Heiress

by Susan May Warren

  by Susan May Warren

  Summerside Press™

  Minneapolis 55438

  www.summersidepress.com

  Heiress

  © 2011 by Susan May Warren

  ISBN 9781609362188

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Scripture references are from the following sources: The Holy Bible, King James Version (KJV).

  All characters are fictional. Any resemblances to actual people are purely coincidental.

  Cover design by Peter Gloege/Lookout Design, Inc. www.Lookoutdesign.com

  Interior design by Müllerhaus Publishing Group www.mullerhaus.net

  Summerside Press™ is an inspirational publisher offering fresh, irresistible books to uplift the heart and engage the mind.

  Printed in USA.

  Epigraph

  For your glory, Lord.

  HEIRESS PART ONE

  Sisters

  NEW YORK CITY

  1896

  Chapter 1

  With the wrong smile, her sister could destroy Jinx’s world.

  “Loosen your breath, Esme, and the lacing will go easier.” Jinx sat on the ottoman, watching Bette pull the stays of Esme’s new corset as her sister hung onto the lacing bar.

  The corset, a silk damask with embroidered tea roses, pale pink ribbons along the heart-shaped bustline, and a polished brass busk, had arrived only yesterday in a shipment from Worth’s of Paris.

  Esme didn’t deserve the beautiful undergarment, not with her gigantic twenty-one-inch waist, the way she fought the corsetiere during the fitting, and now held her breath instead of exhaling to lose yet another half-inch.

  Jinx, still in her training corset, had long ago shaved her torso down to eighteen inches. She deserved a damask corset, in the new S-shaped style, the way it erected the posture, protruded her hips, and forced her body into the elegant shape of a society woman. But her own corset wouldn’t arrive until her mother ordered her debut trousseau, hopefully after the end of this year’s society season. After all, she’d already turned seventeen, would be eighteen when the season started next November.

  She should have been born first.

  Esme closed her eyes, as if in pain. “Mother, I can’t breathe. I will faint during the quadrille.”

  “Perhaps you will be recovered by someone of significance.” Their mother Phoebe sat on a gold-foiled Marie Antoinette chair, the red plush velvet like a throne as she perched upon it, surveying her eldest daughter’s preparations. “It wouldn’t hurt you to be found swooning during a waltz, into the arms of the Astor heir.”

  Esme frowned. “More likely, I’ll find myself discarded in the sitting room, one of the Astors’ maids fanning me to consciousness.” She released the lacing bar. “Please, Bette, that is enough.” Letting her arms fall, Esme cast a look at their mother, who hesitated briefly before assenting with a flick of her hand.

  Jinx bit back a huff of disgust. It simply wasn’t fair that, despite Esme’s almost militant repulsion to securing a husband, men lined up to call on her during her at-home days, appeared after church to walk her home, vied to be seated beside her at dinner parties, and begged her to partner with them in golf and tennis. Most of all, they bedecked her with bouquets of dark red Jacqueminot roses or deep pink Boneselline rosebuds before every ball.

  Jinx blamed Esme’s exquisite beauty—her straw-blond hair, too-blue eyes, a form that frankly, needed no corset to enhance—because Esme had interest in none of her suitors, despite their pedigrees. Worse, her sister almost purposely confused the etiquette of dinner, refused the language of the fan to signal suitors, and occasionally wandered out onto some dark balcony to view the stars while the after-dinner German dance was called, leaving her suitors with no one to present their flowers or party gifts to. Jinx had no doubt her sister wouldn’t hesitate to attend Caroline Astor’s January ball wearing a tea dress, uncorseted, while she pressed her nose into some dime novel.

  God had been so unfair.

  As if Esme could read Jinx’s thoughts, she turned to her mother, even as Bette followed her to fasten her stays. “Really, Mother, are you sure I must attend tonight’s ball? I’m exhausted. Tea today at the Wilsons’, and last night dinner at the Fishes’, and the opera the night before? I am simply wasted to the bone—”

  “That’s enough, Esme.” Phoebe’s clipped tone could draw even Esme up straight, silence her. “You are a ‘bud,’ as you well know, which means you have responsibilities. We have confirmed our attendance to Mrs. Astor’s ball, and she expects us. Imagine, for a Price to cut one of Caroline’s parties—we might as well move to Philadelphia, or perhaps Baltimore, for all the invitations we’d receive. I am sure Mrs. Astor would see to it that all of society turned their backs on us.”

