Splendor: A Luxe Novel (28 page)

THERE WERE NO MORE ANGELS FOR ELIZABETH, not even in the cloudy waters of deepest sleep. In her few conscious moments, she whimpered and prayed and begged. She had tried to pretend to herself that it was all a delusion, and believe that Snowden really only did care that she got her rest. But then she saw the cruel calm with which he put her down again and again, and she remembered that he had killed with awful calculation before. This fact she knew with some frightened, primal certainty. Perhaps her father had given a fight, and she knew that Will had faced his death with the same dogged bravery as he had everything else in his short life. She would be easy for Snowden—he would make it seem that she had died giving birth, and then the heir to everything the Hollands had would be his to control. For why would anyone doubt that it was not his child, once she was turning slowly to dust below the ground and could no longer speak?

It was well past midnight when her eyes flew wide open, and she found consciousness upon her like a frost. There was no way for her to know what day it was. Her heart, which had suffered such abuse already, was now churning like some heroic machine. The memory of a few very hard facts came first, and then sensation followed, all the way to her fingertips and toes. She was thirsty and hungry and would not have minded an encouraging smile from just about anyone, but she needed nothing so badly as she needed to be out of that bed and out of that house.

Everything was blurry, indistinct, bruised. She blinked hard, trying to make out the contours of the room, trying to think what was best for her to do. But she knew she wouldn’t get many chances like this one, file://C:\Documents and Settings\nickunj\Desktop\book.html 10/28/2009

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that it must have been some oversight that she was allowed to wake now, and that her husband was not given to many of those. In her dreams, Teddy had come to save her, but in real life he had made it to the door and his profound sense of decorum had blinded him to her situation. All she could think was: the stairs, the door, the street. Then she brushed aside the heaping covers and stumbled forward on trembling feet.

She had always stepped lightly. It was one of the pretty things that used to be written about her in the society pages. She moved with such grace on the dance floor, one wouldn’t even know she was there, except that of course one could never take their eyes off her. That was how Elizabeth Holland had been, and she found those qualities served her well now as she moved like a ghost into the hall.

There was a touch of moonlight coming through the fanlight above the front entry. Everything else was a spreading darkness. Perhaps, she thought as she came onto the second-floor landing, her training to become a very marriageable debutante would one day make her a great cat burglar, too. But this was a whimsical direction, and her situation was very grave, and she wondered what that clear, cloying stuff that Snowden soaked his handkerchief in before smothering her mouth and nostrils was, and whether it didn’t make her a little daffy besides causing her to fall asleep.

This distracting notion allowed her pulse to slow just slightly as she came, almost, to the top of the stairs.

Then she heard the creak of a board not far below her, and all of her instincts lurched. She knew it was Snowden, though she could hardly see anything. A trace of moonlight caught in the bottle of clear liquid he was carrying. So it was only his being a little late in coming to put her down again that had allowed her this opportunity. The vileness of his intention swept over her. The man whose home she’d promised to make for the rest of her life, before God and everybody, was engaged in nothing less than the extermination of her family. She had never experienced rage of the kind she felt now. It coursed through her like electricity.

In her mind’s eye she saw Will just before he was gone, his face so full of fear and confusion, his whole body traumatized with pain. As Snowden was nearing the top of the steps, his movements slowed, perhaps because he had only recently woken up. She could make him out now, his eyes cast down but his purpose plain in his limbs. He hadn’t noticed her—but then she hadn’t so much as dared inhale since hearing him on the stair. His breath was full and even, like that of a man who slept soundly in a soft bed.

He still had not seen her as she took hold of the banister. That she was there, upright and watchful, didn’t fully occur to him—his eyes growing popeyed at the sight—until after she put her arms forward and pushed hard against his chest.

There could never be a contest of strength between these two. He was solid, and she was practically a wraith, unbalanced by her immense belly. Was it her rage that gave her such force, or some mother-wolf instinct, or had God’s hand worked through her in that moment of peril? Later, when her body was no longer so storm-tossed by terror and emotion, she would come to see that it was Will who had been there, in her, like the winged angel she’d dreamed about, protecting her one final time.

