The Luxe

by Anna Godbersen

  “I’ve already danced so many dances tonight,” Elizabeth offered her mother.

  “Perhaps,” she replied. “But you know how very happy it would make me if one of your partners were to propose marriage to you.”

  Elizabeth tried to laugh to disguise the despair that comment raised in her. “Well, you are lucky I’m still so young, and we have years before I even have to begin picking one of them.”

  “Oh, no.” Mrs. Holland’s eyes darted around the main ballroom. It was dizzying, with its frosted glass dome ceiling, frescoed walls, and gilt mirrors, situated as it was at the center of a warren of smaller but equally busy and decadent rooms. Great potted palm trees were set up in a ring close to the walls, shielding the ladies at the room’s edge from the frenetic dancers gliding across the tessellated marble floor. There appeared to be four servants to every guest, which seemed ostentatious even to a girl who had spent the last two seasons learning to be a lady in the City of Light. “The one thing we do not have is time,” Mrs. Holland finished.

  Elizabeth felt a nerve tingle up her spine, but before she could prod her mother about what that meant, they were at the perimeter of the ballroom, close to where their friends and acquaintances waltzed, nodding hello to the lavishly outfitted couples gliding across the dance floor.

  They were the Hollands’ peers, only seventy or so families, only four hundred or so souls, dancing as though there would be no tomorrow. And indeed, tomorrow would probably pass them by while they slept under silken canopies, waking only to accept pitchers of ice water and shoo away the maid. There would be church, of course, but after an evening so glittering and epic, the worshipers would surely be few. They were a society whose chief vocations were to entertain and be entertained, punctuated occasionally by the reinvestment of their vast fortunes in new and ever more lucrative prospects.

  “The last man to ask for you was Percival Coddington,” Mrs. Holland told Elizabeth as she positioned her daughter next to a gigantic rose-colored marble column. There were several such columns in the room, and Elizabeth felt sure that they were meant to impress as much as to support. The Hayes family, in building their new home, seemed to have seized on every little architectural feature as an opportunity for grandeur. “Mr. Coddington inherited his father’s entire estate this past summer,” her mother went on, “as you well know.”

  Elizabeth sighed. The warm thought of the one boy she knew would not be at the Hayeses’ costume ball that evening could not have made the looming prospect of Percival Coddington any less appealing. She had known Percival since they were children, when he was the kind of boy who avoided human contact in favor of intentionally harming small animals. He had grown into a man of welling pores and frequent snorts and was known as an obsessive collector of anthropological artifacts, although he himself was too weak-stomached ever to travel on an explorer’s ship.

  “Stop,” scolded her mother. Elizabeth blinked. She hadn’t thought she’d betrayed any emotion. “You would not be so complaining if your father were here.”

  The mention of Mr. Holland caused Elizabeth’s eyes to well, and she felt herself softening to her mother’s cause.

  “I’m sorry,” Elizabeth answered, trying to keep her voice level. She felt the dryness in her throat that always preceded tears and willed them away. “It’s just that I wonder if the accomplished Mr. Coddington will even remember me when I have been so long away.”

  Mrs. Holland sniffed as the Misses Wetmore, who were one and three years older than Elizabeth, passed. “Of course he remembers you. Especially when the alternative is girls like them. They look as if they were dressed by the circus,” Mrs. Holland commented coldly.

  Elizabeth was trying to think of something nice to say about Percival Coddington, and missed what her mother said next. Something about someone being vulgar. Just as her mother pronounced the word, Elizabeth noticed her friend Penelope Hayes on the second-floor mezzanine. Penelope was wearing a ruffled, poppy-colored gown with a low bodice, and Elizabeth couldn’t help but feel a little proud to see her friend looking so stunning.

  “I shouldn’t even have dignified this ball with my presence,” Mrs. Holland went on. There was a time when she would not have so much as called on the upstart Hayes women, despite her husband’s having accepted a hunting invitation from Jackson Pelham Hayes once or twice, but society’s opinion had moved on without her and she had recently begun acknowledging them. “The papers will report that I condone this sort of tacky display, and you know what a headache that will give me.”

