She Walks in Beauty (20 page)

“It is. My governess. At least she was … until I found out I was to debut.”

He leaned toward me ever so slightly. “And you miss her.” His voice was gentle. And understanding.

“Yes. Very much.”

“So how, then, may I help you?”

“May I ask her to send any reply to your care?”

“And this would be whom?”

“Miss Julia Miller. Of Cortland.”

“Miss Julia Miller, then. Of Cortland. If a message should ever come to me from her, I shall gladly deliver it to you.”

I smiled my thanks. He smiled in return. An awkwardness hovered in the air between us.

This, then, was the danger of speaking intimately before such privileges had been earned. I never should have asked such a thing of him.
What must he think of me!

Harry broke the silence. “I saw you at church on Sunday. Well, I mean … I see you at church every Sunday. But I thought the reverend’s sermon especially thoughtful this past week.”

“You did? I’ve often thought that I must be the only one who actually listens. Lizzie just spends the service noticing what people wear … or fail to.”

“But that isn’t why you attend?” It was a question couched as an answer.

“I attend because . . .” Why did I attend? “Don’t I have to? Don’t we all have to?”

He shrugged. “We could refuse.”

“And then everyone would notice we weren’t there.”

“Who cares whether they would notice. God would notice. And wouldn’t that be immeasurably worse?”

“You really think He would? When He has so many more important things to think of?” If God cared for anyone, it was people like Mr. Jacob Riis. People who did important things. People who mattered.

“He made you, didn’t He? Different than anyone else who has come before or anyone else who will come after?”

I supposed He had. But I wished He’d had the foresight to make me bigger in the chest and smaller at the waist. Then I wouldn’t be trying so hard to correct His mistakes.

“I must insist that you matter to Him much more than you seem to realize.” There was an earnestness to his words that reverberated inside me. If only he spoke the truth. I would like to believe that God cared for me. That He might love me no matter what anyone else thought. Because such an idea was so astonishing and because I could think of no reply, I deployed my fan, whisking it in front of my face until I decided upon a response. “If I go to church, it’s because I must.”

“But wouldn’t you rather go because you want to?”

“Of course. And wouldn’t you rather be standing in a cathedral in Italy than here? In this ballroom?”

He laughed and I smiled and we turned our eyes to the crowd.

How nice it would be to live life with Harry’s convictions. To be so certain that God thought of us. And so quick to dismiss the thoughts of others. But though admirable, his views were flawed. Harry didn’t understand the way society worked. And how could he? He didn’t have to worry about the style of his hats or the cut of his gowns. He didn’t have to mold himself with a corset. And he didn’t have to squeeze his hands into gloves two sizes too small. He was a man.

18

LIZZIE WAS AT the opera on Monday evening. She fairly ran to greet me when she saw me. “How perfectly …
perfect
! You’re here! And now you can help me.”

Me? Help
her
? If anyone needed help, it was me.

“We’ll never succeed this season, Clara, if we don’t take care of the other girls.”

“Which girls?”

“The other debutantes. We have to get rid of them.”

It took me a moment to reply, so surprised was I at her words. “You don’t mean … what
do
you mean?”

“I mean we have to keep them away from Franklin.”

Franklin? So he must have asked her to call him by his name too. And I had thought it a special honor, reserved just for me.

Lizzie had continued speaking. “Heaven knows
he
won’t keep himself away from them!”

That was certain. He seemed to relish the attention he was receiving from this season’s debutantes … and the previous year’s. And the few left unmarried from the year before.

“There are entirely too many suitable girls in this city for our purposes.”

“Then what did you have in mind?”

I found my way back to our box in a daze. The entire first two acts of the opera,
Aida
, went unnoticed by me. At intermission, it was with a sinking heart that I followed Aunt into the Assembly Room.

Gowns in brilliant reds and vivid blues assaulted my vision, and they were exacerbated by spots of pure, glowing white. By the season’s other debutantes. One of them was Lizzie. And when I reached her, I meant to tell her that I couldn’t do it.

Only she found me first. And under her confident stare, my fortitude wavered.

“I don’t think I can do this, Lizzie. I really don’t.”

She took me by the arm and wound her own through mine. “Of course you can. All you have to do is open your mouth and say the words.” Only Lizzie would have thought to have taken me literally.

“But they’re not true. You’re asking me to tell a lie.”

She frowned as she looked up at me. “What
is
true is that if we don’t find some way to rid ourselves of the competition, then someone else is going to marry Franklin out from under us.”

“But then we wouldn’t have to marry him. And he wouldn’t have to choose between us.”

