Decorum (4 page)

C
HAPTER
4

Connor daubed his lips with the linen napkin as the waiter brought two brandies. The light from the globed chandeliers cast a warm glow over the fluted columns and ornate plasterwork of the Fifth Avenue Hotel’s dining room. Chatter floated upward to the coved ceiling and merged into a general din before descending over several hundred patrons.

Blanche was in high spirits, and truth be told, his own spirits were no less high. Connor had just had the pleasure of sharing an excellent meal with a stylish woman in the dining room of her hotel and the night still held the promise of pleasures to come. The day had been a good one. A small, private celebration was in order.

Connor raised his glass to his lips and fixed Blanche in his gaze—the plain black watered-silk dress, the whiteness of her shoulders and her slender arms, the bisque-white complexion framed by sleek black hair swept high at the back of her head.

“Are those pearls quite right for you, do you think?” he asked, regarding the necklace he had just presented to her. She fingered the three long strands and gave him a questioning look. “Maybe I should have chosen something brighter, something with more sparkle.” He loved to taunt her, if just a little. Her happiness was evident in her eyes and this gave him pleasure. Though he knew his generosity would be rewarded, he was conscious of his own happiness in pleasing someone else. The anticipation had grown even as he stood in Tiffany’s and peered into the glass case earlier that morning.

“Oh, no,” Blanche exclaimed. “I love them. They’re the finest pearls I’ve ever seen. To be understated is to be elegant, you know. Don’t underestimate your taste, darling.”

“All the same, maybe we can find some little sparkler to hang from them. Spruce ’em up a bit. What do you say?” She acquiesced with a gracious nod.

“Now, what’s this all about?” she teased. “I’ve told you all about my little triumphs. You can’t have been opening accounts with dressmakers and boot-makers and milliners as I have done today. I’m sure you haven’t the least interest in my battle with Mrs. Van So-and-So over a dress-length of sapphire silk, or that I was two steps ahead of Mrs. Humbug in obtaining the last of the green shoe leather.” Connor chuckled at this. “What have you been doing that you should look so satisfied with yourself?”

“Today, my dear Blanche, I have officially become a major investor in the forthcoming Hotel Excelsior, the finest apartment hotel in the City of New York.” He leaned back in his chair and took a large swallow from the brandy glass.

“Oh, darling! How simply marvelous. We shouldn’t be sitting here quietly talking about dressmakers. We should be out dancing somewhere.”

“In due course, Blanche,” he said in hushed tones. “It’s a step in the right direction, wouldn’t you say? We can’t go larking about and spoiling the effect, now, can we? You’re the one who’s always telling me that triumph needn’t be showy to be triumph, aren’t you? You and your understated pearls?”

“You’re right, of course, darling.” She laughed. “Plenty of time to celebrate when they’ve seen what a superb partner you are. What is your first move?” She swirled the brandy in its glass and brought the rim to her lips.

“They—or we—are still looking for premises. I’m to scout about a bit, make some inquiries, look for a sizable plot of land at a good price—and the best location, naturally.”

“Perhaps I can help,” she said eagerly. “I might hear of something to your advantage. You never know whose wives I might run into in my travels about the city and to whom they might be connected.”

“Yes,” he said. He often wondered what sorts of “connections” Blanche might make in New York, if left to herself. He was glad that she was striking out on her own in a mild way. She was like an exotic flower, after all, and needed sun and air. When he had pressed her about her prior associations with New York—her family, her friends, her favorite haunts—she left him with the feeling she had not left the city the last time on favorable terms. Whether on account of her family or herself or her connections, he wasn’t sure. Society’s rites and rituals were circumscribed and unyielding. Her association with him was enough to put society on its guard and for this he blamed himself. Society as a whole could not welcome Blanche until she received calls from women who mattered, or who mattered by extension from their husbands. Even so, Connor was not yet familiar enough with society to know how far back its memory stretched and whether society had learned to forgive—or how much. They finished their brandies.

“Shall I order another bottle of champagne to be brought up?” he asked.

“I’m light-headed already,” said Blanche, smiling, “though whether from the champagne or the pearls, I couldn’t say. More champagne and I shall be good for nothing.” Which, as Connor knew well, meant that she would be good for anything.

As they crossed the lobby to the elevator, Connor gave a nod to the concierge. A regular dollar or two had ensured that any inconveniences decorum might dictate as to how a man and woman spend their time alone would be avoided. The concierge telegraphed a look to the desk clerk, who looked the other way.

As Blanche preceded him into her suite, Connor handed the maid an envelope and whispered out of Blanche’s hearing, “On the pillow.”

The evening breeze billowed the window curtains and the room was fragrant with Blanche’s scent. She began to hum a waltz and sway her body in time to her own music until she sang in full voice. Gathering up a handful of skirt, she made pirouettes around the sitting-room chairs. She floated up to him as he stood at the fireplace, his elbow resting on the mantelshelf as he pulled his cigar case from his breast pocket. In three-quarter time, she stepped before him and caressed his cheek, gave his ear a playful tug, and ran her fingers through his beard. Her hand slipped to his shoulder, then his arm, until her hand rested in his. Blanche’s touch electrified his frame, her soaring spirits an irresistible force as she waltzed him to the bedchamber door.

