Rumors

by Anna Godbersen

  “This was you?” she whispered.

  “Yes, back when all the girls would have had me.” Mr. Longhorn paused and took a sip of his brandy. “I hope you don’t think me immodest, Miss Broad, to say so. But that was how I was then. I sometimes wish—several times a day even—that I’d not been so taken with myself and had chosen a wife. Then I wouldn’t be so alone now. But I also can’t help being a little impressed by myself when I look back.”

  “Oh, I don’t blame you,” Lina said, flushing a little at the sincerity in her voice. She looked away from Longhorn’s portrait, and across the framed depictions of beauties past and present. There they were in rosy watercolor or in broad, colorful strokes of oil, with their painted cheeks and fitted silks. She felt a kind of longing to be among them, to be considered so beautiful that some painter would want to immortalize her. For a moment she forgot that she was not alone and lost herself in staring at the portraits. That was when her eyes fell on Elizabeth Holland.

  Her portrait was small and framed in simple black tole. She was positioned so that her body faced away from the viewer, but she looked back over her shoulder with a look of utter self-possession. The strokes that rendered her were light and airy, but everything about the likeness was Elizabeth: the small, round mouth, the innocent, wide-set eyes, the pale, clear skin with touches of apricot coloring at the nose and pointed chin. She was wearing a dress of pale pink silk that Lina remembered dressing her in.

  Lina turned away, hoping it wasn’t obvious to her host how badly she wanted to be like the girl in the painting, and walked toward the high casement windows that looked down on the park. She could see now why her room cost only what it did. Mr. Longhorn’s suite had several rooms, with antique furniture and a fireplace that would have dwarfed the Hollands’. More impressive yet, it looked not over a street but over a park. A huge and elegant park that spread below them: bare, purple trees in the snow contained neatly by a rim of buildings on each side as though it were Longhorn’s own personal flower bed.

  It was the end of an evening in which she had known what it was to be envied and admired. Gazing down at that view, she found that these experiences only made her long for more. When she left the window, she couldn’t help but glance one last time at Longhorn’s portrait. Oh, if only she could have known him then.

  “Mr. Longhorn.” She had turned away from the youth in the picture and was now looking at the real thing. His heavy lids had closed while she was at the window, and they reopened only slowly now.

  “Oh…Carolina,” he replied after a minute. He seemed to have forgotten himself, but when he recognized her, he smiled contentedly. “How happy you make me, my dear,” he added, a little sadly.

  Lina’s gaze drifted to Robert, in a black swallowtail coat and pants of the same color. He was watching her. Even his brass buttons shone in her direction.

  A moment ago, Lina’s opinion of herself had been quite high. It sank a little now, when she saw how Robert was looking at her. His face was placid, and he was observing the scene as though it were one he’d witnessed before. Her sense of herself as a success might have been further reduced had not a sound at the door called him to attention. When Robert opened the door she found that the winds had changed direction again.

  For there was Tristan, wearing the brown suit of a Lord & Taylor salesman and wielding a rather ominous collection of oblong envelopes. She could feel the impress of his lips on hers, as though the kiss had occurred only seconds ago—as though it had left a mark. He brushed past Robert and stood looking down on Mr. Longhorn.

  “I am sorry to interrupt, but I have been trying to find Miss Broad everywhere.”

  “What seems to be the matter?” Mr. Longhorn replied coldly. He sat up now, alert.

  “I’ve never seen this man.” Lina’s voice was hoarse and she felt very much like a skiff battered in a gale. Tristan had mentioned a next move, but this seemed awfully soon. Her confidence began to erode. She seemed again very close to being exposed.

  “Surely, Miss Broad, you remember me from Lord and Taylor’s department store?” Tristan pressed.

  “Oh! But I go to so many stores….” He was looking at her intensely, which only worsened the heat rising in her cheeks. “I guess my memory gets a little bad sometimes.”

