Beautiful Days (4 page)

“You're very pretty,” she announced, pointing her pale red lips in Letty's general direction but not quite meeting her eyes.

“Oh.” For a moment, all of Letty's concentration was in smoothing her skirt over her thighs. “Thank you.”

“He's awfully nice, isn't he?” Peachy went on familiarly.

The large blue discs of Letty's eyes went to Grady and then back to Peachy. “Yes, I guess he is.”

“Oh, he is, he is.
I
know. I've known him forever.”

“Forever—?” The wrinkles in Letty's skirt were no longer of any concern to her, and her mind bent trying to imagine how Grady, living in his garret on Bedford Street in Greenwich Village, might possibly have encountered Peachy, who surely lived in some massive house down a nearby lane. “But how is that . . .”

“Oh, well—” Grady furrowed his brow at Peachy. “Not really forever, just since my sister married Mr. Cobb and moved into the area. Peachy is a friend of my sister's, you see.”

“Among other things.” Peachy gave a peculiar laugh and a vague swat of her hand, before adjusting herself, moving her legs to the other side of her body, so that Letty couldn't help but notice how long and finely formed her calves were.

“I also wrote an article about Peachy once.”

“Yes, that was when I first realized that Mr. Lodge was delightfully easy to be with.” Casting her eyes upward, Peachy began to blithely relate the story of her coming out and an article Grady had written about the debut. Grady interjected a correction here or there, which Peachy followed with uproarious laughter and, once, a slap on his knee. But Letty had ceased paying much attention. The last thing she'd clearly heard Dorothy's friend say was that Grady was easy to be with, and she couldn't stop thinking that this was exactly right. Even around a girl whose excellent breeding and expensive dress would usually have sent Letty into the back rooms of her self-consciousness, she felt at ease, and she knew this was because of the way that Grady's eyes kept searching hers, letting her know that he was thinking of her and that he found her as lovely as any of the girls arrayed on the tapestries spread over the Beaumonts' grass. “Anyway,” Peachy concluded. “
That's
why I feel so lucky to know Grady Lodge.”

“Mr. Lodge certainly knows a lot of people,” Letty said, speaking to Peachy but looking at Grady. It was nice to think that he wasn't intimidated, as she was, by boarding school manners and ready possession of unscuffed shoes that had not been passed down by even one older sibling.

“Oh, yes. He is loved wherever he goes. Unfortunately, this means he is much in demand—Grady, your sister sent me to fetch you.” She used his shoulder to push herself back up to her feet, and took several long steps back toward the house, her long frame springy and assured with the expectation that she would be immediately followed.

“I was enjoying myself much more when you and I were talking about art,” Grady said softly to Letty as he rolled his eyes.

“I was enjoying it, too.”

“Well, perhaps we could continue the conversation soon?” Grady averted his eyes bashfully.

“Mr. Lo-odge,” Peachy sing-songed impatiently. She had come to a stop about twenty feet away on the lawn and was regarding them with her hands fixed at her hips.

“What I mean to say is, I'd like to take you out.”

Now it was Letty's turn to look away and turn pink in the face. “I would like that,” she said.

“Where can I find you?” Grady asked as he stood to go.

“Do you know a house called Dogwood?” Letty replied, trying not to seem disappointed that he was leaving.

“Ah, of course. Your friend Cordelia—I remember reading that she was Grey's daughter. I am glad to hear you two have been reunited.” He winked at her and reached for her hand, so that he could brush his lips across the tops of her fingers. “I'll ring you there tomorrow, lovely Miss Letty.”

Chapter 4

“AND WHEN MY SISTER, CORDELIA, FIRST WENT TO THE White Cove Country Club—without my knowledge, of course—she wore red in defiance of their dress code.”

As the group surrounding Charlie broke into twitters, Cordelia turned her face up and tried to appear more pleased than embarrassed. The country club was owned by the in-laws of Duluth Hale and was supplied exclusively by him, so Charlie and Darius never went there on principle. But on the morning in question she had been Astrid's guest, and a White Cove resident of only two days, and simply hadn't known any better than to wear red among the sea of club-approved white frocks. That would not have been like her; Cordelia had never been in the habit of drawing attention to herself on purpose. She was clear-eyed and knew things about people, and yet she had never felt particularly comfortable being watched by others. Even now she was a little uneasy as the object of Charlie's storytelling.

