“Miss Elizabeth and Henry Schoonmaker, of course. I just read about it now.” Claire moved away impishly and threw herself down in the brocaded armchair by the window.
“I guess he wasn’t in love with Miss Hayes, after all. Do you want to hear?”
“Yes,” Lina replied with quiet urgency. “What does it say?”
Claire smiled and shifted in the chair. She pulled the much-folded broadsheet from the pocket of her apron and slowly ran her finger down its face. “Ah! Here it is: ‘At an intimate dinner party given this past Friday…’”
Lina listened intently as her sister read the announcement. Just as Claire was repeating the ridiculous and unimaginable cost of the engagement ring, Lina heard the sound of the carriage house door slamming shut.
“I’ll be right back,” she said with blunt intensity.
Claire’s face fell. “Where are you going?”
“I…the pillow cases, the embroidered ones…I left them soaking and they’ll be half-ruined….” Lina was already halfway to the door. She turned and grabbed the paper out of her sister’s hands. “Can I take this? I’ll bring it right back!” she called behind her.
Already she was flying down the stairs. The helpless self-loathing she had been feeling all week had been replaced, suddenly, by the certainty that she could sway events in her favor. She would tell Will that Elizabeth was engaged, and then she would be perfectly positioned to offer herself as a replacement. Soon she was in the kitchen, which smelled of broiling tripe. This was a familiar smell from her early childhood, when the Brouds had lived in their own small apartment, but she had never known the Hollands to consume something so common. The cook was nowhere to be seen, and one of the kitchen girls was working a pile of potatoes. Lina might have offered an explanation as to why she was hurrying to the carriage house at this time of the day, but the girl Colleen was her name barely looked up from her task.
As soon as she saw Will, sitting on a wooden folding chair, his whole body bent around a book, she began speaking. “Have you read the Imperial?” Her words were toppling over themselves. “Elizabeth has been lying to you!”
Will looked up at her nervously. His eyes were wide and blank; he seemed to be trying to think what to do next. “I…Do you mean Miss Holland?”
“Yes…Miss Holland,” Lina spat. “And I saw her leaving your room very early in the morning, so don’t think I don’t know what’s between you.”
Will shifted in his chair, his large shoulders rounding awkwardly. He kept his eyes to the ground as he replied. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Liney, but I can tell you with absolute honesty that there is nothing between Miss Holland and myself. It is very dangerous for you to say things like that, and I wish I could make you stop.”
“Will, listen to me. I’m your friend.” Lina knew she must look ugly now, with her lips set and her eyes large and agitated. But she couldn’t help it. What she was trying to convey to Will had to be conveyed. “It doesn’t matter what you tell me, anyway. Lie to me, if you want. But I think you’ll want to know that your Miss Holland is engaged.”
Will pushed his back into the rickety chair, and his eyes roamed across the floor. He still wouldn’t look at Lina, but after a few moments of forming silent words, he managed to say: “How do you know?”
“I read it in the paper, like everybody else. And before you say it’s just a rumor, you should know that it’s to that man who came by the other afternoon you saw him, Mr. Henry Schoonmaker.” She paused and raised the paper in her hand. She continued in a softer voice, “You can read it yourself if you like.”
Will stood suddenly, his chair skidding over and clattering against the hay-covered ground. He walked several yards and then stopped with his hand resting against a post. He faced away from her, but she could see the rigid anguish in his stance and wondered if she had underestimated his feelings for Elizabeth. Across the thick-smelling room, the Hollands’ horses breathed and shifted quietly in their stalls. Will’s head shook back and forth, and he pushed his hair behind his ear. Lina was almost sorry she had had to tell him, but only almost.
“What does it say?” His voice was ragged and breathless.
She paused and looked down at the paper before reading the item aloud. When she was done she added softly: “It doesn’t seem made up to me, Will.”
