Miss Witherspoon was her father’s princess, if no one else’s, and she understood the ways of the rich. She made deep curtsies to each of them as she was introduced, her jewels flashing in the light. She listened to the introductions, looking first at Anna and then at Cap, back and forth, trying to make sense of what was outside her experience of the world.
Anna knew what was going through the younger woman’s mind, the questions that burned to be asked but could not be voiced in society. Anna had been introduced to her as a Miss Savard. It was true that Miss Savard’s manners were exactly what was expected in such company, and her gown was quite pretty, but she wore very little jewelry. More confusing still, she clearly had no husband. She was too young to be a war widow, and so, Miss Witherspoon would surmise, she must be a spinster. Far too old to get a husband, and yet she was here with Cap Verhoeven, who was regarded as exceedingly eligible husband material. The obvious fact that Cap was in poor health didn’t seem to concern Princess Witherspoon, but then women were always drawn to Cap, despite—and sometimes because of—his health.
Bram was leaning over her like any hopeful lover. Did she care for champagne? Madeira? Punch? And how lovely her hair smelled, how beautiful her complexion.
“Mr. Decker,” she said, finally tearing her gaze away from Cap to look at Bram.
“Yes, Miss Witherspoon?”
“Can you explain to me why your friend Mr. Verhoeven is called Cap? I understood his name to be Peter.”
She topped this off with a lowering of the eyes and lashes batted prettily in Cap’s direction.
“Oh, that’s a good story,” Bram said.
“Oh, it’s really not,” Cap countered.
He might have spared himself the objection, because his friends all stood up. Arranging themselves in a semicircle, they stuck out their chests and spread their legs like sailors on the high seas. Andrew Capshaw gave a tone and they broke into song.
O Captain, My Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather’d every rack,
the prize we sought is won.
For all their silliness they sang a very decent four-part harmony, getting all the way through the first stanza to then collapse, thumping each other’s backs, greatly pleased with themselves.
“Got that out of your systems?” Cap said.
“It’s a poem, isn’t it?” Miss Witherspoon addressed Cap directly. “Did you write it?”
There was a small silence in their circle, and then Cap answered her with his usual good grace. “You are too young, I think, to remember the assassination. The poem these idiots were trying—and failing—to set to music—was written in honor of President Lincoln a few months after his death. The poet is a Mr. Whitman.”
“Cap recited that poem at a public lecture at the Cooper Union,” Anna supplied. “It was on his eleventh birthday, just by coincidence. He recited it and brought the whole hall to their feet. How many times were you asked to repeat that performance?”
Cap cupped his cheek with a gloved hand. “I lost count at thirty or so.”
“Which is how he came to be called first Captain, and then Cap,” Anna finished. Her voice came a little hoarse, something that wasn’t obvious with all the noise of the musicians and dancers. Others didn’t notice, but Cap did; she saw it on his face. For that moment she had him back, the boy who had once been her brother.
Then Cap’s cousin Anton Belmont came sailing across the dance floor with his younger sister on one arm and one of the Schermerhorn debutantes on the other. A scramble for more chairs and champagne took a quarter hour, all the while the conversation went forward at a steady gallop, the men doing their utmost to make the girls laugh. Other friends joined them, and Anna decided she could absent herself without worry for a short while.
She rose, interrupting a perennial argument about a poker game played years earlier, and excused herself. The simple truth was that if she did not have a quarter hour of solitude in the fresh air she would seal her reputation as an overeducated spinster unsuitable for company by falling asleep in the middle of the biggest social event of the decade.
It took a few minutes to find the right kind of hallway—one used by staff alone to reach the back of the house—and from there she found a door that led into an unoccupied courtyard enclosed by a limestone wall, lit dimly by a set of workroom or pantry windows. Here music and voices were reduced to an undercurrent of sound much like a mosquito shut in a nearby room, persistent but still possible to ignore. Oh, she was cranky. And for no good reason.