Envy: A Luxe Novel Part 8

She shook her head, and tried to stop the tears, which were quite naturally running down her face now. "It's all right." A brave smiled played on her lips.

"Maybe you would like it now?" Leland's brows slanted downward at the corners in a show of sincere concern. "Maybe it would bring the memory back in a good way."

"Well, I suppose I could try," Carolina answered tentatively.

Leland dipped his spoon in the stew and brought it up to Carolina's mouth. He watched her to make sure it was all right, but then she nodded and he brought the spoonful forward into her mouth. The gumbo was even hotter than she had imagined. It was delicious and lit up her whole mouth. In the next moment, she felt the heat over her entire body. The one bite made her realize how hungry she had been, and when she had swallowed it she asked for more.

Leland then put down his spoon and reached for her hand. He had made similar gestures in the past, but they had all been to steady or protect her, and this time there was no utilitarian excuse. There was a new sweetness to the touch.

"You know, Miss Broad..." he began. Then he put his fist to his mouth and coughed embarra.s.sedly. "You aren't like other ladies."

"No?" she whispered. He'd said it like it was a good thing, but the phrase made her nervous even so.

"Not at all." He shook his head and smiled as though he'd stumbled on some stroke of good fortune he could scarcely believe. "I feel so comfortable around you. Maybe it's because you're not from New York and you don't care so much for all those silly, frilly things, but I find that I'm happier around you than I've been in some time."

A few rays of golden light came through the window then, and Carolina's smile broke wide and relieved across her freckled face. "Oh, me too!" she gasped, and took a firmer hold of his hand. "I feel just exactly that way."

Twenty Two THE WESTERN UNION TELEGRAPH COMPANY.

TO: Diana Holland

ARRIVED AT: The Royal Poinciana,

Palm Beach, Florida

4:00 p.m., Sat.u.r.day, February 17, 1900

Great news-Your column huge success-Payment awaits in NY-Keep up the good work -D.B.

"A ND TO OUR SPECIAL GUESTS, THE HENRY Schoonmakers, who make such a lovely couple!"

The throng-in their tuxedos and laces, their well-oiled hair s.h.i.+ning rosily under the many warm-colored electric lights, which were strung across the ceiling of the pergolalike dance floor of the hotel-twittered and clapped, but Diana Holland couldn't listen anymore. Henry had tried to meet her eyes at dinner, but even of that she could not be sure. Today she had seen him on the beach, and at tea, and playing cards in the garden, all the while with Penelope. Diana felt miffed and more than a little stung by Henry's near complete indifference to her since their arrival in Florida, but had tried to keep within his view at all times that day. It was he who had encouraged her to travel all this way, after all, and it was not in her nature to be forgotten so easily.

She had even enlisted Grayson, who was always at her shoulder anyway, in making Henry jealous. She hadn't gone so far as to let Grayson in on the plan, but when he'd flirted with her she had flirted back, and she'd allowed him to feed her bites of cake at tea and had loudly complimented his croquet skills. That had garnered a few furtive glances from Henry, but it had also been many hours ago, and for Diana hours were beginning to feel like years. Now she was alone. Her sister and Teddy had been wrapped up in each other's conversation all night, and even Grayson abandoned her sometime after dessert and before dancing.

Through the thicket of broad, black-clad shoulders, Diana could see the couple that was now the toast of Palm Beach in profile. They were tall and slim and dark-haired, and though Diana could not discern what was in their faces, it seemed the piece she'd planted in the paper had done nothing to stain them. Perhaps they hadn't seen it; perhaps it would forever escape their notice. She felt a little jittery and depleted by it all, disoriented by doubt, and she stuffed her hand into the pocket of her peach silk dress and crumpled Barnard's telegram. Then she lit out across the lawn unnoticed, ruining a pair of high-heeled slippers her family already couldn't afford in the damp gra.s.s.

If that morning, holding her column in the Imperial in her hands, she had felt the lift of having played a good hand, she was now experiencing the deflation of any gambler after a spree. She started off walking across the lawn, but soon broke into a run. The dress-which she had chosen so carefully to show off her strong, fine clavicles-now flapped against her legs as she dashed through the humid air. She had pushed her sister, who was in a rare, bright mood, to do her hair elaborately, but all that began to fall apart now, too, and the ribbons that had adorned it trailed behind her as she went.

