Reclaiming her hand and angling away from the room’s entry doors to reduce the urge to watch for Mr. Banner’s entrance—should he actually join the party, something she highly doubted after the way she’d abandoned him the other night—she forced a platonic smile.
“So you’re going to work with Mr. Lyons. In the courtroom?”
“That is the plan, ma’am,” Mr. Lewis said, nodding. “Though I expect it’ll be a while before I’m allowed to do more than assist. I only passed the bar last week.”
“A Harvard Law graduate,” Lyons chimed in like a proud father.
“Harvard? Well, bully for you, Mr. Lewis,” she added with sincerity.
“Not bully enough, ma’am,” he said. “I was only one of two coloured in my class, and if we’re ever going to find equal footing, especially here in the south, we’re going to need a lot more of us out there fighting the good fight.”
The air around her suddenly turned brittle as a few nearby guests, who’d clearly been eavesdropping, angled a look at him, and then at her, as though expecting her to say or do something.
She obliged them, as every good hostess should.
“I applaud you, Mr. Lewis,” she said loud enough to ensure she was heard without seeming to purposefully project her voice. “Your achievement, and your cause. And I wish you every success in it. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to assist you. I’m a firm proponent of race equality.”
The social temperature in some parts of the room dipped lower—so much so she heard a crack, like ice breaking.
But it was only the mayor biting down hard on a cracker. The look he gave her was equally hard.
Guess she wouldn’t be waltzing with him at Deer Haven anytime soon.
Pity, that.
She tensed then, not in response to Mayor Bellman-Winn’s cold stare, but because Mr. Banner had suddenly materialised at her elbow, and her body wanted to wriggle around like a delighted puppy whose beloved master had returned home after an interminably long absence.
“Mr. Banner,” Mrs. Lyons exclaimed with joy and volume enough to shift most people’s attention from Mr. Lewis to Mr. Banner.
But not Coral’s. She stood just off the entry doors, holding a platter of canapés and covertly sizing up Mr. Lewis.
A Harvard Law graduate was definitely a catch, especially for a young woman in paid service. But was he a worthy replacement of a life’s dream?
Margaret didn’t think so. Especially this particular Harvard graduate lawyer, who’d dared to reveal to her his carnal interest, and to the rest of the room his plans to help agitate and upset the current social order.
Marriage to him would test even the staunchest of women, and she wasn’t sure Coral possessed her grandmother’s fortitude—something she would need a great deal of to support Mr. Lewis’s valiant cause.
It is lamentable, that to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind.
Coral may not have heard the Voltaire quote before, but even if she had, Margaret would make sure she understood its implications where Mr. Nathan Lewis and his aspirations were concerned—and the toll marriage took on a woman’s autonomy, never mind her heart, even when one’s husband wasn’t intent on inciting a legal revolution. Her Paris dream wouldn’t just slip away; it’d be wrenched away, stamped and trampled on, then left bloody.
L’insurrection est le plus saint des devoirs.
And the hallmark of any holy duty, including and especially insurrection, was sacrifice. Heart, body, mind, soul—and personal dreams.
Either sensing her reproving gaze or finally hearing the grating scratch that indicated the Victrola’s needle had become lodged in the record’s final groove, Coral blinked and looked at her. Then, ducking her head, her cheeks turning a dusky hue, she hastened off with the canapés in the direction of the Victrola.
Margaret hid an amused smile behind a sip of champagne as she brought her attention back to her guests, who’d moved on from the introduction of Mr. Banner and Mr. Lewis to a discussion of Mr. Lewis’s recent addition to Mr. Lyons’s firm.
Coral’s taste in men might be suspect, but her handiness with needles was without question. She could swap out the Victrola’s steel needle for a new one and change records faster than Margaret could choose an evening gown from a wardrobe of one.
If the girl’s fashion dreams didn’t find footing, she might consider a career in medicine, where she could wield any variety of needles with impunity.
“I understand you were up in Atlanta, Mr. Banner,” Mrs. Lyons said after discussion of Mr. Lewis’s admirable curriculum vitae and future plans petered out. “My husband told me—”
“Gayle,” Mr. Lyons said, but his wife barrelled on as though her husband hadn’t tried to interrupt.
