“Harry!” she whispered.
But there came only a faint snore in response, a reflexive twitching of fingers at her waist. The arm, she perceived, rested over the blanket, and Harry’s body did not quite touch her back. A few respectful inches lay between them. The velvet cushion was soft under her cheek.
What time was it? There was no telling. It might be midnight or half past four; she might have hours left or none. How daring and delicious, to lie here quietly with Harry, while the rest of the house slept, while the rest of the world had to endure some ordinary bedfellow.
Well, so would Olive, in two more weeks. In two more weeks, there would be no more Harry, and she would return to the leather portfolio marked VAN ALAN. She promised herself that. She made a bargain with God, or Saint Nicholas, or the baby Jesus, or whoever was keeping vigil with her, in the warm, black, brandy-scented Christmas night. A fortnight of Harry, just Harry and nothing else, no guilt or regrets, no anxiety about tomorrow. And when the carriage had left for that stinking great terminus on Forty-second Street, for the waiting train to carry him to Boston, why, that very morning she would steal into August Pratt’s study and take those Van Alan papers. This time, for good.
But until then. Harry.
Her stiff limbs had gone limp and soft, absorbing him. She should have been ashamed, but she wasn’t: all those nights of posing, all that intimacy. They were in their room, their own sanctuary at the top of the stairs, where Olive could shed her old skin and be someone she’d never known before, someone she never imagined she was.
“Olive.”
She should have been startled, but she wasn’t.
“You’re awake?”
“Not really.”
She smiled. She was filled with heat and certainty, and a flutter deep in her belly that she could not name but supposed was anticipation.
She turned beneath his arm, until they were facing each other, and the scent of Harry’s skin blended with the scent of hers, warm and salty and sleepy. The ruby slipped along her collarbone. With one hand, she lifted the blanket and enclosed him; with the other, she touched his cheek. She couldn’t really see his face, but she heard the damp sound of his lips, parting in surprise.
“Merry Christmas,” she whispered.
Eighteen
JULY 1920
Lucy
Lucy tasted gin.
Tingling on her tongue. On Philip Schuyler’s lips as he kissed her, his hand cupping her cheek, his other arm snaking around her waist, pulling her close despite the interfering curve of the table. The black leather of the banquette encased them, shielding them from the rest of the room.
Those were Philip Schuyler’s fingers on her cheek, the gold of his Yale class ring cool against her skin; it was Philip Schuyler’s lips against hers, murmuring her name as he kissed her, the culmination of a thousand guilty daydreams, daydreams in which he took her hands in his and declared that he’d been a fool, a terrible fool, that she was the girl for him and he didn’t care who knew it, like something out of the serial stories in the papers, where the shopgirl always won the love of the heir to the fortune.
But this wasn’t a daydream.
This wasn’t a ball; she wasn’t wearing a silver-spangled gown and diamond clips in her hair. She was in her work suit, crammed into a corner of a dark speakeasy where the floor smelled of spilled spirits. She wasn’t floating; there weren’t violins. There was no rapture, just the side of the table biting into her rib cage and a nagging sense of the wrongness of it all, the wrongness of kissing a man who was engaged to someone else.
Three tables away, the bored socialite laughed, a high-pitched whinnying laugh. Lucy gave Philip Schuyler a push, hard enough to make the table rock, gin sloshing over the sides.
“Philip—Mr. Schuyler—don’t.”
“Lucy . . .” The banquette creaked and groaned as he lurched after her, falling against the spot where she had been.
He was drunk. She’d never seen him drunk before, never imagined he could be drunk. Drunkenness was for the louts who used to swill beer from the barrel behind the bakery, singing rude songs straight from the beer garden. Drunkenness was for red-nosed old men and high school dropouts, not for Philip Schuyler, the epitome of all that was elegant and refined.
“Lucy . . . Sweetheart . . .” He reached for her, his smile a parody of that easy charm she knew so well.
Miss Young, if you wouldn’t mind . . .
Miss Young, be a sweetheart and . . .
And she had. She’d brought his coffee; she’d taken his meetings; she’d even gone to dinner with John Ravenel.
The thought of John Ravenel—smiling down at her in the sunshine of the park—made her push with renewed energy at the hands clasping her waist.
“I’m not your sweetheart.” Lucy’s voice rose as she struggled to free herself. “Mr. Schuyler—stop.”