She Walks in Beauty (22 page)

“She did. Or, rather, they did.”

“They did!”

“Yes. But Aunt sent it right back. She said no debutante should ever be caught wearing orange of plum!”

Lizzie began to giggle. “If you look hard enough when you’re about the city this week, I bet you’ll see more than a dozen girls wearing hats just like it.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

And Lizzie was right! I had started a trend for a hat I would have been loath to wear. And it seemed to have stuck.

My weeks had fallen into a tedious if predictable routine.

Sunday: church

Monday: opera

Tuesday: at-home

Wednesday: opera and private dinner or ball

Thursday: musical performance or other event

Friday: private dinner or ball

Saturday: private dinner or ball

And then back to Sunday, when it began anew. And in between each social event I worked every minute at embroidering pillowcases and monogramming napkins that Aunt assured me I would soon need.

At least we were receiving callers on Tuesday. Whatever war Aunt had commenced by visiting people in person and receiving callers out of turn, she had won. And now our Tuesdays were spent not waiting for visitors but in discriminating between whom I would see and whom I would not. At times, there were several people waiting in the front hall together. And there were even days when people called, though they risked our not being home.

One afternoon as I joined Aunt in the parlor, the butler entered with the silver tray. “The gentlemen are waiting to be received by Miss Carter.”

Aunt took the tray from him and dumped the contents into her lap. “Mr. Hooper.” She dropped the card directly into the wastebasket. “If he thinks he can come in here and brood again, then he’s sadly mistaken. He can go darken someone else’s door.”

I couldn’t keep from shuddering.

Aunt picked up more cards. “Mr. Hobbs. Mr. Harold De Vries.”

“Harry!”

“Pardon me?”

“I mean … Mr. De Vries. The younger.”

“Yes. Brother to the heir.” Aunt waved the butler over. “We will see
him
. But not the others.”

The butler bowed and disappeared. Harry walked through the doorway a moment later.

Aunt and I stood.

Harry bowed.

Aunt smiled and she and I sat.

“Well.” Aunt’s brows raised as if she expected Harry to say something.

He said nothing.

Aunt inclined her head toward him, in the slightest degree.

The conversation was to be my responsibility then. “It was a lovely opera last night.”

Harry blinked as if my words had startled him. “Oh! Yes. Lovely. Quite.”

“The orchestra was … lovely.”

“Very. Lovely.” Harry was standing, hands clasped, rocking back and forth on his toes.

“You may sit. If you’d like to.”

“Oh. Of course. Thank you.” He looked around for a moment and then moved uncertainly to a spare, plain chair, our one and only Revolutionary relic. And then he sat in it.

I hardly dared to look at Aunt. But then I hardly dared to look at Harry for fear he might fall through the chair at any moment. He didn’t. But he did lean back into it.

The chair wheezed.

I had to do—to
say
—something. “That’s … that’s truly a relic of history in which you are sitting, Mr. De Vries.”

He leaned forward.

I found myself able to breathe a bit easier.

“Is it?”

“Yes. It was the chair my father’s father’s father was sitting in when he decided to join in the War for Independence.”

“Imagine that. My mother has such a thing in her parlor. Only it’s a footstool. Went through the war as well. Got a bullet through its leg.”

I smiled.

“We were never allowed to sit on it when we were little. For fear of breaking it.”

“No. I don’t suppose you were.”

Harry smiled. Let his gaze wander around the room. But then it came back sharply to rest upon me. “Oh. Oh! Perhaps … I shouldn’t be sitting here, should I?” He jumped to his feet. “Maybe … maybe I should be going. Just came to say hello, really. Nice to see you.” He bowed toward me. Turned toward Aunt. “Thank you. For receiving me. Have a … be assured … be well. Farewell.”

We rose.

He turned around and walked right into a pedestal, which supported a vase.

The vase began to totter and I lunged past him to right it.

“Oh—I just—” He turned from the pedestal and attempted to move around it, but a marble-topped table blocked his way. “I didn’t—” He reversed his step right into me. I took up his sleeve to keep from falling, and he reached out an arm to keep me upright. “I’m so sorry!”

“Harry.”

“What?” His eyes sent mine a message of desperation. And misery.

“There is a pedestal to your right and a table to your left.”

“Pedestal right and table left.”

I nodded. Released his sleeve.

He dropped his arm.

“You must step straight back and then you may turn around.”

“Right.”

“No!” I clutched him by the lapels. “Straight back.”

“Right. Directly back.”

“Yes.”

He stood there, looking at me for a long moment as I held my breath, waiting to see what disaster could possibly happen next.

