Splendor l-4

by Anna Godbersen

  “No,” Henry returned. “But there’s no need for you to concern yourself about that, as I’m on my way to tell him myself now.”

  For a moment it was as though she’d breathed in ice crystals. When Henry took a few steps deeper into the gallery, she matched them exactly.

  “On your way to tell him what?” she demanded. Henry’s shirt was unbuttoned to midsternum, and she could see the dark marks of sweat around his armpits. Wherever he had just been was still all over him. He was awfully handsome, she couldn’t help but think, and then hated both of them equally for allowing this line of thinking to begin again in her mind.

  Henry sighed and his head swayed back and forth. The impatience he’d expressed in the previous moments evaporated, and when he spoke again it was in a flat, almost broken tone. “That I’m leaving you.”

  “No. No you’re not.”

  “Yes…” Henry nodded. His gaze, when he met hers, was unflinching. “I am.”

  Penelope’s mouth constricted and she tried to force back hot, angry tears. But the fearful rage this information at first elicited simmered down quickly, until, in a matter of seconds, she found it a more manageable sort of challenge. “Henry,” she whispered through a tight smile, “all those people think you’re a war hero, but I know the truth. I doubt very much you have the courage.”

  “That’s all right, Penny,” Henry said wearily. “You’ll see in a minute or two, anyway. I don’t love you, and you know that, so it’s rather ridiculous to go back and forth like this. I love Diana, and I’m going to be with her — really this time. I’m not even sure why you care, as I doubt very much that you’re still in love with me. I saw you, today, with that prince, you know….”

  If Penelope hadn’t been so bent on her task of persuasion, she might have wondered if there wasn’t a faint quality in Henry’s tone suggesting that she might have inspired some territorial instinct in him. Her words were rapid-fire now, however, and she went on with a dismissive wave of her gloved hand. “Oh, Henry, that was nothing. Of course I love you, and anyway we made those promises in front of too many well-regarded people. This is what marriage is Henry, for people rich and good-looking as you and I. So you imagined yourself in love with little Diana Holland, so I accept pretty tokens from Prince Frederick…they’re all just diversions, Mr. Schoonmaker.” Her elegant nostrils exhaled authoritatively. “This is what we do.”

  Henry’s expression was a mystery. He was staring into her eyes, and might have been confused, although that didn’t seem quite right. “That is what you do,” he said eventually, and turned on his heel. “Not me.”

  Penelope’s first thought, in the next moment, was to rush after him and throw one of her scenes, anything to get him back before he stormed into his father’s presence and started talking stupidly. But some impulse made her turn around just then, and she saw, in the warm light of the drawing room, through the visual clutter of ornate coiffures and erupting cherry blossoms, the figure of the prince. His chestnut hair was polished and thick over his regal brow, his blue eyes glittered with amusement, and his mouth was just slightly crooked on one side, suggesting a smile that only a girl like Penelope would notice. The prince was wearing a smart navy blue jacket with gold tasseled epaulets and a red sash across the chest, for as he had told Penelope that afternoon he was a commissioned officer of the Prussian Army. Henry’s footsteps were fading across the hardwood floor, but she was no longer worried. Either his resolve would fail, or the old man would put him in his place — it didn’t matter particularly to her.

  The younger Mrs. Schoonmaker felt entirely confident that the threats her husband had just made were exactly like all the rest of his threats — hollow, and with no greater objective than to cause her pain. He could stalk about the house and make noise all he wanted; she was no longer going to allow his moods to interfere with her fun. Across the room, the prince’s eyes found hers, and she lengthened her fine white neck, lifting her chin up slightly to the left. Then she let the heavily blackened lashes of her right eye lower in a slow and smoldering wink.

  Twenty One

  Carolina—

  My apologies, I won’t be able

  to meet you before dinner and drive

  you — I’ll meet you at my family’s

  house, at No.16 Washington

  Square North, at eight o’clock.

  — L.B.

  BUT WHY HAD HE NOT COME TO MEET HER?

