The It Girls

by Karen Harper

  She’d met a lovely couple near where they were to live, really their landlords for the house, and they’d been most kind. There they were, seated in the second pew, nodding at her and James, Lord Fitzharding so short and thin and Lady Fitzharding so huge a woman—Jack Sprat and his wife, Nellie had whispered after she’d met them. Could she dare to hope someone of the peerage would wear her designs? Lady Fitzharding was smiling so broadly at her.

  But, oh no, Mother was crying.

  Lucy considered the wedding night more than a disappointment. If she were honest with herself, it was a disaster. She had imagined being slowly wooed and worshipped, but instead James was rushed and impatient. Perhaps she should have expected as much, given his behavior before the wedding, but even a hint of Nellie’s fragile, fanciful ideas of storybook romance would have been nice. Perhaps James thought he had now moved from adoration to ownership.

  Still, this was marriage. But it wasn’t long after breakfast that James downed his first drink of the day, and it was not fruit juice or tea. “I thought,” he said—when he’d said precious little of what he’d thought on their wedding night, except that her body looked like alabaster—“that we’d enjoy a wedding trip later and just settle into our new home this first month or so.”

  “You said I could decorate it fashionably, but I suppose I should wait on that.”

  “I have the money, now, darling, so ‘fashion’ away. I’m glad to see the autumn weather’s holding. We’ll want to take some brisk walks with the hunt dogs. But the sky’s the limit when you get to London to buy curtain goods or upholstery fabric or whatever. And, remember, you can purchase a few new frocks instead of sewing your own. No need for that anymore.”

  “But I love sketching and sewing them, not only for me but for Mother and Nellie.”

  “I want to see them well dressed, too, of course. But, as pretty as your dresses and gowns are, I can’t have someone of our gentrified station—perhaps with the best yet to come—laboring like a seamstress. We’ll be out in the Fitzharding set now. So glad they’ve taken a fancy to you and your sister. Your mama tries to be agreeable, but I don’t think she’s weathering losing you as well as I thought she would. I’ll win her over, just as I did you—you’ll see,” he said and poured another glass of liquor from the sideboard.

  “Lucy,” Nellie said, looking round the sitting room at Cranford Park two months after the wedding, “I adore your friends here, especially the kindly Fitzhardings. And what you’ve done with these rooms—absolutely spiffing!”

  “I’m glad you enjoy them at least—as does Lady Fitzharding. James really doesn’t care one way or the other, though he likes me to make him proud and he basks in any compliments I receive. But he’s balked at paying some of the bills when he told me to spend away, anything I wanted.”

  They sat on the mauve-silk and golden-tasseled Louis XIV–style divan. Nellie knew Lucy had an upset stomach and, with the holidays coming soon, it had crimped her style. James had gone off without her today, shooting whatever birds were available now. Nellie knew she could have accompanied him to the outdoor luncheon in place of Lucy, but it was nippy out, and she’d worried that Lucy looked so shaky she might heave up her breakfast, meager as it was of tea, toast, and honey.

  “This room is almost my ideal of a romantic bower—an escape to the past,” Nellie said, hoping to perk Lucy up. “I adore the way you’ve draped the ceiling so beautifully that it seems we are in a summer tent with all these silk ribbon roses you’ve made. The pretty china plates and flowered rug are so sweet I can almost smell the blossoms.”

  “Coming from you, the queen of old-fashioned romance, a great compliment.”

  “Well, as James has teased me more than once, since he knows I often read about royalty, his middle name is Stuart. But I told him, one of them had his head chopped off.”

  “Nellie, neither of us are good at this but—” Here she popped up and made for a rose-patterned porcelain ewer she had on display at the piano she loved to play. She sat on the piano bench and propped the ewer on her lap and looked into it, as if she had something hidden there.

