by Diana Forbes
“It’s my job to know everyone, dear,” Amy said. “That’s what we Society dowagers do.” She pronounced the word do as if she were British, which she wasn’t. I’d heard she’d grown up in South Carolina, but she’d shed her southern roots faster than she’d added dead presidents to her name. “Come inside and have tea,” she said, hitting the word “tea” with the same dry drawl. “It won’t interrupt your day.” This was delivered as a polite order rather than an invitation. “There’s someone inside you should meet.”
Chapter 28
Through the Rabbit Hole
I followed Amy into one of the most extravagant houses I had ever beheld. Supposedly it was modeled after a Parisian hotel, and just like in a real hotel, footmen scurried about like ants. One handed her a giant leather-bound book. Another handed her a fountain pen. Another handed her a receipt of some kind. I had never seen so many people employed to do so little. And they all looked scared, as if they expected her to chop off their heads at any moment.
We walked through a glittering hallway paved with flagstones, passing a library on one side and on the other, an immense parlor. Next to it sprawled an even larger salon featuring a painting on the ceiling with naked goddesses. This wasn’t a home, but a palace. Every piece of furniture in the salon was French, and I’d read that this one room had launched the taste in New York for French 18th century interiors. Floor-to-ceiling gold torchiers illuminated the glorious expanse, which boasted a marble fireplace, teak floors, and giant gilt mirrors adorning the walls. Three or four seating areas, equipped with opulent, silk-covered couches and mahogany, inlaid parquetry tables, luxuriated in the space. At one end of the room was an antique ebony desk that had belonged to Marie Antoinette.
The display of wealth in this one room was deliberate, arrogant, and untamed.
My brief brush with life down on Orchard Street made me shy away from the pale overstuffed chaises lest I bring in some vermin by mistake. And so I continued to stand. A man and a woman were seated in the room enjoying high tea. I blinked several times, wondering if I was suffering a hallucination, for I recognized one of them. Or thought I did.
“Penelope Stanton, I’d like you to meet Katharine St. James.”
I stretched out my hand to a pretty, petite woman with golden hair and cerulean eyes. If angels existed, surely she must be one of them. She smiled at me: the connection I felt with her was instant.
“And this is Katharine’s very good friend, Quincy Aldrich.” I shook his hand as I felt the breath leave my body. He looked, feature for feature, exactly like Stone Aldrich. Quincy’s eyes were such a dark blue as to appear almost black. His wavy chestnut hair shone like Stone’s. His brow line was high and his nose was short and straight like Stone’s. Prominent cheekbones lent an open aspect to his face. He wore Stone’s telltale round glasses. But not a scar was visible anywhere. Not above the brow on the left or even along the crown. Stone’s scars could not have faded so quickly.
I thought I’d just bend down to peek under his chin to make sure there was no scar. If not, it wasn’t Stone.
I took the settee across from him so I could gaze at him more completely. I knew I was openly staring at him, but I didn’t care. When a footman handed me a linen napkin, I deliberately dropped it on the polished wooden floor. For bending down to retrieve it gave me a clear angle directly under Quincy Aldrich’s chin.
There was no scar.
“I’m terribly sorry,” I mumbled, as a uniformed footman picked up the soiled napkin before I could and instantly placed a fresh one in my hand. Scrambling back onto the settee, I forced myself to gaze into Quincy’s eyes. “Did you say ‘Quincy Aldrich?’” I asked. “You look so much like a gentleman of my acquaintance named Stone Aldrich. Perhaps ‘Aldrich’ is a common name?”
The man laughed Stone Aldrich’s rich, baritone laugh. “You’ve met my brother?”
Brother? Stone’s siblings were all female. So he had told me.
“Stone stayed with my mother and me at our flat in Boston for several weeks. I was under the—er—distinct impression he had only sisters.”
“Aaah. Is that what the louse claimed? It’s always something.” Quincy’s voice bounced off the gilded walls, sounding identical to Stone’s. It had the same timbre. I saw a look pass from him to Katharine and back again and wondered at his frankness. How long had they been aware of brother Stone’s shortcomings?
