“I think our actions show us who we are more than anything else,” Ambrose said, while looking at May, the desire to antagonize her not something he fully understood himself.
“I’ll say,” May said as she stepped to Ethan and took his bad hand in hers. They were a team as they navigated his injury, making it imperceivable to an outsider. It looked like he led her onto the dance floor, but Ambrose knew she was hoisting his hand in hers, allowing herself to be led.
Ambrose walked over to the cut glass punch bowl, needing a drink.
“Couldn’t stay away, could you?” Dicky ladled his drink with care.
“I was invited. Where’s Loulou?”
“She’s here somewhere,” Dicky said, as if they’d been married for years. “Off with her nutty friends.”
Ambrose took a sip of punch. Dicky criticizing anything about his sister, even her friends, raised his hackles.
But Dicky was perceptive. “Don’t know why you’re so uptight,” he said. “We could double-date together. You and Arabella, me and Lou. They’re great chums, you know. And we’d be two brothers in arms.”
Ambrose had played one game of croquet with Arabella, and already they’d been paired off, likely by everyone at the party. “You’re not my brother,” he said. They weren’t jointly fighting a war. Against what? His sister? Women?
“No, I’m not. And a good thing, too, given how Ethan’s treated you.” At the look on Ambrose’s face, Dicky continued. “Look, Loulou told me. I said to her that it wasn’t that serious with May before you left, but Lou set me straight. Told me she’d talked to you about it at that going-away party May threw. Told me she’d seen some things. I can appreciate you’re in pain. You don’t have to pretend with me.”
Ambrose was appalled at the thought of Loulou spilling his secrets to Dicky, both that he’d been outed and that she was already close enough to Dicky that she’d take him into her confidence. Gone now was the abashed Dicky from Ambrose’s welcome home dinner. “I’m not in pain. No one’s pretending,” Ambrose said.
“Fine,” Dicky said. “If that’s how you want to play it. But Loulou knows things.”
“So you’re the expert on Loulou now?”
“Oh, I understand,” Dicky said. “She’s your little sister, but she’s not a kid anymore.”
A thundering clap of revulsion shuddered through Ambrose, though he knew that wasn’t what Dicky meant at all. Dicky might be a hedonist and a libertine, but he was conventional and a coward. Ambrose would bet his life Dicky wouldn’t dare do more than kiss Loulou. Nevertheless, he wanted to tell Dicky to wipe that smug smile off his face, wanted to tell him that his father knew about the dancing girl, that it was the talk of the town. But he had a moment’s thought for Loulou. Though perhaps his sister knew about India, too, and that thought hurt Ambrose. That his idealistic sister, lover of Austen and Bront?s, should have grown into a shrewd-eyed realist, a compromiser, and all at the hands of Dicky Cavanaugh. Ambrose took a swig out of his flask.
“Have it your way,” Dicky said at Ambrose’s silence, and then walked to Loulou, taking up her hand and exaggeratedly kissing the knuckles, which made her friends titter and blush. So perhaps he knew a few gestures out of Austen.
Ambrose dumped the remaining contents of his flask in the punch bowl.
After the winners of the tournament had been awarded a little silver dish from May and the runners-up had been given a crying towel, and then jokingly used it to fake-weep; after the band had taken a break and then another again; after the waiters collected empty glasses off the side tables and brought liqueurs or coffee to the last of the guests; after guests started their drawn-out good-byes—Arabella stood leaning against the door, eyes half-closed, skin flushed, no coat. He checked his shock at seeing a girl so young so visibly intoxicated. Such a thing would never have happened before he had left. He liked her the better for it, found it a little appealing even, that lack of control.
“How are you getting home? Need me to rustle up a car?” he asked, taking the tiny crystal thimble of syrupy liquor out of her hand. She’d definitely feel ill in the morning.
“Not going,” she said, swaying a bit. “Am staying. Dear May said I could stay upstairs.” She laughed. “Look at your face, you old thing. Not in the dormitory. Jeez, where’s your mind? Still off in the Orient with harems or something? In a guest room, silly. I sent the chauffeur home to Mommy. Aren’t you staying?”
No wonder her parents were sending her to a Swiss finishing school. Though he realized May’s invitation to stay probably saved her parents the scandal of dealing with a tipsy daughter.
“Yes, I’m staying,” Ambrose said.
“Then maybe you should tuck me in.” Even through the worn lipstick and the liquor on her breath, she had a beautiful smile.
“What’s required for tucking you in?”
“A nice big old teddy bear, that’s for sure.”
Ambrose smiled. “I’ll see if May has one of those lying around.”
She came forward then and grasped his lapels. “I think she outgrew hers.” Arabella leaned in farther, so that their lips were almost touching. As much as things had changed, and a visibly drunken woman grabbing his jacket and leaning into his face was certainly new, she stopped a few inches from him. She waited for him to come forward and actually kiss her.
And something about her, a hint of May really, made him duck his head to hers.
Through the faint waxy-rose traces of her lipstick and the softness of her mouth he could hear the guests around them chatting, and then he heard May. Her low, distinct voice saying good night to someone made him pull back abruptly, leaving Arabella’s mouth open.
Arabella smiled and actually winked at him and then headed for the staircase, where one of the maids was waiting on the top-floor landing to show her to her room.
THE MOON OF NIZAM
On her father’s advice, Nell calls the museum the morning after the wake, closing herself in Loulou’s aqua-and-black-tiled bathroom and trying to keep her voice down. Even though her last name is Merrihew, she tells the receptionist on the phone “Nell Quincy,” feeling like a fraud. As a girl, Nell had secretly wished the more recognizable Quincy had been her last name—a name with the stardust of Roosevelt or Rockefeller or Kennedy. Not that she’s alone. Loulou had hers changed back the moment she had the social cover of her divorce, and Baldwin used Quincy when making dinner reservations to ensure a good table. Her mother had given it to Nell as a middle name. Cornelia Quincy Merrihew was a mouthful, though dignified, and it looked good on the nameplate outside her office door. But it is with sheepish feelings of pretense that she uses Quincy with the museum.
The curator of Asian art returns her call in minutes.