The It Girls

by Karen Harper

  Suddenly, Mother’s face was gone, and Lucy’s was there, her grown-up face.

  “Lucy!” someone said. “I’m going to drown! Hold me up!”

  “Listen to me, Elinor—Nellie,” she said. “I will hold you up. No one is going to die. You rest now and get your strength back. Do not let go of all we’ve had, all that we can be. Your daughters need you. Your book needs you, and you must finish it. Be strong, and I’ll be right here with you.”

  She felt better after that. Lucy held her hands and surely wouldn’t let her go off this cliff above the sea. They were looking out the window of Elizabeth Castle in just Jersey, and she could see from here her heroine Elizabeth from her book. She would not let her die. She would finish her story and share it with people, with Mother, with Lucy and even Clayton.

  Elinor was sure she pulled a frightened child named Nellie next to her and held her tight so she would not fall into the water and drown.

  Elinor was impatient with how slowly she came back from Juliet’s difficult birth and the rheumatic fever that plagued her after, and her temporary need for crutches plagued her, too. But the truth was she did not mind the doctor telling her she could not risk more children. Clayton was upset, though he was kind enough to lease a small cottage, Lamberts, on the estate for her mother so she could help care for her in her convalescence. But while he’d promised to try to show someone he knew at a newspaper her book when he returned, he was already off to Monte Carlo on his own for a month.

  That hurt. Partly because he had proposed to her there. In her own heart, Elinor knew they were at the very least emotionally estranged now. No putting the broken pieces together this time. Let him caress his bottles of brandy. She accepted that their marriage—except for their little girls—was a failure, but she refused to believe she herself was.

  “Admit it, Cosmo,” Lucile told him, stooping to give him a peck on the cheek. “This new shop is perfect for all my plans. I adore the pale gray painted walls with the mirrors and the thick carpet to set everything off. I tell you, this mannequin dress parade today will be a feather in my cap.”

  He was quick to turn his head so that she caught his lips with her mouth instead of his cheek. “I told you, lass, all this on the condition that you one day model an outfit you have made especially for me, like one of those silky Oriental-type robes with some of the garments under it like you had in your hands and then sat on to hide the first day we met.”

  “Cosmo! You’re to help with all this today, not distract me.”

  He sighed and rose from one of the little gilt wooden chairs they had set in a circle around a raised stage bedecked with white gardenias, stephanotis, and orchids he thought had cost too much, an arm and a leg he’d said with a narrow look at her arms and legs. The man was absolutely driving her to distraction and on a day like this.

  How did she know Lucile Ltd. was doing well? Because important designers were spreading rumors about her, calling some of her designs indecorous. Yes, she was doing away with some layers of petticoats and big bustles and putting slits in some of the tighter skirts. The corsets she sold now were form enhancing, not form shaping. She had introduced the French brassiere and worse—in the eyes of the fashion establishment—insisted on doing away with calling women’s arms and legs “limbs” as if they sprouted from trees. And her expansion to this new address at 14 St. George Street just off Hanover Square was a threat to other couturieres, who believed any sort of publicity, like the embossed and gilt invitations she’d sent out for this newfangled event, was “cheap.”

  Edith bustled past. “Hebe looks wonderful in Mrs. Glyn’s presentation gown. All six of the living mannequins are nearly ready, Lucile.”

  Lucile patted Cosmo’s shoulder and hurried out after her. “The musicians should be here soon,” she told Edith, amid the nervous, chattering girls. “And I intend to decide which of my sister’s jewels go with which gown of emotion. Have Mrs. Langtry and Mrs. Terry arrived yet? Oh, I pray nothing goes wrong today. How I wish I’d dared invite some of the royal family, but we’re not there quite yet. Down with those horrid old wax-faced mannequins. We are going to give them our beautiful goddesses—reality, though fanciful and fantastic!”

  “Yes, Lucile,” Edith said in a loud voice. That was evidently a cue, for all her living mannequins and seamstresses began to applaud. There was Lillie Langtry, who had slipped in too, not only smiling but lifting an early glass of champagne in a toast to Lucile’s creations.

