The Luxe Read Free Page B

embarrassing remnant of childhood.
    She focused again on Percival’s animated, ugly face and tried to keep her feet going one, two, three across the floor. She thought about the evening thus far—all the hours of mindless chatter and carefully accepted compliments, all the studious attention to appearances. She recalled the calculated luxury of her time in Paris. What had she been doing, really doing , all this time? What had he —that boy she had been trying so hard to forget, indeed believed she had forgotten—been doing all that time she was away? She wondered if he had stopped caring for her. Already she could feel the stunning weight of a lifetime of regret for letting him go, and she knew that it was enough to bury her alive.
    All at once the room turned mute and violently bright. She closed her eyes and felt Percival Coddington’s hot breath on her ear asking if she felt all right. Her corset, which her maid, Lina, had practically sewed her into hours earlier, felt suddenly, horribly constricting. Her life, she realized, had allthe charm of a steel trap.
    Then, as quickly as the panic had come, it went. Elizabeth opened her eyes. The sounds of joy and giddy indulgence came rushing back. She glanced up at the great domed ceiling glowing above them and reassured herself that it had not fallen.
    “Yes, Mr. Coddington, thank you for asking,” Elizabeth finally responded. “I’m not sure what came over me.”

Two
    Cloakroom, one o’clock. Bring ciggies.
    —DH

D IANA 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