The Luxe

by Anna Godbersen

  Lina continued to fold as Claire started reading, in a fake upper-class accent. She nodded along as though she were listening carefully, though in truth she could not put away her misery. She could not stop searching her brain for some way to show Will that he had no business with uppity Elizabeth Holland.

  She hadn’t come up with a thing, when she heard her sister exclaim: “Henry Schoonmaker—that’s the young man who came to visit Miss Elizabeth today.”

  “What?” Lina looked up from her laundry and her thoughts and tried to look like she was at all interested in this Henry Schoonmaker.

  “It says right here that Miss Elizabeth’s friend Penelope Hayes is rumored to be an item with Henry Schoonmaker. He was the young man who came over this afternoon, and oh, Lina, did you see him?” Claire’s eyes were bright with disbelief at the few degrees that separated them from such good fortune. “He was so good-looking, it was almost unfair. And Miss Penelope is going to marry him!” Lina was amazed that Claire could be thrilled for a girl who was always so rude to them, but she resisted saying so. “Though I wonder,” Claire added, as a musing afterthought, “why he would have been with Miss Elizabeth this afternoon, then?”

  “Maybe he wanted advice on how to propose?” Lina suggested, folding a pair of Miss Diana’s plain cotton bloomers into a neat square.

  “Yes, maybe…” Claire shrugged and went on reading the latest news of the most charmed New Yorkers.

  Lina offered her sister a smile, which she was too engrossed in fantastical gossip items to notice, and so she went on folding the Misses Holland’s underthings and listening to the comforting sound of her sister’s voice.

  She soon found her mind wandering back to Penelope Hayes with her translucent skin and fancy dresses and bejeweled hands and aloof manner. You can always tell the rich by their skin, her mother used to say. She pictured Elizabeth’s fine porcelain complexion, which was so even and free of flaws, and felt again how excluded she was from the light and fizzy world.

  Lina couldn’t help thinking that if she were a lady like Miss Hayes or Miss Elizabeth, then Will would never have asked her to leave the carriage house that night. Or any night.

  Thirteen

  I’ve always believed in savoring the moments. In the end, they are the only things we’ll have. I hope that I have imparted this belief to my children, though it is so hard to tell when they are still stubbornly becoming themselves.

  ––FROM THE DIARY OF EDWARD HOLLAND, DECEMBER 1898

  IT WAS WELL PAST TWO, AND EVERY CORNER OF THE Holland house was dark. Elizabeth took the servants’ stairs one by one, mindful not to let them creak. Only that morning her mother had cautioned her to be especially careful of appearances, and so she heeded the warning even as she crept toward the carriage house. She held a candle in a brass holder in front of her to better see her way.

  She stood in the hay, letting her eyes adjust. It was a little lighter in the carriage house, because Will’s window was high and let in some starlight. Elizabeth moved toward the ladder and reminded herself why she had come. Already it was tomorrow, and tomorrow was the day she had promised herself she would tell Will.

  She put her slippered feet on one rung after the other, bringing herself slowly up to the loft. She paused there to admire Will, illuminated by her candle’s flickering light. It was a scene in warm browns and flesh tones and blacks. Will must have kicked his red quilt off in his sleep, because she could see that he was curled like a baby on the bed, without a blanket to cover him.

  Elizabeth moved across the floor, ever careful of the old, creaky wood planks. She set her candle down on the milk crate beside his bed and paused to look at him—the solid curve of his shoulders, the closed lids of his big, pretty eyes. The idea of hurting him was so awful to her that she couldn’t even begin to think about it. She lay down beside him, pressing herself against his body. He was relaxed in sleep, and his chest was soft, moving slowly up and down with his breathing. She looked at his face closely and tried to commit it to memory, in case she never saw him this intimately again.

  Suddenly a taut wakefulness came back into his limbs, and he pulled her into an embrace. She almost cried out in surprise, but a smile broke out across his face and she laughed instead—a quiet, happy laugh. She felt his hand move to the nape of her neck, where he ran his fingers through her hair. He cradled her head, and she felt the outside world fade as she came alive to what was right in front of her.

