The It Girls

by Karen Harper

  “Keep sponging her off to bring down that fever,” a man’s voice said, dragging Lucile from deep sleep. “It’s making her delirious. Tell her husband he can come in to sit with her again in a few minutes. This raving might upset him.”

  Her eyelids fluttered open. Who was raving? But her lips felt cracked, and she wet the chapped skin with her tongue. She saw a man in white in a room she didn’t know. Not her bed. Not her robe or nightgown, but a plain white drape over her. Had the Titanic gone down and she was in that stranger’s stateroom on the Carpathia? But where was Cosmo?

  Her midriff was bandaged and hurt like the very devil. She dared not move her hands to touch it. The same woman—oh, a nurse—who had sponged her neck and arms was now holding her wrist and looking at her watch. Exhausted, floating, Lucile drifted off to sleep again.

  But thoughts and pictures kept dancing through her brain. She felt dizzy. Had she been dancing and fell? What had she been wearing? Had that crazy client of hers, Isadora Duncan, refused to wear the gown she’d planned for her?

  “I want to wear classic clothes!” the young woman shouted in her Paris shop.

  “We make classic clothes here, Isadora,” Lucile had said, trying to calm her raving.

  “I mean, classics—a flowing robe, a toga, a chiton like they once wore for their sacred dances in Athens, even on Mount Olympus!”

  Now why didn’t this notorious, famous dancer agree to wear regular Lucile styles? At first, Lucile had scolded her: “Look, I’ve dressed the likes of Mata Hari, Sarah Bernhardt, and Lillie Langtry, but we can adapt all that.”

  So she had designed for her just what she wanted, and Isadora had hugged her and promised to come to dance for her guests. But she was late arriving after Lucile had promised people a dance on the back lawn.

  It grew dark and the party was over. Lucile was embarrassed and angry, and so very sad, felt so very heavy, like she would never dance again. But someone pounded on the door, and a woman’s voice floated to her, “I’m here, let me in! I feel better now. I’ve been drinking, but they had to operate on me.”

  And she began to dance, whirling around. Her white mantle spun away and she was naked, dancing, yes, the famous dancer naked—or was she a designer? She was lying under the lights while they put a mask on her face and said they would help the pain, but she knew they meant to cut her open. They would see her fears then, her pride, her determination. But Isadora danced and danced in the moonlight with her eyes closed and then she opened them and—

  Lucile struggled to open her eyes. Oh, a hospital room, a doctor and a nurse.

  “Can you tell me your name?” he asked.

  She was tempted to fling off the white cover and dance. But her lower belly hurt when she even moved her hand.

  “Lucile, Lady Duff-Gordon,” she told him.

  “Summon his lordship,” the doctor told the nurse, who scurried from the room. “You had an abscess on your womb, milady, so we had to take it out—part of the womb. You will have pain for a while but should make a good recovery.”

  Oh, thank heavens, Cosmo was here, leaning down, taking her hand in his big one. “You gave me a scare, lass,” he said. “Doctor, I will get her out of the city for a while, rest and recuperation.”

  “And not back to work right away,” the doctor said, with a nod that was almost a bow as he backed from the room.

  “Did you let Esme and Elinor know?” she asked. “Is all well at the shop?”

  “Yes, of course. I’ve taken care of everything. You are not to worry, my love. I’ve let a house called the Anchorage for us on the shore of Long Island at a place called Mamaroneck, that area you liked. I need to get you out of this frantic city for a while. People have been worried. I won’t even complain if Bobbie comes and sings you a song or two. We need time for you to regain your strength and for me to regain you. As I said—I was worried.”

  She squeezed his hand back as best she could and pursed her lips when he bent to kiss her. She trusted this man with her life and always would.

  Elinor’s obsessive attention to the inside of old Montacute had spilled over to the outside. She had just ordered hundreds of blooming plants for the stone urns along the back stone balustrades and the beds surrounding the gravel drive. With each improvement she made, she stamped herself on this place—and, she hoped, on Milor’s heart.

  When the telephone in the sitting room rang, she jumped and snatched up the earpiece. Expecting Milor’s voice, she realized it was Margot’s.