“Did you know our Abby’s been up there all week, too?” She tilted her blonde head to one side, piercing blue eyes wide as she raised her eyebrows at Mr. Banner. “Perhaps you saw her?”
“I did, actually,” he said, and Margaret’s stomach lurched as her fingers contracted on the stem of her champagne flute. “We travelled home together on the train, and then she and Geoff drove me home.”
“Oh, so you met our soon-to-be son-in-law?” Mrs. Lyons beamed. “Isn’t he a peach? I love him so much. Abby couldn’t find herself a better man if I had chosen him myself. Well, present company excluded, of course,” she added, dimpling at Mr. Banner, her husband, and Mr. Lewis.
“He’s a likeable man,” Mr. Banner agreed. “Very friendly. And he would not take no for an answer when I told him I didn’t need to be driven out. Said it would be his pleasure. And he really did seem keen, so I could hardly refuse.”
“Oh, he is keen,” Mrs. Lyons nodded. “He’s always looking for any excuse to drive that automobile. His daddy gave it to him as a gift when he and Abby announced their engagement. His daddy is Brighton F. Young, the philanthropist who founded Brighton Oil. Have you heard of him? Anyway, he has scads of money, so I don’t expect it pinched his pocket even the slightest, buying that truck for Geoff. He probably could have bought him a whole fleet of them, and oh, how he would have loved that. He loves anything with a motor in it, that boy. Doesn’t he, Clifford?” She tilted a smile up at her husband, who returned it with a resigned sigh.
Margaret had to wonder how many times Mrs. Lyons had blurted out something Mr. Lyons had rather she hadn’t, and then offered him that innocent look.
Whatever he thought of his wife’s loquacity Margaret was grateful for it. It had veered conversation towards Ford’s four-wheeled marvels, which afforded her opportunity to scan the room and check the comfort of a few special guests, like Mr. and Mrs. Guenther, seated side by side on one of the sofas, the former lovingly dabbing the latter’s mouth with a napkin while holding her plate of edibles in his other hand; Miss Minerva, who blushed when their eyes met, but who also gave her a discreet thumbs-up despite being the mayor’s latest quarry; and Mrs. Bellman, who, along with her granddaughter Grace, sat at a round table in the corner, teaching Mr. Banner senior a variation of rummy she called conquián. From the way she cackled and clapped her hands and the way Tonia, who’d rejoined her husband, slapped palms with her, it appeared the nonagenarian was winning.
But, more than time, what Mrs. Lyons seemingly innocuous prattle had gifted her, however inadvertently, was information she’d not known. One, the C in C. W. Lyons stood for Clifford. Two, Mr. Banner had been in Atlanta. And three, whatever his reason for being there, Mr. Clifford W. Lyons, Esq., had knowledge of it.
Which excluded a tryst. She couldn’t imagine Mr. Banner sharing his sexual adventures with the elder man. Then again, maybe he had. Not directly, but obliquely, as in, “I’m heading to Atlanta for a few days. I’ll be at the such-and-such hotel if anyone needs me.”
But if it was a woman, it wasn’t the Lyons’s daughter.
Thank goodness. Besides lowering her opinion of him at discovering he wasn’t above having an affair with another man’s fiancé when a p
erfectly unattached widow caused him such emotional conflict, she couldn’t imagine having to find a different trustworthy solicitor, especially as that meant extending her search outside Quellentown. She certainly wasn’t going to hand Sugar Hill’s files back to Aston, Griffiths, and Gowdy, the only other legal firm within thirty miles, especially now that Judge Fairview had ruled in her favour in regard to the second will.
That was news she looked forward to sharing with Mr. Banner. It might help ease the menacing tension she felt oozing from him in conflict with Coral’s rather opportune choice of the optimistically romantic “In My Merry Oldsmobile” now playing on the Victrola.
“Speaking of coming along with me, my love,” Mr. Lyons said, touching his wife’s elbow and smoothly parlaying the song’s lyrics into a segue, “we should get on home and see how Abs’s shopping trip went.”
“Shopping?” Mrs. Lyons frowned. “I thought you said she was—”
“Coming, Nathan?” Mr. Lyons raised an expectant, hoary eyebrow at his new protégé.
