by Maya Rodale
A nice walk.
Caught in the rain.
And now this.
“What is this, Mother?” Daisy asked, waving her arms in the general direction of Sally and the box she carried that all at once contained her greatest hopes, dreams, and chances. Glass beakers and dishes, her scales, her experiments in progress.
“Out with the old and in with the new, darling. It’s just your chemistry supplies and . . . your experiments, I suppose we can call them. Rubbish, really.”
“It’s not rubbish. It’s science.” Daisy fought to keep her voice measured. Because it wasn’t just science. “It is my life’s work. My passion.”
It was her out. Within the year she would be considered too old to wed and she would have a degree in chemistry, which would qualify her for some employment, though the opportunities would not be vast or lucrative. Because Daisy had even grander ideas.
She thought of creating products and selling them, a balm for the complexion, in particular. She would make womankind feel a little more beautiful and earn her own independence. If that wasn’t happily-ever-after, she didn’t know what was.
“Whatever it is, you won’t need it when you’re married,” her mother said. “And you certainly won’t have time for it while you’re engaged. We have an announcement to plan, a wedding to throw. And your trousseau! Consuelo Vanderbilt has gold hooks on her corset and diamond-encrusted garters. I want nothing less for you.”
“Mother, I need my chemistry supplies and experiments so that I don’t have to get married. At all. Ever. To anyone. Especially Theodore Prescott the Third.”
“Come now, Daisy. You’re not going to support yourself with all those bits and bobs and science bits. You’re a woman of a certain station. It’s just not done.”
But it was done. Martha Harper had opened hair salons that society women were starting to flock to. Adeline Black was taking society by storm with her new dressmaking establishment that made dresses with pockets. To say nothing of all the women writing for the newspapers. Nellie Bly. Jane Croly. And those were just the ones that Daisy knew. There were so many women striking out alone and succeeding.
“The world is changing, Mother. And I intend to change with it.”
“Daisy, I just want you to be happy and I know that marriage is just the thing.” Then, dropping her voice because Sally was still standing there, awkwardly holding the box and awaiting direction of what to do with it, her mother said, “Especially given what we discussed earlier.”
What they discussed earlier was—and her mother had stressed this vehemently—not to be discussed. But suffice it to say, something had to be done about her future security and soon.
“If you truly wanted me to be happy, you would let me finish my studies and seek employment. Let me have a little more time before we discuss such things. In one year I’ll be done with my degree and—”
“No.” Her mother’s tone was firm. Unyielding. Daisy knew her mother was stubborn but she’d never seen her like this. “You must marry Theodore Prescott the Third and soon. I know society, and I know there is no other way to survive this looming catastrophe.”
Daisy leveled a hard stare at her mother. But Mrs. Swan was not dissuaded. Her beautiful mother, who serenely swept through life with a lilting laugh and a lovely smile, stood firm. There was a hardness in her eyes. “Listen to reason, Daisy. Even if you did wish to make a success of your scandalous idea, you’ll need your good name and reputation to do it. And given the looming scandal, that means you’ll need the Prescott name.”
Blast, if her mother wasn’t entirely wrong.
The butler, Groves, interrupted the stalemate between mother and daughter.
“Miss Swan, a letter for you.” He presented a silver tray bearing a crisp white envelope flecked with raindrops.
With a huff of vexation, Daisy tore it open. Good Lord, it was from him.
Daisy,
Circumstances are such that, under duress, I have reconsidered your idiotic proposal and determined it is not, in fact, the worst and stupidest idea I have ever heard.
I’m in, are you?
Chapter Four
Mr. Theodore Prescott the Second, together with Mr. and Mrs. Jack Swan, announce the betrothal of their children, Theodore Prescott the Third and Miss Daisy Swan.
—The New York Times
The next night
Mrs. Cooke’s Ballroom
Their agreement was simple: Daisy and Theo would tell the world they were engaged with the understanding that they would never, ever say I do. There was no expectation that they would pretend to even like each other, let alone love. There had been little—very well, no—considerations of how society would respond to the news of their engagement or what it would feel like to stand up together in front of Manhattan’s finest.
“Didn’t quite think this through, did you?” Theo murmured. Beside him Daisy’s cheeks were pink and hot with some combination of anger and mortification. Someone in the crowd had actually quacked as they were announced. The rest of them just laughed softly. Some way to congratulate them.
Just tell them we’re engaged, she said.
They’ll leave us alone, she said.
We’ll go our separate ways, she said.
He took the slightest comfort in the fact that she didn’t know everything.
“You didn’t, either,” she retorted. And it was true. He, being fluent in the ways of society, should have anticipated this reaction and strategized. Vexed at the mistake and being called out on it, he replied without thinking.
“Well, you’re the brains,” he said. But it was the words he didn’t say that were understood, that were unintentionally cruel. And I’m the beauty.
By mutual, unspoken agreement they retreated to separate corners of the ballroom at the first possible opportunity; she with her friends and he with his. They would probably never speak to each other again.
“Engaged, Theo?” Daniel guffawed. Again.
