She Walks in Beauty (44 page)

The dressmaker sent a girl out to take my measurements, and soon after the funeral the new mourning clothes were delivered. Severe, dull, stiff things. With no brilliance and little elegance. They suited me perfectly. Stacks of cards were also delivered. They sat in the hall, on the hallstand, waiting to be distributed. But few condolence letters were received. Not nearly as many as Aunt had expected.

We had been cut.

And as sure as Aunt had once taught me, there was no doubt about it. The only thing to do was to turn around and pretend that being ignored was what we had intended all along. It wouldn’t be difficult. There would be no more society for me. No visiting or receiving visits. No dancing or carriage rides or dinners. My life had been stopped by death and, according to custom, it would remain suspended for at least a year.

For six months I would be dressed in crape.

For six months thereafter trimmed in lawn.

And then I would be able to venture forth into the world once more. But what kind of world would that be for one orphaned and ruined and cut?

39

THE NEXT DAY I ventured into Father’s study. I sat in his chair and tried to see the world through his eyes. A world that owed him beauty and fame and fortune. Things he had felt compelled to wrest from destiny through deceit and cunning. I could not find it within myself to feel sorry for him. Pity perhaps. I could find pity enough in my soul for him. For a man who gave up everything of worth for things of such temporal value.

I flipped through the pages of his calendar, noting the names written on the pages.

Schemerhorn. Vanderbilt. Pierpont. Gould.

All of them now freed from his grasp.

I eyed the safe in the corner, the repository of the secret formula for
Dr. Carter’s
. I left the chair and bent in front of the safe. Tried the handle. It was locked. I spun the dial once. Twice. Three times. What could the combination be? I tried his birth date. The date of his wedding. My own birth date. Those were the numbers that should figure largely in any person’s life. But my father had not been governed by passions of hearth and home. I paused for a long moment to think. And then I tried a different combination. September 18, 1873. 9-18-73. The date on which the Panic of ’73 began. The date upon which all of his money had disappeared.

It opened.

I reached into the dark void. Felt my fingers brush paper. I grabbed at it and pulled it out. Reached farther in and found some more. Pulling the papers onto my lap, I began to sort through them. The first paper my fingers had touched was the recipe for
Dr. Carter’s
. It had been scrawled across the back of an envelope.
To four gallons of 60-proof rye add: One pound white sugar—50 grains cocaine—3 drams powdered belladonna root—2 drams sulphuric ether.

Rye, cocaine, belladonna root, and ether. On these, my father’s fortune had been built. I thought about the things he had said. How dismissive he had been of his patients. How contemptuous he had been of their need for his tonic. If one glass of champagne was enough to turn my head, surely four gallons of 60-proof rye would be enough to render anyone a drunk. My father had never cured his patients; he had only drowned their symptoms in alcohol. Mr. Hooper had been right. My father had never been deserving of his title.

After opening a drawer of his desk and hiding the papers within it, I summoned a maid to light a fire for me. After she had gone, I took the recipe from the drawer and threw it atop the logs. It blazed green for one moment and then vanished in a frenzy of flames.

Sitting once more in his chair, I pulled the rest of the papers from the drawer and laid them on the desk before me. They were deeds. Six of them. The properties were all located along Mulberry Street.

Mulberry Street … Mulberry Street.

Hadn’t Mr. Douglas once asked me about Mulberry Street? Even at that first mention, the place had signified something to me. But then, as now, I could not remember what, nor why.

Mulberry Street.

It came to me then in a torrent of revulsion. Mulberry Street was Mulberry Bend. The Bend in Mr. Riis’s book. The place most identified with the anguished suffering of the immigrants. And my father had owned six of its decaying, dilapidated tenements.

I very nearly threw them into the flames as well. But at the last moment, as I held them above the fire, I thought the better of it. Here was an opportunity for me to do something. Something to atone for the sins of my father. I put the deeds back into the safe to protect them until I could decide upon a course of action.

Surprisingly, life was not so solitary as I might have expected it to be. A week after Father had died, Mr. Douglas came to call. I greeted him in the front hall.

“I came for my money. Your father owed me payment. For writing the articles.”

“Did he?”

“Yes. For twelve weeks of work.”

He was only telling me what I knew to be true, so I led him into Father’s study. Bid him sit while I looked for his cheque book.

I found it in one of his drawers. Placed it on the desktop in front of me. But before I opened it, I laid my hands atop it. “Why did you do it, Mr. Douglas?”

He flashed a dimpled smile. “Who would not? For that kind of money?”

“But why did you feel the need to tattle on me? In the other articles, for the other paper. What had I ever done to you?”

His smile disappeared and his eyes lost their warmth. “It was never about you. And I’m sorry that you ever thought it was. Or … perhaps you did not know? That your father was a seller of secrets?”

“And what kind of secret did he keep about you?”

“One that was not worth knowing. One that would have had me banished from polite society. And to my mind, it didn’t seem right, his being able to blackmail your way into society. Someone had to do something.” He looked at me, challenge firing those molten brown eyes.

And in that instant, I remembered something. I remembered where I had seen those eyes before.

But Mr. Douglas kept talking, unaware of what I had just discovered. “I was very … ungallant … several years ago. I thought I had found true love and I had convinced my lady friend that we would marry. Only her father didn’t see it that way. And by that time it was too late. She was sent abroad for my mistakes.”

It made sense now. All of it. Especially the great sadness I had glimpsed in Katherine’s eyes whenever she looked at Mr. Douglas. “She was sent abroad into a society that didn’t look on illegitimate children as such a stain. To a man who found your mistake to be quite useful.” What was it that Harry had said?
“Before the baron met Katherine, it was thought that he would have no heir at all.”

