The Duchesss Tattoo (2 page)

A month later, Palmer was working on the tricky twist at the corner of the Mona Lisa's mouth when he heard the bell ring. He knew who it was even before he lifted the velvet curtain. She was standing with her back to him, wearing a pink and white striped silk with a matching parasol. As he walked into the room, she turned and smiled, a smile so wide that Palmer saw that she had a dimple in her left cheek. She held out her hand.

“Oh, Mr. Palmer, when I think how angry I was the last time I was here, I feel so ashamed.” She squeezed his hand fervently. “I really don't know how to thank you. You told me that a tattoo was irrevocable, and when I think what could have happened….” She blushed, and Palmer noticed that even her earlobes went pink.

“You see, when you refused to give me the tattoo I was so disappointed. I wanted to show the Prince how chic I was. I decided to wear the bracelet anyway—so he would think that I was in the swim. I wore it to dinner the first night at Ventnor; the Prince was coming the next day. I noticed right away that everyone was looking at me; I mean, people are always looking at me, but this time they were looking at the bracelet. Oh, I felt mighty pleased with myself for fooling them all. I may be from New York, but I could play the game just as well as any of them.”

She looked at him ruefully. “Well, you can imagine what happened next. Ivo finally noticed the bracelet. He didn't say anything; he just gave me this look and I knew that something was wrong. I escaped after dinner as soon I could, and Ivo followed me. All he said was,‘Take it off,' and do you know I couldn't? The clasp had broken and the thing wouldn't shift. I was tugging at it so hard I thought my hand would come off, and then thank God a link broke. When Ivo saw that there was nothing there on the skin he…well. he kissed me just here.” She pointed to the point on her wrist where the two blue veins crossed.

“He didn't want to tell me what the tattoo meant, at first—” the Duchess smiled— “but I can be very persuasive. And when I did get it out of him, I was horrified. To think that I might have got a tattoo that would have told the whole world that I was no better than I should be. Why, I have met the Prince of Wales now and he's old enough to be my father. That's not a club I want to join, and besides, I love my husband very much.”

She placed her white hand on Palmer's arm. “I was so angry with you back then, but now I reckon that you were just trying to save me from my own folly. Am I right?” Palmer looked down at the fingers on his sleeve and his mouth twitched.

“As I told Your Grace at the time, I suspected that you did not have all the information.”

She smiled. “I'll say that again, Mr. Palmer.” She pulled a purse out of her reticule. “You know I would really like to repay you for your kindness, I was beginning to give up on the English. I thought, perhaps, a hundred guineas. You could go to the Berlin Exhibition in style.”

Palmer closed his eyes for a moment. “You are too kind, Your Grace. But I don't want your money.” Taking a deep breath, he continued, “There is one thing, though, that I would ask in return.”

She smiled at him. “Tell me, Mr. Palmer, whatever you want; it's yours.”

“The chance to practice my art,” and he swayed slightly as he thought of the butterfly he would put on the dense white skin just above her shoulder blade.

Daisy Goodwin on writing
The American Heiress

I was visiting Blenheim Palace a few years ago and saw the portrait of Consuelo Vanderbilt, the American heiress, or “dollar princess,” who married the ninth Duke of Marlborough in 1895. She was very beautiful, but she also looked spectacularly unhappy. When I read that she was basically blackmailed into marrying the Duke by her social-climbing mother, I thought what a great setting this would be for a novel.

I started working on
The American Heiress
at the height of the economic boom (remember the boom?), when the newspapers and magazines were full of billionaires having fabulous parties on their diamond-encrusted yachts. But even the excesses of Trump or Abramovich pale in comparison with the consumption of America's Gilded Age, when diners at one Newport mansion were invited to prospect with tiny silver shovels for real gems in the miniature river that ran down the center of the dining table.

While certain details in
The American Heiress
might seem unbelievable, like the solid gold on the corset that Cora Cash wears on her wedding day, her trousseau is a replica of Consuelo Vanderbilt's. At her wedding to the Duke, Consuelo carried orchids that had been grown in the greenhouses of Blenheim and then shipped to New York in a specially refrigerated chamber because Marlborough brides always carried flowers from Blenheim. When I borrowed the detail about Cora's bouquet being brought over from England for my novel
,
my editor produced her red pencil and said, “This can't possibly be true.” But in fact, you would have to have a very vivid imagination indeed to match the real extravagance and excess of the Gilded Age. Just as contemporary starlets are written about in the media today, every detail of Consuelo's wedding was chronicled in
Vogue.

