By The Sea, Book One: Tess (14 page)

"But it's not winter now," Tess pursued.

"No. It's not."

Tess felt the rebuff and it showed, because
he added, "Vanessa stays with an aunt outside of Paris in the
summer. We aren't that close—at least, geographically. But tell me
about your family, with whom you obviously
are
close. Your
mother died on board ship, you said? I truly am sorry to hear
that."

"Well, it was all so sudden and most of the
family was seasick. I think in an odd way that that eased the pain
for us. We were all in steerage at the time." She felt obligated to
spell out the difference between a first-class cabin and steerage:
"In steerage the bunks are built of hard-edged wood along the
inside of the ship; in our ship there was also a second row of
bunks that ran parallel. In one of the very first storms my mother
was thrown from her bunk into the corner of another one in the next
row. She never got conscious after that."

Tess declined to say that her mother had
been sleeping off the effects of a bottle when she was hurled out
of her berth. That secret was stitched inside a canvas shroud,
resting at the bottom of the Atlantic.

"I'm sorry. It must be painful for you
still. Steerage can be a dangerous place in a storm. I once rode
out some bad weather there myself, when I was a boy."

"You?"

"I emigrated from France with my father when
I was twelve. My father had been an apprentice in one of Henri
Rochefleur's banks. He came over here, eventually to oversee
Monsieur Rochefleur's American interests. The Rothschilds had their
August Belmont; Monsieur Rochefleur had my father. We arrived in
plenty of time for the war, during which my father remained loyal
to the Union and refrained from all but the most discreet
profiteering, unlike many of his colleagues. A widower, he earned
everyone's gratitude but no one's heart—it's never been easy being
a Jew in Newport. He died wealthy but quite alone, and it became up
to me, the junior Aaron Gould, to prove that it is possible to
attain both love and money in one lifetime."

He gave Tess an ironic smile.
"Unfortunately, I failed. Perhaps I was naive. It takes longer than
one generation for new money to cool off. My well-born wife would
never have accepted me if she hadn't been in dire straits
financially. I have great hopes for Vanessa, however. She is
beautiful, well-educated, fair-skinned, and nicely dowered. She
also happens to be a very kind young woman." He poured himself more
sherry. "Yes, about Vanessa I am quite sanguine."

The steward, wearing a silver-buttoned
jacket, came in bearing a large silver salver. The repast he laid
before them was simply prepared but substantial: galantine of veal,
pigeon pie, boiled lobsters, fruits and cheeses, and a hot and
spicy crab and spinach soup. Tess sat self-consciously still as the
steward opened a bottle of champagne for them. When he left it was
obvious that he was not expected to return, which bothered her.

Nonetheless, she breathed more easily after
that, listening raptly to a lively but outrageous tale of how Aaron
Gould saved his West Indian cook from the clutches of a holdout
band of Carib warriors on the island of Dominique. That took them
through the soup course.

An hour and a half later they were spreading
creamy cheese on thin wafers, and Tess, filled with a sense of
well-being, was complaining that her cheeks were tired from
laughing so much. Aaron Gould was a raconteur of the first order,
well-traveled, but not on beaten paths; well-spoken, but in a
candid, self-deprecating way. She felt as though she'd known him
for years. While the early part of the evening had seemed endless,
now she did not wish it to end. She suspected she might be
light-headed with exhaustion; or maybe it was the sherry. Tess had
resolutely refused champagne, knowing of its potency secondhand.
But it hardly mattered.

She sighed happily, allowing him to fill
another of her glasses with a dark red liquid, and sipped. Fire!
She put the snifter down too late; its magic heat was already
racing through her veins. She smiled and tried to shake her head
clear of its crystal cobwebs. "I must begin to think about
tomorrow."

"But tonight brings good wine, good food,
good company—is there more to life than that?"

"Yes, there is! Of course there is—but I
can't seem to remember ... just
what,
somehow. Tomorrow …?"
She sighed.

