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

Sixteen

“ARE YOU ENJOYING YOURSELF, MISS HOLLAND?”

Diana looked up from the oyster-colored sofa on which she had arranged herself and into the eyes of Teddy Cutting. Her elbow rested high on one of the three mahogany crests of the piece of furniture’s arched back, and her milky skin glowed in the rose-colored light emanating from a nearby lamp. The walls of the room were a deep plum, and the mood was that of the pleasurable sleepiness that always follows a long meal. Diana, cinched into ivory chiffon, looked very bright in the dark room and low light. Her dress collected in many folds to a V-shaped point both at its neckline and in the back and her skirt overflowed the seat. She was lovely, as everybody at the Ralph Darrolls’ small dinner party had noticed, but she knew this was of no particular interest to Teddy. He had mentioned her sister seven times over as many courses.

“Very much,” she answered with a flirtatious smile; she had not given up her goal of appearing beautiful to the man she couldn’t help but consider Henry’s proxy. It was like some wound that she could not help but pluck at.

“I’m glad — may I sit with you?”

“Yes.” Diana was in fact genuinely glad for Teddy’s company. Though his presence held no romance at all for her, she had discovered that evening that she did like him. There was something in his sincere gray eyes that suggested a vast sadness and sense of guilt for the absurd good fortunes of his life. This was not a sentiment Diana shared — she could not stop herself from feeling unlucky — but she found it interesting. “Your sister’s home is very fine,” she went on.

Florence Cutting, Teddy’s oldest sister, had become Mrs. Darroll only a month ago. She was currently sitting near the fire talking to a man who was not her husband and looking rather larger than she had at her wedding.

“That is not the kind of conversation the Diana Holland I know makes.” Teddy smiled. “But yes, it is very fine. Of course, it was my uncle’s house before, and he gave it to them at the wedding, furniture and all, so I can’t say Mrs. Darroll has had to do much.”

“Still, I’m sure she’s given it her own touches. She looks beautiful — you can still see it even under all that jacquard. I suppose you will be an uncle in under half a year?”

“Ah, that is the Diana I remember,” Teddy replied, now disguising his smile with a sip from his snifter. “But I am not going to respond to such a supposition.”

“Tell me how Henry is, then.” The pain and pleasure of saying his name out loud were almost equally intense.

Teddy’s smile faded, and he looked at her with the same concern he had shown when they’d discussed her mother’s grief over dessert. A lamp with a hand-painted porcelain shade lit up his blond hair from behind, casting shadows under his facial features. “I saw him this afternoon.”

“And he is well?”

“He doesn’t seem terribly happy,” Teddy answered stiffly.

“I imagine you mean he takes my sister’s passing harder than I do?”

“He takes it hard,” Teddy said, looking at her and then looking away. “Though I’m sure it cannot be as difficult for him as it has been for you.”

“No.” Diana paused and placed her hands in her lap. She decided that she might as well ask the questions that came into her head, since the worst Teddy could do in response was not answer them. Still, she had to summon some courage to say, “What was he doing?” and even so her voice came across a little plaintive.

“We raced four-in-hands in the park. I won, which is rare, and leads me to conclude that his thoughts may have been elsewhere.” Teddy stared into his drink and related these facts in a businesslike tone. “Before that, he was in his stepmother’s drawing room — she receives on Mondays, you know.”

“Who doesn’t know?” Diana tried to smile, but she was aware that this must have appeared little more than the mechanical lifting of her upper lip. “Were there many people there?”

“Yes.”

Across the room, gowns shifted and light played against china teacups and crystal glasses. There was laughter of the faint, urbane variety, and the crackle of a large fire. “Who, I wonder?”

“Oh, that painter Bradley and one of the fashionable Vanderbilt women and—”

“Penelope Hayes?”

No one in the room was paying attention to their little corner, and even if they had been, Diana felt herself completely absorbed, half out of dread, in the conversation. Teddy sipped from his drink, but that was as long a pause as he could conjure. “Yes, she was there.”

A mute anger came over Diana as she received this information. Of course Penelope had been there. Elizabeth had warned her to watch out for Penelope, but she had been passive, believing all the time that Henry’s love for her was true and lasting. She had been hot and instinctual — she had forgotten that all the while Penelope would be looking out for her own desires, just as she had when she drove Diana’s sister out of town. When she changed the subject, she was unable to thoroughly disguise the bitterness in her voice. “I wonder if you mentioned that you would be seeing me?”

“No,” Teddy replied in a kind tone, “it never came up.”

She nodded and tried not to feel disappointed by the news that Henry had not been talking of her.

“But Teddy, I know so little of you…” Diana went on, summoning all of her resources for one brave smile and a comment that she hoped would save her the struggle of talking any more. Teddy returned it and then went on to tell her about the poetry he used to read at Columbia College, from which he had graduated in the spring, and how he planned to be a lawyer and work for a living, even though he was supposed to inherit so much from his father. Diana half listened and nodded along. She watched the gentlemen in tails come in and out of doorways and greet the ladies who grew rosy sitting in their tufted corner chairs.

She tried to keep Teddy talking, and when it was necessary, to answer his comments in monosyllables. Anything more would have revealed how weak she felt again, how rent in two she was. At any moment, she feared, her chin might begin to tremble like a little girl’s. She had been a fool, she now knew. She had believed that Henry’s love was simply hers and that she didn’t have to do anything for it, when in fact all the young unmarried girls were ruthlessly advancing across the chessboard of Manhattan to make him theirs. One of those girls was Penelope Hayes, whom her sister had specifically warned her about, and who was well known to be the queen.