I didn’t see how his doctor wouldn’t have caught it either, but before I could probe it further, I saw a black car pull to the front of the house. The Danas’ car. Had David come to visit?
I quickly finger-combed the loose waves that tangled over my shoulders and tried to adjust my dress so that it looked less like I’d been crumpled up in a chair all day. I set down the book and then picked it up again. A servant walked out onto the terrace with another silver platter—this time with an envelope—and then I heard the car start and drive away. I slumped back in my chair.
The servant approached me. “Mr. Dana came by to hand deliver this to Miss Landry.”
My mother’s mouth hung open. I took the envelope off the tray and politely excused myself, not wanting her to see whatever was inside, a knot weaving itself in my chest as I walked across the terrace and into the house. I ran up the stairs to the fourth floor, trying to convince myself it wasn’t anything important and trying not to dwell on the fact that David didn’t come find me to give it to me himself. Was he still angry about what I’d said last week?
I opened the envelope with trembling fingers in the privacy of the observatory, surrounded by glass and sunshine. It was an invitation to a ball. A ball in his honor.
Because, in less than six weeks, he was leaving.
In all my ruminating about his strange act of kindness, in all my obsessing over his strange questions and mood swings, I hadn’t given much thought to him leaving. Even though he had referenced it in the car, even though I had known since he arrived that his visit was a temporary stop on his way to the mountain forts, it had just seemed inconceivable that he could really, actually leave before I had a chance to untangle my impressions of him.
The next day did nothing to alleviate the confusion that pulled at me.
“David has asked Cara to be his partner at the ball,” Mother said over breakfast.
My stomach tensed, and I had the sudden, stupid urge to cry.
“I have heard they are combining his going-away ball with Cara’s debut.” The bitterness in her voice was unmistakable.
“Maybe he’s just taken pity on her because her prospects are slimmer since her attack,” Father suggested.
“Oh, I do not think her prospects are dimmed at all,” my great-aunt Lacey said in a chirping voice as she used silver tongs to load more toast on her plate. She was a rare breakfast guest, but she was planning on going shopping with Mother later, and so she’d invited herself over for food and gossip. She talked and ate as much as three great-aunts. “I hear all sorts of boys are asking her to dances, and Addison says that she expects Cara will have an offer within a month of her debut.”
“Well, I heard Addison saying that come hell or high water, Cara would make a good match, and if you knew Addison like I do, you would not doubt it,” Mother said.
“My dear niece, I do know Addison like you do, and believe me, I do not doubt it!”
My father took a drink of coffee. “That is unfortunate about David,” he said, looking at me.
I shrugged. “I don’t care,” I told them. “He and Cara deserve each other.”
“Unfortunate,” Father repeated. “Because David could have brought a considerable sum to the estate.”
I bit my lip. When I was little, my father had often twirled me out on the lawn. I wondered if now all he could see in me was a way to ransom his land. To carry on the Landry line.
“At any rate, he will be in town a couple weeks after the ball.” Mother pointed a finger at me. “A debut isn’t necessarily a proposal. You will still have time to make an impression before he leaves.”
“I don’t care,” I said again.
Father, having clearly decided that the conversation was over, picked up his tablet and stylus. Outside, another laborer was at work on the stone, trying to bleach the vandalized portion back to its original smoky gray.
• • •
The Westoffs emptied their coffers for Cara’s debut. Invitations edged with gold lace and hand-penned in gold ink were sent out to every family in the city, regardless of whether they had received David’s first invitation or not. Rumors of smuggled cherry trees, aged wine, and European seamstresses began to float around at tea parties and dinners. In just a few short weeks, Kansas City would see the most lavish debut in its history.
And in just a few short weeks, David Dana would leave.
