Relative Fortunes (A Julia Kydd Novel)

by Marlowe Benn

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2019 by Margaret L. Benton

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781542005210 (hardcover)

  ISBN-10: 1542005213 (hardcover)

  ISBN-13 9781542091695 (paperback)

  ISBN-10: 1542091691(paperback)

  First edition

  For my father, Peter Beckman

  CONTENTS

  START READING

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  AFTERWORD

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  [The suffragette] is a woman who has stupidly carried her envy of certain of the superficial privileges of men to such a point that it takes on the character of an obsession. . . . What these virtuous beldames actually desire in their hearts is . . . that the franchise of dalliance be extended to themselves.

  —H. L. Mencken, 1922

  CHAPTER 1

  Two bankers—one gray and stout, the other pink and merely soft about the jowls—conferred in low voices outside the office door, flicking pained glances through the window’s gold lettering. Julia smoothed the gloves across her knee to feign indifference and watched from the shadows of her hat brim. It mattered to her what the men said, and also that they not realize how much.

  They stepped back into the room, closing the door with a solemn click. The older man settled behind the desk, and his colleague sat in the remaining client chair, beside Julia. She was flanked.

  “It’s a privilege to meet you at last, Miss Kydd,” the older man said. “I remember your father well, and of course your brother has been a valued client for years. This bank and the Kydd family have enjoyed a long and cordial relationship, as you know.”

  She blanched at talk of satisfied generations. Trouble, then.

  “Naturally we’d like to help,” he went on, stroking his jaw as if to coax forth a kinder way to phrase what must follow, “but I’m afraid what you ask is impossible. While it’s true the account is registered in your name and technically the money is yours, the terms of the trust prohibit release of funds to anyone other than the trustee or his assigned proxies. Not even to you.” He forced a cough. “Particularly not to you. That’s rather the point of a trust, after all.”

  Julia recrossed her legs. She pointed out that she was no longer a child. In less than three weeks, her twenty-fifth birthday would render the issue moot. “I’ve lived independently in London for some time now and am quite capable of managing my own funds. If Philip were available, I’m sure he’d authorize this, but he’s not, and frankly I’m in a bit of a pinch.”

  Was she sure he’d cooperate? Ten years her senior, her half brother was a virtual stranger to her. They shared a name and a father but little else. If not for the small oil portrait over the library mantel, she might not have recognized him at their father’s funeral. She was six, and he, studied from behind the folds of her mother’s skirt, was a silent, taut-limbed youth summoned home from boarding school. Then he was gone again, until her mother’s death seven years later upended everything. Julia had been pitched into Philip’s last-resort care—or, more accurately, his legal jurisdiction. Their only filial touch had been an awkward handshake on signing her guardianship papers. From that moment on they’d been bound by a contract, nothing more.

  For the past decade Philip had been little more than a distant signature, each month releasing the funds from the account that enabled her life to proceed. She had no reason to suspect he now intended to embarrass, much less impoverish, her, although the fact that he was legally entitled to do so (for seventeen more days) chafed at her dignity. Dignity, however, was the least of it. A dark troll of doubt stirred again in her mind: Wasn’t this—control of her own money—the very issue that had dragged her back to New York?

  Philip’s note, folded over the toast rack on her breakfast tray two days ago, had merely said he’d “toddled off to Philadelphia,” with promises to return in time for their appointment next week with the lawyers to resolve the questions he’d raised about her inheritance. Until then, he’d written, surely she could amuse herself? Julia was to enjoy her reacquaintance with the city. The new Matisse watercolors at the Pryor Gallery were particularly fine, and Stokowski was conducting Glière’s Third on Sunday at the Aeolian. As if she too could simply wave a hand to invoke subscriber’s privileges or flick a finger for an account to be billed. For a man it was easy. Honor among peers was enough. Philip’s elegance fell to him on credit, no vulgar cash required.

  The younger banker swung his knees toward her. “We might be able to help in another way, Miss Kydd. I could advance you a small sum off the books, as it were. It’s a kind of gentlemen’s arrangement we occasionally offer our best clients, as even the most provident among us are occasionally caught up short. Say, twenty dollars? To be repaid at your brother’s earliest convenience. He and I are lunching together next week, as it happens. That would be soon enough.”

  How droll. He would consider her an honorary gentleman for a day or two. Their little secret. Very modern. “I require at least fifty,” Julia said. “As I told you.” Most men she knew would ask for twice that and beam at the adventure of such thrift.

  He puzzled at her obstinacy. “But—”

  “May I apply for a loan, then? I clearly have the means to repay it and will accept whatever interest you must charge.” She lifted her chin. Pride cost nothing.

  The men’s eyes reconvened. Lips were rolled, sighs suppressed.

  “That’s impossible too, I’m afraid. It’s simply not done, Miss Kydd. No reputable bank in this country will lend money to a woman without the cosignature of a male relation. You must be reasonable.”

