Lucy’s knuckles were white against the dark wood of the desk. She forced herself to relax her hands, finger by finger.
The file, Lucy reminded herself. She still had a dinner dress to acquire, a client to charm. She drew in a deep, shuddering breath, scrunching the old hurts down, as far as they would go.
There wasn’t much left in the file. Miscellaneous financial documents—apparently, Mr. Pratt’s investments hadn’t fared that well in the nineties—and, at the very bottom, a copy of Henry August Pratt’s will.
It was surprisingly short. There were no charitable bequests, no recognition of old servants. In fact, the only legatee—the sole legatee—was Pratt’s daughter, Prunella.
Had she missed a page? Lucy leafed back through the closely typed pages. No. It was all in order. To my daughter, Prunella . . . and then a complicated spate of legalese, which, when translated to English, seemed to be the provision of a trust that kept her from touching any of the principal. There were four trustees, of whom one was Philip Schuyler.
There were no bequests to his wife or to his other children. It was as if they had never been.
One son had died, hadn’t he? Lucy struggled to remember. A bar fight on the Lower East Side? The papers had only hinted, but it had been something vaguely sordid. An angry husband?
But there had been two sons, twins. What had the other twin done to be excluded from his father’s will?
The date on the will was 1893, the year Lucy had been born.
There was a sharp rapping on the door. “Yoo-hoo? Anyone in there?”
Lucy jammed the file into the drawer and kicked the cabinet closed with her foot. “Yes?”
Fran poked her head around the door. She already had her hat on and was drawing on her gloves. “We’re going for chop suey. Want to come?”
Lucy pressed her eyes shut. Only Fran. Fran wouldn’t know a file if it bit her. “I would, but . . . I have a dinner engagement.”
Fran’s eyebrows went up. “A dinner engagement? You’ve been holding out on us. You never said you had a fellow. Hey, El! Miss Dark Horse has a dinner engagement!”
Lucy cut around Fran, yanking the door of Mr. Schuyler’s office firmly shut behind her. She walked purposefully toward her desk. “No, no. It’s not like that. It’s just . . .”
“‘Just . . .’?” Fran trailed after Lucy, scenting fresh gossip.
Blast Philip Schuyler and his schemes. Philip Schuyler, sitting seraphically in a box at Tosca, his stepmother in silk and diamonds beside him.
Lucy improvised. “It’s just . . . a friend of the family. He’s visiting from out of town.”
Fran pursed her lips significantly. “An out-of-town friend.”
Lovely. It would be all over the steno pool by Monday.
There was no strategy like distraction. On an impulse, Lucy said, “Fran, do you know where I can get a cheap dinner dress in the next”—Lucy glanced at the clock above Miss Meechum’s desk—“hour and a half?”
“What sort of dinner dress are we talking about?”
“A respectable one. Something I can wear to Delmonico’s.”
“Delmonico’s! I wish my family had friends like that.” Fran craned her neck to call back over her shoulder, “Hey, El, did you know we had a Rockefeller in the office?”
“We do?” Eleanor appeared behind Fran, searching in her purse. “Have you seen my gloves?”
Fran rolled her eyes. “Never mind your gloves. Miss Butter Won’t Melt here has a date at Delmonico’s!”
She oughtn’t to have said anything. Briskly, Lucy jammed her hat on her head, securing it with a long pin. “Never mind. I can just wear my suit. It’s no one I need to impress, after all.”
“Oh, no, you don’t.” Fran linked an arm through hers. “Delmonico’s! I’ll send you off right. I know this little woman on Delancey who can make you look like your dress came straight from gay Paree.”
Given that Fran had been no closer to Paris than the Bronx, Lucy took that with a grain of salt, but she let herself be towed off to the elevator, Eleanor trotting along behind.
Fran’s dressmaker might not be Parisian, but she was reasonably cheap. Passing up the gaudier options, Lucy settled on a dress of sapphire blue, with long chiffon panels over a silk slip.
It was only an imitation, she knew, but looking at herself in the long mirror, she could imagine herself at the opera with Philip Schuyler.
She couldn’t do anything about her sensible shoes or her battered leather bag, so different from the wisps of beads and silk the other ladies were carrying. But at least her dress looked right. As long as one didn’t look too closely.
Delmonico’s was housed in an imposing building on Forty-fourth and Fifth. The ma?tre d’ took in Lucy’s old hat and cheap gloves at a glance.
“Yes?” he said.