“There’s more?” Lucy braced herself for some new revelation.
Philip’s face was bleak. “Didi is just like her. I didn’t realize it before—I don’t think I wanted to realize it—but when I heard her on the phone today . . . Christ. They might have been twins.” He looked up, fiercely. “Do you know what Didi wanted?”
Lucy mutely shook her head.
“She wanted me to drop everything tomorrow and go down to Philadelphia to take her to buy a hat.”
“A hat?” Lucy nodded her thanks as the waiter set a fresh round of drinks in front of them. She had barely touched her first, but Philip seized on his third martini gratefully.
“A hat,” he repeated grimly. “She saw one that was just too darling and wanted me to cancel my meetings to come to the milliner with her. In Philadelphia.”
“Perhaps she was joking?” suggested Lucy, with more optimism than hope.
“Ha,” said Philip. “It’s a test, you know. Show of devotion. She liked to do that sort of thing to her beaux—wait till they were in the middle of a conversation, then send one to get her a drink, another to find her gloves. . . . She liked to keep ’em hopping. But I’d thought, well, it was just a game. I thought, she’s young, she’ll grow out of it. But she won’t, will she?” He looked owlishly at Lucy over the rim of his martini glass.
Lucy wished she could tell him otherwise, could give him some comfort. But basic honesty prevented her. “No,” she said. “I think people are who they are. It’s a mistake to marry someone and believe you can change them.”
Her father—the man she had believed to be her father—had tried, so very hard, to win her mother’s love, to make her smile.
She missed her father. She missed her father so. He might not have been a Pratt, he might not have lived in a grand house or worn a starched cravat and a diamond stickpin, but he had been warm and loving and as reliable as a fresh loaf of bread.
“You’re right. People don’t change, do they?” Philip sank back against the banquette, his long legs brushing Lucy’s under the table. “’S no use. ’S no use pretending that anyone thinks I’m a real lawyer.”
“What on earth do you mean?” Lucy discreetly moved Philip’s glass out of reach. She didn’t think she had it in her to carry him downstairs. “You went to Harvard Law. Surely that makes you a real lawyer.”
He had the diploma on the wall to prove it, magna cum laude and all.
“Thass jus’ a degree.” Philip shoved himself back up to a sitting position, squinting for his martini. “Prunella’s right—’s not like I do real work. Old Cromwell just gave me the job as a favor to m’father. Needed someone to handle the Pratt estate.”
“But you do so much more than handle the Pratt estate!” Wasn’t the last month proof of that? They’d spent long hours in the office, longer than anyone else. Mr. Schuyler—Philip—might pretend to be a dilettante, but he’d been working like a dog. With a smile and a starched collar, yes, but still working, and working hard. Lucy wished that Prunella Pratt were in range to hear a piece of her mind. “Mr. Cromwell always speaks highly of you. I’ve heard him.”
“He was friends with my father.” Philip gestured for another martini. “They don’t take me seriously, any of them.”
Lucy absently took a sip of Philip’s old martini. The gin made her cough. “That’s nonsense,” she said crisply. At least, she tried to say it crisply. If it came out just a bit slurred, Philip was in no state to notice. “You’re a wonderful lawyer.”
“Oh, I know,” said Philip moodily. “No one deals with the clients like I do. By which they mean that I can keep the drinks coming, tell jokes in four languages, and play a good game of tennis.”
“No.” The gin was remarkably freeing. Without conscious volition, Lucy’s hand was on Mr. Schuyler’s arm, her fingers making creases in his perfectly pressed jacket. “That’s not it at all. You’re not just a good host; you’re a good lawyer. You know what Mr. Cochran’s drafts look like.”
“Well . . . Cochran,” said Philip with a shrug.
“I won’t have you selling yourself short. You’re good at it. And I know you care, even if you pretend you don’t.”
Philip’s eyes focused on her face. There was a curious, wistful expression on his face. “I do, do I?”
“Yes.”
“You’re a good woman, Lucy Young.” Philip toasted her with his new martini, baptizing the table with gin. “Where were you when I was proposing to Didi?”
Commuting from Brooklyn.
“On my yacht in the South of France,” Lucy quipped. She hadn’t minded telling John Ravenel that she’d grown up above a bakery, but she still, even with her tongue loosened by gin, found that she didn’t want Philip Schuyler to know. She liked when he spoke to her like this, like an equal, with that admiring light in his eyes, a light that would go away if he knew the truth about her.
New money, Philip had said dismissively.