The Luxe l-1

by Anna Godbersen

  Penelope would have enjoyed tearing Elizabeth’s blond hair out of her pretty head. She would have liked to rip that expensive pink skirt to shreds. But Penelope was not playing for quick victories; she was playing to win. And she could not win by attacking the sweetheart of Old New York. So she moved invisibly through the third-floor hall, looked back once to make sure that she had not been seen, and entered the study that adjoined Henry’s room.

  “Henry,” she whispered as the carved oak door closed behind her. Henry was lying across the deep brown leather couch in the center of the room. His eyes drooped, and a lit cigarette rested between his lips. “Henry,” she said again, a little louder this time. Slowly, he reached up and plucked the cigarette from his mouth and then turned to her.

  “Oh,” he said, his dark brow rising slightly. He was as burned by the sun and the drink as a real sailor, but he was still excruciatingly handsome.

  “You look like a prole, Henry.”

  He looked down at himself, at his white dress shirt unlinked at the cuffs, and his light blue trousers rumpled by his day on the river, but ignored the comment. He replied flatly:

  “How was the party?”

  “You mean the party you never showed up to?” Penelope let her hood fall back now, but her smile was subtle enough that Henry might not have noted it.

  “Yes, that one.” Henry lifted the cigarette back to his lips.

  Penelope pulled off a long white glove and began idly swinging it back and forth. “Say, wasn’t that the party where you were supposed to make some kind of entrance with Elizabeth?”

  Henry exhaled a white puff of smoke. “I’d rather not, Penelope.”

  “But don’t you think it’s meaningful, Henry? That somehow you forgot to attend the opening night of your own engagement? Her mother was furious, you should know.”

  “Was she?” Henry said softly.

  “You know, there was a time,” Penelope said, crossing the parquet floor and taking a seat on the leather couch near Henry’s feet, “when you would have found that funny.”

  Henry didn’t answer. He took a drag of his cigarette and stared past Penelope’s shoulder. She reached for his cigarette case, which rested on his stomach, and lit one.

  “Henry.” She paused for a few thoughtful drags, drawing her knees up so that her skirt overflowed onto the couch. Her voice grew soft now that she was close to him. “Why didn’t you tell me, Henry? Why did it have to be such a mean surprise?”

  “Well, Penny…” Henry pushed the crown of his head back into the leather couch cushion and looked up at the fresco on the ceiling, which depicted a happy garden party in the new, loose style. “I did try to tell you, actually. Perhaps if you weren’t in the habit of burning my letters, you would know that.”

  This was an unhappy realization for Penelope, that Henry was capable of breaking things off with her in a note. Her pride smarted as she remembered what they had done while that card burned. She was beginning to feel that she might lose control of the situation altogether. “I had no idea I was so…nothing to you.”

  “It’s not like that.” Henry took a last drag of his cigarette and put it out in the cut-glass ashtray on the ground. “I didn’t mean for it all to be so awful for you. But you’re going to have to believe that this is what I have to do.”

  Penelope stood up sharply, so that her glistening reddish-orange train came hurrying along behind her. There was a strange echo to his words that she disliked. She walked in the direction of the bookshelf, with all its unread books, and spat, “That’s exactly what Elizabeth said to me.”

  “Really?” Henry pushed himself up on his elbows and followed Penelope with a curious gaze.

  “Yes. Now really, what’s going on here? You don’t love her, I know you don’t. She’s a mannered little priss, and if you don’t know it yet, you will soon.” Penelope turned quickly and moved across the room. She landed at Henry’s side, her hand on his, her legs folded beneath her on the floor. “Henry, you are in love with me. Can’t you see I’m the only one who can keep up with you? Who else could possibly?”

  The darkness around Henry’s eyes had taken on a far-off quality. Penelope stared at him, her mouth agape, wondering what else she could say. She had just put it as clearly as she knew how. The logic was obvious.

