The Gilded Hour (43 page)

Anna felt her mouth fall open before she could catch herself. She closed it on a click, trying to find something sensible to say in the flurry of thoughts that were racing by.

Jack raised a brow. “Not a good idea?”

“I don’t know,” Anna said. “I’ll have to think about it.”

“You are grimacing,” Cap said.

“Am I?” Anna shook her head to clear her thoughts. “I suppose I am. It’s just that there are so many decisions to make. Jack’s sisters have been bombarding me already about drapery fabrics and table linen and bedding.”

“Poor Anna,” Cap said. “Forced to choose between periwinkle and primrose, silk and brocade and linen.”

“It’s worse than that,” Anna said. “I have to talk about prices.”

“There you have it,” Cap said to Jack. “Our Anna’s biggest secret. Any merchant can overcharge her without fear of accusation. I think she’d break out in a rash before she challenged a price.”

“I’ll have to pay attention now,” Anna said. “Or I’ll bankrupt us before we get started, and send Jack’s sisters to the poorhouse while I’m at it. He says I can’t pay them or even reimburse them for materials.”

“They would be insulted,” Jack agreed. “And you won’t put them in the poorhouse. My mother has everything well in hand.”

“You see,” Anna said. “I’m doomed.”

“But you like the house,” Sophie prompted.

“Oh, I love the house and I especially love the garden. Weeds and all.”

“Then everything will work out in the end.” Sophie leaned over and kissed Anna’s cheek. “You must tell yourself that every morning and every evening. And Jack must remind you when you forget.”

•   •   •

T
HEY
TOLD
STORIES
, Jack about his family and his time studying in Italy, Cap and Sophie and Anna about their childhood misadventures, most of which put Anna in a central and less than angelic spotlight. As the sun was setting they ate a light supper of lamb, new potatoes, and peas braised in cream and dressed with mint. All Cap’s favorites, which reminded Anna that it was also the last time he would sit down to Mrs. Harrison’s cooking. Her appetite left her just that suddenly, and it was hard work to get down even half of what she had been served.

When Jack went to sit closer to Cap to talk about the journey, Sophie’s mind turned back to Janine Campbell.

“She came to see me weeks ago, asking questions I couldn’t answer for fear that Comstock was behind it. She was distraught but I didn’t think she was in such despair that she would risk—what she risked. You think she aborted herself?”

Anna said, “From the angle of the puncture wounds, yes. But in the end I don’t think it’s possible to know unless whoever did it comes forward to confess, and you know that won’t happen. The coroner will have an opinion.”
Anna took her cousin’s hand. “It’s a terrible thing, Sophie. But you have to put it out of your mind now. You have nothing to feel guilty about.”

“I don’t feel guilty,” Sophie said quietly. “I am just terribly sorry and sad. For her and for those little boys. And I’m frustrated, that I have to admit. I may as well have been bound and gagged when she came to see me, for all the good I did her.”

•   •   •

I
T
WAS
HARDLY
seven when Cap excused himself to retire for the night. The fireworks were still an hour off but he was wan, his hair and face damp with perspiration. They all knew what these things meant and it would do no good to point out the obvious, and still Anna found it difficult to stand back when he was so clearly in distress. If by some miracle he lived another thirty years with tuberculosis, she knew she would never be able to accept the necessity of distance between them.

She heard herself say, “Do you remember when we were little, how we napped together in Uncle Quinlan’s hammock between the apricot trees?”

“I remember you turning over so suddenly that I ended up on the ground.” Cap’s smile was faraway and sad and still Anna was glad to have raised this image, this picture of themselves as children with no worries on a summer afternoon, able to sleep in the shade of trees heavy with fruit, simply because it pleased them.

To Jack Cap said, “You’ll have to watch out for her, she’s a turbulent sleeper.”

“It will be my privilege to watch out for her,” Jack said. “Always.”

•   •   •

W
HEN
THEY
WERE
alone they sat in companionable silence for a good while.

“Sophie has always been the soul of calm in any storm,” Anna said. “She is fearless when it comes to her patients; she’ll confront anyone even against her own best interests. But after tomorrow her natural inclination to protect Cap will be underwritten by law. And I’m glad of it, for both of them.”

“You find it hard to let him go,” Jack said. “To say good-bye.”

She nodded, not trusting her voice. When she had control of it again she said, “I’ve always wondered if what Sophie experienced in New Orleans during the war took the ability to be frightened from her.”

“She had a difficult time of it, I take it.”

