“I beg your pardon?” Icicles might have coated Marjorie’s vocal chords.
“I think Dr. Abernathy was only teasing, Miss MacTavish,” Eunice said consolingly.
“Of course, he was,” said Loretta with haste.
Marjorie, glowering at the doctor, said, “Och, yes. I suppose.”
“Your health seems a bit rocky, Miss MacTavish,” Dr. Abernathy went on, still twinkling. “Perhaps you need a complete physical examination to determine what the matter is.”
“Codswallop,” growled Marjorie, straightening up and looking a bit stronger.
Sighing, Isabel watched the pair and waited for the fireworks. One of these days, she expected Marjorie would tire of the doctor’s teasing and bop him one, or try to. Hoping to prevent a violent scene, she again glanced at Somerset.
“But we need to take luncheon!” Somerset declared jovially, anticipating her and Marjorie and preempting the comment poised on Dr. Abernathy’s tongue. “I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m starving and need my daily ration of chicken with almonds. I almost died from the lack of good noodle dish when I was back east.”
Dr. Abernathy’s mouth snapped shut, and Isabel breathed more easily. She silently blessed Somerset, even as she silently cursed Marjorie and the doctor. What was the matter with those two? The doctor seemed to delight in making Marjorie uncomfortable, and poor Marjorie already felt like a fish out of water; she didn’t need his help.
“My goodness, yes,” said Loretta. “I could use some chop suey. It’s been a long time since I’ve had good old San Francisco food.” She rubbed her hands together.
“What’s chop suey?” asked Eunice.
“Some heathen Chinese dish, I imagine,” said Marjorie, who, Isabel had learned, was a staunch Presbyterian.
Dr. Abernathy took her by the arm. Isabel held her breath, but Marjorie didn’t belt him. “Heathen or not,” said the doctor, “you need to learn to eat it, Miss MacTavish. If you refuse to eat Chinese food in San Francisco, you’re beyond hope.”
Somerset and Isabel exchanged a glance, and Somerset leaned over to whisper in her ear. “I’m afraid she might be beyond hope.”
With a giggle, Isabel said, “I’m afraid you might be right.” She put her hand on his proffered arm and was pleased when he offered his other arm to Eunice, who smiled, delighted to be treated like a big girl. Then she spoiled her sophisticated image by skipping down the street to the restaurant.
# # #
The light in the restaurant was low, and the place smelled like Somerset’s idea of heaven. He had missed this so much while he’d been away. He loved San Francisco. It amazed him that the atmosphere of the city he adored should be enhanced so greatly by the company he kept.
During luncheon, which consisted of rice, chicken with almonds, chop suey (for Eunice) and plenty of fragrant tea, he began to experience a feeling so strong it might be called a compulsion if he suffered from such things, which he didn’t. But the urge to keep this group together forever clamped onto his heart and clung there. Such an urge was unlike him, and he couldn’t quite account for it. He’d always been something of a lone wolf—or a lone ladybird beetle, anyhow—and this need for friends was new to him.
Perhaps he was coming down with something. Influenza, maybe. Could influenza cause emotional symptoms? He remembered his sister crying a lot when she was sick. Maybe such afflictions ran in families.
He was relatively sure that the intense pleasure he derived from Isabel’s company didn’t signify anything bad, such as mania, insanity, or neurasthenia. He truly didn’t think he was crazy. On the other hand, he supposed it wouldn’t hurt to check the family records for documented cases of derangement just in case. After all, he had thought about her constantly between handing her daughter to her in that lifeboat and their providential meeting on the train.
In any event, and with time and luck, he expected he’d get over it. And in the meantime, he would merely keep company with his new friends and take pleasure therefrom. And if time and luck didn’t help cure his symptoms, he’d just have to marry the woman.
He liked that thought.
# # #
After luncheon, Somerset offered to accompany the three ladies and Eunice to the Fairfield Hotel on Nob Hill, where Isabel was scheduled to dance with an Argentine stranger in front of Joseph Balderston, another stranger, and one who would decide her future. Isabel pressed a hand over her heart and willed it to stop pounding so hard.