Was she running from Henry? He was a mystery to her, and every time she tried to solve him it caused her a little more pain. But when she tried to give him up he pursued her in her thoughts, stronger each time. This was as good a reason to keep running as any, and if she had been a less impulsive sort of girl, she might have considered that this was not the first time in recent days she had gone on a restless ramble. But already she'd traveled some distance, lost her shoes, felt the sand in between her toes, and reached the water.

The full moon left a trail of silver across the dark, rippling water, which for a moment looked so inviting that she might have believed she could climb up it. Then a wave came on suddenly, cras.h.i.+ng against her legs and soaking her dress, bringing spray all the way to her ears. The sea was not particularly cold or rough, but she was so surprised by it that she burst into tears. As it drew away she began to lose her balance, and for a moment she wondered if she wouldn't drown that night. But then she felt familiar arms around her chest, and was pulled back up to the dry sand.

"Oh," she whimpered, drawing her fingers across her face and trying to uncrumple her features. The tears were still wet on her cheeks, but her whole lower half was drenched by salt water now, too, and anyway she supposed it didn't matter after everything if Henry saw her cry now. He was standing there in his black jacket and white s.h.i.+rt, and he was looking at her with what she would have named concern and sincerity if she didn't know better. "What do you want?"

"To be with you. Just for a minute."

Diana's chest billowed and heaved. The silk skirt, and all the cotton underskirts, clung to her thighs. Henry was finally right there in front of her, on an abandoned beach late at night, but all the confusions of the day were like a chasm between them. The moonlight was bright, and she could see his whole figure perfectly. "A few minutes? You wanted me to come all this way so that we could have a few minutes?"

Henry's jaw s.h.i.+fted and he glanced away. Somehow he had escaped a full soaking, and she resented him for still looking so put together. "That's all it can be. Penelope, she's so frightful, if she found out I was with you now, if she knew I told you why we married, if she knew how badly I want to kiss you-"

He stepped forward and cupped the back of her head with his palm and put his mouth to hers. A moment ago this would have seemed like a very bad idea, but then Diana closed her eyes and returned his kisses again and again as though they might give her some oxygen she had been sorely deprived of. His other hand had found its way to the small of her back, and despite the state of her gown, he pressed his whole body against hers, ruining both of their evening wear.

"Oh," she said, more softly this time, when he drew back.

His lips were still parted, and the moon was reflected like white disks in his eyes.

Her mouth fell open a little wider. She felt the expectation of another kiss, the way one feels the rain just before it begins to fall. But moments pa.s.sed, their exhalations mingling in the sea air, and none came.

Henry stepped back. "We'll be missed."

"What?" There was anger in her voice, but the disappointment was stronger.

"Your sister, Penelope-they'll be wondering where we are."

Beyond Henry's shoulder the lights of the hotel twinkled and the palms made grand silhouettes against a purple sky. There were some long clouds moving across it-they would overtake the moon and make it blurry soon. "So you'd prefer to have me a few minutes at a time? In back rooms and corridors of trains? That was what you hoped for when you told me to find a way to come to Florida?"

Henry shook his head, but she knew that what she had said was true. She tried to make her body cold.

"You imagined I would become your mistress."

"No-"

"Good night." Diana summoned all the dignity that she could manage in her bedraggled state and began to move back up the beach. Her dress was soaked and her stockings dotted with sand and her heart couldn't possibly withstand any more. She did want to look back, but she felt that to do so would somehow forgive all of Henry's sins against her.

"Diana!" he cried. His voice had been full of anguish, but then it was gone, and for a moment all she heard was the soft lapping of the waves against the sh.o.r.e. "Diana, I need you"-and from the way his voice broke over her name, she believed he did. But she shut her eyes and kept on toward the hotel, over in the distance, where the lights were bright and the music played faintly.

"Diana," he went on in the same desperate voice as he chased her up the beach, "Diana, I'll leave her."

That gave her pause-she stopped and looked. Henry's face had ever been the clean-shaven and well-constructed face of civilization, but he was looking at her now with something more akin to animal urgency.