He hesitated, then said, "All right,
then—tomorrow. Suppose we set your mind at ease about it, so that
we can return to enjoying today." He dabbed at his lips, threw down
his monogrammed napkin, and rose and went over to a built-in
mahogany sideboard inlaid with intricate veneer. When he returned
he was carrying an exquisite enameled box; he handed it to
Tess.

"For you," he said, "with one silken thread
attached."

More baffled than thrilled, Tess lifted the
lid from the small rectangular box: it was filled with money. How
much, she had no idea. She was seeing hundred dollar bills for the
first time in her life.

So this is what drink does,
she
thought in fuzzy wonder. You
dream with your eyes open.
Without taking her eyes from the money she asked simply, "Why?"

"I want you to spend the night with me."

She looked up; he was serious.

"You will find one thousand dollars in
there, enough to start a nice little hat shop in town. You can live
above the shop with your family; you need never tug at a forelock
again—except, of course, as a matter of better business. From what
I have learned tonight, I have not a single doubt that you will be
successful."

"Then make it a loan!" she said in anguish.
"Charge me a fair—even an unfair—interest, and I'll gladly pay.
You're right; I
would
be a success. I'm clever, and I'd work
monstrous hours. Even Cornelia would patronize me eventually. All
I'd have to do was sell one hat to one of her friends; she couldn't
bear it! Oh, I
would
do well at it!"

"If I were an ordinary businessman, I might
consider your offer. But look around you, Tess. Give me more credit
than that. Surely you see that I am a collector of beautiful
objets
d'art
. The
Enchanta
itself is such an
objet.
She is not the largest yacht in the harbor, or even
the most opulent for her size, but she is by far the most
beautiful, the most exquisitely fitted out. So it is with you,
Tess. You are exquisite, and I want very much to have you."

She tried to cut through the sherry in her
brain with only partial success. "But I'm not an ... an
'obe-zhay,'" she wailed. "I'm ... a
Catholic!"

"Whatever you are, you're very desirable,"
he said seriously, and poured more cognac in her snifter. "Listen
to me, Tess. Suppose I lend you the money with interest, as you
suggest. Suppose we do it all quite legally, a business
transaction. What do you think will be the reaction of Newport
Society when you suddenly flaunt the means to open a smart little
shop on Bellevue? Everyone knows I brought you away from the
Servants' Ball; everyone will assume the worst in any case. Short
of your posting sworn affidavits and the promissory note in your
shop window, I can't imagine why they would think otherwise."

"You knew you were compromising me when you
helped me!" she said angrily.

"And so did you, Tess. If you thought about
it at all, you knew you were taking a risk."

"Out of desperation!"

"Absolutely. I'd be the first to admit
that." He waited.

It was such an unadorned offer. So rational,
so measured, so brutally logical. She stared at the delicately
rendered cobalt and emerald pattern on the box, then stood up and
tossed it across the table at him. It fetched up against his
gilt-edged plate with a thunk and he winced; it was clear that
Aaron Gould really was a devoted collector. It gave Tess a sharp
little thrill to see that she'd caused him pain. She wondered why,
as she walked away from him and stared out a porthole at the
drumming torrents of rain.

After all, his offer was quite painless. The
consequences—well, the consequences would have to be faced with or
without his offer. What a fool she'd been before: blind with
embarrassment and rage, utterly without foresight. Her pride again.
It always came down to this: her fatal flaw, the source of all the
bruising encounters she'd had so far in life, was her damnable,
damnable pride.

She turned around to face him. He was seated
at the small table still, his fingers gently rubbing the invisible
wound on the enameled box, soothing and caressing.

"If I don't accept your offer?"

He reached behind him to a small panel lined
with pushbuttons. "I'll have someone escort you ashore instantly."
His lids lowered an infinitesimal amount, registering displeasure
at her apparent distrust of him.

"That won't be necessary." She swallowed her
damnable pride. "I agree to your terms, in the main, Mr. Gould,"
she said in as businesslike a tone as she could muster. "But there
are some things I need to know." She lifted her chin the way she'd
seen society ladies do. "Is it required that I enjoy myself, or act
as if I am?"

"It would be nice; I don't insist on
it."

