Anna Godbersen: The Luxe

“You came,” Will stated, though it sounded more like a question. His legs dangled off the loft where he slept, and his hair was greasy from humidity and work. He had the habit, when he was nervous or annoyed, of pushing it repeatedly behind his ears. Will, unlike the boys her friends lusted for, had a hooked nose from the time it was broken in a brawl, and thick, expressive lips. His eyes were a bright, wounded blue, and he was sitting in a familiar position it was the position of waiting. “I’d nearly given up on you,” he added, the cautiousness of his phrasing masking the fear in his voice.

Looking up at Will, Elizabeth felt elated and weary at once, and she realized what a very long night it had been. The whole ball all that shrieking laughter, all those elaborate gowns seemed like the stuff of a bright, absurd dream that had passed with the coming of morning. There had been dances with enough bachelors to make her mother happy, some of them less eligible and more charming than Percival Coddington. She had found time to catch up with Penelope, and they’d clasped hands and whispered appreciatively back and forth about each other’s dresses. She’d forgotten to needle Penelope about the secret affair she was a bad friend, she realized now, but she would make a big show of begging Penelope to tell her who the unnamed beau was later. They’d agreed that the terrine was delicious, though they had both been too excited to really eat any of it, and that they’d drunk more champagne than they had meant to. But champagne, they agreed, as they always had before, was not to be resisted. It had been a very long night, but it seemed to her now that it could have ended nowhere but here.

“I’m sorry…but you know you shouldn’t always be waiting,” Elizabeth finally answered, even though she might as easily have told him that she’d thought of him every day and that their separation had been excruciating. She wanted to tell him about the far-off places that she had seen, how the broad avenues of Paris curved and opened onto grand vistas unimaginable in straight-up-and-down New York. There were many things she wanted to say, but instead she mumbled: “I wouldn’t want you to count on my coming even when I might not be able ” She stopped herself when he looked away. “Please, Will,” Elizabeth said then, a little desperately, her chest aching at the sight of Will’s downcast eyes. “Please…”

It was remarkable how quickly she adjusted from her big comfortable room upstairs to down here in the carriage house, how quickly all the rules that governed her daily life became useless and silly-seeming. Of course, she had long told herself to reverse this course. In Paris, she was sometimes sure that she could, that she had outgrown Will, that she was now fully the lady her social position called for. But when she came off the ship and down the plank that morning, she saw him waiting with the family carriage and realized that he, too, had grown up. He was somehow even handsomer than he had been before, and she knew from the way he carried himself that he was no longer the sort of boy to get in useless fights. There was purpose in his every gesture. And here she was now, stuttering and stammering, near begging him to adore her again, the way a girl in love would. That’s what she was, after all: a girl in love.

But all that could not stop a few stray thoughts from returning to the words that her mother had uttered just before Elizabeth had set out on the dance floor with Percival Coddington. The one thing we do not have is time. Her words hovered like an augury over Elizabeth’s head, even now, as she stood on the stable floor.

“You were gone so long,” Will said quietly, and shook his head in a show of despondency. Elizabeth looked up at him and tried to banish those words still looming like storm clouds. “And then tonight, standing out on the street, waiting for the ball to be over, not knowing what you were doing in there, who’s touching you, who’s ” He looked straight at her then, which made any further words unnecessary. One of the horses shifted, hooves against the hay, and neighed softly.

“Will, I couldn’t not go to the ball.” She widened her eyes helplessly, wondering why he had to fight with her over things she couldn’t change, especially on her first night home. After all, wasn’t she the one risking everything she had ever known, creeping around the house at night? Couldn’t he just love her in the time they had? “I’m here now, Will. Look at me, I’m here ,” she said softly, stepping forward. “I love you.” She almost laughed because she meant it so much.

“I kept picturing you inside, dancing with those other men.” Will fixed his grip on the wooden edge of the loft, and then went on. “Those Henry Schoonmaker types with their hundred-dollar suits and their country houses even bigger than what they have in town…”

Elizabeth reached the ladder and took two steps up. The wood was rough on her soft, unblemished hands, but she hardly thought of that now. She kept her eyes on Will’s and a crescent smile on her lips. “Henry Schoonmaker? That cad? You must be joking.” She couldn’t help laughing her high, fine laugh outright now.

She didn’t know where it came from, this urge to comfort and hold Will, but it was as deep in her as fate. She didn’t even know when their childhood adoration had turned into adult love, but whatever it was that pulled her to Will had always been there. She’d never met anyone so true, so stubbornly good. Sometimes he verged on righteous, but Elizabeth knew how to calm him down. She looked up at Will, all worn out with feeling, and knew he was ready to not be angry anymore.

Will lowered his eyes and pushed his hair behind his ears once again. Then he raised his face slightly and peeked at Elizabeth. “Are you laughing at me, Lizzie?”

“I would never,” she said seriously, rising another step on the wooden ladder.

Then he swung his legs upward and stood, his worn leather boots making the loft shake. When he reached the ladder, he bent and swooped Elizabeth up, so that she was folded into his arms. He smelled like horses and sweat and plain soap it was a smell she knew and adored. “I’m so happy you’re back,” he whispered into her neck.

Elizabeth closed her eyes and said nothing. It was so rare and so good, this being touched. She hadn’t known how much she’d missed it until now.

“So what kind of evening was it?” he asked, speaking low, directly into her ear as he set her down on the loft’s plank wood floor. “Elegant or wild?”

She pressed her face into his chest and tried to recall the party, but all she could remember were her mother’s ominous words and the strange looks she kept shooting at her daughter. Elizabeth considered her reply, and finally said, “Boring.” Then she looked up at his big, handsome face and wished she could forget the evening and who she was and what her obligations were. She had come down here because what she wanted against all her upbringing was to be close to him for a few hours. “I thought about you the whole time. Now can we never talk about fancy-dress parties again?”

He smiled and gently laid her down on the spring mattress he kept in the corner of the loft, under the wood beams where he hung his clothes to dry. Elizabeth untied her silk kimono. He hovered over her, holding her face in his big hands and kissing her lightly again and again. A natural smile spread, unbidden, across her face. “I think you do love me, Miss Holland,” he whispered.

The light of an already advanced morning streamed through one small window. A certain feeling of agitated ecstasy coursed through Elizabeth’s comfortable body, reminding her that comfortable was not how she was supposed to be feeling at all. It was her second morning back in New York, but she had not yet slept in her own bed.