By The Sea, Book One: Tess (6 page)

Then, after the last hook was hooked, after
the last drooping curl was twisted back into a sprightliness it
couldn't possibly feel, given the warmth of the night—after
Cornelia was made as lovely a vision as careful artistry could
devise, she did what all young ladies do occasionally, and changed
her mind altogether. No sapphires. No emeralds. Only the one,
spectacular, most prepossessing piece of jewelry she owned, a gift
from her parents at her own coming out: a huge dog collar thick
with gleaming pearls and marquise-shaped diamonds, calculated to
bludgeon competing young debutantes into a general feeling of
despair.

Around Cornelia's waist Tess fastened a
chain of diamonds and hooked onto it a small, exquisite ivory
fan.

"Well, Tess," Cornelia asked, surveying
herself carefully in the mirror, "will I do?"

Tess, who'd been astonished by the thought
and effort that Cornelia had poured into herself, smiled at the
image in the mirror and said, "Yes, ma'am. I think you'll do."

The vision turned pouty. "Really, Tessie, I
call that striking an attitude, I really do."

Tess opened her eyes wide. "An
attitude,
Miss Cornelia!"

"Yes. It's not what you say, it's more what
you
don't
say. And you're too tall," she said, irritated.
"You make me feel squat."

Tess bit her lower lip, trying not to smile.
In Cornelia Winward's solar system, a personal maid was akin to a
distant satellite of an outer planet. "I suppose I could try
stooping a bit, ma'am," Tess said blandly, "if that would
help."

"What would
help
is if you'd be more
like Marie and say pretty things to me once in a while, especially
when I'm about to—I'm going to a
ball,
Tess. Anything can
happen at a ball. I could become engaged tonight! The last thing I
need is your ...
attitude."
Blue eyes above a turned-up nose
glared at Tess through the mirror.

Tess was getting used to Cornelia's little
bursts of tension. It couldn't be easy, she thought wryly, being
the younger sister in a family of immense wealth. At the moment,
most of the Winwards' attention was focused on finding a title for
Cornelia's older sister. An English baronet had begun to nibble at
the bait, but much care and patience would be necessary to reel him
in. That left poor Cornelia with little to do but wait her turn. In
the meantime it seemed to her that all around the list of eligible
peers was dwindling at an alarming rate.

Her best friend Susy had landed an
honest-to-goodness viscount, and a second cousin whom Cornelia
absolutely despised had cast her dowry before some Slavic count and
hauled him in like a five-pound bass. And of course everyone in
Newport knew that Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt was about to buy the
ultimate in peers of the realm, an English duke, for her scrawny
stick of a daughter, Consuelo. Was there no justice in life? The
question was often on Cornelia's lips.

As Cornelia adjusted her choker so that the
largest of the diamonds lay perfectly in the center of her throat,
a now-or-never determination glinted in her bright blue eyes.
Gertrude Vanderbilt's coming out was unquestionably one of the
major events of the season, even though it was being hosted by two
pious, hard-working, decidedly unglamorous millionaires. Still,
Vanderbilts were Vanderbilts, and absolutely anyone worth
knowing—or being engaged to—would be there.

Cornelia instructed Tess first to turn down
the gas lamps, then to light a dozen candles that stood in a gilded
sconce from Tiffany's, in an effort to mimic the lighting of The
Breakers' ballroom. If the success of a Newport debutante could be
measured in her ability to extract the most out of face and form,
then Cornelia Winward had done brilliantly. As each of the candles
caught flame and danced, the facets of Cornelia's jewels took on a
magical life of their own, winking and dazzling and spraying the
room with shimmering rainbows. The taffeta of her gown promised
blue, then slid mysteriously into green as Cornelia turned slowly
round and round and round once more, a blond princess in a fairy
kingdom of riches.

And Tess? Tess, in her plain but exquisitely
tailored soft gray dress, Tess, whose natural beauty glowed where
Cornelia's artifice blinded—Tess was awestruck. She knew half a
dozen woman servants as pretty as Cornelia; yet adorn any of them
with this gown, those jewels, and the result would be
laughable.

Cornelia knew exactly how to stand, Tess
thought. Exactly how to hold her head so that her chin line was
smoothest, how to arrange her face so that her eyes looked
roundest, how to force a dimple into her smile where none naturally
existed.

