An Embarrassment of Riches (53 page)

The words were out before he could stop them. Nor did he apologize for them. He was tired and stressed and, as far as he was concerned, it should have been obvious to an imbecile that he would not want an Irish nurse for his child by Genevre.

Maura stood very still for a moment, her hand still on her stomach. Once again everything had turned to ashes between them. Their reconciliation at Tarna might as well have never happened. Despite all his many protestations to the contrary, when it came to the nub of things he was as contemptuous of her nationality as the most snobbish De Peyster or Van Rensselaer. If the illegitimate Stasha was one day, by some miracle, admitted into the circles of the
haut ton
and Felix, because of his Irish blood, was excluded from those self-same circles, then the situation would have Alexander's blessing. It was a prospect too unspeakable to even think about. Almost with relief she felt anger beginning to roar along her veins.

‘How can you be so
stupid?'
she demanded, her voice cracking with emotion. ‘How can you possibly care so much about my nationality that you will allow it to spoil everything there has been between us? Don't you see that happiness for Stasha lies in him being treated as if he were Felix's legitimate brother? Don't you understand how Felix is going to feel one day if you continue treating him as if he were second-best because of his Irishness?'

‘I'm doing what I believe is best!' he shouted back at her frustratedly. ‘I'm doing what Genevre would have wanted me to do!'

‘You're wrong.' Her raging anger was still with her, but she was in control of it now and her voice was far steadier than his. ‘Genevre wouldn't have wanted you to favour Stasha over Felix. If she were alive she would be appalled at the way you are beginning to think and the future you are prepared to countenance. I don't believe that the person you are becoming is the person Genevre fell in love with.' There was a terrible pause and then she said tautly, ‘Nor are you any longer the person that I fell in love with.'

As he stared at her, hardly able to credit what he was hearing, she spun on her heel. Always, before, he had been the one who stormed out of the room. Now, as the double-doors rocked behind her, he was the one left behind, white-faced and appalled.

He continued to stare at the closed door long after she had made her exit. What the devil had happened? When he had walked into the room he had wanted nothing more than to take her in his arms and make furious love to her. They had been apart for just over a month and he had missed her like crazy. And now instead of them being in bed together they were once again at an impasse. And it wasn't his fault. Not this time.

Slowly his shock ebbed and frustrated fury began to replace it. He poured himself another bourbon, spilling golden droplets on to the polished wood of the table as he did so.

He had been in the right. Stasha couldn't possibly be cared for by an Irish peasant girl. He was Genevre's son, for Christ's sake! It had been the height of stupidity for Maura to have engaged an O'Farrell as his nurse. And it had been even more stupid of her to have pursued the subject of why he couldn't possibly sanction the arrangement she had made.

He knocked back the bourbon as if it were medicine. Never before had he thought of Maura as being stupid or insensitive, but he did so now. Why couldn't she have
seen
the bag of worms she was opening by insisting that he spell out his reasons for thinking Aisling unsuitable? Why did something they were both inwardly aware of have to be brought so uglily out into the open?

As the bourbon went to his head his anger increased. How
dare
she call him stupid simply because he didn't want Stasha to be cared for by girls with a brogue so thick you could lose yourself in it? Wasn't it bad enough that their own son was being cared for by them?

He refilled his glass. The decision he had made regarding Aisling was one that showed great common sense on his part. He had indulged her where Felix was concerned. He owed it to Genevre not to indulge her where Stasha was concerned.

He swallowed the bourbon in two quick gulps. And how
dare
she say that if Genevre had still been alive she would no longer be in love with him? It had been a terrible thing to say. It had been unforgivable. As had been her blatant hint that she herself was no longer in love with him. When she had said that he was no longer the person she had fallen in love with, he had thought that he was going to die. Now he began to feel only righteous indignation. How could she possibly say such a thing to him when he had done everything for her; given up everything for her?

