Rumors

by Anna Godbersen

  Will shook his head firmly. “It just says that she’s ill, Lizzie. It’s pretty brief, and you know your sister isn’t a realist. There’s no way to know exactly what’s happening.”

  All of a sudden Elizabeth flashed on a vision of her mother, broken and bedridden. The thought of her so reduced was more terrible and heartbreaking than she could have begun to anticipate. “I have to go to her.”

  Will’s eyes were wide and watchful as he nodded. “I’ll go with you, then.”

  Elizabeth put her hand over her mouth and tried to keep herself from crying. There was that bruised feeling in her chest that always preceded tears, but she told herself that would be very selfish, that her mother was too far away to see how she felt and she would only be crying over her own guilty behavior. “Oh, Will. The oil.”

  “It’s been there a long time.” A smile wavered on his lips, and then he reached out for her. She felt the whole spread of his palm against the small of her back; his other hand lightly brushed the hair back from her face. “It will be there when we come back. The train leaves San Pedro at noon tomorrow.”

  Elizabeth let her body relax into his. All of her fears for her family, which she had been keeping at bay, were back with her now. She wondered if she would be able to sleep that night, or any night before she was with them again. She tried not to think the worst, but already her fretful imagination had gotten away from her.

  Thirteen

  Of all the misfortunes that seem to have befallen the Holland family as of late, no rumor has stuck so painfully as the one that Miss Elizabeth is alive and being held by some nefarious cabal or other, which some ladies might view as a fate worse than death. Of course, if it is money that her captors want, they will be sorely disappointed in their ransom….

  —FROM CITÉ CHATTER, MONDAY, DECEMBER 18, 1899

  “AT LEAST YOU LOOK VERY WELL,” AGNES JONES said, with a furtive look at the dark green velvet jacket that Diana was wearing. This was a non sequitur as far as Diana was concerned, as there had been no mention of what exactly Diana’s appearance was a silver lining to. Previously they had been talking about the weather, which was bright and brisk. If she had not been annoyed, she might have considered that Agnes was politely alluding to the continual disappearance of objects from the Holland parlor, or the recent untoward rumors about Elizabeth, or the lack of a fire going even when there were patches of ice on the sidewalk.

  “Thank you,” Diana replied, haughtily arranging the lapels of her jacket. It was voluminous in the upper sleeves and narrow at the wrists and waist, and the color brought out the russet tones of her dark curls. She had bought it yesterday, with her gossip earnings, and though even a ready-to-wear piece was an extravagance that she could hardly justify, it was turning out quite useful in an unheated house. She needed it to make her feel better in more profound ways as well, which was not something she expected her guest to understand. Agnes, Diana thought rather ungenerously, knew nothing of the sorrows of beautiful girls. “As do you.”

  Agnes shrugged modestly. She was wearing a walking dress of moth brown cheviot that did not fit her right in the least and a bonnet that entirely overwhelmed her square little head. Diana noted these facts without remorse. Agnes had been one of Elizabeth’s friends—a pity project of Liz’s, really, as Agnes had had an unfortunate beginning in life and was now an orphan of minor financial independence—but none of the other Hollands had ever had the patience for her. She still insisted on coming by for tea even after the Hollands had suspended their “day” for visitors, a few weeks after Elizabeth’s passing, ostensibly because it reminded her of her lost friend. Even before Mrs. Holland had turned ill, she’d taken to hiding upstairs on these occasions.

  “This room isn’t the same without Elizabeth,” Agnes presently observed. She cast her eyes over its oak pocket door and wainscoting, its embossed olive leather paneling, its scattered antique chairs. The room was more sparsely furnished than before, it was true.

  “No, nothing ever will be,” the younger Miss Holland replied with an impatient wave of her hand. The girls had finished their tea, which Diana had made herself to save Claire the trouble. She had steeped it perhaps a little too long, and the strength of the tea, combined with her utter lack of appetite over the last few days, had given her the jitters, which had the not unexpected side effect of making her conversation more flip than usual.