  Once Elinor heard what a roaring success Lucile’s dress parade had been, she was even more driven to finish The Visits of Elizabeth. Although she and Clayton were married in name only now, he had kindly taken the manuscript to a man named Mr. Jeyes, who was a subeditor on the Standard newspaper. Clayton had also read parts of it at his men’s club and said it had elicited some “good laughs.”

  “Which I take means good in general, not derisive,” she said. “So then . . .”

  “So then Jeyes, good old chap, has an offer for us that it be run in segments in a publication called The World.”

  Elinor rose to her feet without leaning on her crutches when she heard that. “Well, after all,” she said, “Charles Dickens was successfully serialized.”

  “But he suggests a pen name, and I do too. After all, women of our class don’t write, not for publication.”

  “And if it fetches in money? Or is praised?”

  “Still keep your real name secret, I’d say.”

  “Even for other novels I intend to write?”

  “Elinor, what in the deuce do you want? A little pin money would be nice, of course. Don’t let your sister’s fame go to your head. As much as you two care for each other, I fear you try to top each other too.”

  “Quite untrue,” she told him. But, she thought, just wait until Lucile and all her fancy clients finally figure out who had written a book, one men, too, had deemed delightful.

  “You did what?” Lucile demanded as they celebrated the periodical publication of The Visits of Elizabeth two months later in the library—now Elinor’s writing room—at the Glyn flat in Sloane Square. “You are supposed to be keeping the identity of Elizabeth a secret and you told Daisy Brooke Warwick? Don’t you recall even the newspapers used to call her ‘The Babbling Brooke’? She won’t keep your secret, at least with the uppers she cavorts with, including the Prince of Wales, so you . . .”

  Lucile’s voice trailed off, and her hands shot to her hips. “Why, Elinor Sutherland Glyn, you told her on purpose!”

  Elinor only winked and smiled. “I certainly hope it doesn’t leak out, but Clayton can hardly scold Lady Warwick, can he? You know everyone’s talking about it, saying The Visits of Elizabeth is clever and funny. I can just see you putting an anonymous name on your designs and replacing those tall letters touting the Maison Lucile on your new building.”

  Lucile sighed and sank into the chair across Elinor’s writing desk. “You are right as rain, of course.”

  “I appreciate your saying so. Dear Lucy, my girlhood friend and ever my sister, I’ve decided that Elinor Glyn sounds a bit like a nom de plume, anyway. I intend to write more novels, and I’ve started another to be called The Reflections of Ambrosine, with the main character modeled on Daisy Brooke Warwick and the hero based on this handsome young man Daisy introduced me to, Major Seymour Wynne Finch, one of the Prince of Wales’s Marlborough House set. And oh, he has such style and panache—like your gowns, only quite in a different way.”

  Lucile picked up more than the inspiration for a fictional character in the way Elinor’s eyes lit and her pale skin blushed nearly as red as her hair.

  “If you’d been able to come to the dress parade, dear Nellie,” Lucile said, picking up on her tender use of her own girlhood name, “you could have taken part in the toast Lillie Langtry proposed for me. You don’t by chance have any champagne round here, do you?”

  “No, but something else that will surely do.” She went to the sideboard, opened a cabinet drawer, and du
g under a stack of papers. “Ta-da!” she sang out, producing and holding out stiff-armed a bottle of Bodega sherry from the Duff-Gordon collection. “Clayton is drinking more and more of his expensive brandy, but this should do the trick for two girls from just Jersey. Now where are those glasses he hides? Ah, yes, no fluted goblets but old cut-glass crystal tumblers.”

  She poured two liberal glasses of the sherry. They clinked them together.

  “To my sister, Lucy alias Lucile, fashion trendsetter and artist par excellence,” Elinor said.

  “To my sister, Nellie alias Elinor Glyn, published author and artist par excellence,” Lucile said. “Onward and upward!” And they drank to that.

  CHAPTER Fifteen

  Oh, Madame Lucile, can we not peek at them when they are here?” Annie, one of Lucy’s best seamstresses, asked.