  “Miss Broad can forget department store clerks just as often as she pleases,” Mr. Longhorn cut in. “I really don’t see how that justifies your interruption. It is very late, and this is my private room, so state your business or get out.”

  A few moments ago, Longhorn had considered her one of the bright young things. But here was her friend, the con artist, come to dispel any of those notions. Lina closed her eyes and waited for things to fall apart.

  “I apologize for the hour, but I have been waiting in the lobby for Miss Broad since six. It’s about these bills—”

  “Bills? You bother me with bills so late in the evening?”

  Lina opened her eyes. The older gentleman had drawn himself up. Even though he leaned against the arm of the chair for support, the derision in his voice was biting, and she actually thought she saw Tristan shrink backward a hair.

  “I’ll thank you to have Miss Broad’s bills sent directly to my office on Prince Street from now on, and that you molest the young lady herself no further. You know the address? Good. My man will make sure you find the way out.”

  Breath returned to Lina’s body, although she was still unsure whether to be relieved or devastated. She felt sure that Tristan’s appearance had broken her spell. Mr. Longhorn turned away from the door, and she could see that he had been angry—really, truly angry. He brought his balled fist to his mouth and coughed into it violently several times. As Tristan backed into the hall, he winked once at Lina and then turned.

  “Thank you, sir,” he called before he disappeared down the far stairwell, with Robert following watchfully behind.

  When Mr. Longhorn’s fit of coughing ended, he paused and let his eyes linger on his young guest.

  “That was so…odd.” She was stumbling over her words, and she could not look up from the table. “I can pay you back, of course, just as soon as—”

  The old gentleman made a gesture with his hand as though he were batting away a moth. “I don’t want you to pay me back, my dear.”

  “But I could,” she persisted stupidly.

  “No, you couldn’t. I know what you’ve been up to, or do you think I made all my money by trusting every huckster that came along?”

  “No.” The truth of what he said set in for Lina a few minutes too late. She had been anticipating those words, “I know what you’ve been up to,” and it was almost a relief to hear them. “I suppose you didn’t,” she offered finally.

  “No, I knew just what you were up to that first day in the lobby.”

  She began to fidget with the lace detail of her dress. The shame was almost overwhelming, but in a few minutes, she told herself, it would all be over.

  “And I thought to myself, A girl that lovely shouldn’t have to degrade herself just because she wasn’t born into anything. It’s different for a man with talent. A man with talent can work hard and make some money and marry himself a name. Not so a girl, not unless her pa works hard. And I suspect you never had much of a pa.”

  Only now did Lina allow her gaze to rise a little up. “No.” Her voice was a cautious whisper.

  “Don’t look so scared, dear. I don’t want anything more from you than your company, and you don’t need to worry about my being a lecher like they say. I don’t want to take any of the glow off you. I waited too long to marry, and now it’s too late for me, but I’d still like someone to go to parties with and to tell me how the young people do things. If you’d be that girl for me, I’d see that the department stores and the hotel clerks don’t bother you anymore. Your bills would go directly to me—you could hire yourself a lady’s maid and your own coach. I would see that they give you the best.”

  Lina was so stunned with gratitude she
hardly knew what to do. So she was worth immortalizing, after all. Or at least dressing up. A calming warmth was spreading all over her body, and she had to remind herself to smile. “Thank you, Mr. Longhorn,” she said as the smile suffused her face. “That sounds nice.”

  “Good. Tomorrow you’ll go get yourself some new things. I want you to attend the Schoonmakers’ annual Christmas Eve party with me, and you’ll need a gown nobody has seen before for that.”

  Lina knew her nodding was a little profuse, but already she was picturing the cut and hue.

  When he spoke again, there was a new gentleness in his words. “I’m sorry for that ugly little scene, my dear. We needn’t dwell on it anymore.”

  “Oh, I am, too,” she said softly. But Lina wasn’t sorry at all. For Lina, the waters had unexpectedly turned tranquil, and she found herself floating under a bright, warm sun.