  “I must be going,” Agnes went on after a pause.

  “Yes, I guess you’d better.”

  At the door, Diana managed to feign a little politeness and urge her guest to come again. Elizabeth would have liked it, she told herself, which was more or less true. Then she turned, into the dark foyer, and looked down at the unpolished silver tray on the floor—the ornate piece of furniture that it used to sit on was apparently another casualty of the Hollands’ current lack of funds. There were a few cards there. She picked them up out of a vague curiosity—after all, if she were to keep doing business with Barnard, she would have to pay more attention to the comings and going of the sorts of people who left cards—and came to a stop at the one with Teddy Cutting’s name on it. She turned it over and saw the words:

  Miss Diana,

  I am sorry to have miss ed you,

  but it has all been arranged

  for Monday night. I will

  come by in my carriage

  at seven o’clock for you.

  Yours, Teddy

  Diana had always found Teddy rather dull—he was the sort of boy who worshipped sweetly pale things like Elizabeth—but he held a special interest to her as one of Henry’s particular friends. It drove her up to the second floor, holding her long black skirt back from her quickly moving feet. She rapped twice on her mother’s door and then entered without waiting for an answer. Since Diana had last peeked into the room, the white curtains had been drawn down from the canopy, and the heavy chintz drapes of the north-facing windows had been closed. This change in atmosphere did not deter Diana, who continued on to the bed and perched on the white matelassé bedspread.

  She wasted no time before saying, “Mother, I’m glad to hear you’re feeling better.”

  Mrs. Holland, whose head was resting on a pile of pillows and whose shut lids were veined with blue, paused a moment before replying: “I am not feeling very well at all. I have been worrying about you all night—where did you run off to yesterday morning?”

  “I only went out for a little air,” Diana said in a moment. She wondered if telling her mother the truth—that she had been sending a telegram to her living, breathing sister—would have alleviated all of the gloom.

  “After what happened to Elizabeth, one would think you would be a little kind and wouldn’t give me so much cause to worry.”

  She opened her eyes then and gave Diana a look that was very difficult to meet. The daughter held it as long as she could, and then moved her hand across her face to tuck a few hairs back into their upward arrangement. “Sorry, Mother,” she answered grudgingly. “But what does this note from Mr. Cutting mean?”

  “Ah, Mr. Cutting…” Mrs. Holland’s eyelids drooped closed again. “Well, my dear, since Mr. Newburg and Mr. Coddington do not seem to have taken any interest in you, I thought you might do well to see one of Elizabeth’s old friends, and it happens that Mr. Cutting was looking for a young lady to accompany him to a dinner that his married sister is giving this evening.”

  “How did you arrange…?” Diana began, mystified. At that particular moment she wasn’t sure whether to believe in her mother’s illness or not.

  “You have not forgotten who you are, I hope, Diana.” Here Mrs. Holland’s eyes opened as she turned her face at such an angle that what light there was in the room caught against the underside of her sharp chin. “Who we are.”

  Her gaze fell to the fitted waist of the new jacket, and for a moment Diana’s breath caught at the thought that she was about to be asked where it had come from.

  “I’m sorry it has been so cold, Diana,” h
er mother nearly whispered. “Claire told me that the firewood deliveries have stopped, and I have given her funds to pay the bill.”

  With that her eyes closed again and Diana took her leave. As she returned to her room she could not help but wonder what this Teddy business meant. It was curious and inscrutable news, and what it indicated about her mother’s state was even more obscure. Clearly Mrs. Holland had been out of bed the day before and with enough of her old influence to arrange for her daughter to be escorted for an evening by one of New York’s most eligible. But that she had looked at the brilliant green of Diana’s jacket and felt sympathy for her daughter’s being cold rather than growing suspicious over an unfamiliar piece of clothing was strange and alarming. That was not Louisa Gansevoort Holland at all. Ordinarily she was an obsessive cataloguer of material goods. That something new and fine had escaped her notice did not in the least bode well.

