These Golden Pleasures

by Valerie Sherwood

  “But that’s not what I brought you here to see,” he said, and her interest quickened. “Over there—see her?” His eyes glinted as he pointed out a square-rigged schooner riding the glittering blue waters of the Bay. “The Virginia Lass,” he said. “She’s not part of the Coulter Line. She’s mine. Old, but seaworthy.”

  “She’s lovely. Can we board her?”

  “Some other time. I wanted you to see her.” He laughed. “She’s the only thing my lovely mother left me—except the memory of her smile.”

  Roxanne cast a look at him. His mother . . . Joab Coulter’s second wife, the one the servants called the heiress. Rhodes’s voice had softened when he spoke of her.

  “Do you have a picture of your mother?” she asked.

  “A small photograph of her in my room, but her portrait hangs near the front door.”

  Ah, she thought. The beauty with the gallant lift of the chin and the sad, lovely eyes . . . Not a happy woman, Joab Coulter’s Virginia bride.

  “She was lovely,” said Roxanne.

  “Yes . . . lovely in every way.” He sighed. “She left little impress on our household, Roxanne. After she died, he slipped into very rigid ways, but while she lived she was a softening influence on my father.”

  “Was this her ship?” asked Roxanne, indicating the Virginia Lass.

  He nodded. “Wedding gift from her father. New and shining then—like herself.” He stared fiercely at the wind-battered masts, the wave-battered hull.

  “What was he like? Your grandfather?”

  Rhodes laughed and the salt wind blew through his thick dark hair, ruffling it. She was reminded of the portrait. “Oh, he was a devil of sorts. Dedicated to women and wine. He made merry hell in his day, but —contrary to what my father says of him—he hurt no one but himself. And my mother loved him dearly to the day she died.”

  “It must have been hard on her, married to a man who hated her father,” mused Roxanne.

  “It was,” he said shortly. “It was hard on her just being married to my father. What she saw in him I’ll not be knowing.” There was an almost Irish lilt in his voice when he said that, and Roxanne remembered guiltily how Cook had once whispered that Rhodes had come along late in his mother’s marriage, sometime “after she’d hired that wild Irish groom” for her horses. He had nothing of the Coulter look, she realized. Their arrogance perhaps, their dark hair . . . but his eyes flashed in a face that she suddenly realized had a look of Ireland about it—in spite of his resemblance to his maternal grandfather. She studied him now as he stood gracefully beside her, saw that his build was more powerful than that of the man in the portrait, and saw also the lighthearted arrogance of generations of Irish lords, disinherited and brought low, dancing in his reckless smile.

  She wondered if Rhodes knew that Joab Coulter was not his father.

  “Do you think the Coulter Line will convert to steam?” she asked.

  “No.” He shook his head. “Gavin doesn’t realize what my father’s doing, but I do. He’s trying to purify the stench of the slave trade from our line! He’s too stubborn to make the changeover to steam until enough green seas have washed over our bows to make us clean again! His first wife—Gavin’s mother—though a Maryland aristocrat herself, had two sisters who’d married Mississippi planters. They were both ruined financially by the war. Father could have helped them, but would he? Hell, no! It broke her heart and she died. Then he married my mother. She was a free thinker and had never held with slavery, but her father had had slaves on his Virginia plantation, and my father never forgave her for it. He made her miserable as long as she lived. I think it was his way of purifying himself because he’d once been a slaver. Yes, that’s what the Coulter Line is founded on, Roxanne—slaving. In fast Baltimore-built clippers. Don’t look so shocked. All the world knows it. But you’d be wise not to mention it in Gavin’s presence; it’s a fact he won’t face up to—like many others, one of which is that my father will run the Line his way until the day he dies. Whether he goes broke or not.”

  “But if he was a slaver,” faltered Roxanne, “then how can he—”

  “Condemn others for having bought his cargo? Ah, but he repented his sins, Roxanne. And some others didn’t—my mother’s father, for instance. It’s what he has against me—my wild blood that came to me through my mother. Though God knows, it’s not so wild!”

  Roxanne stared at him. She had never heard him go on like this. She was pleased that he would speak so freely to her; it meant he trusted her.

  “It’s getting late. We’d better get back,” he said and led her off to buy a big basket of soft-shelled crabs. Roxanne climbed back into the buggy, smiling. She felt she had established a closeness with Rhodes; it was the happiest day she had spent in Baltimore.