"Will it involve"—here she blushed
furiously—"cruelty or violence, or pain?"

He considered a moment, which sent her into
a panic. "I shouldn't think so, but there is once in every woman's
life—"

"I didn't mean that," Tess said quickly. "I
meant—any other kind."

"Then the answer is no."

"How long am I obligated to stay?"

He matched her formal tone note for note. If
he was amused by her whimsical negotiations, he gave no sign of it.
With courteous reasonableness he brought out a watch from a pocket
in his jacket and said, "The storm should blow itself out by early
morning; when the wind goes around to the northwest the Cove will
become an uncomfortable anchorage. I plan to head out for Fisher's
Island Sound then, on my way to New York. You should be ashore by,
oh, ten o'clock at the latest."

"I see."

And although you seem to have no great love
for it," he added, I had intended for you to keep the enameled
box." For the first time, he allowed himself a small, wry
smile.

'That won't be necessary. The money will be
sufficient." Sufficient! She almost laughed out loud at herself.
"Well. When do we—?"

"Start? We've begun, dear lady. Please—join
me." He stood partly up from his seat. "This really is an excellent
cognac.

Tess came warily back to the table and took
her seat.
Think of Maggie,
she told herself.
Think of
poor Will and of Father. Think of the shop.

So she did. While Aaron Gould rambled on
pleasantly about the relative merits of various brandies, Tess spun
quick fine dreams of the wonderful life she would provide for her
family. Oh, how happy she would make them! Maggie would have the
finest care and she would live to a wonderful age. Tess would see
to it. They would never marry but would live together in a nice old
house with a big front porch with a swing on it for Maggie. And
Will would visit with his wife and children, and her father would
live either with Will or with Tess; she would have to think about
that. But none of them would ever be tenants and beholden again.
Ever.

A few hours; it was a small price to
pay.

While she nodded absently, smiling whenever
Aaron Gould smiled, she was adding up the cost of outfitting her
shop: veiling, twenty cents a yard; braiding, ten cents; silk
trimming and gimp, ten cents; flowers and sprays and wreaths of
silk and velvet, from four cents to eighty cents; ostrich plumes
and tips, never more than a dollar and a quarter. No matter how
hard she tried, she could not spend one thousand dollars. She would
be able to afford to stock ready-made hats to get things rolling
more quickly. The question was, Thames Street or Bellevue Avenue?
On the whole, she thought perhaps Thames. Bellevue was too
seasonal. Still, if that's where the money shopped ....

"Tess, I was prepared to encounter some
asperity. I confess I did not expect dreamy-eyed vacantness." It
was said with the regret of a client who, in looking over a fine
Swiss clock, discovers that the chiming mechanism does not
work.

Alarmed that he might yet decide to take her
shop away, Tess quickly apologized. "It's the cognac, I think. I'm
not used to drink. She fairly leaped back into the conversation.
"You seem very knowledgeable about wine. At Beau-Rêve Mr. Winward
always has the best wine on his table, but he leaves all the
selection to his butler, since he himself knows very little. Nor is
his son any more well versed."

She had hit exactly the right note.

"As a matter of fact, my people are from the
Cote d'Or region in France. All of the last generation were expert
winemakers. One uncle of whom I'm particularly fond was considered
a genius in the fields. He emigrated to California for the great
Gold Rush. Unfortunately, he dug a bit too far west of the Comstock
Lode, which as we know had the ill grace to be discovered by Tessie
Oelrichs' people instead. Which is why she has a grand cottage in
Newport, and he has not. In any case, Uncle Ben returned to what he
knew best: winemaking. I visited him the year before last. Quite a
character, still."

"How did your father ever end up in
finance?"

"Little by little he gravitated to the
vineyard offices, obviously more comfortable with a pencil in his
hand. Monsieur Rochefleur was impressed and brought him to work for
him in the city. My father made a habit of never looking back.
Learn from that, Tess."

The advice was given in a startling change
of voice, intimate and urgent. Tess, who had been fingering the
embroidered AG on her napkin, looked up; instantly she understood
that they were entering a new phase of her contractual
obligation.