  Diana sat in the gold wing chair in her room, unsettled and a little restless. She pushed her head back into the chair’s cushioned upholstery and ran her fingers along its mahogany arms contemplatively. After some thought, she came to the conclusion that there was nothing to do but choose a dress impressive enough to catch Teddy’s eye. That was the way to make use of the evening. He would have to more than notice her—he would have to be taken in by her beauty. Then he would feel compelled to immediately describe it, in lavish terms, to his friend Henry.

  Fourteen

  Many have already noted that the elder statesman of New York bachelors, Mr. Carey Lewis Longhorn, was sighted for the first time with a young lady of unique but undoubted prettiness at the opening of the opera on Saturday evening. Some have speculated that she is the one to finally tame that eternally unattached fellow. But it is I alone who have exclusively learned her identity: She is Miss Carolina Broad, a western heiress to a copper-smelting fortune, and she intends to grace our city for some time. I will inform as more becomes known of this enchanting young lady….

  —FROM THE “GAMESOME GALLANT” COLUMN IN THE NEW YORK IMPERIAL, MONDAY, DECEMBER 18, 1899

  LINA SHOULD HAVE KNOWN THAT THE ADVENT OF her first true moment of glory would coincide with the complete annihilation of all her dreams. Also, that were her name ever to appear in the columns, it would naturally be misspelled. If Will happened to glance over the columns he likely wouldn’t even wonder if the girl mentioned was the one he used to know. She had been born into the plain world, and it now seemed very likely that she would die in the plain world as well. She had taken her desire to be grand one step too far, and now the sight of her full name, Carolina, in print made her feel a little sick with herself for having dared to imagine such a fine future for someone so clearly destined to be common. She had paid through Friday at the hotel: after that would commence the long descent Diana had warned her about.

  There had first been the fact of her money being gone. This had been an eventuality, of course—it was more than half gone in a short period of time. But it would have lasted her a little longer, and then it would have taken her away from the city and all of its expenses to find Will out west. She had been planning to carefully budget out the remainder any day now, exactly how much it would cost to travel to Chicago and from there to San Francisco. Then she might need more, to travel down the coast to one of those towns she had heard Will speak of before, places he’d no doubt read about in one of his books. And of course she had hoped to arrive in Elizabeth Holland–style grandeur. For all of it to be gone at once, and for it to have taken all her plans with it!

  She had sat with this new fact for a good part of the night, and that was when the anger came. For the money had not disappeared into thin air. Someone had it. Someone was already spending it, and probably on something much less important than finding the love of one’s life. Surely whoever had it was someone whose name had not just appeared—correctly or not—in the “Gamesome Gallant” column in the Monday early edition.

  She wondered, at first, if the thievery weren’t somehow Mr. Longhorn’s doing. It was a little too good to be believed, after all, that her first trip to the opera should bring her into such a very fine box. But he was enormously rich—that fact was in no way in doubt—so why would he bother with her paltry fortune? Then she thought of Robert, Mr. Longhorn’s valet, but of course Robert had been waiting at the carriage outside the opera house the whole evening. She thought of the front-desk man, and of the maid, of all the invisible parts that made the hotel function—but she stopped herself there. She had been lying to them so consistently, and she had been so artful in her vagueness, that to bring a precise complaint felt impossible. Later, when she was older and grander, when she had proved herself as a lady, this illogic would seem like the comical thinking of a frightened child. But at the moment the idea of causing any kind of scene was nearly as terrifying as the loss of the money itself.

  If only she could raise half the stolen sum, she told herself, she would go to Will straightaway. These thoughts circled her head all morning, and then, around noon, she remembered she still had one thing left to sell.

  “Miss Carolina Broad,” the Hayeses’ butler announced from the corner of what appeared to be a vast drawing room. Lina, hovering behind him, caught a glimpse of the girl who had first given her hope for a new way of life. She was perched on the corner of a divan and wearing a displeased expression as well as a skirt of dusty pink silk. Penelope looked up at the sound of the name and turned her head to the side contemplatively. Perhaps, Lina thought, she had noticed the changes to the name since the last time she’d heard it, or maybe she hadn’t—it was impossible to know. “I would have presented her card, mademoiselle,” the butler went on, not assuaging the visitor’s discomfort in the least, “but she hasn’t got one.”