Anna gave him a grim smile. “I don’t know exactly. She has never spoken of it to any of us. I’m sure Cap knows, but I have never pressed her for the details. Someday maybe she will talk to me about it. I’ve been short with everyone this last week, but I’m especially sorry to have been short with her.”

Jack leaned forward, took her by the wrist, and pulled her out of her chair and onto his lap.

“They’ll be gone at this time tomorrow,” Anna said, pressing her cheek to his shoulder. “I know that, but it still doesn’t feel real.”

The urge to tease her was more than he could withstand. “Just now you feel pretty real to me.” He slid his hand from her waist down over her hip, and she shivered and turned her face to hide her smile.

“You make me blush like a little girl.”

“You are anything but a little girl to me, Savard.”

Anna began to yawn and then caught herself.

“You have a busy day tomorrow too,” Jack said. “Do you want to skip the fireworks for a good night’s sleep?”

After a very long pause she said, “It will be hours before anyone comes home.” Her voice had gone low and a little rough. “I can’t remember the last time I was in the house by myself.”

The sound of band music came to them on the breeze, drums and trumpets and horns too faint to make out a melody. “Such a fine summer evening,” Jack said against her hair. “It would be a shame to spend it alone.”

•   •   •

T
HEY
WALKED
TO
Waverly Place at a comfortable pace, holding hands and talking very little. The city streets were far emptier than usual but as it turned out, the citizens of Manhattan had only migrated upward onto roofs. It seemed that everyone who had not gone to the new bridge had found a high place to perch, and voices drifted down to them now and then. Fretting children, young people excited by the novelty and the day’s festivities. There were rooster calls back and forth followed by laughter.

“What is that about?” Anna wondered.

“Mrs. Roebling had the honor of crossing the bridge first, since she did all the work after her husband was injured,” Jack told her. “Apparently with a rooster in her lap for good luck.”

Good luck. Anna had never taken comfort in such ideas, but she wished, just now, that she could. If there was any good luck to be had in the world, Sophie and Cap should have it all.

“Where has your mind gone?” Jack’s voice, low and a little gruff, set something off in her, a prickling that raced down her back to spread out and out. She pressed his hand and leaned against his arm, as if she meant to push him off the sidewalk. Jack Mezzanotte, as solid as a wall.

“I’m just where I want to be,” Anna said. “Except for one odd thing. I’ve walked this way home too many times to count, but tonight it seems to have stretched to double the normal distance.”

“You’re impatient.” He pulled her closer. “And that puts me in a good mood.”

He kissed her, full-mouthed, intent, his hands framing her face. When he lifted his head he said, “You make the most intriguing sounds. Little squeaks and a soft clicking at the back of your throat. As if you were drinking me in.”

“That’s a backhanded compliment,” Anna said, laughing. “If it’s a compliment at all.”

She tried to pull away, but he wouldn’t let her. He spread his hands to span the full width of her back. “Take me to your bed, Savard, and I’ll come up with compliments to make you blush for days.”

They ran the rest of the way, breathless, laughing.

•   •   •

I
NSTEAD
OF
USING
the front door they circled around to the passageway that led to the carriage house, passing the small stable and the garden sheds, the chicken coop closed up tight, an icehouse. The air smelled of newly cut grass and hay, ripening compost and flowering lilac bushes, taller even than Jack, that divided the working parts of the garden from the rest.

Anna went ahead, gesturing for him to wait where he was.

He wandered through the garden, lit by the moon and the reflected glow of the streetlamps. It surprised him still, this quiet island behind brick walls. There were fruit and specimen trees and flower beds that even his father could not have found fault with, a rose arbor overhung with vines weighed down with buds, the neat rows where vegetables had been planted.

The pergola reminded him of home, where the family ate out of doors
in the warm months at a long table under a grape arbor. Someone familiar with the way things were done in Italy and southern France had designed this place, for privacy and comfort. Jack sat down on a wide chaise longue upholstered in dark velvet and piled with cushions. Shadows moved with the breeze, every leaf and shoot, blossom and vine dancing.

Jack thought,
It seems I am turning into a poet
.

Now he realized that Anna wasn’t going to take him to her bed after all, but she would come to him here. They would lie down together in a bower of blossoming lilac and wait for the fireworks to arch across the sky. And he would have her here. It had been too long, and he wasn’t willing to wait even one more hour.

Things hadn’t gone as planned today, but it occurred to him that a doctor was the right wife for him; she really would understand when work kept him out late or took him away unexpectedly. He knew more than a few detectives with unhappy wives and sour views on marriage, something that had kept him from thinking too much about the institution for himself. Until Anna.

