An Embarrassment of Riches

by Margaret Pemberton

  ‘It doesn’t matter what he’s done,’ he said with such fierceness that her eyes flew wide with shock. ‘He’ll always be doing things that hurt and half-destroy you. It’s in his nature. He can no more help doing it than I can help breathing.’

  ‘You’re wrong, Kieron,’ she began, but her voice lacked conviction. Wasn’t it what she herself had thought when she had walked out of the hotel and into the avenue, blinded by tears?

  His hands slid up her arms and grasped hold of her shoulders.

  ‘Listen to me, sweetheart. Listen to me carefully. I love you. I love you in a way very different from the way you have always assumed I do. I don’t just love you as a brother or as a best friend. I love you in the way that your husband ought to love you. I should have asked you to marry me when we sat together on the paddock-fence at Ballacharmish. Heaven knows, I came close enough to doing it and heaven knows how bitterly I’ve regretted not doing so.’

  ‘Kieron … please …’

  ‘And if I had asked you, you would have said yes, wouldn’t you?’ he said, his hands tightening their hold of her as he rode rough-shod over her protests. ‘You would have said yes, because you feel exactly the same way about me as I do about you. We were meant to be together, élainn. We come from the same roots, we understand each other in a way no-one else can ever understand us.’

  ‘I’m married, Kieron,’ she said thickly. ‘You shouldn’t be saying these things to me. We shouldn’t be having this conversation …’

  ‘We’ll go to the Bishop of New York. We’ll explain to him the circumstances of your marriage. We’ll ask for him to write to the Vatican and we’ll have your marriage annulled. I’ll ask Henry if he will loan me enough to buy a ranch out West and we’ll begin a whole new life together. We’ll take Felix and Natalie with us and …’

  ‘Alexander would never let me take them. Never.’ Her mouth was dry, her heart hammering as if she had been in a race. Insanely, incredibly, she was responding to him as if he were speaking sense. As if the whole thing was possible.

  Kieron’s eyes burned into hers. ‘He would. You’ve said yourself that the only child he cares for is Stasha. And if he did still want to see Felix and Natalie he’s got enough money to be able to travel West any time that he chooses. We can do it, Maura. We can walk away from this hellhole of a city and start a new life together. A life we should have started together two years ago.’

  The urgency and certainty in his voice was such that if he hadn’t been grasping tight hold of her shoulders she would have stumbled. So much of what he said was true. They were right for each other in nearly every way. She knew exactly what their life would be like, out West. In her mind’s eye she could see the ranch and the horses, the white picket fencing.

  ‘No,’ she said, the hurt she knew she was causing him almost crippling her. ‘No. I can’t.’

  ‘You can, Maura!’

  In the muted autumn light his tumbled tightly curled hair and wide-spaced eyes gave him the look of a Medici princeling. She wondered why she had never been aware of the similarity before, or of the dangerousness of their close friendship.

  She shook her head, a stray curl escaping from beneath her hat. As it tumbled softly against her cheek, she said again, unequivocally, ‘No, I can’t, Kieron. I can’t, because I’m still in love with Alexander.’

  It was as if she had slapped him with all her might across his face. He let go of her shoulders, his eyes dark with disbelieving shock.

  ‘I know it doesn’t make sense, not after all that has happened. But it’s true. I can’t help it.’

  ‘And the Brevoort woman?’

  ‘He doesn’t love her,’ she said, keeping pain from her voice with great difficulty. ‘He loves Genevre.’

  Kieron breathed in deeply, his nostrils white and pinched. He had laid his cards on the table and there had been a moment when he had thought that they had come up trumps. They hadn’t. All he had done was to make their friendship well nigh untenable.

  Reading his mind, she said awkwardly: ‘We can still be friends, Kieron. I can’t imagine life without you being my friend.’

  In the distance they could hear a steamship making its way slowly up river from the bay. Inconsequentially he wondered if it had sailed from Ireland.

  ‘Then we’ll still be friends, élainn,’ he said, his voice raw with regret. ‘And when the day comes that you want us to be more than just friends, I’ll be ready and waiting for you, no matter how far in the future that day might be.’

