The Forgotten Room

by Karen White

  In the spare glow of the single candle, Prunella’s youthful face took on a lurid shadow, and her pink lips and blue eyes lost all color. Olive felt as if something were clawing its way up the back of her head, a premonition of some kind, a warning of impending disaster. Don’t ask, she thought. Don’t ask.

  “Don’t you want to know what it is, Olive? Dear, curious Olive. Don’t you want justice for your poor departed father?”

  “I already know my father is innocent of anything you might accuse him of.”

  Prunella giggled. “Oh, my. So you really don’t know. Well, I’ll give you a hint. It’s something to do with that pretty ruby necklace hanging there beneath your dress. A necklace that really belongs to someone else.”

  Olive’s hand went instinctively to her throat. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I was wondering where that necklace had gone. It was in my mother’s jewel box, you know, and I begged her to let me wear it for my debut. She said I shouldn’t, that it was too flashy for a debutante. Too red.” Another giggle. “So I took it myself, when her back was turned. And I do believe I was right. That necklace set my white dress off to perfection. It set me apart from the other girls, and Mr. Schuyler asked me to dance three times. Father turned absolutely purple when he noticed, of course, but it was worth it. Really, it’s a shame you weren’t there. Your father attended, if I recall.”

  “Yes, I recall.” Olive also recalled that her mother hadn’t wanted to go. She hadn’t anything to wear, she said.

  “Such a sociable man, your father. Awfully charming. Well, I can tell you, he couldn’t take his eyes off my ruby, either. And the next morning, poof! It was gone.”

  “You can’t possibly be suggesting my father stole your necklace.”

  Prunella leaned forward, so that Olive could smell the excess of wine on her breath. “Well, he stole something; that’s for sure. I’ll leave you to decide what it was.”

  The clawing sensation had turned into a kind of drumbeat, and Olive realized it was her own pulse, knocking in her ears.

  Don’t ask. Don’t ask.

  “That won’t be necessary. I know my father’s character very well.”

  Prunella sniffed and straightened away from the desk. “As you like. I’d hate to murder your illusions, after all, when you’ve got so little left to you.”

  The clock chimed softly. Quarter to midnight.

  “That’s me, I suppose,” said Prunella. “Papa’s got the congratulatory toast all ready. Be sure to lock the door when you’re finished. We’d hate for anyone to break in and see our private papers, after all.” She laughed and turned for the door. The slim bar of light from the hallway illuminated the whiteness of her dress. “And, Olive? You will give your notice and leave this house by daybreak, do you understand? Or else I might be forced to whisper our little secret in an ear or two. Just imagine what my poor brother will say when he finds out the truth. To say nothing of your widowed mother.”

  “My mother already knows what I’m doing here.”

  “Oh, I don’t mean that little thing, Olive. I mean the truth. The real reason my father dismissed the eminent Mr. Van Alan without his fee, and the reason your father didn’t object.”

  Because he couldn’t, Olive wanted to scream. Because he couldn’t get another commission if he did.

  But screaming wouldn’t help, would it? Screaming wouldn’t unsay the words that hung in the air of the study, wouldn’t quell the drumbeat at the back of Olive’s brain.

  Wouldn’t wipe the self-satisfied smirk from Prunella Pratt’s childlike face.

  Olive glanced down at the wineglass at the edge of the desk, and a young woman she didn’t know reached out and took that glass by the stem. She blew out the candle and hurried to the door, through which Prunella Pratt had just swept, and she said, in a voice Olive didn’t recognize, “Miss Prunella, you forgot your wine.”

  The noise came up like a physical object from the empty column of the grand stairway: laughter and tinkling glass and violins. Prunella turned, and the brassy young woman who wasn’t Olive—whom Olive didn’t recognize but rather adored—dashed an arc of red Burgundy across the splendid cream bodice of the Pratt engagement gown, not forgetting the dainty exposed curves of Miss Prunella’s bosom, to match the pretty pale pink flowers scattered over the satin.

