She Walks in Beauty (17 page)

As I entered, my father pushed away from his desk. “Ah. There you are.” He stood there as if he was not quite sure whether to advance toward me or to retreat from me.

It was then I realized we were not alone. A man stood by the window, looking out onto the back garden. I had done the same just that morning, watching the snow sift down upon the ground. But whereas I had been happy to be gazing at such icy beauty from inside the house, the set of his shoulders made me think he wanted nothing so much as to be gone from here.

While I had been looking at the stranger, my father had reclaimed the seat behind his desk. “This is Mr. Douglas.”

The man turned. He was younger than I had expected. Pronounced of chin, with an air of disdain that the curiosity in his brown eyes belied. He bent at the waist in a fluid, elegant bow. “Miss Carter.”

“Mr. Douglas is going to accompany you at all your functions.”

“Accompany me?”

The man leveled his eyes at me. “I am a columnist for the
New York Journal
.”

“He writes the social column.” Father spoke the words with what seemed like an especial satisfaction.

“
And
a political one as well.” The man was rather pointed in his tone.

Father shrugged. And then he rose once more and approached Mr. Douglas. “You do understand your obligations?”

The man turned his gaze from me to my father. “Yes.”

“There is nothing further to discuss?”

“No.”

Father nodded. And then he smiled, his shoulders relaxing. “I appreciate your willingness to be of assistance in this matter.”

Mr. Douglas nodded. And then, with a slight bow toward me, he was gone.

Aunt slid into the doorway as his steps echoed down the hall. “Well?”

Father smiled at me as he answered his sister. “He’ll do it. Our Clara will soon be the season’s most celebrated debutante.”

15

IT SNOWED AGAIN the day of the Posts’ Ball. I wished that it had made the carriage drive as sparkly and festive as they always seemed to be in novels, but snow that fell into the city was always corrupted by the atmosphere through which it passed. By the smoke from tens of thousands of chimneys, by the great spark-lit belches of the elevated trains, and by the grime and filth that it finally came to rest upon. By the time we reached the Posts’, it had degenerated into ice-glazed puddles or turned into an ash-colored slush. I had altogether forgotten about Mr. Douglas and our shared appreciation of snowflakes when I saw him in the front hall.

I didn’t know what to do. Should I acknowledge him? Or would that have been inappropriate? He was like an employee, as good as an employee, although … he didn’t look like one. He wore the same black tailcoat, black vest, and white bow tie that the other men did.

Aunt frowned. And then, as if making a great concession, nodded. Once.

Mr. Douglas inclined his head toward me. And then he came over. “May I have the pleasure of a dance?”

Aunt opened her mouth, but he pointedly ignored her and continued to speak to me. “If I must write about you, I should think it would be better to do it authentically.”

I offered him my wrist.

“I’ll take a polka. That way you can work your charms on someone else during the waltzes.”

I didn’t know whether he was criticizing me or complimenting me. And I had no chance to ask him, for once he signed the card, he disappeared into the crowd. But what the masses swallowed up, they also gave back. In the form of Lizzie.

She smiled at Aunt.

Aunt scowled.

Lizzie hooked her arm through my own and spoke to me from the private recesses of her fan. “I adore the Posts’ decorations.”

Only Dickens’s Scrooge would not have. In every corner of their ballroom stood a Christmas tree, strung with tinsel and bedecked with candles. And underneath each tree had been stacked presents wrapped in colored papers and secured with lengths of lace or ribbon. There were dozens of them, and they were all of identical shape and size. It was not difficult to imagine that they would be given out as favors before the night was over.

Lizzie brought my attentions back to her with a whisper. “Who is that divine-looking man that you were talking to?”

“A Mr. Douglas.”

“Not
the
Mr. Douglas?”

I took a swipe at her nose with my fan. “I have no idea which Mr. Douglas. He came to visit Father last week.” I very nearly told her that the man was a columnist for the
Journal
, but I could not overcome the thought that I shouldn’t. That there was something not quite … fair … about hiring a newspaperman to report on all of one’s social doings. And so I said nothing.

“There’s a Mr. Douglas who writes for
The New York Journal
. Do you think that’s him?”

I should have guessed that Lizzie knew more of such things, more of such people, than did I. Wasn’t Mrs. Barnes the last word in social flair? “Is there? I hadn’t known it.” Least not before I had been told it. By Father.

“He looks as if he belongs.”

I glanced about until I saw him, and indeed, he did have an air of belonging. That air of studied indifference that seemed to plague the most fashionable of the city. The mien that Aunt had often suggested I acquire.

“And besides,” Lizzie whispered, “it cannot hurt to have a handsome man follow you about!”

“He’s not following—”

“He
is
following. At least with his eyes. But it’s perfect. Haven’t you seen how Mr. De Vries glares at him?”

“Does he?”

“Doesn’t he! I wish I had a Mr. Douglas of my own. You must flirt with him, Clara, and use him to your advantage.”

I was using him to my advantage … in ways that Lizzie must never know.

As we stood together, a young man approached Mrs. Barnes. I saw Lizzie’s mother try to catch her eye. I touched my friend’s hand with my fan. “A suitor awaits.”

She glanced beyond me toward her mother. Glanced back at me with a wry twist to her lips. “I’d rather stay right here with you.” She wrinkled her nose at me. And then she smiled. “How do I look?” She asked the question through her teeth.

“Lovely.”