The impact of that push was sudden and great. Snowden’s slippers skidded against the step, and then his arms wheeled. The whites of his eyes grew huge, and he looked at the small, blond thing he had so easily kept subdued for many days now. But it was too late for him; the earth pulled him down hard, and not in any kind way. He hit the bottom of the stairs with a thud and a bone-snapping crack. After that Elizabeth took several quite audible breaths and still felt no kind of calm. She placed her hand on her belly, to try and stop the trembling there. The rest of her was a lost cause.

Then she tiptoed forward, to see what she had done.

Thirty Nine

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…and can’t you just imagine those women glaring at us for sport, calling me the second wife and criticizing my hostessing style? It’s not a game I have any interest in playing, or a place I have a taste for anymore. I can’t be without you, but I can’t stay here. Come to Paris with me. I will wait for you on the pier for the noon ship tomorrow. With all the adoration my beating heart is capable of,

—D.H.

HENRY HAD STAYED UP ALL MONDAY NIGHT GOING over documents having to do with his father’s railroad interests, but by the time the first peachy hint of dawn was spreading from the corners of the sky, he and Mr. Lawrence had cleared the matter up satisfactorily and he was ready to address some paperwork of real importance. He was anxious about Diana—it was now more than a day since she’d run away from him, and he was eager to show her that everything was over with Penelope officially, legally, and in every other way. The staff had reported that Mrs. Schoonmaker had not come home the night before, or shown herself today, and his lawyer was ready to draw up divorce papers on the grounds of adultery. It could be kept out of the columns, Lawrence assured him, especially if it was done hastily and while the ghost of William Sackhouse Schoonmaker still held some sway over the city’s newspapermen.

A footman brought him the letter just as he and Lawrence were getting into the particulars. He glanced down at it, and knew immediately from the lovely looping scrawl who had written these pages.

“When did this come?” he demanded.

“Yesterday, Mr. Schoonmaker.”

“Why was it not brought to my attention sooner?” He had not realized with what force he was speaking until he saw the trepidation in the young, thin face.

“We thought you were busy…. We—”

“Never mind,” he said. “It’s done now. Don’t worry,” he added, trying to sound a little kind. He was overtired, and the staff couldn’t help but be somewhat confused and intimidated by him now. His features had hardened with fatigue, and his lean frame was down to a white collared shirt tucked into dark slacks; his jacket and waistcoat were somewhere, but he had, in the last few days, stopped thinking so much about his clothes. He was carrying himself differently; he knew he walked through the many halls of that house with a proprietary attention that he had not formerly possessed. “Don’t think any more of it. You may go.”

When the footman was gone, he stood and spread the pages out against the massive dark-stained wood desk with the simple bucolic imagery carved on its hefty sides. His father had bought it at the auction of the contents of some English lord’s country seat; in its previous life, it was the great bulwark peasants had had to face when they came to pay their tithes. His father always liked to keep in mind the piece’s history, and to see to it that when associates and underlings and rivals came to visit his offices, they felt a little peasantlike, too. In the last few days, Henry had come to really know this section of the house for the first time and had discovered to his surprise that he felt at ease there.

My love, how do I begin? read the first line of her letter, after which tumbled unwieldy paragraphs of yearning and fervent feeling. Despite the desperate situation she was laying out in words, he found file://C:\Documents and Settings\nickunj\Desktop\book.html 10/28/2009

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himself smiling. She was such a vivid, passionate little thing. There was so much emotion in every remote part of her, in each drop of her blood. She loved him—so said all of the sentences of her letter, even if they purported to be an ultimatum. There had been so many moments, over the course of the previous year, when he had fumbled hopelessly in the case of Diana. But there had been a shift inside him, and he was able to read her arguments and pleas without his confidence flagging even slightly. This he could make right.