And now she came around the corner carrying an old-fashioned hurricane lamp, as round and bright as a sun in the new dark. It covered her in light and lifted her face out of the night, and Jack heard himself catch his breath. She had changed into a loose white gown of some fine fabric and let her hair out of its pleats and tucks so that the breeze sent it twisting and twirling around her like a dark lacy shawl.

The words that came to mind were ones he could not say. To tell Anna Savard that she looked like an angel would embarrass them both with such triteness. To say she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen in his life would diminish the truth of it. And so he got up and went to her. He took the lamp from her and put it on the table. The pergola came to life, the crockery vase filled with white lilac and deep red Rose de Rescht he had sent from the greenhouse, the blue leather binding of a book that had been left out, the jumble of cushions, yellows and greens and pinks, that lined the chaise longue with its velvet upholstery worn thin and silky as a woman’s skin.

She was looking over her shoulder into the dark garden, as if she did not trust herself to look at him. He caught her wrist, threaded his fingers through hers, long and strong and tough with constant scrubbing and still
gentle enough to remind him that she was female, and fragile in ways she would never admit to him or herself.

“Look,” she said, her voice hoarse as he drew her into his arms. “Look, Jack. The first fireflies.”

He took his time with her, exploring skin that never saw the light of day: the backs of her knees, the soft crease between thigh and buttock, the small of her back. He pressed his face to her belly and slid up to nuzzle her breasts, suckling with a wet and greedy mouth until she gasped and tried to twist away. He would have none of it. He held her down to take what she wanted to give him, and here was another shock: she liked being at his mercy.

With some small part of her mind she realized that the fireworks had begun. Colors fell like rain in the whispering dark.

NEW YORK SUN

Friday, May 25, 1883

BELMONT HEIR TO MARRY CREOLE

There is great agitation among the upper classes of this city about a wedding to take place this morning at Trinity Chapel. The groom is Peter Verhoeven, Esq., son of Anton Verhoeven, a prominent Belgian architect, deceased, and Clarinda Belmont of this city, also deceased. Through his mother Mr. Verhoeven, an attorney, inherited a large portion of the Belmont fortune as well as a fine home on Park Place.

The bride is Sophie Élodie Savard, a beautiful mulatto lady, highly educated and refined in person and habit. The couple have known each other from childhood.

According to the city clerk, a marriage license has been issued. In light of this fact, members of the Belmont and related families declared the intention to disown Mr. Verhoeven should the scandalous and unnatural union go forward.

Both bride and groom have declined to be interviewed, but the
Sun
has learned that they plan to leave for Europe after the wedding ceremony and luncheon. They will travel to Switzerland, where Mr. Verhoeven will be admitted to a private sanatorium for treatment of advanced consumption. His new wife, who is a qualified physician, will attend him there.

•   •   •

NEW YORK SUN

Friday, May 25, 1883

MOTHER’S TRAGIC DEATH

FOUR LITTLE BOYS LEFT BEHIND

MALPRACTICE SUSPECTED

Mrs. Janine Lavoie Campbell, aged 26 years, of 19 Charles Street, died yesterday afternoon at the New Amsterdam Charity Hospital as a result of possible medical malpractice.

Originally from Maine, Mrs. Campbell was employed by the Bangor post office until her marriage to Mr. Archer Campbell of this city. The marriage was a fruitful one, producing four boys in five years.

Yesterday morning a neighbor called on Mrs. Campbell and found her to be very unwell. A police ambulance was summoned, and Dr. Neill Graham of that service examined Mrs. Campbell and declared her to be in danger of her life.

In accordance with her wishes, Mrs. Campbell was transported to the New Amsterdam Charity Hospital to be delivered into the care of Dr. Sophie Savard, who was not present. Instead Mrs. Campbell was seen and operated on by Dr. Anna Savard. She did not survive the surgery.

The coroner was notified by the hospital, and an autopsy was arranged with all speed. The report of the postmortem examination carried out yesterday evening has not yet been made public.

Confusion in this case stems from the fact that two female physicians with the surname Savard were involved in treating Mrs. Campbell. Dr. Anna Savard and Dr. Sophie Savard are reportedly distant cousins who studied together at Woman’s Medical School. Dr. Sophie Savard is a mulatto. How she came to have a white lady of good family as a patient is a matter still under investigation.