A pulse began to throb at the corner of his jaw. She was trying to rule him, trying to call all the shots, trying to turn his family home into a refuge for half of Ireland. He would damn well show her that she couldn't do so. He wouldn't countenance it. He would move back into his suite at the Fifth Avenue Hotel until she learned her lesson and he would take Stasha with him.

He rocked back unsteadily on his heels. And what of his painful celibacy of the last few weeks? He had wanted to end it with her. Never in a million years had he intended being unfaithful again. But she had left him no option. She had virtually told him that she no longer loved him. She had walked away from him and had slammed the door on him. If she couldn't be warm and welcoming after he had been away for so long then he would go to someone who would be.

Maura hurried up to the nursery suite, tears of frustration and anger staining her cheeks. How could their marriage possibly survive if Alexander continued to think of her nationality as if it were a social disease? How could he possibly have said the things he had? How, under any circumstances, could he happily countenance a situation where his illegitimate child would be socially acceptable and their own child would not be?

She entered the nursery and crossed to the cradle where Felix was sleeping. How, in a million years, could Alexander think of him as being second-best? She reached down and picked him up tenderly, holding him close. The scene downstairs had been hideous, but in a terrible way she was glad that it had taken place. At least now she knew how Alexander truly regarded her. And how he regarded Felix.

She kissed him on his forehead and he stirred slightly, nuzzling against her. Tears glittered on her eyelashes. She wanted Alexander to stride into the room and for him to say that he was sorry for the things he had said. She wanted him to say that he hadn't meant them, that he had been disorientated by his long sea voyage and over-tired. She wanted them to be lovers again, for them to be a family again.

Very faintly she heard the sound of a carriage rumbling from the stables at the rear of the house to the main entrance. Then she heard a door slam. And then nothing.

The next few days were even worse than she had anticipated they would be. Alexander moved back into his suite at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, installing Stasha and Stasha's English nurse in an adjoining suite, and he resumed his affair with Ariadne.

Henry washed his hands of him.

‘It's insane,' he said when Maura reluctantly told him that Alexander was once again living at the Fifth Avenue Hotel. ‘No-one walks out on a pregnant wife over an argument over a nursery-nurse. It isn't sense. It's lunacy.'

‘It was over something a little deeper a nursery-nurse,' Maura said, not wanting Henry to believe that they were both certifiable idiots. ‘It was really over my Irishness and the problems he seems to think Felix will one day face because of his half-Irishness. And of his belief that Stasha will be able to overcome the problems of his illegitimacy and be accepted in high society in a way that Felix is not going to find possible.'

‘If Alexander believes that then he needs his head examining,' Henry said vehemently. ‘I've never heard such rubbish. It's absolute trash. Utter garbage.'

Charlie also came to the conclusion that Alexander had been a prize fool.

‘You mean he's back with Ariadne because you took exception to his telling you that if Stasha were one day accepted into circles closed to Felix, it would be a situation that would have his blessing?'

‘Because we fell out and yes, that was one of the things we fell out about.'

‘But it don't make sense,' Charlie said, struggling for comprehension. ‘I mean, it might never happen.'

‘It doesn't matter whether it ever happens or not,' Maura said with a touch of impatience. ‘What matters is the way Alexander says he will behave if it
does
happen. Don't you see?'

‘No,' said Charlie frankly, ‘I don't. But I do see that Alexander is making you unhappy and I ain't being his friend while he's doing that. Do you fancy a hand of poker? Will that cheer you up?'

The offer had been well-intentioned but it failed miserably. She needed far more than a game of poker in order to cheer up. She needed Alexander.

At the end of the first week without him a change came over her. It was pointless wallowing in lonely misery. Her life had to continue and as Alexander had shown scant regard for her feelings there was no need for her any longer to circumscribe her activities with regard to his feelings. From now on she would live as her conscience directed. She would do what Alexander had failed to do. She would join the Citizens'Association.

The chairman of the Citizens' Association stared at her in amazement.