I hid from the usual summer parties—barge trips atop the muddy Missouri and picnics on the surrounding river bluffs. I wouldn’t have been able to bear watching David and Cara together, laughing and kissing, the couple that the city had its eyes on. No matter how many times I told myself I didn’t care, that I only cared about his connection to the Rootless, and that it was inevitable that he singled out Cara from the very beginning, it still stung. I still had to force myself to remember to breathe when I thought of his blue eyes and his quick laugh.
Addison taxed my mother with her gloating, making sure to anguish over every minute detail of the party, fawning over the idea of David as her future son-in-law. After two days of this, servants packed several suitcases and Mother went on an impromptu retreat to some mineral springs north of the city.
This meant that I no longer had to spend my meals listening to her grieved denouncements of the selfish Westoffs, or long and venomous outbursts where she ranted about Christine and her whorehound son. But even her grating rants couldn’t penetrate my misery. My thoughts chased themselves in constant circles.
I want him to go.
I want him to stay.
I don’t care about him.
I can’t stop thinking about him.
Before she’d left, Mother had commissioned a seamstress for me and had taken the liberty of choosing the fabric and style of dress that I would wear to Cara’s debut. Silver to match my eyes and set off my pale skin. The seamstress pinned the pieces on me in silence, needles pressed between her lips.
I looked in the mirror. On my pale frame, the silver was drab and gray with no shimmer or depth. Rather than highlighting my hair, it simply forced the dark circles under my eyes and my pale lips into prominence.
A sharp clicking sound brought me out of my daze. Christine Dana stepped into the room, looking light and fresh in a suit and heels. Married women occasionally wore pantsuits or skirted suits since they weren’t worried about snagging a husband. But far from looking like a woman on the shelf, Christine managed to make the tailored lines look sensual and chic.
“Madeline, darling,” she greeted, taking my elbows into her hands and kissing me on the cheek. “I was hoping I would catch your mother. Is she here?”
She had eyes identical to David’s. I couldn’t find my voice to greet her back.
She waved a hand. “No matter. I am sure your father will entertain me. He is so accommodating that way.” Then she caught sight of my face. “Are you quite all right, Madeline? You look so pale.”
I nodded.
She paused, then took a seat on the seamstress’s stool, earning a mordant glare from the woman, who was about to sit down. Christine paid her no attention, and pulled a cigarette from her purse. She offered me one, but I declined. The spicy scent told me it was opium laced, like the kind my father preferred.
She sat for a moment, wreathed in smoke, and then asked, “When do you think you will debut, darling? Soon?”
“No,” I said. My voice was rough from not talking. I cleared my throat. “No, I do not think anyone will ask me soon.”
She gazed at her cigarette. “When I was your age, I was in love with the man I was sure I would marry.” Her voice was distant. “But he asked another girl to debut and eventually proposed to her, and I ended up in Virginia with my aunt. But if I had not gone there, desperate and heartbroken, then I never would have met Admiral Dana, David’s father. We were very happy for many years, until he died.” Her bright eyes pierced mine through the smoke. “Do you see what I am saying?”
“Am I that obvious?” I whispered. I don’t
know why I asked, or why I felt like I wanted to hear her answer, but she had taken more interest in my feelings in the past ten minutes than my mother had all spring and summer, and I wanted to believe that underneath the glamour, underneath the sharp face and equally sharp self-assurance, was someone compassionate. Empathetic.
She stood and snapped her clutch closed. “If I had my way, Madeline, we would be putting my grandmother’s tiara in your hair tomorrow and supervising flower arrangements downstairs. After the way David has spoken of you . . . well, I was surprised that he chose Cara, is all. Take heart, dear,” she said, and kissed me on the cheek. I watched her leave, fiddling with the pins on my dress and trying not to think of David. Her cigarette still smoldered in the ashtray.
• • •
“We’re here,” the driver announced.
The car rolled to a stop, and the Westoffs’ footman stepped forward to open the door. He helped my mother out of the limo and caught her as she stumbled, tripping over her dress. She’d been sipping sake mixed with plum wine since we woke at dawn to get ready.