It hardly mattered, however, because by now Charlie had brought the group's attention back to himself. He had so many bad things to say about the Hales that sometimes, when he got started, he was unable to stop. And though Cordelia, in his position, certainly would have played her hand a little closer to her chest, there was no way to quiet him, and the group of well-heeled White Cove young people seemed perfectly entertained by his grandstanding.

“You really think old Hale could be that bad?” asked a man with a straw boater propped way back on his head, who had been standing entirely too close to her for some time. The smell of his cheap cologne filled her nostrils, and that wasn't the sort of question Cordelia had any kind of answer to, so she turned her face to the water and stepped away from the group. That was how she noticed that another crowd was forming—this one bigger and more animated—near the shoreline. In the tranquil blue sky above, a silver biplane was twirling out puffy letters. The white plumes the plane left in its wake strung together a jaunty message—
THE BEAUMONTS WISH YOU A HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY
—and as each word was completed, the girls below jumped up and down and squealed.

A dazed smile came across Cordelia's face. She had seen this kind of lettering before—when she had only just stepped off the train from Ohio—and all the wonder of that first hour in New York returned to her. She had observed the same aerial skill once again, from the vantage of nearby Everly Field, and then on another occasion she had witnessed it failing spectacularly. She hadn't seen the daring pilot Max Darby since delivering him to the Rye Haven Catholic Hospital.

Since that night, she'd barely had a moment to wonder how he had fared. Her family had been in mourning, and she had been too preoccupied with all the things she had done wrong to speculate about someone else. But now, on the Fourth of July, when the air was humid and fragrant with grass, she felt a twinge of excitement to recognize his plane up there. Absentmindedly, she put her hands into the deep pockets of her loose-fitting skirt and drifted away from Charlie and his friends, her head bent back so that she could watch the end of the air show. The plane twirled a few more times and zoomed low over the heads of mingling partygoers twice. Once she saw that it was sailing down toward a smooth landing on the far side of the property she set out at a brisk pace across the lawn.

But the other girls were actually running. They mobbed Max Darby when he jumped down from the cockpit and cried out his name.

It was another twenty minutes before he emerged from the crowd of jubilant young women and she managed to catch his eye. By that time, the color of the sky was already ripening with the suggestion of dusk, and she was holding a pitcher of mint julep in one hand and a glass for him in the other.

“If that's for me,” he said when he reached her, his blue eyes pale in contrast to his tanned skin, “I don't drink.”

“Oh.” She lowered the pitcher. His appearance, like his words, seemed uniquely unadorned against the background of the Beaumonts' party. All across the field were young people wearing the latest thing, but Max's dark hair was so short it was almost a shadow on his forehead, and the light brown color of his leather jacket matched his trousers.

“I'm glad to have run into you here,” he said with a formality that made him sound not exactly glad. “Because I've been meaning to thank you for—what you did that night.”

“That.” Cordelia wrapped one leg behind the other girlishly, and her red-painted lips sprang upward at the corners. The mention of the night she'd seen his plane go down on the field of some Long Island farm made her feel a little dizzy. Suddenly she remembered the way he'd smiled at her, after being so serious, in that empty early-morning hospital, how wonderfully alive he'd made her feel, after days of feeling lost and useless and worse. “Well—here I am.”

“Thank you.” She waited expectantly for him to go on, but after he looked away toward the place on the lawn where the band was setting up, her expectation began to curdle. There was a sheen of sweat on his forehead, and perhaps on his hands, too, because he paused to wipe them on his white T-shirt. “That's all I've got to say to a bootlegger's daughter.”

For many years, Cordelia had hoarded newspaper stories about New York City and longed for nothing so much in the world as to be called a bootlegger's daughter. It was a double shock that Max, when he uttered that phrase, should make it feel like a slap across the face.

“A bootlegger's daughter!” she repeated with cool indignation. Inside, she was the opposite of cool, and only wished that she wasn't holding the stupid pitcher of julep, which was heavy in her hand. “Well, I suppose trick pilots are in the habit of being careless with their lives and indifferent to those who risk their own helping them.”

He averted his eyes again and moved to walk past her and up toward the house. Her hands wanted to shake at this final slight, but she commanded them to hold steady as she tipped the pitcher, pouring a drink for herself into the glass that she'd brought for him.

“Is that why you're being so prissy?” she called after him, loud enough for the young girls watching them to hear.

He paused and gazed at her intently, but did not reply. She took a sip of the sweet, heady drink and that quieted her irritation, though she knew some fury lingered in her face. Here was the person whose body she had pulled from the wreckage—but her bravery had not earned his respect. He thought nothing of her, it turned out, and even less of Darius Grey.