“Crumpet?” he asked, removing one from the china bowl with a pair of silver tongs and placing it on my plate.
“Delicious,” I said, disoriented by the strong family resemblance. Still, after so many weeks of banishing Stone from my mind, it was pleasing to see a face that brought his back to me with such clarity. I had barely allowed myself to miss him and realized with a sharp pang that I had been deceiving myself. I could feel my heart start to hammer against my corset and hoped no one else could hear it in the large, airy room.
“Get to know each other,” Amy instructed, waving her large hands like an orchestra conductor. With several overeager footmen tripping over themselves to please her, she marched out of the room.
I chewed my crumpet and drank the tea. Bess had always told me that butter was the secret ingredient used by all great chefs. However this crumpet, served in the home of one of the world’s wealthiest dowagers, had skimped on the butter. It wasn’t nearly as rich as Bess’s crumpets and tasted dry and crumbly. Still, after the long hike from Orchard Street, I could almost hear my stomach growl. The last real meal I’d had was a potato knish down on Delancey Street the night before, and I was so famished that I felt hollow. So, when I thought no one was looking, I reached over and stole another crumpet from the silver serving dish.
Katharine caught my eye and laughed out loud.
There was something familiar about her too, but I couldn’t place it. The hair that glistened like gold. The cerulean eyes. The shimmer of rouge on her cheeks. It was as if I had met her before as well. And yet I knew that I hadn’t. Memory is an odd thing, I thought. Mine is playing tricks on me. No doubt it was due to the hunger.
Katharine was short, pretty, and jovial. Lord knew there was no one jovial at those Newport balls. She was also exceptionally blonde. Sitting there, smiling across from me, she didn’t look like a witch, although I was certain she could cast a spell over any man.
And then it struck me. She was the prostitute—not in reality, certainly not, given the green muslin dress she was wearing—but she had the same face as the prostitute in Stone Aldrich’s picture.
A tingle of fear shot through my body as I stared up at the naked goddess mural on the ceiling. What was Katharine’s connection to Stone? And what if she discovered I had feelings for him?
She eyed me over her cup of tea. She had a heart-shaped face that could capture any heart and the bluest of eyes.
“My poor girl,” she said. “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”
“You’re the prostitute in Stone Aldrich’s painting!” I blurted, then quickly brought my hand up to cover my mouth.
I was appalled. I felt my face get hot on her account. I could not believe that I’d uttered the vile word prostitute in Amy Van Buren’s home. The dead presidents must be turning over in their graves. “I mean, not that you are one, but Stone Aldrich painted you scantily clad, and with so much rouge piled on that—”
Oh, dear. This was going poorly.
She smiled like a beneficent angel of forgiveness. Yes,” she said, with a grin. “He has a habit of doing that. I’m his Muse, you see. He includes me in many of his paintings.”
So that’s why he had never allowed me to become his Muse. Apparently he already had one. “I still have the masterpiece,” I said glumly. “Do you want it?”
Katharine smiled in a way that was so magnificent, so generous, I could almost hear church bells ring. “No, child. If he gave it to you, there must be a good reason,” she said. “He probably wanted to repay you for putting up with him. He had an accident in Boston, isn’t that
right?”
Oh no! “Miss St. James—”
She waved her delicate hand back and forth. “Please, call me ‘Katharine.’”
“Katharine, then.” I breathed in. “Stone was temporarily blinded. He had a terrible bicycle spill that laid him up for weeks.”
“You shouldn’t believe everything he says,” Quincy said, clasping his hands behind his head as he leaned back on the sofa. “He makes up some things and leaves out others. He never told you about me, for example.” He seemed to say it with a certain irony.
“Well, a doctor called it temporary blindness,” I retorted, glancing at Quincy’s face again. There was something eerily familiar about him, too. Even beyond the resemblance to his brother.
Yes. Quincy resembled…
Katharine made a whistling sound. There was a tiny gap between her two front teeth—the one flaw that contrasted with the rest of her beauty and made her even more beautiful as a result. “I’m hungry,” she said. “These crumpets are delicious, but I wish our hostess would for once give us something more substantial to eat.”