Daniel Thomas, whose family made a fortune in coal, was great fun to spend time with because he found the simplest things endlessly amusing and let it be known with his loud belly laugh. But tonight Theo found it irritating. Probably because he was on the receiving end of it for once.
“Just last week you were riding high, literally, with the most sought-after actress.” Patrick Cavanaugh, heir to an oil fortune, smiled smugly. “And now . . .”
It was another sentence that didn’t need to be finished to be understood.
“You’re engaged to her.”
They were three of Manhattan’s most eligible bachelors. Wildly wealthy, blessed with good looks, and a devil-may-care spirit that many women tended to find irresistible. But not all women.
For the first time in perhaps ever, these three rogues looked across the ballroom to the corner where Daisy stood with her friends—the outcasts, the eccentrics, the not-quites. The distance between them was just the length of a ballroom and yet it seemed vast and insurmountable.
Daisy did not look like a woman happy to be announcing her betrothal.
“Lucky girl, huh?” Patrick said dryly.
“Lucky Duck!” Daniel shouted.
A burst of laughter that indicated Daisy Swan would henceforth be known as Lucky Duck Daisy. Which, given the circumstances, was cruel indeed.
“You’d think she would be happier to have landed you,” Patrick said, somewhat confounded by the prospect of a woman who wasn’t ecstatic to be wedding the likes of them.
Theo didn’t quite understand it himself. But it had to be just her because soon enough, the rogues were surrounded by the prettiest, wittiest, and wealthiest debutantes in the city. The kind of girls that made all the others jealous. The girls enveloped them in a cloud of taffeta and tulle, perfume and soft laughter, and pretty pouts.
“What is so funny?” Miss Victoria Gould asked. “We heard you laughing from the far side of the ballroom.”
“That Theo is engaged to Lucky Duck Daisy,” Patrick said with
a smirk. “Can you believe it? I can’t believe it.”
“So it is true! I thought it had to be a joke when I read it in the paper this morning,” Miss Pennypacker said. She laughed. Theo did not.
“She doesn’t look very lucky,” Patrick said. “In fact, she looks like she’s off to the gallows.”
“But who wouldn’t want to marry our Theo?” Miss Gould asked. She linked her arm with his, tilted her face up, and batted her lashes prettily. Theo struggled to remember why he didn’t just run off with a pretty, wealthy girl like her. It would be so easy. But then he wouldn’t have accomplished anything. His father wouldn’t be proud of him. And all they’d have to talk about for the rest of their lives were parties.
Suddenly, he wanted more than parties.
“Lucky Duck Daisy, apparently,” Daniel replied.
“This is your father punishing you for what happened in Saratoga, isn’t it?” Patrick asked, lifting one brow with a knowing smirk. Like all the others, Patrick thought he knew what happened that night. But he had no idea.
“Looks like you got a lifetime sentence,” Miss Gould quipped.
“If your father wanted you to get married, you could have run off with me, Theo,” Miss Pennypacker cooed.
“Or me,” Miss Gould added.
“Why didn’t you call us, Theo?”
The girls swarmed around him with their perfume and questions. Theo did not have a good answer. He just knew that for the first time in his life, he wanted something more.
On the other side of the ballroom
There was a corner in each and every ballroom where those who wished not to be bothered with the preening and posturing that went on at parties gathered. After her disastrous presentation with Theo, Daisy plucked a glass of champagne from a passing waiter and made her way directly there. She held her head high and did her best to ignore the looks and stares as she passed. She was rather used to being ignored by most in society and already she missed it.
She took a sip and welcomed the company of her friends: Miss Harriet Burnett and her constant companion, Miss Ava Lumley. Once upon a time Harriet had refused an unwanted marriage proposal—and found herself cut off from society as a result. She’d since inherited a fortune, and with the companionship of Miss Ava Lumley, a respected society woman, found herself back in the whirl of things.
“What on earth was that spectacle?” Harriet asked, gesturing in the general direction of Daisy, Theo, and the farce of a debut they’d just made.
“That was an act of desperation. Starring yours truly and my mortal enemy.”
“I almost couldn’t believe it when I read it in the paper this morning,” Ava said. “But if it’s in The New York Times, it must be true. And tonight’s display only proves it.”
“So you really are engaged?” Harriet asked, somewhat aghast. “To him?”
“Much as it pains me to say yes, I must. The New York Times has all the facts. We are engaged. In a manner of speaking.”
Harriet’s eyes lit up, understanding that something else was up. She stepped in closer. “What’s the real story?”
For the first time all evening, Daisy truly smiled. This was why she loved her friends—because while everyone else in the ballroom thought that Theo was condescending to marry Daisy, her friends believed that she was the catch and could do better than him.
“Our parents want the match. We do not. We are pretending to be engaged so that they’ll leave us alone.”
“Interesting strategy. But how are you going to get out of it?” Harriet asked. “Of course you are going to get out of it.”
This, Daisy thought, was also why they were friends.
“Maybe you won’t have to,” Ava said. “This could be the beginning of a grand romance.”
The three ladies burst out laughing at a most unladylike volume. Heads turned. People glared. How dare these outcast and eccentric women enjoy themselves!
“I cannot imagine a world in which Theodore Prescott the Worst and I live happily ever after.”