  Carolina’s eyes grew watery and darted about as she rode downtown in her own coach, cheek rested against fist, watching buildings roll by and chasing this question around in her thoughts. She wore a little fitted jacket of ash-black silk, with ruffles at the sleeve and just below the ruching at the fitted small of the back, over a dress of white faille layered with grapefruit-colored lace that bunched up near the hips and fell rather epically down around her feet. Her intention had been for a subdued appearance, but now, as she traveled by herself toward the Bouchard family residence, she wondered if it wasn’t obviously the kind of dress that the sort of girl who rides around in carriages with boys at night chooses, in an attempt at merely looking subdued. Then there were all her other blunders, and surely the worst of them she was still ignorant of, and weren’t people always saying how ephemeral love was? Maybe having said the word aloud had made all of Leland’s affections disappear for good.

  The Bouchards were old banking money, and Leland’s mother was the product of a union between a Lusk and a Cortland, making her prestige and wealth older still. The Everett Bouchards lived in two conjoined townhouses on the north side of Washington Square Park, along with four of Leland’s six younger siblings. The family had lived there for several generations, and so worshipped tradition that they would not dream of moving to a more fashionable part of town. That was why they had colonized a neighboring property, when the original house proved too small for such a large clan. Carolina had known all this for years, even when she was a maid, from the gossip columns Claire used to read aloud to her. She knew also that Charlie, who was two years younger than Leland, was away in the navy, and that Katherine, Charlie’s twin, had recently been married to Peter Harwood Gore, though she, according to Leland, would be at the family dinner that night.

  All day Carolina had felt overjoyed that her beau was going to introduce her to his family — it was a step that could only bode well. That was what she told herself as she prepared for her evening with her lady’s maid, roping herself into her corset, curling and pinning up her hair, darkening her lashes, and lightening the freckles on her cheeks with powder. But then his note came, some hours before he himself should have arrived to escort her, and her mood had become increasingly dark and paranoid in the intervening period.

  She had hoped against hope that he would appear and tell her it had been a mistake, that he would accompany her, but this fantasy never became manifest. By the time her driver helped her up to the seat of her carriage she had become completely convinced that she would die of nerves before she’d be capable of entering a room populated by such grand people. Because, after all, she had rode around in Leland’s phaeton being kissed in a way she was pretty sure virginal debutantes were not supposed to be kissed, and wouldn’t they all know, the high and mighty Bouchards — who, unlike her, were real society people — with a single glance?

  At her destination she paused and hovered behind the door of her coach, and was only persuaded to come down when her driver asked if maybe she didn’t look a little pale and want to be taken home, at which point she became annoyed at him for saying so, as well as at herself for giving him any cause. Through the lush trees of the park she could see the marble arch that the society architect Stanford White had built, cast a little orange by the dying light of the day. That was where Fifth Avenue began, she thought to herself with a shiver, before turning to climb the white stone steps of the redbrick structure with the Greek columns on either side of the entryway.

  The door opened before she had a chance to ring the bell, and she was
greeted by the shell-pink face of a blond child, whose merry smile revealed two missing front teeth. The child wore a simple blue pinafore over a dress of white eyelet, and for a moment Carolina wondered if she wasn’t one of the servants’ children. But then the girl addressed her.

  “You’re Carolina!” The girl beamed for a moment, but then an unexpected wave of shyness overcame her, and she hid her face. “I’m Olivia,” she explained from halfway behind the door. “Leland’s my brother.”

  Carolina tried to muster a smile, but her jitters had grown so bad that it took all her concentration just to stand still and upright. A woman with graying blond hair in a simple arrangement, dressed in a high-necked dress of pewter-colored fabric, appeared behind the girl. “Olivia,” she said, “who have you found?”

  “Carolina!” Olivia answered, her shyness abating somewhat.

  “Welcome, Miss Broad. I’m Mrs. Bouchard,” the older woman said in a low, smooth voice, drawing her guest indoors and kissing her warmly on either cheek. “Leland has told me so very much about you.”

