The Luxe (27 page)

D
IANA HAD BEEN STANDING STILL IN HER ROOM
for well over an hour, wondering what she should do with that hat, when a scream from downstairs broke through her state of shock. A new frost alighted on her heart. When she had left the house the night before, it had seemed impossible that she might get caught—nobody was paying any attention to her doings these days, and besides, her whole evening had seemed like an episode out of time, ending as abruptly as it had begun. But the noise coming from below was most certainly a cry of grief, anger, confusion, or some combination of all three.

Diana looked at the hat, placed just so at the center of her bed. She was trying to think of some story to explain this clear evidence of her misbehavior, when another cry—this one more of a moan—came up from the first floor.

Diana threw Henry’s hat under her bed and turned to her closet. The dresses she had taken out the night before were all there. It was too late to change, she told herself, so she quickly
checked herself in the mirror. She did not look any different, after her night with Henry, but she felt much older already. Then the moaning started again, and she had no choice but to take the stairs two at a time to face what would surely be an inevitable circle of accusations and confessions.

Diana burst into the drawing room to find Penelope Hayes, her dark hair unusually low and messy, and her red muslin dress dripping onto Louisa Holland’s favorite Persian carpet. She was drenched and blubbering, punctuating her nonsense with occasional shrieks.

“Thank God you’re here,” Aunt Edith said, coming up beside Diana and wrapping her in her arms.

“How could you sleep so long on a day like today?” her mother added as she, too, came over and pressed Diana’s head to her breast. “Out of all the tragedies the Hollands have suffered.”

“What are you talking about?” Diana whispered. It was the loudest voice she could manage. She looked out from the clot of arms around her, at Penelope, who had all of a sudden quieted down.

“It’s almost too much to bear,” her mother said.

“It is certainly too much to bear,” Aunt Edith seconded.

At that moment Claire came rushing into the room. “I found a policeman on the street,” she said hysterically, “and he said he would go to the precinct and summon his superiors. Mrs. Holland, do you need salts?”

“Yes, Claire, please. And water.”

The three Holland women moved in a cluster to the nearest settee and sat down together. Diana was by now cognizant of the fact that this had nothing to do with her late-night tryst. Something far worse must have happened. She glanced once more at Penelope, whose expression implied that she had borne witness to a very grave occurrence.

“What’s this all about?” Diana managed. Her heart was thumping so loudly now that the rest of her surroundings seemed muted. Both her mother and aunt looked pale and exhausted from crying. They clasped each other’s hands across Diana’s lap.

“Your sister…” Aunt Edith began in a faltering voice.

“She’s…well, she’s gone from us, Diana.”

“Gone?” Diana whispered stupidly. “Gone where?” It was only then that she began to take in the details. The hat, placed with such perfectionist zeal at the center of the impeccably made bed. It was a message from Elizabeth. With every passing second, it was becoming more horribly clear. She felt dizzy and sick with herself.

“It happened this morning,” Penelope broke in, suddenly regaining her speaking voice. She moved forward assuredly, and situated herself on a small silk hassock in front of Diana and her family. Every sound and color seemed extreme to Diana now, and she was painfully aware of the droplets of
water falling from Penelope as they hit the ground. “Elizabeth came by to visit me early this morning. We had planned to go to the dressmaker’s together.” Penelope spoke carefully, as though she were thinking out each word or trying to keep herself from crying. “She was all nerves about the wedding. I think it was just dawning on her how much there was to be done by Sunday. I thought it might be a good idea to take an early-morning ride by the water to calm her down. I wanted her to able to speak freely, so I tried to drive us myself. I just wanted to reassure her. After all, it will all get done…or it
would
have. That’s what I told her.”

Penelope’s speech slowed, and Diana turned her wild eyes toward her mother, expecting her to complete the story. Before she could, Penelope broke in again: “There was a strange man by the waterfront. The horses got spooked, and…and…I couldn’t control them! I couldn’t…oh…oh, oh, oh.”

“She was thrown,” Mrs. Holland said distractedly.

“Into the river. And then Penelope and the carriage were pulled for many blocks before she managed to get control of the horses, and by then there was no sign of Elizabeth anywhere.”

“My new phaeton,” Penelope continued, more to her hands than anyone else. “It goes so fast and it’s set so high!” she explained, and there was something in her voice that reminded Diana of bragging. “I can’t even really make sense of
what happened. And then the water, when I tried to see if I could find her. It was so cold, so bone-chillingly cold.”

Diana was stunned and full of disbelief, but what she had seen upstairs told her that she had to believe. Surely it was Elizabeth who had come into her room and put all the clothes away. And surely she knew where that hat had come from and, put together with Diana’s absence last night, what it meant.

“But how could she have been thrown while Penelope remained in the carriage?” Diana asked. She didn’t want to ask these questions, but she had to. A nauseating guilt was sweeping through her, and she could feel Henry’s cross, underneath her dress, digging at her skin and reminding her of what she’d done. Her sister was dead, and it was her fault. She brought her eyes up to Penelope, who was staring back with what must have been pure shock in her face. “I mean…” Diana went on, in a barely audible voice, “you don’t think she threw herself, do you? On purpose, I mean.”

Diana felt the bodies of her aunt and mother draw back from her own, and a silence descended on the room.

She thought she saw a spark of interest cross Penelope’s face, but it disappeared as quickly as it had come and once again Diana saw only a mask of distress.

“We’re all a little shaken,” Aunt Edith said. “Or you wouldn’t say something like that.”

