The Forgotten Room(60)

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.”

The waiters stopped in their tasks and the bored socialite threw a glance over her shoulder and then said something in a low tone to her companion that made him throw back his head and laugh.

Lucy could feel shame, hideous shame, rising red in her cheeks. Your mother’s daughter, her grandmother said.

“You called me Philip before,” said Mr. Schuyler, looking like a disappointed little boy.

“Before, you hadn’t tried to kiss me.” Lucy reached below the table, rooting for her bag. It had fallen in the scuffle, somewhere under the table.

“Lucy . . . Lucy, wait.” Philip Schuyler grabbed her hand, pulling her up to face him. He twined his fingers clumsily through hers. “I thought you liked me.”

He was looking up at her with such big eyes, all vulnerability. A little boy, rejected by his stepmother. Indignation warred with pity, and, worst of all, flattery. “I did like you. I do like you. It’s just—I can’t—”

Philip’s hand tightened on hers. “Sit down.” He gave a little tug. “Have another drink.”

Lucy stared down at him, fighting a crushing sense of disappointment. “And what? Be your little bit on the side? Kiss you in the dark and then take your calls from your fiancée? No, thank you, Mr. Schuyler.”

Philip Schuyler stared at her in genuine consternation. Or perhaps that was just the gin, slowing his wits, wrinkling his forehead. “I never thought— You’re a girl in a million, Lucy. Has anyone ever told you that? You’re the bee’s knees. The cat’s meow.” Grandly, he declared, “You’re the best secretary I’ve ever had.”

And whatever last illusions Lucy had cherished shriveled and died.