Anna Godbersen - The Luxe

“Depends whom you ask,” he replied lightly. “Some of us like to think that we make the most monumental and lasting kind of art.”

“That’s very nice,” Diana said blithely. “Because you see, I have been trying to find a real artist all night.”

“Whatever for?” he asked, leaning into the coats and putting his cigarette to his mouth.

“Well, to kiss, of course.” Diana drew her breath in after she spoke. Even she was occasionally surprised by the audacious things that came out of her mouth.

Haverton exhaled thoughtfully, the smoky sweet smell of tobacco surrounding them. For a moment, Diana felt like she could have been a million miles off in a tent hidden away in some souk in Tunis or Marrakech, arranging for secret deals in magic powders.

“It occurs to me,” Haverton started, the hard edges of his American voice reminding her that she was still in New York, on a street as familiar as Fifth Avenue, no less, “that you are being a very naughty girl.”

“You think so?” Diana asked, dragging on her cigarette amusedly. She, too, sank into the soft wall of coats, moving a little closer to Haverton.

“Well, how often do young ladies of your class meet strange older men in oversize closets, with all of society a few heartbeats away?”

“What makes you think there is any comparison between me and the girls of my class ?” Diana pronounced the last two words in disgust. The girls of her class were slaves to rules, going about life if you could call it that like bloodless mannequins. “I told you I was looking for an artist,” she went on impatiently. “So if you’re going to go on thinking conventionally and just like everybody else, I may as well leave.”

Haverton smiled and dropped his cigarette onto the black-and-white marble-tiled floor. He stepped on it before shooing it to the corner with his toe. He looked very old to Diana all of a sudden, even though he couldn’t have been more than twenty. Then he was moving toward her fast. As soon as their lips touched, she knew there wasn’t going to be any magic. This was not the heart-stopping touch that she had been waiting for all evening, and it didn’t help especially that his style of kissing was akin to mashing one face against another. Her whole body went slack with the disappointment.

Diana kissed him back, just to make sure her instinct was correct, but she had been kissed before, and she knew what it felt like when it was good. Haverton ranked far below Amos Vreewold, whom she had kissed several times in Saratoga over the summer, and only slightly better than her first kiss, at age thirteen, which had been so acrid an affair that she had banished the boy’s identity from even her own memory. Diana was finally accepting the fact that James Haverton, architect’s assistant, was not the kind of artist she was looking for when the door creaked and a foot sounded at the threshold.

“Miss Diana?” said a male voice, more hurt than shocked.

Diana felt Haverton’s grip tighten momentarily as they turned toward the door. Diana recognized Stanley Brennan’s long, tired face immediately. He was only twenty-six he had taken over from his father as Mr. Holland’s accountant but his constant anxiety gave him a prematurely aged appearance.

“Your mother. She sent me to check on you…” he said haltingly. “To make sure you weren’t getting into trouble.”

Haverton let go of Diana’s waist and stepped back. He didn’t look especially pleased by Brennan’s entrance, but he kept quiet. Diana felt freer almost instantly, rejoicing as she was in having Haverton’s rough chin off her face.

“Thank you, Brennan,” she said. “Would you like to accompany me back to the ballroom?”

Brennan stepped forward cautiously, reaching toward the rips that Diana had put in her costume. They had widened during the poor excuse for a tryst.

“Oh, stop, it’s fine.” She lifted her arm for him to take. Then she turned to Haverton. “Thank you for explaining the Islamic references in the Richmond Hayeses’ coatroom to me. I will remember it always.”

She looked back once, and imagined that the grimace on Haverton’s face was the beginning of his life as a lonely man broken by disappointments. It was her fate to leave such casualties in her wake, she thought as she and Brennan exited and walked in the direction of the main ballroom.

“I won’t tell your mother,” Brennan whispered as their shoes shuffled along the gleaming marble corridor. “Though I feel, as your late father’s friend, that I should remind you that that kind of behavior could be your ruin.”

“I’m not afraid,” Diana said gaily.

“You’re like my little sister almost, and it is my responsibility to look after you. Your mother thinks so, anyway.” He stopped walking, as if to convey his seriousness. “If she found out what you had been up to and that I knew about it, that would be the end of both of us.”

“Well, that is very true.” Diana paused next to him. They could already hear the shouting and music from the ballroom, and in a moment they would be swept back under the bright lights. Diana turned the corners of her mouth down in a fake pout, even while her eyes shone with flirtation. “But would that really be so bad?”

Then she laughed, grabbed Brennan’s hand, and pulled him back into the center of things. She was searching for an inexpressible something , and she wasn’t about to let one sour little kiss slow her down.

Not sure if I can make it to your party tonight. My apologies, if this is the case.

HS

“LITTLE BO PEEP. THAT’S TOO PERFECT FOR LIZ,” Penelope Hayes said, as she said nearly everything, with a quarter ounce of venom.

“Well, at least she didn’t forget her humble American origins while she was swanning about with the Frenchies,” her friend Isaac Phillips Buck replied. “And at least she didn’t go bland marquis et marquise like everybody else,” he added with a sniff.

Penelope gave a careless shrug. If he wanted to praise Elizabeth Holland, whom she had long ago singled out as her principal rival and thus her only possible best friend, and who was now circling the polo-field-size dance floor with that toad Percival Coddington, it was fine with her. She was feeling entirely better now that she had seen how very impressed everyone was by her family’s new house and hosting style. And, of course, by her.

There had been a dark moment earlier, when the messenger arrived with the note. She had just returned from the Hollands’, where she had gone to welcome Elizabeth back and chastise her for nearly missing the party. Her heart had clenched, reading the careless missive, and then she had flown into a rage that she could admit this now had not been especially fair to the maids attending to her before the party. It was not so much that she feared the writer of the note would not come to love her how long could any boy hold out, really? but that this particular boy might miss this particular party. After all, what better place for him to realize she was truly the center of the universe, and that keeping their relationship secret was a colossal waste?

Now, observing her family’s ballroom from the mezzanine, her torso cinched beneath her flamenco dancer’s red flounces to a perfect eighteen inches, she felt supremely confident that he would come. It was the evening of the Richmond Hayeses’ ball, the evening when they reached their apotheosis as a top-drawer family there was simply no place else to be. She was certain he would arrive shortly. Well, almost certain. Penelope rested a confident hand on her hip even as she clenched and unclenched her fist around the note in her other hand.

“Would you look at Elizabeth, holding herself so high and mighty,” Penelope said. The dozens of delicate yellow-gold bangles lining her forearms jangled.