  On the way back she let him kiss her in the shade of a giant elm that grew in a quiet corner of the park. The contact shook her more than she cared to admit. And when Rhodes, pressing his advantage, kissed her again, this time gently probing her lips with his tongue, while his hands sought her breasts, she pulled away and gave him an uncertain look.

  He attracted her, but his name was Coulter. And she didn’t want to end up like poor Mary Bridey, tucked away in some quiet place to have her baby and be forgotten.

  Chapter 8

  Clarissa’s return was a great event in the household, and for Roxanne everything changed overnight. She was in the front hall when Clarissa arrived, sweeping grandly through the front door on Rhodes’s arm. A girl of Roxanne’s height and weight, with a fashionable pompadour of dark auburn hair and brown-auburn eyes that almost matched. A laughing, chattering Clarissa, who clung possessively to Rhodes’s arm—and whose laughter stopped short when she saw Roxanne.

  “You had some luck while you were gone, Clarissa,” explained Rhodes, indicating Roxanne. “You got yourself a new lady’s maid!” He told her that Roxanne had been Aunt Hattie’s maid and companion in San Francisco.

  Clarissa frowned. “I wanted to choose my own maid,” she said petulantly with a cold look at Roxanne.

  She doesn’t like the way Rhodes looked at me, Roxanne discerned uneasily. She’s afraid I’ll compete for him!

  “Oh, well.” Clarissa shrugged. “She can help carry my things to my room anyway. Roxanne,” she ordered, “bring that pile of boxes. You can start unpacking.”

  Roxanne flushed a little under the peremptory tone in Clarissa’s voice. Clarissa was eighteen, only slightly older than herself, but she was dressed in a lavish sheer brown organdy with a hat to match, ornamented with artificial peach roses and a huge peach tulle bow. Her dainty hands were encased in peach kid gloves, and her arrogant stance proclaimed that she owned the earth. Roxanne was sharply aware of the plainness of her own serviceable gray cambric and stiff starched apron. Soberly, she bent to pick up a pile of boxes.

  “Here, let me help,” said Rhodes.

  Annoyed, Clarissa said, “Oh, let her do it, Rhodes!”

  Upstairs, Rhodes deposited a stack of boxes beside the stack Roxanne had carried up, and left. Clarissa, peeling off her kid gloves, watched with some dissatisfaction as Roxanne untied packages and put the contents away in drawers. When she ran out of space to stuff things, even in the big walnut armoire, Clarissa said irritably, “Oh, put the box under the bed!”

  Roxanne complied, going down on her knees to slide the large carton under the bed. She wondered where Clarissa was going to put all the things in her trunk.

  As she undressed, Clarissa carelessly left items of her clothing scattered about the room, which Roxanne then had to step forward and pick up. Plainly it was not going to be easy to work for her.

  Stripped down to her “combination” underwear, with its chemise top and light bloomer bottom, Clarissa paused to survey her figure critically in the tall cheval glass.

  “I haven’t gained any weight,” she stated complacently, “in spite of all those wonderful late suppers!” As Clarissa turned about for a better view of herself, Roxanne surveyed
her thoughtfully. She saw a girl of her own height with a figure quite strikingly like her own. But Clarissa had a candy-box pretty face with wide, rather vacant eves of a rich dark brown that matched her thick auburn hair . . . while Roxanne's face was stunning in its beauty and impact. Each of Roxanne's features was perfect—her dark-lashed sapphire eyes, her soft expressive mouth, her sheer peach-bloom complexion, her small firm chin, and her thick and gleaming dark-blond hair.

  She saw Clarissa studying her just as she studied Clarissa. There was irritation in Clarissa's glance, a kind of angry look that said: You are only a servant; how dare you be so beautiful?

  Later, from the second-floor stair landing, Roxanne heard Clarissa, freshly clad in peach dimity with a little ruff at the neck and great satin bows at the elbows, telling Rhodes, “I don't know if I'll keep Roxanne. She's very conspicuous looking for a servant and—sort of above herself, if you know what I mean.”

  "Oh, you mean that insolent look? Well, remember Roxanne speaks French and has had some schooling. She knows her knife from her fork!" Roxanne looked over the banisters and saw him turn to Clarissa as if a new idea had struck him. "Say, there's your chance, Clarissa. Roxanne can easily pass as a French maid.”