"You will?" she whispered.

"I can't be without you."

"You can't?" Diana knew she was in grave danger of being a fool again, but hope bloomed in her heart.

Henry took a few strides and then he looked down on her with new conviction. He brushed the curls away from her face, his hand lingering over her eyes, his thumb pressing against her full lower lip.

"Come, you had better get yourself cleaned up," he said as he put his arm around her shoulder.

For a while they walked like that toward the great, lit-up dollhouse across the lawn, until it was too close. Then they separated so that she could return to her room, and he could go back to play his role for just a little longer. She kept the image of his face in her mind even after they'd parted. Like all his promises, it was now burnished with renewed and wondrous value.

Twenty Three The recently affianced couple, Reginald Newbold and Adelaide Wetmore, were seen last night at a little musical evening at Mr. Newbold's home on Madison Avenue. His sister, Gemma, was there as well, who was said to be expecting a proposal from Teddy Cutting. Did she look so sad because Mr. Cutting is away in Florida, and should we take his prolonged absence to mean there will be no June wedding?

-FROM THE SOCIETY PAGE OF THE NEW-YORK NEWS OF THE WORLD GAZETTE, SAt.u.r.dAY, FEBRUARY 17, 1900 "A RE YOU ALL RIGHT?"

Elizabeth opened her eyes slowly, and then the ballroom of the Poinciana came back into focus: the bodies swaying across the parquet floor, the white latticework of the ceiling, the string music soft from behind a screen. She realized that she had rested her head on Teddy's shoulder during the dance, but she answered truthfully when she said, "I am."

"You'll let me know if you would like to sit, won't you?" She had never before noticed the worry lines that sometimes emerged on her old friend's forehead. His skin was otherwise so soft and unblemished, and she wondered when and how he'd come by those marks.

Like the other women in the room, Elizabeth wore light, evening-appropriate colors-her ivory dress was embellished with embroidery of pale pink-but in the hours since dinner she had lost track of everyone else. She knew that the kind of people she had always been comfortable amongst populated the room-they were the people her mother wanted her to be seen mingling with, and she was grateful to feel safe and light enough to do so now. Her neck, as gracious and slender as a swan's, was bedecked with her grandmother's jewels, which her mother had carefully packed for the trip, and her pale hair was arranged in piles above her head. The cooler evening breeze came through the open windows, and for a moment she felt quite perfectly at ease.

"Do I look tired?" her small, plump lips parted, and she let her eyes flutter between open and closed.

"No." Teddy smiled from one corner of his mouth, and moved her, in smooth glides, away from the center of the room. "You look lovely."

She smiled faintly and nodded.

"I've so enjoyed getting to spend time with you these last days," he went on.

"I have as well."

"They are such lovely hours, the ones I get to spend with you. They're something I feared I'd never experience again...."

Out of the corner of her eye, Elizabeth noticed Henry coming in from the lawn. He approached Mrs. Schoonmaker, whose hair was arranged in s.h.i.+ny curls with feathers on top of her head, and whose polka-dot chiffon dress gathered in a low V-neck over her chest. Penelope glanced at his feet and then back to his face, and her eyes widened. Elizabeth knew that look well-she had seen her old friend angry, with servant girls and members of her family and-on one especially notable occasion-with Elizabeth herself.

The Schoonmakers were across the room and there was no way to know what words pa.s.sed between them, but at the end of their brief conversation Henry removed Penelope's hand, which was sheathed in an elbow-length black satin glove, from his shoulder and left the room. For a reason that she couldn't place, the scene filled Elizabeth with foreboding, and she looked to Teddy to ask him what he thought it was all about.

"Elizabeth?" he said before she could question him.

She nodded that he should speak, but he exhaled self-consciously and had to look away. They waltzed in a few circles before he began again.

"I only wanted to tell you that when I proposed to you, so many years ago now, it seems-"

"Less than two, the last time." A whisper of a smile appeared on Elizabeth's face, even though the memory this conjured was a sad one. It had been in Newport, where she had stayed for a whole month and grown dizzy and lovesick over her distance from Will. He had managed to send her letters-she couldn't remember anymore how they'd gotten away with it-which had been full of his fear that she would lose interest in him while she was away. Her eyelashes sank down.