Will drew back his arm and smashed his fist into the post. Like all the wood in the stable, it was rough and splintered easily. He hit it again and again, with such fury that Lina feared what he would do to himself next. Pieces of the post flew into the air. He hit it a fifth, and then a final time, and when he turned to Lina, she could see the blood bursting from his knuckles, and the bits of wood that it was washing out. Finally, he raised his eyes to hers.
The hurt in his face was clear, and she couldn’t help but move toward him, lifting up the chair as she went and forcing him to sit down on it. “Here,” she said. “Just sit.”
She looked around for things to clean the wound and found what she needed. She grabbed the basinful of water, the one Will used when he cleaned the horses, and doused his hand. Then she took the bloodied fist, and with her fingers long and nimble from stitching she pulled out the big, obvious splinters. She used the white cotton petticoat under her skirt to stanch the blood, and then continued like this: plucking the rough bits of wood, stopping the blood with her skirt. When his knuckles were clean of splinters, she ripped a long section of fabric from the bottom of her petticoat and wrapped it around his hand. It looked a little puffy and amateurish, but at least her bandage seemed to be soaking up the blood.
She put the folded paper on the floor by his feet. Without looking at him, she climbed the ladder to his little loft, where she knew he kept his whiskey. The early-afternoon light filtered in over the old chest of drawers and his books and his piles of clothes. She found the glass bottle, half full of brown liquid, stashed in one of his drawers, and carried it back down with her.
When she reached Will again, she offered him the bottle but he shook it off. His thick lips still trembled slightly from whatever emotion was coursing through him, and the paper was resting on his knee. He must have read it again.
“I’m sorry,” was all Lina could think to say. She was stunned silent by his reaction. She had certainly underestimated whatever it was between Will and Elizabeth, and though she had hoped this would be the perfect time to confess her love to him, his grave expression made that seem impossible now.
Will looked at her with damp eyes. His lashes were dark and clumped, and his mouth was twisted up. She offered him the bottle again, and this time he took a long pull. “No, I’m glad you told me,” he said as he passed the whiskey back to her.
She took a sip and felt the burning against her lips and the warm drop of the whiskey into her belly. She watched Will shake his head in disbelief. Eventually, his eyes turned to her again. “Thank you for telling me, Liney,” he said. “Just stay with me for a while longer, okay?”
She smiled at him, feeling dizzy with joy. There was nothing so good as Will needing her. If they could just spend a few hours like that, she felt, she wouldn’t have to tell him anything.
“Of course I’ll stay with you,” she said as she took his hand, the one he hadn’t smashed up, and squeezed it. “I’ll stay as long as you want me.”
Seventeen
Are you sure this isn’t why you’ve been avoiding me?
Will
ELIZABETH HAD MANAGED NOT TO LEAVE HER ROOM all morning, and she was beginning to prefer the solitude. How close she had come to losing this luxury, a room of her own how close she had come to having to share with her sister and perhaps her mother as well was not lost on her. But every time Will entered her thoughts, she felt tortured by the fact that she had not yet told him. She could not bear lying to him and she could not bear to confess, so she avoided him altogether. She had tried to delay the inevitable by writing him a quick note, on her personal stationery, letting him know that it had been diffi
cult to visit him and that she would come as soon as she could. She had left it on his chest of drawers while he was out on an errand three days ago, and had yet to receive a reply.
But the Hollands were always ready to receive visitors on Sunday, and she knew that she would have to emerge from her safe retreat soon. Her ladies’ maid was a silent and strange presence as of late, which Elizabeth resisted telling her mother because they had been close as children and because she did occasionally miss Lina and the way things had been then. So she arranged her hair by herself, in a neat chignon, and dressed in a white shirtwaist and a starched Dutch blue skirt. She could not think of putting on any jewelry the diamond on her left ring finger that she had kept turned to the palm side of her hand since Friday night added quite enough weight, all by itself.