Mr. Archer Campbell, a senior postal inspector and husband of the deceased, directed that his wife’s body be taken to his home. This young mother of four was by all accounts a virtuous woman beyond reproach.

•   •   •

J
ACK
STOOD
OUTSIDE
Trinity Chapel watching a couple dozen people, Bonners and Ballentynes, Scotts and Quinlans and Savards greeting each other. Small groups would drift together and then apart, but nobody ever strayed very far from Anna’s aunt Quinlan. The old lady stood holding the Russo girls by the hand, both of them too excited to do anything but bounce in place while she talked to daughters and grandchildren, cousins and nieces.

As he left Waverly Place the evening before he had been introduced to most of them, returning from the excursion on the river. He made excuses for Anna, who had slipped away upstairs to put herself to rights. Jack wondered what she could have possibly done to chase the flush from her neck and face, and grinned to himself.

All of the family members he had met so far were friendly, but seven-year-old Martha Bonner had assigned herself as his companion and inquisitor. She had come to the city from Albany with her grandfather Adam. Adam Bonner, as he had introduced himself, was lean and straight, with pure white hair cut unfashionably close to the scalp. It set off the warm brown of his complexion and eyes of an unusual shade that could be called golden. Jack was reminded of the glow of Sophie’s skin and realized that the connection must be through the New Orleans branch of the family, though he could not think of a way to ask that would not be rude. He might have come up with something if not for Martha, who demanded his attention.

Like her grandfather the little girl had a complexion that seemed to draw in sunlight. Her eyes were a milder and deeper brown, in stark contrast to the energy that bubbled out of every pore. She wanted to know his whole name, if he had sisters and brothers, how tall he was (too tall, she announced, when he told her), if he liked eggs, and whether he had dogs. Now, it seemed, she had come to a matter of greatest importance just as he realized he had lost the thread of her conversation.

“You’re not listening,” she told him with a touch of impatience.

“Sorry,” Jack said. “Pardon me. My attention wandered, but you have it now. What did you need to know?”

“Who is the flower girl?” And in response to his blank face: “A bride needs a flower girl. Who is Sophie’s flower girl?”

Jack thought back to the chaos at the house on Waverly Place when he had stopped by just an hour ago.

“I don’t think she has one.”

“But she has to,” Martha Bonner said. “Are you sure?”

Jack said, “Fairly sure, yes.”

“Well,” she said, straightening narrow shoulders. “I am Sophie’s second cousin once removed. Her great-grandfather Nathaniel is my great-great-grandfather, and she has no flower girl and really, that’s not the way things are done.”

To his own surprise, Jack followed this reasoning. “They must be very distracted to have forgot something so important.”

She nodded her approval and smiled, showing off the gap where her front teeth were coming in. “Anna says you have lots and lots of flowers at your house.”

“That is true,” Jack acknowledged. “But my house is far away from here.”

“You could take a cab,” she suggested. “I could help you find one.”

“Martha,” said her grandfather as he came up to hear this part of the conversation. “What devilment are you up to now?”

The elderly woman on his arm gestured to her. “Martha, child, come here to me. Nobody has introduced me to this young man, so you’ll have to do it.”

The girl didn’t hesitate. “This is Auntie Martha Bonner. Martha Bonner like me, except old. This is Detective Sergeant Mezza—” She paused.

“Mezzanotte,” Jack finished for her, “Jack Mezzanotte,” and he gently shook the hand the old lady offered, aware of the swollen joints. She looked nothing like any other member of the family; there was still a touch of red in her hair, and her skin was so fair he could see a tracery of veins just below the surface.

“Aunt Martha,” Adam said. “Excuse me, please. Your namesake and I are off in search of flowers.” He winked at her. “So you can conduct your interview in private.”

•   •   •

“Y
OU
INTEND
TO
marry our Anna,” Martha Bonner said, cutting right to the heart of the matter.

“As soon as she’ll have me,” Jack agreed. “But I may need a little time to
learn all your names and faces. Especially the names. How many Martha Bonners are there?”

“Four at last count, but only two of us here today. We are a confusing family,” she said, taking his arm. “So now, pay attention.”

What followed was a rapid-fire sketch of the descendants of Nathaniel Bonner by three different women, one a youthful indiscretion followed by two marriages.

“But not at the same time,” she clarified. “So think of the family as divided into three branches for the three women, Somerville, Wolf, and Middleton.”

“And you are?”

“I married into the Middleton line,” she said. “My husband was Lily’s twin brother. Their little sister Birdie—your Anna’s ma—was a favorite of mine.”

