Vixen (35 page)

Gloria looked into the mirror and sucked in her breath. “Clara!” she exclaimed, leaning closer to the mirror in disbelief. “How did you
do
this?”

Clara dusted a speck of powder off Gloria’s cheek. “It’s all you, babycakes. You have an inner glow.”

Gloria did. Her cheeks radiated a peachy luminescence,
seeming to brighten her eyes to a spearmint green and her hair to a gold-flecked copper. It was as if she were seeing herself in color for the first time. “Are you sure this isn’t the absinthe?”

“Hold that thought!” Clara dashed out and came back a second later with the butterfly flask. She placed it in Gloria’s palm. “I want you to keep this.”

Gloria traced the mysterious
C & H
. “Clara, I can’t—”

“Consider it my engagement gift to you. Tuck it somewhere safe, like your garter, and use in times of need,” Clara said.

Gloria impulsively hugged Clara. “Thank you,” she said into the shoulder of Clara’s dress. She was finally grateful to have Clara here. “Thank you for everything.”

“Hey now, don’t smudge your face! Or my dress!” Clara teased, holding Gloria at arm’s length. “Last word of advice for the night,” she said. “Make up your mind and never look back.”

Gloria nodded. Clara was right about life and love. Gloria was going to have to make a choice, and she was going to have to make it quickly—with no regrets. Before an irreversible choice was made for her.

CLARA

Clara leaned over the banister and peered down the stairs.

The house was alive with people and noise—hundreds of guests eating, chattering, and laughing; bright darts of music from Isham Jones and his all-white jazz orchestra, specially hired for the occasion. Usually, the place was so empty: only her, Gloria, and Aunt Bea—and the help. Tonight, however, the house was thick with fancy faces—gray-haired old members of the Chicago elite, gray-faced friends and family of Sebastian’s, pie-eyed acquaintances of the Carmodys. Even a few local celebrities had been invited, but no one expected them to show up.

Gloria’s engagement party had begun.

From her perch at the top of the grand staircase, Clara
could see it all. In the foyer, Mrs. Carmody’s man, Archibald, had roped off space to either side of the door, where he herded the reporters and photographers. With every new guest he announced, there was a stutter of light as a dozen explosions of flash powder went off, and then the shouts of the reporters trying to get a choice quote for their stories. In the house proper, waiters in white tuxedos glided masterfully among the guests, carrying silver trays of drinks and appetizers raised high on their gloved hands.

And the guests themselves were resplendent. There were girls on the verge of flapperdom in sparkly dresses, bronze and gold and silver, with long white gloves on their arms and pearls looped around their necks, and older women swathed in floor-length gowns of georgette, crepe, and satin, their hair done up, diamonds and other jewels dripping from their ears and fingers. The boys and men looked all the same in white tie and tails.

Claudine had transformed the front sitting room into a hat-check room. Even from here, Clara could hear the poor girl crying out
“Oui, monsieur!”
again and again. And on every surface, piles upon piles of hothouse flowers: plush white peonies, statuesque white calla lilies, soft petals of purest white everywhere.

“Oh God,” Gloria said, coming up behind Clara and standing next to her. “Save me.”

Clara gave her cousin a nudge. “Just remember to stay calm. This is
your
party, after all.”

Gloria said nothing, just gazed at the mob below and looked sick.

“Come on,” Clara coaxed her. “We can’t hide up here forever.”

Together, the girls descended the staircase.

Their descent caused a ripple in the crowd below, a low
“Ohhhh”
that seemed to fill the foyer and drive everyone to silence. “There they are!” someone shouted. And then there was clapping—such loud and sustained applause that it seemed to rock Gloria midstride. For a moment she looked nakedly terrified.

“Just smile for the cameras,” Clara said.

The clapping continued until they’d reached the bottom of the staircase. It was a long way down. Clara was about to say, “See? That wasn’t so bad,” when someone shouted out: “Smile, Gloria!”