  He lifted his hand away from hers suddenly and stood up. His hair, which was usually so perfectly pomaded into place, was comically mussed. A black bunch of it stood up in back.

  Penelope stiffened. “Where are you going?”

  “My dear Penny,” Henry replied. He appeared to have to concentrate on balancing for a moment. When he had collected himself, he went about tucking in his shirt and combing his hair with his fingers. With a few gestures, he was again the dashing figure she was so proud to be seen dancing with, even if he was wearing day clothes at night. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to excuse me. I have an errand to run.”

  “An errand? At this time of night?” Penelope pushed herself against the couch and put on a petulant expression.

  “And after I went to all this trouble to visit you.”

  Henry went over to the desk, where an elaborate samovar sat. He poured coffee into a small silver cup and drank from it. Then he turned back to Penelope, lifted and dropped his shoulders, and let his gaze linger on her for a minute. The light in his eyes danced. “You know, I don’t feel drunk at all anymore. And I was in a real state earlier.”

  “I know,” Penelope said bitterly. She had had nothing but Vichy water all day, so as to better fit into her dress, and she was feeling awfully empty all of a sudden. “I arranged it.”

  “Really.” Henry took a final sip of the coffee and then put the cup back down. “That doesn’t surprise me, I guess. Oh well.”

  “Oh well? Henry, I’m here. I am right here.” She raised her eyebrows and tried to give him the same flirtatious look she had given him so many times before. “What else do you need?”

  Henry crossed over to the couch, where Penelope was still lounging on the intricate parquet-wood floor, and kissed her airily on either cheek. “I don’t think you’d really understand.”

  Penelope looked up at him, her great blue eyes narrowed to angry red slits.

  Henry returned her expression with an almost careless smile. “You know how to find your way out, don’t you? I’m sorry I can’t escort you myself, but right now I have to go make my amends to the Holland family.”

  Penelope sat on the floor in a pile of red silk, still unable to grasp what she was hearing, as Henry plucked a straw boater from the post of a chair. His step was light as he exited the room, and he did not pause to look behind him. Watching that slender, slightly rumpled figure walking out the door, Penelope felt, for perhaps the first time, humiliation tinged with the worst kind of loneliness.

  Twenty Seven

  A lady must retain always her composure. Even in a rainstorm, she must appear joyous and dry. When she loses her composure, then the respect of her peers and her staff will follow in short order.

  — VAN KAMP’S GUIDE TO HOUSEKEEPING FOR LADIES OF HIGH SOCIETY, 1899 EDITION

  ELIZABETH HAD LEFT HER PATIENCE SOMEWHERE in the riotous streets of Manhattan. All the time it would take to wash her face and take off all the layers of dress would have driven her insane. As soon as she knew her mother was in bed, she took the familiar back-of-the-house route, custom-made petal-pink dress and all.

  Henry had never arrived at the ball, so Elizabeth could still feel the touch of Will’s mouth on her hand, unsullied by any potential encounter with her sham fiancé. They had ridden home in a Schoonmaker carriage Henry’s father, sweaty and clearly irritated by his son’s no-show, had insisted but even that couldn’t change the direction of her thoughts. She had gazed out its window at the explosions in the sky, and counted the blocks until she was home.

  All night she had been thinking of Will. Even when she was dancing, moving gracefully through those golden hours with a smile for Brody Parker Fish or Teddy
Cutting, she was counting the hours until she could be with him again. They were in love; they would find a way. Elizabeth felt dizzy and light with the possibilities. She was almost mouthing the words to herself as she crossed the empty kitchen and went hurtling down the wooden steps into a darkened stable.

  “Will?” she whispered into the darkness. She kicked off her slippers and hurried toward where she knew the ladder to be. The old floorboards were soft against her feet, the hay sharp and ticklish. She pulled herself up the ladder with her hands and darted across the loft. “Will?” she said again. “Will, are you there?”