My father sighed impatiently and climbed out. “Compose yourself, Olivia.”
Her eyes flashed but she said nothing. The footman’s face stayed studiously blank.
Father held out a hand to me as I tried to pull myself and the expansive rustling dress out of the car. After twelve or more hours of mineral soaks, lotion treatments, hair, and makeup—all so I could hold my own with the radiant Cara—my body felt too weak and drained to even walk. I wobbled a little on the smooth flagstones of the entry walk, knees like jelly.
Father examined my face. “Are you anxious about the ball?”
“I just want tonight to be over,” I told him.
“You and me both.” He touched my cheek, his face softening. “Sometimes I forget how much my daughter you are.”
I smiled at him. At least I would have one pleasant moment from tonight to tuck away.
The gold clock clanged grandly above his head, the chimes echoing across the grounds, and two footmen appeared from the shadows to open the doors for us. Father ushered us in.
Tonight, as was tradition, the debutante’s favorite flowers were in abundance. Pink roses hung in garlands above doorways, nestled in bunches on the dinner tables, and made halos and wreaths around every statue, pillar, and banister. The smell permeated the air, making an almost palpable miasma. I felt the fingers of a headache begin to creep over my temples.
Addison and her husband stood in the foyer greeting guests. I merely shuffled by, uttering the barest of hellos, before squeezing into the front hall, packed with guests waiting to enter the ballroom. I craned my neck, trying to peer around the people crowding the hall, wanting both to see David and to be reassured he was nowhere in sight.
“David is upstairs waiting with Cara,” Mother mentioned. She was holding a fresh glass of plum wine. “That is the tradition, you know, to come down together. Your father stayed in my room with me for the entire night and day before.”
“He spent the night with you?” I asked, before I could help it.
“Yes,” she answered, looking past me at something else.
I turned to see what she saw—Father and Christine Dana talking together, laughing. He leaned over to say something in her ear and she put a hand to her chest, blue eyes cast to the floor.
My mind went back to David and Cara. “You don’t think David and Cara spent the night together, do you?”
“Of course,” Mother snapped. “Cara knows what she’s doing, and she—”
Christine’s laugh carried across the room. I looked over to see my father’s hand lingering on her waist as they strolled toward the ballroom. “Excuse me,” Mother whispered, and pushed past to catch up with them.
I felt so sick. All those flowers. I needed some fresh air.
I pushed past everyone to a door hidden behind a painting of a water nymph. Checking to make sure no one would witness my escape, I opened the door and slid into the space behind the painting, having to wrestle with the skirt and train of my dress to close the door again.
Faint lights lined the dark hallway of the south wing, shut down for the summer season. I stepped forward quickly, silk slippers silent on the marble, grateful to leave the din of the ball behind me. I used to hide from Cara in this wing when we were little girls, and I knew every closet, trapdoor, and ground-level window. I opened the seventh door on the right to get to the winter library.
Expecting it to be dark and abandoned, I started when I saw a man sitting on the wicker divan, reading. Evening light slanted through the windows and reflected off his silky curls.
“Jamie! You scared me!”
He came over and kissed my cheek. “Apologies. I’ve been at the hospital all day, and I needed some peace before I spent the evening telling everyone for the hundredth time how grateful I am to Arthur Lawrence.”
“No need to apologize.” I sat in one of the low chairs, trying to breathe in my punishing corset. The stiff layers of tulle under my dress made a wall around me. I pushed fruitlessly down at them. “I needed to get away, too.”
Jamie cocked his head at me. “Jealous of Cara?”
“No,” I said automatically, then remembered I was talking to a friend. I put my hands over my face. “Yes,” I said through my fingers.
Jamie came and sat next to me, skinny legs crossed, his too-short pants exposing his socks. “And this doesn’t have anything to do with David Dana?”
I lowered my hands. “I’m just as ridiculous as all the girls we used to make fun of,” I mumbled.