“I’d love to see the audition and I had intended to go, but I must return to my clinic. I have to perform an operation this afternoon that I hadn’t anticipated.”
“Come over some evening this week, Jason, and we’ll tell you all about it.”
Isabel wasn’t accustomed to men and women being so free and easy with their invitations and assignations, although she’d certainly never noted anything the least bit unsavory about Loretta and Dr. Abernathy’s friendship.
Over lunch, she’d learned that the two had grown up together, and lived next door to each other until they both graduated from college, he from Stanford, and she from the San Francisco Seminary for Young Ladies. Isabel had never known a female with a college education before. Loretta and the doctor remained friends after Dr. Abernathy had gone on to medical school and Loretta had gone on to irritate her parents by espousing a variety of radical causes.
Although she considered the idea a trifle disloyal, Isabel wondered if the fact that Loretta’s parents objected to her political and social views was one of the reasons she clung to them so tenaciously. It must be nice to have wealthy parents to rebel against. Isabel chided herself for disloyalty. Her parents had both been saints.
She thought it was both typical and splendid that Loretta had chosen to express her rebellion in so many useful ways, however, instead of sinking into some form of degradation. She was assuming, of course, that women’s suffrage was a useful cause. She was pretty sure the soup kitchen Loretta spoke about so often was performing a valuable function in the world.
“I’d be delighted to. What day?”
Loretta’s pretty brow furrowed. “Oh, Thursday would be a good day. I guess.”
“You guess that, do you?” With a grin, Jason asked, “And what time?”
“Oh, about seven-thirty or eight, I suppose,” said Loretta, sounding distracted. She opened her handbag and peered at an undoubtedly expensive gold watch on a chain contained therein. “But we have to dash now, Jason. We don’t want to be late to the Fairfield.”
“Right. Good luck, Mrs. Golightly.” Dr. Abernathy smiled winningly at her, took her hand, and shook it heartily. Then he wheeled abruptly, grabbed Marjorie’s hand, lifted it to his lips, and kissed it.
Poor Marjorie turned a brilliant scarlet, stuttered a few incomprehensible syllables, and stared, dumbfounded, after the doctor as he strode jauntily away. Accosted by what looked like a beggar’s child hawking posies, he bent, offered the waif a coin, received in return a shabby bouquet, and reentered his clinic.
Pondering the doctor’s bizarre behavior, Isabel murmured softly, “I do believe he’s rather taken with you, Marjorie.”
She knew she’d misspoken when Marjorie swirled around and stared at her incredulously. “You what? I canna believe you! Why that man is the most baneful, pernicious, awful, clamjamphried . . .” She ran out of adjectives and subsided into irate splutters.
Loretta smacked Isabel lightly on the arm, the first time Isabel had been the recipient of Loretta’s favored form of expression. Leaning close to her ear, Loretta whispered, “Wrong thing to say.”
It certainly had been. Feeling like an idiot, Isabel tried to smooth the waters. “Of course, I may be mistaken.”
“Aye,” said Marjorie, her bosom heaving, her cheeks a remarkably becoming pink. “You’re mistaken.”
Isabel, Loretta, and Eunice—her expression very adult—exchanged a meaningful glance. Then Loretta grinned and said, “Well, we’d best be off.”
“Please,
” said Somerset, who’d been watching with amusement, “allow me, Miss MacTavish.” With a twinkle for Isabel, he took Marjorie’s arm and began leading her up the street.
“Will you come with us to the Fairfield in my Runabout, Mr. FitzRoy?” Loretta trotted behind Somerset and Marjorie.
Taking Eunice’s hand, Isabel did the same, amused that Marjorie, in her righteous rage, was leading the way and causing Somerset himself to trot a little. Full of good Chinese food, Isabel was puffing a bit when they reached the Runabout.
“My machine is parked just across the street,” Somerset told Loretta, gesturing at a large, imposing automobile. “I’ll meet you ladies there.”
“I’m so excited about this,” exclaimed Loretta.
Isabel was glad about Loretta. As for her, her tummy felt slightly jumpy. It didn’t help that Loretta squealed into the oncoming traffic on two wheels, as if she were steering a racing automobile through an obstacle course.