“Uh, yes.” Mr. Lewis angled to put his half-empty bourbon glass on a side table and, turning back, graced Margaret with a charismatic smile as he took her hand to airbrush another kiss over the back of it. “Thank you for a wonderful afternoon, ma’am,” he said, looking directly into her eyes. “You’re a gracious and beautiful hostess. I enjoyed meeting you, and hope to again soon.”
“It was a pleasure meeting you, too, Mr. Lewis,” she said, trying to ignore the sudden arctic blast off Mr. Banner’s aura, and the simultaneous lustful fire his nearness stoked inside her, as she withdrew her hand.
Mr. Banner struck out a stiff arm to indicate Mr. Lewis take the lead in following the Lyonses out, and then his entire body went rigid.
Frowning, Margaret looked to where he was staring.
“Oh, dear,” she whispered, but forced herself to remain with the Lyons and Mr. Lewis, who were slowly making their way out, paying respects to various other guests as they did, while Mr. Banner scooped Maisie up out of the hallway and hastened off with her in the direction of the guest wing, Reba trotting in his wake.
“Was that your daughter and dog?” Mr. Lewis asked, pausing to angle a smile at her as he gestured for her to precede him.
“Ah, no,” she said. “That was Maisie. And Reba. Mr. Banner’s daughter and her dog. Maisie must have heard he was back from his trip and come to look for him.” But that didn’t explain why Miss Lisette wasn’t with her. Or who had told her he was home.
Mr. Lewis nodded and offered her another charming smile as she moved past him, but in the gilded mirror above the table in the hallway, where she paused to deposit her champagne flute as they exited the parlour, she noted his darting frown at the spot where Maisie had been and the longer assessing look he gave the back of her head, as though he didn’t quite believe that with those vivid red curls trussed up in diamond-studded hair combs, she wasn’t Maisie’s mother.
The Lyonses and Lewis’s departure acted like a plug pulled from a cooling bath, for the next hour heralded a steady stream of departing partygoers.
Cheeks aching, feet throbbing, and pulse tapping out an erratic tempo of impatience as she tried not to think about Mr. Banner or Maisie during the slow but persistent exodus, she kept up a continual reciprocal murmur of gratitude for invitation and attendance—along with other short-lived but exhausting inanity—until all twenty-two guests had trickled out the door.
When the final wheeled transport rolled off down the drive into the deepening dusk, she returned to the parlour, where Antonia Banner sat on a sofa, sipping a glass of champagne, while her husband stood behind it at the drink cart, pouring a measure of bourbon into a short glass.
Stifling her disappointment that Mr. Banner had not yet returned from seeing Maisie back to bed, she forced a smile.
“Well, that went better than expected,” she said as she lowered to the sofa opposite Tonia.
“Not for me.” Daniel Banner came around and plopped down next to his wife. He took a sip of his drink. “It went exactly as I expected. And I’m glad it’s over.”
Margaret bit back a real smile as Antonia cuffed his arm.
“Really, Daniel,” she said.
“It’s quite all right,” Margaret said. “I used to host these kinds of gatherings all the time. And I loved them. Then. Now...” She glanced around, seeing the images of her guests like a panorama, the crumbs dusting the mayor’s lapels, the harsh repudiation in his and some of the other guests’ gazes when she expressed her support of Mr. Lewis’s cause. Mr. Lewis’s daring invitation to her with his eyes and, in the mirror, his skepticism. “I’d honestly forgotten how much work it is to keep a smile when you really want to kick someone.”
“Or pinch,” Antonia said.
“You wanted to pinch someone?” Margaret asked, intrigued.
Coral, at the back of the room, stopped in the midst of helping Winnie gather dishes and cutlery to hold up an open bottle of Moët & Chandon and look at Margaret. She nodded.
“Still do,” Antonia said. “But my son has conveniently disappeared.”
“Can you blame him, after you cornered him and insisted that he give his luggage to the butler and join a party he clearly had no interest in attending? You didn’t even give him a chance to change his clothes, Tonia. Or wash the road dust off. And you know how he feels about these events in the first place. Like me, he’d rather be dragged across hot coals naked than rub shoulders fully dressed with the likes of those people.”
