Anna Godbersen - Envy

• Название: Envy
• Автор: Anna Godbersen
• Издательство: HarperCollins
• Жанр: Исторические любовные романы
• Год: 2009

Jealous whispers.

Old rivalries.

New betrayals.

Two months after Elizabeth Holland's dramatic homecoming, Manhattan eagerly awaits her return to the pinnacle of society. When Elizabeth refuses to rejoin her sister Diana's side, however, those watching New York's favorite family begin to suspect that all is not as it seems behind the stately doors of No. 17 Gramercy Park South.

Farther uptown, Henry and Penelope Schoonmaker are the city's most celebrated couple. But despite the glittering diamond ring on Penelope's finger, the newlyweds share little more than scorn for each other. And while the newspapers call Penelope's social-climbing best friend, Carolina Broad, an heiress, her fortune — and her fame — are anything but secure, especially now that one of society's darlings is slipping tales to the eager press.

In this next thrilling installment of Anna Godbersen's bestselling Luxe series, Manhattan's most envied residents appear to have everything they desire: Wealth. Beauty. Happiness. But sometimes the most practiced smiles hide the most scandalous secrets. .

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The volume of her black skirt, with its tiered ruffles below the knee, made her instinctual response to this undetectable: She stamped her foot — twice, silently — against the polished wood floor. All the guests were gone now, and across the room men from Mr. James’s office were moving to wrap up what finery remained and cart it off. Soon all the parties, the whole life Mr. Longhorn lived there, would be scrubbed away. She saw clearly what she had half-consciously feared during her train journey: This game was over. She saw, too, why Mr. James had been so conscientious in seeing her to the graveyard; so that he could have his staff go through her things while she watched, through a black net veil, Mr. Longhorn being lowered into the ground.

“I don’t think this is how he would have wanted it,” she said quietly. It was the truth, though she knew very well that it mattered not at all to the gentleman lawyer.

“Well, if you like, you may come hear the will being read next week. Maybe there will be some special compensation for you. But if you ask me — and I am usually paid quite handsomely for advice of this kind — I’d say you’ve gotten away with quite enough already.”

Carolina left the New Netherland carrying far fewer possessions than she’d arrived with and badly in need of some company. Neither Penelope nor Leland would do, and not only because both were still in Florida. The former was pledged to help her, but she was still not exactly the kind of friend you wanted to show your weaknesses to; and the latter could never know how dependent on Longhorn she had been — she wouldn’t allow that. He knew of course that the old man had looked after her, but she had explained that this was because Longhorn and her father had been great friends, and that she lived off her own inherited income. As she left the hotel and watched her two beaten black trunks loaded into a hansom cab, she couldn’t help but think of the one person in New York who knew perfectly well what she was.

She gave the driver a downtown address and refused to look out the window as they passed out of the charmed avenues and into the dingy old world. Outside it was all hum-drum skyline, a gaggle of disappointing faces, a barrage of bold advertisements trying to convince everyday New Yorkers that their lives really would be different if they bought some cheap hair product or other that she now knew to be beneath her. There was no answer when she rang the bell on that faraway street, which she had visited only once before, and so she paid the driver a little extra out of her dwindling cash, and sat waiting in the seat with her black silk ladies’ top hat tipped forward over her profile.

They had taken many of her gowns away and most of the jewels, although there were a few items that fit her so perfectly that even sour Mr. James saw no point in stealing them. She still had her pride and her name, she told herself as she bent forward over the hard seat — however serendipitously come by, it was hers now. But even that small gift seemed to diminish as she waited and waited on the cobblestone street. The driver was growing impatient, she knew, and she wondered if maybe it wasn’t time to move on, when the face appeared in the glass.

“Miss Carolina Broad!” he said, as though there were no one he would rather have happened upon. Her face turned hopelessly to sunshine. She couldn’t wait, as she knew a real lady would, for the driver to come around and open the door for her. Already her gloved fingers were pressing down on the handle and she was spilling out onto the street.

“Tristan!” she cried as she threw her arms around his neck. “And to what do I owe this honor?” he asked, as he pried her away just enough to get a look at her.

“Oh, Tristan, it’s the most terrible…” she began. Now that she was with someone who’d always looked at her with such gilded intention and given so freely of his advice, she believed she might be able to let her guard down. Even though the air was still biting — Tristan’s neck was protected by a thick, brown scarf — she began to feel a little warm. She wanted to show him all the sadness and anxiety and indignity of the day, and was grateful to him for even small things, like the fact that he knew her name.