Marjorie closed her eyes as soon as the engine roared to life, and she covered her face with her hands as soon as the machine left the curb. Poor Marjorie.
Fortunately, neither Isabel nor Marjorie had the time to become seriously ill. It wasn’t long before Loretta sang out, “This is Nob Hill. We’re almost there.”
Isabel’s heart sped up as Loretta guided the Runabout—at a furious rate—up another one of San Francisco’s steep hills.
Fabulous mansions lined the street. Isabel noted signs that the neighborhood was changing, although not for the worse. The mansions appeared to be giving way to mammoth hotels and businesses, maintaining the same level of luxury, but not in single-family residences. From what Isabel had seen so far, the single-family residences might have housed entire neighborhoods where she came from, but where she came from people didn’t have so much money to fritter away.
The landscaping everywhere was magnificent. The entire hill breathed lavishness and extravagance. It boggled Isabel’s mind that a mere six years earlier, most of the city had been demolished during that tremendous earthquake and fire. Once again she hoped she and Eunice would be spared earthquakes.
“Here we are!” Loretta called out cheerfully.
She turned the wheel sharply, sending everyone in the automobile sliding sideways, and the Runabout screeched into a long, curved drive and pulled to a stop under a portcullis. A uniformed attendant darted to the automobile and opened first Loretta’s door, then Marjorie’s, and then Isabel and Eunice’s.
Taking a last big breath for courage and silently praying that the audition would not prove to be too humiliating, Isabel stepped out of the machine. Smiling, she took Eunice’s hand and helped her with the big step down.
Chapter Eight
Isabel peered up at the building they were about to enter and knew she didn’t belong there. Well, perhaps if she were a member of the cleaning staff, she might, but . . . Well, the Fairfield Hotel was perfectly fabulous. And Loretta knew the man who owned it. Isabel wondered if she’d ever get used to traveling in such lofty company.
Loretta, of course, suffered no such qualms as those afflicting Isabel. She fitted in here, as she’d fitted in among Titanic’s first-class passengers. “Joe’s office is on the top floor,” Loretta said, as if she visited the man all the time. “But let’s wait for Mr. FitzRoy, and we can all go up together.”
It wasn’t a long wait, and as Isabel watched Somerset’s shiny black automobile pull up behind Loretta’s, she noted that it was a Maxwell sedan. Unfamiliar with American motorcars, she didn’t know if it was as expensive as it looked. Newspapermen must make more money in San Francisco than they did in Upper Poppleton.
Eunice’s soft voice wafted up to her, and Isabel bent slightly to hear her better. “Do you believe this hotel might have electrical lifts, Mama?”
“I don’t know, sweetie.” Electrical lifts. Good heavens.
“I hope it does.”
When she glanced down at her daughter, Isabel recognized the symptoms of extreme excitement. Although Eunice seldom behaved like an ordinary child, because she wasn’t one, when she became especially interested in something, she nearly vibrated with energy. She was vibrating now, and Isabel hoped the Fairfield Hotel wouldn’t disappoint her.
It didn’t. Not only did the four ladies and Somerset get to ride up the entire eighteen floors of an unbelievably posh hotel in an electrical elevator operated by a uniformed young woman with a snooty air about her, but they were all treated as if they belonged there.
Isabel knew that was because they were in the company of Loretta Linden, daughter of a well-known and wealthy San Francisco family, but Eunice thought it was just because people were nice. Isabel hoped she’d never have to learn otherwise.
# # #
Mr. Joseph Balderston jumped up from the chair behind his mammoth-sized maple-wood desk when his secretary—a female, Somerset noted with interest—announced their arrival. He hurried to greet them with hands outstretched, a broad smile on his smooth-shaven face. His greeting was much more informal than his office, which was furnished in the height of elegance, with crimson brocade wallpaper and an expensive Persian carpet covering the floor from wall to wall.
Somerset was curious to see that Balderston wore no chin whiskers. A few years earlier, if a man wanted to be taken seriously in the business world, he’d have had to wear a beard. Whiskers were considered old fashioned nowadays among those who strove to attain a place in society.