  “I can’t believe you’re here again already,” he whispered.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” she answered, keeping her eyes on him. His irises rolled back and forth as though he were searching her.

  “How lucky for me.”

  She wanted to kiss him, but she didn’t want to break their gaze even for a second. His hand moved from her neck down her spine and rested again at the small of her back. The way Will was looking at her made her feel like she had lain in the sun for a whole afternoon. For the first time all day she felt her lungs swell with air and her heart with happiness. She tried to remind herself, with a stern internal shake of a finger, that they had no kind of future. But as she gazed into the pure blue of his eyes, they confirmed what she had known about him more than half her life: that she could trust him with anything.

  “You must really have missed me,” he went on.

  “Who are you again?” She only managed to hold her straight face for a moment, however, before she broke out in ringing laughter.

  He laughed back, grabbing her around the waist and rolling her over him and then pinning her to the mattress. He hovered above her with a broad smile on his face. She tried to sit up, but he grabbed her by the wrists and held her down. She shrieked with laughter, and then he bent down and quieted her with a kiss.

  Sweet as it was, she couldn’t help feeling like a liar, and Will was the one person she never wanted to lie to. She pulled her face back gently and gave him a serious look. It would be cruel of her to wait, she told herself. It would only aggravate Will’s pain when the inevitable came out.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  She closed her mouth and opened it again, and then took a deep breath for courage. “Henry—” she began.

  “Schoonmaker?” Will laughed, cutting her off and skewing his smile sideways as he did. “You’re not going to tease me about that again, are you? I saw him leaving the house this afternoon, and you don’t have to worry. I won’t harangue you with my jealousies anymore.”

  He kissed her gently. She felt a tightness in her throat and wished that she could make this moment go on forever.

  When he pulled away, he was smiling and there was light playing in his eyes. “I think everything is going to be all right,” he whispered after a long silence.

  Elizabeth brought her lips back together in a kind of smile, and wondered if he could see how sad it was. “Everything is going to be all right,” she repeated in a voice that sounded almost convincing to herself.

  Tomorrow—she would tell him tomorrow. All she wanted was one last night when they weren’t angry or heartbroken about the way things had to be. Tomorrow, she repeated to herself. How much harm could be done saving the awful news for one more day?

  When he pulled her nightgown over her head, she tried to tell herself not to think about how far her family had fallen, and how vulnerable they all were. She tried not to think of her responsibilities to them. Or how it was going to be just as impossible to tell Will tomorrow. Or the tomorrow after that. She told herself to concentrate on the way he was kissing her neck just under her chin, so that she could remember forever how it used to be.

  Fourteen

  A young man held very much in esteem by the ladies who populate the matrimonial market, and who hails from the house of Schoonmaker, was seen yesterday afternoon at Tiffany & Co. on Union Square. My sources in the engagement ring department tell me he left with a diamond solitaire of uncommon size and clarity worth upwards of one thousand dollars….

  ––FROM CITÉ CHATTER,
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 1899

  PENELOPE HAYES SMILED TIGHTLY AT THE LITTLE English maid who was waiting in the Hayes vestibule to help her with her black mink wrap. The wrap was new, like her dress, which was ivory satin overlaid with black velvet in an art nouveau design—very modern. She had never seen this girl before, with her small eager eyes and not altogether neat hair, and concluded that she must be one of the new hires. There were so many new servants these days, what with the size of the new house, it made one fear for the sanctity of one’s correspondence. Penelope tried to express this in the irritated way she removed the thick cream card from the shiny silver tray that the maid held aloft for her.

  “Mr. Isaac Phillips Buck has arrived to escort you,” the girl said with exaggerated formality. Penelope and Buck were intimate enough friends that he hardly needed to present his card anymore, but he could never resist little flourishes like that.

  “Thank you,” Penelope replied, hurrying down the grand white marble steps of her family home. She looked back once and realized her mistake. The girl was nearly foaming with joy after the kind words from her mistress. Penelope tried to put her annoyance away—it wasn’t good for her complexion, and she was going to a dinner party at Henry Schoonmaker’s, where she always wanted to look her best—and turned to see Buck waiting. He was facing the avenue, cigarette smoke wafting back over his shiny top hat.