“Will you come up for some tea?” he interrupted, after a good deal of babbling on her part.

Carolina let her sage-colored eyes roll ashamedly to the ground. “I have a few bags…” she said in a more tentative tone than before. The last time she’d been without a home, she had felt stupid and cloddy. She was only a little surprised that this time she was able to wear her distress like loveliness, and she imagined that she must be as delicate and fine as some rose petal veined with color that has just been picked off by the breeze.

Tristan’s body was lean and strong, and he moved with assurance and purpose. She couldn’t help but take a little pleasure in the fact that he was now instructing the driver to help him with her bags, and leading them up the narrow wood floors to the small flat he kept. It seemed neater and more welcoming this time, and when she felt the strong blast of the radiator she realized how cold she had been.

Tristan tipped the driver and gave Carolina a devilish smile as he took her coat from her. She had meant to mention, somewhere in all this, that she had met Leland Bouchard and was in love with him. But she hadn’t done so by the time he put on the water and poured her a spot of brandy to warm her up. Then it felt too late, and anyway, the natural thing to do when he turned and gave her well-fitting black silk dress an appreciative look was to lean forward, put her hand into his wayward blond hair, and press her lips against his.

Thirty

My Di—

I am thinking of you always,

and when we’ll be together.

How soon that will be.

But in the meantime, keep your

wits about you, and act like

everything is normal.

Love,

H

THE WATER WAS FINE, THOUGH DIANA WASN’T, AND she swam out without looking back. The women in hats and stockings clinging to the rope that extended out to sea took no notice of her, and went on shrieking as though the ocean contained some perpetual surprise. For Diana, there were no surprises — the ocean went up and down, it carried you in and out. She felt soothed, a little, by the repetitious rocking, although she had an almost inexhaustible need for solace just then, which no act of nature could fulfill. Three days had passed since she had seen Henry on the balcony with his wife, and she had kept quiet since then, and thrown all of Henry’s notes into the waves. It had been an awful thing to lose Henry the first time, to matrimony, but to discover what a false front he was capable of was another kind of blow, and it had left her almost speechless. Then there was the fury with herself — for she had known what Henry’s love was, and still she had gone back to suffer a little more at his hands.

She floated on her back and paddled aimlessly, and the shouting from shore grew indistinct. The beach cabanas and umbrellas were far away, and the hotel, with its place settings and carpets and lawn games and bicycles, farther still. Grayson was sitting in the sand, waiting beside her wicker chair, but he wasn’t in much of a mood for high excitement, either. He followed her dutifully, but some of the recklessness had left him, and he seemed to have run out of things to say. Whenever she turned to him she was met only by great, sad, yearning eyes. Meanwhile, Henry seemed to believe everything was as it had been between them, and she was playing along with his game. Diana had directed whole scenes in her head, imagining what it would be like to confront Henry, and all the witty, devastating insults she would hurl at him. But another part of her wondered if she would have the chance. Perhaps he would go on sending her little notes forever, never noticing how hard her heart was to him, and the only difference would be that they would have returned to New York and she would have to put them in the fire.

Meanwhile, she’d grown trusting of the ocean, and in the midst of her contemplations a wave picked her up and then buried her under its arm. She had to swim hard to get back to the surface, and when she did she shook the water and the bright sun from her eyes. She kicked to keep her head up and pushed the hair back from her face. Then she blinked, trying to see in the light again, and realized that Henry was bobbing a few feet away from her. His eyes were attentive, and his sharp shoulders just emerged from the water.

“Are you all right?” he said, paddling toward her. But there was a smile secreted in his concern, and she knew he was proud of having found her like this. “Say, nice spot you found here.”

“I’m fine.” She gave him a steady, unkind look, and began to swim away.

“Diana, I think I’ve realized something about — what’s wrong?”

“Are you asking what’s wrong with me?”

“Yes….” He paddled toward her. “You seem…”

For a moment, it was too vast and terrible to put into words, but she felt another wave come on, and this saved her from any silence or outburst. She ducked under it and held her breath, and when she came back up she looked for Henry. She was ready to get out of the water, and as soon as she told him where things stood, she could.

She spun around, and when her sun-spotted vision settled on the place where Henry surfaced, she said, “I saw you.”

“You saw me swimming out to find you?” he asked. Then he looked over his shoulder, as though he feared some other witness.

