The Luxe Read Free

betrayed any emotion. “You would not be so complaining if your father were here.”
    The mention of Mr. Holland caused Elizabeth’s eyes to well, and she felt herself softening to her mother’s cause.
    “I’m sorry,” Elizabeth answered, trying to keep her voice level. She felt the dryness in her throat that always preceded tears and willed them away. “It’s just that I wonder if the accomplished Mr. Coddington will even remember me when Ihave been so long away.”
    Mrs. Holland sniffed as the Misses Wetmore, who were one and three years older than Elizabeth, passed. “Of course he remembers you. Especially when the alternative is girls like them . They look as if they were dressed by the circus,” Mrs. Holland commented coldly.
    Elizabeth was trying to think of something nice to say about Percival Coddington, and missed what her mother said next. Something about someone being vulgar. Just as her mother pronounced the word, Elizabeth noticed her friend Penelope Hayes on the second-floor mezzanine. Penelope was wearing a ruffled, poppy-colored gown with a low bodice, and Elizabeth couldn’t help but feel a little proud to see her friend looking so stunning.
    “I shouldn’t even have dignified this ball with my presence,” Mrs. Holland went on. There was a time when she would not have so much as called on the upstart Hayes women, despite her husband’s having accepted a hunting invitation from Jackson Pelham Hayes once or twice, but society’s opinion had moved on without her and she had recently begun acknowledging them. “The papers will report that I condone this sort of tacky display, and you know what a headache that will give me.”
    “But you know it would have been a bigger scandal if we hadn’t come.” Elizabeth extended her long, slender neckand gave her friend up above a subtle, knowing smile. How she wished she were with her instead, laughing at the poor girl whose bad luck had forced her to dance with Percival Coddington. Penelope, gazing down, let one darkly made-up eyelid fall—her signature slow, smoldering wink—and Elizabeth knew that she was understood. “And anyway,” Elizabeth added, turning back to her mother, “you know you never read the papers.”
    “Right,” her mother agreed. “I don’t.” Then she jutted the one feature she shared with her daughter—a small, dimpled nub of a chin—as Elizabeth offered the subtlest shrug to her best friend on the mezzanine.
    They had become friends during that period in her early teens when Elizabeth was most interested in what it meant to be a young lady of fashion. Penelope had shared that interest, though she was ignorant of the rules of the society she so deeply wished to be a part of. Elizabeth, who was only just beginning to care about all those rules, had cultivated her as a friend anyway. She had quickly discovered that she liked being around Penelope—everything seemed sharper and fizzier in the company of the young Miss Hayes. And soon enough Penelope had become a deft player of society’s games; Elizabeth could think of no one better to have at her side during an evening’s entertainment.
    “Oh, look!” Mrs. Holland’s voice rang out sharply, bringing Elizabeth’s focus back to the ballroom floor. “Hereis Mr. Coddington!”
    Elizabeth put on a smile and turned to the inevitable fact of Percival Coddington. He attempted a bowlike gesture, his glance darting across the low-cut square of her bodice. Her heart sank as she realized that he was dressed as a shepherd, in green jodhpurs, rustic boots, and colorful suspenders. They matched . His hair was slicked back and long at the neck, and he breathed audibly through his mouth as Elizabeth waited for him to ask her to dance.
    A moment passed, and then her mother singsonged, “Well, Mr. Coddington, I have brought her to you.”
    “Thank you,” he coughed out. Elizabeth could feel his eyes lingering on her uncomfortably, but she kept herself upright and smiling. She was,