Somerset shaved his own face because beards itched and he didn’t need to prove anything to anybody, but he had a feeling it was otherwise with Mr. Balderston, who owned and managed the most expensive hotel on the west coast of the United States. Mr. Balderston would feel it to be in his best interest and that of his hotel to follow current modes.
A portly, jovial-looking man in an expensive suit, Balderston left a costly Cuban cigar smoldering in the tray on his polished mahogany desk. Although he didn’t indulge in cigars himself, Somerset could detect the differences in tobaccos, as he could recognize different varieties of many other plants. Mr. Balderston smoked only the best, it would seem.
“Come in! Come in! Loretta, it’s good to see you again. It’s been years.”
“Not that long, surely. My parents came here for my father’s birthday party last month. I saw you then.”
Balderston laughed merrily. “Making a liar of me, are you, Loretta Linden? Why, if that isn’t just like you, I don’t know what is!”
“Fiddlesticks.” But Loretta laughed.
They shook hands all around, and Balderston gestured them into several deep, plush chairs facing his desk. “And which one of these young ladies is our dancer?”
Somerset thought he was joking at first, and considered it a poor joke. Eunice was six years old. And poor Marjorie MacTavish was clearly not the type of female who could take the stage and make a audience do anything but yawn. Isabel, on the other hand . . . well, there was a different story.
As he glanced at her now, he saw a lovely woman of average height, although that was the only thing average about her. She had a glow to her. A radiance. And her coloring was so marvelous, too. That beautiful, thick blond hair and those smashingly gorgeous blue eyes. Somerset still hadn’t hit upon a flower that did Isabel’s eyes justice. A Laurentia fluviatilis, perhaps. Or a deep blue Ranunculacae. The flower of the Borago officinalis, maybe. Well, he’d keep thinking.
Loretta said, “Isabel Golightly is our dancer, Joe. Her family has a long history with the British theater.”
Balderston seemed to have forgotten which woman was which, because his gaze was bouncing between Isabel and Marjorie when Isabel solved his puzzlement for him by speaking. Somerset could scarcely believe it. Imagine not being able to tell, upon first being introduced, that Isabel was the one who belonged in the spotlight. Balderston must be as thick as a plank. Surprising in a man who operated such a flourishing business.
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Isabel said, clearly embarrassed. “It’s only that my aunt
and uncle taught me the modern ballroom dances.”
“Well, that’s good, because that’s exactly what we’re looking for here at the Fairfield, Miss.”
“Missus,” murmured Isabel. “Mrs. Golightly.”
“Good name for a dancer, Golightly.” Balderston grinned broadly, pleased with his joke.
“Perhaps you could explain to us exactly what a dancer at the Fairfield will be expected to do, Joe.” Loretta spoke in a no-nonsense voice that took Somerset aback slightly. He’d never heard her in business mode before, although he guessed she’d have to be pretty authoritative if she managed all the causes and committees she talked about.
She went on, “Mrs. Golightly has a little girl whom you’ve met, Eunice here, who will be in school during the day. I presume that Isabel will be dancing at night, but she doesn’t want to completely lose track of her child.”
“Of course, of course. Dancing in our dining room starts at 8:00 p.m., and continues until one o’clock in the morning. Our dancers give a dance demonstration at nine-thirty p.m. and another one at midnight, and they dance with the guests and socialize in between the demonstrations. Only occasionally, guests will need a fourth for bridge. Do you play bridge, Mrs. Golightly?”
“Bridge?” Isabel’s face assumed a troubled expression. “Er . . .”
“I’ll teach you,” Somerset offered, surprising himself.
Balderston frowned a bit. “Our guests would prefer someone skilled in the game.”
“Is knowledge of bridge a necessity?” Loretta asked sharply.
Balderston shrugged. “I don’t suppose so.”
“Then perhaps Isabel can learn as she dances. Surely people are more interested in dancing than playing cards. It’s too dark in the dining room for a decent game of cards, anyway.” Loretta sat back in her chair, as if pleased to have taken care of that obstacle.
Somerset heard Isabel clear her throat softly, and saw her sit up straighter. “I’m sure I can learn the card game, Mr. Balderston. I’ve always been good at cards. My uncle and aunt and I used to play whist sometimes.”
Perfect Stranger Page 12