“If lovely is as lovely does, I’d rather act like a toad.”

I was sorely tempted to laugh aloud, but checked myself just in time. And good thing. For when I had turned back to Aunt, she requested my dance card. For the unfortunate Mr. Hooper. He of the malignant eyes, who was so fond of staring at me.

“I gave him a dance. A quadrille. He might have made a scene.”

Perhaps with a quadrille he would be so concerned about keeping the sets that he wouldn’t be staring at me. At least I hoped not.

My dance card was soon filled. And Mr. De Vries had claimed a dance upon it. So had Mr. De Vries, the younger son. They had approached me together, and the elder had introduced his brother to Aunt. It was the first time I had seen the younger brother since he had found my slipper. He took a lancers. The heir took a waltz.

No waltz quadrilles to worry over.

I sighed in sheer relief.

The dance with the younger De Vries came first.

He escorted me out onto the dance floor, accepted my gloved hand in his. “Are you in command of both your slippers this evening, Miss Carter?”

A flush crept across my cheeks. “I am.”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything. I’m always saying just the thing I shouldn’t say.”

Which was probably why he and his brother had been urged to cut their tour short. But he didn’t look like a dissolute. Not that I had any great experience with them. He looked rather … nice. His hair was a bit overlong when compared to the fashion, but it curled handsomely at his neck behind his ears. And where his brother seemed sophisticated and knowing, the younger Mr. De Vries seemed simply genuine and kind.

“Perhaps I should have signed up for a waltz, for that’s all Franklin could talk about yesterday: ‘dancing with that delicious girl who closed her eyes.’ But I must confess that I rather like your eyes. Open. Much better to see them than to … not.” As the music began, he bowed and I curtsied.

“Did you enjoy your tour, Mr. De Vries?”

We stepped to the center and greeted the couple across from us with another bow and a curtsy. Then we retreated.

“My what?”

“Your tour. Of the continent?”

I chained across the center of our square with the other girls and then took up my place beside Mr. De Vries once more.

“Yes. That is until … well … it was shorter than expected. I would have liked to have seen Italy.”

Italy! Where Bryon had lived. And died. “I would like to see it too.”

Our conversation was impeded by a series of sliding chassés, which took us in opposite directions.

“Would you?”

“Yes.”

“Well … that’s something. Something in common.”

Such an odd way he had of expressing himself.

We joined hands in a two-hand turn. “It’s so rare to be able to look at a person, at a girl, in the eye.”

“My aunt says I’m as tall as a boy. Taller even.”

We broke apart to bow and curtsy once more, this time to our corner.

“I wouldn’t say that. Although … I am a boy. And you are as tall as me … only what I meant to say was that it’s unexpected, considering that generally I’m looking down upon some pointy tiara or getting tickled beneath the nose by some wayward feather.”

I smiled at his remarks as I chained once more in the center.

“Oh, sure, you may laugh, but imagine me in the ballrooms of Vienna trying desperately not to sneeze because some baron’s daughter has got a peacock’s feather that will not stop waving itself beneath my nostrils.”

Once again we were obliged to chassé.

“Better a feather than a hatpin.”

“Oh yes. Much better a feather. A hatpin is likely to poke a man in the eye. You have no idea how filled with traps these ballrooms are. I take my life into my hands every time I set foot in one.”

“I wish everyone shared your sentiments. You have no idea how tiring it is to balance all of these jewels and feathers on my head all evening.”

We chained across the square and then chained back to our original position.

He gave my hair ornament an apprising look. “Doesn’t seem that big an imposition.”

Had I been complaining? I hadn’t meant to complain. It wasn’t polite. “It’s not!”

He raised a brow.

“I’m not complaining. Because I wouldn’t.”

“I would.” We looked at each for a long moment and then burst out laughing.

As the final bars of the dance were played, we bowed to the couples across from us and at our corners and then Mr. De Vries deposited me back at Aunt’s side. Bowed. “Thank you ever so much, Miss Carter.”

“Thank you, Mr. De Vries.”

He stepped a bit closer. “Don’t you think, since we spoke of … feathers and hatpins … that you could call me Harry?”

I nodded. And as he left me at Aunt’s side, I was smiling still.

The next dance was his brother’s. He bowed toward my aunt and then he turned his attentions toward me. “Miss Carter.”

“Mr. De Vries.”

He escorted me out onto the dance floor.

We waited for the opening measures.

And waited.

And waited some more.

“I wanted to tell you, Miss Carter—”

The orchestra began. I closed my eyes and let the dance, and Mr. De Vries, carry me away.

When I opened my eyes after the last note faded away, it was no little sorrow. I had imagined myself in sunny Italy. And then in a ballroom in Vienna. I flushed as I realized just how far my wild imaginings had taken me from Mr. De Vries’s arms. “Thank you, Mr. De Vries.”

He smiled at me. A slow spread of a smile that started at one corner of his mouth and didn’t quite make it to the other side. “It was my pleasure, Miss Carter, and
I
thank
you
. For a dance that was … exceptional. No other girl has ever placed herself in my hands as you do. Never trusted me so completely. It was as if I could do to you whatever I wanted.”

I looked up sharply at that comment. But I found nothing but regard in his eyes.

“You’re like no one I’ve ever met,” he said.

“Thank you, Mr. De Vries.”

He linked his arm through my own and turned me toward Aunt. As he did, his chin grazed my ear. He looked into my eyes. “Call me Franklin.”