Splendor: A Luxe Novel (24 page)

Now Elizabeth began to move her lips, but still she failed to make sound. Help, she was trying to say, but it was inaudible, and Teddy was all the way across the room. Finally she managed to produce a weak croak, but it didn’t sound like any kind of language known to this world.

file://C:\Documents and Settings\nickunj\Desktop\book.html 10/28/2009

Page 91 of 128

“You see?” Snowden said. He had noticed what she was attempting, and he crossed the room quickly to her side, blocking Teddy’s view of her, and hers of him. “She is truly not well, and can hardly speak. As you say, you know her very well, and so I am sure you are aware how delicate a lady she is. Please. I fear you will cause her a great shock.”

Then he bent forward, pretending to put his face close to her mouth as though he were listening, but in fact covering her lips. Panic seized Elizabeth, as it occurred to her that Snowden might somehow or other manage to keep her quiet until Teddy was gone. Her heart raced. She managed to say something like help, but it was drowned out in the heel of Snowden’s palm, which was pressing down against her sluggish mouth.

“Yes,” Teddy said then. There was something stunned and low in his voice, as though it had been too much for him to see the girl he had on more than one occasion asked to be his wife. “Yes, I have been most improper. I am sorry. I will show myself out.”

“No,” Elizabeth tried to cry out, but the plea was smothered by her husband’s grip. Already Teddy’s footfalls were moving away. She blinked, and Snowden looked down at her with a most patient fury. He waited another few moments, and she brought air into her nose sharply, trying to maintain her breath. She could hear Teddy on the stairs. Snowden lifted his hand off her mouth, and she parted her lips to call out.

But her husband was too quick, his other hand was ready with the soaked cloth.

The picture of Teddy standing there like her savior was still fresh in her mind. Yet in reality he was on his way to the door, and anyway her eyes were drifting closed, and everything was growing fuzzy and dark.

Thirty Two

With the passing of William S. Schoonmaker, the city has lost one of its most esteemed merchant princes.

Barely more than half a century in age, Mr. Schoonmaker made prodigious gifts to many of New York’s finest institutions, and was a fixture on its social scene. He is said to have left his second wife, née Isabelle de Ford, with whom he had no children, and his daughter, Prudence, each an amount of $100,000, which, while certainly a handsome inheritance, is nothing compared to the rest of the estate, which will go in its entirety to his only son, Henry.

——FROM THE FRONT PAGE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES,

FRIDAY, JULY 20, 1900

“THANK YOU, GENTLEMEN.”

Henry stood on the threshold of the Schoonmaker mansion, his hands thrust in the pockets of his black file://C:\Documents and Settings\nickunj\Desktop\book.html 10/28/2009

Page 92 of 128

trousers, and his face drained of color by the events of the week. His father had left holdings far vaster and more complex than he could possibly have imagined, and he had spent many days trying to come to understand them. It seemed to him that his father owned a not insubstantial slice of everything in the city, and maybe in the nation. They were all his now, as was the house with the theatrical limestone steps stretching down below him. It was twilight, and the carriages of many of his father’s associates waited by the curb in a deceptive quietude. These men had come to see what it would mean, for them and their interests, this calamitous, startling event.

“Thank you, Mr. Schoonmaker,” each replied, one after the other. They gave him sympathetic pats on the back and handshakes as they moved, in a stream of dark bowlers and jackets, through the entryway and down to their waiting driv ers. He was beginning to be able to match their faces to their names.

“You have put their minds at rest,” Jeremiah Lawrence offered, from Henry’s side, once the others were out of earshot. The lawyer’s sleeves were rolled to his elbows, as though they had been shucking corn all this time.

“They think I am too young.” Henry sighed. He, too, had done away with his jacket, and now wore only his black waistcoat over an ivory dress shirt with an undone collar. The night was muggy, lavender, and he could hear the cooing of an especially loud pigeon, fluffing his feathers and rubbing his wings together somewhere overhead.

“Yes, they thought you were a puppy when they arrived. You surprised them, I think. Your seriousness, your attention to the details of the estate—they were impressed.”

“I surprised them by being there at all,” Henry remarked dryly.

Lawrence laughed, and rested a hand against Henry’s black jacket. “Well, they know you didn’t have to be. You could have absented yourself from these proceedings, and you would still be a very rich man tonight.”

“That thought had occurred to me,” Henry confessed, “but I suppose we all have to grow up sometime, don’t we?”

“No.” It was Lawrence’s turn to be wry. “Not all of us do.” For the first time that day, a kind of smile came to Henry’s face.