"Yes, that's right, it was not even two years ago. When you were a guest of the Hayeses."

Elizabeth couldn't yet bear to open her eyes, but she knew from his breathless tone how nervous and in earnest Teddy must be.

"Anyway, what I meant to say, what I want to say, is that I was sincere then, and my offer still stands." She had never heard his voice so shaky. "I would still-"

"Oh, Teddy," was all Elizabeth could manage. She was afraid that if she didn't stop him she would begin to cry on the dance floor and then there would be no stopping all the feeling, or holding in any of the secrets. But perhaps he misread her sadness for another emotion, because he went on.

"Do you think you could love me? Perhaps marry me? I mean, not now, necessarily, but maybe in time-"

Elizabeth came to a sudden halt on the dance floor. She thought of Will on their wedding day in a brown suit that he had bought for the occasion, and shook her head instinctively. He had still been wearing that suit when she had rushed away from him, and it was that suit that had soaked up his blood on the platform in Grand Central Station.

"Perhaps in time, Teddy," she said, even though the idea of frothy white flowers and trousseaus and groomsmen in a row filled her with revulsion. She met his gray eyes, which were watching her so sweetly and attentively. She'd known, even that summer when she was still so naive, that if she had never known a man like Will, then Teddy might have given her a very happy life.

"In time," she repeated. Her voice sounded mechanical, but she meant it as a confirmation. In time, there would be nothing so sweet to her as words like those. She tried to smile, but she knew the effect was no good, for all the color had drained from her lips. "You know, if it hadn't been for my experiences last fall and before-" she began, wanting to give him some kind of an explanation. But she stopped herself, realizing this was neither the time nor the place. "Just now I find I am very tired after all. Won't you excuse me?"

Her skirts and jewels, her gloves and laces, the pins that held up her hair and the strings that held in her ribs, all felt very heavy then. She didn't know if she would even be able to carry them across the room. But she could not be out, among the throng, in all that adornment any longer. She wasn't able to look at Teddy as they parted, and so she had no idea whether he had understood her at all.

Twenty Four Resort dress is always lavish, but my spies in Palm Beach report that Miss Carolina Broad seems to have arrived with an all-new wardrobe, and that she appears always spangled, sparkling, and encrusted with diamonds. I hope that Mr. Carey Lewis Longhorn is at least receiving reports of all his money has made possible.

-FROM THE "GAMESOME GALLANT" COLUMN IN THE NEW YORK IMPERIAL, SAt.u.r.dAY, FEBRUARY 17, 1900 T HERE WERE MANY WOMEN IN POSSESSION OF youth and beauty gliding across the dance floor of the Royal Poinciana that Sat.u.r.day evening, which was covered by an arched white wood ceiling but remained open to the elements via its large, thrown-open windows. Carolina felt she must be the loveliest of them all. Her brown hair was divided into two sections so that it both rose above her forehead in a high pouf and curled down her neck in a ribboned tail. Around her throat rested a double strand of pearls and garnets that brought out the green in her eyes, and her arms were sheathed in flutes of antique lace. She knew that the skin of her broad forehead very nearly glowed under the varicolored lights, and that in the South her smattering of freckles indicated a kind of thoroughbred tawniness. The only element out of place was her partner, Percival Coddington, whose breath was fragrant with the chicken frica.s.see he had eaten for dinner.

"What a pleasure it is to dance with you," Percival said. Carolina knew what it was to be uncomfortable in this world, and she understood the meaning of the sheen of sweat on his forehead. He was nervous, poor thing, and she did feel a little bad for him. Still, she knew she was wasting whole minutes of her promising new life, of her late-blooming loveliness, on him. His cavernous nostrils were just at her eye level, and his damp hands were in far too familiar a position as they swayed to the music of Bailey's Orchestra, which played behind a screen painted with underwater creatures. Hundreds of guests were ama.s.sed along the edges of the room, and the dance floor was crowded with young couples. There were far brighter, far richer, far better-dressed people in the rosy shadows, blotted out by the army of waiters, and here she was with a moderately moneyed n.o.body who had not yet learned to breathe with his mouth shut.

