The Shadow Queen (6 page)

She had always tried to stand out from the crowd by dressing differently from her school friends, but now she determined that in future she would do so even more exaggeratedly. And she would capitalize on her boyish physique instead of being self-conscious about it. In one of her mother’s dressing table drawers was a monocle that had once belonged to her father. She would begin wearing it. That would certainly make her stand out from the crowd, and she already knew that simpering never engaged any boy’s attention and that it was far better to be confident and bold, as she had been with Henry.

With that decision made, all she had to do now was work out how she was going to disengage John Jasper from his friends. She looked at the way the other girls at the rink were skating. They were all doing so in twosomes or in a shrieking, chattering group, bumping into each other and regularly falling over. Confident in her own prowess, she buckled the straps on her skates a little tighter and set off to attract John Jasper’s attention.

It didn’t take long.

“Hi, Bessie Wallis,” he said, leaving his friends behind and skating up beside her. “How are you doing?”

Wallis didn’t break the rhythm of her skating. “No one calls me Bessie Wallis anymore,” she said, shouting to be heard above the roar of fifty or so careering roller skates. “I’m called Wallis now.”

He grinned, keeping pace easily with her as they expertly negotiated a curve of the rink. “Okay then, Wallis. How are you doing?”

“I’m doing just fine,” she said, trying not to think of the painful scene that had just taken place between her mother and her aunt.

Fleetingly she took her eyes off the skaters in front of her in order to quickly glance across at him.

She liked what she saw just as much as she always had. His dark hair was still as thick and curly as a ram’s fleece, and she still couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to feel those tight curls springing beneath her fingers.

“How are you liking being at Bryn Mawr with Mabel and Violet?”

She noticed that he was roller-skating with his hands laconically clasped behind his back. “I’m not at Bryn Mawr,” she said, doing the same thing with her own hands and cross that he should be linking her with the two girls she had liked least at Miss O’Donnell’s. “I’m at Arundell. With Pamela.”

He chuckled, still roller-skating with perfect balance. “I ran into Lady Pamela at Guth’s last year, just before the summer vacation. She said she was off to Europe to hobnob with royalty. She said if I wanted to tag along, her pa wouldn’t mind.”

Wallis lost her balance, crashing into him so hard it was a miracle they both didn’t end up on the wooden floor.

Hanging on to her in order to keep her upright, he steered her to the side of the rink, where they were out of harm’s way of the other skaters.

“What happened?” he asked, black-lashed brown eyes darkening in concern. “You were skating brilliantly.”

Wally leaned against the rink’s waist-high barrier, struggling to catch her breath. She could hardly tell John Jasper that Pamela hadn’t breathed a word about meeting him in Guth’s and of the invitation she had given him—and that Pamela’s not doing so, when they were best friends and constantly confided every detail of their lives to each other, was a betrayal that stunned her. Especially so when Pamela knew she had been sweet on John Jasper for years.

“Thanks,” she said in answer to his compliment, her mind whirling. “I just lost concentration for a moment.”

“Come on.” He took hold of her hand as if she still needed steadying. “Let’s do another couple of circuits.”

Her fingers interlocked with his in a way she found terribly exciting, but she couldn’t give herself up to enjoyment of the experience because she was too busy thinking about Pamela. Why hadn’t Pamela told her about running into John Jasper at Guth’s? Even more to the point, why had she told John Jasper he was quite welcome to spend the summer vacation with her and her father? There was only one answer, and it wasn’t one Wallis liked.

Pamela was just as sweet on John Jasper as Wallis was.

And though she and Pamela had always promised they would never have any secrets from each other, this was one secret Pamela had kept very firmly to herself. Just how she felt about it Wallis didn’t quite know, but she found it disconcerting, for if she couldn’t trust Pamela, who could she trust?

