“And don’t fidget,” Bathilda added.
The dining room at La Fiorentina was excessively bright, closed in behind windows that had steamed opaque with the vapors of hot food and exhalation. Yellow light glanced and spiked from glass and jewelry and polished metal. The winter had been long and hard, and now, just as spring had seemed poised to flourish with a tantalizing week of bird song, crocuses and a green haze on the park trees, a long spell of cold rain had settled over New York City.
Caroline caught her reflection in several mirrors relayed around the room, her every move amplified. Unsettled by such scrutiny, she blushed more deeply. “I do listen to you, Aunt. I have always listened to you.”
“You listened to me in the past because you had to, as I understand it. Now, as soon as you perceive yourself old enough, you disregard me entirely. In the most important decision you will ever make, at this most crucial juncture, you ignore me. Well, I am only glad my poor dear brother is not alive to see how I have failed his only child.” Bathilda heaved a martyr’s sigh.
“You have not failed, Aunt,” Caroline murmured, reluctantly.
A waiter cleared their empty plates, brought them sweet white wine, to replace the red, and the pastry trolley. Bathilda sipped, her lips leaving a greasy smudge on the gilt rim of the glass, and then chose a cream-filled éclair, cut a large piece and widened her mouth to accommodate it. The floury flesh of her chin folded over her lace collar. Caroline watched her with distaste and felt her throat constrict.
“You have never made me feel dear to you,” Caroline murmured, so softly that the words were lost beneath the throng of voices and eating, drinking, chewing, swallowing. Smells of roast meat and curried soup clung to the air.
“Don’t mumble, Caroline.” Bathilda finished the éclair and dabbed cream from the corners of her mouth. Not long. Not much longer, Caroline told herself. Her aunt was a fortress, she thought, angrily. Balustrades of manners and wealth around a space inside-a space most commonly filled with rich food and sherry. Certainly there was no heart there, no love, no warmth. Caroline felt a flare of defiance.
“Mr. Massey is a good man, his family is respectable-” she began to say, adopting a tone of calm reason.
“The man’s morals are irrelevant. Corin Massey will make you a common drudge. He will not make you happy,” Bathilda interrupted. “How could he? He is beneath you. He is far beneath you, in fortune and in manners-in every station of life.”
“You’ve barely even met him!” Caroline cried. Bathilda shot her a censorious look.
“May I remind you that you, also, have barely even met him? You may be eighteen now, you may be independent from me, but have I earned no respect in raising you? In keeping you and teaching you-”
“You have kept me with the money my parents left. You have done your duty,” Caroline said, a touch bitterly.
“Don’t interrupt me, Caroline. Our name is a good one and would have stood you in good stead here in New York. And yet you choose to wed a… farmer. And move away from everything and everyone you know to live in the middle of nowhere. I have indeed failed, that much is clear. I have failed to instill respect and good sense and propriety in you, in spite of all my efforts.”
“But I don’t know anybody here, Aunt. Not really. I know only you,” Caroline said, sadly. “And Corin is not a farmer. He’s a cattle rancher, a most successful one. His business-”
“His business? His business should have stayed in the wilderness and not found its way here to prey upon impressionable young girls.”
“I have money enough.” Caroline tipped her chin defiantly. “We will not be poor.”
“Not yet, you don’t. Not for another two years. We’ll see how well you like living on a farmer’s income until then. And we’ll see how long your wealth lasts once he has his hands upon it and finds his way to the gaming tables!”
“Don’t say such things. He is a good man. And he loves me, and… and I love him,” Caroline declared, adamantly. He loved her. She let this thought pour through her and could not keep from smiling.
When Corin had proposed to Caroline, he had said that he’d loved her from the first moment of their meeting, which was at a ball a month previously-the Montgomery’s ball to mark the beginning of Lent. Since her debut, Caroline had envied the enjoyment that other girls seemed to derive from such functions. They danced and they laughed and they chatted with ease. Caroline, when forced to enter the room with Bathilda, found herself always at a disadvantage, always afraid to speak in case she caused her aunt to correct her, or to scold. Corin had changed all that.
Caroline chose her fawn silk gown and her mother’s emeralds for the Montgomery’s ball. The necklace was cool and heavy around her neck. It covered the slender expanse of her décolletage with a glow of gold and a deep glitter that sparked light in her gray eyes.
“You look like an empress, miss,” Sara said admiringly, as she brushed out Caroline’s fair hair, pinned it into a high chignon on her crown and braced one foot on the stool to pull up the laces of her corset. Caroline’s waist was a source of envy to her peers, and Sara always took careful pains to pull it in as far as she could. “No man in the room will be able to resist you.”
“Do you think so?” Caroline asked, breathlessly. Sara, with her dark hair and her ready smile, was the closest thing Caroline had to a true friend. “I fear that they will be able to resist my aunt, however,” she sighed. Bathilda had seen off more than one cautious suitor; young men she deemed unworthy.
“Your aunt has high hopes for you, miss, that’s all. Of course she cares a great deal who you will marry,” Sara soothed her.
“At this rate, I will marry nobody at all, and will stay forever here listening to her disappointment in me!”
“Nonsense! The right one will come along and he will win your aunt over, if that is what he must do to have you. Just look at you, miss! You will bedazzle them, I know it,” Sara smiled. Caroline met Sara’s eye in the mirror. She reached over her shoulder and grasped the girl’s fingers, squeezing them for courage. “There now. All will be well,” Sara assured her, crossing to the dresser for face powder and rouge.
Caroline, every scant inch the demure, immaculate society girl, descended the wide staircase into the incandescence of the Montgomery’s ballroom. The room was alight with precious stones and laughter; ripe with the fragrance of wine and perfumed hair pomade. Gossip and smiles rippled around the room, passing like Chinese whispers; alternately friendly, amused, and vicious. Caroline saw her dress appraised, her aunt derided, her jewels admired, frank glances cast over her, and comments passed in low voices behind delicate fingers and tortoiseshell cigarette holders. She spoke little, just enough to be polite, and this at least was a trait her aunt had always approved of. She smiled and applauded with the rest when Harold Montgomery performed his party piece: the messy cascading of a champagne magnum into a pyramid of glasses. It always splashed and overflowed, wetting the stems which then stained the ladies’ gloves.
The room was stuffy and hot. Caroline stood up straight, sipping sour wine that lightened her head and feeling sweat prickle beneath her arms. Fires blazed in every grate and light poured from hundreds of electric candles in the chandeliers, so bright that she could see red pigment from Bathilda’s lips seeping into the creases around her mouth. But then Corin appeared in front of them and she barely heard Charlie Montgomery’s introduction because she was captured by the newcomer’s frank gaze and the warmth of him; and when she blushed he did too, and he fumbled his first words to her, saying, “Hello, how are you?” as though they were two odd fellows meeting over a game of whist. He grasped her hand in its embroidered glove as if to shake it, realized his mistake and dropped it abruptly, letting it fall limply into her skirts. At this she blushed more, and dared not look at Bathilda, who was giving the young man a most severe look. “Sorry, miss… I, uh… won’t you excuse me?” he mumbled, inclining his head to them and disappearing into the crowd.