Anna Godbersen: Rumors

“Indeed,” Buck replied as he removed a hand-sewn pair for her. “Especially when I am giving the coachman his instructions.”

“Thank you.” Penelope drew the gloves over her wrists and felt like herself again, which was for her always a good thing.

“They adored you today,” Buck went on contemplatively.

“If only it weren’t all so unbearable.” Penelope let her exquisite head rest against the velvet. “I mean really, how many poor people can New York possibly hold? And don’t they ever get sick of turkey?” She brought her kid-covered fingertips up to her high, fine cheekbones. “My face hurts from all the smiling.”

“It is dull, always keeping up the pretense of being good.” Buck paused. “But you were never one to lose sight of a goal,” he went on delicately.

“No,” Penelope agreed. “And I haven’t.”

Just then, the carriage came to a stop, and Buck put his hand on the little gold crank to lower the window. Penelope leaned over him and saw that they had come around to the front of the parade and now stood in the intersection looking down at the head of the procession. There was William Schoonmaker, both tall and broad in his black cloth suit. Beside him was the second Mrs. Schoonmaker, née Isabelle De Ford, who was still young, and who was currently a vision in furs and lace. They were framed in the canyon of tenement buildings, and they paused at the sight of the carriage in their path. In a moment Henry came up to their side.

Penelope’s breath caught at the sight of him. There had been a time when she saw Henry Schoonmaker almost every day, when they had been intimate with each other and with every secret corner of their families’ mansions that permitted behavior not suitable to the maiden daughters of high society. They had done the kinds of things girls like Elizabeth Holland had been famous for not doing — until one day Henry announced that he was engaged to Miss Holland. At a dinner party that Penelope had attended. It was enough to make one vomit, which was in fact what Penelope had done next.

Of course, her violent reaction to that despicable news had since been tempered with understanding. Buck had helped her with that. He had pointed out that old Schoonmaker was a businessman of no small ambition — mayoral ambition — and that he doubtless liked the idea of his son’s bride being so pristine and well liked. Penelope felt fairly certain that if Elizabeth was capable of something, then she was, too, and she’d set about making herself into just such a potential daughter-in-law.

She had rarely been near Henry since then, and the sight of him now was like a concentrated dose. He was a slim figure in black, and under the long shadow of his top hat she could see the handsome line of an aristocratic jaw. He still wore a mourning band on his left arm, which Penelope noticed even as she willed Henry to meet her eyes. She knew he would. And in a few moments, he did. Penelope held his gaze with as much modesty as she could muster, smiled an oblique little smile, and then pulled the veil back down over her face.

“It was a lovely parade, Mr. Schoonmaker!” she called out the window, resting her hand on the half-raised glass.

As she settled back into the velvet carriage seat, she heard Buck tell the driver to move on. But she wasn’t thinking about where she was going. She was thinking about Henry and how very soon he would be done mourning Elizabeth. He was standing back there now, she just knew, remembering what kind of girl she was under the virtuous veneer, and all that had passed between them. And this time, it wouldn’t be just stolen kisses in back hallways. There would be no secrecy and no humiliation. This time it would be for real.

The social leaders of this city have been concerned as of late with one of their own. Mrs. Holland — whose judgment and taste were once revered by top-drawer people — has been in mourning for her husband for almost a year, but her scarcity has been noticed still. Some have suggested that the Holland fortune has dwindled over the years and that the family of the late Mr. Edward is living in near poverty on Gramercy Park. With the passing of her elder daughter, the lovely Elizabeth, who was to have married Mr. Henry Schoonmaker, Mrs. Holland will surely be considering matrimonial options for her other child, Diana, who at sixteen is still very young and has been known for being seen in public without a hat.

— FROM THE SOCIETY PAGE OF THE NEW-YORK NEWS OF THE WORLD GAZETTE, FRIDAY, DECEMBER 15, 1899

THE MAUVE, LEAFLESS BRANCHES OF TREES ROTATED at a giddy pace around the little frozen pond in Central Park. They moved horizontally between a gray strip of sky and a mass of people whose cheeks had been turned red by the cold. This panorama sped faster and faster until, suddenly, Diana Holland put the toe of her skate down into the ice and came to a dramatic stop. She took an ecstatic breath to steady herself, and felt dizzy and lucky to be alive and in the refreshing winter air.

Then she saw her companion for the afternoon, Percival Coddington.

“Miss Holland,” he said as he stumbled toward her. Although Diana felt a strong urge to be far away from Percival, she couldn’t help but fear for him a little — and for anyone unlucky enough to be within his wingspan — as he tripped forward on the tips of his skates, his arms flailing in some helpless search for balance.

Diana was trying very hard not to laugh at him. Percival — as she had already discovered that afternoon — did not take kindly to being laughed at. He had greeted all of her jokes that afternoon with sourness and ill humor, and had several times pointed out that she was not behaving as he believed a young woman who longed to marry should. There was really nothing to do in such situations but laugh, although she was doing her sincere best to resist. To distract him from the pickled expression her face had taken on, she now offered him her hand.

“Miss Holland,” Percival said again as his grip tightened. She was glad that two layers of gloves separated her palm from his and made a silent prayer that she would not be pulled down with him.

“Mr. Coddington, my sister was, and still is to me, Miss Holland. I’d prefer Miss Diana.”

Percival, whose hair was like a greasy mat and whose nostrils flared in what could only be described as a grotesque way, lowered his eyes respectfully. It was not entirely honest for Diana to have said what she said. Despite the affected pose of extreme mourning and deep melancholy that she had employed for the last two months, she was neither bereaved nor in particularly low spirits. She felt justified in manipulating the storied loss of her elder sister, however, since it was Elizabeth’s premature departure from New York that had necessitated a host of afternoons like this one, spent in the company of wealthy and detestable bachelors. For once their mother had gotten over the initial shock of losing Elizabeth, she had redirected her ambition for an advantageous match from her first daughter onto her second. This despite her poor health, which had afflicted her for much of the fall.

It was Mrs. Holland who had insisted that Diana accept Percival’s invitation to ice-skate that day, and she had also been the one — Diana felt she could safely assume — who had suggested the activity in the first place. Percival was objectionable in more than one way, of course, but the most pressing reason that Diana wanted to free her hand from his was that her heart belonged elsewhere. And that was not a thing a woman like Mrs. Holland would have any patience for.

It was, additionally, just like Elizabeth to absent herself from Diana’s life at the precise moment Liz finally had an interesting story to tell. For she had been driven to fake her own death by her love for a boy named Will Keller, who had once been the Hollands’ coachman and was good looking enough that Diana had wondered on more than one occasion what it would be like to kiss him. The faked death had involved the Hudson River and the assistance of Elizabeth’s treacherous friend Penelope Hayes, and then the older Holland girl had gone off to California in pursuit of what must have been a very agonizing, and thus fascinating, love. But since she had learned of her sister’s romantic deception, Diana had received only the most limited information about Elizabeth’s whereabouts.