“Oh, Henry,” she sighed. “No one would blame you.”
A few moments ago he would have agreed, but he’d climbed some great summit and descended into an unfamiliar valley since then. “It would be…I’m sorry.”
But she did not seem to hear him. She put her hand farther back on the balustrade, and leaned on it as though she were trying to better hear the faint music of the orchestra. Her position looked precarious, and he worried briefly that she might push herself over. He decided that he was close enough to stop her, but then he took a woozy step toward her and felt the floor wobble under his feet, and in the end nothing dramatic happened. She stood and gazed at Henry with those same aged eyes, and then she took a shaky breath and tried to smile bravely, once or twice, without ever quite succeeding.
“Well then,” she said quietly. She moved back into the suite with woeful grace, leaving Henry alone on the terrace. He closed his eyes and allowed the relief of having not acted on that awful impulse to soften in him. His blood was still agitated about it, but he knew suddenly that he was very drunk, and that his already unreliable memory would soon subsume the incident into the realm of the forgotten.
He followed Penelope, although his pace was slower and less sure this time, all sorts of pathetic explanations sputtering in his head. Her hip rested on the edge of the bed, and her back was to him and bent forward in a poignant arch. He shuffled closer and sat down beside her, and when she still gave no acknowledgment of his presence, he put an awkward hand on her back. That was when he realized she was crying, for her body was just slightly racked by silent tears. He found he wanted nothing so much at that moment as to look into her face.
“Don’t cry,” he said. He had always felt unnerved when anyone cried, and since he was a child had been known to promise anything just to make somebody stop. But then she twisted around to face him and he saw the wetness already catching against her lower lashes.
There was something unbearable to him about seeing Penelope brought low, and to stop her from any more self-abnegations he put his mouth—so fragrant with drink—against hers. Neither moved for a long moment, and then she took his lower lip, very gently, between her teeth. He felt dizzy and charged with emotion. Then he pulled her against him, just as he had the summer they had spent together. His hands fluttered along her face and shoulders and down her back, where they began to undo her corset.
He had watched several corsets being removed over the years, but had never done the work himself. All the hooks and ribbons presented a complicated puzzle, but despite his drunkenness—or perhaps because of it—he proceeded with great, plodding care. When, finally, the layers fell down around her waist she gave him a mysterious smile. Was it shyness, or gratitude, or some quality he had never seen before? The room was full of stars and Henry wondered for a moment if it hadn’t come unmoored from the hotel and gone spinning off into the night. Then he told himself to smile back at her—he did so, a little sloppily, as he batted a leaf of hair back from his face—and moved to push her down into the sheets.
Twenty Six
MANY OF OUR GUESTS LIKE TO DANCE
QUITE LATE, AND FOR YOUR CONVENIENCE
WE NOW HAVE OUR COBBLER SET UP
ALL NIGHT LONG. HE IS STATIONED IN THE
LOBBY, JUST BEYOND THE NEWSSTAND,
AND ALL LADIES ARE ENCOURAGED TO DROP
THEIR SLIPPERS THERE BEFORE THEY GO TO BED.
—THE MANAGEMENT,
ROYAL POINCIANA, PALM BEACH
THE WAVES WERE STILL BREAKING AGAINST THE shore, and over on the other side of Lake Worth, in West Palm Beach—the town that Henry Flagler had built for the help—everything had gone dark. But light still poured from the dance floor of the Royal Poinciana onto its manicured lawns. The hotel’s guests were eating second suppers or howling in laughter or dancing far closer than they would have dreamed of doing in New York or Philadelphia or Washington, with partners they might not have considered in their regular lives. The music grew faster and some of the husbands snuck off to play cards at the adjacent casino. Then their wives started strutting with the waiters, and more bottles of wine were ordered. The first lavender fingerprints of dawn were visible on the horizon when Diana Holland looked around to make sure that the man who owned her heart was nowhere in sight.
