There was a party the following night. There was always a party, she would learn. He invited her, and when she accepted, he asked where he might claim her on the evening in question.
“Why, right here, of course!” she answered. “Won’t you want a cup before a long night out? Unless,” she added, “you don’t think it’s going to be a very long night.”
He assured her that it was. And when he came to pick her up in his two-horse carriage the next evening, she found that he wasn’t wrong.
If he noticed that she was wearing the same green dress as on the day before, he made no comment about it. She would come to learn that his sort never did.
It took her only three more parties before she found someone to buy her another dress. His name was Coulter, and he was friendly with Monsieur Jacques Doucet himself. Surely she’d appreciate a little something from his shop? Her collection of gowns grew in direct proportion with her collection of gentleman admirers. A silk baron, a minor aristocrat of the old order, a German banker who found himself frequently in Paris at the House of Lazard. None needed any prompting to send her a little something.
Her mother was her only female companion in that first year. The women of Paris society were competitive, and they could smell a rat, even when their brothers and husbands and fathers could not. But what were they to do except to exclude Agnes from their teas? To gossip about her incessantly? To keep her name on their lips in snide and disparaging tones?
She returned nightly to her mother, who’d given her everything and who’d received nothing, yet, in return.
If the social intrigue stung on occasion, the pain was easily balmed by the singing. Agnes made her debut during a party at Thomas Hentsch’s mansion. The crowd was more than receptive and her name was passed around. First she sang at parties, and then an offer came to sing at the Théatre du Chatelet. When she closed her eyes mid-song, when she felt the air in her throat and the rapt audience before her, it was everything she’d ever imagined. If she could ignore the circumstances of her arrival, she was at home.
People said that Agnes could bring even the most stoic of audiences to tears with her voice. If that was true, it was because she knew of what she sang.
After a year the Huntingtons decamped for London. Agnes used the reputation she’d built up in Paris to arrive fully formed across the Channel. And this time, her mother “arrived” to meet her from California. They had enough money, at this point, for even Fannie to acquire the accoutrements of society. The West End theater owners clamored to book Agnes before she’d even arrived. She and Fannie passed a few successful years there. The Earl of Harewood had taken a fancy to her. She’d taken a lovely sail with the Duke of Fife. And then back to Paris, where she was hailed as a returning champion.
After touring Europe, Agnes returned to Boston at the age of twenty-one as the toast of the Continent. She was welcomed with open arms into the opera houses and parlor rooms of the Back Bay, rooms that she would never have been able to enter before. And she went unrecognized. As did Fannie. Who would even remember a poor, sad sweeping girl named Agnes Gouge? Agnes Huntington was the toast of the European elite to which all American classes aspired. A certain green dress and its accompanying diamonds had long been sold off. Fannie stayed away from the parties, away from the opening nights. She stayed very far away from the Endicotts. Her face went unseen in Boston society, even as her name was mentioned frequently in connection with Agnes’s.
They’d gotten away with it. The life that Agnes had won became so full that she believed it herself. She had not succumbed to cynicism; she had grown into the woman she’d dreamed. The talent of Agnes Huntington, the things that made her a star of the stage and a belle of the ball, were wholly real. No one else had made her who she was. And though she’d lied to get there, it was not the lies that echoed from the walls of the Metropolitan Opera House every night. It was the truth. The lie had only granted her a fair shot. She owed nothing to anyone except for one person, and that was a debt she would repay every day. Was Fannie difficult, controlling, omnipresent? Of course. Did Agnes relish the occasional night out? The infrequent tipsy moment, where she might be free of the perfect caution her mother expected of her? Well, of course. But if she resented her mother’s wrath on occasion, that did not mean that she didn’t love her. Fannie had given her everything.
—
“Why are you telling me all this?”
“Because I haven’t told anyone else,” she said. “And I thought…I wanted you to know why this is so important. Why I have to…”
“That’s why your mother wants you married into the Jaynes. She’s worried that one day this will all catch up to you. That someone will recognize Agnes Gouge in the face of Agnes Huntington.”
She held his gaze.
“And that’s why you hired me in the first place. It wasn’t just about Foster making up stories. You could have handled that yourselves. You were worried he might start digging into your past. If your identity was exposed, all of this—everything you’ve done—would be for nothing.”
Her smile was sad.
“Unless you have some manner of protection,” concluded Paul. “Agnes Huntington is susceptible to accusation. But Agnes Jayne is not.” Paul had to admire the brilliance of their plan. “No one would dare confront you. Even if the Endicotts found you, they wouldn’t possibly suggest anything. They’d be eaten alive by the Jaynes.”
“To go up against the Jaynes,” she said, “would be like going up against Thomas Edison. Only a fool would attempt it.”
“A fool like me?”
“Or like our eccentric friend in there.”
Paul knew more than ever that he could never marry her. She deserved a peace that he could never afford. Did she care for him? Is that why she’d made her confession? He didn’t know. Could she? He hoped so. But because he knew he cared for her, he let those hopes recede into the starlit night.
Paul reached out and took her hand. He hadn’t decided to do it, it just happened. Their fingers intertwined suddenly. He wasn’t sure if he’d wrapped his fingers around hers or if it was the other way around. Her skin felt warm.
“Sometimes I hate it so much,” she said. “Always having to pretend.”
Paul gripped her fingers tighter. “This is America,” he said. “We’re all pretending.”
He looked up at the clear night sky. His eyes naturally traced the constellations among the bright stars. Dipper, Orion, Cassiopeia. He’d been spotting their hidden shapes from this very place since he was a boy. Yet the irony of constellations was that their shapes were but narratives imposed by an active mind. The brightest design among the heavens was in truth only what you imagined it to be. Glance across the stars differently, and the figures they formed were suddenly different as well. Blink once and you could draw the lines between them into anything you chose.
He leaned in and kissed her.
I do not think you can name many great inventions that have been made by married men.
—NIKOLA TESLA