  “Mother, he’s not going to last long. Daddy—he’s going fast, hardly breathing.”

  “I have a motorcar and driver here. I’ll leave straightaway. Has he—has he been asking for me?”

  “Once. But he thought you were swimming in some pool somewhere and kept saying you had your hair down.”

  Elinor sucked in a sharp breath. Their honeymoon, when she’d had so much hope. He was dying, and after all the troubles between them he still thought of their honeymoon long ago. Lucile had nearly died in the States and now this. She knew Clayton was deathly ill, and yet the reality of it was such a sad shock.

  “I’ll be there as fast as I can, Margot. Tell him.”

  She hung the earpiece back on the hook and turned away to run upstairs for some things. “Thatcher, a dear friend is near death, and I need to go to him,” she told the butler Milor had just hired. “Please call the driver to bring the motorcar round and inform his lordship that I will be in Richmond at my daughter Margot’s for a few days.”

  “Of course, Mrs. Glyn.”

  Of course, his words echoed in her head. Of course she was still Mrs. Glyn, and with her author’s fame would always be. But, God forgive her, how desperately she wanted to be Lady Curzon someday.

  CHAPTER Twenty-Eight

  In November 1915, the late autumn sun poured in Lucile’s window on Long Island Sound, and Bobbie’s voice came pouring through it too when she opened it. He was serenading her with one of her favorite Neapolitan songs, “O Sole Mio.” She knew the lyrics were about a lover’s song to his lady on a sunny day. For some reason, Cosmo had left the room in a huff, and then, she realized perhaps why, though he and the young man had been getting on well enough lately.

  Cosmo had enjoyed his voice training in Italy years ago. He used to sing to her, and she loved his voice, but could he be jealous of Bobbie, his youth and adoration of her—and his romantic song? No need. Absolutely, no need. Why had she always understood women better than she had men?

  Bobbie’s real name was Genia d’Agarioff and he was actually a Russian émigré, a very talented, handsome one too, with fierce ambitions to become an opera singer, though he was so creative she’d given him a job overseeing the cutting room in the New York shop. One of her acolytes had brought him to the shop, not really to learn the design business, but to entertain her staff and clientele during parade shows. Of course, her mannequins adored him, and he seemed to get on with everyone. He had little money, so she’d invited him to stay here at the beach house. Cosmo had disagreed, yet allowed it since she was still healing months after her operation, but now . . . now she wondered if her husband was trying to think of a way to make Bobbie leave.

  She rose from her chair and waved to Bobbie below. Then she took her cane, not an affectation lately but a necessity, and went after Cosmo. She found him in his bedroom, staring—actually glaring—out a window at the restless, white-capped water in the sound. He turned to stare at her.

  “Your voice is precious too,” she told him, taking his stiff arm. “You never sing anymore.”

  “Bird in a cage or fish out of water here,” he said, turning away again. “Lucile, I need to go home to Scotland for the winter, and I want you to come with me. You’re strong enough to travel now.”

  “But we’d be snowbound there, and I’ve been away from the shops here and in Europe for weeks. What about my outside commitments, my dreams to—”

  “To design for all of womankind before you’re content?” he demanded,
and his voice broke. “To be waited on hand and foot—and voice—by an army of your acolytes?”

  “You have waited on me hand and foot through this, my love. Please try to underst—”

  “I understand, but it doesn’t help. Yes, I know I agreed before we wed that you must have your career, too. I only wish I could be half as dear to you as sewing and cutting and your voracious self-promotion. I feel cut to pieces here, and I may not be put back together again like that . . . that damned Humpty Dumpty if I don’t go home. I see you’re not going with me. I can read that plain enough. You’re back on your feet, and I’ve got to find mine again. I’m booking passage as soon as possible, solo, I believe. O, poor me, solo mio,” he muttered as he pulled away and stalked out.

  Lucile’s knees went weak; she collapsed into a nearby chair. She should say she’d go too but she couldn’t. Not now at least. Soon. The London store needed her too, and the Paris store with the threat of the Huns . . . Why had it come to this? Cosmo was her bulwark, her adviser, her strength. But despite his denials, he had broken his vow to support her design empire, so she might just have to continue building it alone.