  The younger man tried again. “But your problem is so easily solved. A brief note would do. Philip can even telephone, if he speaks to one of us directly. We do sympathize, Miss Kydd.”

  “Trust your brother, my dear,” his colleague added. “He’ll look after you, decide what’s best. I’m afraid there’s nothing more we can say. You must understand.”

  Julia understood. It was they who failed to grasp the situation. She simply sought to withdraw a modest sum of her own money. She needed their services, not their sympathy. The more solicitous (and adamant) their manner grew, the more her cheeks began to burn.

  She stood, and both men scrambled to their feet. “I see,” she said. “I’d hoped for a more enlightened respon
se, but it appears my faith was misplaced.” Misplaced and outright trampled.

  Her dignity, however, would not waver. She strode out through the bank’s vast marble lobby. Her steps echoed beneath the high vaulted ceiling, gilded with the fortunes of prosperous men, and no doubt with the fortunes of women too—women like her, from whose feeble judgment and impulsive sentiment their money was so zealously safeguarded.

  She continued down the steps into the mild September sunshine, ignoring the doorman’s low whistle. She intended to march clean out of view, gaze high and shoulders back, beyond any shadow of those massive pillars and all the “simply not done” nonsense they supported. Instead she was forced to stop, stalled by a pebble under her left foot. Her shoes were made of a smooth kid leather dyed to match her dove-gray frock—pretty things but also a hobbling nuisance, intended for indolent afternoons at the card table and strolls through smart galleries, not rough Manhattan pavements.

  She freed the stone and calculated: sixteen blocks. Difficult but not impossible. She turned left, took two steps, and paused. On reconsideration she reversed course, 51 percent certain the route to Philip’s apartment lay to her right. Without the money she’d intended to collect, all hopes of moving to a hotel were thwarted, and she had no choice but to return to his so-called hospitality. She began to walk.

  Two weeks, she thought. Maybe three. Certainly within a month it would all be resolved, and she would be steaming toward home again, perhaps even already back in her lovely flat in Shepherd Market. By then her housekeeper, Christophine, would have dry proofed, cleaned, and laid in the shiny new fonts of Garamont due to arrive from France any day now. She had barely demurred when Julia decided to turn the flat’s small dining alcove into her printing studio, stationing the heavy oak type cabinet in the window bay so that during the long, close labor of letterspacing a line of caps, she might look up and rest her gaze on Green Park’s distant overstory. Shortly before she’d had to sail for New York for this one last tangle with Philip, Julia had christened that alcove and all within it the Capriole Press, her Capriole Press. She’d produced only one official title so far, but it had pleased some of London’s most discerning collectors, and it was enough. It made her a publisher.

  Julia produced her books by hand, in necessarily small editions, planned and executed with a care that made her enterprise more important, not less. At this point Capriole was mostly still a vision in her head, a jumble of possible new projects combining texts, illustrations, papers, inks, and more. But that vision, awaiting only the funds to be unlocked on her birthday, was her future. Just thinking about it kept her stride steady and her pace brisk (despite a complaining whisper from her left heel), as if she could walk straight there today.

  “Julia!”

  A month ago she might have flinched at such a squeal, but now the sound of her name exclaimed in pleasure—or spoken at all, to be frank—was cheering. A silver motorcar glided to the curb beside her. “Where’s the fire? You look like you want to get there yesterday.”

  Julia bent to the lowered rear window and greeted her friend.

  “What luck,” Glennis said. “Hop in.”

  Julia hesitated. Luck? She doubted it. Glennis had likely wheedled news of Julia’s banking errand from Mrs. Cheadle, Philip’s housekeeper. Glennis Rankin was an old school friend, half-forgotten until wild coincidence had jostled them together again last week on the crossing from England. Given Julia’s long absence from the city and now Philip’s neglect, Glennis was also Julia’s sole acquaintance in New York. Chums for a single year when they were fourteen, they’d grown quite different in temperament and taste in the intervening decade. Glennis was still almost childlike, eager for a romp and a laugh, but her exuberance wasn’t the problem. The problem was more embarrassing.

  Glennis simply exhaled money. Successive evenings of chasing her restless fancy, abandoning twenty-dollar bottles of dubious champagne in one club after another, had reduced Julia to her present predicament. She could still afford her friend’s company, barely, at least for another few weeks, but not without refreshing her supply of ready cash. She murmured as much as the motorcar pulled smoothly into traffic.

  Glennis scoffed. “Easy. I’ll float you. And anyway we can start at my sister’s party tonight, and that won’t cost a penny. Viv made me promise to kick things up if it gets dull.”

  And so it was settled. Julia sank back into the upholstery and accepted the prospect of yet another evening of her friend’s cheerful meandering, which suited her perfectly at the moment. She needed distraction, any lark to get her through until the lawyers could resolve Philip’s qualms. Another few idling weeks, she hoped, and she could recommence her real life, unencumbered by his oversight or anyone else’s.

