She Walks in Beauty (16 page)

“I don’t understand.”

“It’s the patterns of a quadrille, to the steps of a waltz. Do you understand now?”

“No!” The quadrille was a certain, predetermined set of movements. So how could I dance them to a waltz? I didn’t understand. And I was going to have to do it with Mr. De Vries!

As if I had summoned him from some other realm, he appeared, asking for my hand.

In the urgency of the moment, with a lightness in my head and the extra constriction of my corset, I couldn’t seem to get a proper breath. I held out a hand toward him, and as I took a second step, the world dissolved into a hundred black and white pieces and I knew no more.

14

AUNT SPENT THE next morning in bed, while I spent mine with my books, in a chair placed by the fire, until she called for me just before lunch. Her bedroom was still dark, the curtains a barricade against the light and the chill of day. I had an urge to cup my fingers to my mouth and blow warmth onto them. It was no wonder she was still bundled abed.

She held the paper out to me. “Read it for me. The society page. About last night. I have not the stomach to read it for myself.”

“T
HE
N
EW
Y
ORK
J
OURNAL
—S
OCIETY
D
ECEMBER 15, 1891

“The first event of the season was attended well and spectacularly by all, the city’s finest sons seeking to win the hearts of the city’s loveliest daughters. What unions will be forged, what marriages will have been struck by this time next year? Who can say where Cupid will aim his bow? One thing is for certain: Miss Elizabeth Barnes, who fell asleep during the opera’s second act, would not hurt the prospects of any man.

“The John Moffatts gave an admirable start to this season of private balls. Miss Clara Carter certainly captivated the ballroom. And she captivated Mr. Franklin De Vries as well, dancing about the floor with her eyes closed as if she were listening to some celestial music. What heavenly melodies do you hear, Miss Carter? And how might the rest of us fallen mortals join you? Yet once Miss Carter fainted, Miss Barnes reigned supreme over the remainder of the evening.”

“And?”

I glanced up at her from over the top of the paper. “That’s all there is.”

“There is nothing more? About you?”

“There is nothing.”

“So Lizzie is lauded for falling asleep and you get mentioned for fainting.” Her voice had become louder, the tone more shrill.

I shrugged. They had mentioned my dancing as well.

“Don’t shrug. It’s vulgar! You must pretend yourself to be much too delicate for such common gestures. Here.” She handed me another newspaper. “Read this column. The one for gossip.”

The paper was called
The Tattler,
and it came out whenever there were tales to be told. It seemed to be composed of inside knowledge and discreet jokes. Very seldom did the columnists identify people by name if the news was compromising. Normally the words meant nothing to me. It was the sort of news one had to have witnessed to understand.

I read through the first of the column quickly; it had nothing to do with me, of course, but I paused at the items that I thought might catch Aunt’s interest.

“And while one of our fair debutantes was sleeping, another had surrendered herself to the passions of the opera. Whatever one might think of the girl’s good father, it seems his daughter is made of finer stuff. Would that all debutantes might listen with such abandon.

“Which fine son kept up his end of the social stratum by dancing with the season’s most eligible debutantes? And some who are not quite so eligible? Be careful, young lad, there are thorns among our flowers. Some lovely blooms who issue from tainted stock. Choose wisely—choose well.”

Was that? … had that first part been about me? I had surrendered myself to tears at the opera, but I had thought no one was watching. Who was The Tattler, that he had known how much it had moved me?

“Let me see that.” Aunt held a glass up to her eyes as she read it. “‘. . . listen with such abandon.’ It reeks of vulgarity. Only a common person would be overcome by such emotion.”

“Was he … he wasn’t speaking of me … ?”

“Of course he was speaking of you. You were one of the only people present who actually listened to the opera. Most of the rest of us were more intent on who was there and what they were wearing. Good gracious, my dear, one would think you had never attended an opera before!”

I hadn’t.

“You must not let yourself be moved. Not to the point where persons such as this one would notice. Far better to adopt Lizzie’s casual attitude, if I must say so. And I hope it’s the only time I shall have to.” She handed the paper back to me. “Is there more?”

“No.”

Aunt sniffed. “It left Lizzie in the best light.”

“Not by name.”

“Yes, but anyone who was there will know of whom he speaks. No matter what high esteem you seem to regard her with, Lizzie Barnes is your chief rival for the heir. Can you see that now?”

I could see that the abrupt end to my evening had left something to be desired. It was little wonder that it had been noted in the newspaper. “Lizzie is my friend.”

“A friend who seems to want the very same thing that you do. Did you know that it was she who danced your waltz quadrille?”

Better her than me.

“I’ll have the dance master come tomorrow to remedy that lamentable flaw in your education. If only you hadn’t fainted. That’s what everyone will remember first about last night.”

“If only my corset hadn’t been laced so tightly. I couldn’t breathe! I don’t know how I even managed to dance.”

