The Luxe (25 page)

“T
HE GREATEST WEDDING OF THE NINETEENTH
century,’” Penelope spat as she walked, at a slow, agitated gait, across the floor of her personal drawing room on the second story of the Hayes mansion. The afternoon was bright and bustling outside. She held Robber close to her chest and kissed his head. “A little bit of hyperbole, don’t you think?”

“Definitely a bit too much,” Buck put in, between drags of a small fuchsia cigarette. “And you know I am an arbiter of all things a-bit-too-much,” he added.

“Oh, please.” Penelope punctuated her dismissal of Buck’s commentary by rolling her large blue eyes. “The point is, it should be my name in the papers with Henry’s, not Liz’s. She is just so
infuriating
.”

Penelope stomped her foot once and then turned sharply and walked from the west-facing windows to the south-facing ones. Buck crossed one pudgy leg over the other and exhaled. “You know, I am acquainted with that Gallant fellow. Davis
Barnard is his name; he’s my mother’s second cousin or something. Maybe we could—”

“But it doesn’t matter, because I’m not presently engaged to anyone, am I?” Penelope was feeling hot and itchy inside her black dress, and impatient with every little thing. Her instinct was to do some violence to the white-and-gold upholstery that decorated the room, but she had not so lost her head as to want to ruin good brocade. Not yet. She sighed, turned back to Buck, and said in a low voice, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be short. It’s all so hard…. She more or less threatened me, you know.”

“Really.” Buck inhaled. “How?”

“She said that if I exposed her,” Penelope answered, her voice returning quickly to a near shriek, “it would only end up making me look bad.
Me
. As though I were the one acting like a whore in the carriage house!”

Buck lifted his light-colored, sculpted eyebrows. “She’s right,” he ventured cautiously. “It will be difficult for you to get Henry if you appear at all related to Elizabeth’s fall, or if you seem to benefit from it. Society does not like an opportunist,” he added with a slight wag of his finger.

Penelope emitted a wounded guttural noise and widened her eyes at her friend. “I am not an opportunist!” she wailed. Robber squirmed in her arms, but she held him firmly to her.
She strode back toward Buck and threw herself down onto the couch beside him. A few moments of awkward, heated silence passed, and then Penelope went on as coolly as she could manage: “I couldn’t stand it if she got him. Do you understand? We need a plan—a perfect plan—to ensure that their engagement is broken immediately.”

“We’ll come up with one.” Buck reached out and scratched Robber’s head, and then petted Penelope’s slender fingers.

“She’s coming tomorrow morning,” Penelope huffed.

“How are we going to come up with a foolproof plan in less than twenty-four hours?”

“Penny, you know I’m very good with a plan—”

“She’s just so perfect at everything!” Penelope interrupted. She stood up and dropped Robber into Buck’s lap.

“Everyone
thinks
so,” she went on, pacing agitatedly across the black walnut. “And meanwhile, behind that act, she was…
you know
…with the help.” Penelope smiled faintly, as a thought occurred to her. “She probably thought she was doing the Christian thing, giving herself to someone who really, really needed it.”

Buck’s face broke into a sneering little laugh at that. “So, do you think she’ll come in the morning?”

“Of course. She must be scared out of her mind.
I
would be.” She chuckled mirthlessly as she crossed her arms across her
chest and continued to move restlessly across the floor. “You should have seen her face, Buck. She was white as a ghost.”

Buck tipped the end of his cigarette into the ashtray that was held three feet off the ground by sculpted, gold-plated nymphs. He rested his chin on his palm contemplatively, and said, “Well…that’s a good start.”

Penelope’s jaw tightened and she balled her hands into little fists, which she began to shake in frustration. “Of course it’s a good start. It would be better if the next step were outing her as the slut she is. Then everyone would see plainly why she can’t be with Henry, and the world would return to its rightful order. But apparently that would make
me
look bad.” Penelope let out a little shriek, then collapsed onto the floor and pounded it once with her fist.

