She Walks in Beauty (24 page)

“Yes. Yes, I am.”

“You can do whatever you want. But I’m a girl—”

“Yes, indeed you are!”

I frowned. He was teasing me.

“Forgive me. As you were saying?”

“I cannot just go wherever I want whenever I please. I have to be escorted. And who would escort me abroad?”

“I would.”

I laughed.

“I would!” His protest was tinged by his own laughter.

“You can’t.”

“And why not?”

“Because we aren’t—” I was going to say married, but that would have been presumptuous. “Because you can’t. It wouldn’t be proper.”

“Far be it from me to know polite from improper, but I believe you just danced your first waltz properly. With your eyes open.”

I had? I had! I had done it! I had danced an entire waltz with my eyes wide open.

As the carriage sped through the night toward home, it seemed that shadows fled at our approach. I blinked, hard, several times, certain my eyes were simply overtired. But then, at the next block, the shadows seemed to take on actual shapes. Of children.

“What are they doing?”

Aunt lifted her head, glanced out the window. “Who?”

“Those … are they children?” Jacob Riis’s children? Orphans who spent their nights on the streets?

She squinted for a moment into the darkness, then she fell back against her seat. “They’re urchins. Fleeing before they get caught.”

“Caught doing what?”

“Sleeping under the stoops. Or on top of the grates.” She said it as if it were reasonable for people to do such things.

“If only they had someplace to go, someplace warm. And something to eat.”

“Well, they’ve nowhere. And nothing. And we can’t have people sleeping on the street wherever they please.”

“But shouldn’t—”

“Forget them.”

I couldn’t. They had resurrected the images in Riis’s book.

We stepped into the house as the clock tolled four. And as soon as we had done so, Aunt began to scold me. “There was altogether too much laughing and too much conversing tonight.”

“With Franklin?” I hardly ever talked to Franklin, let alone laughed with him. We mostly just … danced.

“With the younger son. He
is
a De Vries … such an alliance is not the worst of things. But you would not want the heir to get the wrong impression.”

“And what impression would that be?” The night’s activities must have made me bold.

“You would not want him to think you preferred his brother to himself.”

Perhaps not … even though I did.

“Just … be careful.”

Of Harry? There was no one I could think of who was less dangerous. “Why does it have to be Franklin?”

“Listen to me. I was in your situation once. So don’t think I don’t understand. I do. Only it was Franklin’s father who courted me.”

Mr. De Vries?

“Don’t look so amazed. I was beautiful once. The belle of the whole city. Only I had no money. All I had was my fair skin and my glossy hair and my smile.”

I could not bear to look at Aunt. Not when what I saw was so different from the image she had just painted. I could not reconcile it with what she was telling me.

“My mother told me it was enough. But it wasn’t. She told me I was as good as any De Vries. But I wasn’t. Oh, he danced with me and he kissed me in the moonlight, but after the season was over, it was Edith Wentworth he married, not me.”

“Maybe it wasn’t you, Aunt. Maybe it was him. Maybe Mrs. De Vries was his heart’s choice.” I had meant to try to release her from the burden of the past, but my words didn’t come out as I meant them. And as soon as they had died in the air, the illusion of youth that had passed over Aunt’s features dissolved too.

She sighed.

“But you did marry.”

“Yes. I did. I married into one of the old families. One of the old, fabled,
poor
families. I married a second son—the son who had all the proper connections but none of the money to go with them. And when my parents died, Brother was left to my care. The little I had, I put on deposit for him at the De Vrieses’ bank. But when the Panic of ’73 hit, we discovered it to mean nothing. All the money vanished in an instant.” She laughed, but it was bitter and filled with rancor.

“Oh, we had ancestors and artifacts and relics. But in this day, in this gilded age, family means nothing. Money means everything. Your father had meant to marry some, but what could be done? He had nothing left to offer. It was while he was taking solace in Newport that he happened upon your mother. The most beautiful girl he had ever seen. As beautiful a girl as New York City had ever seen. And he vowed then that one day he would own this town. That one day all the money that the De Vrieses had lost would come back to him. With interest. And make no mistake. With you, that promise will be kept.”

“But what if—”

“Money means everything, and we mean for you to have as much of it as you can get. You must redeem us. And you will do it by marrying the heir.”

I bowed my head to her words and started up the stairs.

Aunt called out from behind me. “Whether he knows it or not, Franklin will marry you. And it’s in your best interest to let Lizzie know sooner rather than later. Don’t you think?”

“But how will … I don’t know if I can … how can I make Franklin marry me?”

Her gaze seemed to soften. “You are enchanting, in spite of being so tall, with your wide mouth and lack of bosoms. You really are quite striking. So if you had nothing else at all, you have your looks.”

“But you just said—”

“Looks have been known to entice even the most staid of men. But do not worry. Franklin is smart. He will know what choice to make.”