Diana’s legs and arms worked to keep her afloat, and she breathed in gulps. “I saw you and Penelope on the terrace of your suite, and so I know that all those stories you told me about there being no love between you, and all the lies about leaving her, were just as false as every sweet song you ever sang me.”

A few seconds passed before Henry appeared to comprehend what she’d said, and then he cried out, “No!” He swam closer to her and tried to reach for her arms, but she floundered away. His fingertips grazed her skin, and she sensed a kind of desperation in them. “You don’t understand what you saw. I mean that it’s not what it seemed. I am going to leave her, I told her—”

“There’s nothing between us anymore, Henry.” This line had occurred to Diana in the hour after she realized his deception, and she had thought it to herself and even whispered it in the mirror hundreds of times since. She had no idea how she would wince when she finally had to say it to him, and she was relieved to feel the water swell under her with the current. “We’re quite done,” she added, as though that finalized things.

In the next moment another wave crashed over them, and it sent her wheeling head over heels back toward shore. She didn’t fight this one. She let it drag her in. When she could feel the sand below her, she stuck her feet in, and then she began staggering out of the water. She was unsteady at first, but she kept on bravely and didn’t look back.

Thirty One

My spy at the Royal Poinciana, where many of our brightest New Yorkers have been enjoying the sun, has gone silent. The last note informed that Diana Holland has been paid much attention by her sister’s former fiancé’s new wife’s brother, and that the young lady would seem to be blushingly returning his affections….

— FROM THE “GAMESOME GALLANT” COLUMN IN THE NEW YORK IMPERIAL, WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 1900

IT WAS THE HOUR WHEN THE WOMEN WENT UP TO their rooms to dress for dinner and the sky went from tedious blue to a kind of fireworks. All along the wide veranda of the hotel, fathers and husbands and brothers drank afternoon cocktails and reclined in the large rattan chairs in the fading orange and purple light. They folded newspapers across their knees and accepted telegrams on silver trays. They smoked cigars and talked about the golfing and the hunting and the driving they had done that day and, in lower tones, how the markets back in town were doing. Down on the far end, leaning against the white wood railing so that he would be least seen, Henry was trying to get drunk in a hurry all by himself.

There was little else for him to enjoy. Days had gone by in Florida, each one like the last. He was formal with his wife in public, and avoided being with her in private. He watched Diana laugh with Grayson Hayes and go off to the beach with him after breakfast. Now he knew she no longer hoped for him, and he felt the full idiotic weight of his many missteps. He had known that morning, after having been with Penelope, that he was a fool, but until a few hours ago he’d believed that Diana would never find out about it. Moreover, he’d seen that look on Penelope’s face when he’d called her bluff — she could no longer ruin Diana as she’d once threatened. Her own reputation was too much at stake. But that was a precious insight that he couldn’t use now. It was useless to him, just like every other pointless thing in the whole pointless world.

He had taken for granted his own smoothness and taste, his ability to discriminate and have his pick. It was an unhappy realization that when something mattered, when he actually cared, he was a hopeless boor tripping over himself and destroying everything in his path. That morning, before Diana had told him how much was changed in her, it hadn’t been so bad to see her in Grayson’s company. But he’d made the mistake of reading the society columns over one of the other gentlemen’s shoulders, and it had confirmed his worst fears.

“Henry!”

Even the sound of his own name irritated him, although he did glance up dutifully in time to see Teddy approaching over the rim of his julep. Teddy was already wearing his dinner jacket, and, unlike Henry’s, his tie was neatly in place. Henry was wearing a dress shirt of fine Italian linen, although he had forgotten his cuff links and left the top two buttons undone. He sipped from his glass and grimaced a little, even though there was no one else whose intrusion he could have tolerated at that moment.

“Henry,” Teddy said again, when he had crossed the thick boards of the porch and reached his friend’s chosen column. “Where have you been hiding?”

Henry shifted his black eyes away from the Coconut Grove, where a few women who had completed their post-tea transformation were strolling with men they thought were in love with them. There were a lot of flounces and parasols being twirled idly, and he couldn’t stand any of it. “I wasn’t hiding — I just haven’t had the stomach for the party anymore.”

“I know just what you mean,” Teddy replied.

“I doubt that,” Henry said darkly. He was being ridiculous, he knew, but Teddy had long suffered Henry’s silly behavior, and that was too old a habit to change now. He didn’t, anyway, seem to mind too much.

A waiter appeared, and Teddy gestured at Henry’s drink. “Two more, please.”