"The Luxe" - читать интересную книгу автора (Godbersen Anna)

Two

DIANA HOLLAND SAW HER MOTHER ASCEND THE twisting marble staircase on the far side of the ballroom, supported by some big older fellow whom she felt sure she knew. Their family friend and accountant, Stanley Brennan, trailed behind. Just before they moved out of view and toward some surely lavish second-story smoking room, Mrs. Holland looked back, caught Diana’s eye, and gave her an admonishing glance. Diana cursed herself for being spotted and then briefly considered staying in the great central ballroom to wait patiently for one of her cousins to ask her to dance. But patience was not in Diana Holland’s nature.

Besides, she had been so proud of her cunning in writing the little invitation during a freshening-up in the ladies’ dressing room earlier in the evening. She’d then slipped it to the architect Webster Youngham’s assistant, who was stationed near the arched entryway in order to explain the many architectural references that had been incorporated into the Hayes family’s new home. She had pushed her way through the crowd, curtsied, clasped his hand, and palmed him the note. “You truly are an artist, Mr. Youngham,” she’d said, knowing full well that Mr. Youngham was already drunk on Madeira and lounging in one of the card rooms upstairs.

“But I’m not Mr. Youngham,” he told her, looking adorably confused. As soon as she saw that look, Diana knew she’d hooked him. “I’m James Haverton, his assistant.”

“Nevertheless.” She winked before disappearing back into the crowd. Haverton had broad shoulders and dreamy gray eyes, and even if he was just an assistant, he seemed like somebody who had gone places and done things. She hadn’t seen anyone nearly so nice-looking in the intervening hour.

So Diana picked up her skirt and moved quickly between the enormous planters and the wall. She looked behind her once before leaving the ballroom to make sure no one was watching and then slipped into the cloakroom. It was massive and overly ornamented, Diana thought, especially for a room that was chiefly occupied by coats. It didn’t matter to them that the room was Moorish-themed, with a colorful mosaic floor and antiquities displayed in the turret-shaped alcoves carved from the walls.

Diana looked around her, trying to locate her French lieutenant’s coat. She had come dressed as the heroine of her favorite novel, Trilby, who appears for the first time on a break from her job as an artist’s model in a petticoat and slippers and a soldier’s coat. Diana had not been allowed to wear a petticoat without a skirt, but she felt the thrill of having gotten away with something just wearing the rest of the costume at all. Her mother had even had a shepherdess costume made for her so that she would match her older sister, Elizabeth, which would have been hideous in addition to humiliating. Instead, here she was in a satisfyingly bohemian red-and-white striped skirt and a simple cotton bodice that she had ripped in a few places on the sly. No one got it, of course all the other girls Diana’s age were conformists at heart and seemed to have dressed up as themselves, only with more powder and artificially narrowed waists.

She was just beginning to wonder if one of the servants hadn’t mistaken her perfectly shabby gray coat for her own, when she was startled by one single clang from the clock in the corner. She gasped, surprised, and stepped backward a little unsteadily after all the champagne she’d been sneaking and when she did, she felt the chest of a man and a pair of hands on her hips. Her whole body flushed with adrenaline.

“Oh, hello.” She tried to make her voice flat and indifferent, even though this was by far the most exciting thing that had happened to her all evening.

“Hello.” Haverton’s mouth was very close to her ear.

Diana turned slowly and met his eyes. “I hope you brought cigarettes,” she said, trying not to smile too much.

Haverton had short, straight eyebrows set far apart, which made his eyes look open and earnest. “I didn’t think ladies of your class were allowed to smoke.”

Diana affected a pout. “So you didn’t bring ciggies?”

He paused, his eyes lingering on her in a way that made her feel not at all like a lady. “Oh no, I brought them. It’s just that I’m not sure whether I should give you one or not….” Diana noticed a little mischief shining in his eye, and concluded that it must be the glimmer of a kindred spirit.

“What do I have to do to convince you?” she asked, turning her head jauntily.

“This is serious, what you are asking me to do,” he replied with an air of put-on gravity. Then he laughed. Diana liked the sound of it. “You’re pretty,” he told her, smiling unabashedly now.

Diana and her sister could not have shared more physical characteristics and looked less alike. Like Elizabeth, she had the small features and round mouth of the Holland women, although she still had the softness of her baby fat. She liked to think that her dark hair added a certain mystery, although it was in truth a sort of medium brown, and untamable. Her eyes were always being described as vivid. And of course she and her sister had the same chin their mother’s. She hated her chin. “Oh, I’m all right,” she answered him, glowing with false modesty.

“Much better than all right.” He continued to observe her as he pulled a cigarette case out of his breast pocket. He lit one and handed it to her.