  Rhodes pressed the point. “How many of your friends have French maids? Why don’t you dress her up in black silks with white organdy raffles and take her about with you? You'd be the talk of the town, Clarissa!"

  Clarissa considered him doubtfully. "Do you really think so?"

  "No doubt about it," said Rhodes in an airy voice.

  "Son of froufrou . . ." murmured Clarissa.

  Roxanne turned away smiling then, but she was startled when Clarissa, bent on having a French maid since none of her Baltimore friends had one, suddenly ordered a length of lavish black silk and a lot of white organdy and had her seamstress whip up a concoction that was different from anything Roxanne had ever expected to wear in service.

  At Clarissa's command, she tried it on in front of the tall cheval glass in Clarissa's bedroom: Black silk stockings, black hign-heeled shoes. A gleaming black silk dress with leg-o'-mutton sleeves. a seductive bell-shaped skirt and a ruff of white at the throat. A fluted white organdy apron tied with a big bow in the back and a little tiara-like fluted organdy ruff to wear in her puffed-up dark-blond hair. The dress fitted her like her own skin and rustled when she moved. Roxanne studied her refection in the mirror and thought such an outfit belonged in a music hall or cabaret.

  “You can't mean I’m to go out on the street looking like this?" she said, aghast. "Everyone will stare at me!”

  Clarissa’s faint smile told her that was the idea; she stood entranced, studying Roxanne narrowly—now garbed in her very own idea, of what a French maid should look like. “And remember." Clarissa cautioned, “to speak only French. If you can't say something in French, just don't speak at all. I wouldn't want people to know you were a counterfeit."

  Roxanne rushed from the room, painfully conscious as she went down the stairs of how the clinging black silk outlined not only her breasts, her dainty waist line and her softly rounded hips, but clung to the curve of her bottom as well and moved as she moved. The whole effect was so seductive, it looked as if it belonged in a boudoir. She couldn’t imagine going out on the street in it.

  Striding through the hall below. Rhodes paused to watch her descent with kindling eyes “Clarissa's done something right at last, he exulted. “You're magnificant Roxanne."

  “I feel ridiculous." she muttered. “like a deg on a leash—with a diamond dog collar. And walked on past him.

  Rhodes laughed heartlessly she thought—and gave her bottom a familiar pat. She whirled and struck at him. Deftly he avoided her blow and went out whistling, looking very pleased with himself. Roxanne glared after him and rustled out to the cupboards to find a lamp wick.

  Later, as she was hanging up Clarissa’s clothes, Roxanne noticed something that had not caught her attention before: While Clarissa’s wardrobe consisted primarily of peach and pink and ruffles and furbelows—all standard enough in the fashions of the day—every dress had something striking to catch the eye. And every hat as well, for Clarissa’s hats were ingenious creations of feathers and ribbons with artfully sweeping brims. Even her gloves were special—they were jeweled, tasseled, scalloped. Roxanne realized that every item in Clarissa’s wardrobe had been chosen for its impact on the viewer; the girl’s one desire seemed to be to make herself conspicuous and attract attention.

  Much to Roxanne’s horror, Clarissa’s new way to attract attention was to parade around Baltimore with Roxanne following two paces behind her. On these walks, Roxanne found herself carrying Clarissa’s fan—which usually matched her costume—a large reticule containing smelling salts, lacy handkerchiefs, visiting cards, Paris powder and perfume, an extra pair of kid. gloves, and a white prayer book (for Clarissa publicly affected religious devotion). Often the reticule also contained a romantic novel which Clarissa was borrowing from a friend and must smuggle into the house—an item Roxanne was always glad to see, for she would manage to read a chapter now and then as she straightened up Clarissa’s room. In fact, Roxanne might have gotten used to it all, if it had not been for the crowning insult, the parasol. Clarissa wasn’t content to carry her own beruffled parasol—and she had one to match each of her afternoon gowns. Instead, Roxanne must carry it, bending forward slightly to hold it so that it shaded Clarissa’s pretty vacant face from the sun, her own face red with embarrassment at the amused glances directed at their progress as they paraded through Baltimore’s better downtown streets.