  “It’s one ball, Mother.”

  Esme’s sardonic attitude about society would be the ruin of them. Jinx wanted to cheer when her mother scoured her with a look that—at least for now—silenced Esme and her whining.

  “It’s Mrs. Astor’s annual ball. The most lavish, elite society event of the season, and the first in Caroline’s new chateau. Do you know what social favors your father and I had to promise to acquire this invitation? And, do I have to remind you that this is your second season without a match—not that there weren’t plenty of suitors last year. It’s time you married. I’ll not tolerate one more word of complaint from you. Bette, help her into her knickers.”

  The former chambermaid had turned into a first-class lady’s maid. She was quiet, efficient, and discreet.

  Jinx smoothed her simple skirt, her tucked shirtwaist with the high neck and mutton-chop sleeves, and tried not to watch as Bette attached the stocking suspenders to Esme’s corset then assisted her sister into her silk and lace knickers.

  Indeed, if her sister didn’t accept an offer of marriage soon, they’d have to travel overseas to find a mate—some homely duke or a widowed baron. Then Jinx’s debutante year would be further delayed. If only her father weren’t so old-fashioned, determined to marry off his eldest daughter before presenting his second daughter into society.

  “You will wear the white tulle tonight,” Phoebe said. Bette had already retrieved the dress from the cedar closest, bound in muslin and stuffed to retain its shape. The perfume of the lavender sachets used to preserve it scented the chamber, along with the rose-scented lotions and talc powder from Esme’s bath and preparations. “You have yet to wear this costume, and you need a dress never before seen for this evening.” She glanced at Jinx, a smile tweaking her lips before she dismissed it. “I believe it may be a special one, for many reasons.”

  Esme met Jinx’s eyes in the mirror. Jinx raised a shoulder, but her mother’s words, the way she glanced down at her hand then worried her sapphire wedding ring, sparked hope.

  Perhaps her parents had already arranged a match for Esme. Perhaps, by this time next year, Jinx would have her own satin gown, and be bedazzled with diamonds from head to toe. Maybe even a cadre of society’s bachelors gifting her with bouquets, requesting appointments on her dance card. Vying for her hand in marriage.

  Please, Esme, cooperate.

  Esme settled herself on an ottoman as Bette helped her into her ivory satin slippers, tying the bows. Then she stepped into her new crinoline, something even the newest buds had discarded from their trousseau, according to the gossip at Misses Graham’s Seminary for Young Ladies. But Phoebe Price wasn’t taking any chances on society’s disdain.

  Bette tied the tapes then went to retrieve the gown.

  Phoebe rose, graceful despite her portly curves. “I need to attend to my own toilette. I will meet you in the front hall for
our carriage. Do not keep me waiting.”

  “I feel as if I am already ill,” Esme said as Bette attended to the dress. “I heard that Mrs. Astor is serving duck croquettes. It’s bad enough that I must taste everything, but to know its origin! I swear I cannot eat another serving of creamed oysters and terrapin or I will lose my supper into one of Mrs. Astor’s potted ferns. Not that I have any room for food.” Her hands brushed over her corseted stomach. “Still, I have no doubt that tomorrow I will only be able to survive tea and toast.”

  Jinx couldn’t hold herself back. “Please be on your best behavior, Esme. The season is at its height and you have the power to usher us into the inner chambers of society, if you choose.”

  Esme seemed not to hear her as Bette gathered up the tulle, opened the bodice, and helped her dive into the finery. Oh, to have such a lovely dress, the way the gold thread shimmered under the bright gas lit chandelier in Esme’s boudoir. Esme stood like a statue as Bette secured her dress. It draped over her, fitted to her body, cascading off the shoulders with seemingly only pearled straps to secure it. A teardrop trio of pearls fell from the apex of the tulle bodice, stitched with white glass beads and paillettes to make it shimmer. A white satin band secured her waist, then the garment fell into trained ruffles at the hem, fanning out behind her.