  She put her face in her hands and sobbed.

  The moment she stepped out of her motorcar in Richmond, Elinor could tell she was too late. Clayton must have died. Margot ran out to meet her, her face ravaged by tears. She looked both grieved and angry.

  “I was hoping you’d be here in time,” she choked out. “His sisters and a cousin made it in time but—”

  Elinor pulled her into her arms, then propelled her up the walk toward the house. “I’m sorry, my dearest. Sorry for him—even after all these years.”

  “But you could have patched things up. You should not have been doing up a house for you know who.”

  “Please, Margot, not now. Let’s try to pull together on this.”

  Margot, even with her lighter hair, looked so like her sometimes, especially around the eyes when they weren’t swollen and reddish from tears. Both girls had their mother’s backbone, thank heavens, and not their father’s dissipated ways, though they’d loved him dearly for his generosity—which he could not afford—and his fun and first-class outlook on life. The foolish man could hardly expense the way he’d lived, but he had taken the girls along for the ride.

  Margot pulled away and blew her nose. Juliet burst from the house, arms wide. “Oh, Mother, he was living high right till the end!” she cried, hugging her hard. “But—but I think his soul kind of left us about five years ago when—when—”

  Elinor finished for her, “When nothing could stop his headlong rush toward escape from his problems, including me, I suppose—and toward wearing himself completely out.”

  Margot, sounding stuffed up, said, “He’s in a coffin now, but they will come to take him tomorrow. We’re going to have him cremated, then have a memorial service. Everyone’s agreed.”

  That comment about “everyone” hurt more than the others. She was not included in that decision, as in “everyone who had mattered.” For the first time she began to cry, dreading going in to see his sisters and cousins and whoever else was behind the buzz of voices drifting through the door Juliet held open.

  Her damp handkerchief wadded in her hand, Elinor went inside to find a sea of black-clad women sitting in the parlor with Clayton laid out in a handsome wooden coffin on a table. She steeled herself for the comments, the hard looks as she went up to gaze at his white, round face, so still now.

  His eldest sister stepped up to hug her. “We can never thank you enough for keeping him financially afloat,” she whispered. “We are grateful you allowed him to live the way he wanted until the end.”

  His cousin, the sternest and most staid of the lot of them, came up and took her hand. “We are so appreciative of all you did to support him . . . in—in more ways than one, especially when he overstepped to lose the properties that were his heritage. He just did not have your grit and go, and you’ve been a godsend to us all.”

  Amazingly, so it went. They were grateful to her, perhaps since they didn’t have to pay his debts and take him in. They showed her great respect that day and during the memorial service. Margot and Juliet saw it too and softened toward her. Professionally, Elinor was used to being surrounded by admiring people, but this was better. Despite the tragedy of her and Clayton’s life together, this was family, one perhaps she had ignored too long.

  The longer Lucile stayed in New York, the more it seemed there was to do. She ignored the advice and pleas in letters from her mother that she come home and a short cable from Cosmo that he expected her soon. You might know, somehow Esme was on her stepfather’s side. And how dare Elinor take her to task for not living with her husband when she’d spent years apart from poor, departed Clayton. Elinor had gushed that Curzon had inherited his family estate of Kedleston and the title 5th Baron Scarsdale. She’d said she hoped to help redecorate that great neoclassic expanse of a mansion someday too.

  Now why, Lucile groused to herself, would she want to go home to hear more of that? Good heavens, did that bright sister of hers believe, now that Clayton was deceased, that the ambitious Curzon would marry her? And Esme hardly needed a mother at the age of thirty-one with her own family. Besides, she and Anthony were living in the country and seldom came to town.

  Yet, feeling guilty at her family’s scolding and missing Cosmo, Lucile wrote him frequently. He answered in brief one-page notes that smelled of his pipe and—did she imagine it?—fresh, brisk Scottish air. She feared he did not believe her when she wrote how much she missed him and she could only pray he did miss her because the tone of his letters was businesslike, as if he were her adviser again but not her beloved. Well, she’d see to all that once she got back to England, though in one note he’d threatened that they should let out or sell the Lennox Gardens pied-à-terre since they were never there anymore.