“If you could just … ?” His gaze was directed downward.

I followed it, and noted my hands were still gripping his coat. “Oh! Of course.” I let him go.

He carefully stepped backward. Once. Twice. “I’ll see you tonight? At the Vandermeres’ ball?”

“Yes.”

He turned around and walked right into the doorframe.

“Harry!”

He held up a hand to stay me, then walked out through the door and into the front hall.

“What an odd young man!” Aunt frowned and went over to inspect the chair. “I don’t know what young people are taught these days. Perhaps we should find another place for this chair.”

That evening I danced a polka with Mr. Hamilton. Giggled with Lizzie over Mr. Porter’s dogged pursuit of her. Then Harry found me. For a lancers.

“About this afternoon—”

“Are you all right?” I lifted a hand to feel along his cheek where he had struck it against the door. There seemed to be a faint purpling beneath the fine stubble of his whiskers. But he captured my hand within his own before I could commit such an indiscretion. The music started and he pulled me forward toward the couple across from us.

“I’m fine. What I meant to say is that … I can think of nothing to say when I’m supposed to. When I’m calling. When we’re sitting across from each other like two … marionettes! And the only things I’m to mention are the weather or the opera.”

“I know.”

“It feels like my collar’s too small and my tie is too tight and then I can’t breathe and before I know it I’ve made a fool of myself. Again.”

I very nearly smiled. “It doesn’t matter. Not to me.”

We chasséd in opposite directions and then came back together. “It doesn’t?”

“No. I understand. I feel exactly the same way myself.”

“You do?”

“Yes!” It was so good to talk to someone who understood! “Imagine that week after week I sit in the parlor waiting for callers to come so that I can talk about nothing at all to people that I don’t even know.”

“What a miserable existence.”

“And the worst of it is that I’m doing it this year, with Aunt, as a kind of training. So that once I’ve married I can do it for the rest of my life. By myself.”

He grimaced. “How perfectly horrid!”

“Yes. But I can do it. I’ve practiced. I practiced speaking to Aunt’s dog for a whole hour once. About . . .”

His left brow peaked. “Absolutely nothing?”

“Absolutely nothing.”

“And why is that a good thing?”

“Because . . .” What was it that Aunt had said? “Because the city is built on connections. The more connections one has, the more prominent one is.”

“And these connections consist primarily of women who spend countless hours sitting in their parlors hosting other women, whom they know very little, to whom they say nothing of great interest?”

How dull it all seemed. How bleak my future suddenly looked.

We bowed and curtsied to one corner couple and then to the next.

“I’m sure you’ll do very well at it.”

“Thank you.” I couldn’t summon the enthusiasm necessary to accompany my words with a smile.

After that dance came an intermission. And I didn’t mind when Harry remained at my side. He offered me his arm. “Come! There’s someone I want you to meet.” As he walked us over to the side of the room, a woman stood. The one from the De Vries pew. When we reached her, Harry made the introduction. “Miss Clara Carter, this is my sister, Katherine. She usually lives abroad, in Germany, but she decided to grace us with her presence this season.”

“I am so pleased to meet you.” And incredibly, it looked as if she was. She was as fair as Harry was dark. An angel with eyes the color of a summer’s sky.

There was a cough at Katherine’s elbow.

Harry turned in that direction. “And this is her husband, Baron von Bergholz.”

The man snapped from the waist into a bow, grayed hair flopping over his forehead. And then he took up my hand and kissed it. “You must be pleased.”

I must? But … why? He had spoken with a distinctive accent. Perhaps he didn’t understand what he was saying. I looked from Katherine to Harry.

Harry gave his eyebrow the slightest lift, then took his sister by the hand. “I must tell you about Miss Carter, Katherine. She has the amazing ability to dance around a ballroom with her eyes closed!”

“But I—it’s not—” I turned from Harry to his sister. “It’s not the way he makes it sound.”

Her eyes were fairly lit with laughter. “Then tell me … how is it?”

For the first time since my debut I woke that next morning not with regrets, not with memories of some foolish thing I had said or some important thing I had forgotten to do, but with complete and utter contentment. It took me a moment to work out why, but once I had, I leaned back against my pillows with a smile on my face.

I had met Katherine.

I had made a friend.

Which is not to say that Lizzie was not a friend. She was a very good one! But Katherine had already gone through her debut. And what’s more, she had survived. There was a person I could look to when despair threatened hope. When the only life I could envision was one filled with dull conversation and innumerable parties and dances in which everyone said the same thing over and over and over again.