  The dress and Esme’s demi-parure of jewels for tonight’s ball probably cost as much as Father’s new yacht.

  “I love that dress,” Jinx said, mostly to herself.

  Esme scowled into the full-length mirror, gilded at the edges. “I hate tulle. It scratches my skin, and I believe I must be allergic to it.”

  The mirror captured the immense room—the red velvet divan and gold-edged chairs, the polished oak dressing tables, Esme’s writing desk, and beyond that, the windows that overlooked the city.

  When the Price family built their mansion on Fifth Avenue, only blocks from the Vanderbilt’s 660 Fifth Avenue palace, Esme had asked for the room with a view of Central Park. Never mind the walnut wainscoting, the green, floral damask wallpaper, the seventeenth-century tapestries, or the Marie Antoinette gold-gilded canopied bed built on a platform like a throne. August Price hadn’t spared a penny on his eldest daughter.

  Jinx’s room, however, overlooked the private garden. She would have enjoyed seeing the street instead, with its parade of traffic—the landaus, motorbuses, delivery wagons, automobiles, and bicycles. She loved watching the mounted policemen directing in the middle of the street, the drivers attired in livery colors and seated on the high boxes. The clanging trolley bells, shouts from the cabmen, clatter of horses’ hooves on the cobblestone, the growl of motorcars, and the shriek of railways made the city sound alive.

  And, at night, sometimes Jinx retired with her mother in Phoebe’s third-story room, watching the stars sparkle over the park, a thousand diamonds almost within her grasp.

  As soon as Esme was married, Jinx planned on moving into her boudoir.

  “I hope the ball doesn’t last all night. I’m in the middle of Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days, although journalist Nellie Bly’s true-life account is vastly more exciting,” Esme said as Bette straightened the dress on her frame.

  “You can’t be serious. You have an invitation to the most exclusive ball of the season, and you are pining for a book?” Jinx turned away, staring at the lacing of frost creeping up the sill. Despite the central heating and the fire in Esme’s marble fireplace, the winter crept through the windowpane, chilling the room. By the end of winter, the frost could choke out the view entirely, except for a breath blown into the middle. “You shouldn’t spend so much time reading. You know it’s simply fantasy. I don’t know why Father allows it.”

  “He fancies that I might be like him, a newspaper man. That’s why he allows me to visit him at his offices. He knows I like the smell of the ink, the hum of the presses, the clicking of the typewriters. I would love to be a journalist like Nellie Bly, to see the world, to research asylums and sweatshops. To see my name in print on the front page of Father’s Chronicle.”

  Jinx rounded on her. “Are you mad? You are not Nellie Bly. She is a working woman! You are a debutante, destined to marry William Astor, or perhaps a Fish, a Morgan, or a Rothschild. What a shame society doesn’t yet have a Vanderbilt within marrying age. But you will have a fashionable seaside estate in Newport, a home on Fifth Avenue, a life in the social court. You will live a life of prominence and influence. A life of blessing.”

  Esme’s mouth opened.

  Jinx stood and walked to the dressing table. “Don’t appear so offended, it doesn’t become you.” She ran her fingers over her sister’s jewels—a dog collar strung with a cascade of diamonds and pearls on silken threads that would cover Esme’s décolletage, a cluster of diamond and pearl earrings, and a filigreed rosebud tiara, encrusted with diamonds, pearls, and shimmering emeralds.

  Drawing in a breath, Jinx schooled her voice. “Nellie Bly is a disgrace. She travels unchaperoned around the world, often lunches with men, and pretends to be insane to secure a berth in a psychiatric hospital. Some might call that living a life of deceit. She will marry poorly, if at all, and die without acknowledgment.”

  “She’s made her own way. And spoken the truth. Perhaps she doesn’t need to marry.”