Quincy laughed—Stone’s laugh. Katharine stared at Quincy, which made him chortle louder. She crossed her legs at the ankles and pierced me with her eyes.
I agreed with her about the need for food. I felt like I would happily sell my soul for a teaspoon of Mother’s tomato soup. A drumbeat pounded my stomach from the inside. I suffered from lightheadedness that, for some reason, the crumpets couldn’t sate.
And looking at Quincy just compounded the sensation.
“Maybe we should stage a union strike and force Amy to feed us,” Quincy said, glancing at me with a wry expression. “In honor of my dear brother, the Insurrectionist.”
I laughed, but shook my head, which made me feel even dizzier. He smiled—that mischievous Stone smile. No one should look this much like his sibling. Quincy sprang up from his couch. Behind him stood a wooden easel that was identical to his brother’s. Quincy swiveled the easel until it was in front of his seat. He picked up a long piece of charcoal.
“Say, Penelope, while we wait for Amy to come back, do ya mind if I sketch you?” he asked. “She’s been looking for the next suffrage model for our posters, and you have a pretty face.”
I could feel myself blush from my chin to my hairline.
“I might die from hunger,” I told him. “But until then, I suppose you can sketch me.”
I heard the telltale sounds of charcoal scratching against paper and forced myself to sit as still as possible. Again, I felt like an object. Was sitting for a likeness—frozen to the settee—really in keeping with the suffrage message? Fortunately the owner of the house rescued me. She swept back into the room like a monarch, three footmen struggling to keep up with her. One lifted the silver tray of crumpets to whisk it away, although it was still almost full.
“May I have another one?” I whispered, cheeks on fire. I felt like a beggar on palace grounds and expected armed guards to escort me out. Sure of it, I steeled myself for public humiliation. But her footman just leaned over me with a worried expression and stacked three more crumpets on my plate.
“No trouble, Miss,” he said. “We were just goin’ to toss ’em to the dogs.”
“Why thank you,” I said. Looking at Marie Antoinette’s desk emboldened me. “In that case, do you mind leaving the whole tray?”
He tossed a worried glance over at his mistress, who thankfully was preoccupied with floral arrangements. Behind her, one footman carried an armload of sunflowers while another footman ported just as many long-stemmed roses. The trio stopped at each vase to replace the dead flowers with fresh-cut ones while Amy orchestrated. The footman near me left the crumpet tray intact, and I shifted uncomfortably, trying to muffle my stomach’s uproar.
The grand dowager surveyed us, her sharp eyes peering from Katharine to Quincy to me. “Continue to mingle,” Amy ordered with imperious goodwill. “And whatever you do, don’t mind me.”
Once she left, I turned to Quincy. “You’re the urchin in the painting,” I said. “I thought it was a self-portrait of Stone because you both look so much alike, but I see that I was wrong. Your brother painted you,” I told him. “So on some level, he must love you.”
Chapter 29
The First Commandment
Monday, August 7, 1893
Amy’s salon was always filled with fine French furniture, crumpets, and people. Whereas fifteen women had visited Verdana’s flat in Boston, here there were more like thirty.
“Here are Mary, Madeleine, and Midge,” Amy said, gripping me by the elbow and pointing to a cluster of women on one of the couches. She pointed to another grouping. “Olivia, Olga, Theresa.” She nodded at Katharine and Quincy. “You already know these folks,” she said. “Everyone, this is Penelope.”
I bobbed my head and tried to keep smiling as I struggled to keep everyone’s names straight.
Even the tiniest departure from the way she wanted things done was considered an act of supreme truculence. The first commandment in the book of Amy was to treat her as the final authority on any matter that arose. This was easy for me, as I already treated Verdana with deference. Verdana, however, chafed under the new leadership: she wasn’t used to being bossed around.
I happened to be sitting near the mistress of the house the day Verdana finally deigned to meet her.