“J
ohn Jasper? At Guth’s?” Pamela looked perplexed, and then her expression cleared. “Oh, way back last year? Yes, I did run into him. And he told you about my asking if he’d like to tag along with Papa and me to Europe?” She gave her distinctively throaty giggle. “Didn’t you think that a hoot? What if he’d said he’d come? Can you imagine John Jasper Bachman at the Royal Hotel, Cannes, mixing with Russian royalty? Or, much, much worse, at York Cottage, Sandringham, in the presence of Prince George and Princess May?”

The images Pamela was conjuring up were so bizarre—and so unlikely—that Wallis found herself giggling along with her. Pamela had merely been teasing John Jasper and he should have had the sense to realize it, but then, as Pamela had once said to her, boys could be awfully dim.

A
few weeks later, strange things began happening at the Preston Apartment House. Her mother ceased worrying about money and her new dresses were no longer ones she had made herself but instead bore the label of Baltimore’s most prestigious fashion house. If that weren’t bewildering enough, something even more bewildering followed.

“We’re moving,” Alice announced gaily. “Nineteen oh-eight is going to be a wonderful year for us, Wallis darling. There’s going to be no more Preston Apartment House. We’re going to move into a splendid little house on Biddle Street, and it will be our own house, Wallis. It won’t be rented.”

“Our own house?” The prospect was so magical, Wallis’s legs felt weak. “But how can we afford our own house, Mama?”

Her mother laughed. “We can’t, Wallis, but someone else can, and that someone is being extraordinarily generous.”

Wallis gasped. Her own relationship with Uncle Sol had improved vastly over the last few years. Sometimes he would unexpectedly slip her a ten-dollar bill and had even begun kissing her on the forehead when saying good-bye to her. It had never occurred to her, though, that his relationship with her mother had also undergone a great change, and her relief that it had was enormous.

“A house of our own!” She hugged her mother ecstatically. “It’s going to be wonderful, Mama! It’s going to be perfect!”

A
lthough the houses on Biddle Street were relatively small brownstone row houses, it
was
perfect. On the first floor there was a library, a parlor, a dining room, and a kitchen and pantry. On the second floor were two large bedrooms with a bathroom in between them, and on the third floor was another bedroom. Her mother took one of the second-floor bedrooms for her own use, designating the other bedroom on the second floor for use as a guest bedroom. Wallis’s bedroom was the one on the third floor.

It was far better than living at the Preston Apartment House. Wallis thought it even better than living at East Preston Street, for though there was no grandeur at Biddle Street, it was all their very own. She even preferred it to West Chase Street, because at Biddle Street they were not living as guests—however well loved—in someone else’s home.

“I’m happy,” she said to Pamela. “Happy, happy, happy.” It was a happiness that didn’t last long.

Chapter Five

T
hey had been in the Biddle Street house only weeks when her mother said to her, “I have a friend comin’ over for dinner tonight, Wallis. A very special gentleman friend. His name is Mr. Rasin—and I’m very fond of him, Wallis.”

Wallis stared at her, too shocked to think of a suitable response. She was still in a state of shock when, an hour later, she met up with Pamela at school.

Pamela was blasé about Mr. Rasin, but in talking about him Wallis’s concern only deepened.

“Mama’s never done this before,” she said, trying to get Pamela to understand how she felt.

“What?” Pamela was chewing on a mouthful of taffy and spoke with difficulty. “Never become fond of anyone?”

“No. She’s never invited an admirer home to dinner before.”

Pamela continued to chew thoughtfully. Eating taffy at school was strictly forbidden, but like all the rest of Arundell’s regulations it wasn’t one she’d ever taken notice of. When her mouth was empty, she said, “Your mother had dinner guests when you were at the Preston Apartment House.”

“That was different. They were paying to be there.”

It was something Pamela had no answer for, and so she said, “But your mother won’t be dining with him on her own. You’ll be there. D’you want a piece of taffy? I’ve still got quite a bit left.”

Wallis shook her head. She’d quite enough on her mind without being found by Miss Carroll with a lump of taffy in her mouth. Not only would Uncle Sol and her grandmother be appalled at the thought of her mother entertaining an admirer at Biddle Street, Aunt Bessie would be appalled as well. It wasn’t the thought of her Aunt Bessie and her grandmother’s disapproval that was filling her with fear, though. It was the thought of Uncle Sol’s disapproval.