  All over Baltimore Clarissa exhibited her new toy. Roxanne was stared at and giggled at all over the city. Heads turned curiously to look at her as Clarissa minced and Roxanne rustled sexily by. Clarissa’s friends all asked Roxanne questions in French. Her accent, as she answered, was as bad as theirs, but in their ignorance they didn’t know that.

  Roxanne felt ridiculous on these tours, most of which were journeys to the houses of Clarissa’s friends, where she cooled her high French heels in the corner of one elegant drawing room after another, jumping up every few minutes to be stared at as she did Clarissa’s bidding—to bring a fan or to take it away, or to pin up a stray lock of hair of Clarissa’s artful coiffure that had come loose during animated conversation as the young ladies gossiped, seated around massive sterling tea services.

  Had she not been so conspicuous, Roxanne would have enjoyed these journeys, for the houses themselves had enormous individuality: There was the Renaissance-style mansion of the Misses Lyons, where the furniture was all tall, dark and handsome,- and the people were uniformly short and round. And the posh abode of Miss Paige, where Roxanne was promptly banished below stairs, to be pursued by an amorous butler around the table in the servants’ dining room. And the ornate Greenspring Valley “cottage” of the nouveaux riche Pottersby clan, where one of the handsome Pottersby boys jumped out of a doorway, cried “Boo!” and kissed her as she hurried with a glass of water to Clarissa, who claimed she was fainting from the heat.

  As it was, Roxanne hated these excursions. Surrounded by all the trappings of wealth and power, she was made to feel a fool—and worse, sometimes she was made to feel like the legitimate prey of lustful upper servants. She kept her head high and her back stiff and rustled along in her picturesque black silk and white organdy, challenging all corners with her sapphire eyes. Though she hated the trappings which proclaimed her a lady’s maid instead of a lady, she tried her best to hide it.

  In spite of the embarrassment, there were compensations:

  Such as the visits to the glovers.

  Gloves were a necessity. Women of fashion wore them even inside the house. They had stacks of gloves. And every formal occasion meant long opera gloves (which the glovers called twenty-button gloves). Some of these long gloves were so tight they were called mousquetaires; they were said to have been adapted from the gauntlets worn by the famous Musketeers. Men wore gloves on the dance floor
as well as on the street. Even waiters in restaurants and the servants in wealthy homes wore them to serve dinner. At least at the table one could remove one’s gloves and still remain in fashion.

  Clarissa made frequent visits to her favorite glover, whose window displayed gloves known as Limerics, of such fine calfskin that even a pair large enough to fit a man’s hands could be squeezed into a walnut shell. Roxanne stared, fascinated, at these gilded nutshells when Clarissa decided on them for gifts for the men of the Coulter household.

  The glove-making family who owned the shop was named Barrington. The father and elder son managed the small factory in the rear of the shop where the hand-made gloves were produced, while the younger son, Denby, clerked.

  When Roxanne entered the shop, Denby’s expression became as rapt as if an angel had just come to earth.

  Clarissa noted the glazed look in the young glover’s eyes, and her voice reflected her irritation as she said sharply she’d like to see some of their newest styles, please.

  Denby recovered himself and favored Clarissa with a professional smile. Hastily he produced a half dozen pair of gloves in Clarissa’s size—for she was a regular customer of the shop. But even when he came around from behind the counter to help fit a pair of long embroidered kid mousquetaire on Clarissa’s shapely arms, his gaze hardly left Roxanne.

  Denby Barrington was in his early twenties, above medium height with light hazel eyes and silky brown hair. He sported a drooping silky mustache of which, Roxanne guessed, he was inordinantly fond. His complexion was rather pale—no doubt he did not get outdoors much. There was pride in the way he walked and moved; his was a swinging gait which in a heavier-set man might have been a swagger, but in reed-slender Denby it was rather graceful. There was a suggestion that his coltish build might fill out later to wiry strength. It seemed odd to Roxanne that a man should have such a dainty profession, but otherwise she gave him little thought. She could not help noticing, however, how Denby’s hazel eyes followed her as she moved about the shop, rustling in her seductive black silk uniform. Watching him as he fit the gloves carefully on Clarissa, Roxanne decided that he had the manners of a Grand Duke, and wondered if his mother had lovingly pressed those stiff spotless white cuffs, that tall stiff white collar.