  Olive set down the wineglass on the commode and turned away, toward the stairs to the fifth floor and the small door that led to the attic staircase.

  She jumped up the steps two at a time, stumbling once, her breath short and her head swimming. By the time she reached the last landing, she could hardly see the door before her; she hardly noticed that it was not closed but ajar, not dark but gently lit.

  “Olive! There you are.”

  Harry’s arms. Harry’s shoulder against her forehead.

  For an instant, she let herself rest. The black wool was so sleek against her hot skin.

  And then she pushed away. “Aren’t you going to be missed downstairs?”

  “Probably. I don’t care. Why, what’s wrong?”

  “You should go back. There are at least a dozen pretty girls waiting for a kiss. I don’t know how you’ll choose among them.”

  “Oh, Olive. Don’t be foolish.” He reached for her again. “You can’t possibly think—”

  “Of course I can think. I can think very clearly. All night, I watched you dance with them, while I served the champagne and fended off—fended off—” She was running out of outrage, running out of strength altogether. She just wanted to sleep. She wanted to go to sleep and not wake up, to never have to wake up to the questions hurting the back of her head.

  Harry’s face grew stern. “Fended off what, Olive? Did someone offend you? Is that what’s wrong?”

  “No! No, it’s just . . .” She touched the filigree chain at her throat and tugged the necklace free, so that the ruby glittered against her black chest. “This necklace. Where did you get it?”

  Harry stepped close and cupped his hands around her head. “From my mother, Olive. She gave it to me a year ago, New Year’s Day. She said I was to keep it for her and give it, one day, to the lady I loved with all my heart. The love of my life. You, Olive.” He bent and kissed her lips. “I kept looking for you tonight, did you know that? Every time they put another doll in my arms to dance with, I looked around for you. I’ve been miserable.”

  “You didn’t look miserable. You looked delighted with the company you had.”

  “And do you know how miserable that made me, having to pretend? Having to wear that damned mask, to be the son they expect?” He shook his head. “No more, Olive. Not another day. I’ve decided. We’re not going to wait for June. We’re going to leave right now, tomorrow morning. I can’t stand another day of this, watching you suffer, helpless to step in and say, She’s mine. So I’m not going back to college. I’m not going to wait for graduation. I’ve got a bit of money saved, enough to get us started until the trust comes through. We’ll be free, Olive.”

  She pulled back. “I can’t, Harry. My mother. She depends on my wages.”

  “Why, then we can send for her, too. Or send her money. Please, Olive.” He reached for her hand. “Listen to me. There’s another thing. I’ve been a blackguard this past week, head over heels, a careless blackguard who’s put you in a very particular sort of danger, and I’m afraid . . . Well, I was thinking that it’s possible—I mean, it’s not entirely inconceivable that . . . or even likely—well, that we can’t wait so long as June. Do you understand what I mean?”

  Olive stared at the neat line of gold studs marching down Harry’s shirt. His words ran past her ears, too much to comprehend, because her mind kept returning to the thing it should not. The thing she dreaded to know. She said softly, “You said your mother gave you the necklace on New Year’s Day?”

  “Yes. I remember it well.” He
hesitated. “She and my father had had an argument of some kind, right after the party. She was upset. She said that the necklace had been given to her in love, and that she was passing it on to me in the hope that I should find such a love, one day. And I didn’t want to take it, at the time. I thought she was giving it to me on an impulse, because she and my father had had an argument, but she insisted. And she was right.” He lifted Olive’s hand and kissed each fingertip. “We shall be so much happier than my parents were, darling.”

  “Why? How do you know that?”

  “Because no two people in a million have the kind of connection we have, the connection we both felt from the instant we first saw each other, up on the attic stairs. If we walked away from this house today and went our separate ways, if God led us to marry others and live our lives without ever seeing each other again, I would always know who you were. I would always know you in my heart.”

  She couldn’t speak. Not a word, not a syllable, not a single vowel.

  He touched the curve of her ear. “Dearest, practical Olive. Be reckless for once.”

  “I already have been reckless. I have been very reckless indeed.”