“That cartoon in the Times really captured you, Verdana dear,” Amy said by way of greeting. “Such a resemblance. You’re famous.” She snapped her tapered fingers at a footman and asked him to retrieve a copy of the paper. Instantly he disappeared to chase it down. Verdana continued to stand at attention, perhaps unsure if she was allowed to sit.
She leaned back on her clunky boots. “Oh, that wasn’t me.”
Amy toyed with her hatpin, finally spearing it in her giant white hat. “No? Who was it, do you think?”
She stood up, adjusted her long, white-lace dress, and sat down again on the overstuffed chaise, motioning with a flick of her wrist that Verdana should sit across from her.
Verdana remained standing. Between them, large crystal bowls of hydrangeas and lilies perfumed but did not ease the tense air.
“It was just a cartoon,” said Verdana, wiping a trickle of perspiration off her lip. “It wasn’t me. For one thing, the editor at the Times ignored all my letters about it. For another, the hair was different.” She gestured to her bangs. “My bangs are short and feathery. Whereas her bangs—”
“Don’t be naïve,” Amy drawled, adjusting her dark bun with a ruby clasp. “The cartoon shows a woman wearing bloomers and boots. And her face bears a striking likeness to yours.”
I glanced at Amy. A glint of malice shone in her fiery eyes.
“Her face is heavier,” Verdana retorted, colorless eyes growing wide. “I’d say it was twice as heavy at least.” She snagged a crumpet from a footman carrying a tray of them and downed the pastry in one bite. “I know I should lose some weight, of course, and the potato latkes downtown don’t help, but that woman—”
“By the way, I don’t think you should wear bloomers anymore,” Amy declared, staring at Verdana’s sunflower-studded pantaloons. “Don’t tell me you moved all the way from Boston and forgot to pack a dress. Even if you did, something in one of my wardrobes will fit you just fine. I went through a heavy phase myself, too, at one point, and…”
Verdana crossed her hands over her bloomers, holding onto them as if someone might snatch them off her.
“The bloomers are a symbol of our independence,” she said. Glancing at me for moral support, she raised her eyebrows as if to say, Help me quell the doubting dowager.
The suffrage countess snapped her fingers. “True. Still, Penelope manages not to wear them,” she pressed, with the firm insistence of one whose wishes were generally granted. She pivoted her formidable shoulders toward me as her dark eyes took in at my green poplin dress. “That’s a smart move not to wear them here, dear. Manhattan fancies itself a fashion capital. T
hose bloomers are many things, and fashionable isn’t one of them. Verdana, if you don’t start wearing skirts, we’re all going to be thrust to the outskirts of Society.” She wagged her finger. “We don’t want naysayers and cartoonists to make a mockery of the Movement before it’s had the chance to seed.”
“Mrs. Van Buren,” I interjected lightly.
“It’s ‘Amy,’ dear. No need to stand on formality. And it may not be ‘Van Buren’ forever; so for numerous reasons, let’s just stick to ‘Amy,’ shall we?”
“Amy, then.” I lowered my gaze slightly so I wouldn’t appear to be staring at our hostess. Had she just implied that she’d be filing for divorce? I didn’t know what to make of a woman who flaunted her money and freedom so obviously. She was everything Newport was not, although she owned multiple residences in Newport. She was a paradox. “Verdana wears bloomers to underscore a point in our talk about health,” I said. “As I’m sure you’re aware, tight waists are considered unhealthy by many of today’s doctors.”
Amy adjusted herself on the chaise in the manner of a judge putting down a gavel. She wasn’t heavyset but had just enough heft to give her movements an air of gravitas. “Yes, I’ve heard Verdana’s speech and it’s superb. But it’s not designed to move our Manhattan audiences.”
Her dark eyes swept around the enormous parlor, lingering on a fireplace that was three times the size of any other fireplace in the city (so the newspapers said). Her ceilings were significantly taller. Her windows let in far more light and were cleaner. Her French furniture was more imposing. She coughed in the manner of one who meant to be heard, and the thirty women in her parlor snapped to attention. “This is a big city with a great deal of influence,” she said. “You both need to start addressing the larger themes of enfranchising and empowering women. Your talks have been good but are too narrowly focused.”