She stopped short. On the bed, freshly turned down, an envelope lay on the snowy, lace-edged pillow. Blanche snatched up the envelope and tore it open. In it were two tickets for the Halloween Charity Masquerade Ball given by the Ladies’ Auxiliary for the Benefit of the New St. John’s Hospital, a much-talked-of affair among Connor’s business associates. A public ball, with hundreds of guests, and masked to boot—the perfect venue for society’s first glimpse of his hothouse flower and his first opportunity to see how Blanche might fare. No pressure of invitations or visits. A public ball was no less important to their future, he must remind her. They must show themselves as players in this game. Public is still public.

“So, you’ll get your dancing after all, Blanche, won’t you?”

“Oh, Connor, darling! A ball! How simply wonderful! I shall ado-o-ore it.” Her being seemed to explode in joy. She sang herself around the room, folds of skirt in one hand, the tickets in the other hand like a flag. As she approached him, she untethered the watch chain from his waistcoat. He shed his jacket and Blanche sang and sang and pulled the knot of his tie free and pushed her body into his. Her singing was only arrested by his kiss. He grabbed her around the waist and lifted her—lighter than usual? he wondered—and swayed her toward the bed to the humming that buzzed in his ears. She laughed as he tasted the soft flesh of her neck. He was beyond thought, beyond care, beyond worry. At that moment, the only thing that mattered was Blanche.

C
HAPTER
5

John tapped lightly at Francesca’s dressing-room door.

“One moment,” said the lady as May wrestled the last pin into the thick coil at the nape of Francesca’s neck. May opened the door as John remained in the doorway.

“Mr. Tracey has arrived, miss,” he said in his usual quiet tone.

“Now?” Francesca turned from her dressing table, where a small enameled clock displayed three-thirty. “I didn’t expect him for at least half an hour. Show him into the drawing room, please, John. I’ll be there in a moment.”

“Yes, miss,” said the manservant, and retreated.

“What on earth can he be thinking?” said Francesca half to herself and half to May, though the grip on the pit of her stomach told her that she knew the answer already. “Vinnie won’t be here till four o’clock, and she’ll probably be late, as usual.”

The uncooperative autumn weather had required a change of plans. The rain had begun at two o’clock and the planned drive through Central Park with Vinnie attending as chaperone had been abandoned in favor of tea at Francesca’s house at four. For once, she was annoyed with herself for being more than punctual. After five years of pursuit Edmund knew this habit well.

Why should she be so skittish about a few minutes alone with Edmund Tracey? It’s not as if they had never been “alone” before, dining at a public restaurant or together at home with the door ajar within a long earshot of a friend. How many times had Francesca craved being truly alone with him? Too many to count. The moments in his embrace, to be overcome by his kisses, the play of his lips, the brush of his moustache around her ears and neck were all too few and left her unsatisfied. His smooth freckled hands with their long fingers, graceful and adept, had always fascinated her. His sunny freckled face and auburn hair belied the cool blue eyes, whose look seemed to expose her every feeling before she herself was even aware and sent her into a tailspin of confusion and delight.

When she was alone, her resolve was so strong to move steadily forward, to be healed and made whole and use the brains and heart God gave her for some good. There seemed to be no room for a decoration like Edmund Tracey and it suited her. His lukewarm enthusiasm for her interests in music and charity was exercised the way many men of her acquaintance exercised enthusiasm for women’s interests, as an entertainment to keep them out of trouble. She would stand for none of that, Francesca would think to herself. Anyone whom she might marry would have to credit her and her interests with more import. She would dismiss Tracey from her presence and her life. Next time. Next time she saw him she would do it. Then he would come, sunny smile spread across his handsome face, with eyes and lips and hands full of implicit desire fulfilled, and she was undone.

It’s only Edmund, she thought as she made her way down the hall to the landing at the top of the stairs. As she descended, she could see through the open door his shadow moving to and fro across the drawing-room floor as he paced. She halted on the third step, took a deep breath, and walked the final gauntlet to the drawing room.

“Hello, duchess.”

There was that smile again, drat the man. Her body turned to water—water into which Edmund Tracey plunged an electric current.

“You’re very naughty,” said Francesca.

“Yes, most of the time.” The smile grew wider.

He met her halfway across the room and circled her waist with his arm before she could protest and with his other hand guided her face toward his and kissed her warmly on the mouth. Whether he released her from the kiss or she him, she couldn’t think. She laid her head on his shoulder and felt the smooth-shaven chin against her forehead as she drank in the masculine scent of shaving soap and pomatum. Reluctantly, she remembered herself and peered over his shoulder to the pianoforte, where her eyes rested on a sheaf of blood-red roses in a chrysalis of baby’s breath and tissue, cinched with green ribbon.