In the late nineteenth century, American heiresses who fancied being called “my lady” subscribed to a periodical called
Titled Americans
—a pre-digital version of Match.com—that listed all the titled bachelors still on the market. The trade-off between money and titles was so successful that about a quarter of the members of the House of Lords in 1910 had American wives. American money probably kept the stately homes of England going for another generation.

Those of you who enjoyed the Masterpiece Theatre series
Downton Abbey
will remember that the Earl of Grantham married an American heiress (also called Cora) whose dowry saved the family estate from ruin. But
Downton Abbey
is set twenty years after
The American Heiress.
By that time even the stuffiest English aristocrats had realized that American money had stopped the roof leaking. The traces of these American girls are everywhere in Britain today; most people know that Winston Churchill's mother was American, but the great-grandmother of Princess Diana was also an American heiress.

For many of these American brides, however, a title really didn't make up for the horrors of English country life. A dollar princess frequently found herself isolated and miserable in a great pile of a house that, however exquisite, was miles away from anywhere, with no heating apart from open fires and—horror of horror—no bathrooms. One titled American bride wrote home to her mother that she hadn't taken her furs off all winter even when she went to bed. Another heiress gave up going to dinner at people's country houses because she couldn't bear the arctic temperatures in an evening dress. And English society was not exactly welcoming to these rich newcomers: Imagine Kim Kardashian marrying Prince Harry today and you get the general idea of the suspicion and disdain that the Americans encountered. In
Downton Abbey,
when Cora, Countess of Grantham, wonders whether a potential suitor for her daughter comes from an old family, her mother-in-law, played by Maggie Smith, retorts, “Older than yours, I imagine.” And even the Countess's own daughter, Lady Mary, dismisses her mother by saying, “You wouldn't understand. You're American.”

You will have to read
The American Heiress
to the last page to find out if Cora Cash wins her own particular War of Independence, but you can rest assured that every detail in the story, however outlandish, is grounded in fact.

DAISY GOODWIN is a leading television producer in the U.K. She has published several poetry anthologies, and was chair of the judging panel of the 2010 Orange Prize for Fiction. She and her husband, an ABC TV executive, have two daughters and live in London.
The American Heiress
is her first novel.

Why English Noblemen

Seek American Brides…

And Other Excerpts from

Titled Americans
^*

March 1890

Why English Noblemen

Seek American Brides.

Chauncey M. Depew's Views on the Subject.

“Why do Englishmen select American wives?” was asked the silver-tongued orator, Mr. Chauncey M. Depew, who submitted himself graciously to a reporter's inquisition on the subject of paramount interest and continuous discussion since the Endicott-Chamberlain wedding.

“Do you think I can answer that question without getting up another war with England? If I may express my opinion, without shattering the international treaty, I should say that the American girls has the advantage of her English sister in that she possesses all that the other lacks. This is due to the different methods in which the two girls are brought up. And English girl is, as a rule, brought up very strictly, kept under rigid discipline, sees nothing of society until formally brought out, is not permitted to think or act for herself, or allowed to display any individuality. As a result she is shy, self-conscious, easily embarrassed, has little or no conversation, and needs to be helped, lifted. The English young man has not the helpful qualities that characterize the typical American masher, and, in consequence, the two present, as I have often seen them, a very helpless combination. Then the American girl comes along, prettier than her English sister, full of dash, and snap, and go, sprightly, dazzling, and audacious, and she is a revelation to the Englishman. She gives him more pleasure in one hour, at a dinner or ball, than he thought the universe could produce in a whole life-time. Speedily he comes to the conclusion that he must marry her or die. As a rule he belongs to an old and historic family, is well educated, traveled, and polished, but poor. He knows nothing of business, and to support his estate requires an increased income. The American girl whom he gets acquainted with has that income, so in marrying her he goes to heaven and gets—the earth.”