  “You may look up and curtsy, but no one but Edith and I will be in the Rose Room while we do this fitting. This is a special day, and I want no missteps. We will fit the gown to her, so even Hebe won’t be needed this time,” she told her assembled staff and shooed them all back to work.

  Lucile had hired four other “living mannequins,” every one of them nearly six feet tall with perfect curves. They all had fair hair and classic features. She had them sitting so they would not tower over their royal guests, but she wanted her “goddesses” to be able to see them so close—and here!

  When the new century dawned in 1900, word was that old Queen Victoria was ailing. But the Maison Lucile was not. Lucile had seldom felt more professionally energized—or personally desperate.

  Energized because her new client Mary, Duchess of York, was actually stopping by for a fitting of a stunning blue satin, heavily embroidered gown Lucile had created for her after a visit to St. James Palace to show her the sketch of it. Previously, designs for the duchess had been carefully packed and sent off in a carriage, but this gown was special to Her Grace, and so to Lucile. The entire staff was thrilled because her husband, Duke George, was going to accompany her. At Victoria’s passing, he would become Prince of Wales when his father, “Bertie,” was crowned King Edward VII. And then someday, hopefully far distant, George would become King and their Queen would be in Lucile’s frocks. Let the other fashion salons like Norman Hartnell’s over in Bruton Street, which had been so snide, chew on that!

  The only cloud that hovered over her excitement was that she hadn’t seen Cosmo in over a fortnight, since he was in Scotland. His mother was also ill, that pillar of Victorianism whom he had vowed to protect and honor at his father’s deathbed. Lucile pictured her as looking like Queen Victoria, still mourning her long-departed husband and the grand old days. Cosmo had sent Lucile a letter now and then, but she was shocked how much she missed him, and, worse, she feared that his ardor for her was cooling. And hers, more and more, was not, and that terrified her too.

  “And do not be peeking out the window at them,” she threw back over her shoulder as it was obvious the royal carriage, one pulled by four horses instead of a pair, clattered up just outside the door. Yes, they were precisely on time. Lucile had been told that the duke was always prompt if not early. Obviously, he was a stickler for propriety, so everything had to go quickly and properly.

  With Edith behind her and the others standing back, Lucile greeted them at the door with a curtsy and pleasantries. The duke was bearded and smoking a cigarette, no less, but no good to fuss about the smoke near all the fabrics as she had with other men. Women smoked now too, but she had no compunction about scolding them.

  The royal couple often lived in their country home called Sandringham in Norfolk and, despite her excitement, Lucile found herself wondering if it was anything like Cosmo’s Maryculter in the Scottish countryside.

  “This way, please, Your Graces,” she said and indicated the carpeted hall toward the private fitting room at the rear she had dubbed the Rose Room.

  “A beehive of activity,” the duke said with a quick glance around. “Just the way I like to see our children at worthwhile tasks. Lead the way, then,” he added, she assumed to give her permission to walk ahead of them.

  Oh, just wait until she wrote Cosmo all this. It had worried her so that Elinor had said his mother would never accept a divorced woman as a daughter-in-law, but if royalty approved of her, wouldn’t that count for something?

  Things went well, though she could tell the duke did not like being penned in this small, frilly, pink room. He sat only briefly in the armed chair she’d brought from home, then stood or paced. Everyone knew he was an outdoorsman, a sportsman, but weren’t they all, from the squires to the noble males of England, including Cosmo—even Clayton, who had turned out to be a wretched husband for intellectual, emotional Elinor.

  The dark-haired duchess was not as stunning as her mother-in-law, Princess Alexandra, but she was pretty. She held herself stiffly erect, head up, shoulders back as she was fitted. It was rumored she did not get on with her mother-in-law and—oh dear . . .

  Lucile’s elbow knocked into the box of straight pins Edith held for her and they spewed all over the flowered carpet, even to the duke’s feet.

  “Oh, sorry,” Lucile cried. “Edith and I will get them.”