He snorted. “I would have married her. I would have taken care of her. Of them both! Only I wasn’t given the chance.” He looked up at me. “I loved her.” He said it as if he wanted to convince me of his intentions.

“But she was married off to a baron instead.”

He nodded.

“Have you seen him?”

“Who? The baron?”

“The boy.”

He shook his head. “No. She won’t let me. Says he’s the baron’s son now.”

“Can you blame her?”

His jaw worked as he seemed to grapple with an answer. And then his face went still. “No.”

“He looks just like you. He has your eyes. And your pride.”

As he looked at me, his eyes cleared and a ghost of a smile flitted across his lips. “How did you find out? Did your father tell you?”

“No. You did. And she did. By the way you looked at each other.” And of course, I had received no little help from eavesdropping.

“It was your father who pronounced her … with child. And if word had gotten round to any in society … how could I have continued to be invited into their ballrooms and their dinner parties when I had disgraced one of their own?”

“I once asked you if you knew what my father was doing in The Bowery. You wouldn’t tell me.”

“No.”

“Because you’re a better, more honorable man than he was.” I opened Father’s cheque book and wrote him a cheque. Put it into an envelope and handed it to him. “I’m sorry, Mr. Douglas. For everything. Whether you choose to believe it or not, your secret is one I never wished to know and one I will never share. As well, I believe my father left something for you.”

His eyes were wary. “What? And why would he leave me anything at all?”

I handed him the deeds to the tenement buildings.

Mr. Douglas fanned them out as if they were playing cards. And then he shook his head and tried to pass them back. “No. He didn’t leave these to me. He left them to his heir. To you.”

“I don’t want them.”

He laid them on the desktop. “You’ll need them. The rents from them, in any case.”

“I don’t want them.”

“Then how else are you to keep yourself in the manner to which you’ve become accustomed this season?”

“I don’t plan to.”

“Ah. I see. You’re going to sacrifice yourself for the good of common man. No matter whether any of them will notice, whether any of them ever know or not.”

“Whether anyone ever knows or not, Mr. Douglas, it’s the right thing to do.”

“And what will happen to you?”

I shrugged. It didn’t matter anymore if it was vulgar to do so. I was no longer Miss Clara Carter, preeminent debutante and arbiter of all that was fashionable. I was simply and only myself. “I don’t know what will happen to me, but I have no doubt that God does. And I shall have to rest in that belief.” If Harry was right, if God had truly made me for some purpose, if Clara Carter without corsets and without pretensions is how He intended me to be, then He would find some way to look after me. He was obligated to if it was true; if I mattered to Him just as I was.

Mr. Douglas narrowed his eyes as he held my gaze. “How old are you?”

“Eighteen.”

He frowned.

“In another six months.”

“And that still leaves three years until you can hope to do anything at all with this sorry inheritance.” He gathered the deeds together, struck them against the edge of the desktop to align them, and offered them back to me.

“You once told me there was nothing I could do for those people in The Bowery. But I can. I can give these to you. And then you can do something with them.”

He was shaking his head. “They aren’t mine to do anything with. They have his name on them. All of them.”

“Surely you know people, Mr. Douglas. You can’t tell me you’ve no clout at Tammany Hall. Not when you’re a newspaperman.”

He smiled then. Mischief at work in the corners of his lips. “I might. I just might.” He folded the deeds and put them into the inside pocket of his coat. “And you, Miss Carter, might just do after all.”

Color lit my cheeks at his compliment. “You were a very great help to me during the season. I thought of you as a friend during a time when I had very few. I will always be thankful for you.”

For once, his eyes would not meet my own. “Yes … well . . .”

“Always, Mr. Douglas.” I got up and left him then, knowing that he could find his own way out.

40

MY NEXT CALER was as unexpected as the first.

My aunt had taken to her room since Father had died, since her work of ordering cards and tying crape on the front door had been completed. And so it was to me that the butler delivered the calling card.

Baroness von Bergholz. Katherine. Harry’s sister.

I told the butler to show her in and stood when I saw her walk through the door. “I didn’t expect to have the honor of your call.” Not after all that I had done.

She quickly crossed the parlor carpets and embraced me. The cool scent of bergamot followed her. “I came to say good-bye.”

At least she’d had the decency to come see me one last time. I fully expected that I would be cut by all my peers and their families.

She pushed herself back from me, keeping hold of me by the arms. “It’s not as you think. The baron and I sail for the Continent in several days’ time.”

A flush lit my cheeks, but warmth suffused my limbs. And relief that I had at least one friend still. “Please, sit.” I gestured toward the sofa.

“No. I shall only stay a moment. You are in mourning and your thoughts may be put to better use than idle conversation with me. I only wanted to say that you are … fortunate. More fortunate than you know. I was worried about you and Franklin. You wouldn’t have been happy with him.”

“He has Lizzie.”

She smiled. “Yes.”

“But have you no fears for her?”

“No. Lizzie was made for all of this. She sees it as it is and has neither undue hopes nor unfounded expectations. She can make her own happiness. And somehow I think she might just ensure Franklin’s as well.”

The warmth I had basked in vanished. I took a step back from her.

“It’s not that you are any less a woman than Lizzie. It’s that you are more of a woman than Franklin deserves.”

“I see.”

“No. I don’t think you do. But perhaps … I hope you will. While there is still time.” She moved in close, took my face between her gloved hands and kissed both of my cheeks. “You must begin to guide yourself. Do not be swayed by what might have been. It is my fondest hope that I might see you again. It would make drear Berlin seem quite gay.”