  “But you know it would have been a bigger scandal if we hadn’t come.” Elizabeth extended her long, slender neck and gave her friend up above a subtle, knowing smile. How she wished she were with her instead, laughing at the poor girl whose bad luck had forced her to dance with Percival Coddington. Penelope, gazing down, let one darkly made-up eyelid fall—her signature slow, smoldering wink—and Elizabeth knew that she was understood. “And anyway,” Elizabeth added, turning back to her mother, “you know you never read the papers.”

  “Right,” her mother agreed. “I don’t.” Then she jutted the one feature she shared with her daughter—a small, dimpled nub of a chin—as Elizabeth offered the subtlest shrug to her best friend on the mezzanine.

  They had become friends during that period in her early teens when Elizabeth was most interested in what it meant to be a young lady of fashion. Penelope had shared that interest, though she was ignorant of the rules of the society she so deeply wished to be a part of. Elizabeth, who was only just beginning to care about all those rules, had cultivated her as a friend anyway. She had quickly discovered that she liked being around Penelope—everything seemed sharper and fizzier in the company of the young Miss Hayes. And soon enough Penelope had become a deft player of society’s games; Elizabeth could think of no one better to have at her side during an evening’s entertainment.

  “Oh, look!” Mrs. Holland’s voice rang out sharply, bringing Elizabeth’s focus back to the ballroom floor. “Here is Mr. Coddington!”

  Elizabeth put on a smile and turned to the inevitable fact of Percival Coddington. He attempted a bowlike gesture, his glance darting across the low-cut square of her bodice. Her heart sank as she realized that he was dressed as a shepherd, in green jodhpurs, rustic boots, and colorful suspenders. They matched. His hair was slicked back and long at the neck, and he breathed audibly through his mouth as Elizabeth waited for him to ask her to dance.

  A moment passed, and then her mother singsonged, “Well, Mr. Coddington, I have brought her to you.”

  “Thank you,” he coughed out. Elizabeth could feel his eyes lingering on her uncomfortably, but she kept herself upright and smiling. She was, by training, a lady. “Miss Holland, will you dance?”

  “Of course, Mr. Coddington.” She raised her hand so that he could take it. As his damp palm pulled her through the crowd of costumed dancers, she looked back to smile reassuringly at her mother. She could at least have the gratification of seeing her pleased.

  Instead, she saw her mother greeting two men. Elizabeth recognized the slender figure of Stanley Brennan first, who had been her father’s accountant, and then the imposing figure of William Sackhouse Schoonmaker, patriarch of the old Schoonmaker clan, who had made a second fortune in railroads. His only son, Henry, had dropped out of Harvard back in the spring, and since then the daughters of New York’s elite families had talked of nothing else. At least, the letters Elizabeth received from Agnes while she was in Paris were full of his name, and how all the girls were aching for him. He had a younger sister, Prudie, who was a year or two younger than Diana, though she wore only black and was rarely seen because she disliked crowds. Elizabeth’s impression of Henry Schoonmaker was still vague, though she had seen him and heard his name spoken often enough in their younger years, usually attached to some prank or other.

  Elizabeth’s partner must have sensed her thoughts going elsewhere, because he brought her attention back with a pointed comment. “Maybe
you wanted to stay in the drawing room with the ladies,” Percival said, bitterness surfacing in his voice.

  Elizabeth tried not to stumble on her partner’s poor footwork. “No, Mr. Coddington, I am just a little tired is all,” she told him, not entirely falsely. Her ship had missed its arrival date by three days; she had been home for less than twenty-four hours. She barely had her land legs yet, and here she was dancing. Her mother had insisted by letter that she not retain the services of her French maid, so she had been left to do her own hair and care for her clothing all by herself during the entire journey. Penelope had stopped by in the afternoon to teach her the new dance steps and to tell her how furious she would have been had the ship been any later and caused her best friend to be a no-show on one of the most important nights of her life. Then she’d gone on about some new secret beau, whose identity she would reveal to Elizabeth later, as soon as they had a moment alone. There were simply too many servants hovering during those pre-ball hours for the naming of names to be prudent. Penelope had seemed even more competitive about her looks and dress than usual—because of the boy and because the ball was the debut of her family’s new home, Elizabeth assumed. Also adding to Elizabeth’s strain, of course, was her mother’s odd behavior.

