Heiress (8 page)

“You’re going to be married to him. Have his children. Share his life…his home. His bed.”

“Don’t talk that way. It’s bad enough that I barely know him. I refuse to think of spending my wedding night with a stranger.”

“Then talk to him. He has beautiful eyes, and he’s an amazing dancer—”

“Have you been dancing with him?” She hadn’t expected those words to turn inside her like a knife, to have them cut, and bruise.

Jinx froze. “Just…a few times. For practice. I needed help with the steps of the quadrille, and the waltz.”

She saw them then, Jinx in his arms, him smiling down at her, caught in the music.

The pose of a couple in love.

She stared at Jinx, the words boiling out of her. “Jinx, are you in love with my fiancé?”

Jinx recoiled. “No! Of course not. But I don’t understand why you’re not.”

She drew in a long breath over the nettles in her chest. “I…will be. Someday.” Please, please. But perhaps she’d had her chance for love, and walked away.

Do you love me? Because I think you do.
She couldn’t escape the haunting of Oliver’s voice. He found her in her sleep, in the morning as she watched the newsies hawk their papers, in the familiar presence of her father’s butler.

Did she love him? The question wrapped around her at night, noosed her breath from her chest. Indeed, she missed him so desperately, the answer seemed suffocating.

Jinx had risen from the table. “Give Foster a chance to win your heart. You may not find him as repulsive in reality as your despair has conjured.”

She watched Jinx leave. Probably she’d never understand what it felt to have another determine her future. To be powerless. To feel as if she’d wasted her life before it had even begun.

To be a coward.

The April air scented of lilacs and jasmine as she walked out into the garden, the last tendrils of twilight etching the sky. Perhaps she should attempt to allow Foster to win her heart. Perhaps with time, she’d forget the echo of Oliver’s voice.

After all, her parents wouldn’t have sold her into marriage with a monster.

She sat on the bench under the cover of an empress tree, listening to the city just beyond the gates, the
clip-clop
of the horses’ hooves, the chirrup of crickets rising from the park. A breeze raised the flesh on her bare arms, her mother requiring her green satin evening gown for tonight’s dinner.

“You seem cold.”

The voice startled her, especially when Foster stepped out into the garden. He wore a quilted Turkish smoking jacket—she recognized it as one of her father’s.

She found a repentant voice. “I’m sorry for my behavior this evening. Perhaps I read too much of Jacob Riis’s work.”

“I read him also, and I’m not unaware of the plight of our working class. But it is not a sin to be wealthy, Esme. It is our businesses that give them employment.”

He sat on the bench, next to her, the smell of her father’s cigars rising from his skin not entirely unpleasant. “But when Alva Vanderbilt or Mrs. Astor throws a ball that could feed the city for a year—”

“They have that right; it is their millions. But forget not that to throw such a ball, they must employ hundreds. They are feeding the city.”

Esme ran her hands up her arms, whisking away the cold. She nearly jumped when Foster traced his finger down the back of her neck. It was fleshy and bold, especially when he turned her to face him.

“I have always known you were outspoken and bold, Esme. I remember from those few times when we played lawn tennis. I won’t ask you to temper your comments unless we are in public.” He smiled at her, and she searched for warmth in his eyes.

“Th—thank you?”

“I think you’ll find that I can be quite agreeable to a woman’s whims.” He touched her chin. “When she is agreeable to mine.”

She stilled, and he held her chin as he moved toward her.

What—no, wait—she pressed her hand on his chest to stop him, but he brushed his lips against hers. She stiffened, “Fos—”

He curled his hand around her neck, held her in place as he moved his mouth against hers, forcing his kiss upon her.

She fought his grip, pressing both hands against his chest, but he held her tight, finishing his kiss before he released her.

She reeled back, staring at him, her lips bruised. “I—you—I didn’t give you leave—”

“You will get used to my kisses.” He ran his hand down her face. “Learn, even, to enjoy them.”

She pressed her hand to her chest as he rose.

“Jinx has asked me to join her in the library. Apparently she has a poem she’s penned for my amusement. Will you join us?” He held out his hand. She wanted to slap it. Instead, she shook her head.