“Diana, this is an awful moment, and it is understandable
for you to not quite know what you’re saying. You couldn’t, or you wouldn’t say things like that.” Her mother was struggling to keep her voice level, and though her face was unmoving, there was a muddy quality to her eyes that suggested untold grief. “You must go to your room. You must rest. But don’t go on saying things like that—you must not—or someone might give them credence.”

Diana was grateful that they wanted her to leave the room. She walked to the hall without a backward glance. Her chest was brittle with grief, like it might catch fire or crumble away. The thought of being around people who believed she was innocent was abhorrent to her. Perhaps, in her way, Elizabeth
had
loved Henry. Perhaps she had been so distraught by her sister’s secrets that she had wanted to do herself harm. Elizabeth must have felt like the whole world was upside down, and maybe the cold embrace of the Hudson had, in the end, seemed preferable to a world where the Hollands were not wealthy, marriage had nothing to do with love, and her future husband spent the night with her little sister.

Diana entered her room and picked up Henry’s hat. The things she had done yesterday had been thoughtless, but their result was horrific and everlasting. She had never really known guilt, and now it was overpowering her. Diana lay down on the crisply made bed, put the hat over her face, and let her whole body be racked by tears.

O
N THURSDAY MORNING, LINA ROUSED HERSELF AND
chose a dark-colored skirt and a light-colored shirtwaist. These pieces were not quite so flashy as the red dress she had put on two nights ago, but Lina had had her fill of red for the moment. And anyway, what she was wearing was nice enough to impress her sister without making her feel jealous. During her hurried departure from the Hollands’ home, she and Claire had agreed to meet at eleven on Thursday—the one hour when her older sister was reasonably sure she would not be needed by her mistresses—on one of the benches in the park in Union Square. Lina was still feeling a residual shame for her drunken behavior of the other night, and hoped that, when and if she managed to find Will, he wouldn’t somehow sense the depths of her depravity. It was some relief that she couldn’t remember much of the episode in the saloon.

She did her hair the old way, with a sharp part and a low bun, and then she put on a little tailored jacket. When she
realized how late it was getting, she tucked her purse under her arm and scuttled down the stairs.

She hurried through the small lobby, past the single drowsing clerk. Outside she could see the rain was falling heavily. It occurred to her that, given the weather, Claire might not even be able to make it to their meeting. But Lina felt she must go. Her sister would do everything in her power to be there, so she must do the same. And besides, she was harboring a secret hope that Claire would have heard something about Will. Perhaps she knew something that would help Lina find him. As there was no forgotten umbrella upstairs, she swiped the copy of the
Imperial
that was lying at the clerk’s desk.

She stepped tentatively onto the one little step down to the street, where she was still protected from the rain by an awning. The sky was an ominous slate color, and the air smelled of all the grime being washed out of crevices and into the street. A few people ran by, shielded under black umbrellas, and those passersby who had not thought to bring such protection were quickly soaked to the bone. She unfolded her paper, propping it open so that she could at least shield her head from the onslaught. A chill set in at the back of her neck when she saw Elizabeth’s name.

There it was, on page eleven. Elizabeth Holland had been plunged into the Hudson River and was presumed dead. It would have been less surprising to see a front-page
banner headline proclaiming that the end of the world had been scheduled for later that afternoon. Lina had felt so many things for Elizabeth—adoration, envy, jealousy, and fury—it seemed impossible that she might simply…
die
. This thought revived something in Lina’s memory, but she couldn’t quite grasp hold of it. As the news settled into her consciousness, Lina began to feel a little sick and dizzy.

She forced herself to step forward and onto the sidewalk. As she did, she brought the paper up above her head so that it made a kind of tent. The water was into her shoes within seconds. She started off at a run, moving eastward along the street. She only managed to make it a few blocks before her newspaper was entirely soaked, and she had to take cover on a little ledge that led into a flower shop and was sheltered by an awning.

She could see, down the street, the expanse of Fifth Avenue. She was still quite far off from her destination, but she was now very close to the site of her humiliation at the hotel. The rain was pounding the uneven pavement, and there was a crack of thunder somewhere in the distance. Lina looked up, and saw a man across the street, partially obscured from her view by a gigantic black umbrella. She was suddenly reminded of the phrase
tall, slender, and well dressed,
which had appeared in the item about Elizabeth. She was beginning to feel very nervous all of a sudden. She saw the man with the umbrella move forward and cross toward her with long, quick strides.
She wanted to move, but the newspaper in her hands was too sopping to be of any use.

The man was close enough to her now that she could make out a neat, fair stubble on his cheeks and a sculptured nose. Soon he was close enough that she recognized him as someone she had met. He was without a doubt Tristan from Lord & Taylor. She thought back to the evening with him in the saloon and the note he’d left, and she stepped away from him as he approached.

“Remember me?” he said, as he brought his huge umbrella over her head. The raindrops fell against it loudly. Her face was completely wet, and she had to blink back the rain from her sage-colored eyes.

“Yes,” she said in a small voice.

“Miss Carolina, whose face I simply can’t get out of my head. I see you’ve read the
Imperial
already,” he said, and Lina looked away quickly. The ink from the paper had run and was now all over her fingers. “What do you say we go get breakfast, and I tell you what you’ve missed?”

Lina nodded. She didn’t know what else to do. She was confused and cold and she felt fearful and nauseated. At least she was no longer being soaked by the rain. Tristan tipped his head and gave her a reassuring smile. But she couldn’t help but wonder, standing under the protection of a Lord & Taylor umbrella in the drenched streets of New York, what it was she had wrought.