“Smile, Gloria,”
Clara repeated in a silly voice. Gloria turned and looked at her, and they both started laughing. What a ridiculous scene this was. An engagement party for a girl who didn’t want to get married—because she was in love with a black musician, who, if he’d shown up tonight, would have been turned away the moment he stepped onto the property.

Bastian had been waiting at the bottom of the steps, looking especially tall and broad-shouldered. His face was
smooth shaven, his dark hair brushed back in a wave. He took Gloria’s hand, and the couple posed for yet more photographs. Then they were engulfed by the crowd.

Suddenly, all the cameras were on Clara.

Clara blinked away the afterimages of the photographers’ flashes and searched the crowd for Marcus, but all she saw were stuffy Chicagoans in fancy dress. The orchestra was playing something soft and mellow in the living room. Clara could hear it and wished she were there, with Marcus, having fun and away from these high-society wolves.

“Miss Knowles! Miss Knowles!” cried a woman reporter in a fur-trimmed suit. “What a beautiful gown! Who made it?”

“Oh, beats me, really,” Clara said, looking down at her dress, a sheer midnight-blue sheath that fell to her knees and was hemmed with a silk and beadwork band. It was slightly out of fashion but still beautiful. She could have told the reporter that it was Chanel who’d designed this gown, but Country Clara would have had no idea.

“Clara, dear, there you are!” Aunt Beatrice swept through the crowd and kissed Clara on each cheek. For once in her life, Clara’s aunt was in something chic—a modest black dress, her neck wrapped in diamonds. She looked happier and younger than she had in ages.
Aunt Bea looks elegant
, Clara thought. She told her as much.

Aunt Bea gave her a quick hug. She seemed genuinely happy to see Clara, so unlike when Clara had first set foot in
this mansion. The threat of reform school was only a ghostly memory.

“I was just about to tell this reporter about my gown.” Clara did a little twirl. “Of course, I can’t take credit for my ensemble tonight. If my aunt hadn’t been so generous, I would have come looking like a ragamuffin! We country girls don’t know a ton about fashion, but I’ve been learning so much.”

Aunt Beatrice waved her hand in the air. “Oh, nonsense! You became the toast of this town all on your own.” She patted Clara’s arm and whispered, “That there
will be
a wedding is thanks, in no small part, to you. I’m glad you came to Chicago, dear. Your parents would be very proud.”

Clara felt tears come to her eyes. She hadn’t thought of her parents in ages; in her mind, they would always be disappointed in her. But maybe her aunt was right, and now they could finally stop being ashamed of her.

“Miss Knowles, will you stand for a photo?”

“Of course,” Clara said. She smiled without showing her teeth, one hand propped on her dropped waist.

A few more reporters threw out questions, but she called to them, “I’m sorry, but I need to get a bite to eat before I perish from hunger!”

She was lying. She had eyes for only one thing, and it wasn’t caviar. It was Marcus.

He was waiting for her, leaning against one of the
cream-colored walls and looking more dashing than he had when she’d first laid eyes on him—if that was even possible.

“Hello there, handsome,” Clara said, tugging at his silk tie.

He kissed her cheek. “Don’t think I didn’t see your little pose over there, Miss Clara. Did they teach you in Pennsylvania how to make those sultry eyes for the camera?”

“Marcus! Don’t you dare say that dirty word here,” she said, taking a sip of his seltzer.

“I wasn’t aware that
sultry
was a dirty word.”

“I meant
Pennsylvania.
”

Marcus crinkled his adorable brow. “And yet I may need to say it one more time when I ask you what your parents will think of me, back on the farm in
Pennsylvania.
” He gulped down his drink, then took two crab-cake hors d’oeuvres from a passing waiter’s tray and popped them into his mouth.

“You’re an animal,” Clara said, laughing. He wanted to meet her parents? He wasn’t even her boyfriend yet. Or was he?
Baby steps
, she reminded herself. “I thought we were taking this slowly.”