“What will you do to get out of it?” Harriet wanted to know. “The stakes are too high to take this risk without a solid, foolproof, and fail-safe plan.”
“I do have a plan,” Daisy said. “But you’ll have to wait until Thursday.”
Chapter Five
One of the Rogues of Millionaire Row is expected to wed the one spinster Swan sister. Wagers are already being placed on the outcome of the match.
—The New York Post
Thursday
Central Park
The newspapers were not any kinder this morning as they reported on the disastrous debut and comical reception of the couple of the hour: the Millionaire Rogue and the Ugly Duckling. The newspapers and gossip columns were beside themselves sharing every last detail about their chilly behavior toward each other, anonymously quoting outrageous speculation about the reasons for the mismatch, and reporting on all the wagers made on the outcome. Odds were not in favor of I do.
Their parents were furious. Furious.
And embarrassed. Which only made them more furious.
Frankly, they weren’t the only ones. Theo did have his pride, after all. He didn’t know who he was without the good opinion of society.
Something had to be done.
And so, presumably at the behest of her mother, Daisy was seated by his side as Theo expertly navigated his carriage through the busy pathways of Central Park. Around them, people walked, picnicked, frolicked, and generally enjoyed the legendary green space.
Daisy wore one of those atrocious, large-brimmed hats that were the fashion these days. One could hardly see the woman underneath. Just . . . hat, perched upon dress.
Still, he’d wager that the expression on her face was one of: What are we doing here? I no longer recognize my life and how does one make it stop?
These were questions he also wanted answers to.
“It has been reported, in no uncertain terms, that last night was a disaster,” he began.
“Ah, so you have read the papers. Or maybe your father had ‘a word’ with you the way my mother had ‘a word’ with me. In the unlikely event that it wasn’t abundantly clear during each agonizing moment of the ball last night?”
“I told you, I went to Harvard. I am not an ignoramus. I was well aware of the horror that was our debut. The newspapers this morning only confirmed it.”
What she said next surprised him.
“It’s just you’re so pretty, Theo. One cannot expect you to be intelligent and be pretty.”
“I am not pretty,” Theo replied hotly. “Men are not pretty. If anything, I am boyishly handsome.”
“Your father is handsome. In a distinguished, silver fox kind of way. You are pretty. Those blond curls. Those blue eyes. That pout of a mouth. Perhaps in thirty years you’ll age into handsome.”
“Let’s not discuss my father. Especially like that.” Theo was not in the mood to hear of yet another way in which he did not live up to his namesake. “How would you like it if we discussed your mother thusly?”
“My mother was once described as eighth of the ten most beautiful women in New York. Everyone discusses her thusly. I am quite used to it.”
Theo did not mention the newspaper just this morning that had described Daisy in starkly opposing terms—“A woman who spent her evenings in the dim corner of ballrooms where the light suited her best.”
“And then there’s me,” Daisy continued candidly. “So unlike her in every imaginable way. No, I wasn’t dropped as an infant or acquired from a foundling hospital in case you were wondering.”
“People don’t actually say that.” Theo glanced at her. She was no Helen of Troy but she wasn’t awful to look at.
“Oh, yes,” she answered. “Many think it and more than a few have ‘joked’ about it. To say nothing of all the Ugly Duck comments.”
Theo felt shame start to rise. He still remembered that day when he had come up with the name. It had felt good to make everyone laugh
—but then he hadn’t considered that they were laughing at her. He thought they were laughing at his wit. And he never thought the name would stick. He’d always had a knack for quips and nicknames. The Rogues of Millionaire Row, the Saratoga Scandal. And those were just the recent examples.
She continued, “Hardly funny, if you ask me, but I do see their point. Have you seen my mother and my sisters? Three nearly identical specimens of ideal feminine beauty. Those blond curls. Those blue eyes. That pout of a mouth. People cannot believe a creature so beautiful spawned someone who looks like me.”
She spoke as if it was all very matter-of-fact. And he had to look. To confirm.
He merely saw hat.
A ghastly, wide-brimmed affair all aflutter with feathers and ribbons.
But they had grown up together. They’d spent the entire previous evening together. He knew what she looked like.
Sure, her mother and sisters were the ideals of female beauty and she was . . . not. Her nose was a little too much, her eyes perhaps a little too close together, her jaw more square than heart shaped. She turned her head and he saw her pink lips pressed firmly together.
That gave it away: she did not feel so matter-of-fact about her looks at all.
“You’re very fixated on your appearance,” Theo observed.
“How ironic that you should mention it. Why do you think that is? You were the one who called me Ugly Duck.”
Theo winced at the memory. They had all been playing in the park on a blue-sky day, not unlike this one. Correction: he and the others had been playing but she refused to join the game. Like she was better than them. Like she had a purpose. Even then, he’d been jealous. His immature efforts to involve her, to bring her down to their level, involved teasing. With lasting consequences. He’d been an ass. There were no excuses to be made for it.
“I apologize,” he said genuinely. “Ghastly behavior on my part. But in my defense, I was only thirteen. Everyone knows that thirteen-year-old boys are not exactly the high point of humanity.”