  Twenty Eight

  No man ever believes his depiction in the press to be accurate.

  —SOCIETY AS I WROTE IT, BY “THE GAMESOME GALLANT,” DECEMBER 1899

  SATURDAY WAS THE DAY BEFORE CHRISTMAS EVE, and it passed quietly for smart New York. The sun went down early and, for Henry, it was as though daylight never happened. He brooded all night in his own room, slept fitfully but late, and by five o’clock darkness had completely fallen. It seemed one continuous night, for here he was again, in the same drawing room with the same people. There were a few extras, too—Lucy Carr and Mr. Gore. Apparently, Isabelle couldn’t go without entertainment for two nights together and had put her foot down, since ordinarily old Schoonmaker would not have let a divorcée into his house twice in one week, and especially not at the same time as a man who was seen so regularly without his wife. They were playing bridge, the four of them—Mrs. Schoonmaker, Mrs. Carr, Gore, and Penelope Hayes, who was watching Henry, bird of prey–like, without ever seeming to turn her eyes in his direction.

  “Bridge,” said Henry without moving his nose too far from his waiting cognac. “Isn’t that one of the unladylike pursuits?”

  “Only when you do it in large parties or the big hotels or in foreign places,” replied his father, who had been sitting next to him getting red-faced on his son’s favorite after-dinner drink and saying very little.

  “In other words, only when you get seen?”

  “Exactly. Not everybody is so pathologically seen as you, my boy.”

  Henry nodded and drank. He tapped his fingers on the ormolu-encrusted arm of his chair and considered the fact that if he had not been seen on one recent evening in particular, he would be free to go find out exactly what had happened between Teddy and Diana. Instead, he sat in the parlor of his family’s Fifth Avenue mansion, growing older by the minute just like everybody else.

  He could hear, in the adjoining galleries and parlors, the servants preparing for the Christmas Eve party Mrs. Schoonmaker was planning—she had complained of the ruckus, and of the strain the preparations put on her nerves, several times already. It occurred to Henry that he was sitting in that same enfilade of rooms where his engagement had been announced, some months before, and it seemed to him that from that original act of cowardice came all his current misfortunes.

  “Miss Hayes is such a lovely good girl.” His father took a drink when he had finished speaking but did not otherwise pretend that this was a random observation.

  “You didn’t used to think so.”

  “Tragedies change people.” Henry’s father shifted his bulk in his antique chair, which sighed, and moved his snifter from one hand to the other. “Some people,” he added pointedly.

  Henry took a bitter sip and propped his head against his fist, shifting his body as he did away from his father’s. He looked across the floor, the polish of which was obscured by the dark carpets, at Penelope, who was posed against the little card table in her pale yellow dress with the gold beading around the bustline. Her dark hair was swept up into a high sculpture, and the glow from the next room gently outlined her long, curved neck. He had kissed that neck, but he felt very far away from a desire to do so now. It was arched just so for him, he knew, but also for his father, and this thought gave him a deep feeling of disgust.

  Henry’s attention was sharply diverted when the butler appeared in the door and announced a name that had been much in his thoughts. Before the final syllable of the name “Teddy Cutting” had been uttered, Henry was out of his chair and across the floor. He met Teddy as he entered, looked him in the eye and stated a sharp and simple: “You.”

  “Hello to you, too,” Teddy replied with mild amusement. “I was just dining at Delmonico’s. Everybody missed you.”

  “I’ve got to talk to you.” Henry’s eyes flashed around the room even as he roughly linked his arm through Teddy’s. To his great irritation, Teddy released himself and moved to the card table, where he made his hellos. Only after he had gone around the circle did he allow himself to be drawn forward into the galleries. He wore a bemused twist to his smile and a dinner jacket that Henry noticed as being distinctly borrowed from his own style. His blond hair was darkened with the pomade that held it parted on the side.

