The Tea Rose

by Jennifer Donnelly

  Will sighed irritably. “Nothing’s wrong! I’m fine, I just…”

  She raised her glass to her lips, then stopped midway. “It’s a woman, isn’t it?”

  “Anyone ever tell you you’re too damn nosy, Nellie?”

  “Everyone. Who is she?”

  “Nobody! There is no woman! It’s the subway. All right?”

  Nellie raised an eyebrow, but she let the topic drop. Will was relieved, though he was angry with himself for allowing his emotions to show so blatantly. Fiona was on his mind constantly now, and try as he might, he couldn’t make sense of his feelings for her. He’d tried to tell William Whitney, one of his oldest friends, about her, but Whitney only asked him why he was making such a fuss. “Just buy the girl a bauble and take her to bed,” he’d advised.

  He thought about telling his sister Lydia, but didn’t think she’d react well; she was forever trying to interest him in a friend of hers, a widow from Saratoga. He’d finally decided on his younger brother Robert. They’d had drinks here a week ago, on the eve of yet another one of Robert’s jaunts to Alaska, where he was prospecting for gold. Robert was thirty-six and had never married. He’d lost his fiancée, Elizabeth, to tuberculosis when they were both twenty-four. They had been deeply in love. Her death had broken his heart and he’d never gotten over it.

  “Why all the agony, Will?” Robert had asked. “Bed her and be done with it.”

  “You sound just like Whitney. It’s not like that,” Will had said.

  “We’re speaking of a potential wife? Forgive me. I thought you meant a mistress.”

  “We’re speaking of a woman. The most beautiful, smartest, funniest woman I’ve ever met,” Will said.

  “Does she know your feelings?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. I haven’t told her.”

  “Why not? It’s been what … two years since Anna passed? Your mourning’s over. You’re free to marry again if you like. What’s stopping you?”

  “Complications, Robert. She’s not… we don’t share the same background.”

  “Ah,” Robert said, taking a long swallow of his drink.

  “She’s a shopkeeper. I don’t think my sons would accept her. Liddy, either. I don’t know how her family would feel about me. And, of course, I’m a good deal older than she is.”

  “That is a difficult situation, my boy,” Robert said. He paused for a moment, then said, “Do you love her?”

  “I can’t stop thinking about her. I’ve never met anyone I could talk to so easily …”

  “Will… do you love her?”

  He blinked, confused. “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know? Will, you’ve been in love before, haven’t you? I mean, with Anna, of course … and your various … well, you have, haven’t you?”

  Will looked into his glass. “No. No, I haven’t.” He swallowed selfconsciously. “Is this what it’s like? This feeling … this sense of longing? It’s horrible!”

  Robert had laughed, amazed. “Yes, that’s what it’s like,” he said, signaling to the waiter. “I’m going to get you another drink. Maybe the whole damn bottle. You look like you need it.” He shook his head. “Didn’t you ever wonder what you were missing?”

  “No. I didn’t believe in it. I thought it was something lady novelists invented.” He shrugged helplessly. “Don’t misunderstand me, Robert, I did feel something for Anna. She was a wonderful mother, a helpmate, a gracious person. But it was nothing like this.”

  “Christ, Will, that really does take the cake. In love for the first time.” He laughed. “I guess you can teach an old dog new tricks.”

  He grimaced. “Did you have to say old dog?”

  Robert flapped a hand at him. “Why don’t you let her decide if she’d like to see you? If you’re worth it, she’ll put up with the hardships.”

  “If I’m worth it?”

  “Yes. If. And if she’s half the woman you say she is, she’s more than up to the task. Her family will come around. Yours, too.” He smiled. “I already have. Liddy will. And you can disinherit your children if they refuse to.”

  A hand suddenly waved in front of his face. “Will? Will, are you listening to me?”

  “Sorry, Nellie.”

  “Gee whiz, you’ve got it bad,” she said. “You can say, or not say, whatever you like, but someone’s stolen your heart.” She leaned in closely. “You do have one, don’t you?”

  As Will was laughing, Cameron Eames, a young city judge and a friend of Will’s eldest son, Will Junior, breezed through the door. “Evening, Mr. McClane,” he said.