“There’s nothing wrong with those people, Daniel,” Antonia admonished. “Or with the clothes Joe was wearing. Didn’t you notice? They were new. And the latest fashion, too, which is unheard of for him. And he was clean, and his hair recently cut. He looked very dapper for a man who’d spent the day travelling.”
She paused, as though listening to the echo of her words, and then narrowed her eyes at Margaret in a look almost as calculating as the one Mr. Lewis had given her.
Fortunately, Coral arrived with Margaret’s new glass of champagne, providing her reason to look away from Tonia as Daniel turned on the sofa to glower at her.
“Dapper?” he said, incredulous. “Sometimes, woman, I swear it’s you who’s blind, not our granddaughter. Deaf too. Did you not hear how quiet the room got when that Mr. Lewis said what he said, or see the way some people looked at him? Or you, for that matter. And me whenever I spoke. I could see in their eyes the distaste they tried to keep from their faces. Why do you think I spent the evening in the corner playing cards with a lady who kept whooping my—”
“Daniel,” Tonia cautioned.
“You know what I mean,” he said. “Joe told us what it was like around here, and for once, we got to see it for ourselves.”
“I know. And that is why I still can’t understand why he prefers it here.” Tonia scowled into her champagne flute she held low on her lap, like the answer might be found floating in the content’s fizz. “He’d find it far more welcoming in Tarpon Springs.”
“I don’t think it’s a welcome he’s looking for, Tonia.” Daniel Banner finished his drink and waved off Rufus, who’d started forward from where he’d positioned himself by the parlour doors after all the guests had gone. Twisting, Daniel grabbed the decanter off the cart behind him and replenished his glass. “He’s looking for a place to call his own. A man needs that. What he doesn’t need”—he plunked the decanter on the low oval table in front of the sofa—“is his mother breathing down his neck and threatening to pinch him when he’s not at her beck and call every minute of every day.”
“He took Maisie back to her chamber,” Margaret said before the couple escalated into a full-on row.
“Maisie?” Tonia frowned at her. “She was supposed to stay in her room. Was she out here? Where’s Miss Lisette? Why wasn’t she watching her?”
“Maisie was in the hallway, and only very briefly,” Margaret said, distracted by Coral and Winnie’s progression towards the parlour doors, each carrying a s
tack of small plates.
They had really stepped up in helping Miss Alma make the dozens and dozens of hors d’oeuvres. Then they’d served them while Rufus kept libation carts stocked between excursions to and from the front door and Miss Alma steadily refilled empty platters in the kitchen so the girls could keep a continuous rotation.
To make things easier on all of them from the start, Margaret had intentionally made the event informal and early, from six to nine, after the midday heat had tapered off but before full darkness forced the lighting of a full complement of heat-and smoke-generating candles and candelabras. She’d also encouraged her guests to help themselves to champagne and punch bowls on a table at the back of the room, or to stronger options off the carts positioned around the room. Many, like Miss Minerva, Mrs. Bellman and Grace, and even the Guenthers, had gladly helped themselves, while a few, like the mayor, had stood fixedly, awaiting delivered service.
It was always nice when guests helped curate her invitation list for her by removing themselves from future consideration.
“We noticed Maisie when the first guests started to leave,” she said, retraining her attention on Tonia. “She looked fine, Tonia. Really,” she added with a reassuring smile, noting Tonia’s anxious pique. “She was in her nightdress but otherwise looked well. And Reba was with her. I can’t say where Miss Lisette was except to say that she or Mr. Banner usually tuck Maisie in for the night around eight thirty. So I suspect she was in her own chamber, if not asleep then assuredly believing that Maisie was.”
Mr. Banner had looked rather dapper, come to think of it. His roguish mane had been trimmed above the stiff collar of a crisp and new white shirt that, like the dark-blue trousers he’d been wearing, fit well, embracing and sculpting his rounded musculature as he hastened to collect Maisie rather than compressing it as Mr. Guenther’s loaned clothes had. The red suspenders were a new addition, too. At least she hadn’t seen him wearing them before. He usually wore brown ones.
Maybe there really was a woman.
The thought hollowed her, and she sought to fill the cramping emptiness with more champagne.
My One True Love Page 31