“The corset has nothing to do with it. You’re too much like your mother. Given over to female hysteria and a nervous disposition. I’ll ask Brother to prescribe you something for it.”

I needed nothing so much as a loosening of my corset strings.

As I was leaving, she said one thing more. “Until you fainted, you were doing just fine.”

At a music concert that evening, I was able to greet Lizzie before the program began. We talked for a moment under Aunt’s begrudging and watchful eye. Lizzie’s cheeks were still pleasingly pinked from the frigid breeze that had blown all of us into the concert hall, her blond curls charmingly displaced. When she took my gloved hand within her own, I felt the chill of her fingers through both of our gloves. But her first words inquired after my own welfare. “Are you well?”

“I’m fine.” Still a little chilled perhaps, but I expected that the impending crush of humanity in the hall would soon remedy that complaint.

“I was so worried! You didn’t hurt yourself, when you fainted … ?”

I flushed in remembrance. “Only my pride.”

“Debutantes faint all the time.” She gave my hand a squeeze.

“But not all of them are mentioned in the
Journal
.”

“You were mentioned in the
Journal
?”

“And so were you.”

“Really?” She leaned closer. “What did they say?”

“They said you reigned over the evening.”

She smiled, flashing a glimpse of her even, white teeth. “Did they?”

“Yes.”

She wrapped my hand in both of hers. “Oh, Clara. I’m so sorry.”

“Aunt said you danced with him.”

“I did … are you terribly upset? Someone had to.”

“I’m glad! At least I know he didn’t linger and witness my further humiliation.” Such a true friend Lizzie was.

“No. We danced. Although . . .” Her gaze crept toward mine.

“What?”

“His brother . . .”

“Yes?”

“He was there. Stayed there. With you. While you were … had … fainted.”

He had? Somehow that was even worse.

“But by that time, someone had found a doctor.”

Humiliation heaped upon humiliation. I was to be responsible for lifting the Carter family name to the highest echelon of society? When I could not even save myself from disgrace? I had been foolish to even think that I had a chance of succeeding at my debut. “I don’t think—I don’t want to do this. Any of this!” After just three events—a mere three days into our debut—the crush of people, the bloom of colorful gowns was threatening to suffocate me. I felt a sweat break out upon my brow and I blinked, hard. Clutched at Lizzie’s hand.

“But you danced beautifully. Every single dance!”

“I didn’t.”

“You did! I wish I were as tall and graceful as you. And when you closed your eyes, it was as if you were living in some … dream or something.”

I want to live in the dream
. The one in which I looked exactly as I should. And danced exactly as I ought. The one in which I knew, always, what to say, and always, what to do. I wished I could be the person Aunt and Father needed me to be. Though why they should be throwing me at a family they seemed to despise, I could not say.

“Aren’t you glad I said what I did?”

“What did you say?” What was she talking about?

“When your aunt asked me about the waltz quadrille.”

“Oh. Oh! Yes. And she agreed to it! She’s been insisting that you were the first among my rivals.”

She lifted her chin and patted at the curls dangling at her neck. “I am.” Then she grinned. “But I’m also the first among your friends.”

“Thank you. I would never have dared to ask.”

“I’ll see you at the Posts’. And you’d better not faint! The next time someone collapses, it’s going to be me.”

“It wasn’t at all amusing.”

“But there were ever so many people concerned about you. You were quite the center of attention!”

At breakfast the next morning, Aunt wasted no time in directing Father’s attention to my shortcomings. “Clara has no champion in the pages of the society columns.”

Father put down the newspaper and laid it next to his plate. “Is that so?” He looked over at me as if I were some peculiar species of person. A type of creature that he had never before encountered. “Her mother used to headline all of those columns.”

“What do you intend to do about it?”

“What
can
I do about it? She will simply have to become more noticeable.” He winked at me.

Aunt’s lips stretched thin and she turned her attentions to her egg, whacking off the top of the shell with a sharp blow and plunging her spoon into its golden liquid center. “I should think that the problem could be corrected with some attention to a newspaperman.”

“A newspaperman?”

“One of those who writes such columns. They come, often enough, to these balls. Cannot one be convinced to write in greater detail about our Clara? With a kinder tone?”

“Perhaps.” Father patted his lips with a napkin and then tossed it onto the table. “Perhaps he can.”

The next day, the dance master put me through my paces. Indeed, the waltz quadrille was just as Lizzie had explained it, though it only made sense once I had danced one. Aunt made me dance four, just to make sure I had committed the steps to memory. Then she had me dance both a polka and a schottische to be certain I had not forgotten them.

After the dance master and his assistant had gone, I took to the stairs to return to my room.

But Aunt stopped me. “You are wanted by your father.”

It was not often that I received such news. I reversed my course and went immediately to his study.