  “Hello, Cameron,” Will said.

  “You have a guest, I see. I wasn’t aware the club admitted ladies. Oh, it’s you, Nellie.”

  “Gee, that’s a fresh one, Eames. Hey, you lock up any kids lately? I saw some boys playing stickball a few streets over. You know what they say – stickball leads to stickups. You can’t be too careful. Better call out the paddy wagons. Maybe the army while you’re at it.”

  There were chuckles from two gentlemen standing nearby. Will heard them, so did Cameron. His face darkened. “That was a hysterical piece of reporting. From a hysterical lady reporter led more by her heart than her wits,” he said.

  “The kid was ten years old, Eames.”

  “He was a criminal.”

  “He was hungry.”

  Eames, fuming, turned to Will and said, “If Will Junior arrives, would you let him know I’m in the dining room, Mr. McClane?”

  “Of course, Cameron.”

  “Enjoy your meal, sir.” He stalked off.

  “That wasn’t smart, Nell. Now he’s going to tell the maitre d’ and get you thrown out.”

  “I’m sure he will. Why should his club be any different from his courtroom? He throws me out of that all the time, the smug little shit,” she said. “Sorry. I know he’s Will Junior’s friend.”

  Will shrugged. “He’s still a smug little shit.” He felt a hand on his shoulder. “Hello, Dad. Nellie,” a voice said. Will turned and smiled at the solidly built wheat-blond man of twenty-five standing at his side. It was his eldest son. As Will greeted him, always happy to see him, to see any of his children, he was struck by how much he favored his late mother. The older he got, the more he reminded him of Anna and her Dutch ancestors, with their fair coloring and their grounded, no-nonsense ways.

  “I’m meeting Cameron. Any sign of him?” Will Junior asked. Cameron and Will Junior had grown up together in Hyde Park on the Hudson and attended Princeton together, joining all the same clubs and the same fraternity. Married now, they both kept homes in the Hudson Valley where their young families were ensconced, and apartments in the city where they stayed during the work week.

  “He’s in the dining room,” Will replied.

  “Good,” Will Junior said. He turned to Nellie. “Scorcher of an article.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “You could ruin a man’s career with stories like that.”

  “Cameron can do that by himself. He doesn’t need my help.”

  Since last January, when he’d been appointed a justice of the city’s criminal courts, Cameron Eames had been on a highly publicized campaign to clean up New York. Contrary to the unending praise heaped upon him by the majority of the city papers, Nellie, a reporter for the World, had written a piece about a young Polish boy from the Lower East Side whom Cameron had remanded to the Tombs, Manhattan’s jail, after he’d been caught stealing a loaf of bread. Though the theft was the child’s first offense, he was locked up with a group of seasoned criminals. The next morning, the guards found his body stuffed under a mattress at the back of the cell. He’d been assaulted – a polite word for raped – and choked to death. Will’s stomach turned when he’d read the article. He’d wondered how Cameron could’ve been so stupid.

  “Cameron had a moral choice to make and he made it,” Will Junior said, defending his friend.

  Nellie laughed. “Please, McClane. The m
ore so-called criminals he locks up, the more press he gets. We both know that. It’s not morality that’s driving Cameron, it’s ambition.”

  “All right then, Nellie, Cam’s ambitious. So am I and so are you. There’s nothing wrong with that,” Will Junior said hotly. “He wants to be the youngest justice ever named to the state supreme court. He’ll do it, too, despite your attempts to slander him. His campaign’s a success. He’s put more criminals behind bars in a year than his predecessor did in the last three.”

  Will gave his son a long look. “All small-timers from what I hear. Cameron needs to go after the root of the problem if he’s going to make a difference, son – the gaming-hall owners, the madams, the gang bosses. And the police officers who take bribes from them.”

  Will Junior snorted. “I said Cameron was ambitious, Dad, not crazy. The important thing is that he’s locking up the lowlife. Making the streets safer for the rest of us.”

  “A wise judge understands the difference between stealing for gain and stealing to eat.”