  She never told Isabel of what had passed between herself and Kieron. Their friendship continued as she had hoped it would, but there was a new constraint between them. When he told her after Christmas that Henry had agreed to finance him in a ranch, she was well aware of his silent invitation. When he moved West, so could she. If she wanted to.

  In February he travelled to Kansas to look at likely property and at Easter Frederick Lansdowne asked her if she, too, would make a trip and look at some property.

  ‘Washington is a relatively newly built city,’ he said to her as they discussed Citizens’Association business. ‘I’d like you to visit it in company with another lady committee member and make a report on the working-class housing you find there. There may be lessons we can learn and whatever your conclusions, they are bound to be of interest.’

  ‘I’m going to go with Augusta Astor,’ she said to Isabel at the beginning of May when arrangements had finally been made. ‘I shall be away for at least a week, possibly two …’

  ‘If you’re away for two weeks, then we’re not going to see each other again for an age. I leave in ten days’ time for my visit to Bessie Schermerhorn’s summer home.’

  ‘Then I’ll try and get back before you leave.’

  She had forgotten all about Isabel’s long-standing invitation to the Schermerhorn Hudson Valley mansion. The invitation had also been extended to herself, but she had not accepted it. The Hudson Valley would have been too full of memories of Tarna.

  She knew, without the subject even being mentioned, that there would be no visit to Tarna for her that year. Alexander had bought himself a new million-dollar toy. A steam-yacht that he had named Jezebel. He intended sailing down to Florida in it and, in his absence, he had arranged that Stasha and his nanny would vacation at Tarna.

  It seemed incredible to her that she had still not seen his son by Genevre. Alexander never brought him to the Fifth Avenue house and she had never again visited the Fifth Avenue Hotel.

  ‘But aren’t you curious?’ Isabel said to her whenever their conversation touched on him.

  She was curious. But, as Alexander obviously thought that any contact between herself and Stasha would not be in Stasha’s best

  interest, she had no intention of indulging her curiosity.

  ‘It’s perhaps a good thing you’re leaving on the fifteenth,’ Henry said to her when she told him of her plans. ‘At least you won’t be embroiled in the hoo-ha of the race.’

  ‘What race?’ Maura asked affectionately.

  Henry’s silvered eyebrows rose in surprise. ‘You haven’t heard? Alexander hasn’t told you?’

  ‘We’re barely on speaking terms,’ she reminded him drily. ‘What horse is he running? Is he running one of Desert Sheik’s fillies?’

  ‘He’s not running a horse at all,’ Henry said in the tones of a man who had long since given up all patience. ‘He’s racing the Rosetta up the Hudson against Willie Rhinelander’s New Dawn.’

  ‘It’s all Willie’s fault,’ Charlie said to her as he sprawled on a hammock in the garden. ‘He was shooting his mouth off all over town about the way his new boat could outpace everything else on the river, including the Rosetta. Naturally Alexander had to make some kind of a response.’

  ‘But it’s all over the Herald,’ Maura protested exasperatedly. ‘August Belmont is bringing a party over from Europe in order to sail aboard the New Dawn and Leonard Jerome is promising to pack the Rosetta to the seams with opera-singers a
nd show-girls.’

  ‘I know,’ Charlie said with relish. ‘It’s going to be a hell of a day. Everyone who is anyone is going to be aboard one boat or the other. The money being betted on the outcome is phenomenal. Henry says he’s seen nothing like it.’

  … and so I thought this would be a good opportunity for Stasha and Felix to become acquainted. They’ll both need their nurses with them of course, but they’re old enough now to be able to enjoy a day such as this. There are going to be fireworks and bands and …

  Maura threw Alexander’s letter into the waste-basket without even finishing reading it.

  ‘And no doubt Ariadne will be there,’ she said furiously to Isabel. ‘Willie is her brother so she is bound to be aboard the New Dawn. How on earth can Alexander think I would even consider allowing Felix to be present at a public social spectacle where his mistress is going to be present, too? And Felix is only two and a half years old, for goodness’sake. What if the boats collided? What if they sank?’