“Your father always thought you would have a good head for business, though,” Lawrence went on, growing serious again, and assessing Henry as though he were not a man of twenty-one. “I think he would be pleased with how you are conducting yourself.” This notion was no less shocking to Henry today than it had been yesterday, on the tongue of his stepmother. Since then he had replayed countless arguments with his father, searching for hidden clues, and though he could detect a kind of harsh affection in some of his memories, it still baffled him. But the week following a man’s death did not seem like the time to question his secret trust or magnanimity, and Henry had told himself that he might as well see if Schoonmaker the elder had been right to believe in him. “So it was not some oversight that I was the chief beneficiary of his will? He was always threatening to cut me out, I half thought he already had somewhere along the way.”

“Your father did not make oversights like that. He did not make oversights at all.” Lawrence chuckled.

“Nor will you; I will make sure of that, though I expect in time you will be after me about my failures of attention. But these have been long, hard days for you. The old man’s legacy has been well taken care of.

We should give it a rest and pour ourselves a drink.” Perhaps the emotions of an entire staggering week showed in Henry’s finely chiseled features then, for Lawrence quickly changed his expression.

“I mean, of course, you should have a drink, young man. With your friends, or your Mrs….” Henry’s eyes drifted as Diana entered his thoughts. They had exchanged a flurry of notes but had not seen one another since gazing from a distance after his father’s burial. Frequently he found himself picturing those shining eyes and that twisted little smile, and yet he felt a kind of quiet orderliness settling within him and all around. To his surprise, these days of responsibility, the answering to people and finding that they listened to him, had a rigid rightness to them. He didn’t want to disturb this feeling, which was a new one for him; he did not, just then, relish any thrills.

“You would be as good a companion as any,” Henry returned, after a pause. They had begun to walk file://C:\Documents and Settings\nickunj\Desktop\book.html 10/28/2009

Page 93 of 128

slowly across the marble floor of the main hallway, which was washed with golden light from the chandeliers hanging above. Behind them, a footman sealed the door. “It’s only that I don’t feel much like celebrating.”

“No, sir. Of course. I’ll just put things away in the office so that we can pick up again tomorrow.”

“Thank you, Lawrence.” Henry bowed his head appreciatively, and took the lawyer’s hand, shook it firmly. When the older man had disappeared, he began to slowly walk the halls and stairwells of the house, not knowing quite what he should do. He could be anywhere, he knew, and yet these were his walls, his roof. As he ambled past the grand parlor, where Mrs. William Schoonmaker had long been known to welcome her visitors on Mondays, he heard the quiet sobbing of his father’s young widow.

“Isabelle…,” he said, crossing to the settee where she curled, under layers of black crepe, her face hidden in cushions. He knelt by her side and rested a hand against her shoulder and thought, not for the first time that week, how she seemed to have grown smaller over a very short period.

“Oh, Henry.” He could only see half her face, for she covered her mouth as she turned frightened eyes upon him. Her gloves were stained dark by her tears and running nose, and her eyes were swollen and red with sorrow and self-pity. “What will become of me?” The blond hair that she always kept so elaborately curled was pulled back severely under a black widow’s cap. He realized, seeing her in mourning garb in the place where she had collected clever people and amusing anecdotes, that she had been diminished, perhaps forever; that she feared a permanent loss of status. Remembering how repeatedly he had pushed his father, how continually he had infuriated him until the end, he felt a pang of guilt. He had never coveted responsibility of the Schoonmaker fortune, but, for better or worse, he had it now.

“It is an awful period,” he began slowly. Reassuring was not his most natural mode, but he felt that he must say something. “But you will see, in time, you’ll hold your Mondays again, you will wear fine dresses in colors other than black. You are Mrs. William Schoonmaker, and you must carry on, just as I must.”

Her pupils moved rapidly back and forth. She sniffled, and tried to dry her cheek with the back of her hand. “I can stay here?”

“Of course.”

“You will maintain the house?”

“I think father would have wanted that.” She nodded emphatically. “I certainly do,” he added softly.

Her face crumpled, and she pulled her gloves off, yanking each finger with a touch of aggression, and cast them aside. Then she rested her little palm against Henry’s cheek.

“He was right about you, you know, Henry,” she said when the risk of a fresh cry had passed. “Now, will you be a darling and help me to bed?”