  “You’re too soft-hearted, Dad,” Will Junior said irritably, ever impatient at subtleties, always one for the black-and-white view. “Stealing is stealing. The immigrant classes are overrunning the city. They have to be taught that their contempt for the law won’t be tolerated here.”

  “Easy to say when you’ve never been hungry,” Nellie said.

  “How about the baker he stole from? What about him? Hasn’t he got a family to feed?” Will Junior asked, his voice rising.

  “For God’s sake! It was a loaf of bread, not the contents of the man’s cash register …”

  Will gritted his teeth as Will Junior and Nellie continued their debate. He loved his son, but he found him – and many members of his generation – ruthless in their pursuit of money and standing and harsh toward the less fortunate. He had reminded him on many occasions that both the McClanes and their mother’s family – the Van der Leydens – had at one time been immigrants. As had members of all the city’s wealthy families. But Will’s lectures made no difference to his son. He was an American. And those getting off the boat at Castle Garden were not. Italian, Irish, Chinese, Polish – nationality made no difference. They were lazy, stupid, and dirty. Their numbers spelled ruin for the country. The boy’s intolerance was something he’d learned for himself, not from his parents. And it was the one thing Will did not like about him.

  As he regarded Will Junior, gesturing at Nellie now, he wondered what he would make of Fiona. He knew the answer: he’d be appalled at the idea of his father seeing a woman who worked for her living, one who was a member of the very immigrant class he despised.

  “No, Nellie! You’re wrong!” he exclaimed, his voice too high for his father’s liking. Will was just about to admonish him when they were interrupted by a loud, pushy “Hello, darlings!” Will stifled a groan. This would not help matters. The voice belonged to Peter Hylton, editor of “Peter’s Patter,” a feature in the World that was part of a new phenomenon in publishing known as the society pages. Designed to amuse readers with reports of the affairs and amusements of wealthy New Yorkers, “Peter’s Patter” had become the newspaper’s most popular feature, helping to push its already huge circulation through the roof. No one admitted to reading it, but everyone did. When the column praised a play, the theater’s box office was swamped. If it panned a restaurant, it closed within a week.

  Will thought the column an appalling and irresponsible misuse of the press, little better than rank gossip-mongering. Hylton did not respect the codes of public decency. He thought nothing of mentioning that a certain coal baron had been seen at the opera in the company of a woman not his wife. Or that the recent sale of a Fifth Avenue mansion was due to the owner’s losses at the racetrack. The papers had recently begun to print photographs, and Hylton often had his photographers lurking outside of restaurants and theaters with their infernal cameras and flashes. Will had been blinded by them on more than one occasion. He did not like the man, and Will Junior despised him. Three years ago, when Will Junior had made his first bid for a seat in Congress, Hylton had written about his fondness for chorus girls. He was unmarried at the time, but such behavior did not sit well with the public. He lost the election. He tried to sue Hylton, but had no case. Hylton had described him, but had never actually referred to him by name. When pressed by Will Junior’s attorney, he denied he’d been talking about him. He said his subject was another young businessman from a prominent family. Will Junior had had to drop his complaint.

  “Hylton!” his son hissed now. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “I’m about to dine, dear boy. I’m a member now. Didn’t you know? Just got voted in.”

  “Then I’m damn well resigning! I won’t patronize a club that allows the likes of muckrakers like you and her” – he hooked a thumb in Nellie’s direction – “in it.”

  “I’m the muckraker,” Nellie said primly. “Peter doesn’t deserve the title.”

  Will Junior ignored her. “You both think you can just go around sticking your noses into other people’s business and splashing it all over the place, don’t you? Anything goes, as long as you get fodder for your damned rag!”

  Peter, a short, fat man given to bright clothing and gold jewelry, recoiled, pulling his stubby-fingered hands to his chest like a chipmunk. “My word! Hopefully the dining room’s a little more civilized,” he said, moving off.

  Nellie watched him disappear into the dining room – a room whose occupants together were worth more than the gross national product of many countries. Whose power and influence shaped political and financial policy at the national and international levels. The envy in her eyes was palpable. “How come Hylton can get into this club and I can’t?” she asked Will.