“But what about me? Don’t I have a choice?” Shouldn’t I have a choice?

She reached out to pat my hand. “Of course. You can choose orange blossoms or roses for your wedding.”

“But what if I don’t like him?”

“Don’t you?”

“I don’t know.” I really, truly didn’t.

“Well, let me tell you: Whether you do or whether you don’t, money makes life much better. And it’s easier to live with a rich man than a poor one.”

“But what if I don’t want money?”

“Don’t want money!” She gave a short bark of a laugh. And when Aunt looked at me, it was with something close to pity. “Oh, my dear girl, you don’t know what you want, and you’re too young to know what you need.”

“But shouldn’t I at least be happy?”

“Pray for happiness and hope for the best. Happiness has never been sufficient grounds to marry. Or not.”

“If marriage is so important, then why have you never remarried?”

Her smile seemed to freeze upon her face. And then it withered. “I have earned the right to wear my widow’s cap. I paid for it with years of unhappiness and many … tears. And I’ll surrender them to no man!” She paused, and when she began again it was with a lower, more controlled voice. “You cannot understand it now, but the best legacy Mr. Stuart passed on to me was the use of his name. And the right to place the word
Widow
before it. When Mr. De Vries approaches, you must smile and be captivating. And maybe one day, you too will find yourself to be a widow. With all the vast means of the De Vries family at your disposal. And then you can turn your attentions toward happiness.”

21

LIZZIE WELCOMED ME into the hedge that Thursday, eyes shining. “I’m to have a dinner party!”

“A dinner party?”

“Yes! And you’re to be invited.”

“Aunt will never let me come.” And it was too bad, for I would have dearly loved to.

“Of course she’ll let you come.”

“She won’t. She wants me to have nothing to do with you.”

“But you have to come. I’ve already forced Mama to send you an invitation.”

“Forced her?”

“She says that you’re my only rival. And it’s even odds on which of us will end up with the heir.”

Mrs. Barnes didn’t like me? Didn’t want me? She’d been Mama’s closest friend!

“But I said that if she didn’t, I’d cry myself sick and wouldn’t attend any events for a week.”

“You didn’t!”

“I did.”

“You would never have done it.”

Her smile, when it came, was sly. “She seemed to think I might have.”

“Lizzie. You’re incorrigible!”

“I know. That’s why you have to come.”

If I could, I would. “When did you send the invitations?”

“This morning. By messenger.”

Then Aunt might already have received it.

“Just tell your aunt I plan to trap Franklin into marrying me. You overheard me say it. And I did. Just now.”

“It’s still a lie, Lizzie.”

“It’s a partial truth. For a noble cause. Please.”

“She’ll find me out.”

“She won’t. She’s too blinded by her ambition. The thought of Franklin being alone with me will frustrate her to no end. Just watch if it doesn’t!” Lizzie disappeared behind the wall with a flounce.

That afternoon I was called into Aunt’s room.

“I have received an invitation. For you. To
Lizzie Barnes’s
. For a dinner party. It would behoove you to discover who she has invited.”

“A dinner party? I think . . .”

“Yes?”

“I remember overhearing Lizzie say . . .” How exactly had she phrased it?

“Yes?”

“I overheard her saying that she planned to trap Franklin into marrying her.”

“She did?”

“She did.”

Aunt held her lorgnette up to her eyes and then studied the invitation. She turned it over and turned it back. She set it down on her lap, then picked it up once more. And at last she reached over and began to scratch one of her dogs on the belly with it. “Then I have no choice but to send you. You’ll be accompanied by your father.” She tossed the invitation in my direction. “Cheap. Cheap pasteboard. And not even engraved. They are not a respectable family. Not now. Though perhaps they were before the war. Before he married that Southerner.”

I ignored Aunt’s slurs and picked up the invitation. It was lovely. Pink in color and typeset in an ornate filigree. It looked just like Lizzie.

“You may go, but you are not to arrive until half past eight.”

“But the invitation reads eight o’clock.”

“Then the dinner party will not be able to start until you have arrived, will it? Take up a piece of paper and a pen. We’ll see how well Miss Miller taught you.”

I did as Aunt requested.

“You will write, ‘My dear Mrs. Barnes, Miss Carter and her father are delighted to attend. Thank you for your kind invitation. Sincerely . . .’” Aunt gestured for the paper and pen, then signed it.

“Now put it in an envelope, but do not mail it until Monday.”

“But—”

“We do not know what invitations await you next week. Lizzie’s dinner may be the least of them.”

“Won’t they wish to know if I’ll be attending? So that they can plan—”

“Of course they’ll wish to know. But we do not always, any of us, get what we want, do we? It will do no harm to keep them guessing. And you must not seem so eager. I’m of half a mind not to let you go.”

I did not respond, though Aunt sent a keen glance at me from behind her lorgnette. “That is all.”

I shut the door and heaved a sigh of relief.