The Forgotten Room(30)
But it was blank. I flipped it around to the front, thinking maybe I’d missed a signature or endearment, but all that was there was the name of Estes Photography Studio embossed in the bottom-right corner.
Feeling oddly despondent, I reached my hand inside the bag one last time, digging in the corners just in case I had missed something. My fingernail clipped something solid and light, something that had been carefully wrapped in an article of clothing, then tucked in place rather than being haphazardly thrown.
Carefully, I pinched the object between my thumb and forefinger and brought it out of the bag before placing it faceup in the palm of my hand. A fine linen handkerchief—the monogram CJR hand-embroidered in a corner—was wrapped around the object. I studied the handkerchief for a moment, briefly wondering if Victorine had lovingly stitched his initials, then pulled it away from the small square object so I could see it.
It was a miniature oil painting, set in a gilded frame, of a woman with dark hair and green eyes who stared up at me. Her expression eluded me, the emotion displayed there unknown to me. If I’d been a poet, I would have called it passion, or perhaps lust. Or maybe even love.
I remembered all the journeys to art galleries and museums my mother had taken me to, the lectures and art lessons, and for the first time in a very long while I wished that I had paid more attention. There was something eerily familiar about the paint strokes, about the way the colors blended together when one stared closely, the features of the face discernible only when held at arm’s length.
The woman appeared to be nude, her long dark hair tumbling around her shoulders, her only accessory a filigree gold necklace about her slender, pale neck, a perfect large ruby dangling from the center.
I stared at the miniature for a long time, the air thinning around me. It wasn’t the woman’s expression, or the necklace, or even the fact that this had been found with Cooper’s possessions. What stole the breath from my lungs was the simple fact that the woman in the portrait looked exactly like me.
Eleven
DECEMBER 1892
Olive
An enormous gilt-framed mirror hung above the mantel of the Pratt dining room, expertly scattering the light from the brilliant electric chandelier, and Olive kept catching her reflection as she hurried past with the serving dishes. She couldn’t seem to recognize herself. Who was that ruddy-cheeked young woman with the lacy white cap and the dark hair and the frown occupying the space between those harried green eyes? No one she knew.
She bent next to the thick black shoulder of August Pratt—the younger, not the older—and presented to him the bowl of creamed peas. He was deep into a loud and good-natured argument with his father, brandishing his wineglass to illustrate a point, and didn’t notice her. “Sir,” she said. “Mr. Pratt. Would you care for the creamed peas?”
She didn’t know how to serve, really. She’d been pressed into duty today because Hannah, the more senior housemaid, whose job it was to attend the family in the dining room (along with beetle-browed Eunice, who bore a plate of sliced goose at the other side of the table) had taken sick after lunch and was now confined to her room upstairs. At home, even before Olive’s father died, meals had been a much more casual affair, served all at once instead of fashionably à la russe, in separate courses, as the Pratts insisted on dining even when en famille. Mrs. Keane had given her a two-minute course of instruction. Serve on the left, pick up on the right (well, she knew that much already; she wasn’t a barbarian), and never, ever disturb the family while they’re eating. Or talking. Or listening to someone else talk. How Olive was supposed to serve and clear up six different courses (soup, fish, meat, game, roast, salad, dessert) without once intruding herself on the family’s notice, Mrs. Keane never quite made clear.
The peas were heavy, swimming in a thick cream broth. August went on talking and gesticulating (something about railroads, or banks, or perhaps both) and paying her not the slightest notice. The fire sizzled and popped a few yards away, and Olive felt the first trickle of perspiration begin its slow, inevitable journey down her temple. In another moment, it would either roll underneath her jaw or drop from the edge of her chin. Possibly into the peas themselves.
“Gus, you big lummox, the peas are to your left,” said Harry Pratt.
Harry.
She had done her best to ignore the third man at the table, radiant and laconic in sleek black dinner dress, though his burnished hair kept catching the electric light, as if (so it seemed to Olive, anyway) to signal her, or else to taunt her. Every time she leaned next to his shoulder, offering him the newest dish to arrive steaming in the dumbwaiter, she felt the warmth of his neck on her arm, and smelled the curious mixture of pomade and shaving soap that characterized his evenings; every time she passed around the other side of the table, his face would half turn toward her, catching her gaze in an amused way that communicated the length and breadth of their secret in a single instant. (She snapped her eyes away at once, of course, but never soon enough.)
Harry.
“What’s that?” said August, wineglass raised.
Harry nodded at Olive. “The peas, idiot.”
August jerked to the left, knocking his elbow into the dish. Olive staggered and caught herself, while the creamy pea ocean sloshed dangerously to the edge of its Meissen shore.
“Clumsy girl,” said Mrs. Pratt.