I wasn’t allowed to leave the house except for my monthly appointment with Dr. Westbrook, who asked nosy questions about my feelings on motherhood and marital relations with my husband. I was convinced everything I told him would be reported back to Hannah, so I put up with his poking and prodding and smiled demurely when he lectured me for not wearing a maternity corset. The only time I ever missed having morning sickness was in his office. What I would have given to vomit all over his pristine white coat!
Good Lord, I was bored. Denied my rambling walks outside, I paced the halls of Lakecrest instead. The rooms felt clammy and oppressive, with a lingering smell of wet plaster, and I began to hear the steady drip of leaks throughout the house. It was as if tiny rivers were trickling inside the walls, just out of sight. Even with a heavy cardigan pulled over a wool dress, the damp cold seemed to seep through my skin.
Matthew went off for a week to Boston, then for another to New York, and Marjorie tagged along to visit friends. My only visitor during their absence was Eva Monroe. I came close to asking her about the time I’d seen her standing alone in the snow; even from so far away, I’d sensed her loneliness. But Eva had a wariness to her, reminding me of a cat that scurries under the bed if you approach it too quickly. Confidences would have to wait.
Besides, I never knew when Hannah would swoop in. She had an unnerving way of inserting herself into our conversations, as she did one day when Eva and I were having tea in the morning room. I’d asked Eva how she was adjusting to country life, and she gave me a tight, wistful smile.
“I’d have been perfectly happy in an apartment in the city,” she said. “Victor’s the one who wanted to live out here. He thought the little ones needed space to roam.”
“So they do.”
Hannah was standing in the doorway; I hadn’t even realized she was home.
“It’s lovely out here in the summer,” she continued. “We have a beach, down by the lake. You and the children are welcome anytime.”
“Oh, that’s so kind. We’d love to.”
“I should warn you, the water’s freezing. Even in August.”
Eva smiled and shook her head. “I don’t think they’ll mind. My Rosie loves swimming so much, she’s practically a mermaid.”
With Eva, every topic veered to the same destination: her children. They were the center of her world, the only subject on her mind. Would I be like that one day? I couldn’t imagine it.
I heard the irritating leaking again that night, when Hannah and I took our usual spots by the sitting room fireplace after supper. To pass the seemingly endless hours before bedtime, I’d begun reading aloud from a family history commissioned by Obadiah Lemont while Hannah worked on her embroidery. The author, one T. L. Blythe, must have been well paid, because he laid on the gushing praise with a heavy hand.
The book began with the Lemonts’ supposed descent from French royalty, the ultimate flattery for a nouveau riche American family. Then came a few chapters on Henri, the fur trader who traveled across the northern territories and created supply routes seemingly single-handedly. The rumor of his marriage to an Indian princess—more royalty!—was described in a single sentence. That section was followed by the exploits of Henri’s son, George, who somehow managed to be present at all the major events leading to the founding of Chicago. It was George who coined the family’s Latin motto, Factum est (“It is done”), words that were now inscribed over Lakecrest’s front door. His wife was described briefly as “a Talbott of Philadelphia.” Another prize claimed by the ambitious Lemonts.
The second half of the book was centered on Obadiah himself: buying up land in the wake of the Great Fire, socializing with Rockefellers and Vanderbilts, expanding shipping routes throughout the Great Lakes, and establishing his family as one of the richest in the Midwest. The man portrayed in the book was half business baron, half frustrated artist, someone who could demand a meeting at the White House one day and buy the contents of a French chateau the next. A man who always wanted more.
Mr. Blythe outdid himself in his obsequious description of Lakecrest:
The crown jewel in the Lemonts’ empire, the mansion stands as a monument to the indomitable American spirit, a new world forged from the ashes of the old. In its noble turrets and soaring archways, we witness man reaching toward the heavens and achieving a small measure of its perfection here on earth.
Obadiah must have loved that part, I thought. And then I heard it: the same incessant dripping that seemed to follow me throughout the house. It was impossible to tell where it was coming from; the sound seemed to echo from the ceiling to the walls to the card tables.
“There it is again,” I said to Hannah. I’d been pestering her about the leaks for days.
Her gaze remained focused on her stitches.
“Can’t you hear it?” I asked.
It was such a little thing—a few drops of water, here and there—but it had begun to nag at me. How was all that water getting in? Where was it going?
“Old houses settle,” she said, maddeningly calm. “You have to get used to the odd bump or creak.”
Drip. Drip. The noise seemed to taunt me. I looked back at the book and saw a reproduction of a painting I’d noticed in a forlorn corner upstairs. A woman with a long neck, her slim shoulders emerging from a low-cut ball gown. The caption identified her as Leticia Lemont, Obadiah’s wife. She was beautiful, of course. She’d have to be, to produce a daughter like Cecily and grandchildren like Matthew and Marjorie. Her profile and posture were the very definition of elegance.
I flipped through the pages. Other than noting her marriage to Obadiah, the author had nothing else to say.
“What was Leticia like?” I asked. “Jasper and Cecily’s mother? I know she died before you moved to Lakecrest, but you must have heard stories.”
“Jasper never talked about her. She was sickly, I think.”
Another wife ignored by the Lemonts’ own history book. No wonder Cecily was so determined to support female artists. In this family, the women were always overlooked.
It wasn’t long afterward that I decided to create a shrine to the Lemonts’ forgotten women. I’d turned the bedroom adjoining mine into a dressing room, and Matthew agreed to move his portrait of Cecily there. Next to that, I added the portrait of Leticia and one of Lucy Talbott Lemont, Matthew’s great-grandmother. She looked severe in an unflattering lace cap and black dress. I even put up a painting I’d found in an unused bedroom of a woman in an Indian headdress. It wasn’t the fur trader’s wife—the picture was dated 1855—but I pretended it was. The Indian princess deserved a spot among the others.
They’ve all survived this, I told myself. They married Lemonts and had children and continued the family line. I can do it, too.
I did attempt domesticity, at least for a while. I tried knitting baby booties, which ended in snarled failure. I built elaborate houses out of playing cards, and I worked my way through the works of Charles Dickens, giving up midway through David Copperfield. I sent a letter to Mr. Haveleck, asking if we could meet.