting of the newsagent and the lemonade salesgirl, the room was silent.

  “My engagement ring.” Her voice broke over the word. “From Henry Schoonmaker.”

  Elizabeth had avoided even saying that name out loud to Will since they had left New York. She disliked doing it now, and it was plain on his face that he found the sound of it distasteful too. “Oh.”

  Now she spoke fast, hoping to bring him away from that maudlin precipice he was surely now approaching. “Not because I want it, Will—because it’s worth a great deal of money, because I thought maybe we would need it and I didn’t know how I was ever going to find you and…” Her voice trailed off. “But I did find you.”

  “I wouldn’t have let you get lost.” Will still hadn’t met her eyes yet, and his jaw was set so that it emerged prominently over his neck.

  “I know,” Elizabeth replied. She didn’t like how small her voice had gotten, but she couldn’t help it.

  “I’m not angry, Lizzie, don’t be like that. It’s just not a nice memory is all. I would have liked to have been the one to give you that ring.”

  It was late in the afternoon and the light coming in from the windows on either side of the station was moody and blue, but Elizabeth found that she was radiating in her old way despite all that. “I don’t even like that ring.”

  “You don’t?” Will met her eyes now, and there was the suggestion of a smile just waiting to emerge.

  “No.” She reached for his hands and took them both up, swinging her arms to lighten his mood. “I would have thrown it in the river with my old self if I didn’t have a practical streak. But I do—that part of me wants to sell the ring. Just in case my family really needs that money. Just in case.”

  The arc of a line had emerged between the left corner of Will’s mouth and his left nostril. His large hands were holding on to her dainty ones, and they swung their arms back and forth a few more times just thinking of what they would yet do together. “Someday I’m going to buy you just the kind of ring you want.”

  “I know,” Elizabeth whispered. “I know you will.”

  “In the meantime, let’s go sell that ring, get it off both our minds.” Will dropped her hands and put an arm over her shoulder, drawing her toward the far door of the waiting room, which led away from the train platform and into town. “That way you can stop worrying, putting lines in that famous complexion of yours.”

  “But how will we know where to go? We’ve never been here before,” Elizabeth said, even as they moved across the floor.

  “All train stations are the same,” he answered, his jovial tone fully restored to him. “Surrounded by saloons and pawnshops, so that people desperate to get away can sell what they have. Or have a drink while they wait. We aren’t desperate, though, neither of us. We’re going to get a good price for that ring. It’s caused enough trouble, and now it’s going to give us something back.”

  Elizabeth, tucked in under Will’s shoulder and headed into a snow-covered place she had never seen before, began to feel all right again. She felt truly calm for the first time since Diana’s telegram had arrived. They were wrapped up in their coats, which made them look a little put together despite everything, and they could already feel the bracing air just outside and the whole future just beyond it.

  Twenty Five

  D—

  I am so sorry I wasn’t able to

  visit you yesterday or the day before.

  My father has placed me on house

  arrest. I would have written sooner,

  but even my correspondence is being

  monitored. Will you come tonight?

  Nine o’clock, the same place as before.

  —HS

  “WHO IS THE NOTE FROM?”

  Diana, who was sitting too close to the fire in her family drawing room, raised her eyes as though she were coming out of a daytime sleep. For a few moments her thoughts had been entirely elsewhere, further uptown, in the greenhouse where she’d once spent the night, in that perfect presence. The most exciting presence she’d ever known. Her lids fluttered and she realized that the side of her body facing the flames had grown hot and red. She folded the note hastily and put it in the pocket of the honeydew-colored dress she had worn only the week before. The dress, which had been a witness to feelings entirely opposite of what she was experiencing now, had been her mother’s decision that night and this evening, as well.

  “Oh, it doesn’t matter,” she told Snowden, who was sitting across from her in a dull black jacket that seemed deliberately chosen to accentuate his less urban qualities. “What were you saying…?”

  “I was saying that the ways in which I am prepared to help you and your family are not a charity…” Snowden went on, looking vaguely pleased with himself. It was a point he seemed at pains to make, and to which Diana was surely obliged to listen, as she feared Edith, stationed in the near background and pretending to read from a book of sermons, might remind her if her attention lapsed. For he had bought more wood than they could burn all winter, and stocked the pantries, and erected in the corner of the room a Christmas tree that brought a sense of festivity to the Holland house that would have been unthinkable the day before. “Your father and my business interests were of course entangled, and our holdings in the Klondike were for a time difficult to decipher….”

  Diana smiled mistily and focused her eyes on the dust brown collar of Snowden’s shirt so she would appear to be paying attention even as she allowed her thoughts to drift. She had been dreamy and agitated since their guest had arrived, trying not to seem rude or dismissive but unable to banish the image or idea of Henry for even a moment. Of course, when he had not come to visit on Wednesday and then again on Thursday—as he had so clearly promised on Tuesday night—her yearning had grown and she had not been able to eat, and by evening she had felt tingly and weak. It had been a sweet, almost unbearable state of confusion. She was certain that this time she had not misjudged Henry, however, and his note—which had been delivered by some anonymous man, just as darkness was falling, and then brought to her by a distracted Claire—had finally vindicated this assumption.

  She was lucky in a way that Snowden was there, because all of his projects to make the house better kept her busy and prevented her imagination from wandering too far in any direction, although she did not in truth want to be distracted.

  “What a time we had on the Klondike, though…” Snowden was saying.

  She did not ask herself why Henry’s father had put him on house arrest. She only imagined that he must be experiencing a kind of torture, as she was, and that his intentions and desires were also shifted to the greenhouse with the simple brass frame bed. Diana wondered if there were a way to calculate this division of self—what percentage of her body and spirit was there in the drawing room of No. 17 Gramercy Park South, what percentage was transported to that perfect place with the arched glass ceiling where she was close enough to Henry that she could smell his clean, faintly cologned skin. Certainly more than half. The arrival of that note, which was now saf
ely hidden in her pocket, had so captured her senses that she could almost feel the delicate play of Henry’s fingertips along her arm.

  “Of course, that was only one of our adventures. We went looking for fortunes in South Africa and Cal-ee-for-nye-ay.”

  Diana shifted in her seat and nodded vaguely. This weak attempt at humor did not please her. Meanwhile, the line of Henry’s chin was as clear in her mind as the white line of the mantel on which Snowden rested his stubby elbow. She could see the exact shade of his eyes, although she would not have been able to answer whether Snowden’s were blue, green, or brown. The objects in the room she occupied—a room she had seen daily for all of her life—were indistinct, but she was already mentally mapping the route she would take out of the house, the route that would take her to Henry. She had already planned what she would wear and what she was prepared to give him.

  “Diana, are you well?”

  “Yes,” Diana answered, startled. She decided she should appear convincing and so reiterated the sentiment. “Very well.”

  “Good. You looked faint for a moment, but if you are feeling well, then there is something your mother and I have discussed. We have talked about how well I knew your father, his affections and hopes for his daughters—hopes that now fall exclusively on you. We have discussed what Mr. Holland thought appropriate and true, and we decided that at this juncture it would be wise to show the world how lovely—and how well—you are. We shall dispel the rumors about the Hollands having to hide in poverty. You and I will thus have dinner tonight at Sherry’s, with your aunt Edith as chaperone. The world will see how beautiful you look—have I told you, by the way, how beautifully you wear that dress?” Snowden reached inside the breast of his jacket and removed a small oblong box. “It will go very well with this, don’t you think?”