Anna Godbersen: The Luxe

He took her hand and kissed it. “I think I’ve finally figured out who you are. You’re friends with Adelaide Wetmore, and you came in with her to look at brooches two weeks ago.”

She giggled and shook her head.

“One of Commodore Vanderbilt’s granddaughters, perhaps?”

Lina raised her eyebrows at this suggestion, and then had to shake her head no again.

“Then perhaps I recognize you because you’re in the Schoonmaker-Holland wedding party?” Lina felt her smile disappear from her face. “That’s it, isn’t it? You’re one of Elizabeth Holland’s friends?”

“The Hollands ,” she said hatefully. “They’re awful. Especially Elizabeth.”

“Really? She always seemed so well mannered when I saw her in the store.”

Lina nodded disgustedly. She reminded herself that if it weren’t for Elizabeth sneaking around and tricking Will into falling in love with her, he’d be in love with Lina right now instead. “That’s the way she seems in public. But everyone who knows her knows that she’s nasty as can be.” Lina paused and decided that she was rambling unwisely. Then she remembered how the very man she was sitting next to had demanded payment of her former employers. “I’m far richer than they are now anyway.”

“Really?” Tristan said, lowering his mug slowly to the bar. “The Hollands are such an old family, though.”

“Oh yes ,” Lina said proudly. She knew that she was going on really foolishly, but she couldn’t help herself. “I could buy and sell them.”

“Oh, really,” Tristan said lightly. “And what would you do with them when they belonged to you?”

“I would make them scrub my floor and mend my stockings, and then I’d send them out to find me lilies in a very particular shade.” Lina couldn’t stop herself. She was enjoying this fantasy too much.

“Sounds like an awful lot of work for Holland girls.” Tristan’s eyes were full of mischief.

“Oh, you’ve never met them. Awful family. Real princesses. Elizabeth especially.” Lina paused to slurp her beer. “I wish she’d never lived.”

“I could make that happen.” Tristan leaned forward confidentially. “I know you look at me, in my tailored suit and my fine way of talking, and think I’m probably out of my element with the Kid Jack Gallaghers here. But if you want a little problem like Elizabeth Holland gone…” He trailed off, raising a blond eyebrow.

Lina dropped her mug to the bar heavily. She was suddenly discomfited by this bend in the conversation. But then she looked at Tristan serious now but so light before and realized he must be joking.

She put her hands over her face and giggled. She felt terrible laughing at a thing like that, but there was something funny about the idea of Elizabeth being done away with by one of the men who used to deliver her dresses. And anyway, it was just an elaborate story. “It would serve her right,” she added when her giggles had quieted down.

“Cheers to that, Carolina.” Tristan raised his eyebrows and clinked his mug against hers.

Pretty soon everything began to feel warm and fuzzy; the faces in the room grew long and distorted, the warblings of the vocalist grew louder, and clinking glasses with Tristan Wrigley was the last thing Lina could recall.

My dear Lizzie,

At this stage of life, I’ve begun to worry what will happen to you when I am gone. Remember always to be true as true and honest as the girl I know.

With love,

our Father

ELIZABETH WOKE EARLY ON TUESDAY AND COULD not fall back to sleep, although she was grateful to have slept at all. The night had been restless and full of ghosts. She didn’t have the energy to choose a new outfit, so she put on the same dress she had worn the day before, the eyelet with the square neck and ruffles on the three-quarter-length sleeves. When she had finished dressing herself it was still well before breakfast, which she had little interest in anyway, so she went up to the morning room on the third floor. It was the room where the Holland women wrote their letters and stored their correspondence.

The most striking thing about the room, when she entered on that particular morning, was the heap of bridal fabrics from Lord & Taylor, which must have been delivered the previous afternoon. The room was simpler than the rest of the house, with wide dark floorboards and a plain metal frame for the fireplace. The wallpaper was an earthy brown with a velvet leaf pattern over it. The yards of silk muslin and point de gaze caught all the light and seemed almost to glow from the worktable in the center of the room. There was a note from Mr. Carroll, asking her to approve the fabric and informing her that his assistant would be by in the afternoon to pick it up and take it to his shop on Twenty-eighth Street. She didn’t have a mind for that, however; what she wanted, more than anything, was to talk to her father.

The letters Edward Holland had sent to his oldest child were kept in several of the small drawers in the great mahogany cabinet. She had received crisp white envelopes embellished with the stamps of Japan and South Africa and Alaska, and she kept them all in dated order, each month’s tied together with light blue ribbon. They were full of his quiet observations of foreign peoples and his carefully espoused principles of personal dignity. Her father had traveled a great deal, ostensibly on business, although really he had just wanted to see the world.

Elizabeth opened one of the cabinet drawers and pulled out a stack of letters. Even before he had passed, Elizabeth used to come here sometimes and pick a letter at random, looking for advice or wisdom. She needed that more than ever now, so she closed her eyes and ran the tip of her soft finger along the neatly opened edges of the stiff white envelopes. When she settled on one, she opened her eyes and saw her father’s long, slanting script. She pulled open the envelope, and reread the little note, which must have accompanied some gift or other.

“Remember always to be true,” she read his words in a whisper. “As true and honest as the girl I know.”

A creeping shame set in around her chest bone. So this, she knew instantly, was what her father would have said if he were here. She closed her eyes, and thought how little the words true and honest applied to her now. But perhaps she still had time to change all that.

Elizabeth turned and marched across the hall to the room that once was her father’s study, letter in hand. It was now the room where her mother went every morning, to look over their mounting bills and go through the papers as though she would somehow find a way to make them rich again. Elizabeth leaned her face against the door and knocked.

There was no answer. Elizabeth waited a moment and entered on timid feet. She saw her mother, a figure in black, behind the big oak desk with the burgundy leather top that her father once used. Her mother’s hair, which was always pinned in a dozen places, if not also covered with a hat, was completely loose. It was the same chestnut color as Diana’s, except streaked with white, and it streamed down her shoulders. She glanced up from her letter briefly and wished her daughter a good morning.

“Mother,” Elizabeth said as she tiptoed into the room.

“I’ve got to talk to you about this wedding.”

Her mother nodded for her to continue, but she kept her eyes on the letter in her hands.

“I have been thinking about what Father had wanted for us, about how he lived his life, and how he expected us to live ours. I was reading through his letters this morning, and I came across one in which he urged me to stay true and honest. And when I think about it, marrying Henry Schoonmaker would make me neither of those things.” Elizabeth waited for her mother to say something, but she barely even moved. “I think Father would have wanted me to marry for love,” she went on, in a shaky voice. “And though I am deeply flattered by Mr. Schoonmaker’s interest in me, and while I am very sensitive to his position in the world, I know I do not love him at all. I don’t think I will come to love him either.”