Buck stood and lifted her up by her armpits. He gave her a generous smile, his waxy cheeks rising with it, and then said, “You’re going to have to calm down. You’re never going to win if you can’t keep your nerves under control.”

“I
know
.” She tried to take a few breaths and remind herself how much was in her favor. She leaned heavily on Buck, as they moved to the windows that looked down on Fifth. The avenue’s afternoon parade of slow-moving carriages was on display, with passengers who pretended not to be watching one another, and who perhaps looked
up now and then to see if they might catch a glimpse of the finest silhouette in the city. Penelope turned the dramatic curve of her back onto the street below. She hated that any one of those gawking masses below might perceive her as weak. “The idea,” she went on, “that they would move up the wedding just to thwart me—”

“Well, I’m sure it wasn’t
just
to thwart you.”

Penelope’s eyes flashed at this suggestion. “It is intolerable that I should lose out to Elizabeth!” she screamed. “That a twit from one of those old inbred families would appear to have stolen what everyone—
everyone
!—knew was mine.”

“Be calm, my dear,” Buck said, rubbing his friend’s shoulder. “We can’t keep going back and forth. We’ve got to come up with a plan for tomorrow morning. We have all the right cards. It’s just a matter of when we play them.

“And we will,” he told her in a sugared, reassuring voice.

Penelope turned her face into Buck’s lapel, and let her thoughts wander to the episode in Lord & Taylor, trying to pinpoint her rival’s weakness. Instead, she began fixating on Elizabeth’s face, with its trembling chin and its eyes all welled up with self-pity.

Penelope could not cool the rage spreading inside of her. She turned quickly away from Buck and took long strides back to the couch where Robber had been lounging.
When she reached him she swept the Boston Terrier up into her arms. He let out a few sharp barks, but still she clung to him. “Whatever it takes, Buckie, we’ve got to find a way. I cannot bear to lose. I would rather see Elizabeth dead than married to my Henry.”

“S
O IT
WAS
NINE AT NIGHT!” DIANA EXCLAIMED AS
Henry led her from the side gate, across a gravel drive, and into the greenhouse with its arched glass roof. As the door closed, he turned to her and grinned. She looked into his face and in an instant forgot all the things that she had planned to say.

“I worried you might misunderstand,” Henry said, with a playful backward glance. “But I didn’t worry that much.”

As she followed him to the greenhouse she kept a hand on his note—the bookmark that she had found in his Whitman—which she had brought in the pocket of her cape. She had in fact read it several times on her way over, just to prove to herself that Henry Schoonmaker had asked her to visit, at an hour not suitable to young ladies.

Inside it smelled of dirt and hothouse flowers. It was just as wondrous as it had been on that night a week and a half ago. They walked under giant leaves, past beds of rare blossoms, and at the far end of the building Henry led her
through a little door into a small room. The ceiling was glass here as well, though it was low and frosted, and there was a bed covered by a hand-sewn quilt.

“It was the gardener’s room,” Henry explained. “But then he took up with one of Isabelle’s seamstresses, and now they’re married, so he lives in the house. He lets me use it sometimes.”

Diana wondered for a minute what he meant by
sometimes
and also what he meant by
use
. But then the beauty of the room took over and commanded her senses. The air was fresh from all the verdure, and the room was lit with simple yellow lamps. There were no candles or incense or champagne, which were always present in seduction scenes in the serials. “It’s lovely here,” she told him. It felt both very civilized and remote at once.

“I didn’t think you’d come, to be honest. I mean, given that the only good thing about me is my greenhouse,” Henry teased her, and Diana was reminded of how different he’d seemed when she had furiously uttered that phrase. “I thought you’d
want
to come, but—”

“But you didn’t think I’d find a way? I’m a crafty girl, Henry.” She gave him a wink, and he smiled in return. Neither of them could seem to stop smiling. She pushed the hood of her cape back now and waited for him to take it off. He did, after a minute, unbuttoning it at the neck first and then lower
down, until she was standing there in the simple dotted navy batiste dress that she had chosen so that, if she were caught, she wouldn’t look like she was going anywhere.

