ROSEMARY HELPED MARTIN with his tie. With Michael missing and Francis off in his own world, Martin had aged ten years in two days. He had been home only once, briefly, since he started his search and he moved like a sleepwalker. Even the news that Peggy was not, in fact, calling off the wedding hadn’t cheered him, and Rosemary so badly wanted to cheer him up today. She wanted to share the feeling that had seized her when she left the relief office, and she wanted to tell him all about Miss Costigan and her crack team of investigators and her even more threatening pencil sharpener. She wanted to tell him all about Captain MacFarquhar and the iceberg and the Staten Island Symphony and the fire-in-the-blood feeling that led her to dump the relief application in a garbage can but keep the number of the Manhattan WPA office folded neatly in her purse. She wanted to tell him that all of this was a vote of confidence in him and his top secret master plan. She was anxious—that’s just how she was—but they were young and in love and she wanted that to count for something. There were so many others, after all, who were so much worse off—men and women who’d been battered by time and tide and who had to endure the petty cruelties of Miss Costigan in order to get the help they needed. Yes, she wanted to tell all of this to Martin but there was no way to make it come out right. He would hear only the words relief office and it would be one more thing that had gone wrong this week. One brother was missing, another had lost his mind, and now he had made his wife into a beggar.
And then the telephone rang, and it was the Plaza. By the time he hung up the receiver, the added years had melted away. He had become Rosemary’s Martin again, the very picture of her dashing young bridegroom.
“I’m coming with you,” Rosemary said.
“And miss the dinner?”
“Of course miss the dinner! Do you really think I want to go—alone or otherwise?”
“But what about your mother, your sister?”
“We just found out that the worst thing didn’t happen, and now we have a babysitter and a chance to go to the Plaza Hotel. I’ll take my lumps from Peggy and my mother in the morning, and all day tomorrow I’ll be the dutiful, put-upon sister. But tonight we’re going out. When was the last time we painted the town red—or any color at all?”
Martin looked doubtful, or maybe he was just dazed. He’d barely had twenty winks—forget about forty—and he had to be wondering, Who is this minxy brunette and what has she done with my wife? Rosemary kissed him smack on the mouth and explained it as best she could—that they were adventurers, polar explorers, Thanes of Cawdor, and experts in the Eskimo tongue. “We deserve this,” she said. “We’re MacFarquhars, aren’t we?”
FIFTH AVENUE
ANISETTE HAD SEEN FéLICITé for only a minute—one minute of the whole day!—but still her sister had managed to get right under her skin. “I saw your Scotsman,” she had said. “At the Plaza. He invited me up to his room, but I turned him down.” And then Félicité was out the door for a rendezvous with those horrible friends of hers who treated Anisette like she was some kind of broken plaything: a mangled toy, or an easily tricked child who was too slow to understand the adult talk all around her. But she understood just fine—understood the ways that Félicité was always conspiring to rob her of her happiness. She’d been cross with Anisette for getting engaged—Why are you doing this to yourself? You’re too young! And with him?—but that was only because it made her look like an old maid, still single while her younger sister was wed. And she hadn’t shown any sympathy once it all fell apart: “What did you expect?” she heard Félicité tell Maman. “I told you about him.” Félicité had plenty more to say too, but what Anisette heard was I told you so, and hadn’t she heard that from Félicité her entire life?
It wasn’t any surprise that her sister was up to her old tricks, suggesting that Angus was anything less than a complete gentleman. As if he could ever be interested in Félicité. Hadn’t they had a laugh about her in the park just the other day?
She would see him for herself tomorrow and all would be well. Since they had parted at the museum, she’d barely heard a word from him; nothing but a brief note delivered to the house, confirming details for tomorrow morning. They were to drive together, and that would give them some time—but of course Félicité would be there with her sour smile and her sneery eyes. And Maman, too, so perhaps she could keep Félicité on her best behavior. Not that anyone could ever do that for long.
Of course Anisette knew there was something odd about Angus, if that was even his name. Despite what her sister said and her father thought and her mother feared, she wasn’t a simpleton. Yes, she admitted to herself the possibility that there was mischief in him. After all, she’d heard that delightful Scottish burr of his come and go. But he always righted himself, and he was such a gentleman—that didn’t seem to be part of the act. If in the beginning it had been simply politeness or good breeding, something had changed in these past few days. Maybe the outside of him was an act, but she believed there really was something good on the inside: he cared for his brother, he cared for her, and she sensed in him a desire to be not just good, but better. Better than he had been; better than anyone believed he could be. Her sister, her mother, her father—they all worried about her. Poor Anisette. Poor simple stupid Anisette. But she wasn’t stupid, and when she and Angus were together in their house by the sea, her family would understand, or they’d stop thinking about her altogether, because she would be someone else’s Anisette to worry about.
MRS. BINGHAM CHECKED on Anisette, reminding her that it would be an early night. Both needed their beauty sleep, and tomorrow would be a busy day from first light: their hair was to be done, and any last-minute fixes to their dresses would need to be tended to before their departure for the fair.
She took the brush from Anisette and began working it through her daughter’s hair. She talked about tomorrow, how it would be a day that Anisette would treasure for the rest of her life. She was going to meet the king and queen.
“To think,” Mrs. Bingham said, “that you begin your life never expecting that such things could ever happen to you, but dreaming about them, wanting them, and by working very hard to make those dreams come true—”