“It was at one time. Part of it’s old and falling down, but some ancestor of mine built around it.”
It took her a moment to understand what he meant. “Someone put a facade on it? You mean there’s a castle hidden inside your house?”
“Mmmmm,” was all he said.
Claire’s imagination ran away with her. She imagined one family having lived in the same house for centuries; she imagined all the history that must be in a house like that. “Is Bramley very large?”
He put his head down and grinned at her, making Claire’s heart skip a beat. “I haven’t seen all of it.”
A house so large its owner hadn’t seen all of it. It was a difficult concept for her to imagine. “Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, I will marry you.”
With that Claire could no longer contain herself. She jumped up and began to twirl about, her skirt held to one side. He couldn’t help laughing, as she was rather like a puppy in her exuberance. He did so like American girls; they said what they thought and acted on their impulses. “I shall make you the best duchess in the whole world,” she said. “You’ll see. Oh, heavens, but I think being a duchess will be so very interesting.”
He didn’t say another word but slowly lifted one of his big hands, put it behind her head, and drew her face down to his for a kiss. Claire had never kissed a man before and she was anxious that she should please him. She tried to follow his lead and do what he wanted her to, but when he pulled her down to him, then pushed her body on top of his, she moved her head away. She had to use some strength to get away from him. When she was at last back on the robe, she was out of breath as she blinked at him. He had a wicked look in his eyes.
“I don’t think I’ll mind marriage much after all,” he said, and leaned back on his arms again.
They sat in silence for a while, Claire trying to calm herself. The very oddest thing had happened: when Harry was kissing her, she could no longer hear the pipes.
“You must come and meet my mother,” he said. “It’s hunting season and there’ll be some shooting. You can stay at Bramley with my family and after a while we’ll get married.”
“Yes,” was all Claire could say.
They didn’t say
any more for a while—Claire had realized some time ago that Harry didn’t like to talk much—but sat in companionable silence until he said it was time to go. As he helped her into the boat, he kissed her again, softly and sweetly on the lips, then rowed her to the far shore. Claire smiled at him and thought of the future that awaited her.
What followed were weeks of preparation. Claire’s mother was swooning with happiness over her daughter’s announcement and the impending visit to stay at Bramley and meet the duchess. Claire wanted to spend every minute of every day with Harry, but Arva had other plans for her daughter. “After you’re married you’ll spend more than enough time with him. Believe me, you’ll see more than you want to see of a man after he’s your husband,” her mother repeated yet again.
Claire wasn’t about to allow her mother’s cynicism to upset her. She saw Harry whenever she could, never alone, but always with other people. They went with four of Harry’s friends to choose her engagement ring, a fat blue diamond surrounded by emeralds, and she knew she was going to miss him dreadfully when she went with her parents and sister across the Channel to be fitted for a divine wardrobe by Mr. Worth.
Claire returned from her first fitting at Worth’s Paris salon and looked about the suite of rooms of the hotel. It wasn’t the Ritz, but her mother said it was where all the really fashionable people stayed. Yet the carpet was frayed, the seat on one of the chairs was torn, and there were spiderwebs hanging from the ceiling. Claire knew it was now necessary to stay in places like this, and it was just as necessary to her mother to believe her little lie that this was actually the most fashionable hotel.
“I’m off, dear,” her father, George, said to his plump wife.
Claire knew where her father was going, for she’d seen him sneak a thousand franc note from the little box her mother oversaw. Her father was going to the races—where he’d lose the money, as he always did. Frowning, Claire pulled off her gloves and tossed them on the top of a dusty table.
Her mother instantly picked them up. “You can’t have such disregard for fine things. There won’t be more of these until after you’re married.”
“If he marries her,” said Claire’s fourteen-year-old sister, Sarah Ann, better known as Brat, while she went through Claire’s jewelry box again.
Tired and irritable from a day of standing still while she was pinned and repinned, Claire snapped the jewel case shut.
Brat just laughed. “I shall marry a man who adores me. He will do whatever I tell him to do. And he will be very, very rich. I’m not going to marry a man who’s poor even if he does have nice legs.”
“You’ll marry who I tell you to marry,” Arva said as she grabbed her younger daughter’s ear and pulled her from the room. Claire shrugged when she saw them, for she knew her mother would never actually punish her adored younger daughter no matter what she did. Within minutes the clever child would have her mother feeding her chocolates and promising her some forbidden outing.
Claire walked to the window and looked at the trees in the little park outside the hotel. The leaves were just beginning to turn in the fall air, and she thought of her home in New York. Both Paris and London seemed so different from New York, so much slower. She thought of all her nineteen years in New York and her summers in the coolness of Maine. She had taken her easy life for granted up until now, had thought it would never change. She was used to kissing her father good-bye as he went out the door to go away on his yacht, or off to some week-long hunting trip, or off for months to the wilds of the West after grizzly bear and mountain lions.
She’d grown used to the sound of her mother giving orders to their many, many servants as Arva decorated their big Fifth Avenue house for yet another party. Claire used to stop and admire the thousands of orchids hanging from the walls and mantels and the ceilings as she left on her way to the library or the museum.
For the most part, her parents had ignored their two daughters, thinking they were well cared for in the hands of their governesses. Both Claire and Brat had found it easy to bribe their overseers; for the most part, they’d led their own lives. Brat liked society, just as her mother did, and often wandered down to her mother’s parties, where everyone made a great fuss over her prettiness.
But Claire hadn’t much taste for society. What she liked were libraries and museums and talking to people who were knowledgeable in their chosen fields. Her mother hated it when Claire brought home for tea ancient professors of obscure branches of history. Arva always made derogatory remarks about how much the skinny little men could eat. “I like intelligence,” Claire had said.
But both Arva and George had been too busy to pay much attention to their daughters until their accountant had that horrid talk with them. After that, it seemed to Claire, their lives had changed overnight.
Now the house on Fifth Avenue was gone, the house in Maine was gone, her father’s yacht had been sold. All of it, their possessions and their whole way of life, had disappeared.