  “Neither of us are good at what?” Nellie asked. “I’ve never decorated a room in my life, only arranged the few things I have, but I’d like to. I imagine I would do it up quite exotically, something inspired by the scenery from Bernhardt’s Theodora. I’ve been keeping extensive journals, you know. The Fitzhardings have been so kind not only to you but to me, admiring my stories and the caricature sketches I’ve made of them and their friends, so—”

  “I don’t mean decorating,” Lucy interrupted, her voice shaky. It was as if she had not been listening at all. “Dear Lord, I meant that, after but these few months married, I think I’m pregnant. Worse, I don’t want to be.”

  She retched into the ewer and collapsed onto the piano keys with a dissonant chord.

  Nellie hurried to her, put one arm around her shoulders and one hand on her forehead, while Lucy vomited into the ewer again.

  “Oh. Oh dear—dearest,” Nellie managed, whipping her handkerchief from her sleeve to wipe her sister’s face. “I’ll summon your lady’s maid.”

  “That bell cord—there,” she said, pointing. “Violets on it. Tha—that one.”

  Silk violets and roses and pregnant, Nellie thought. Poor Lucy wasn’t happy, didn’t want a child now, or at least James’s child. And just when Mother was getting resigned to the marriage, especially since the rented house was nice and James and Lucy had been taken in by a lord and lady, and James had seemed—sometimes, that is—to have money.

  Nellie pulled the correct cord twice and hurried back to sit on the piano bench with her arm around Lucy. Nellie glanced out the window through the flower-patterned curtains into the distance. James was walking back with one of the Fitzhardings’ footmen, who was carrying a slew of dead birds. And James was drinking from a small metal flask.

  Oh drat! Suddenly Mother’s worries about James’s drinking seemed justified. At least he was with a man, not a woman, so Nellie hoped his womanizing reputation Mother fretted over was not true. But with Lucy pregnant and disheartened, Nellie would have to keep any of the bounder’s secret she learned, at least for now.

  Nellie knew she was learning a good but hard lesson. Mixing matrimony and men seemed more than dangerous and dim-witted—it could be disastrous.

  “Lucy insisted on a French name for the child,” James groused to Nellie when he came back in from seeing his newborn daughter months later. “Es-may, spelled E-s-m-e. Never heard it before,” he muttered and took a swig from a silver pocket flask, though Nellie knew by his tone and expression that it was hardly a congratulatory toast. Everyone knew James had wanted a son. “Whatever does Lucy have to do with France?” he asked and banged out of the sitting room off Lucy’s bedroom where the baby had been born after nearly twenty hours of labor.

  He was barely gone a moment and came back in. As much as Nellie had appreciated him letting Mother and her visit here—she now preferred to stay with the Fitzhardings nearby—he had thoroughly upset her.

  Before he could say another word, she told him, “She picked a French name because we have a proud French heritage through our Canadian grandmama. We still have relatives near Paris, as you well know. And please stop shouting. You told her if it wasn’t a son, she could choose the name.”

  “That aside, is it true what I heard yesterday?” he demanded, all too obviously switching topics as he did when bored or cornered. “About your turning down that millionaire who took a fancy to you on top of refusing the hand of the Duke of Newcastle last spring? A duke! Hell, Queen Elinor, you could have been a duchess and helped us all up the damned social ladder. Granted the duke was an old man—”

  “And I’ve noted from observation somewhere that a marriage can be ill served by huge differences in the ages of the couple. I’m barely beyond twenty to his lofty sixty years, but on this day which should be so happy here for the birth of your child—”

  “Lis
ten, Nellie,” he said, pointing a finger at her. “I know your clever comments and sketches of people amuse the Fitzhardings and their friends, but you don’t amuse me. Do you intend to keep living off your poor mother—or that curmudgeon Kennedy—the Fitzhardings, or me?”

  “I’ll make my own way. I’d rather jump into the sea than wed someone I don’t love like the duke or that wealthy acquaintance you hauled in here with his yacht. I knew someone once who married for a yacht and a grand escape, and she ended up badly.”

  “Say no more!” he said, holding up a hand and the flask toward her as if to ward her off. “I don’t do battles with words. I prefer to love rather than fight!”