“Did Mrs. Schoonmaker leave?” she asked the waiter with the pretty face and ample lips with whom she had danced the last few dances. She was in too good a mood not to dance, for she had seen her and Henry’s whole life laid out in front of her, and it was going to be so lovely and intricate and fine.
“Does it matter?” The waiter grabbed her hand and twirled her back around so that she was facing him.
She laughed aridly and let her smile fade. But perhaps this recalibration of her attitude toward him was too subtle, because he cocked an eyebrow and went on looking at her as though she were a goddess come down from heaven on a cloud for his own personal delectation.
“I think she left a little while ago, by herself, with a sour expression on her face…” the boy said, catching his breath. Then he winked shamelessly.
Diana saw his intentions in a flash, and moved just aside of his approaching kiss. Then she yawned theatrically and let go of his hand.
“I’m so tired all of a sudden,” she lied. Many of the other dancers were now retreating to the shadows of the room, and only a few wild-eyed guests were still flailing their limbs for all to see. It was a little improper, a small voice within her cautioned, to be up so late without a chaperone, and though she was proud of these touches of rebellion in herself, she wondered if caution might be the right path at this particular moment. But she was wearing a new dress, her skin was fresh and her heart full, and even now she didn’t want to go to bed.
“Don’t go.” As he gazed at her, she couldn’t help but acknowledge that it had been fun—and she was grateful that he had celebrated with her for a few hours. But her smiles were all for someone else, so she offered him a wan look and then slipped away.
She imagined that he stood there alone for several minutes wondering what he had done wrong. Of course the thing he had done wrong wasn’t something he could possibly have helped, for it was the simple fact of him not being Henry. She felt strangely full of energy, thinking of how she had danced and of all the things she had seen. Once the morning was more advanced she would have to cable Barnard, and tell him how Lady Dagmall-Lister had spent the evening with a man half her age whom nobody had ever heard of, but who nonetheless knew all the dance steps, and how Henry Schoonmaker had abandoned his wife promptly after dinner.
And he had, Diana thought to herself as she walked across the wide planks of the hotel’s porch, which was empty at that hour, and onto the vast lawn that was just touched with dew. She had abandoned a second pair of shoes on the dance floor, so this time she felt the wetness of the grass against the soles of her feet. Somewhere in that great structure, Henry was probably plotting how to annul his marriage, and perhaps he had already taken a small separate room, and maybe chance would draw her to it in the hours to come….
Meanwhile, the light was growing brighter in the sky, and soon she would have to bathe and dress herself for another day of carefully coordinated leisure. The air was thick and still, even at that hour, and it smelled like nowhere she had ever been. With every footstep she felt that her whole life would be different now. All the details of the landscape were surreal and new to her; it was as though she had crossed over into some new stage of existence. For a long time she wandered underneath the palms, alone, and only when the sun was cresting the horizon and gold played along the waves did she turn back.
By that hour a new shift of hotel workers was making their way from the dormitories, which were hidden from the main building by a forest of banyan trees. They wore starched white shirts and black trousers and skirts and they looked away from Diana deferentially even though she wanted to smile at them. There was something wrong to her about seeing so many black people serving so few
whites, and though she knew it wasn’t slavery anymore, it seemed nearly as bad. And this was a grand hotel. She had heard that at some of the other places the guests took rides in little carriages that were pedaled by a servant, although the guests sat in front so that they could enjoy an unobstructed view. The idea revolted her.
Diana had been so lost in these thoughts that she had failed to notice where she was going, and found herself back at the vast lemon yellow building, with its little turrets and gingerbread trimmings, with all its thrown-open shutters and terraces. It was a beautiful structure, she couldn’t help but notice. Then she turned her chin and refocused her gaze. High above her a man naked from the waist up emerged on his terrace and looked out across the grounds. Diana blinked twice—his chest was almost golden and his hair was dark as black velvet, but he was on the fourth floor and so it took her several moments to realize that it was Henry.
