Bethany Hagen - Landry Park

I don’t care about him.

I can’t stop thinking about him.

Before she’d left, Mother had commissioned a seamstress for me and had taken the liberty of choosing the fabric and style of dress that I would wear to Cara’s debut. Silver to match my eyes and set off my pale skin. The seamstress pinned the pieces on me in silence, needles pressed between her lips.

I looked in the mirror. On my pale frame, the silver was drab and gray with no shimmer or depth. Rather than highlighting my hair, it simply forced the dark circles under my eyes and my pale lips into prominence.

A sharp clicking sound brought me out of my daze. Christine Dana stepped into the room, looking light and fresh in a suit and heels. Married women occasionally wore pantsuits or skirted suits since they weren’t worried about snagging a husband. But far from looking like a woman on the shelf, Christine managed to make the tailored lines look sensual and chic.

“Madeline, darling,” she greeted, taking my elbows into her hands and kissing me on the cheek. “I was hoping I would catch your mother. Is she here?”

She had eyes identical to David’s. I couldn’t find my voice to greet her back.

She waved a hand. “No matter. I am sure your father will entertain me. He is so accommodating that way.” Then she caught sight of my face. “Are you quite all right, Madeline? You look so pale.”

I nodded.

She paused, then took a seat on the seamstress’s stool, earning a mordant glare from the woman, who was about to sit down. Christine paid her no attention, and pulled a cigarette from her purse. She offered me one, but I declined. The spicy scent told me it was opium laced, like the kind my father preferred.

She sat for a moment, wreathed in smoke, and then asked, “When do you think you will debut, darling? Soon?”

“No,” I said. My voice was rough from not talking. I cleared my throat. “No, I do not think anyone will ask me soon.”

She gazed at her cigarette. “When I was your age, I was in love with the man I was sure I would marry.” Her voice was distant. “But he asked another girl to debut and eventually proposed to her, and I ended up in Virginia with my aunt. But if I had not gone there, desperate and heartbroken, then I never would have met Admiral Dana, David’s father. We were very happy for many years, until he died.” Her bright eyes pierced mine through the smoke. “Do you see what I am saying?”

“Am I that obvious?” I whispered. I don’t know why I asked, or why I felt like I wanted to hear her answer, but she had taken more interest in my feelings in the past ten minutes than my mother had all spring and summer, and I wanted to believe that underneath the glamour, underneath the sharp face and equally sharp self-assurance, was someone compassionate. Empathetic.

She stood and snapped her clutch closed. “If I had my way, Madeline, we would be putting my grandmother’s tiara in your hair tomorrow and supervising flower arrangements downstairs. After the way David has spoken of you… well, I was surprised that he chose Cara, is all. Take heart, dear,” she said, and kissed me on the cheek. I watched her leave, fiddling with the pins on my dress and trying not to think of David. Her cigarette still smoldered in the ashtray.

“We’re here,” the driver announced.

The car rolled to a stop, and the Westoffs’ footman stepped forward to open the door. He helped my mother out of the limo and caught her as she stumbled, tripping over her dress. She’d been sipping sake mixed with plum wine since we woke at dawn to get ready.

My father sighed impatiently and climbed out. “Compose yourself, Olivia.”

Her eyes flashed but she said nothing. The footman’s face stayed studiously blank.

Father held out a hand to me as I tried to pull myself and the expansive rustling dress out of the car. After twelve or more hours of mineral soaks, lotion treatments, hair, and makeup—all so I could hold my own with the radiant Cara—my body felt too weak and drained to even walk. I wobbled a little on the smooth flagstones of the entry walk, knees like jelly.

Father examined my face. “Are you anxious about the ball?”

“I just want tonight to be over,” I told him.

“You and me both.” He touched my cheek, his face softening. “Sometimes I forget how much my daughter you are.”

I smiled at him. At least I would have one pleasant moment from tonight to tuck away.

The gold clock clanged grandly above his head, the chimes echoing across the grounds, and two footmen appeared from the shadows to open the doors for us. Father ushered us in.

Tonight, as was tradition, the debutante’s favorite flowers were in abundance. Pink roses hung in garlands above doorways, nestled in bunches on the dinner tables, and made halos and wreaths around every statue, pillar, and banister. The smell permeated the air, making an almost palpable miasma. I felt the fingers of a headache begin to creep over my temples.

Addison and her husband stood in the foyer greeting guests. I merely shuffled by, uttering the barest of hellos, before squeezing into the front hall, packed with guests waiting to enter the ballroom. I craned my neck, trying to peer around the people crowding the hall, wanting both to see David and to be reassured he was nowhere in sight.

“David is upstairs waiting with Cara,” Mother mentioned. She was holding a fresh glass of plum wine. “That is the tradition, you know, to come down together. Your father stayed in my room with me for the entire night and day before.”

“He spent the night with you?” I asked, before I could help it.

“Yes,” she answered, looking past me at something else.

I turned to see what she saw—Father and Christine Dana talking together, laughing. He leaned over to say something in her ear and she put a hand to her chest, blue eyes cast to the floor.

My mind went back to David and Cara. “You don’t think David and Cara spent the night together, do you?”

“Of course,” Mother snapped. “Cara knows what she’s doing, and she—”

Christine’s laugh carried across the room. I looked over to see my father’s hand lingering on her waist as they strolled toward the ballroom. “Excuse me,” Mother whispered, and pushed past to catch up with them.

I felt so sick. All those flowers. I needed some fresh air.

I pushed past everyone to a door hidden behind a painting of a water nymph. Checking to make sure no one would witness my escape, I opened the door and slid into the space behind the painting, having to wrestle with the skirt and train of my dress to close the door again.

Faint lights lined the dark hallway of the south wing, shut down for the summer season. I stepped forward quickly, silk slippers silent on the marble, grateful to leave the din of the ball behind me. I used to hide from Cara in this wing when we were little girls, and I knew every closet, trapdoor, and ground-level window. I opened the seventh door on the right to get to the winter library.

Expecting it to be dark and abandoned, I started when I saw a man sitting on the wicker divan, reading. Evening light slanted through the windows and reflected off his silky curls.

“Jamie! You scared me!”

He came over and kissed my cheek. “Apologies. I’ve been at the hospital all day, and I needed some peace before I spent the evening telling everyone for the hundredth time how grateful I am to Arthur Lawrence.”

“No need to apologize.” I sat in one of the low chairs, trying to breathe in my punishing corset. The stiff layers of tulle under my dress made a wall around me. I pushed fruitlessly down at them. “I needed to get away, too.”

Jamie cocked his head at me. “Jealous of Cara?”