  “What were you looking at?” she asked, and he turned to take her hand. She leaned forward to kiss him on either cheek.

  “Oh, you know, just the notables.” Buck gave a little sniff and began walking his favorite socialite down the steps. The evening was warm and a little hazy, and indeed the best carriages were passing one another at a spectator’s pace on the street. “None of them looked half so good as you.”

  The Hayeses’ driver was waiting with one of the family’s four black polished phaetons. Buck helped her up, and then he followed and gave the driver a nod. A girl more mindful of decorum would never have taken an open carriage to an evening dinner party, but Penelope could not at that moment have felt more delighted with herself just as she was. She settled herself into the plush red velvet seat and unclasped her fur wrap so that it fell behind her. She wanted to feel the night air, even though moral minds would doubtless criticize her for such a public display of bare shoulders.

  As the horses began their relaxed trot south, Buck reached into his jacket and removed a piece of newspaper.

  “I thought this might be of interest,” he said casually, though he could not stop his moist lips from curling up in a very pleased sort of smile.

  “Oh?” Penelope said as she unfolded it. Her eyes darted across the article, becoming wide and bright as her gaze settled on the words Tiffany & Co., diamond, and one thousand dollars. She batted her eyelashes, heavy with mascara, and gave a modest little shrug of her shoulders, though modesty was a characteristic she had never really practiced or admired. She turned her face to the east so that oncoming traffic would see her face from the best angle, and enjoyed the short ride down the broad avenue. Henry had said she would know soon enough, and for once he had used the phrase accurately. This felt soon even for an impatient girl like Penelope.

  The horses trotted along as the Schoonmaker residence came into view. It took up half a block of Fifth Avenue at Thirty-eighth Street, and though the building was younger than Henry, it was beginning to look dated, with its mansard roof and steep front steps. She and Henry would have a new mansion, of course; perhaps Daddy would build them one as a wedding present. The phaeton came to a stop, and Buck climbed—almost delicately for a man of his size—down to the street so that he could assist Penelope. She saw the carriages of several other guests loitering at the curb, the coachmen leaning against them and smoking as they began their long wait. She recognized the Hollands’ coachman among them, leaning against their old brougham with a folded paper—he had big, brutish shoulders, and his name was something Penelope could not recall. Elizabeth had once mentioned in passing that they had been friends as children, and Penelope couldn’t help but smirk to herself at how quaint it was down in Gramercy Park, with all their old traditions and their curious penchant for getting muddy with the staff. Here on Fifth, the ladies and gentlemen ascended the limestone steps in pairs, toward the brightly lit doorway, and did not pay the coachmen any mind.

  “I may be very late, Thom,” she said without meeting her driver’s eyes. She focused instead on her elbow-length white gloves, taking care to smooth out any possible wrinkles. She already looked perfect, however, and she knew it.

  “I will be here for you when you are ready, Miss Hayes,” Thom replied.

  She rested on Buck’s arm as they ascended to the entryway. One of the Schoonmakers’ butlers took her wrap and ushered her into the receiving line, where she found young Isabelle Schoonmaker already red-cheeked from the exertion of so many greetings. She was wearing a shimmering turquoise Worth gown that fanned behind her and cinched her up at the middle so that she tilted forward like the eager, bosomy figurehead of a ship’s prow.

  “Oh, Penelope,” she gushed, teetering forward to kiss the younger girl on each cheek. “I am sorry your parents and brother couldn’t be here.”

  “Isabelle,” Penelope replied, returning the double kisses. Her parents were dining with the Astors, which was not something one turned down, and her older brother, Grayson, was abroad, overseeing the family’s interests in London. “Don’t worry about me. I do very well with Buck here.”