“I’m glad you are.” He gazed at her appreciatively until she began to blush. He put his fingers to the neckline of the dress, where the little white buttons began. She felt her blood rush to that tender spot.

“I didn’t want to be nicely dressed in case of—”

Henry stopped her with a long kiss on the mouth. His arms reached around her and brought her close, so that her body was pressed against his. She was exquisitely aware of the pressure of his palm against her back. The kiss was moist and it had its own rhythm and it lasted and lasted. She feared the flutters it was giving her might be too much for her untried little heart. When he pulled back, she saw that Henry was grinning, but there was a new softness to the curl in his lips.

He took the top button between his fingers and twisted it. Diana felt her chest rise and fall, and then he pushed the button out of its loop. He unbuttoned the next one and the next, all the way down her torso. The bodice of her dress fell around her waist revealing the sheer, ruched chemise below. She pressed her lips together in the hope that that would calm her restless breathing. Henry kept his eyes on her as he pushed the dress off her waist. It fell to her ankles, and she was left standing, in the middle of a greenhouse, in nothing but her underclothes.

She tilted back her head and let a sparkle cross her dewy, dark eyes. “So you lured me here to ruin me?” Her voice seemed to have grown husky in a matter of seconds.

Henry kissed her neck, on the opposite side from where he had yesterday, and then loosened his grip on her. “No, I promise I won’t do that,” he said. Diana tried not to look disappointed as he fell back on the bed and folded his arms behind his head to make a pillow. He was wearing a pale yellow button-down shirt, and he looked long and slender against the bed. “I lured you here so that you could ask me all those questions you tried to ask me the first time we met. Any question at all, and I swear to answer honestly.”

Henry gave her one of those winks that made her heart slow and warm again, and she felt relieved, just a little bit, that she wouldn’t have to do that thing she was always thinking about. Not yet, anyway. “Anything?” she asked, sitting down on the bed next to him.

“Anything you want.” He reached over to the bedside table, pulled a cigarette from the small gold case there, and lit it.

She took Henry’s cigarette from him, dragged on it, and then handed it back. Her eyes wandered up to the ceiling as she exhaled, and glittered when they fell back on him. “All right…if it’s really
anything
…then tell me what you think of me.”

Henry chuckled and took a thoughtful drag. “I think that
you are the most naturally lovely girl I have ever seen. When you get that mischievous look about you, I want to know exactly what is going through your head, and then I want to plot something devious with you. I like the funny little way you walk and the way you seem always to be too big for the room you are in.” Diana took a deep breath of warm, earthy air to slow her breathing. “To put it succinctly, Miss Diana”—he took her hand and kissed it—“you are more alive than anyone I know.”

Diana bit her lower lip and felt the blood rising to her cheeks. “I like this game,” she whispered.

“I could go on complimenting you all night, but you’d get bored of it quickly. Ask me another one.”

“Have you really broken as many hearts as they say?” Diana was conscious of the strap of her chemise slipping down her white shoulder, but she didn’t do anything to stop it.

“I have broken hearts, but not nearly as many as they say.”

“Have you ever been in love?”

“Yes,” Henry said firmly, looking almost pained. “Once.”

“Who was she?”

“Now here is where you must promise not to repeat what I am about to tell you.”

Diana took in an excited breath, and then lay down, so that she was on her side facing Henry, her head propped against her fist. “I promise.”

“She was a daughter of New York like you, and her maiden name was Paulette Riggs, but when I knew her she was already Lady Deerfield.”

“Paulette Riggs! She’s nearly
thirty
,” Diana couldn’t help but exclaim. “And married to a
lord
.”

“I know.” Henry laughed wistfully. He lifted his hand and maneuvered it deftly under her chemise to the rise of Diana’s thigh. “But I was eighteen and she was the most worldly thing I had ever seen. She spent that season in Newport, because her father was ill that year, and Lord Deerfield went off on so many hunting trips that I suppose she got lonely.”