When he finished reading, he folded the pages of her letter and put them away in the top drawer of the desk. He hated himself for being unsure, for not acting sooner. Now he understood why she had run from him in the park—it was because he had been beastly. He had presumed that he had Di’s affections, rather than asking, humbly if she would be his wife. How he wished he had shown her, clearly, what a transformation he had undergone. In this sad, hectic week he had glimpsed the man he would become—a man she would be proud to call her husband. Lawrence—sitting in one of the black leather and wood chairs, which his father had acquired at the same auction, down near the corner of the mighty desk—

glanced up. His eyes were watery and wrinkled, and he was waiting in a pose of expectation, as though acutely sensitive to some coming order.

Henry strode across the room to the large, square windows that looked down from on high at the most famous avenue in the city. There was nothing doing at that hour, except in the sky, which was growing brighter with every passing moment. He stood pensively, his feet spread apart, and watched the day beginning. Presently he placed a cigarette between his slender, patrician lips, hesitating some moments before striking a match. Afterward, smoke curled up in his line of vision, blending with the smoke from all the fires that were being lit in that hour in all the best kitchens of New York.

“Mr. Lawrence,” he said after several moments of quiet reflection. “How soon can the divorce papers be ready? Could we perhaps serve Mrs. Schoonmaker this afternoon?”

“I see no reason why not,” the lawyer replied.

“Excellent.” Henry dropped his cigarette on the floor and stubbed it out with his toe. “In that case will you send someone to call Tiffany? They’re going to have to open early for me today….” Forty

Mrs. Snowden Cairns has been known for a weak constitution since the days when she still went by the name Elizabeth Holland. Of course she has not been seen out since it was reported that she was in a family way—but even her best friends, like Miss Agnes Jones, have not glimpsed her, and one wonders if her frail life can survive any more disruption….

——FROM THE SOCIETY PAGE OF

THE NEW-YORK NEWS OF THE WORLD GAZETTE, TUESDAY, JULY 24, 1900

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DAYLIGHT HAD BECOME SHIMMERINGLY VISIBLE IN the fanlight over the front entryway of the Cairns house. Soon the morning deliveries would begin to arrive, and outside, there was a summer day in the making. Halfway up the steep staircase that ran along the north-facing wall, Elizabeth Holland sat, frozen and shivering despite the heat, and incapable of going up or down. At the bottom of the stairs lay the lifeless body of her second husband, his head bent away from his body at a horrific angle. Ash blond hair fell from her bowed head and all around her shoulders. Both her hands were placed over her protruding belly, as though to shield her unborn baby from seeing, for the first time, what ghastliness the world was capable of.

For a girl who was raised for the exclusive purpose of appearing lovely and exercising correct behavior, she’d done some bad things in her life. But nothing had shut her down like this. Her hands, her will, had snuffed out a human life. She knew that soon one of Snowden’s men, or his housekeep er, or another person who might pose a threat to her, would come along. But to run from that place, to do anything, was to acknowledge her unspeakable act. And so she sat, rocking, and the hours passed.

She was so distraught, so curled in on herself, that she barely noticed the sound of the door opening.

Once she had, she realized that the unidentifiable noise she had been only dimly aware of for the preceding minutes must have been the doorknocker, and someone taking it in his hand.

“Why—Elizabeth…”

The gentleness with which her name was pronounced was so like a much-needed caress, that by the time she had lifted her head and met the eyes of Teddy Cutting, her own were filled with tears. He was wearing a fitted navy blue jacket with brass buttons up the front and black trousers; his soft face was torn open with a mournful kind of yearning. There was a pistol at his hip, in a leather holster—it was so odd, seeing something like that, on her decorous, fair-haired friend.

“Oh, God,” he said, glancing at the broken body lying between the bottom step and the ornately patterned carpet. “I’m too late.”

“No,” she whispered. He was just on time, she wanted to tell him, but the words wouldn’t come. He hurried toward her, stepping over Snowden and taking the stairs two at once. She tried to stand up, so as to better greet him, but her legs were faulty, and in another moment she had collapsed into his waiting arms. She allowed all of her weight to fall against him and found that he supported her completely. “You knew,” she whispered eventually.