  “I know you do.” Isabelle took her hand and pumped it, just as the Richard Amorys, who had been married three years and had remained just as dull together as they had been singly, were coming in. “We’ll have to save fun for later,” Isabelle whispered under her breath, and then one of the Schoonmaker servants—whose velvet livery was emblazoned with the Schoonmaker crest—appeared and guided her through the halls, to a reception room of deep red walls and fizzing champagne flutes.

  “I am going to go see if they need any pointers in the kitchen.” The warm light played on the soft skin of Buck’s face. “Go do what you do best,” he told her with a quick wink.

  She paused in the doorway for maximum effect, letting the intricately detailed yards of her ivory-and-black dress spill across the oak floor. As usual, she could feel the muted, almost covetous approval of the people around her, but tried to maintain an aloof turn of the chin. The only person she really wanted to see was Henry, but instead of feeling his large warm hand on her waist, she felt the petite grip of a cold palm on her arm. She turned and saw Elizabeth, who was wearing a washed-out shade again, looking very much like a stiff mixture of milk and water.

  “Penelope,” Elizabeth breathed, smiling in her moderate way. Her blond bangs curled neatly at the top of her round forehead, and around her throat was nothing more than a simple gold cross. “I have been meaning to call all week. I was so sorry we didn’t get to talk more at your ball, but it’s been incredibly busy, and—”

  “Don’t worry about me,” Penelope said, for the second time that evening, lacing her arm through Elizabeth’s. Elizabeth let her hand rest over Penelope’s and smiled warmly. They glided through the low-lit room of ghostly statues and overflowing, potted ferns at a pace ideal for any admiring eyes. As they moved, Penelope noted with a proprietary interest the coffered ceilings and the fine woodwork of the wainscoting.

  “I’ve been so busy myself, I hardly noticed. But I am glad to see you now.” She looked at Elizabeth and cocked a carefully painted brow. “There’s news.”

  “The crush,” Elizabeth replied excitedly. Her eyes widened in anticipation. “I have been thinking of you and your crush all week.”

  “Always thinking of others,” Penelope said, sounding only slightly sharper than she’d meant to. “But before I tell you anything, we must properly toast you.” She noticed Elizabeth start but went on. “It feels like you were away forever. My news and your return certainly call for champagne,” she said, feeling generous enough to include Eliza
beth’s homecoming in her celebratory moment.

  “Oh, yes.” Elizabeth made a subtle gesture at one of the Schoonmaker servants, and soon they were both holding wide-mouthed, gilt-edged glasses of bubbly liquid. They clinked them and sipped. Penelope felt the warm fizzing in her head and a deep satisfaction that Elizabeth was on the verge of being very impressed by her. The elder Holland sister could be a goody-goody sometimes, but Penelope had known her to be fun as well, and of course she had exquisite taste in friends.

  “So,” Penelope began, threading an arm around Elizabeth’s petite, satiny waist. Before she could begin the story of Henry, however, she noticed a handsome man, all in white sporting clothes, who didn’t look remotely like any boy she had ever met. He had almond-shaped eyes and skin the color of café crème. “Who is that?” she whispered to Elizabeth.

  “Oh!” Elizabeth leaned in to Penelope’s ear. “That’s Prince Ranjitsinhji, from India. He’s the captain of a team of cricketers, they say, and he’s here to play with the younger men in the Union Club.”

  “Is he really a prince?” Penelope asked.

  “Nobody knows for sure,” Isabelle Schoonmaker whispered in her girlish tone as she arrived unexpectedly at Penelope’s side.

  “His father was the Fadi of Nawanagar, who, so they say, experimented somewhat extravagantly in matrimony….”

  Penelope and Elizabeth giggled into their gloved hands, as Isabelle gave them a merry wink. Penelope was about to ask more questions about the prince, when she noticed the curious figure of Diana Holland, in a pale peach and Belgian lace concoction that was topped off with enormous gigot sleeves. It was very clearly a dress that had been chosen for her, either by her sister or her mother. She was standing by herself and fidgeting, looking resentful and careless and quite possibly like an escapee from an insane asylum. Penelope leaned in close to the blond wisps at Elizabeth’s ear, and said, “What is your sister doing?”