Once Henry had seen his stepmother to her suite, and called for her maid to undress her, he went to the room that used to be his study, where his own monogrammed stationery was kept. It was next to the room that he used to sleep in, but which now belonged to Penelope, and so was naturally done up in white and gold as though Marie Antoinette had outfitted it for her children. There was no light from under her door, as there had not been for some days. The servants told him, in their most circumspect tones, that since Tuesday his wife had been coming in late, sleeping through the morning, dressing and then going out again. They made concerned and loyal faces at him, but for Henry this was only another sign that his life was adhering to some perfect, as yet invisible design. He turned on a lamp and searched out a monogrammed piece of card stock. Then he wrote a quick note—My Diana, when can we meet?—and went to find someone to deliver it.

Thirty Three

file://C:\Documents and Settings\nickunj\Desktop\book.html 10/28/2009

Page 94 of 128

THE EVERETT BOUCHARD FAMILY

REQUESTS THE PLEASURE OF YOUR COMPANY

AT THE WEDDING OF

MISS CAROLINA BROAD

TO THEIR SON

MR. LELAND BOUCHARD

AT THE GRACE CHURCH

THE TWENTY-SECOND OF JULY,

NINETEEN HUNDRED

ONE O’CLOCK

THE BELLS HAD RUNG ONE O’CLOCK, BUT ALL OF the notable, elegant, very rich people file://C:\Documents and Settings\nickunj\Desktop\book.html 10/28/2009

Page 95 of 128

occupying the pews of Grace Church sat quietly waiting, in their heavily ornamented hats, for the union of one of their own and a rather new heiress. In the small room on the side of the church, which Isaac Phillips Buck had arranged like the dressing room of a visiting princess with soft chairs and flowers everywhere, the flutters had arrived. It was as though Carolina’s physical body might disintegrate at any moment and go floating away on the wind. This feeling was in no way trepidation about marrying Leland—that part could not come soon enough, especially after the separation of a few days, which his old-fashioned family had insisted upon, and which had been unbearable for both bride and groom. The fear was entirely to do with her having possibly misstepped in some way, now, when she was about to take her grandest stage yet, and when it was too late to fix anything.

“Miss Broad, are you ready?”

Over her shoulder, in the gold framed mirror’s reflection—it was full length and had been so heavy that it required three men to carry it in and position it—hovered Buck. Her eyes, paler green than usual, flashed in his direction, and then back toward herself. The antique lace fit tightly around her torso, to her chin and down to her wrists. A belt of white satin embroidered with pearls marked her waist; below that swept a vast and complex skirt with a train worthy of a coronation. Because of that train and that skirt, she had not sat down for some hours, and her legs felt just a little weak. Her dark hair was parted at the center and swept down over her ears and into a low bun. Sprays of white flowers and tiny diamonds decorated the headband that secured a gauzy veil in place.

“Your groom,” he went on gently, “is waiting.”

“But do I look all right?”

She knew she did. It seemed to her that in the last few days some final rough edges had been scrubbed from her features, so that what was truly lovely and original about them was now allowed to shine. The dark freckles that lay across an otherwise pale complexion no longer seemed a liability, but rather like a seal of authenticity. Buck, who surely knew a thing or two about status anxiety, came forward to her side and rested a hand upon his shoulder.

“You are the loveliest bride I have ever seen,” he said. “And you know I have assisted not a few in the hours before they walked the aisle.”

For the first time that day, she managed a smile at the thought that Buck was comparing her favorably to Penelope Schoonmaker. But she owed much to that other lady, who was no doubt waiting among her and Leland’s guests, and she knew it would be indecorous to press further, to try and extract more pleasure from the compliment. Especially not on a day as important as this one. She tucked her lower lip under her top teeth and declared in a voice barely above a whisper, “I think I am ready.” Everything had come together, she reminded herself. Madame Bristede had completed her dress and the bridesmaids’ peach-colored confections—for Katy and Beatrice and Eleanor Wetmore and Georgina Vreewold—in just the right amount of time. The papers had all reported extensively on the bright and shining couple. Even God seemed to have done his part, granting her one of those perfectly temperate summer days when the sun is a golden disk against a backdrop of eternal blue. She had succeeded in having her sister there, even though it had meant inviting Mrs. Carr; Claire had assisted her regular lady’s maid in dressing her, and stood in the shadows now, watching these final moments before the ceremony with quiet reverence. Soon the pomp and circumstance would be over, and Carolina would officially be Mrs. Leland Bouchard. She and her husband would walk down the church steps, smiling at their own, gorgeous weather. All of those fancy New Yorkers she so wanted to impress would judge her or not judge her—it wouldn’t matter much anymore, she suddenly realized, because in days she would be on a steamship, sailing for Europe and her honeymoon.