  Carolina, who had been expecting a butler or housekeeper or some other uniformed middleman, found that she couldn’t remember a single phrase, or even a word, appropriate to the situation. She did manage to part her lips just slightly, but if this succeeded in looking like a smile, then she was a lucky girl indeed. The foyer was paneled with wood and dark, and the ceilings were somewhat low, as they often are in old houses. As her eyes adjusted, she saw through a wide doorframe into the front parlor, where the last light of day illuminated a room as cluttered with old paintings and bric-a-brac as the Hollands’, but populated with many more people besides.

  A maid — wearing not livery or a black-and-white uniform, but a plain black dress of the variety Carolina had once donned every day — moved away from the mantel, where she had just set a large brass candelabra ablaze, and came into the foyer.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Bouchard,” the girl said hastily. She was about the same age as Carolina, and yet she seemed infinitely less beset by anxiety.

  “That’s quite all right, Hilda,” the mistress replied.

  Hilda gestured toward the Bouchard’s guest, and a moment later Carolina realized she was supposed to give up her jacket. Once it had come off she saw that the curves and flounces, the lace and detail of her dress, were almost blinding with ornament. She was painfully overdressed.

  Leland’s mother approached and hooked her arm through Carolina’s in an elegant, easy manner. With her other arm, she drew Olivia along by the shoulder. “Where is Leland?” she asked her guest.

  “I — don’t know,” Carolina answered stupidly.

  “What a cad, to send you here alone.”

  Perhaps the older woman was joking, but there was a sharpness in her tone — Carolina thought so, anyway — and it suddenly occurred to her that she was a young woman out, sans supervision, amongst an old and very traditional sort of family. “My chaperone…,” she stuttered.

  “Yes?” Mrs. Bouchard looked at her, the light from the adjoining room dancing in her blue eyes.

  “I don’t have one,” was what came out of Carolina’s lips.

  “Oh, nonsense!” Mrs. Bouchard laughed. “I will be your chaperone, if you are worried, and if the police stop by to see that everything is in order here, I am sure they will approve of the job I am doing. Now come.”

  They stepped across the threshold and into the low, wide room, which was filled with wingback chairs upholstered with patterns of pineapples and palms, and paintings that depicted the stern faces of a previous century. Black cloisonné vases filled with pale pink chrysanthemums were stationed around the room, and beautiful textiles hung from the back of every sofa. The Bouchards were indeed a clan, Carolina saw, and they were so many that they nearly blotted out the Persian carpets. The gentleman who must have been Leland’s father sat by the fireplace, a friendly giant of a dog with a brindle coat prone at his feet. The Bouchard patriarch was oversized and gangly, the way Leland was, and though his hair had gone completely white, he had the younger man’s well-defined nose. He did not rise at the sight of the guest, as everybody else did, and she guessed from the sight of him that he was ten years older than his wife, and not in prime health.

  “Come here, Miss Broad!” Mr. Bouchard called, extending a long arm toward her. His voice was booming, his smile grand.

  There was a moment of graceless hesitation, after which Carolina did as he said, stepping timidly away from Mrs. Bouchard and between the stuffed ottomans and colonial side tables to reach him. He clasped her hand and stared up at her for a long minute with such fierce attentiveness that her heart began to thud again at the prospect of being found out.

  “Th-thank you for inviting me to dinner,” she said awkwardly.

  “She’s too pretty for that ugly son of mine,” Everett Bouchard declared, ignoring her timidity, and laughing with uproarious joy. “But she’s made of very good stuff and I’d like to keep her around, so you will all have to do your part to charm her!”

  Then the rest of the Bouchards laughed with him, and for the first time since receiving Leland’s note at four, a natural smile broke across Carolina’s face. A woman with honey brown hair, dressed in an ivory shirtwaist and a topaz-colored skirt of exquisite material and very fine, simple tailoring, stepped away from the other side of the fireplace and came to Carolina’s side.