  Jinx met Esme’s blue eyes in the mirror, so naive for all her bookish ways, her fluency in French and German, her ability to dance the quadrille. “Father would never let you write for the newspaper.”

  Esme stiffened as Bette touched up her hair. The maid had parted Esme’s hair in the center, heated the front into the shape of water-waves, padded the rest of it with matching blond rats, then swept the loose tresses up into tight curls atop her head, secured finally with diamond-encrusted barrettes.

  Jinx had already required her maid, Amelia, to begin experimenting with her own—sadly unremarkable—dark hair, and collecting and washing the loose strands that would create her hair rats.

  “Perhaps he doesn’t have to know,” Esme said quietly.

  Jinx froze. “What are you talking about?”

  Esme lifted her creamy shoulder, mischief flashing through her eyes. She blinked it away. “I am simply suggesting that there are other ways for a woman to have her voice heard.”

  “The way to be heard is to influence your husband, give him a voice in society,” Jinx said. Oh, she knew it. Her sister had always been out of hand, too vocal. Now, she’d even begun to believe the things she read in Godey’s Lady’s Book.

  “For now. But soon, perhaps, we’ll have a real voice. One in politics and the workplace.”

  Jinx walked to Esme’s desk, picked up a copy of the magazine, and opened to where a piece of writing paper marked the Employment for Women section. She could have guessed. “I thought mother cancelled our subscription.”

  “I’m twenty years old, with my own allowance. I ordered it myself.”

  Jinx closed the magazine, tempted to throw it in the trash receptacle. It only filled her sister with rebellious, untoward thinking. Someday she would be forced to reveal to their parents where Esme hid her stash of dime novels, everything from Maleaska, the Indian Wife of the White Hunter to a stack of DeWitt’s Ten Cent Romances. It was time her sister started behaving as her status demanded.

  She easily found her mother’s tone. “You have fooled yourself into the world of your dime novels, where women decide their own futures, choose their own husbands, and pursue careers. Continue this, and you will disgrace us, cause us to be ostracized from society, and ruin any chance of either of us marrying someone with the proper name.”

  “I don’t think that’s fair. I don’t want to marry. I’m a journalist—”

  Jinx rounded on her. “You’re the daughter of a journalist, born to wed, not become some stringer, rooting around dark alleys for a story. You have been trained to be a wife, to run a household, to keep your husband’s name in the conversation of good society. Father and Mother are—we are—expecting you to make
a match this season, to marry well. To usher the Price family into society’s elite, to behave in a manner befitting the heiress of the Price family.” She drew a breath, cut her voice low, glanced at Bette. It mattered not that the servants were handpicked for their discretion. Of their thirty-five house staff, not everyone could be trusted.

  “We must marry up if we want to continue our ascent in society. Father has bought us that opportunity, and you owe it to him to honor his wishes. If Father—or any eligible men—caught you writing something, even anonymously…” She closed her eyes, her frustration huffing out of her. “I should have been the firstborn.”

  Yes. Then Esme could have done as she wished, the requirements of the firstborn—acquiring a man with a pedigree—happily borne on Jinx’s shoulders. She opened her eyes, held up her hand, as Esme made to speak. “It doesn’t matter. I suspect Mother has already found you a match.”

  Esme drew in a breath then rose from her chair. She stared at herself in the mirror, submitting to Bette’s adornment of the dog collar, the earrings. Finally, she bowed her head for the tiara. Certainly she appeared regal as the jewels captured the light. A Price, waiting to be won.

  Esme turned to Jinx, her blue eyes cool, glittering. “It doesn’t matter. I will not submit to their arrangements and marry for the sake of society, for the sake of privileged invitations to teas filled with gossip and insufferable dinners where I must choose my fork correctly or be cut from a Vanderbilt matinee. Or balls where the incorrect flutter of my fan condemns me to a dance, or even more. I loathe this life and all it requires, and if I marry, it will be for love.”

  “Love? Please. How will you tell the difference? You’re a Price, not some scullery maid. You will never know whether you are loved for your money, or your beautiful mind.”

  The words seemed to slither out, and Jinx tasted in them the poison she intended.