  Until then, she would entrust her hours to Glennis’s frivolity. Once again tonight she’d lead them everywhere and nowhere. New York had changed in the five years since Julia had left for Europe’s fresh horizons. After dark in this new Manhattan, one party simply melted into the next. She’d seen it in London too, the endless searching for some new diversion—silly or vacuous or even dangerous, it didn’t matter—anything to avoid thinking about all that had been lost in those muddy trenches.

  Every night was the same. Whether stalking a saxophone’s wail or tumbling out of a taxicab at a half-remembered address, one kept moving in the quest for somewhere the sidecars were safe, the chatter amusing, and the hours quick to pass. New York seemed full of such sanctuaries, given the right sort of knock and moneyed smile. On both scores Glennis’s did nicely, which was a blessing, really, as Julia had just two dollars and sixty-four cents to her name.

  CHAPTER 2

  Julia followed Glennis into the front rooms of a spacious apartment somewhere in the East Eighties. She relinquished her wrap to the waiting maid and surveyed the smoky crowd. A sluggish knot of guests stood ravaging canapés by the piano, barely lifting their faces to inspect the new arrivals. Glennis shrugged off her sister’s greeting as she peered down a shadowed hallway. Over the jittery bray of a phonograph, she demanded, of no one in particular, to know, “Is Russell here?”

  Her talk all afternoon of a man named Russell had been interminable. She’d raptured at everything from his taste in neckties to his nile-green Jewett, apparently ranking him high on her list of prospective last-chance husbands. Never mind that they’d spent the past two nights on the trail of another elusive candidate named Warren, a Wall Street up-and-comer with a powerful devotion to Glennis when he could get away from his dishrag of a wife in Hoboken. The ever-resilient Glennis had shrugged at each disappointing prowl through another murky room, and off they’d gone again. Glennis knew a great number of places to look for whatever or whomever she was after, and Julia was content to trail in her wake, paying the fare every other time they alighted somewhere new. As long as she was able.

  Glennis lifted two drinks from a passing tray and gave one to Julia. “Dreadful. No one here but wholesome, bloody strivers. Nothing we can do about that. Let’s finish these and push off. I’ll say you have a headache. Tab’s on me tonight.” She fiddled with her frock’s shoulder strap and jerked her wrist toward her mouth in a clumsy bottoms up signal.

  Julia agreed with a hasty gulp. What made some parties effervescent and others a sludge of misery? There was a sour whiff of boredom here on both sides of the canapé trays and cocktail shakers. Little wonder Glennis was already keen to soldier on.

  But downed gin and a swift getaway were not to be. Glennis’s sister lifted the phonograph’s needle. Vivian Winterjay stood across the room in a spotlight of wary silence, mustering one of those small, composed smiles meant to carry one through any occasion—the bare-knuckle refuge of impeccable breeding. Her party was clearly not going well, not well at all, yet her fair features glowed serenely in the lamplight. It seemed fate had lavished the family beauty on Vivian, leaving only scraps for the younger Glennis, and a discreet swell of expectant maternity only deepened her radiance. A special treat was wait
ing, she announced, and they were all to proceed through to the dining room. She gestured to a pair of varnished oak doors as her eyes swept the room, enforcing the invitation with a jaunty smile. They pinned even Julia for a moment. Glennis could click and nod herself into a frenzy gesturing toward the exit (and she very nearly did), but to turn and leave at that moment would be unspeakably rude. They had no choice but to refresh their drinks and join the shuffle into the dining room.

  Waiting at the head of the table sat an aging woman with tar-black ringlets and a wobble of white skin from chin to collar. Hands upturned to either side, she said simply, “Madame Sosostris, at your service.”

  A séance, then. Neither special nor a treat. In London séances were such exhausted party fare that Julia knew several young people who would revolt at this moment, upsetting the plan with brutal mockery. These guests settled meekly into place around the table: either the game was less commonplace in New York, or they were simply a tamer lot. One hour, Julia calculated. No hostess on earth could hope for more.

  The slap of dark was absolute, prompting a few seized breaths and a cluck or two of laughter. At the first shiver of blue light, someone gave a sporting whistle of appreciation, but that was all. There were no gasps or clutches for another’s hand. The tiny light swayed above the table like a trapeze in search of its artist before swooping low in a staccato frenzy, sparking flickers off cocktails, brilliantined heads, and the tablecloth’s embroidered sequins and mirrors.

  “Poor thing needs a drink,” Glennis said into Julia’s shoulder. “Awful jimjams.”

  The jittery light sprang to the ceiling and stilled, a resting hummingbird.

  “Who’s there?” Madame prompted in a low rumble.

  They waited. A muffled clatter and plaintive “Oh, for the love o’ Mike” seeped through the wall from the kitchen. Snickers traveled the circle of hands, emerging in Mrs. Winterjay’s soft sigh of irritation.

  Still nothing. The swish of stockings as legs were crossed. A cough muffled into a lapel. Another rustle. The partiers were already restless. Spirit lights, if that was all they were to get, were as old as ankle-length hems. Julia revised her estimate of time remaining: ten minutes.