  And worst of all, he dared to lecture her long distance about spending so much money. He was keeping an eye on the London store but said it needed her there. You might know, he didn’t say he needed her. Surely her flagship London store was on solid ground even in wartime. It was her new ventures here in the thriving United States that needed her time and attention.

  When she was in her New York apartment or at the Long Island house, to stave off depression, she filled it with her staff, her friends, her acolytes—and Bobbie. He cheered her up. He sang to her. But when there were stirrings that America would enter the war, he seemed convinced he should enlist.

  “My homeland, Mother Russia, she fights on the side of England,” he told her, his face impassioned. “If my adopted country goes to help them, I will too.”

  “But you are important to the New York shop. You can lift hearts here with your singing career—keep people’s spirits up as you do mine,” she’d protested.

  But what really kept her spirits up was the shop she’d opened in the most fashionable area of Chicago. Cosmo had tersely advised her not to pay the high rental, but he didn’t exactly say no, so she clung to that as his approval. She could chuck her entire career for all he cared if she just came home to cold, snowy Scotland. But she could not and would not, not yet, at least. The passion within her to succeed, to share her vision of beauty, to lift women’s spirits, prevailed.

  “Franks, this shop is in an ideal location,” she’d told her secretary when they’d first entered the new building at 1400 Lakeshore Drive, set like a jewel among millionaires’ homes who had made their fortune in the meatpacking business and had daughters galore they hoped to marry well—even to English titles. Ah, she’d heard it all before, but what customers they would be, and they all wanted to meet and consult with Lady Duff-Gordon.

  It made her feel wanted, but it also made her feel old. Well, she had turned fifty-three this last June. Where had the years gone? But she felt ready to take on new tasks and challenges just like in the good old days—didn’t she?

  Yet how desperately she wished that Cosmo were here. She wanted him
to sing to her, not Bobbie. But she laid her cane aside at last and stood squarely on her own two feet in the main room of the Chicago property, the design of which she was still working on.

  “I want something wildly dramatic here,” she told faithful Franks, thinking how Elinor was nearly finished decorating Curzon’s Montacute mansion. Would he even want that leased estate, now that he had inherited his family legacy of Kedleston? And where would he get all the money for his private empire-building?

  “Purple rugs, I think,” she went on, as Franks took notes, “bordered with emerald and definitely pale lilac draperies. And then my first design line will be splendid and set new trends—but be cuts and looks I can adapt to a much more middle-class woman who wants to look and be her affordable best.”

  “You are the best at all this, milady.”

  “Sometimes, in what really counts, I wonder.”

  Elinor wondered when Milor would come again, this time to view the finished product of redecorated Montacute, but he had been so busy in London now that he was formally in the wartime government cabinet. When he came again, they would dine alone over an intimate dinner in the dining room, and she would seat him to face her portrait. She would escort him from room to room, pointing out particular objects, color schemes, views, and next spring, they would walk through the new gardens she had planned.

  But the place felt so big and empty without him as the early December wind howled outside. The huge fire that Thatcher, the butler, had started in the fireplace crackled and trembled. The logs shifted and sparks flew.

  To take her mind off her apprehensions and loneliness, perhaps she should write to Lucile again. Did that woman intend to take over each big city in America with her designs? And she’d tried to tell her that, after a certain point, absence did not make the heart grow fonder, but rather, it could lead to out of sight, out of mind.

  At least Cosmo didn’t drink himself to death or gamble and run off to anywhere but Scotland. Since Lucile’s first husband had run off with a silly pantomime girl, was her older sister just building walls between herself and Cosmo so he wouldn’t hurt her if he did the same? But not loyal Cosmo, and Lucile should realize what a gift she had in him. Granted, he had been different—more melancholy, even wounded—since the debacle of his honor being attacked after the Titanic disaster, his own disaster, in a way, though he was innocent of all charges.