  She fell to her knees on the bed, feeling the mattress in front of her. It was bare the blankets and even the sheets were gone. She pushed herself up and climbed backward down the ladder. Then she went running across the floor to the far side of the stable, between the stalls where the horses were kept.

  “Will?” she called. “Will, are you there? Will?”

  She could remember one previous time when she had come to visit Will and had been unable to find him. It was before her father died, when nothing seemed very consequential. She had tiptoed through the stalls, giggling and whispering his name, until she found him, standing against one of the wooden posts that separated the individual stables. His eyes had been half shut, and he had been drifting off into one of those dreams set on the other coast. He was almost sleeping standing up, the way the horses did. When she woke him by saying his name, he told her that Jumper, Elizabeth’s favorite thoroughbred, had fallen ill. Will had been sleeping by her side. That night, they had stayed up together till dawn, cooing to her.

  But tonight there was no sign of a coachman sleeping amongst his charges. She ran back and forth, whispering his name, but there were only the black-lake eyes of the horses staring at her blankly over the Dutch doors of their stalls, and the sweet, grassy smell of the hay as her bare feet fell upon it. She turned, and turned again, bewildered by his absence. She had been so looking forward to seeing him all night. It was inconceivable that he wasn’t there, feeling exactly the same thing.

  Elizabeth took a few breaths and went back up to Will’s loft. She was afraid of the oil lamp, because of all the hay and because she had never had to light one herself, but her eyes were adjusting without it. The naked mattress stared back at her plaintively. The wooden milk crates that he had once used as bookshelves were empty, and she knew without looking that the chest of drawers, a shabby piece that had been her father’s as a child, was now empty of his clothes. She went back to the edge of the loft and sank down to the place where Will had always waited for her.

  Her hair was coming undone, and she pulled at strands until the pearls that had adorned them all night began to come loose and roll across the warped wooden floor behind her. The image of Will in front of the hotel was so fresh for her, it might have happened seconds ago. He had been looking at her with such intention, and she had taken it as confirmation of his love. He had taken her hand and kissed it, and she had taken this as a recklessly romantic gesture. She replayed the memory, like some jerky motion picture, and with a waterlogged heart she began to understand what Will had been doing. He had been trying to say good-bye.

  She pulled her hair back from her face and felt her throat begin to close. The tears were coming, sobs racking her whole body. She bent forward and let them soak her skirt, quietly saying Will’s name again and again. She must have been going on like this for some time, when the voice broke in.

  “What have you got to cry about?”

  All of Elizabeth froze. “Excuse me?” She was too frightened to look up just yet and see who had caught her in her secret life.

  “Your dress does look a wee bit ruined. Does that explain the tears?”

  Elizabeth’s eyes rose slowly. There was Lina, her arms crossed against her chest, standing at the entryway where Elizabeth always paused when she was coming to visit Will. Lina was wearing that same ugly black dress, which fell, unflatteringly, to just above her ankle, and she was tapping her left foot.

  “No,” Elizabeth replied. She sat up straight and steadied her voice. “Not the dress.”

  “Well, what then? Is it Will?” Lina shook her head disgustedly, and added ironically, “Your Will?”

  “What?” The skin around Elizabeth’s eyes tightened as she stared down at her maid. She was reminded of Lina as a child, crying because she felt excluded from Will and Elizabeth’s games. There was that same hurt look in her eyes, although she seemed more erratic and somehow frightening now. Elizabeth brought her legs up to the loft floor and scrambled to climb down the ladder. As she went, her skirt caught on the rough wood. She looked up only when she heard a ripping sound and saw that a heap of pink silk was caught at the top of the ladder, but she kept going. At that moment she could not have cared less about anything.

  She landed on the ground with purpose and turned to Lina just as she was saying, “You never deserved him.”

  Elizabeth wasn’t sure whether to argue with Lina or find some way to convince her not to tell anyone about the secret between her and Will. They stared at each other for a long moment. As the fierce beating of her heart slowed a little, she noticed the pained cast of Lina’s features. She was trying to be cruel to Elizabeth, but she too was clearly devastated by Will’s disappearance.