  “I’m Katy, Leland’s sister,” she said as she embraced the guest. She could not have been much older than Carolina, a year or two. “And that’s my husband, Peter,” she said, gesturing to the smartly dressed fellow on the other side of the fireplace. “That’s Beatrice…,” she continued, presenting a tall, skinny girl in white, sitting shyly on a settee, not quite old enough to have come out yet, “John…”—the boy sitting next to her, with the height of a man but a face that indicated he could not be much more than twelve—“Harold…”—still a child, sitting on the floor with a toy train—“and of course Olivia, the youngest, you met at the door. We are seven, you know.”

  Carolina beamed, and they all beamed back. “Yes,” she said. “Leland told me, and how jealous I was! I’m an only child,” she lied. How much easier it would be, she thought in passing, if she were an only child, and then felt a pang of guilt, and hoped Claire’s bed at Mrs. Carr’s was more comfortable than the one they’d shared in the Hollands’ attic.

  “How unfortunate! But you must sit, my dear,” Mrs. Bouchard commanded from her position at the edge of the room. “And since you are a very special guest, we shall break our habit of drinking only at table, and have a little champagne before dinner….”

  But before she could sit, or Hilda could be sent for the champagne, the door opened again, and the tall handsome figure belonging to Leland Bouchard strode into the entryway. For a moment his gaze held Carolina’s, and she saw that his failure to escort her was not out of any deficit of love. Then the youngest children ran to Leland and threw their arms around him, as though they hadn’t seen him in months, and he bent to kiss each of their heads.

  “You look very well, Leland,” Mrs. Bouchard said, in a tone of perfect equanimity, as she kissed his cheek.

  “So do you, Mother,” he replied.

  An older male servant appeared in the hall, and Leland quickly moved to take off his blue coat with the wide lapels. As he handed it off, he leaned in and whispered something in the old man’s ear that made the whites of his eyes grow large. The servant patted the eldest Bouchard boy on the back and disappeared with his coat, as Leland entered the room and walked from one of his siblings to another, greeting them with a kiss for the ladies and a handshake for the gentlemen. When he reached his father, he lowered his whole body down for a bear hug.

  “Is she all right, Dad?” he said.

  “You may proceed,” answered Mr. Bouchard.

  Watching his path across the room, Carolina’s pulse had grown fast and her knees had become a little weak. It was the very picture of everything Carolina herself had never
had, and she felt her love for him growing sweet and heady in the handful of minutes it had taken for him to reach her, just beyond his father’s throne.

  But whatever this vision of him amongst his family had done to her internal registers of emotion, it was nothing compared to his next act. For he turned to her, caught her gaze, and then sank to one knee. The room went silent, and for the first time since he had entered the house he fumbled. He was trying to get something out of his waistcoat pocket. He glanced away, and when his eyes met hers again his lips were parted and he was holding a small box aloft. Until the lid flipped back and he spoke, her stubborn brain refused to believe that this scene could be what it seemed. But there were three diamonds set in yellow gold staring up at her, and the words, “Carolina Broad, will you do me the honor of being my wife?” hanging in the air.

  The entire Bouchard clan stared at her with shiny eyes and bated breath.

  For Carolina, it was a struggle not to cry. The moment could only have been made more perfect if her own mother, with her hands worn and chafed from a lifetime of doing other people’s laundry, were there to witness this triumph. But perhaps she was, from on high.

  “Yes,” she said with simple, beatific clarity. The light outside had gone completely from the sky, but perhaps some of it had been transferred to Carolina’s face, for she was now glowing like a country sunrise. Hilda and the old man and a few other servants had come in from the hall to see what was happening, and the rest of the Bouchards began to smile and clap. Leland slipped the ring onto her left finger and then he stood, cupped her face between his hands, and kissed her — somehow it appeared chaste, but was experienced otherwise — on the lips.

  “You will make a very lovely Bouchard, my dear,” she heard Leland’s father say as he rested his hand against her arm and smiled in congratulations. She nodded in stunned thanks. Nothing about her dress or bearing seemed remotely off anymore; already she felt like one of them.