  Exasperated beyond belief she wrote a short and very sharp note back to him, saying that the occasion was entirely unsuitable for a child and that not only would she not allow him to take Felix aboard the Rosetta, but that she thought his taking Stasha was sheer insanity.

  ‘I’m just vastly relieved that I’m going to be out of the city,’ she said to Isabel when an invitation to the Winners Ball, to be held on the evening of the race, was sent to her from Caroline Astor. ‘How can Caroline Astor even imagine that I would accept? She must be aware of the Rhinelander/Brevoort connection?’

  ‘It’s a great pity,’ Isabel said regretfully, putting her own engraved invitation card back into its envelope. ‘It sounds as if the ball is going to be such fun. Charlie told me that Mrs Astor was having an artificial lake installed in her ballroom and that the orchestra would be on a small island in the centre and that there would be swans on the water.’

  At the thought of Caroline Astor’s excesses Maura’s exasperation turned to amusement.

  ‘It’s a miracle to me how two brothers could have married two such different women,’ she said, not noticing how crestfallen Isabel had looked as she had laid her invitation card and envelope to one side. ‘What Augusta’s comments on the lake are going to be I can’t begin to imagine.’

  Two days later she and Augusta set off for Washington accompanied by two maids, two secretaries and Frederick Lansdowne’s aunt.

  Isabel watched their entourage depart for the train depot and the private Karolyis train awaiting them, with a slight feeling of nervousness.

  Although she had crossed the Atlantic on her own, she had never done anything else of moment on her own and now, until the day when she left with Bessie for the Hudson Valley or until the day Maura returned, both Natalie and Felix were in her care.

  ‘You don’t have to worry about anything,’ Maura had said to her reassuringly. ‘Caitlin and Bridget have everything under control and if I do come back a day or so after you have left for the Hudson Valley, they will be perfectly able to cope.’

  Both Henry and Charlie called on her and gave her the reassurance of their companionship and on the morning of the race, Alexander swept into the house.

  ‘Come on!’ he exhorted as he strode in on her in the Chinese drawing-room. ‘I thought you would be ready and waiting by this time. Where’s Felix and the O’Farrell girl?’

  Isabel felt her cheeks flushing. She had been in his company many a time with Maura but never before on her own and she was acutely aware of his almost overpowering attractiveness.

  ‘I’m sorry, Alexander, I don’t understand. Why should I be ready and waiting? And why were you expecting Felix and his nurse to be downstairs?’

  Alexander flashed her a smile that had her blushing more deeply than ever.

  ‘You can’t possibly not know what today is, Isabel. All the state knows and half the population of the city is down at the pier waiting to wave the Rosetta and the New Dawn off. The race itself isn’t to start until we reach Yonkers and it’s to finish at Albany. Now where the devil is Felix? The world and his brother are aboard the Rosetta waiting for us.’

  Isabel clasped her hands tightly together. ‘He isn’t to go, Alexander. Maura said so specifically. I know that she wrote to you and …’

  ‘She wrote me a ridiculous letter and I am very sensibly taking no notice of it,’ Alexander said dismissively. ‘Now get your parasol and gloves and I’ll have Felix brought down immediately.’ He crossed purposefully to the bell-rope and yanked it hard.

  ‘I can’t, Alexander, Maura said …’

  He turned away from the bell-rope, no longer smiling but frowning. ‘Isabel, listen to me. Felix is my son and if I wish to take him out for the day, I will do so.’

  ‘It wasn’t your taking him out for the day that Maura objected to,’ Isabel said bravely. ‘It was your taking him out with Stasha.’

  He stared at her. This time it was his turn not to understand. ‘I don’t believe you,’ he said at last, running his hand through his hair. ‘Maura would object to a certain other person, but never to Stasha. There was a time when she thought it would be all to the good if Felix and Stasha grew up close friends.’

  Isabel clasped her hands even tighter. It had never occurred to her that she would ever have the opportunity of talking to Alexander about his relationship with Maura, but she had the opportunity now and she was determined, for Maura’s sake, to make the most of it.

  ‘That was when she thought Felix and Stasha would be being brought up together,’ she said as inoffensively as possible. ‘When she thought that Stasha would be in her care. It hurts her very deeply that you consider any contact between the two of them would be detrimental to Stasha’s future social life.’