Every inch of her body felt stiff and defensive rigid with the thought of Henry Schoonmaker, with the inevitability of her marriage to him. What a careless person he was proving to be. She knew already, from his drunken behavior at the dinner party on Friday night, that their life together would be an unnatural one, full of silent differences and alien nights. She could not even think of Will she was forcing herself not to. If she thought about him for even an instant, she might begin to melt; her whole self might just drain away. And what would become of her family then?
When she was ready to face the world, she pulled back her bedroom door. She paused at the sight of a gray scrap of newspaper falling to the ground. It was folded into a small neat square, and had been wedged into the bronze handle of her bedroom door. She knew immediately that this was Will’s reply, and so it was with trepidation that she bent to pick up the society page recounting of her engagement. Scrawled at the bottom, in Will’s handwriting, was an indictment veiled as a question: Are you sure this isn’t why you’ve been avoiding me?
The soft skin of Elizabeth’s cheeks burned as she read the note. Her stomach dropped and her heart began to beat at a frightful pace. She tucked the piece of paper in her pocket and tried to do the same with the emotion that it raised in her. But she could not stop the trembling of her chin, that familiar dryness in the back of her throat. She looked around, half-expecting to see Will waiting at the end of the hall, and then she hurried down the servants’ stairs in search of him.
When she was halfway down the narrow passage, the door from the kitchen opened, and she saw Claire take a few steps upward. The girl stopped when she saw Elizabeth.
“Miss Holland! What are you doing here?”
“Oh.” Elizabeth wavered on the stair. It took her several seconds to think of something to say. “I was just on my way to check on dinner, before joining my family for visiting hours.”
Claire backed up to allow for Elizabeth to descend. “Oh, you don’t have to do that,” she said as she reached up and took her mistress’s arm. “I will do it. You must go do your hostess duties. Now especially, because…” She broke off and shrugged. Elizabeth noticed the blush on Claire’s cheek and knew that she had been about to say something about the engagement, but must have remembered her place. Claire escorted her to the hall and drew back the parlor’s pocket doors for her to enter.
When Elizabeth stepped across the threshold, she saw her sister in her usual position: curled in the Turkish corner, with a volume of poems. Claire had dressed her quasi-respectfully in a dress of soft rose-brown seersucker, and it spilled over the pillows, calling attention to Diana despite all the treasures in that room.
“Oh, Elizabeth,” her mother said. Elizabeth turned and saw Mother looking in the armor of her fitted, embroidered, long-sleeved black dress quite fierce. She was sitting on a high-backed chair near the fireplace, which was not lit. “Mr. Schoonmaker Henry, that is has just sent up his card. I insisted that he have tea, but it seems that what he really wants is to take you for a ride in Central Park. Isn’t that right, Claire?”
Elizabeth turned slowly to look at Claire, who was still hovering in the hall.
“Oh yes, that’s exactly what he said,” she gushed. Elizabeth saw Diana’s eyes dart up over the pages of her book, before she hid her face behind it again. “He is waiting outside,” Claire went on, her voice growing more confident as she assumed her role. “And he appears most impatient. He won’t even come in.”
“Very good,” Mrs. Holland said.
Elizabeth stood still in the doorway, not sure whether to come in or go out. She watched her mother draw herself up, her stature and imperiousness growing in a matter of seconds. Elizabeth found herself craving some word of encouragement, but she had been trained as a child not to pull at skirts or go begging for affection, so she stayed put. “Since I must be here to receive,” said her mother, “and since your aunt Edith is not feeling very well poor thing, I think she is still recovering from the heavy food that Isabelle De Ford, I mean, Isabelle Schoonmaker, serves Will is going to have to go as your chaperone. He is getting the horses ready even as we ”
“No!” Elizabeth’s hands flew to cover her cheeks at the very thought of Will and Henry coming face-to-face. Her ears were full of noise, and every inch of her skin felt coated in a fine, cold sweat.
“What is the matter with you?” Mrs. Holland snapped. She turned her chin up at Elizabeth and set her hands firmly on the arms of her chair.