  Plus there had already been quadrilles, and dinner, and polite talk with several of her aunts and uncles. She had had to give the same account of her rocky transatlantic passage several times already. And just when Elizabeth had finally sat down with friends for a glass of champagne and a little talk about how absolutely stunning everything was, she had been forced back into the center of activity. To dance with Percival Coddington, of all people. But she kept smiling, of course. It was her habit.

  “Well, what are you thinking about, then?” Percival frowned and pressed his hand into her lower back. Elizabeth couldn’t think of anyone she would trust less to move her backward across a floor of exuberant, slightly tipsy people.

  “Uh…” Elizabeth started, realizing that she had been thinking that even the drawing room was not a total respite. Truthfully, she had been just a little bit relieved to leave Agnes, even though Agnes was such a loyal friend, because the leather-fringed dress she wore was ill-fitting and unflatteringly tight. Elizabeth had been distracted with pity during their entire conversation. Agnes seemed, especially next to her new glamorous Parisian friends, like an embarrassing remnant of childhood.

  She focused again on Percival’s animated, ugly face and tried to keep her feet going one, two, three across the floor. She thought about the evening thus far—all the hours of mindless chatter and carefully accepted compliments, all the studious attention to appearances. She recalled the calculated luxury of her time in Paris. What had she been doing, really doing, all this time? What had he—that boy she had been trying so hard to forget, indeed believed she had forgotten—been doing all that time she was away? She wondered if he had stopped caring for her. Already she could feel the stunning weight of a lifetime of regret for letting him go, and she knew that it was enough to bury her alive.

  All at once the room turned mute and violently bright. She closed her eyes and felt Percival Coddington’s hot breath on her ear asking if she felt all right. Her corset, which her maid, Lina, had practically sewed her into hours earlier, felt suddenly, horribly constricting. Her life, she realized, had all the charm of a steel trap.

  Then, as quickly as the panic had come, it went. Elizabeth opened her eyes. The sounds of joy and giddy indulgence came rushing back. She glanced up at the great domed ceiling glowing above them and reassured herself that it had not fallen.

  “Yes, Mr. Coddington, thank you for asking,” Elizabeth finally responded. “I’m not sure what came over me.”

  Two

  Cloakroom, one o’clock. Bring ciggies.

  —DH

  DIANA HOLLAND SAW HER MOTHER ASCEND THE twisting marble staircase on the far side of the ballroom, supported by some big older fellow whom she felt sure she knew. Their family friend and accountant, Stanley Brennan, trailed behind. Just before they moved out of view and toward some surely lavish second-story smoking room, Mrs. Holland looked back, caught Diana’s eye, and gave her an admonishing glance. Diana cursed herself for being spotted and then briefly considered staying in the great central ballroom to wait patiently for one of her cousins to ask her to dance. But patience was not in Diana Holland’s nature.

  Besides, she had been so proud of her cunning in writing the little invitation during a freshening-up in the ladies’ dressing room earlier in the evening. She’d then slipped it to the architect Webster Youngham’s assistant, who was stationed near the arched entryway in order to explain the many architectural references that had been incorporated into the Hayes family’s new home. She had pushed her way through the crowd, curtsied, clasped his hand, and palmed him the note. “You truly are an artist, Mr. Youngham,” she’d said, knowing full well that Mr. Youngham was already drunk on Madeira and lounging in one of the card rooms upstairs.

  “But I’m not Mr. Youngham,” he told her, looking adorably confused. As soon as she saw that look, Diana knew she’d hooked him. “I’m James Haverton, his assistant.”