My Henry, she thought as she moved forward, her footsteps crushing the grass. There was something starry and far away in his gaze and she couldn’t help but imagine that he was thinking of her. She felt her lungs balloon with air and then she raised her arm to wave at him, forgetting for a moment all the room cleaners and busboys and bellhops and chefs streaming toward work behind her. Then her arm fell, and shortly thereafter all her hopeful emotions were extinguished.
For there, at Henry’s side, was Penelope. Diana closed her eyes and told herself not to cry. When she opened them, Penelope was still there. She had come up behind Henry and draped her arms over his shoulders in a very familiar manner. She was wearing a robe and her silky brown hair fell all around her shoulders. It had been many years since Diana had seen Penelope without her hair in some immaculate arrangement, and the effect of disarray on her in this location, at just that moment, was both beautiful and terrible. The two people on that terrace were far more sophisticated and far more knowing than she would ever be, but one thing she was grown-up enough to see in them at that moment, despite all of Henry’s protestations, was that they were a very intimate married couple indeed. Across the grounds of the Royal Poinciana everything was tranquil, but Diana Holland had been all torn to shreds.
There should have been no crying for a stupidity so grand and so prolonged. Diana had known what Henry was from the beginning, and it was only a wonder that she had believed what he said about his marriage to Penelope being loveless, or that things might have been different with her than they were with all his other paramours. Of course he had just been telling her stories on the beach, of course he only wanted her as his mistress. Though if she had been a good girl and gone to bed, she would never have been the wiser. As it was, she now knew herself to be a fool of the first order.
Diana tripped forward idiotically in her long skirt—the employees of the Poinciana no doubt staring perplexedly at this young girl running around in an evening dress at dawn—hoping to find some very private place to hide herself before she began to truly break down.
Twenty Seven
Marriage is a mystery that one would be wise not to solve too hastily.
—MAEVE DE JONG, LOVE AND OTHER FOLLIES OF THE GREAT FAMILIES OF OLD NEW YORK
THE LIGHT OF EARLY MORNING WAS COMING IN through the French doors of what every guest and bellhop knew to be the best suite in the Royal Poinciana, where Penelope leaned back into the small mountain of champagne-colored pillows and felt entirely new. She stretched her long arms over her head and crossed her narrow ankles. Who knew that the way to Henry’s heart was through his murderous instinct? She did, now, and was planning on manipulating his guilt as much as possible. He hadn’t scared her, not for very long anyway, and afterward she knew she had him. She didn’t care anymore whether or not the other guests witnessed them together. Let the Hollands and Miss Broad and all the other fine people at the hotel speculate on the conspicuous absence of the Henry Schoonmakers instead—that would be much more satisfying.
“Henry?” she called.
There was no answer, only the breeze pressing the Irish lace curtains against the glass panes of the open door. She stood and wrapped herself in the robe, pulling the last pins out of her hair from the night before and throwing them on the polished walnut nightstand. She sighed happily and proceeded across the vast room. Her movements were light and filled with a new contentedness, for in one evening, months of scheming and climbing, of unreturned affection, had at last been validated. They were now truly man and wife.
“Henry,” she said again as she stepped onto the terrace. His back was to her, and for a moment she gazed at him in silhouette, his broad shoulders against the tableau of palm trees, the carefully trimmed lawns, the ocean glittering with the light of the rising sun. It was early, she thought—there was still so much left of this wondrous day. Then she moved forward and let one arm and then the other rest on Henry’s shoulders. “What ever are we going to do today?”
There was nothing sudden about what he did next. He took her wrists in his hand, first one and then the other, and plucked her arms away from his skin—but ever so slowly, ever so gently. In another moment he’d turned and his expression told her that he was five hundred miles away.
“It was a mistake,” he said as he dropped her wrists.