He had bought the dear little house on Biddle Street for them. What if he decided her mother was abusing his generosity and took the house away from them? The very thought gave her a sickening feeling of dread deep in the pit of her stomach. No matter how nice Mr. Rasin might turn out to be, she knew she wasn’t going to like him. She couldn’t afford to. He posed too much of a threat to the newfound security she had just begun to enjoy.

M
r. Rasin turned out to be nearly as old as her Uncle Sol, at least forty. And he wasn’t as fastidiously well groomed as her uncle. He was a big man with a big stomach and a huge shock of bright red hair. His stomach looked as if it were trying to escape from his clothes, and his mustache was in need of a clip.

“How-de-do, Wallis,” he said genially, a kindly smile splitting his face as he held his hand out to her. “I’m right glad to meet you.”

Wallis stared at him in horror. Not only didn’t he look to be a gentleman, he didn’t sound like a gentleman either.

She became aware of her mother watching her with anxious eyes. “Where are your manners, Wallis?” she prompted. “Shake Mr. Rasin’s hand.”

Wallis did so.

Mr. Rasin beamed down at her and, withdrawing his other hand from behind his back, produced a prettily beribboned box of sugared almonds. “For you, Wallis,” he said, giving them to her.

She accepted them, not wanting to, but not seeing what else she could do.

“There now, isn’t that swell?” Alice said happily. “Aren’t we just a nice little family?”

As far as Wallis was concerned, Mr. Rasin wasn’t family, and she had no intention of treating him as if he were. To her vast relief, she found out her Aunt Bessie felt just the same.

“Of all the men to fall in love with, Alice,” she said in exasperation and in front of Wallis, “John Freeman Rasin has to be not only the most unlikely, but the most unsuitable.”

Alice narrowed azure blue eyes and put a hand on her hip. “And just why is Free so unsuitable, Bessie?”

“Because he’s an ‘out’—and with good reason, too.”

To be “out” was a Baltimore expression meaning that someone wasn’t, where Baltimore high society was concerned, “in.” In high-society-conscious Baltimore, there wasn’t a worse thing to be.

“Fiddle-dee-dee!” Wallis had never seen her easygoing mother so angry. She was even angrier than she had been when her quarrel with Aunt Bessie had resulted in their moving out of her house and moving into the Preston Apartment House. “John Freeman Rasin was educated at Loyola College, and his daddy has controlled state politics in Maryland for more than thirty years.”

“Carroll Rasin may well be head of the Baltimore Democratic Party,” Bessie shot back waspishly, “and he may well be wealthy, but he hasn’t any pedigree. None of the Rasins have.”

“Just because Free didn’t come to America with the Pilgrim Fathers doesn’t mean he isn’t kind and good company and generous!” As always, Alice couldn’t sustain her temper and was now on the verge of tears. “I’ve been a widow for eleven years, Bessie. I don’t want to be a widow all my life.”

Her elder sister regarded her with loving despair. “But Free isn’t the kind of man women marry, Alice. He wouldn’t still be a bachelor at forty if he were. Not only doesn’t he hold any socially eminent position, he doesn’t even work—or hasn’t for as long as I have known him.”

“Free doesn’t need to work.” Alice dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. “His daddy gives him all the money he needs.”

“There you go!” Bessie threw up her hands and her eyes to heaven. “What kind of a husband would a man like that be? Lord Almighty, Alice dear. Open your eyes before it’s too late.”

F
or days after the scene between her mother and her aunt had taken place, Wallis was so quiet and withdrawn that even Pamela grew exasperated with her. Wallis didn’t care. All she could think of was that word
husband
. What if her mother married Free Rasin? What would happen to her then? Her Uncle Sol would turn them out of the house on Biddle Street and, as Free Rasin didn’t work, there was no telling what sort of a home they would then live in. As far as Baltimore high society was concerned, she and her mother would be social outcasts.