She Walks in Beauty (36 page)

And eyes that sparkled like sapphires?

Why would he not fall in love with Lizzie? Why would anyone not fall in love with Lizzie Barnes?

31

THE FOLOWING EVENING, there was a performance at the Music Hall. Katherine extricated me from the crowds during intermission. Concern washed her blue eyes with gray. “Has something gone wrong?”

“With what?”

“With you? And Harry?”

I kept my voice flat. “I have no idea.”

“He’s been so despondent. As if the heart’s gone out of him.”

Of course it had. “He misses Lizzie.”

Katherine shook her head so vehemently, her hair ornament seemed in danger of flying off. “Harry is the best of my brothers, and I don’t like to see him so forlorn. Please, has there been some argument between you two?”

“There’s nothing between us.”

“Nothing? Are you sure? Because I wish you would have him. Franklin will only play with you, like some shiny new toy, and then, once your novelty has worn off, he’ll take up with someone else. He’s not worth the money.”

I couldn’t keep my mouth from falling open.

“Shocked?”

“I . . .”

“On the other hand, Harry is worth more than his weight in gold. Only he has none. Not compared to Franklin, though Papa will make certain he will never want for anything.”

She made it sound as if I were a gold digger. But then, wasn’t I? Hadn’t my sights been trained upon only the best and the wealthiest of bachelors? And hadn’t I been ordered to secure him? At all costs?

“You haven’t been long in our circles. And perhaps it’s best if you don’t linger too long. Those who dance too close to the fire always get burnt.” A great sadness weighted her words.

I tried on a smile to lift her spirits. “You seem to have survived without being scorched.”

“What seems is not always what is.”

“But you’re married. To a baron.”

“Yes.”

We both looked over at him. As we watched, he took up a glass of champagne and then he tipped the glass to his mouth and drank it all in one great swallow.

“You’re not happy.”

“Happiness would have exacted far too high a price.”

As we watched, Mr. Douglas walked up to the baron and began to speak to him. The German had to crane his head to look up at him.

“I should not have come back.”

I reached out to touch her arm. “I’m glad you did.”

She turned her gaze upon me and when she smiled, it contained real warmth. “Thank you. That’s the nicest compliment anyone has paid me this evening.” She paused then and placed her gloved hand upon my own. “Remember, Clara: Not all choices are as terrible as we imagine them to be. When you must make a choice, choose with your heart.”

“My wishes aren’t my own.”

“Perhaps they should be.” She leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. And then she walked over to join her husband, though not until Mr. Douglas had gone.

The next evening’s private ball brought a surprise: Lizzie’s return to society.

How I had longed to talk to her scant days before—to tell her about the possibility of Harry, to see if she could think of any way for us to be together. But now … now that Harry had revealed his true sentiments. Should I speak to her of them? But how could I, without revealing my own heart? And had she not once said that if it were Harry we were both after, that she would fight me for him? Perhaps she returned his sentiments. Perhaps … perhaps she already even knew of them.

How stupid I had been. Of course she knew.

And of course she returned his affection.

How could she not?

Had Aunt not observed their match weeks ago? And had he not been neglecting to sign my dance card even while he had been certain to sign Lizzie’s? I felt so angry with her for taking something—which, in all fairness, had never been mine—that I found myself quite without words when she came up behind me and threaded her arm through my own. I turned and even as I recognized a terrible jealousy within my soul, I saw an agony at work behind her eyes.

“Lizzie?”

She looked up at me, eyes glazed, then leaned so hard upon my arm that I nearly staggered.

“What is it?”

A dew of perspiration lined her upper lip. “My ankle.” She lifted her skirts with one hand. Just enough that I could see her foot had been wrapped in gauze, leaving her ankle about four inches too thick. “Mama said I could no longer delay. She made me come tonight. And I have Franklin for a polka. You know how energetic he is. I don’t think I can do it!”

Of course she couldn’t do it. And for the first time in memory I despised Mrs. Barnes and her ambitions, making Lizzie attend a ball when she clearly couldn’t dance. “Let me see your dance card.”

She flapped it toward me.

I found Franklin’s name, took a rubber from my reticule and erased it. Wrote Harry’s name instead.

And then I looked for that same dance on my card … Harry—perfect! I erased Harry’s name and wrote Franklin’s in its place.

“Here.” I handed it back to her. “Dance the polka with Harry. And I’ll dance it with Franklin.”

The lines that had been etched into her brow eased a bit. “Oh, thank you.”

When the polka came, Franklin and Harry appeared together. But when Franklin began to offer Lizzie his hand, I stepped in front of her. Pretended, in fact, to be her. And every other debutante at the ball.

I pouted. Tapped at him on the chest with my fan. “But, have you forgotten? You promised the polka to me!”

For one moment, an uncharacteristic look of confusion rode his features. But then he shook it off. Smiled. “I always dance the polka with Lizzie. And I always dance the waltz with you—”

“Which is why I made you promise to save me one. Tonight.” I pulled the card from my wrist and held it up for him to see.

“Polka. Mr. Franklin De Vries.” He bowed. Offered me his arm. “My mistake.”

As he escorted me onto the floor, I looked back and saw Harry standing at Lizzie’s side, gazing at me in bewilderment. But soon I saw him take up Lizzie and follow after us.