Penelope tried to regain the vulnerability that she had used to such great effect the night before. The glow she had felt moments ago was beginning to fade, but not quickly enough to look truly stricken and needy. “You mean—”
“All of it.” He set his thin lips together, as though putting a stern end to whatever compassion lingered inside.
“But Henry—”
“Last night, the wedding.”
“—just think how much fun we had last night. Just stay with me now, and we’ll have more fun!”
Henry shook his head sadly. “You know very well why I married you, since it was all your idea and your brute force. You can’t be surprised now if I want nothing to do with you.” His gaze dropped away from her, and she realized that at the very least it was with great difficulty that Henry uttered these words. “I need to think.” He rolled his eyes toward the pink sky. “I am very sorry, but I can’t stay with you now.”
When he turned away and moved back toward the room, Penelope felt all the rage and fear rise within her like a towering wave that might drown them all. Henry paused once and looked back. His black eyes darted up and down at her for a moment and then he spoke with pained emphasis. “I am sorry.”
Somehow all this careful, distanced kindness was worse than any slap. Penelope’s hand fluttered to her chest pathetically, but already he had turned and was walking across the Spanish tiles at a fast clip. A moment later she followed, her pride inflamed but her head still relatively cool. If she could garner some time, some information, perhaps the worst wouldn’t come to pass. “What are you going to do?”
“I am going to go to Teddy’s room and I will dress there. Then we’re going fishing, which was the original purpose of this trip.” Henry was picking up his clothes from the night before. He pulled the sleeves of the rumpled shirt over his arms and then stepped into his shoes. It was perfectly obvious to Penelope that he was avoiding meeting her eyes, and she wondered what he was afraid of seeing in them. “And then, when we get back to New York, I am going to find a way to leave you. I’m not sure how yet, but I can’t stay in this absurd joke of a marriage any longer.”
“What about your little Di?” Penelope moved toward him, her voice reaching a frightening pitch. She knew it sounded like shrieking, but she couldn’t help herself, not when everything she’d ever strived for was slipping through her fingers.
“What about her?” Now he did meet her eyes, and she saw that his were fatigued, and a little sad, and washed out by some new maturity that one way or another made his gaze that much more piercing.
“If you love her so much, I wonder that you aren’t worried about what will happen when everyone knows she played the whore with you.” She was hurling her words now, her mouth constricting unattractively around eve
ry sentence. “It would be my pleasure to tell them, Henry.”
Henry’s black tuxedo jacket fell from his hands, but his eyes remained level in her direction. “I doubt that,” he said. His voice was tentative at first, but when he spoke again it had gained strength and momentum and an angry edge. “I doubt that when you begin to experience the humiliation of being turned out of the Schoonmaker mansion, you will want to add to it by letting everyone know that your husband never loved you, and was already thinking of someone else before you were even married.”
Henry paused to draw his clenched fist across his mouth—for he had spit, just a little, when he spoke. Penelope’s eyes were the least cool blue they had ever been. What he’d said was true. She had flinched, and she knew that he had seen it.
“You wouldn’t want to test me, Henry.”
There was no answer, only a moment that felt to her like it might go on forever. But it did end, at last, when he bent and picked up his jacket—successfully, this time. He gave her one final hard look, and then he turned and began to move away from her. She took one halting step forward, but he was already headed for the door.
Then he was gone, leaving her alone in her sumptuous robe, her hair all undone, the careful architecture of her plan for them flattened. She wanted to smash things up, but was uncharacteristically restrained by the realization that none of the objects in that large and lavish room belonged to her.
Before her angry impulses got the better of her, she admonished herself that she was born to win and that one did not win by throwing temper tantrums—at least not outside of one’s own home, which could result in vicious, spurious rumors. But oh, how she wanted to destroy things, when so much had been destroyed for her.
Twenty Eight
And what of the famous friendship between Miss Elizabeth Holland and the woman who married her former fiancé, the former Miss Penelope Hayes? The two have repaired to Palm Beach together, but of course none of us can see what they do there….
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