“We are,” Marcus answered. “Slowly, slowly, slowly. That is the name of the game.” He ran his fingers through a loose tendril of her hair. Every time he touched her, she felt weak. “Did I tell you how beautiful you look tonight?”

Marcus took a second glass of seltzer from a waiter, then casually poured the water into a potted plant. He produced
a flask, from which he poured a golden liquid into the glasses. He handed one to Clara. “An event like this calls for champagne. Unfortunately, all I have is whiskey.”

“That will have to do.” Clara raised her glass. “Should we toast to something?”

“We must!” he said, raising his own. “To …” He squinted at her. “Now, this may make me sound like a flat tire, but how about to leaving the past in the past, and living for the future?”

“I’ll drink to that.” Clara wrapped her arm around his, and thus entwined, she and Marcus clinked their glasses together. “How is it you always know the right thing to say?”

“Me? I’m a bumbling idiot around you!” Marcus said. “Speaking of, would you follow this bumbling idiot somewhere more private?”

“Pos-i-lute-ly,” Clara said.

No one would notice if they disappeared for a moment. The photographers and reporters were still locked on Gloria at the other end of the hall, who was sitting on a plush chair that looked like a poor man’s throne, gingerly holding Bastian’s arm in a chaste manner that probably looked proper but that Clara knew was because of her distaste for the man. Questions were coming fast from the reporters. Bastian answered all of them while Gloria stared into space.

At the edge of the crowd Clara spied Ginnie Bitman. She looked positively horrifying in a baby-blue dress, but she was
talking to a boy—a real, live boy!—who seemed … not completely uninterested. Sure, he was funny in the face, but Clara felt a swell of pride for the girl.

Marcus took Clara’s hand in his. He led her down the hallway past the kitchen, where the caterers had noisily set up camp; past one of the guest bathrooms and its overpowering stink of lilac-scented soap; and toward her uncle’s library. That room had been virtually closed since he’d abandoned the family for his Manhattan fling.

And then it dawned on her: a secluded, dark room—

No, she didn’t want to be that girl to him! She didn’t want him to think that just because she had been promiscuous in the past, she would fool around with him now. It was important to start this relationship off right.

Relationship?
She stopped dead in the hall and pulled her hand from his.

“What is it?” Marcus asked, his face flushed.

“Nothing,” she said. “Sorry. I just got … confused.”

So that was how she was feeling.
Relationship
. She used to run away at the mention of that word, but now … She looked at Marcus and grinned until her cheeks smarted.

She thought of the “plan” she’d overheard Lorraine and Gloria discussing the first time she’d met Marcus. Was this the final step? A dark room, humiliation before a crowd of hundreds?

“Maybe we should go back,” she suggested.

“Into that stuffed-shirt hell? God, why?”

“I just thought that, well—” There was no easy way to voice her suspicions.

But all Marcus did was say, “I guess this hallway will be private enough, then. Clara Knowles, you
are
the most exquisite girl in this gaudy old house. And don’t you dare protest that compliment, it’s not allowed.”

“Compliments. Flattery.” Clara tilted her head. “Why are you so sweet to me?”

“Me? Sweet? Don’t ruin my reputation.” He dug inside the pockets of his tailcoat and fished out a red box with a signature gold-scripted
Cartier
stamped across the top. “But if you already find me too sweet, maybe I should reconsider giving you this.”

“Marcus!” she said, a little breathless, and then, not knowing what else to say, said his name again.

“Perhaps you should open it first.” He laughed, holding the box before her, but underneath his confidence, Clara could see he was unsure of himself. He wanted her to like him just as much as she wanted him to like her. The way this felt—the two of them equal, neither with the upper hand—was something new and altogether scary, but also wonderful.

Tentatively, Clara opened the box.

Inside, a glittering diamond and platinum bangle bracelet, with rubies scattered between the pavé diamonds like a red constellation, stared back at her. It was the most gorgeous,
most delicate thing she had ever seen. She was stunned into silence.