The Forgotten Room (16 page)

Mr. Schuyler flashed her his most winning smile. “I don't like to drink alone.”

Before Lucy could argue, he bustled her into the dark depths of a taxicab, giving the driver an address in the West Fifties, an area Lucy knew not at all. As the crow flew, it might not be that far from her lodgings on East Sixty-ninth, but Manhattan was fiercely territorial. East was east and west was west and never the twain would meet.

Mr. Ravenel had teased her about that, about her ignorance of the
city she called home. He had taken her down paths in the park she hadn't known existed, pointed out buildings she had never noticed before.

Lucy hadn't wanted the afternoon to end. She could have roamed the paths of the park forever with Mr. Ravenel for an escort and a melting ice cream for sustenance, forever in the sunshine, forever summer.

Except that summer ended, sunshine gave way to rain, and Mr. Ravenel would, eventually, go back to his home in Charleston, his visit to New York nothing but a pleasant memory.

Perhaps, Lucy told herself, perhaps that was why she had enjoyed herself so much, not because of anything inherent in Mr. Ravenel, but because he was only passing through, because she didn't have to worry with him.

That was all. That had to be all.

As if he had read her thoughts, Philip Schuyler asked, abruptly, “What did you think of that Ravenel fellow?”

“Mr. Ravenel?” Lucy played for time, thankful for the murky interior, the sunlight barely filtering through the soot-grimed windows. “He seems nice enough.”

Nice. Such an incredibly inadequate word. He was an intriguing mix of old-fashioned courtliness and schoolboy mischief. He gave the impression of openness, but Lucy suspected that it was as much of an act as his Huck Finn impression that night at Delmonico's. There were depths there, and secrets, and the more she saw of him, the more she wanted to unravel them.

Which was silly, given that he was just a chance acquaintance.

Mr. Schuyler didn't seem to notice her abstraction. “Nice.” He turned the word around on his tongue. “You might just be right about that. Let's hope you're right about that.”

The cab screeched to a halt outside a nondescript redbrick building
with a faded awning. There was a storefront advertising sewing machines for sale. It was closed, the door locked and the store dark.

“If you want me to sew on your buttons,” said Lucy, turning to Mr. Schuyler, “there are easier ways to ask.”

“Watch and learn, Miss Young; watch and learn.” The jauntiness was back in his step as her employer went to a small door on the side, a service door, and knocked three times, one slow, two fast.

The door opened, but only by inches, revealing a man who could have doubled as the troll in one of her father's stories, thick of neck and arm. Instead of holding a large club, though, he held a notebook.

“Yeah?” he said, looking forbiddingly at them.

Behind him, a steep flight of stairs rose into darkness. The hall was dingy, with a smell to it that Lucy didn't like. “Mr. Schuyler, are you sure—”

“Philip,” he said. “It's Philip.” To the man at the door, he said, “The cat's pajamas are the bee's knees.”

The magic phrase had been spoken. The troll stepped back, letting them through. The door clanged shut behind them, although not before Lucy saw Philip press a folded bill into his hand.

Behind them, Lucy heard the ominous sound of locks turning.
Bad things happen to fast girls,
Lucy's grandmother liked to say. Despite her attempt to maintain a veneer of sophistication, Lucy felt a little trickle of unease.

Stop it,
she told herself. The idea of Philip Schuyler—Philip Schuyler!—selling girls into white slavery was so ludicrous that it almost made her smile.

Almost.

“We're in,” said Philip Schuyler, with satisfaction.

“Lovely,” said Lucy weakly, and her employer laughed.

“It's better upstairs, you'll see. This is just for atmosphere. Well, and to keep the cops away.”

“Cops?” Lucy looked at him with alarm. She'd seen the stories in the news, clubs raided by police, men and women gasping their last breath after drinking tainted gin.

Mr. Schuyler squeezed her arm. “Don't worry. No one is going to bother a couple of virtuous citizens.” When Lucy didn't look reassured, he said cheerfully, “They wouldn't come on a Wednesday. They only raid when it's worth their while.”

Lucy looked at him sideways. “You seem to know a lot about it.”

