Anna Godbersen: The Luxe

“Well, what are you thinking about, then?” Percival frowned and pressed his hand into her lower back. Elizabeth couldn’t think of anyone she would trust less to move her backward across a floor of exuberant, slightly tipsy people.

“Uh…” Elizabeth started, realizing that she had been thinking that even the drawing room was not a total respite. Truthfully, she had been just a little bit relieved to leave Agnes, even though Agnes was such a loyal friend, because the leather-fringed dress she wore was ill-fitting and unflatteringly tight. Elizabeth had been distracted with pity during their entire conversation. Agnes seemed, especially next to her new glamorous Parisian friends, like an embarrassing remnant of childhood.

She focused again on Percival’s animated, ugly face and tried to keep her feet going one, two, three across the floor. She thought about the evening thus far all the hours of mindless chatter and carefully accepted compliments, all the studious attention to appearances. She recalled the calculated luxury of her time in Paris. What had she been doing, really doing , all this time? What had he that boy she had been trying so hard to forget, indeed believed she had forgotten been doing all that time she was away? She wondered if he had stopped caring for her. Already she could feel the stunning weight of a lifetime of regret for letting him go, and she knew that it was enough to bury her alive.

All at once the room turned mute and violently bright. She closed her eyes and felt Percival Coddington’s hot breath on her ear asking if she felt all right. Her corset, which her maid, Lina, had practically sewed her into hours earlier, felt suddenly, horribly constricting. Her life, she realized, had all the charm of a steel trap.

Then, as quickly as the panic had come, it went. Elizabeth opened her eyes. The sounds of joy and giddy indulgence came rushing back. She glanced up at the great domed ceiling glowing above them and reassured herself that it had not fallen.

“Yes, Mr. Coddington, thank you for asking,” Elizabeth finally responded. “I’m not sure what came over me.”

Cloakroom, one o’clock.

Bring ciggies.

DH

DIANA HOLLAND SAW HER MOTHER ASCEND THE twisting marble staircase on the far side of the ballroom, supported by some big older fellow whom she felt sure she knew. Their family friend and accountant, Stanley Brennan, trailed behind. Just before they moved out of view and toward some surely lavish second-story smoking room, Mrs. Holland looked back, caught Diana’s eye, and gave her an admonishing glance. Diana cursed herself for being spotted and then briefly considered staying in the great central ballroom to wait patiently for one of her cousins to ask her to dance. But patience was not in Diana Holland’s nature.

Besides, she had been so proud of her cunning in writing the little invitation during a freshening-up in the ladies’ dressing room earlier in the evening. She’d then slipped it to the architect Webster Youngham’s assistant, who was stationed near the arched entryway in order to explain the many architectural references that had been incorporated into the Hayes family’s new home. She had pushed her way through the crowd, curtsied, clasped his hand, and palmed him the note. “You truly are an artist, Mr. Youngham,” she’d said, knowing full well that Mr. Youngham was already drunk on Madeira and lounging in one of the card rooms upstairs.

“But I’m not Mr. Youngham,” he told her, looking adorably confused. As soon as she saw that look, Diana knew she’d hooked him. “I’m James Haverton, his assistant.”

“Nevertheless.” She winked before disappearing back into the crowd. Haverton had broad shoulders and dreamy gray eyes, and even if he was just an assistant, he seemed like somebody who had gone places and done things. She hadn’t seen anyone nearly so nice-looking in the intervening hour.

So Diana picked up her skirt and moved quickly between the enormous planters and the wall. She looked behind her once before leaving the ballroom to make sure no one was watching and then slipped into the cloakroom. It was massive and overly ornamented, Diana thought, especially for a room that was chiefly occupied by coats. It didn’t matter to them that the room was Moorish-themed, with a colorful mosaic floor and antiquities displayed in the turret-shaped alcoves carved from the walls.

Diana looked around her, trying to locate her French lieutenant’s coat. She had come dressed as the heroine of her favorite novel, Trilby , who appears for the first time on a break from her job as an artist’s model in a petticoat and slippers and a soldier’s coat. Diana had not been allowed to wear a petticoat without a skirt, but she felt the thrill of having gotten away with something just wearing the rest of the costume at all. Her mother had even had a shepherdess costume made for her so that she would match her older sister, Elizabeth, which would have been hideous in addition to humiliating. Instead, here she was in a satisfyingly bohemian red-and-white striped skirt and a simple cotton bodice that she had ripped in a few places on the sly. No one got it, of course all the other girls Diana’s age were conformists at heart and seemed to have dressed up as themselves, only with more powder and artificially narrowed waists.

She was just beginning to wonder if one of the servants hadn’t mistaken her perfectly shabby gray coat for her own, when she was startled by one single clang from the clock in the corner. She gasped, surprised, and stepped backward a little unsteadily after all the champagne she’d been sneaking and when she did, she felt the chest of a man and a pair of hands on her hips. Her whole body flushed with adrenaline.

“Oh, hello.” She tried to make her voice flat and indifferent, even though this was by far the most exciting thing that had happened to her all evening.

“Hello.” Haverton’s mouth was very close to her ear.

Diana turned slowly and met his eyes. “I hope you brought cigarettes,” she said, trying not to smile too much.

Haverton had short, straight eyebrows set far apart, which made his eyes look open and earnest. “I didn’t think ladies of your class were allowed to smoke.”

Diana affected a pout. “So you didn’t bring ciggies?”

He paused, his eyes lingering on her in a way that made her feel not at all like a lady. “Oh no, I brought them. It’s just that I’m not sure whether I should give you one or not….” Diana noticed a little mischief shining in his eye, and concluded that it must be the glimmer of a kindred spirit.

“What do I have to do to convince you?” she asked, turning her head jauntily.

“This is serious, what you are asking me to do,” he replied with an air of put-on gravity. Then he laughed. Diana liked the sound of it. “You’re pretty,” he told her, smiling unabashedly now.

Diana and her sister could not have shared more physical characteristics and looked less alike. Like Elizabeth, she had the small features and round mouth of the Holland women, although she still had the softness of her baby fat. She liked to think that her dark hair added a certain mystery, although it was in truth a sort of medium brown, and untamable. Her eyes were always being described as vivid . And of course she and her sister had the same chin their mother’s. She hated her chin. “Oh, I’m all right,” she answered him, glowing with false modesty.

“Much better than all right.” He continued to observe her as he pulled a cigarette case out of his breast pocket. He lit one and handed it to her.

Diana took a drag and tried not to cough. She loved smoking or at least the idea of smoking but it was hard to practice doing it right with her mother and the staff always watching her. She was pulling it off, though at least she thought she was exhaling little puffs into the air. It felt right, especially with all the metallic and turquoise detail in the room suggesting some hazy, far-off locale. She raised an eyebrow, wondering how Haverton was going to make his move. “So, if you’re an architect, does that make you an artist?”