“Very well. I’ll call on you tomorrow. Perhaps we can take a carriage ride.”

She held her breath, watching him leave, her heart webbed in her chest.

She waited until she heard his footsteps vanish then fled to her room, locking the door behind her. She tore off her evening gown, unhooking her corset from the front, and slipped into her nightgown.

She scrubbed her face, pulled down her hair, brushed it through, tears shaking her. Why hadn’t she run away with Oliver? She dropped the ivory-handled brush, put her face in her hands. Oh God, she’d lived such a fairytale. Thought she could somehow live in both worlds.

Now, she belonged in neither.

Father cheated on Mother. He had children—illegitimate children. And one of them lives right here, in this house.

Jinx’s words gnawed at her. Maybe she hadn’t lied. Maybe—maybe indeed, Esme wasn’t the daughter of Father’s wife, but the offspring of some illicit union, one she was destined to pay for. What if God, because of her father’s sin, had turned His back on her?

Be the woman you were meant to be.

And who, exactly, might that be?

If you don’t start behaving like a Price, you just might end up in one of those tenements, right beside your whore mother.

What if she didn’t belong in this family? What if her mother had been a working-class maid, someone her father had betrayed, just as he’d betrayed her?

She watched the fire crackling, devouring the hickory Bette had laid in the hearth.
Please don’t marry Foster Worth.

Oliver again, and this time she let him linger in her mind, despite the barbaric pleasure of it. She saw him hiding behind the piano in the solarium, the winter sun in his ebony hair, stolen moments playing hide-and-seek.

“You found me, Esme! You always find me!” he’d said.

He smelled of the stables, where’d he’d no doubt assisted the footmen in caring for the horses, but he’d found her reading in the garden and the chase ensued.

“It’s because I can smell you all the way across the house.” Laughter always came so easily when she teased Oliver.

He came out, sat on the bench. “My hands are clean.”

She took them, examined the scrapes, the reddened skin. Compared them with her own, creamy white.

“You have pretty hands,” he said, and for a moment pressed his against hers. His wounds scraped, but she pressed back, folded her fingers between his.

They sat there, her legs swinging under the piano bench as the dust motes swam through the sunlight.

Footsteps in the hallway drove him away, back into the shadows, but his voice lingered.

“You found me, Esme! You always find me!”

She got up, went to her bureau. Inside was the picture Oliver had taken of her the night of Mrs. Astor’s party. Regal in her white dress, she saw a woman undaunted by the scrutiny of the camera, a smile unfamiliar in recent days upon her lips.

I love you, Esme. I have for years.

What if he really did love her? What if he looked at her like—like Foster did Jinx? She pressed her fingertips against her lips, tender now after Foster’s assault. Her first kiss. The gorge rose in her throat. Nothing like the moment when Oliver had searched her face, so much longing in his eyes.

She closed her eyes, remembered his breath, so close she could nearly taste his lips against hers. Why hadn’t she let him kiss her?

Fear.

The truth shook her through to her bones. She wasn’t so much different than Jinx, was she? She simply disguised it with a sort of righteous indignation.

She didn’t want to be poor, live in the tenements, scraping out her life from day-to-day. But she didn’t want to live trapped inside Foster’s cruelty either.

She studied her picture again, then took it out and set it upon the bureau. Under it lay her Bible. She pulled it out and took both of them back to her divan before the hearth.

“Miss Price, is there anything you require of me this evening?” Bette stood in the doorway.

Esme sighed, ran her hand over the Bible.

“Ma’am, if you will permit me, I remember what Mr. Moody said that night.”

Esme glanced at her. “Mr. Moody?”

“When he visited a year or so back? Your family attended the evangelical soiree. A fundraising event?”

Of course. Which meant Bette also attended. “What do you remember of the evening?” She’d remembered the man: portly, with a receding hairline and a dark beard. He spoke with a tone of command that made his words sink into her tissue, her bones.

Bette took a step into the room. “ ‘God never made a promise that was too good to be true.’”