  “Stay with me tonight, here in our room. In the morning, you can pack up your things. We’ll go to your mother’s house and explain everything. I’ll book us passage on the first ship out. There’s nothing to stand in our way.”

  Nothing and everything, Olive thought. Everything in the world.

  “You can’t say no. You know all this as well as I do, only you’re too practical to say it out loud. So I’ll say it for us: We’re in love, and we’re going to run away together. Do you hear me, Olive? Say it. Say, I love you, Harry.”

  He was so beautiful. She loved his cheekbones, his jaw, the wave of hair in his forehead, the small bump on the bridge of his nose, his lips, his eyes that gazed down at her in such priceless sincerity. She could see her own reflection in them, the way she looked at Harry. Her adoration, hopeless and eternal.

  He bent to her ear. “You can whisper it, if you like.”

  Well, what was the point in denying it? She had nothing else to give him.

  Olive linked her hands at the back of his warm neck and lifted herself on her toes.

  “I love you, Harry.”

  Twenty-four

  JULY 1920

  Lucy

  He didn’t love her.

  A heat haze rose from the streets, obscuring Lucy’s vision. Or maybe it was the fine mist of tears she refused to shed. What a fool she was! To think herself in love with a man she had known for, what? All of two weeks? Less than that, even. When all along, all he had wanted was to know more about the Pratt family.

  There was a certain irony to that, but Lucy wasn’t in the mood to appreciate it.

  It was before I knew you, he had said, as he followed her to the El, dogging her footsteps, his broad frame casting a dark shadow against the sidewalk in front of her. You feel it, too, don’t you?

  Lucy did. She couldn’t deny that she did. That was part of why she’d left him there on the El platform, his words lost in the din of the oncoming train. He’d been gentleman enough not to follow her onto the train.

  Whatever you want, he had said. But she didn’t know what she wanted, not really. Not anymore.

  She had thought, once, that finding Harry Pratt was all she wanted, that being reunited with her real father might fill the hole in her heart left by her father’s death. But the more Lucy learned about the Pratts, the less she wanted to know them. She had imagined Harry Pratt as the prince in a fairy tale, golden, shining, the embodiment of all the virtues, separated from her mother only by some cruel tragedy.

  So much for high romance. From what she had heard of the Pratts, her father had probably died in a drunken brawl like his brother. And, even if he hadn’t, even if he were still alive somewhere, it seemed highly unlikely he would welcome her with open arms, acclaiming her the lost daughter of his heart. The Pratts didn’t seem to care for anyone but themselves.

  The Pratts had brought her nothing but misery, Lucy thought bitterly. She hated the thought of going back to their house, to that cold marble monument to lost social standing. If any echoes of her parents lurked within those paneled walls, she hadn’t found them.

  Maybe it was time to throw it all in, Lucy thought wildly. Resign her job at Cromwell, Polk and Moore. She couldn’t go back there anyway, not now, not when Philip Schuyler was hiding from her in Philadelphia. He was a partner. She was a secretary. If one of them had to go, it wasn’t difficult to guess which.

  She couldn’t go back to Brooklyn, to the woman she had believed was her grandmother. That life was closed to her now.

  And Charleston, that glittering mirage of a future that John Ravenel had held out to her—that was gone now, as swiftly as it had come.

  Perhaps they needed good secretaries in California? It was as far away as she could think to go. And why not? There was nothing to hold her to New York.

  “Lucy.” She was so lost in her own thoughts that she heard his voice before she saw him, Philip Schuyler, sitting on the steps of Stornaway House like a schoolboy playing hooky from school. He rose as she approached, stepping forward to meet her. “Lucy. I need to talk to you.”

  Lucy’s head was spinning with heat and confusion. “How did you know where I live?”

  “Your file,” said Philip, as though it were the most natural thing in the world to show up on her doorstep. “I need to speak to you.”

  Lucy glanced nervously at the windows of the house. “Won’t it keep until Monday?”

  “This isn’t a conversation I want to be having in the office.”