I would not have known that her ankle was bound had I not seen it myself. She hopped and galloped around the dance floor with nary a stumble. In fact, I think I was the only one who saw her faint clean away.

A look of astonishment crossed Harry’s face, for just a moment, and then he grasped her tightly and whisked her away to an alcove. He’d moved so quickly it looked as if they were still dancing.

I left Franklin’s arms to join them.

“What—?”

“It’s Lizzie. She’s fainted!”

“We can’t do anything about it now but finish the dance.”

I saw her return some several minutes later, leaning heavily on Harry’s arm. He was looking down at her, adoringly. I saw him reach over to pat her hand. And he never lifted his gaze from hers.

Yes. There was no doubt. He truly did prefer Lizzie Barnes to me.

The dance ended as we galloped past the refreshment table. Franklin reached out and grabbed a flute. “Champagne?”

“Yes. Thank you.” The bubbles scoured my throat as they went down and I knew I would soon regret them, but I couldn’t seem to make myself care.

I didn’t understand what was happening to me.

Harry loved Lizzie. I couldn’t marry him anyway. What did it even matter?

I ran up the stairs, intent upon the sanctuary of my room. But once I reached the door, I was loath to go in. I wanted something different, something more than the thoughts I had to offer to myself.

I walked farther down the hall and pushed open the door to Mama’s old bedroom. It swung open on silent hinges.

It still smelled of jasmine and lavender. I slipped inside and closed the door firmly behind me. Stepped into the middle of the room and … stopped.

What had I come for?

What had I hoped to find?

There was nothing here of those last dark, dismal days. No odor of stale sweat. No hint of the cloyingly sweet stink of blood. No moaning, no sighs. And least of all, there was no lump, no wasted body tucked away from view beneath the bed linens.

I walked on the tips of my toes to the bed and then sat down upon it. I lay my head on Mama’s pillow and closed my eyes. A poem recalled itself to my memory, the words unfurling in Mother’s soft, whispered voice. I whispered the words along with her.

“There rose no day, there roll’d no hour
Of pleasure unembitter’d;
And not a trapping deck’d my power
That gall’d not while it glitter’d.”

She had repeated those lines over and over again like a refrain during her last hours. But hearing those words, over and over again, was not so terrible as seeing her clawing at her corset, insisting that she wanted to be freed. Father, finally, had dosed her with laudanum. It had made her stop, though her fingernails had collected tatters of the lace and ribbons she had tried to shred. After the dosing, she had ceased her frantic, fevered movements and had settled. Then she had folded her hands upon her chest and begun to sing.

“I heard the voice of Jesus say,
‘Come unto Me and rest;
Lay down, thou weary one, lay down
Thy head upon My breast.’
I came to Jesus as I was,
Weary and worn and sad,
I found in Him a resting place,
And He has made me glad.”

And she sang that hymn until she sang no more. Until she could sing no more. Until she had sung with the last breath of her life.

“I came to Jesus as I was, weary and worn and sad.”

What if I came to Him just as I was? What would He say? And what would Mama say to me if she were still living? Would she know what to do with a heart that had been shattered?

Mama, I need you.

I opened my eyes and pushed up from her bed. Walked about the room, eyes lingering on her perfume bottles, her brush and comb. I held up her mirror to my face.

It only reflected back my own image.

Opening her wardrobe, I breathed deeply of the lavender that still scented it. I pushed through her dresses. Pushed into them and draped their arms across my shoulders, burying myself in a phantom embrace. But then my shoe pushed into something hard, ushering reality into my fantasy. I stepped out of the wardrobe and knelt on the floor in front of it. I stretched out an arm to discover what my toe had hit.

A box.

I pulled it out and set it on the floor.

It was filled with an assortment of odd … contraptions. Rubber rings and bowls and cups in varying sizes, each one attached to a steel bar or spring. Devices of a masklike shape with a hinge in the middle, fixed to a rod with a screw at the end.

I disentangled them from each other as I pulled them from the box and laid them before me on the floor. I had just reached in to retrieve the last of them when I heard the sound of the door shutting behind me.

I turned, prepared to defend my intrusion.

Father walked into the room and sat on Mother’s bed. “I’ll never forget the first time I heard her. It was in church and she was singing. And I knew right then that she could have the entire city at her feet if she wanted to.” The features of his handsome face seemed touched with something. Sadness? Regret?

“Did she want to?”

“There were several years when she was the only person the papers ever mentioned. We were guests of the Lorillards and the Hamiltons. Even the De Vries. That’s when I acquired all of them as clients. It was your mother’s charm and grace that secured them for me.”

“What did you like most about her?”

He turned his gaze from his memories to me, a smile upon his lips. “The way she used to look at me, when we first met, as if I were the only person in the world.”

She used to look at me that way too. Right up until the day she died.

“She looked at me that way before we married. Before I brought her to the city.” His eyes fixed on a spot somewhere beyond my shoulder. I wondered when it was that she had stopped looking at him that way. And why.

“She suffered from female hysteria. And a falling womb.” He coughed. Cleared his throat. “Prolapsed, we call it. At the end, there was no pessary that could push it back up inside.”

A falling womb?

Prolapsed?

I knew the words. I knew them all individually. But I didn’t understand what they meant when they were all put together. A prolapsed falling womb. “What do you mean?”