“Oh, how beautiful,” she said, breaking the embrace and gathering up the roses in her arms, drinking in their fragrance. She touched each silky rose, firm and tight on its stem. “Thank you, Edmund. They’re perfect.” Blood-red roses—no man with any sense of decorum would present a lady with such a blatant display of passionate love unless he meant to follow through. The qualm in Francesca’s stomach was likely to prove right.

“I thought we should have a few minutes before Vinnie arrives,” said Tracey. “I think it’s high time we settled a few things.”

“Oh?”

“Now, don’t pretend not to know what I’m talking about, duchess.” He drew up close to her. “This interview has been a long time in coming.”

“Edmund—”

“Now, hear me out—and take those silly things out of your arms and look at me.” He took the roses from her, replaced them on the piano, and took both her hands in his. A roar of thunder shook the house. Rain torrented against the windows. “How long have we known each other? Too long to pretend there’s no attachment between us. There is a decided attachment, isn’t that true?”

“You’ve been a good friend to me, Edmund—”

“Friend? I had thought—had hoped—that after all this time I would have become more to you than that. Besides, do you usually kiss your friends with such determination?”

“Oh, Edmund. You’re teasing me.”

“Of course, if it will help ease the situation.”

She pulled her hands from his, strode to the fireplace, and turned and faced him.

“This is so difficult,” she began.

“Why?”

“Now you hear
me
out, Edmund. Please.” He gestured as if to give her the floor. “You have been a good friend to me, when a friend was what I needed most. You left me alone when I needed that, too. You didn’t demand anything of me or ask me questions.”

“I didn’t know what else to do.”

“I know. In fact, I marvel that you haven’t given up on me after all this time. I’ve often asked myself why.” He nearly interrupted her, but she held up a hand, begging him to keep still. “You were wise to stay away, when I was living with the Jeromes.”

“I was afraid you thought I had abandoned you.”

“No, not really. I wasn’t fit to be seen. I never would be until I could go out on my own and get back on my feet. I know the settlement house wasn’t exactly your cup of tea, but you didn’t fight me over it.”

“I admit that at first I thought you may have been foolish not to let Maggie and Jerry take care of you. I do know how protective they can be, though. It can’t have been easy.”

Protective? More like smothering,
she thought. The rain continued its relentless patter against window and street.

“Eventually, I came to see it as a sign of strength,” he said.

“Did you really?”

“I know it took a great deal of courage to walk away from them with no guarantee of success. I also understand the anxiety they must have felt when they realized you were gone. It’s a natural reaction to want to protect someone you care for deeply.”

Always protection. The protection of a man’s name. The protection of a family and a home. Maybe even protection from herself, she thought. Where was this protection the day Mother and Father and Oskar went boating? No one protected them—or her from grief.

“And do you want to protect me?”

“I know better than to answer that. What I want is to somehow make up for a part of what you lost—and more, if I can,” he said, as if he could read her thoughts. “More than a friend or a brother. I think you’re ready for more and I believe you know it too. You’re ready for what a married life can offer you, for what we could experience together as husband and wife. For a life that’s no longer hedged about by chaperones and proprieties.”

“Edmund . . .”

“Yes, duchess, for a full life together.”

Francesca would have stopped her ears if she could. Edmund had hit upon two themes that cut her to her marrow—to live in the bosom of a family and the “full woman’s life” to which Maggie always referred with a lowered voice. If he understood these, could he fail to understand her desire for a full life in other ways as well, to push the limits of her talents and her personality? If not Edmund, then who? Would more time and consideration make the least bit of difference? Was she being foolish, standing in her own way when she could have at least this part of what she wanted? Maybe engagement and marriage were the last, best answers.

“Duchess? Shall I kneel?”

“You’re teasing me.”

“No, not about this.” He came forward and took her hands again. “Francesca, I offer you my heart and my hand, my soul and body. Will you marry me? Will you consent to be my wife?”

Could she leap over this last hurdle—and survive? If she faltered now, would there be anyone else six months from now, or next year, or the next? Would she come to her thirtieth year with no one? As Francesca looked into his earnest face, she heard the clatter of hooves. A cab had pulled up outside the house, followed by the snap of the cab door.

“That’ll be Vinnie,” said Edmund. “It’s now or never, duchess. What’ll it be?”

The bell rang and John’s footsteps made their way down the hallway. The inner hallway door opened, then the front door, and Francesca heard Vinnie’s greeting and complaint about the weather. “Miss Lund and Mr. Tracey are waiting in the drawing room, Miss Lawrence,” she heard John say. Yes, it’s now or never.

She threw her arms around his neck and held him to her, as if for dear life. He nuzzled her hair and then kissed her mouth.

At that moment, Vinnie burst into the room.

“Vinnie,” Francesca said before her friend could utter a word. “You’ll never guess what just happened.”