"You're quite wonderful, Miss Cornelia,"
Tess said, and she meant it. Whether Cornelia was born with such
magnificence or whether she was trained for it from infancy almost
did not matter. Either way, for Tess and her six pretty
servant-friends, it was too late.
If she and I had been switched
in our cradles ....

"Tess—wake up!" Cornelia demanded, snapping
her fingers at the faraway look in Tess's eyes. "Miss Van de Stadt
and the viscount will be here for me any moment, and so will the
carriage for you. Where's my wrap, girl?"

Within half an hour a stately brougham was
pulling out from under the limestone porte-cochère of Beau Rêve,
filled to bursting with taffeta and chiffon and peau de soie. The
laughing, excited debutantes inside had allocated a patch of maroon
leather seat for the many bouquets that had been arriving all day;
all of their dance cards were full. In the soft, twilit evening the
brougham eased into the parade of carriages on Bellevue Avenue, the
luckiest among them bound for The Breakers, the fabulous new
cottage on the southeast coast of Aquidneck Island, which was
throwing open its massive gates for the first time tonight.

In Tess's coach, which followed a little
behind Cornelia's, the laughter of the maid-servants squeezed
inside was no less excited, the gossip no less lively. Mostly it
concerned The Breakers. By now everyone in Newport had heard about
the water taps that were said to run saltwater and rainwater (both
in hot or cold) and the priceless tapestries and oils that had been
arriving from Europe by the crateload.

Susan Van de Stadt's maid Sarah was by far
the best informed. "I understand there are only thirty for Gertrude
Vanderbilt's pre-ball dinner. That's cutting it daringly close, if
you ask me. Mrs. Vanderbilt is not the lioness she thinks she is,
for all her millions. She's bound to put some very prominent noses
out of joint. Why, it's not enough anymore to look above you and
make sure your Astors and your Oelrichs and your Fishes have been
invited. You must look around and below you, too, because most
anyone may be someone to be reckoned with tomorrow."

"Especially if 'someone' happens to marry
into nobility," another of the maids said slyly. "Would it be your
mistress you're thinking of, Sarah?"

"Miss Van de Stadt—soon to be Lady Dennison,
it's true—has nothing to apologize to Miss Vanderbilt for," Sarah
sniffed.
"Her
people were never in trade.

"Anyway, if you ask me," she continued,
"it's a relief that Miss Van de Stadt wasn't invited to the
pre-ball dinner at The Breakers. Because I understand," she
explained in a confidential voice, "that Mr. Vanderbilt would allow
only the most churchgoing of his daughter's friends to come. I
expect the dinner conversation will sound drearily like an
Episcopalian sermon. Whereas
his lordship,"
she said with
emphasis, "moves with a much smarter set."

"I've
heard that some of the women in
his
lordship's
set are breathlessly fast," the other maid
said vindictively.

"Well, that's as may be. But Miss Susan is
nothing if not absolutely proper," Sarah sniffed.

"And what about Miss Cornelia, Tess?"
another maid asked, turning to Tess curiously. "Is she fast, or
proper?"

It was the kind of lurid speculation that
Tess despised. "I couldn't say," she answered coldly.

"You mean you
wouldn't
say, Tess,"
the maid retorted. "Ooh-la-la; Miss Cornelia must smother you in
silks to wring such loyalty from you."

"Oh, leave Tess alone, Livia. She's not like
the rest of us, secure in her position. On trial the way she is,
why, everything could slip through her fingers," said Sarah.

Surprised, Tess stared at her. On trial!
She'd had no hint of it from anyone—not the housekeeper, not her
mistress.

"Don't look at me like that, Tess. Everyone
knows a person can't jump from laundry to lady's maid—leastways,
not without running a risk o' falling flat on her nose. That's just
what Miss Cornelia told my Miss Susan, see if it isn't."

"Why wouldn't I believe you?" Tess asked
calmly, but inwardly she was trembling. She thought she'd been
doing well, but obviously Miss Cornelia had some reservations.
Didn't she admit as much to Tess an hour ago? Didn't she demand
pretty words and compliments from Tess, the kind Marie thought
nothing of showering on her?"

