"Envy" - читать интересную книгу автора (Godbersen Anna)

Two

THE GIDDY PIANO MUSIC FROM THE MAIN FLOOR of Sherry’s Restaurant, on Fifth Avenue and Forty-fifth Street, could be heard even in the ladies’ lounge, and perhaps might even be said to have infected the women there. For they were clambering forward, in that rosy-hued space, toward the mirror, which was etched with metallic curlicues and shrouded in white netting from above, as though by celestial clouds. It was large, but not large enough for all those pink-cheeked beauties in their silks and laces, as they leaned in to blacken their lashes and perfume their décolletages. They had supped on English pheasant and hothouse asparagus, and they had grown drowsy until the coffee arrived. Now they were eager for the next chapter of their evenings, and perhaps none of them so much so as Carolina Broad, who stood in the center pinching her freckled cheeks to bring some warm color there, in a dress of pale but unmistakable gold.

The dress was the gift of Carey Lewis Longhorn, the man often referred to in the papers as the elder statesman of New York bachelors. It brought out the length and slimness of her middle, while disguising her big, bony shoulders with bursts of gold-edged lace, and her almost unladylike clavicles with five choker-length strands of gleaming pearls. Her dark hair was festooned with strands of smaller pearls, and her lichen-colored eyes were set under recently shaped brows. The pride of her face, her bee-stung lips, were painted glossy red. Any of the women surrounding her would have been shocked to hear that she’d once been a maid in service to the kind of girl she now purported to be, or that she had until recently been known by the plain-sounding name Lina Broud.

This was an inconvenient fact of which Longhorn was perfectly aware, and that his young friend did her best to forget. It was easy to forget now, as she swept her skirt, its lacy underskirts foaming upward like a cresting wave, back from the vanity table and moved toward the central dining room. She walked very well, in a manner almost indistinguishable from the way she had walked only a few months ago, and it was at this ladylike gait that she came through the series of small, dimly lit antechambers and stepped into the margins of Sherry’s main dining room. Her figure was shadowed by a second-floor balcony, but she had an excellent view of the vast room, with its columns and posts, its white tablecloths and elaborate flower arrangements, its hustling waiters and pampered debutantes.

Longhorn sat at a prominent table in the middle of the room where the dappled light of the central chandelier shone brightest. When he had dined by himself he had preferred the corners, but once Carolina began accompanying him she had insisted that it was her time to be seen, and he had acquiesced with an easy laugh. He was wearing his customary red velvet smoking jacket and an old-fashioned collar that turned down at its high, white corners and was fastened below the chin with a conspicuous button. His hair had gone gray, though he still had much of it, and despite the wear of a drinking life, which was evidenced in a swollen nose, you could see the good features that had made him so desired as a young man. At his shoulder stood his man, Robert — a constantly hovering, bearded presence — with their capes. Carolina felt a surge of airy anticipation when she realized this, for she knew what those capes signified. It was time to go.

It was not that she did not appreciate the fine china or the champagne cocktails or the elaborate service of her patron’s favorite restaurant. She had enjoyed her many courses (perhaps with a little too much relish, she had realized when she caught Robert looking at her from his post), and being observed by all the other diners, who had lately grown as curious about her as she once was about them. But her whole evening thus far had been building to its second act, in which Longhorn took her to a party at the home of Leland Bouchard, whose name now held a place in her thoughts once reserved for that of Will Keller.

Will had been her first love, but she had known him when she was a child, and it seemed a very childish attachment now. Anyway, Will was dead, and while that was a starkly horrible fact, one had to move on, and when one did one discovered ever more new and wonderful things. For had there ever been a name with a nicer ring than “Leland Bouchard”? It sounded like it was made of money and charm, which it almost surely was. She had met him at a ball around Christmas, and he had asked her to dance again and again. His hands on her waist and wrist had been neither polite nor lecherous. He had gripped her earnestly as they talked of many things. She had never felt so lovely or light before or after that evening, and she often filled her mind with memories of it when she rested her head on her pillow at night. For though she had done her utmost to be near him again, she had not managed to see him. Or rather, she had seen him — once, from Longhorn’s carriage, as he hurried along the street, her heart rattling at the thought that he might turn at just the right moment, and a second time from behind at a ball where she had been too pathetic to go up to him — but he had not seen her. Tonight he was the host, and she was looking her very best; it would be impossible for him not to ask her to dance. Her friend Penelope had promised to introduce them again if he did not — and then he would lead her into a waltz that would draw her across the floor and into his heart forever.

It was with this winsome fantasy that she stepped forward into Sherry’s main room, ready for an evening that she was convinced would come to herald so many new beginnings. She would have crossed straight to Longhorn, and gone on to the front entrance without any need for discussion, but she was stalled by the whisper of fingers on her back. She half turned, with an indifferent semi-smile on her face; when she recognized the person who had touched her, all her pleasant thoughts faded.

“Miss Broad!”

The voice was jocular, but when she returned its owner’s greeting, she found she could not match his tone.