  It was through a forest of blue-and-white-upholstered Louis Quinze that Lina had to walk—her nerves raw and her courage flagging all the way—to get to the young lady of the grand new house. Although she had met Penelope before, it was hardly the kind of interaction that might lead to further genteel visits. Lina had to force her leather lace-up boots—a gift from Tristan, the day after they’d met—across the black walnut floor. She was finding it awfully difficult to appear natural.

  Penelope looked up at Lina only after she had paused a few feet from the divan. The young lady of the house was drawing her long fingers over the head of a small black-and-white dog. “That dress used to be mine.”

  Lina looked down on the pale red fabric with the Swiss dot pattern, which she had worn quite a few times over the fall. She remembered Penelope telling her, when she handed it down, that it had been one of her favorites—Lina wondered now if anyone at the hotel might have recognized its provenance.

  The large man with the feminine brow and soft skin, who had been reading the columns in a chair just behind Penelope—though she’d never met him, Lina assumed he was the Buck Elizabeth used to speak so doubtfully of—commented without raising his eyes from his folded paper, “She certainly doesn’t wear it as you did.”

  “Oh…” Lina looked down at herself and wished she hadn’t come. It had been a mistake, as she would have realized earlier if she hadn’t been desperate. But she was desperate, so she moved a little closer to her onetime patroness.

  “I can’t imagine what brings you here,” Penelope put in sharply.

  “It’s quite irregular,” Buck added.

  Lina’s cheeks turned the color of claret. “Perhaps I could speak to you about that in private?”

  Penelope looked as though she had just been asked to make her own bed.

  “Anything you can say to Miss Hayes, you can say to me,” Buck said finally, ending a pause that had done unkind things to Lina’s already suffering nerves.

  She looked several times from Buck and back to Penelope, and finally resolved to go forward with what she had planned to say. “I thought we might be able to arrange another trade.”

  “Another trade?” Penelope exclaimed. There was disbelief in her wide-open eyes. “I hope
you haven’t told anyone about all that.”

  “Of course not.” Lina drew her lower lip under her teeth and wondered just how evident the despair was on her face. “But this is a bit of news I think you’d find most interesting.”

  Penelope’s gaze turned neutral and she moved her elbow—its sharpness obvious even beneath the tight-fitting pink silk—a little forward on the armrest. “Well. What is it?”

  “It’s about the Hollands,” she forced herself to say. “I discovered it while I was still part of their staff. You see, there was a man, I think he dealt in antiques and things, he would come by the house and take pieces of theirs away. The bills were really piling up then. That’s how I realized…me and my sister, Claire…that they’d lost their money. And Claire still works there, so I know that they’ve had to let most of their staff go.”

  “Carolina Broad, is it?”

  Lina nodded.

  “Carolina…” A dry smile had crept onto Penelope’s face. Maybe this was a good sign, Lina thought. For a brief moment she felt at ease in that vast room with its ormolu-encrusted mirrors and old master paintings and its blindingly shiny floor. “Are you saying that the famous Hollands are poor?”

  Carolina smiled back a little now. “Oh, yes. I am absolutely sure of it—”

  “Lord, get out.” Penelope’s face fell and she waved her hand impulsively. She turned her whole body away from her visitor now, even as Lina bent toward her, wishing to know what she had done wrong.

  “But before you said that—”

  “The Hollands are poor?” Penelope went on in a voice that even the little dog, struggling to free his tail from under her skirt, seemed to find discomfiting. “Everyone knows that one already. If you’d come here with a reason Henry Schoonmaker hasn’t fallen back in love with me, then perhaps…but that’s a riddle that people far smarter than you are stumped by. You stupid girl, did you really think you were going to come into my house and sell me old news?”