  “But you can’t be here.” The idea of having a personal discussion in the boardinghouse lounge, with the other girls reading magazines and eavesdropping and Agatha drying her stockings on a rail, made Lucy cringe. “Matron—”

  “I’ll square it with Matron,” said Philip Schuyler, with casual arrogance. “I was in and out of this house long before it was a boardinghouse. But, if it makes you uncomfortable, we can go somewhere else.”

  “Yes. I think that would be best.” Lucy was too rattled to argue. “There’s a coffee shop on Lexington.”

  “Coffee it is,” said Philip Schuyler, and offered her his arm.

  Lucy hesitated only a moment before taking it, but that moment was a moment too long.

  “I won’t bite, you know. Not this time,” he added wryly.

  Lucy grimaced. “I hadn’t thought— I’m sorry.” She had been so wrapped up in her own worries that she hadn’t noticed how tired he looked. His usually impeccably shaved chin glinted with blond stubble.

  Like gold flecks, thought Lucy, picking her way across Park Avenue. With the Schuylers, even stubble turned to gold.

  Unlike the Pratts, who seemed to be able to turn gold to lead.

  “I wish I could say that I was sorry.” Philip looked down at her, his eyes serious beneath the brim of his hat. “I ought to be sorry. But I find that I can’t be. You may not realize it, but you gave me a great gift.”

  Something about the way he was looking at her, so serious, so unlike himself, made Lucy nervous. “A hangover?”

  “That I gave to myself. And very foolish it was, too.” He held open the door for her to precede him into the coffee shop.

  Lucy could tell, by the twitch of his nostrils, that he didn’t think much of it, of the cracked white pottery sugar bowls and the dingy mats on the tables, but he didn’t utter a word of protest. Instead, he ushered Lucy to a table as if they were at the Ritz and she in a long gown and jewels.

  “Two coffees, one with milk, two sugars; one with just milk.” Philip ordered without waiting for her to speak.

  Lucy looked up at him in surprise. “You remember how I take my coffee.”

  Removing his hat, Philip ran a hand through his blond hair.
“Is that so startling?”

  Lucy ducked her head. “I didn’t think—it’s usually the secretary who remembers her employer’s preferences, not the other way around.”

  Philip caught her eye. “I know now that you don’t like gin.”

  Lucy winced. “Must we discuss that? Please, can’t we pretend it never happened?”

  “Would you pretend the sun never rose or the moon never shone? Forgive me, I’m a bit punchy. It’s been a long few days. I had—a lot of thinking to do.”

  Wouldn’t he hurry up and get to the point? Lucy found herself twisting with impatience on the grimy seat of the chair. All she wanted was to get back to the quiet of her stuffy attic room and take off her sweaty stockings and lie on her lumpy bed, where it was dark and quiet and there were no John Ravenels or Philip Schuylers, where she could close her eyes and pretend she was ten again, in her own room decorated with the mural her mother had painted.

  Philip Schuyler was still speaking, in his beautiful boarding school voice, the sort of voice that Lucy had thought she wanted to have, that now, after John Ravenel’s mellifluous tones, sounded slightly nasal, slightly affected.

  Not that it was affected. He spoke that way naturally. He was Philip Schuyler. “I know this is sudden,” he was saying, “but . . . marry me.”

  Whatever fog she had been in, that cleared it with a vengeance. “I’m sorry,” Lucy stuttered. “I must have misheard. Did you say—?”

  Philip Schuyler leaned forward. “Marry me, Lucy. This week, this year, I don’t care when. Just . . . marry me.”

  Lucy stared at him. He didn’t seem drunk, not like last Wednesday, but . . . “Are you under the influence?”

  “I’m not under the influence. Not that sort of influence, at any rate.” And he wasn’t. His eyes were bleary, as if he had been up all night, and his jaw showed a faint and entirely unprecedented sprinkling of gold hairs, but his voice was clear and his hand was steady. Lucy could smell coffee on him, but not the slightest betraying whiff of spirits. “Do you really think I would have to be inebriated to have the good sense to fall in love with you?”