  “Because he comes from a prominent family, believe it or not, and he’s a man,” he said.

  “That’s debatable,” Will Junior fumed. “He’s as swishy as a silk dress.”

  “He’s got a wife and children. They live in New Jersey,” Nellie said.

  “I don’t blame them,” Will Junior said. “Will you join us for dinner, Dad?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t. I’m expecting guests. Carnegie and Frick.”

  “I’ll be eager to hear how it went. I’ll stop by your office first thing tomorrow. Bye, Dad,” he said. He turned to Nellie. “Miss Bly,” he said icily.

  As he departed, the maitre d’, looking thunderous, advanced on them. “Miss Bly, I’ve told you a hundred times, ladies are not allowed in the Union Club,” he said, taking her elbow.

  She jerked it out of his grip, finished her drink, and placed the glass on the bar. “Thanks for the Scotch, Will. Looks like your ghoul here’s throwing me out of this mausoleum.”

  “Miss Bly! I insist you depart the premises this instant!”

  “All right, chuckles, keep your hair on. I can see when I’m not wanted.”

  “Hardly, Nell,” Will said, smiling. He watched her leave, grousing at the hapless maitre d’ every step of the way. When she was gone, he looked around at the interior of his club. Mausoleum! He’d never thought of the Union in quite that way before, but Nellie had a point. Two elderly men shuffled by in dinner jackets, shouting at one another because they were both hard of hearing. Am I going to be here when I’m seventy? he wondered. Creaking around, gumming my dinner, haunting the place like some ghostly old fart?

  He glanced at the other men around him – friends and colleagues – as they clustered by the bar or moved into the dining room. They spent their evenings here, not at their homes. Because there was no reason to. There was no love, no passion in their marriages, no warmth in their beds. He knew this; there had been none in his, either. They gave their hearts to their businesses, not their wives; that’s why they were all so damned rich.

  If it was that sort of arrangement he wanted, Will knew he could easily have it. His sister and his late wife’s friends had taken it upon themselves to matchmake. If he went along with their designs, he�
�d find himself married to the same sort of woman his wife had been – socially eminent, old money, well-bred – with the same dull, unsatisfying marriage he’d had. His new wife would be his social equal. A partner. At best, a friend. She’d endure his sexual demands uncomplainingly, as Anna had, but she’d never demonstrate an ounce of desire or pleasure, because it wasn’t proper. Sex was coarse and vulgar and only for making children. If he wanted a romp with a woman who enjoyed lovemaking, he’d take up with a mistress, as he had done many times in the past. He and his wife would have separate lives, separate bedrooms.

  But, by God, if Fiona were his, he wouldn’t stay in a separate bedroom. He’d make love to her every night, then fall asleep beside her, breathing in the sweet smell of her. He’d kiss her awake every morning and watch the life come back into those amazing eyes, watch her face crinkle into a broad, beautiful smile just for him. What would that be like? he wondered. To spend your life with a woman you were madly, passionately in love with? He’d never known. He was forty-five years old and he had never known what it was like to be in love. But he did now. Nothing, no one had ever touched his heart as she had.

  The door to the bar opened again and Will saw Carnegie and Frick walk through it, their long robber-baron faces somber enough to knock the romance out of Cupid. And suddenly he had no wish to discuss subways.

  “Robert, would you do it again?” he had asked his brother. A week ago. In this very room.

  “Do what?”

  “Ask Elizabeth to marry you. Even though … I mean, with all that happened.”

  “Even though she died?” Robert said gently. “Even though the love I felt for her seems to have ruined me for any other woman? Yes, I would. Without hesitation.” Then he’d leaned forward and covered Will’s hand with his own, a rare gesture between them. “You’ve followed your head your entire life, Will. It’s time to follow your heart. You deserve that. At least once in your life. Everybody does.”

  Chapter 34

  Fiona, hands on her hips, stared at the mountain of wooden chests piling up on the sidewalk. A deliveryman handed her a piece of paper. She read it and signed it. Then she closed her eyes and inhaled. She could smell it, even through the lead-lined wood. Tea. Warm, rich, and beguiling. There was nothing like it.