“Better one of us than one of them.”

I supposed that Lizzie was right. “Fine.”

“Ready?”

I hesitated in doing so, but eventually gave her a nod.

“It’s only going to work if we say it comes from your father. Remember, you only have to tell the Vandermeres and Addy Remstell.”

“And you’re going to do your part?” I didn’t like it, I really didn’t. But Lizzie was right: We had to do something about the other debutantes.

“I’ll tell all the others.” She laid her other hand on my arm and gave me a squeeze. “You know that he’ll eventually come to decide that we really are the two best debutantes in the city. We’re just going to make it easier for him to come to that conclusion.”

“But do we have to say
that
?”

“Yes. Because it will keep everyone from wanting to marry him. Why would any girl want to if his fortune is destined for his brother?”

“But—”

“Shh! No more delay.”

“But—”

“It’s what Mama told me to say.”

“You involved your mother in—!”

“My mother suggested the whole scheme.” There was something very much like pride in Lizzie’s words. “Don’t worry. No one will be harmed in the end.”

“I suppose … I mean, if your mother thinks—”

“She does.” There was no deterring Lizzie. Not when she had her mind set on something.

As I walked back through the Assembly Room, I let space grow between Aunt and myself. And when we passed by the Vandermere cousins I slowed just a bit. “My father let slip something I thought you should know.”

“Oh?” Emma, the older one, aimed her upturned nose in my direction.

“Yes. Mr. Franklin De Vries is . . .” I truly didn’t want to say it.

“What?”

“He is … known to be … sterile.”

Her eyebrows shot up toward the ceiling. “Really!”

I shrugged and continued on my course, pausing when I reached Addy Remstell to tell her the same thing.

“Are you sure?”

“My father seemed to think so.” Lies! Lies, lies, lies.

As I left the room, it was with the knowledge that I had left a roiling, reeling trail of deceit behind me. I couldn’t even concentrate on the next act of the opera, except to note how romantic it was when the hero forsook the arms of the king’s daughter to find true love with an outsider. A slave.

When the opera was over, I spotted Lizzie in the foyer. She tipped her fan to her left.

Another signal? But what did it mean? Was someone watching me? I examined the crowds around me. But, no. There didn’t seem to be anyone looking in my direction.

Except Lizzie. She tipped her fan again. And then she tipped her head in the same direction. Twice.

Why couldn’t she speak to me in equations? Or Italian? Then I would know exactly what it was she meant to say.

She jerked her head once more to the left.

Did she mean … ?

Finally, she threw her arm out and pointed. As I followed the gesture, the thrill of triumph and the shame of guilt warred within me. For the first time during the season, Franklin De Vries was standing quite alone … while his brother Harry was surrounded by debutantes.

The next week, my nerves frayed and my conscience wracked by guilt from the lie, I barely slept at night. So when the scream came, I almost confined it to the realm of my imagination. But then it came again. From the parlor.

I ran down the stairs as quickly as my corset would allow me.

When I reached the front hall, servants were already appearing from the basement and the back stairs. As they saw me, they cleared a path, leaving open the entrance to the parlor.

I crept toward it, not quite certain that I wanted to know what was happening inside. As I entered, I saw Aunt, nearly reclining on the sofa, waving one hand in front of her face as she clutched a letter in the other. When she saw me, she said no word, but she held out the letter to me with a trembling hand.

“What is it?”

“Read.” Her face, which had theretofore been pale, flushed red.

“It’s an invitation.”

She nodded.

“To a … Patriarch’s Ball?”

“
The
Patriarch’s Ball.”

I handed it back to her.

“You’re going to the Patriarch’s Ball!”

“Yes.” Another ball.

“That I should live to see this day. The Patriarch’s Ball!” She sounded as if I had just been transformed from mortal to goddess. She pushed herself to sitting and turned, full body, to look at me. “There are only ever four hundred people on the invitation list. Just four hundred worthy to attend. And we were never among them. If you have secured a place among the four hundred, then you have succeeded. The De Vrieses must have convinced someone to add you to the list.”

“But … how do you know that it was them?” And why would they do that?

“Who else could it have been?”

Had I known the amount of work entailed in readying myself for the ball, I would have intercepted and destroyed the invitation before Aunt could read it. There were visits to be made to the dressmaker. Hair ornaments to be altered and new slippers to be ordered. And worst of all, there were more dancing lessons to be endured. Apparently, the patriarchs demanded nothing so much as novelty at their balls. And there was a new cotillion to be learned in advance of the event.