  “You don’t know anything,” Elizabeth said in a firm, quiet voice. She could feel her cool returning. “And you most certainly are not where you are supposed to be.”

  Lina’s smirk was constant. “And where would that be, miss? Up in your room, helping you off with your gown? Makes my job awful hard, having no mistress to serve.”

  “That’s exactly where you are supposed to be. And don’t forget, you serve at my pleasure. You are an employee of my family.”

  Elizabeth drew in her breath and propped a hand against her hip. She stared at Lina, with her nose darkened by freckles, and her big bony shoulders. She lifted a fair eyebrow and said, in as authoritative a tone as she could manage, “You must be such a disappointment to your poor sister. It is for her sake that I am not going to fire you.”

  Elizabeth let her arm fall back to her side disgustedly. She pulled her torn skirt away from her feet with one hand and let the other one swing as she walked past Lina and toward the kitchen door. She paused with one foot on the first step and turned her head in Lina’s direction. “That’s why I’m not going to fire you yet.”

  Lina stared back, her eyes narrow with hatred, but said nothing. Elizabeth tipped her head upward slightly and let the moment unfurl. The knowledge that Will was gone, one person lost in a vast country, was gnawing at her from the inside. But she kept herself from crying as she moved slowly and proudly away from her maid, and up those worn steps for the final time.

  Twenty Eight

  Dear Elizabeth,

  It looks like you won’t be going with me. I am trying not to feel too brokenhearted, though, and am leaving with the hope that you will soon be following me. I am going to California, and I can only pray that I will one day see you there. Or if you’ve changed your heart already, meet me at Grand Central. The last train leaves at eleven o’clock.

  Your faithful,

  Will Keller

  LINA FOUND THE NOTE IN THE TOP DRAWER OF WILL’S dresser, tucked into the pocket of a navy coat. She lit the oil lamp on the chest, cranking the canvas wick and touching it gently with a match. The letter was written on a torn piece of thick cream paper, the kind that Elizabeth used for all her correspondence.

  She ran her fingers along its gold edges, and thought how difficult it must have been for Will to resist Elizabeth. She must have seemed very rare to him, a possessor of magic objects, which was how she used to seem to her personal maid, too. But now Lina was catching glimpses of a new Elizabeth. She was a girl who had to be put together, hair and face, who preened alone in her own rich bedroom. She was a mirage.

  Lina turned the note in her hand, her face growing hot and furious as she thought about the things her onetime frie
nd had just said to her. Her words had been brutal and her haughtiness disgusting. As long as she thought about Elizabeth she stayed angry, but then the memory of her mistress faded and the reality of Will’s absence began to set in. Lina lay back on his mattress, stretching her long arms over her head, and tried to think him back into the room. This only made her growing sadness worse. The only boy she’d ever imagined herself loving was gone. And she had never so much as kissed him.

  She put the heels of her palms against her eyes to keep from crying, and when that instinct passed, she brought herself back up. The worst of it was, he had left without even considering Lina but perhaps it was not too late for that. She went to the dresser and removed the navy coat. It was the kind of coat that sailors wore and she had seen it on Will in winters past, when he was shoveling snow or bringing blankets out to the horses. He must have left it for Elizabeth, in case she decided to follow him into the night that was the kind of boy he was but Elizabeth had overlooked it. Lina put the coat on and slipped the note back into its pocket. She collected the little pearls from the floor that she had laced into Elizabeth’s hair earlier in the night, and then took the small side door onto the street.

  The night was balmy and Lexington Avenue was still full of people. They had been celebrating the return of their war hero all day, and they continued to celebrate now, charging through the streets with flags, leaning on one another in happy fatigue. No one noticed Lina as she walked quickly, pulling Will’s coat around her body. She hardly needed it, but it smelled like him like hay and soap so she kept it on.