Diana took a drag and tried not to cough. She loved smoking or at least the idea of smoking but it was hard to practice doing it right with her mother and the staff always watching her. She was pulling it off, though at least she thought she was exhaling little puffs into the air. It felt right, especially with all the metallic and turquoise detail in the room suggesting some hazy, far-off locale. She raised an eyebrow, wondering how Haverton was going to make his move. “So, if you’re an architect, does that make you an artist?”

“Depends whom you ask,” he replied lightly. “Some of us like to think that we make the most monumental and lasting kind of art.”

“That’s very nice,” Diana said blithely. “Because you see, I have been trying to find a real artist all night.”

“Whatever for?” he asked, leaning into the coats and putting his cigarette to his mouth.

“Well, to kiss, of course.” Diana drew her breath in after she spoke. Even she was occasionally surprised by the audacious things that came out of her mouth.

Haverton exhaled thoughtfully, the smoky sweet smell of tobacco surrounding them. For a moment, Diana felt like she could have been a million miles off in a tent hidden away in some souk in Tunis or Marrakech, arranging for secret deals in magic powders.

“It occurs to me,” Haverton started, the hard edges of his American voice reminding her that she was still in New York, on a street as familiar as Fifth Avenue, no less, “that you are being a very naughty girl.”

“You think so?” Diana asked, dragging on her cigarette amusedly. She, too, sank into the soft wall of coats, moving a little closer to Haverton.

“Well, how often do young ladies of your class meet strange older men in oversize closets, with all of society a few heartbeats away?”

“What makes you think there is any comparison between me and the girls of my class?” Diana pronounced the last two words in disgust. The girls of her class were slaves to rules, going about life if you could call it that like bloodless mannequins. “I told you I was looking for an artist,” she went on impatiently. “So if you’re going to go on thinking conventionally and just like everybody else, I may as well leave.”

Haverton smiled and dropped his cigarette onto the black-and-white marble-tiled floor. He stepped on it before shooing it to the corner with his toe. He looked very old to Diana all of a sudden, even though he couldn’t have been more than twenty. Then he was moving toward her fast. As soon as their lips touched, she knew there wasn’t going to be any magic. This was not the heart-stopping touch that she had been waiting for all evening, and it didn’t help especially that his style of kissing was akin to mashing one face against another. Her whole body went slack with the disappointment.

Diana kissed him back, just to make sure her instinct was correct, but she had been kissed before, and she knew what it felt like when it was good. Haverton ranked far below Amos Vreewold, whom she had kissed several times in Saratoga over the summer, and only slightly better than her first kiss, at age thirteen, which had been so acrid an affair that she had banished the boy’s identity from even her own memory. Diana was finally accepting the fact that James Haverton, architect’s assistant, was not the kind of artist she was looking for when the door creaked and a foot sounded at the threshold.

“Miss Diana?” said a male voice, more hurt than shocked.

Diana felt Haverton’s grip tighten momentarily as they turned toward the door. Diana recognized Stanley Brennan’s long, tired face immediately. He was only twenty-six he had taken over from his father as Mr. Holland’s accountant but his constant anxiety gave him a prematurely aged appearance.

“Your mother. She sent me to check on you…” he said haltingly. “To make sure you weren’t getting into trouble.”

Haverton let go of Diana’s waist and stepped back. He didn’t look especially pleased by Brennan’s entrance, but he kept quiet. Diana felt freer almost instantly, rejoicing as she was in having Haverton’s rough chin off her face.

“Thank you, Brennan,” she said. “Would you like to accompany me back to the ballroom?”

Brennan stepped forward cautiously, reaching toward the rips that Diana had put in her costume. They had widened during the poor excuse for a tryst.

“Oh, stop, it’s fine.” She lifted her arm for him to take. Then she turned to Haverton. “Thank you for explaining the Islamic references in the Richmond Hayeses’ coatroom to me. I will remember it always.”

She looked back once, and imagined that the grimace on Haverton’s face was the beginning of his life as a lonely man broken by disappointments. It was her fate to leave such casualties in her wake, she thought as she and Brennan exited and walked in the direction of the main ballroom.

“I won’t tell your mother,” Brennan whispered as their shoes shuffled along the gleaming marble corridor. “Though I feel, as your late father’s friend, that I should remind you that that kind of behavior could be your ruin.”

“I’m not afraid,” Diana said gaily.

“You’re like my little sister almost, and it is my responsibility to look after you. Your mother thinks so, anyway.” He stopped walking, as if to convey his seriousness. “If she found out what you had been up to and that I knew about it, that would be the end of both of us.”

“Well, that is very true.” Diana paused next to him. They could already hear the shouting and music from the ballroom, and in a moment they would be swept back under the bright lights. Diana turned the corners of her mouth down in a fake pout, even while her eyes shone with flirtation. “But would that really be so bad?”

Then she laughed, grabbed Brennan’s hand, and pulled him back into the center of things. She was searching for an inexpressible something, and she wasn’t about to let one sour little kiss slow her down.