“Lily is—”

“They call her Aunt Quinlan these days, but you’ll have to ask Anna why. Now, Birdie was the youngest of the Middleton line and the twins the oldest, born some twenty years apart, mind you. Adam—” She looked over her shoulder, but he had disappeared with the younger Martha. “Is the Somerville line.”

“And Sophie?”

“Sophie is Hannah’s granddaughter, Wolf line. It would take paper and pencil to draw it all out for you, and that will have to wait. The bride is here.” A kind of sorrowful quiet came over the old woman’s face as she watched Sophie being helped down from the carriage with Anna just behind her. “She doesn’t look anything like her grandmother Hannah, but she has her spirit and her mind. I hate to think of her so far away from family when she’ll most need support.”

After a moment Jack said, “I’ve come to know Sophie fairly well. I don’t think anything could change her mind.”

“Hannah’s granddaughter,” she repeated. “And Curiosity Freeman’s great-great-granddaughter. Strong women with excellent minds, loving hearts, loyal unto death. It’s bred in the bone.”

•   •   •

T
OGETHER
C
ONRAD
AND
Cap had planned the ceremony with two things in mind: Cap was not strong enough to be in public for very long, and he
needed to keep his distance from everyone, including the woman he was marrying. Somehow Conrad had convinced the rector and the vicar to go along with these requirements.

Anna was less sanguine about his decision to allow a small group of newspaper reporters into the back of the church, but she was certain that there was some strategy there. The papers couldn’t be controlled, but they could be manipulated by means of favors granted. The rest of the reporters from the cheaper papers waited outside the gate that surrounded the church. Uninterested in the facts, they would write the stories that sold the most newspapers. Only so much could be handled, even by Conrad Belmont.

There would be stories about the fact that none of Cap’s five aunts were present, about Cap’s finances and Sophie’s childhood, and worst, the public would be reminded that Cap Verhoeven was ill unto death. One more titillating fact to add to the mess of innuendo, rumor, and half truths that would be spun into headlines, which she imagined, unable to stop herself.

MULATTO LADY DOCTOR SNAGS DYING KNICKERBOCKER SCION

HE MARRIED IN SHAME AND FLED THE COUNTRY

OLD GUARD SHAKEN BY SCANDAL ON PARK PLACE

With the exception of Conrad, Bram, and Baltus, and a few of Cap’s household staff, the groom’s side of the church was empty until Adam noticed and migrated, taking his granddaughter and a pew full of Bonners and Ballentynes with him. Anna was glad of her family, sensible, observant, kind people who had long ago embraced Cap without hesitation or reservation and never wavered. Doubts they would have, she knew that, but doubts would not be voiced unless Sophie asked specifically about them.

Anna wanted to listen as Sophie recited her vows but found it almost impossible to concentrate. Her attention kept creeping away to roam through the church pew by pew, taking note of family members she had not seen for too long, and landing always on Jack.

He was watching her, too, and sent one of his most sincere and comforting smiles, which reminded her: whatever the newspapers printed, whatever scandal occupied the city because a white man of means had
married an educated woman of mixed race, Cap and Sophie would not have to deal with any of it, and Anna would not have to deal with it alone.

As soon as the vicar had declared the couple married, Cap and Sophie started down the aisle, Cap walking with the assistance of two canes when he might have managed with none at all. He had taken them up to provide an excuse and explanation to curious strangers who would certainly note that the bride and groom never touched as they left the church. But Sophie was smiling, and there was nothing artificial or staged about the simple joy on Cap’s face, now that there was a ring on Sophie’s hand.

•   •   •

T
HE
WEDDING
LUNCHEON
was exactly as perfect as Anna knew it would be, because Mrs. Lee and Mrs. Harrison had had the planning of it.

The party gathered in the large formal dining room around a table that was set for two dozen people, laid out with what had once been Clarinda Belmont’s wedding china and crystal and silver. Serving staff stood at attention next to a sideboard, waiting for the signal to start. Anna’s stomach growled quite reasonably, she reminded herself, as she hadn’t had breakfast.

She felt some of the anxious tension flow away as she sat down beside Jack; she had no work to do here, and no strangers to worry about. While the waiters served a first course of clear soup, Bram and Baltus entertained everyone with their usual irreverent observations, amusing chatter, awful puns, and worse doggerel. Most of their observations had to do with Cap, and all of them ended in the same place, with the conclusion that he had done very well for himself by marrying Sophie before anyone else could get to her. There was no talk of illness or the coming farewells.