  “Not to worry,” the duke said. “Keep working there, as we are going to see the Queen. Here, let me help.” To Lucile’s surprise and embarrassment, he knelt next to the small dais on which his wife stood and helped Edith pick up pins.

  Lucile didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The future Prince of Wales and King of England was kneeling at her feet. Wait until she wrote that to Cosmo!

  “But I can tell you care for me, my darling Elinor,” Seymour pleaded. He shocked her by kneeling next to her chair at their private luncheon table and taking both her trembling hands in his. “Can you not be mine in body as well as in soul, as you have said?”

  They had met several other times for luncheon at this Amphitryon restaurant in London, which had private dining rooms intended for discreet liaisons. She loved this man madly—Clayton liked him too—but she had not been able to take the final step, the plunge to surrender her body to him as she had her heart. For some insane reason, she was still faithful to a husband who now detested her, who said he was sick of her histrionics and temper tantrums.

  Seymour Wynne Finch was all she had idealized and desired, as if he had stepped full blown as a hero from her heart and head. He was what she considered to be “the best type of Englishman,” well born and well educated, widely traveled. He had served his nation and was still a major in the Royal Horse Guards. He was a member of the Prince of Wales’s so-called Marlborough House set. And, nearly fifteen years ago, he had enjoyed an affaire de coeur with her onetime inspiration Lillie Langtry. Yet, he had been eating strawberries from her hand and kissing and licking her fingers with each bite today. She was nearly insane with desire, however much it must be the man’s first move. And yet she meant to—she must—put him off again.

  “I told you, dearest,” she said, her voice trembling, “I know it’s de rigueur among our friends, but I am just not ready to become your lover, however much I love you. It’s not you—it’s—it’s me.”

  He laid his head on her knees as if he were a little boy. She could feel the heat of him, fancied she could hear his heart beating. She shifted her hips slightly as he embraced her thigh and derriere with one arm.

  Elinor knew full well that if she was discreet about the affair, Clayton would not give a damn. He’d gotten on well with Seymour when he’d visited them at Sheering Hall or their flat here in London. But however tempted she was to give in to her passions and his, it just was not her way. Yet in this moment she nearly swooned. This was truly romantic love, even without the blending of bodies.

  He raised his handsome head and looked up at her. “I’m not worthy of your ideals, am I?” he asked. “It’s your moral code only to love those who fit your elevated sensibilities.”

  “No, it isn’t that. You are my ideal man, and that makes this even more diff
icult.”

  “I am so tempted to ravish you, my darling. But you know I would never presume that far.”

  “And I am so tempted that there is only one thing to do, and that is not to give in. We—I must stop meeting you like this. I fear I’m fragile and will break—break my promises and rules.”

  He suddenly looked so angry that she feared him for a moment. “Since you’ve decided, then so have I,” he said, clipping out his words with almost military precision. “I shall leave you now because it is so difficult to be near you and behave. And you would detest me forever if I acted the cad on my deepest desires not only to please but to possess you.”

  She sucked in a sob as he stood and stiffly stepped back two paces.

  “I won’t forget you or what we could have had,” he told her in a measured tone. “I wish you well in your marriage and your future.”

  As he turned away, she almost screamed his name and ran after him. Her vivid imagination pictured her on the settee, even the floor, clinging to him, crying out his name as he pulled her skirts up. Her passion was so vivid when he quietly closed the door that she nearly imagined he had taken her.

  She hated herself yet admired herself at the same time. She sat alone for a good hour, listening to the silence of the room and smashing strawberries she had been feeding him by hand.

  “You’ve seemed so unhappy lately,” Lucile told Elinor as they left the theater together and waited in line for a hansom cabriolet.

  “You should talk. You hardly smiled, let alone laughed at Ellen Terry’s jokes. You’re missing Cosmo, aren’t you?”

  “Terribly. Once he’d been through the funeral for his mother, I thought he’d be back, but I only received a short note. Now that she’s gone, maybe the divorced woman is not such a diversion. Maybe I was his rebellion—but I thought he cared.”

  They climbed up into the hansom and gave the driver Elinor’s address.