“You are not ridiculous,” Jamie said, patting my hand. “We made fun of the people who were chasing after marriage and money for marriage and money’s sake. You genuinely like David. That’s different.”
“Is it? Not that it makes any difference now,” I said bitterly. “I should have realized how I felt earlier, not after he asked another girl to debut. I kept telling myself I didn’t care about him, that I thought he was arrogant and fake.”
“He certainly acts that way, doesn’t he?” Jamie mused. “They could not have built a better gentry boy in a laboratory.”
“It doesn’t matter. I can’t compete with Cara. I couldn’t when we were little and I can’t even after she is covered in bruises and scratches.”
Jamie tensed.
“What?”
“Nothing. It’s . . . nothing.”
I turned to look at him. “What is it? Is it about Cara’s attack?” When he didn’t answer right away, I knew I was right. “Jamie, please tell me. I’ve been trying to figure this out for almost six weeks, and I have nothing to go on.”
He fidgeted. “I overheard Philip Wilder at the country club the other day. Something about putting Cara in her place.”
“What?” I got to my feet, mind racing, replaying his mocking behavior at the Lawrences’ last month. “He wasn’t with Marianne when her family escorted her into the ballroom . . . he must have been out in the grove with Cara.”
Jamie raised his hands. “I didn’t hear much, and hearsay is not proof. I just heard him laughing to his friends about meeting Cara the night of the debut. He said, ‘she deserved it, and I’d do it again.’ Then he and his friends called her names a gentleman should not repeat.”
“It makes sense,” I said. “He attacked her, but Cara knew she couldn’t accuse him, not when she would have to admit to agreeing to meet him privately at the Wilders’ and risk creating a new scandal. So she accused the Rootless, knowing the police wouldn’t bother to prove otherwise.”
“Even if Philip did attack her—which we can’t prove—how do you explain the abandoned Rootless bag on the scene? It’s not worth one of the Rootless’s lives to leave an expired charge on gentry property. The punishment for willingly exposing a non-Rootless to radiation is torture and death, and then imprisonment of one’s family.”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But I’m going to find Philip and force the truth out of him.”
Jamie looked worried. “Don’t get yourself into trouble. Especially now that the Rootless have marked your house. Do you think that anything you do will change your father’s mind and stop his campaign of discipline?”
“Do you really think it’s that pointless?” I asked.
“Will it even make a difference to the Rootless?” Jamie asked. “If you manage to prove that they didn’t attack Cara, but the gentry still punish them for the vandalism and for the minor arsons and for the robberies at the ration station—do you think they’ll stand up and thank you?” He shook his head. “I work with them every day, and while I genuinely pity their suffering, I also see that your father has made them too angry and too desperate to react in a civilized manner.”
I nodded to be polite and to stave off another argument, but I wasn’t convinced. Not in the least.
The brassy blare of horns interrupted our conversation. Jamie offered an arm, and we left the library and the winter wing, closing the door behind us and entering the rose-strewn hall.
Now that everyone had moved to the ballroom for the grand entrance, the hall was mostly devoid of life. A few harried-looking servants tended to the buffet tables and to the marble floor, littered with crushed pink petals and fallen beads. No one noticed us creeping into the ballroom—their eyes were ahead on the staircase, where David and Cara were making their first appearance of the night.
I scanned the room for Philip Wilder, but as soon as I saw the debut couple, I could focus on nothing else.
I saw Cara first, the deep pink of her silk dress catching every ray of light, making her shimmer and glow. Fresh pink roses were set in her hair, and she carried a small nosegay in a silver holder. Murmurs rumbled through the crowd—look at her dress, look at her—but after glancing at Cara once, I only had eyes for David.
He walked easily down the stairs, one arm supporting Cara, the other swinging at his side. Amusement lit the corners of his mouth and eyes. He was happy. He wanted to be here. He wasn’t just after Cara for her family’s influence or her non-debt-ridden estate.
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