  Nellie gave an inelegant snort. Oh yes, Lucy might be the one with the strongest spine in the past, but she could fend for herself now. “I realize you’d rather love—or your form of so-called love,” she hissed, fighting to keep her voice down so Lucy and Mother would not hear from the other side of the door. “I’ve heard about your dancing and singing friends in town.”

  “And you’ve kept your mouth closed for once, I take it, since Lucy never mentioned that.” He pretended to applaud her, one hand against his flask. “Look, Elinor the great,” he said, lowering his voice too and stalking toward her, though she stood her ground. “All Lucile Christiana Sutherland Wallace adores is thinking up pretty things like room decorations and dresses. She wasn’t even enamored of having my child, as far as I can tell.”

  “She will be a good mother to Esme.”

  “How about being the wife I need? Going shooting or watching me fish? Not spending so much money on fabric and bibelots and knickknacks,” he said with such a sweeping gesture around the room that some of his liquor sloshed out to mar two silk throw pillows in a slash of darker blue.

  “You courted and wooed her. You knew what she was like from the start! Maybe the world would be the better for it if the woman would choose and propose.”

  “That’s the dumbest damn thing I’ve ever heard come out of your pretty mouth,” he said and wiped the back of his hand across his own.

  She stared hard at him. He acted as if he’d say more, do more, then he slammed out of the room again.

  Though Nellie felt weak-kneed, she did not collapse, but went over to the sitting room door to the upstairs hall and firmly turned the key to lock him out.

  CHAPTER Five

  Lucy wished she felt well enough to pace or even venture outside, whatever the weather. These four walls—everything was closing in around her here in Hounslow. Esme’s birth and a fever that had lingered had sapped her strength.

  Now she only had a fever to get out of this house for a spell. And without her adorable, two-month-old daughter. Yet guilt rode her hard that she had few maternal feelings for the child.

  Simpson, the young nursemaid, knocked and brought cherubic Esme in as she did twice a day. Lucy took the baby, held her the way she’d seen others do. Why did it not feel instinctive and natural? Why couldn’t she want to do all this?

  “There, there, my sweet little doll,” Lucy crooned, but she sounded silly to herself. What was wrong with her that she didn’t need to coo and fuss over Esme the way even Nellie had?

  It terrified her that she only loved her child in an abstract way, not with a rush of emotion. Granted, she would love to take Esme places when she was older and to teach her things.

  Actually, her fiercest feeling for the child was to protect her from her own father as she grew up, not that he would hurt her as he was seldom near her. He had become a layabout when he wasn’t drinking or gaming. He was also sulking because Lucy and even Nellie had criticized his long absences and his love of his brandy. This time the cad had been away in London for three days, doing who knows what and seeing—no doubt, chasing—who knows whom? Why had he swept her off her feet if he now simply wanted to sweep her under the rug? Granted, she’d been pregnant and then ill, but was her company so distasteful? She feared he would someday break the child’s heart as he had broken hers.

  “Let’s give her the sterling silver rattle that Lady Fitzharding brought, Simpson,” Lucy said and pointed at the shiny rattle.

  “Oh, I think she’d hurt her gums with that, and we’d best just let her look at it—not that it’s teething time yet, Mrs. Wallace,” the girl said. Again, Lucy felt she didn’t know what she was doing with Esme. It annoyed her that Simpson picked up the rattle and shook it as the baby gurgled and watched with her blue eyes wide.

  After Simpson took Esme back to the nursery and she was alone, Lucy reached for Nellie’s latest letter from Paris, where she’d gone to visit their cousins Margot and Auguste, family connections through their grandmama. Despite the fact James dared to banish Nellie from here—and then wasn’t around to keep her out anyway—this letter annoyed and even angered her.

  Dearest Lucy, what lovely fun I am having! I have discovered that English women have more freedom than do French women, but I would still rather be here!

  “Indeed, what a cheery letter,” Lucy said, frowning at it and speaking in a biting voice. “Why, I am having the most smashing fun here, married to James Wallace who ignores me.” If Nellie thought these frequent, gushy epistles were helping, she was wrong. And it got worse.