‘I know that I can't offer much to the association. I have no personal money and no appreciable social standing …'

‘My dear lady …' Frederick Lansdowne was rendered almost speechless. ‘Your support of the association will mean a very great deal. I'm sure there is no need for me to tell you that your husband owns more land and is landlord of more properties in New York than any other single person, including Astor. To have you come out openly in support of what we are trying to do … Why, it will be of
inestimable
value.'

Maura hoped that he was correct in his judgement, but couldn't help wondering if he was being a little overly optimistic.

‘Where one lady publicly ventures, others will follow,' he said reassuringly. ‘You know our long-term aim, of course. It is to achieve legislature which will put an end to the horrors of the slums once and for all. We want to institute a Tenement Housing Act ruling that no building be allowed to take up more than sixty per cent of a lot and stipulating that windows be cut into inner rooms and that it be illegal to rent out cellars as living quarters. You can have no idea, Mrs Karolyis, of the conditions under which thousands are living.'

‘I have a little idea,' Maura said quietly. ‘I have friends who live in the Bowery and I have visited them and seen the conditions in which they live.'

Frederick Lansdowne stared at her. Ladies of quality did not have friends who lived in the Bowery. He remembered that she hadn't been long in America and that in Europe ladies of good breeding quite regularly visited the poor.

‘If you have indeed ventured into one of those pits of pestilence then I need say no more to you, Mrs Karolyis,' he said, wondering how the Karolyis marriage was going to survive the strains that must exist within it. ‘Some while ago we had a group of doctors inspect the tenements. Their report was damning, the general consensus being that not even a dog should be kept in such conditions.'

He flushed as a terrible thought suddenly occurred to him. What if she was unaware that as a land-owner, her husband was among the very worst?

Aware of his sudden consternation and guessing correctly as to its cause, Maura said, ‘The landlord of the tenement I visited is a man named Belzell. The landowner is my husband.'

Frederick Lansdowne almost sagged with relief. They were not talking at cross purposes after all. They understood each other.

‘Would you consider sitting on our committee, Mrs Karolyis?' he asked, knowing the weight her name would carry.

Maura thought of Alexander. It would be an action he would never forgive.

‘Would I be of real use to you if I were to do so?'

‘Immeasurable.'

‘Then, of course, I will do so.'

It was the crossing of her own personal Rubicon and she knew it. From now on she and Alexander would no longer be at an impasse; they would be at war.

When he read in the
Post's
society column that Mrs Alexander Karolyis had agreed to sit on the Citizens'Association committee alongside such luminaries as William Backhouse Astor and Franklin H. Delano, Alexander was nearly apoplectic with rage.

‘How
dare
she?' he thundered to Ariadne as she reclined behind her breakfast-tray. ‘How could anyone in their right minds have asked her to do such a thing? She's
Irish,
for Christ's sake! Is Lansdowne an imbecile? A moron? Of what use will she be? She isn't anyone! Not even a Vanderbilt will receive her!'

‘Bessie Schermerhorn has been receiving her,' Ariadne said tightly.

She didn't like what was happening one little bit. When she had initially become involved with Alexander she had done so believing him to be legally free. By the time he had told her differently she had become too dependent on him to cut free. She needed him. She needed to be able to feast her eyes on his devil-may-care handsomeness and she needed his skilful, infinitely satisfying love-making. What she didn't need was a ruined reputation. So far, no cardinal damage had been done. Alexander was ‘a close family friend'. Discreet gossip was being curtailed. It would not be curtailed, however, if by some miracle the Irish girl became acceptable in polite society – and being asked to sit on a committee such as the Citizens'Association committee, and having her name mentioned in the society columns of the
Post
, was a big step towards such an unthinkable eventuality.

‘Bessie is ga-ga. She's only received her as a favour to Henry.'

Ariadne drummed immaculately manicured nails on her breakfast-tray. There were times when Alexander was annoyingly unrealistic.