“Oh.” Her gaze shifted over the full tables to Longhorn, who had not yet noticed her there in the shadows. “Hello, Tristan.”

Tristan Wrigley was tall, with wispy light hair and hazel eyes the color of a sunset reflected in muddy waters. Although their acquaintance was still new, he had already hurt and helped her in many ways. He was a department store salesman and a con artist, and he was the first and only man who had ever kissed her. She had been avoiding him, but if this rankled him he did not show it. He was smiling, and a bosomy woman, who wore a garish amount of rouge and foot-high feathers in her hair, was hanging off his arm and grinning entirely too much for the setting.

“This is Mrs. Portia Tilt,” he went on, fixing a steady and intense gaze on Carolina. “She and her husband have just moved from out west. Carolina is from out west, too. She is the heir to a copper-smelting fortune, you know, and she—”

“I’m sure your friend doesn’t require my entire autobiography,” Carolina interrupted coldly. In a moment, she had surmised the whole situation. Mrs. Tilt, having more money than class, had believed Tristan’s implication that he might assist her with getting into society, and he, thus assured of her gullibility, had pressed on for money and trinkets and free meals of all kinds. Mrs. Tilt would learn in time — though she did not look particularly swift at the moment — that one does not get into society by walking arm in arm with a Lord amp; Taylor salesman around one of the best restaurants in Manhattan; Carolina was not such a fool, and she did not intend to make the same mistake. “Goodbye,” she concluded, with a bright smile but without explanation.

“Goodbye,” Mrs. Tilt answered gaily, too thick-witted to realize she had been cut, and then pushed forward. Tristan — still attached to her by the crook of his arm — was pulled along, but he had time to look back and fix Carolina with such a concentrated look that she felt it down into her toes. It was lucky that Mrs. Tilt began guffawing loudly after that, and all eyes turned in the direction she was heading, which allowed Carolina to return to her seat without anybody taking notice.

“Ah, there you are, my dear.” Longhorn smiled at her appreciatively, the way one smiles at a favorite grandchild who has eaten all of the candy one has given her and shortly thereafter requested more. Then she felt the weight of her wrap on her shoulders and allowed herself to be escorted through the many rooms to the front entrance.

Out in the deep purple night it was still, and the lamplight fell in yellowy pools. It was cold, too cold to move, and the coachmen who loitered at the curb were bent, immobile, over their cups of hot cider. The horses were covered in thick blankets, and the breath streaming from their nostrils was visible in the frigid air. Carolina had regained herself after her encounter with Tristan, and she turned to Longhorn now with a look of gratitude. Longhorn knew what she was, but he didn’t know about her shameful involvement with the salesman, or that it had been Tristan’s idea for her to get close to the old bachelor for both their gain. He thought of her as more guileless than all that, and had given her no opportunity to correct the impression. It was a kindness that she felt acutely at that moment.

Since Tristan’s initial suggestion, she had grown truly fond of the older man. She enjoyed his saltiness and carefully observed the confidence and indifference to others’ opinion with which he approached the wider world. And he liked what he termed her “candidness”—in truth, this was nothing more than a lack of knowledge and a dumb willingness to admit that she had much to learn. But they made a good pair, and their time together was always of a high quality.

“What a lovely evening this is turning out to be,” she said sweetly, tucking her bottom lip under her teeth. Her heavy cape was lined with white fur, which framed her face, and embroidered with gold threads along its full sweeping length.

Longhorn smiled at her, and a twinkle — or maybe the light from the restaurant behind them — passed in his eye. Then Robert reappeared, leading the horses that pulled the coach along behind him. He opened the door to the coach and helped Carolina up. He paused to spread a wool blanket over her lap, and then stepped down to the street. He and Longhorn exchanged a few words, and then Longhorn came inside and took the seat beside her, the small door closing with a click behind him.

“It has been a lovely evening.” The horses jerked into motion, and Carolina felt her body drawn forward as Longhorn’s words evaporated into the air. There was something about his tone that she disliked. “Lovely. But I am afraid I had a bit too much of that heavy sauce, and that I have been staying out too late too often with you, my dear. You won’t mind just this once if we go home early? We can have a glass of Madeira in my suite….”

Carolina’s heart puttered and began to sink. Suddenly Leland Bouchard’s house on East Sixty-third — she had passed the address several times, claiming that she wanted to admire the architecture on that block — seemed the only place in the whole city that contained life. Her friend Penelope Schoonmaker was there, no doubt being admired by all the young men, even as she had eyes only for her dashing husband, the bubbles rising in the champagne, the witty phrases too frequent for the laughter ever to cease for very long.

Carolina felt desperate, and wanted to grasp at any possibility, but she couldn’t muster the will to say anything contrary. The coachman had already been given his instructions, and he was pulling them inexorably to the same hotel where, it suddenly seemed to her, they would spend all their nights in an uninterrupted cycle of Madeira and monotony. Her bottom lip trembled with regret, but her companion, whose eyes had already drifted shut, was too fatigued to mark it.