In another moment she might have dwelled on the irony that, only a few months ago, the chance to hold the attention of a Percival Coddington would have seemed to her a very lucky turn indeed. But she was entirely different now. She did not have time for such sentimentalities. Her throat began to constrict, for no matter how rudely she twisted her head around, she could not get a glimpse of Leland anywhere.

Of course, her day with him had already been long and close to perfection. But foolishly she had insisted that she be delivered to the hotel in time to bathe, apply her maquillage, have her hair done, and still leave an hour in which to be corseted and to push all the tiny pearl b.u.t.tons of her suggestively white dress through their holes. He had agreed almost too amicably, and then he had gone off to play golf with Grayson Hayes. She had worried the whole time that he would not return in time to escort her in to dinner, perhaps so much so that she had made his tardiness come true. That was when she had fallen prey to Mr. Coddington, who had insisted on discussing the caste system of the Fijian islanders through the first three courses. She had seen Leland when he came in late, and she now feared that in choosing a few hours with her maid over golfing (which she had never played) she had lost his interest.

"I never did see what people liked about old Carey Longhorn," Mr. Coddington said-cruelly, Carolina observed-before she finally lost her patience.

"I hardly see how you are in any position to-" she began, but was saved from causing a scene by the sight of her afternoon companion over her partner's shoulder. He was grinning, with that mouth that was handsomely too large for his face, and the blue of his eyes was sparkly in the low light. Carolina stopped dancing, and Percival let go of her hand a second later. "Mr. Bouchard."

"Miss Broad." He tipped his head and then turned on his heel. "Mr. Coddington, may I cut in?"

Percival's nostrils flared, and for a moment it appeared that he was going to be vocally unhappy about it. But then he acquiesced, and Carolina felt her hand taken up again, with much more force this time, as she was moved backward into the crowd.

"I find I must apologize to you again," he offered, though Carolina was barely listening. The gleam on her partner's strong white teeth, the width of his shoulders, the solid size of him, were too overwhelming. "If I had noticed that you were cornered by that tiresome a.s.s-forgive my language-I would have saved you a long time ago."

Suddenly the music was louder, exultant, as though her own inner sensations were being re-created by horns and strings. She would have liked to go on staring at Leland, but she reminded herself how Elizabeth never seemed to need anything from her suitors, or even to be particularly interested in them. She turned so that he could appreciate her profile and looked out at the crowd and felt very satisfied to be right where she was.

For there was Lady Dagmall-Lister, dancing with her young male companion, and there was the famous architect Webster Youngham dancing cheek to cheek with one of the junior Mrs. Astors. They were all dressed in their finest, as though life really were some magical stage play in which every moment ought to be illuminated with its own bright spotlight. Earlier, everyone had murmured over Mrs. Henry Schoonmaker, dancing with her adoring husband, his dark eyes full of mystery but his hands on his wife. She couldn't see them now, but she noted Diana Holland, who was wearing a different dress than the one she had dined in earlier; Grayson Hayes was nowhere to be seen either.

Carolina was a little disappointed that Elizabeth had already gone to bed, leaving Teddy Cutting without a partner, for it meant that she would not be forced any longer to witness her former maid's entry into the rare world of which she had once been the undisputed princess. For a moment, Carolina wondered uncharitably if her onetime mistress had found another member of the staff to have midnight a.s.signations with. But it didn't matter, really. There were plenty of witnesses to Carolina's total acceptance into the fold, and some of them might even cable their contacts in the newspaper business about it tomorrow. They were all her friends, or something nearly as good-they had to be nice to her, they had to have her on their little trips now. She was possessed of her own intrinsic social value, and none of their petty jealousies or little games could take that from her.

"Miss Carolina Broad?"

When the diminutive man in the bow tie said her name, Leland came to a stop. She realized that she was no longer dancing with the man who that afternoon had given her reason to antic.i.p.ate a possible proposal, and then she felt herself, however irrationally, beginning to hate this messenger, who was waiting patiently off to the side, and whatever it was he had to say to her.

"Yes?"

"You have a telegram."