“How did it end?”

“Badly.” Henry sighed, and let his fingertips press into the flesh of her leg. “She just tired of me after a while, and I of course kept on writing her letters and trying to arrange meetings like a real ass.”

“Do you ever miss her?” Diana was a little frightened to know that this woman, who she remembered as having very white skin and very red lips and carrying herself like royalty, had once been Henry’s lover. But of course she still wanted to know everything about it.

“Not anymore. Seems like a long time ago, now. She had a way of looking at me, with those moody eyes…sort of like you, actually. But no. I stopped missing her a good while ago now.”

“And she was the only one you have ever been in love with?”

Henry nodded, and drew his hand back and forth along Diana’s thigh.

“How many have you…
loved
?” Diana fixed her eyes on him, even through her embarrassment. He seemed to be smiling faintly at her lack of vocabulary.

Henry paused, whether to count or to reconsider his promise to answer anything she wasn’t sure. “Five,” he said at last.

“Were they all married to English lords?”

“No! Nor were they all well-brought-up girls like you. But I had good times with each of them.”

“And who was the last girl to be loved by Henry Schoonmaker?”

Henry shifted, bringing himself up to rest on his elbows and bringing his hand away from her thigh. He met Diana’s face, and he worked his lips in agitation.

“You said anything!” she exclaimed, and wondered whose name could give him such pause.

He would not meet Diana’s eyes as he pronounced a name she knew quite well. “Penelope Hayes.”

“No…”
Diana wasn’t sure whether to admonish him or giggle. “She must have been angry about…” Diana trailed off, realizing that she wasn’t ready to bring up Elizabeth just
yet. Henry rolled his eyes and let out an exasperated sigh of agreement. “No wonder she’s been acting so bizarre lately. And you…you…
her
.”

Henry grabbed onto Diana’s thigh again, this time with a firm grip. She was very close to Henry now, and she could feel the slightest movements of his body.

“She’s one to…well, she’s more savage than I thought she was at first.”

“Oh.” Diana could feel the conversation growing heavier, and she didn’t mind. She wished she had a way to tell him that she liked being serious with him, too.
“Well,”
she said, “I guess I know all about you now.”

“But I don’t want to be like that anymore.” Henry paused and fidgeted with the buttons of his shirt. His voice had grown low and self-reproaching. “Careless, I mean, with people’s hearts. I don’t want you to think that this was all some kind of game. You told me not to treat you like a toy once. I don’t want you to think that I’ve been playing with you.”

“That’s why you asked me here?” She pushed herself up farther with her elbow, and kept her shining eyes on him. “To clear that up?”

“Yes. Well, that and…When I marry your sister, I can’t go on…” Henry looked down, and moved his hand along to where her hip sloped into the small of her waist.

Diana nodded. “You have to marry her, don’t you?”

“Yes…. Well, it’s that…”

“I understand.” Diana had been thinking of her sister’s reasons for marrying, and suspected that there must be some similar force driving Henry. “And I don’t want to know why.” There was a sadness gripping at her, but she felt the need to be the one who said what she was sure they were both thinking.

“This will have to be the only time we are together.”

He raised his eyes to hers again after a moment and nodded. He reached up and put his hand on the back of her head, bringing her face closer to his. She examined his dark prettiness with intense eyes, so that she could commit it to memory and have it always. Outside, a gust picked up, blowing the trees noisily against the roof—a storm must be coming—but still he held her gaze. Then he kissed her with a hungry intensity that made her want to weep.

“Now, if I promise to leave you as pure and perfect as you are now, will you stay the night with me?”

Diana nodded and gave him a reckless smile, which he returned.

“Excellent, because there is a question or two I want to ask about you.”

And with that, she let down what was left of her guard and gave herself over to Henry’s knowing gaze and unfailing charm.