"Anyway, I can only do my best," Tess added,
sick at heart.

"Which I'm sure is just fine," Sarah
answered, patting Tess's knee with her special brand of
kindness.

Pre-ball dinners were being hosted all over
town. The house to which Misses Van de Stadt and Winward were
invited was rather whimsically Tudor in style, and as the coaches
rolled through the vast iron gates, Tess caught a glimpse of
soaring stained-glass window-panels, lit from inside to reveal deep
jewel-toned figures arranged in a tableau of some sort.

"That's Miss Julie's
bedroom,
if you
can believe it," said Sarah. "I've heard that the Pearsons sacked a
cathedral in France for those windows, and all because their
daughter thought she resembled a woman-figure in one of the panels.
Well, I saw the panel close up, and she doesn't."

"Imagine that," Livia said breathlessly.

It was that way everywhere in Newport:
absurd stories of Americans running amok all over Europe, not
knowing what to buy first. Americans had money to burn; the number
of millionaires who summered in Newport was staggering. What
Americans did
not
have, and seemed to crave, was lineage.
Those who could, bought their way into titled families. But those
who could not, settled for aping the ways of the British
aristocracy. Mr. Pearson, tonight's host, had reproduced, down to
his snuff-box, the life and times of English country gentry. His
liveried servants were powdered, of course; but in Newport that was
not unusual.

What
was
uncommon, even in Newport,
was the ferocious zeal with which Mr. Pearson mimicked the ways of
a British sportsman. Hunting was his great passion. When the local
farmers arose en masse to protest the fox hunts that were being
routed across their fields, Mr. Pearson, alone among his peers,
actually paid them for their inconvenience, thereby single-handedly
keeping a doomed tradition limping along for several more
years.

After that he turned to game-shooting,
stocking the grounds of his estate with hand-raised pheasants. The
birds were so tame that there was no sport involved, but he shot
them anyway. Once he fired off a round at what turned out to be a
gaily-feathered hat, still on the head of one of his female guests;
word quickly went out that it was unwise to wander far from the
main house. These days, however, Mr. Pearson was confined to his
study and a soft hassock: he was afflicted with gout. Secretly he
was pleased. It felt so very British to wave a cane and bark at the
servants.

All of this amused Miss Van de Stadt's
viscount-fiancé no end; imitation, after all, was the sincerest
form of flattery. Of course, the viscount's stables back in
Derbyshire did not have stained-glass windows at either end, or a
gold nametag above each horses stall as did Mr. Pearson's. If the
truth were known,
his
stables were a bit down in the mouth,
and the roof at the south end of one had all but collapsed. But no
matter. The viscount had long since been forced to sell what little
horseflesh he possessed and had no need for a stable roof, good or
bad. In the course of dinner that evening, however, it was not the
condition of the viscount's stables that was the subject of a few
moments of dinner conversation, but the number of stalls. Of these,
the viscount had thirty-eight. There was a murmur of approval
around him before the conversation drifted off to another
topic.

Sarah was in a huff. "That was the
weakest
tea," she said as she and the other maids piled back
into their coach two hours later en route to their next, even
grander destination. "I do believe their housekeeper ran that pot
through
twice.
I never!"

"She's probably served tea to every lady's
maid in Newport by this time of year," Tess said with a laugh. "I
shouldn't wonder that she tries to cut back when she can."

"And her apartments! So plain, so unadorned.
Even your Mrs. Bracken has a nicer table to set, Tess."

Tess and Livia exchanged looks; no one could
manage condescension as well as Sarah. "How kind of you to notice,"
said Tess dryly.

Before long they were in a line of carriages
waiting their turn to empty, and the maids within had gathered up
their needlepoint satchels filled with combs and hairpins, needles
and thread—well-thought-out survival kits for the harrowing moments
before a ball. Their carriage had not quite reached their
destination when the door was opened by a footman wearing pale blue
Van de Stadt livery. The first two maids tumbled out quickly, but
when it was Tess's turn to alight, a freakish accident occurred.
The right mare, new to harness, reared up suddenly, causing the
coach to roll back and Tess to lose her balance; she fell awkwardly
to the ground, twisting her ankle.