  “Nevertheless.” She winked before disappearing back into the crowd. Haverton had broad shoulders and dreamy gray eyes, and even if he was just an assistant, he seemed like somebody who had gone places and done things. She hadn’t seen anyone nearly so nice-looking in the intervening hour.

  So Diana picked up her skirt and moved quickly between the enormous planters and the wall. She looked behind her once before leaving the ballroom to make sure no one was watching and then slipped into the cloakroom. It was massive and overly ornamented, Diana thought, especially for a room that was chiefly occupied by coats. It didn’t matter to them that the room was Moorish-themed, with a colorful mosaic floor and antiquities displayed in the turret-shaped alcoves carved from the walls.

  Diana looked around her, trying to locate her French lieutenant’s coat. She had come dressed as the heroine of her favorite novel, Trilby, who appears for the first time on a break from her job as an artist’s model in a petticoat and slippers and a soldier’s coat. Diana had not been allowed to wear a petticoat without a skirt, but she felt the thrill of having gotten away with something just wearing the rest of the costume at all. Her mother had even had a shepherdess costume made for her so that she would match her older sister, Elizabeth, which would have been hideous in addition to humiliating. Instead, here she was in a satisfyingly bohemian red-and-white striped skirt and a simple cotton bodice that she had ripped in a few places on the sly. No one got it, of course—all the other girls Diana’s age were conformists at heart and seemed to have dressed up as themselves, only with more powder and artificially narrowed waists.

  She was just beginning to wonder if one of the servants hadn’t mistaken her perfectly shabby gray coat for her own, when she was startled by one single clang from the clock in the corner. She gasped, surprised, and stepped backward—a little unsteadily after all the champagne she’d been sneaking—and when she did, she felt the chest of a man and a pair of hands on her hips. Her whole body flushed with adrenaline.

  “Oh, hello.” She tried to make her voice flat and indifferent, even though this was by far the most exciting thing that had happened to her all evening.

  “Hello.” Haverton’s mouth was very close to her ear.

  Diana turned slowly and met his eyes. “I hope you brought cigarettes,” she said, trying not to smile too much.

  Haverton had short, straight eyebrows set far apart, which made his eyes look open and earnest. “I didn’t think ladies of your class were allowed to smoke.”

  Diana affected a pout. “So you didn’t bring ciggies?”

  He paused, his eyes lingering on her in a way that made her feel not at all like a lady. “Oh no, I brought them. It’s just that I’m not sure whether I should give you one or not….” Diana noticed a little mischief shining in his eye, and concluded that it must be the glimmer of
a kindred spirit.

  “What do I have to do to convince you?” she asked, turning her head jauntily.

  “This is serious, what you are asking me to do,” he replied with an air of put-on gravity. Then he laughed. Diana liked the sound of it. “You’re pretty,” he told her, smiling unabashedly now.

  Diana and her sister could not have shared more physical characteristics and looked less alike. Like Elizabeth, she had the small features and round mouth of the Holland women, although she still had the softness of her baby fat. She liked to think that her dark hair added a certain mystery, although it was in truth a sort of medium brown, and untamable. Her eyes were always being described as vivid. And of course she and her sister had the same chin—their mother’s. She hated her chin. “Oh, I’m all right,” she answered him, glowing with false modesty.

  “Much better than all right.” He continued to observe her as he pulled a cigarette case out of his breast pocket. He lit one and handed it to her.

  Diana took a drag and tried not to cough. She loved smoking—or at least the idea of smoking—but it was hard to practice doing it right with her mother and the staff always watching her. She was pulling it off, though—at least she thought she was—exhaling little puffs into the air. It felt right, especially with all the metallic and turquoise detail in the room suggesting some hazy, far-off locale. She raised an eyebrow, wondering how Haverton was going to make his move. “So, if you’re an architect, does that make you an artist?”

  “Depends whom you ask,” he replied lightly. “Some of us like to think that we make the most monumental and lasting kind of art.”

  “That’s very nice,” Diana said blithely. “Because you see, I have been trying to find a real artist all night.”