  “I saw the paper,” Henry hissed when they were out of earshot from the others. The walls of the room were deep red, and copper pots in the corners overflowed with ferns.

  “What paper?” Teddy asked. He was maintaining a stance of vaguely amused innocence that did nothing to calm Henry’s ire. He tapped his top hat, which he was still holding, against his thigh as though he were bored. “It’s really a shame you’re on house arrest so soon after you ended your mourning period…” he went on. “The fellows miss you.”

  “The paper with the item about you and Diana Holland.”

  “What are you talking about?” Teddy said, halting by a marble nymph and finally looking his friend in the eye.

  “That ‘Gallant’ column,” Henry replied hotly. “The one that mentioned you being intimate with my—with the young lady with whom you thought I shouldn’t be engaging in a romantic relationship at this particular historical moment.”

  Teddy paused and his gray eyes shifted back toward the room where the others were laughing over something or other. All amusement had washed out of his face. He tapped his foot against the parquet floor and considered for a moment how best to reply. “Oh, Henry, you can’t believe—” He broke off, shaking his head. “That thing that had Florence so upset? Did you read what it said about her, Henry? How could I have been concerned about what it said about me, when…”

  Henry’s face was stuck in a furious frown. His rage had built up without his control, and it had no route of escape. Teddy was watching him in that quiet, serious way he sometimes had late at night after too many drinks had been spilled, and Henry could almost see his own frightful visage reflected in his friend’s. The fun that was being had down the corridor of rooms seemed a thousand miles away.

  “I didn’t notice about Florence,” Henry said finally. His throat was tight.

  “Henry…it was arranged by my sister’s mother-in-law and Mrs. Holland that I would escort Diana to a little dinner. I enjoyed her company very much, just as I always enjoyed her sister’s, but you know there is nothing between us.” He kept on with those eyes, and Henry felt his rage subside an inch. “Don’t make yourself ridiculous with accusations,” Teddy concluded sharply.

  “All right, all right.” Henry sighed and covered his face with his hand. He was about to ask why then, if there had been nothing between his friend and Diana, she had not come to him last night, but stopped himself—not because he was afraid of shocking Teddy, but because he felt suddenly protective of her again. And of her sister, wherever she was, guarding her secret just as he should.

  “You love her,” Teddy observed quietly.

  Henry replied with an uncharacteristic lack of irony: “Yes.”

  Teddy’s eyes shifted to the plaster interlacing that decorated the ceiling in curlicues. “Lord, you never make it easy, do you.”

  “No.”


  “You are aware of that.”

  “Yes.” Henry paused. He had known Teddy a long time, but he had never had a conversation with him quite like this one. “But I’ve never felt like this, either.”

  His friend regarded him. Moments passed, and for the first time Henry was afraid to hear his friend’s assessment. “You’ll have to get her, then.”

  Henry let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. “I can’t even leave the house.”

  Only now did he move his hand from his eyes, and saw that his friend was nodding. Teddy touched his arm and leaned in for a view of the room where a fire was crackling and cards were being loudly played.

  “Your father’s gone out for a minute,” Teddy observed.

  The two men looked at each other and then turned and started back toward the others at an inconspicuous pace.

  “What a bore he is,” Teddy mocked, with a little jab in Henry’s direction, when they were again beside the card table.

  “Oh, I know!” Isabelle spoke with enthusiasm but barely glanced up from her hand. Cards were, as his father had observed several times—erroneously, in the son’s opinion—her only vice.

  “I rather like our new Henry,” Penelope said in a soft voice that, if Henry had heard it from behind a door, he would have sworn belonged to some other girl.

  “I’m going to bed,” Henry went on, trying not to betray the new energy that was already making racehorses of his thoughts.

  “And I’m going to see what the city at night has to offer a young man like myself.”

  Both men stepped away from the marble-topped table across the deep purple carpet. The light from the fire played across Penelope’s slim, yellow torso and on her stunned features.