“My father has been dead barely a month.” Her voice trembled a little, but her words fell with violent precision. “He wasn't a bad man, and he did all he could for himself and his family. He didn't begrudge other people their choices, and he left a life grander than the one he was born into. So you'll not say ‘bootlegger' to me in that righteous tone again.” She took another sip of the drink, and then thrust both the glass and the pitcher forward with sudden force, so that Max had no choice but to take them. Then, leaning forward, holding his gaze, and almost hissing, she concluded: “Don't expect me to act like some ashamed nothing just because you talk so high and mighty. I know who I am.”

They stood facing each other another few moments, their bodies frozen in animosity. Cordelia blinked once, as though to communicate that she had nothing to prove and was not about to be drawn into anything so petty as a staring contest. Then she turned and walked up toward the Beaumonts' Greek Revival mansion, shaken, but not so badly that she was unable to walk confidently in her high-heeled shoes.

As she made her way along a stone path toward the colonnaded verandah, she was conscious—at first vaguely and then most definitely—of other people's eyes on her. Perhaps she was now radiating some of her fury, perhaps it was visible along the high sharp lines of her cheekbones. Or perhaps they were staring at her in the usual way, with some mix of curiosity about her criminal family and pity for the tragedy that had befallen her so soon into her life as a New York girl.

In any event, she
was
being watched. Even as the band struck up behind her and a few girls shrieked happily at their sweethearts to spin them around. Even as a first firework was set off somewhere down the shore, heralding the bigger show to come once the darkness was complete. Their eyes were on her as she climbed the stairs and went through a palatial hall and into the parlor; their eyes were on her as she glanced around for Astrid or Letty. It was perhaps because of the unabashed stares of the Beaumonts' other guests that she was not at first surprised to find that the familiar face her gaze finally settled upon was already gazing right back at her.

Her lips parted and she heard a fragile little “Oh” escape them. There was Thom Hale, who had used her callously and wrecked her family, holding a half-full cocktail by the window and looking as crisp as ever. Her knees went to mush and her throat got hard and tight.

As always Thom's every hair was in place. His white linen suit fit him just loosely enough, and unlike the other young men, the heat of the day did not seem to have caused him to sweat even a tiny bit. The handsomeness of his features was as devastating to her as ever, and he still stood in exactly the same elegant, careless way. Yet there was something changed in him, in the way he looked at her. Maybe in the set of his jaw, or in the light in his eyes. For a moment she wondered if it was unrequited love, but then she reminded herself that he had had plenty of her (how it seared her heart to remember taking him into her bed), and that this quality probably had more to do with lust or hate or deepening enmity or an intention of violence.

The last time they had stood face-to-face had been the night she'd lured him away from his family's party with the idea of killing him. Even now the audacity of this made her feel sick. But in the weeks leading up to that night he had played a wicked trick and convinced her that he loved her and would do anything for her. Then he had managed to extract a secret about Dogwood and how to sneak into it, and someone working for his family had used that secret to murder her father. She had been so stricken with grief and self-recrimination that driving to the Hales' home with a gun in her garter had seemed like quite a logical thing to do, the only thing to do, and it was not until she had seen Thom on the other end of the barrel and imagined his perfect features marred and bloodied that she had faltered, dropped the gun, and run.

A waiter bearing a tray of wide-lipped glasses passed between them, breaking some kind of spell. Cordelia became aware of the room around her: The fine parquet of the floor gleamed and the deep red of the walls went up twenty feet, where it was crowned by elaborate picture moldings. The tall east-facing windows were open so that breezes could rise off the Beaumonts' parterre gardens and soothe young girls who had been overheated by bourbon and dancing in the sun. Five conversations were going on at once, and she could faintly make out the exuberant playing of the band outside on the lawn, a soft wail of trumpet.

Then Thom took a step in her direction with a curl to his lips that was unlike any expression she'd ever seen on his face before. The indifference of the previous few seconds was replaced by a ragged beating of her heart.

But before she got a good look at the twist of his upper lip or had any chance of really knowing its meaning, she felt the touch of a gentle palm at her elbow.

“Darling.” It was Astrid at her side, looking as gloriously Astrid-like as ever: Her hair was shiny and buoyant and only half covering her ears, and her smile was as easy and radiant as though all the world were just a little game set up for her amusement. She rolled her eyes in young Hale's general direction. “You know girls like us never wear the same dress twice.”

It had been a tumultuous half hour for Cordelia, and she was relieved when her friend drew her away from the parlor before she could be certain whether Thom had been about to come after her or not.