“And what did he promise you, Bette?”

“That night? ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’”

Of course Bette would be poor in spirit. What did she have but the clothes the Prices gave her, the room in the attic? How did she suppose to see the Kingdom of God?

But, just in case, “And have you seen it?”

“Every day, ma’am. Being poor in spirit means we need God more than we need ourselves. He also said, ‘If we are full of pride and conceit and ambition and self-seeking and pleasure and the world, there is no room for the Spirit of God.’ He said that many of us are praying to God to fill us when we are already filled with something else. Things, however, that leave us bereft.”

Like, perhaps, her own ambition? Esme let her thumb shuffle through the Bible’s pages.

Bette took another step toward her. “He also said that seeking to perpetuate one’s name on earth is like writing in the sand by the seashore; to keep it, it must be written on eternal shores.”

Bette picked up the poker, pushed the logs back into a pile.

Esme watched the embers glow red. “I remember, ‘We can stand affliction better than we can prosperity, for in prosperity we forget God.’”

She glanced at Bette, looking for condemnation in her eyes. Strange, she’d always felt an affection for her maid, only a few years older than herself. She recognized nothing but a strange compassion in her expression as Bette said, “Yes, he said that too.”

“Thank you Bette, that’s enough for tonight.”

“Very good, ma’am. Pleasant dreams.”

Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Esme let Bette’s words soak into her as she watched the fire burn. She hadn’t needed God, not really. In fact, she’d spent most of her life thinking God needed her.

She opened the Bible, found the verse in Matthew 5, read it again, then the entire passage, ending with, “ ‘Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.’”

She pressed her hand into the filament pages, cold and smooth, letting the words churn inside. She remembered that night, remembered Moody’s words stirring her to fresh awareness of heaven, of her own desire to do something more with her life.

In fact, her writing had started with the verse she’d scrawled on the program. She took it out, read it. “ ‘Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in Him; and He shall bring it to pass.’”

Had she committed her way that night?

Ever?

She slipped over to the window, pressed her head against the cool pane. Outside, electric lights lit up the city, pushing back the darkness.

She wanted to push back darkness. But she couldn’t, trapped in a marriage to Foster Worth, could she?

No. The word sank deep inside, reverberated. No.

Not when she loved Oliver.

In fact, just like he’d intimated, she’d loved him for years. The truth heated her through. Oh, why hadn’t she seen it earlier?

Maybe she simply hadn’t wanted to.

In the fireplace, the fire crackled, popped. She turned toward it, hearing again Oliver’s childhood laughter.
You found me, Esme! You always find me!

Yes, she did.

She got up, walked to the fire, and dropped the photograph of her debutante self into the flames.

So this was how the other half lived. Esme clutched the paper on which Mr. Stewart had written Oliver’s address and eased into the foyer of his building, located on the shore of the East River. In years past, this area of town housed George Washington and society’s elite. Now, the steps of the stone dwelling crumbled beneath her shoes, the gated windows like eyes etched with age. She tucked her reticule closer to her, thankful she’d chosen her fading school cloak, something less than flamboyant. Imagine if she’d worn her fur….

The brine of beer and urine, the wail of a child in the dark recesses of the building curdled her courage. Oh, why hadn’t she brought Bette?

Worse, she’d lied to Oliver’s father—the first of her many sins tonight—when she’d said she only wanted to post Oliver correspondence.

If Mr. Stewart knew she intended to find his son, he would have never betrayed his employer. She had to hope her father would never discover his indiscretion.

Even if he did discover her absence.

Maybe she should have simply posted a letter. But then she couldn’t see Oliver’s face when she told him…what? That she loved him?

Perhaps she just wanted to confirm his words.
I love you, Esme. I have for years.

She’d imagined a cheerier boardinghouse for him, something that didn’t scurry with rats, one where the old tile floor from bygone days didn’t echo her entrance, the ornate oak molding hanging with dirt and cobwebs. A gaslight flickered in a dim hallway that had once hosted a grand corridor, now partitioned off to create rooms. Somewhere in the catacombs of rooms the whine of a fiddle attempted cheer.