Mr. Schuyler shrugged modestly. “I get around.”

He pushed open a door at the top of the stairs, and Lucy found herself in an entirely different world. A long bar ran down one side of the room, the wood gleaming in the muted light. The walls were wood paneled, with the subdued opulence of a gentleman's club. It was relatively empty at six o'clock on a Wednesday. Two businessmen had their heads together at one of the round tables, and a bored-looking society girl powdered her nose at another, while the man with her sipped morosely at his drink.

A small stage in the corner was unoccupied, a music stand devoid of music.

“It doesn't really get going until later,” said Mr. Schuyler. He led her to a small table in the corner, standing courteously as she settled herself on the black leather banquette. “Well, Miss Young? How does it feel to enter a den of iniquity?”

“My grandmother would never approve,” said Lucy, looking at the man and woman together, her dress dipping in a daring vee in the back.

“Mine would,” said Philip Schuyler. “She was a ripping old soul. And she did like her drink. What's your poison?”

“Er—a gin fizz.” Lucy wasn't quite sure what it was, but she'd heard the name somewhere.

“That's my girl,” said Mr. Schuyler approvingly.

No, Didi Shippen was his girl. Lucy wondered if he would take Didi to someplace like this, up a secret stair, whispering together in the shadows, or if Didi was for sunlight and tennis courts and brightly lit ballrooms.

Lucy glanced covertly around as Mr. Schuyler ordered their drinks, both nervous and exhilarated. There was a curious unreality about it all, about the dark, tobacco-scented room, the low lights, the small table, Mr. Schuyler so close to her she could feel his knee—unintentionally, of course—brushing hers.

Not Mr. Schuyler, Philip, Lucy reminded herself, and forced herself to relax her hands. She looked, she knew, like a nervous spinster paying a call on a crotchety maiden aunt, not a woman of the world about to have a clandestine drink with a handsome man.

Deliberately, she set her bag on the table and drew the pins from her hat. Little enough in the way of debauchery, but at least it made her feel less like an Irish schoolteacher.

A waiter set their drinks in front of them, the contents icy cold, the glasses already sweating gently in the warm room.

“Bottoms up,” said Mr. Schuyler—Philip—and drained half his glass in one swig. He set it down with a satisfied sigh. “That's better.”

Lucy sniffed cautiously at her own drink before taking a very small sip. “I don't want to pry . . . but is something wrong?”

“You're the least prying person I know,” said Philip, and Lucy felt a small flush of shame.

If he knew why she had taken the job . . . If he knew that she had gone through his files when he wasn't there . . .

He raised his glass in a salute. “What's wrong is that my father
married the Hag from Hell. And then the old so-and-so had the nerve to die and bequeath her to me. Cheers.”

“The Hag from Hell?” Lucy took another small sip from her drink.

“Demanding Witch will also do.” Philip Schuyler drained the last of his martini. “God, I needed that.”

It was the perfect opening Lucy needed to ask about the Pratts. “Is she really that bad?”

Mr. Schuyler waved for the waiter. “It depends on how you define
bad
. She never locked me in the attic or sent me to my room without my supper. Of course, she would have had to be aware that I was having supper to send me to my room without it.”

Tentatively, Lucy asked, “How old were you when your father married her?”

The waiter set another martini down in front of Mr. Schuyler, the astringent smell of undiluted spirits strong enough to strip the varnish from the table.

“Eight. I was eight when my father married her.” Philip wrapped his hands around the stem of the martini glass, his shoulders hunching forward, and, for a moment, Lucy saw not the confident man she saw in the office every day, but a lonely little boy. “I remember him telling me that he'd found a new mother for me. Mother. Ha. She's about as maternal as a mongoose.”

If Philip had been eight when his father had married Prunella Pratt, that meant he was old enough to remember the family; old enough, perhaps, to have noticed Lucy's mother. Prunella Pratt had announced her engagement to Harrison Schuyler in the winter of 1892. Lucy's mother had married her father in early 1893.

Did you ever meet a woman there?
Lucy wanted to ask.
A woman who looked like me?

If her mother was a houseguest, she would have been included in
family events. But Philip Schuyler, eight years old and confined to the nursery, wasn't likely to remember.