  If she had grown two heads he couldn’t have stared at her with any greater incredulity.

  ‘That I believe what?’ he demanded, forgetting all about Felix, forgetting all about time.

  Isabel regarded him uncertainly. He really did seem not to know what she was talking about. She said explainingly, ‘You have never brought Stasha to the house. You have never suggested that he and Maura meet. Maura believes that …’

  ‘I’ve never brought Stasha here out of respect for her!’ Alexander expostulated. ‘I didn’t think she would allow Stasha over the threshold and …’

  Isabel was so incensed by his allegation that she forgot all about being shy with him. ‘A child?’ she flared back at him. ‘You seriously believe that Maura would resent a child? Any child?’

  ‘She resents my having bequeathed Tarna to him,’ Alexander responded tartly.

  The footman who had entered the room in answer to Alexander’s summons cleared his throat.

  Alexander looked towards him. ‘I want my son and his nurse brought down here, wearing outdoor clothes, immediately.’

  ‘Her resenting that is perfectly logical,’ Isabel continued, undeterred. ‘And as you have also told her that her Irishness and the Irishness of Felix’s nursery-maids is going to be a handicap to Felix, it’s obvious that she also believes you haven’t introduced her to Stasha because you think if you did so, any relationship they might form would only be a handicap to him as well.’

  ‘This is the most ridiculous conversation I’ve ever taken part in! Of course I don’t think Maura would be a handicap to Stasha …’

  ‘Then why did you say that her Irishness would be a handicap to Felix?’

  ‘Because it very probably will be,’ Alexander snapped, cornered. ‘But I’ll be damned to hell before I stand accused of never introducing her to Stasha for the same reason. It never entered my head.’

  There was a ring of truth in his words. Isabel said slowly, ‘Perhaps it would be a good idea if you were to tell Maura that, Alexander.’

  The doors opened and Bridget and Felix entered.

  ‘I will,’ Alexander said, ‘when I explain to her about taking Felix aboard the Rosetta. Now are you coming or are you not, Isabel? It’s going to be great fun. Even B
essie Schermerhorn is aboard.’

  Even looking back on that moment weeks later, Isabel did not see how she could have refused. She couldn’t possibly have forbidden Alexander to take his son out for the day and it was surely more responsible of her to accompany Felix and Bridget than to remain behind at home. And she wanted to go. The newspapers had been full of speculation about the event for weeks. Everyone in society was going, even the elderly and infirm, such as Bessie.

  ‘I’m coming,’ she said, following him from the room untroubled by even the faintest premonition of disaster.

  That it was going to be a disaster was obvious within minutes of the Rosetta leaving her East River pier. It had never occurred to Isabel that Ariadne Brevoort would be aboard the Rosetta. Maura herself had said that Ariadne would be aboard the New Dawn.

  She wasn’t. She was on the Rosetta’s bridge and holding her hand was a chubby-legged, dark-haired toddler who could only be Stasha.

  ‘Don’t go near that woman!’ Isabel whispered fiercely to Bridget, but it was hopeless.

  Alexander was very obviously going to take up a focal position on the bridge. And Felix wanted to be with him.

  ‘Why, what a delightful surprise,’ Ariadne said without the least trace of embarrassment as Isabel was obliged to follow Alexander and Felix into her presence. ‘I thought you had said that you were unable to sail with us today, Lady Dalziel?’

  ‘I’m merely here to help Felix’s nurse keep an eye on him,’ Isabel responded with freezing politeness.

  For the first time she was beginning to see what Maura meant when she accused Alexander of being almost criminally feckless. He must have known Ariadne was aboard the Rosetta and yet he hadn’t had the decency to warn her of the fact. Nor was he available now in order that she could tell him exactly what she thought of him. He was in deep conversation with his captain, ignoring not only her, but Ariadne as well.

  Ariadne was apparently uncaring. Her broad-brimmed straw hat, almost drowning in artificial flowers, was secured against the river breezes by silk ribbons tied in a bow beneath her chin. Her gown was of eau-de-Nil silk and her Indian shawl was a riot of delicate pinks.