  You would adore the fashions here, and Margot has so kindly given me her last year’s gowns by Jacques Doucet, a women’s fashion designer who is simply all the rage. Lower necklines, which you would love. Lace, lace, lace, spills of lace. I have a peach gown with a tiered, full skirt all in gathers and folds, layers of lace, so wait until you see that. And I’ve had my hair done by Marcel Grateau, all with a hot comb and then finger waves. I’m sure you’d agree that sort of hair dressing goes so well with Doucet’s fancy dresses!

  So far, we have divided our time between our relatives’ town house on the Champs-Elysées and a charming family château in the country, though I far prefer Paris. Versailles was a marvel! Our cousins’ family is amazingly well placed in Parisienne society, so different from dear Mlle Duret on my last visit. Auguste is the perfect gentleman to escort Margot and me about.

  Lucy couldn’t help herself. She wadded up that first page and tossed it on the floor under her daybed. But, as if to punish herself, she read on.

  What I mean about English girls having more freedom—even here—is that, since everyone knows I have no dowry—they call it a dot—the young women are willing to introduce me to the men they hope to wed or even their fiancés, because they know I will not—cannot—steal their men! The young men live a fast life, but the young ladies a carefully watched one. Of course I must be on my guard against flirtations, because I don’t want to lose the friendship of our cousins and the charming people in their circle, so I am keeping a diary of everything here, all my visits . . .

  “While you, dear Lucy, enjoy yourself to no end.” Lucy created her own next line and tossed that page too. “And, of course,” she went on imitating Nellie’s voice, “all your dreams, dearest Lucy, are in ashes while your husband is off gallivanting in London.”

  But she did read the last paragraph just before the signature, because it mentioned their former idol Lillie Langtry:

  So did you hear that Lillie has been a huge success in her stage career in the States? They say Prince Edward urged her to try it! And maybe partly sponsored her! Lily has become an American citizen, where, I warrant, there is even more freedom for us younger women, those not wed at least, for then the man rules the roost as well we know! And that reminds me of one more thing—the French make it clear that love and romance are rarely the same thing!

  “And don’t I know that,” Lucy said in her own voice and heaved a huge sigh. But, she promised herself, she would still strive for romance, at least in her designs, in her heart. Though, somehow, it felt as if the grand possibilities for all that were over, and even her sister and mother could not understand the black depths of that. It made her angry at Nellie all over again.

  “And I know,” Lucy said aloud to her fancy, empty room, “tha
t, for a would-be authoress, my sister, you use far too many exclamation points when you write to your sister who is distressed and depressed.” She ended by muttering “ding damn!”—one of James’s favorite curses—and meant the exclamation point.

  The man who ruled her roost had told her to stop drawing and sewing her own fashions, Mother’s dresses too, but she was going to do it anyway. It fed her soul.

  She turned over the last page of Nellie’s letter, grabbed the pen she had intended to use to write her back and sketched herself in an evening gown she was certain would be far better than one of this Jacques Doucet’s, not with the stiffer lace but clouds and clouds of something she’d seen only once in a French fashion gazette—soft, heavenly chiffon.

  Why was it she could pour out her emotions like this, but not when she saw her own daughter, her flesh and blood? This drawing was a gown of emotion, one she could imagine cutting out even now, one she would entitle Exotic Escape.

  PART II

  London

  1886–1907

  CHAPTER Six

  At least they had all moved to London, so Lucy hoped that would help the ennui that she had experienced at Cranford Park, however kind the Fitzhardings had been to include them in society there. She worried James wanted to be in London for ulterior motives, but the best part was that Mother and Mr. Kennedy had moved to London also.

  As his health had taken yet another turn for the worse, the old man had wanted to be closer to his doctors. Actually, the sicker he got, the more Lucy and Nellie, too, felt they got on with him. Besides, he doted on Esme, giving her little trinkets she loved, more than he’d ever given a straw for her or Nellie, but then they’d hardly been toddling, babbling babies when he’d taken them on.