Philip was still musing over his martini. “She had me fooled for a bit. You wouldn't think of it to look at me now, but I was a very pretty child.” There was a mocking note. “Blond ringlets and all. Prunella liked to dress me up in a little velvet suit and take me to tea with her friends, so they could all exclaim over how maternal she was, how sweet. Then she'd send me back to the nursery as soon as we got home. I used to wonder what I was doing wrong. I'd try to find ways to get her attention, to make her love me. Stupid.”

“It's not stupid,” said Lucy softly. “I—”

She bit her lip on what she had been planning to say. The drawings she had made, trotting to her mother with them like a dog with bones. She'd known her mother loved art, and she'd thought, maybe, if she could create it, then her mother would pay attention to her, would look at her as though she really saw her.

“It's not stupid,” she repeated.

Philip shook his head. “Wasted effort. She'd make up to you when she wanted something and then forget you a moment later. It took me years to realize it.”

“What about your father?” She was wandering away from the Pratts, but she was curious. This was a side to Philip Schuyler she'd never imagined. He'd always seemed so untouchable to her, a man in control of himself and his destiny.

Yes, she could hear the strain in his voice sometimes when Prunella would call for the second or third time that day, but he had always covered it with a smile.

But not now.

Philip gave a short laugh. “My father was besotted with her. Thought she was the embodiment of all womanly virtue. He couldn't
believe his luck when she passed up all the others and chose him instead. He didn't know that her father was about to go broke.”

Lucy's head went up. “I thought Mr. Pratt was one of the wealthiest men in New York.”

“New money,” said Philip dismissively. “Easy come, easy go. They put on a good show . . . but by the time my father married Prunella, it all came out. There was nothing left but the house.”

Lucy remembered that file in the cabinet, the Pratt trust, funded by the sale of the house on East Sixty-ninth Street. It had never occurred to her to wonder why there was nothing else.

So much for any hopes of being a long-lost heiress, she thought wryly.

“What happened?”

“Railroads,” said Philip Schuyler succinctly. “One minute they were up and the next they were down. August Pratt went down with them.” With a stiff wrist, Philip knocked back his second martini. “My father wasn't the love of Prunella's life. He was her lifeboat.”

He looked so miserable that Lucy cast around for something that might comfort him. “That doesn't mean she didn't love him.”

“Prunella loves Prunella.” He considered for a moment. “Also diamonds.”

Lucy saw her chance. Artfully, she said, “There were brothers, weren't there? Surely she must have loved them.”

Mr. Schuyler—Philip—let out a very ungentlemanly snort. “There was no love lost there. Prunella used to snoop around, look for things she could use against them.” He leaned forward confidingly. “When you're eight, no one pays any attention. You fit in cracks and corners. I
heard all sorts of things I wasn't supposed to hear.” He nodded emphatically. “All sorts.”

Lucy's heart was in her throat. “What sorts of things?”

Philip leaned back against the banquette, squinting at the smoke-wreathed ceiling. “I 'member—I remember—Prunella threatening her brother that she was going to tell his father about some of his less ladylike lady friends.”

Lucy tried to ask casually, tried not to show how much it mattered. “Which brother?”

“Gus. August. He reeled in drunk that night, smelling like a brothel. I was sitting on the stairs, playing with my top—they didn't want me in the drawing room.” A shade of childhood hurt passed across Philip's face. He shrugged. “So I saw them. Prunella told Gus she'd make it all right if he got her a ruby brooch she wanted. Or maybe it was a necklace? Doesn't matter. Prunella smashed a glass when Gus laughed at her.”

“They don't sound like very nice people.” Somehow, Lucy had always assumed that life must have been better in the Pratt household, that wealth brought with it gentility, in the muted clank of silver against porcelain, in the soft swish of the servants opening the drapes. Rudeness, lewdness, those belonged to squalor and noise, not to a place where the very sound of footsteps was swallowed up by the vastness of soaring marble ceilings.

Apparently, she had been wrong.

“Do you know the worst of it?” Philip leaned his elbows on the table, so close that Lucy could smell the gin sharp on his breath.