“I ” Elizabeth tried, but could not think of a reason not to go for a carriage ride on a perfectly lovely, late September day. She fingered Will’s note in her pocket and thought how wretched it was going to be to see him. “It’s just that I ”
“Just that you what? Really, Elizabeth, I raised you better than this. Your fiancé is waiting. Do not just stand there making yourself unworthy of him.”
“But I…” Elizabeth stammered. She saw the way her mother was looking at her and knew that she had no choice but to go. So she grasped out for the one thing that would give her strength. “I mean, since we are supposed to be very careful of appearances, maybe Diana could come with me?”
“No!” was the swift answer from Diana’s corner.
“But Diana, please?” Elizabeth said, resisting the instinct to stamp her foot.
Diana pushed herself up against the pillows and sighed in exasperation. “I’m not going to go on some long, boring excursion just because you’re afraid of your own fiancé.”
“Diana, you really are being ridiculous,” her mother said coldly. “Go with your sister before you make yourself utterly useless to me.”
“It’s not that I’m afraid of him,” Elizabeth said quietly. She looked up and saw that her sister was already standing up. She wore a wounded expression, and Elizabeth realized that her sister was going to accompany her, if only because she now felt wounded by their mother. “So you’ll come.”
“Yes, I’ll come,” Diana said darkly as she pulled at her dress, which had become twisted from lying down amongst all those pillows. “But don’t go thinking I’ll speak to anyone.”
“Girls,” their mother interjected, “you must both stop being strange it is unattractive. And don’t forgot your hats. It would be absolutely the end for me if you two came down with freckles at a time like this.”
Diana gave her mother a big, obviously fake smile and charged across the parlor. Elizabeth followed her into the hall, where she could see, through the glass pane in the oak front door, Henry waiting on the porch. He was wearing creaseless, tight-fitting black trousers and a high hat pushed back on his head. He was facing away, toward the little gated park. Elizabeth turned back to her sister, who was slouching and glaring. Even so, Elizabeth was glad she did not have to face Henry and Will by herself. She tried to give Diana a smile to show her gratitude, but found that smiling was, under the current circumstances, very difficult for her.
Claire appeared from the cloakroom with two wide straw hats. She put Diana’s on first, tying the thick white grosgrain bow under her chin, and then helped Elizabeth with hers. “Thank you, Claire.” Elizabeth’s voice quavered a touch as the maid tightened the bow. “And would you start a fire in the
parlor before our return? I find it so strangely cold in there.”
Outside they were greeted by the clarity of a fine September day, the smell of cooking fires somewhere not far off, and the great expanse of blue sky, interrupted here or there by small puffs of cloud and crowded only occasionally by a building that rose over six stories high. Elizabeth felt almost heartened by the perfection of the weather, but that was before she saw Henry begin a slow turn, and before she heard the sound of the Hollands’ four black horses coming around the front. She was suddenly glad of her hat, which tipped forward to accommodate her bun in back, and so shielded her eyes. The only thing that kept her from fainting, right there on her own steps, was the fact that she couldn’t see the way Will was looking at her.
“Miss Elizabeth,” Henry said stiffly. Elizabeth extended her hand, and Henry leaned forward and kissed it. “Miss Diana, you won’t be joining us, will you?”
There was a pause, and Elizabeth hazarded a look to her right, under the safe shadow of her hat, to see what Diana was up to. “Well, I didn’t want to,” Diana replied rudely. “But it would pain me to be left out of a ride through Central Park on a day like today. Sometimes, fresh air and a natural setting are the only things that make living at all worthwhile.”
“Lucky me, two for one.”
Elizabeth thought she detected irony in Henry’s voice and disliked it. She took Diana’s arm for support, and they walked down to the street.
“May I help you up, Miss Holland?” Will offered with false formality.
“I’ve got it,” Henry said to Will. She wished for some way to sign to Will that she didn’t want Henry or his help, but then she felt Henry’s hand on her waist, and her whole body being lifted up into the carriage. She tried to calm her heart as she took the padded red leather backseat of the landau.
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