Louisa Rawlings Read online

  “But it’s not like the old days. You’re not exactly a little girl anymore. He might not like it. And he’s paying.”

  “Then I could go in Amos’s boat. Or one of the others. And it’s not as if I’d be the only woman there. Mrs. Marshall would probably take kindly to company. And if the men don’t seem like good prospects, I could always make some excuse and come back to Palmer’s or Sabattis’s and wait for the next batch.”

  He scowled in disgust. “You surely shame me, Marcy, with such talk. You make it sound like a quail shoot!”

  She turned toward the window, watching the last rivulets of rain course down the old panes. “Please don’t scold, Uncle Jack,” she said softly. “I don’t know what it is, but…” She turned back to him, her aquamarine eyes shimmering behind crystal tears. “I was down to North Creek last week. There was a railroad car. One of those fancy things the swells use to ride up here. All cut-glass windows, with swans and flowers scratched into them. Just for decoration! And polished brass and shiny wood— It even smelled special.” She sighed. “I wanted to peek inside, but old Tom at the depot shooed me away.” She looked up and blinked, and the brimming tears mimicked the rain on the windowpanes. “It wasn’t just the fanciness. It was like that car was all the things I want that I never had. That I never did. I kept thinking…that car has traveled out of the mountains. It’s seen the world. And I’ll live and die here.” She brushed the tears from her cheeks. “Help me, Uncle Jack. I’m aching. I don’t even know what it is, but I want…” Her voice trailed away on a sob.

  “What? What do you want, girl?”

  “I don’t know. Everything. To leave here. I don’t know… I think I’ll never be safe until I’m away from here.”

  “Safe from what? This has always been your home! Safe from what?”

  She buried her face in her hands. “I don’t know. I’m so mixed up inside, Uncle Jack.”

  Awkwardly, he draped his arm around her shoulders. “You’re my own brother’s child. You know I’ll do whatever I can to make you happy, Marcy,” he said gruffly. “You can ride in the boat with me. And if my feller makes a fuss, I’ll hit the rapscallion with my oar!” He smiled in relief as she sniffled and giggled. Then he shook his head, his face suddenly serious. “But I think you’re going against what you are, girl. This crazy notion—to leave the mountains—I only hope it does make you happy!”

  She smiled in gratitude. “I’ll never know if I don’t find out,” she said softly. “Now!” She squared her shoulders. “I reckon I’ll go down to the barn and ask Zeb to stay for supper. I ought to feed him, at least!”

  “Ali ben Tibor smiled and took my hand in his. ‘Pray give me your trust, Lady,’ he murmured. I leave you, gentle Reader, to divine the joy with which my heart was filled at his words. The touch of his fingers was…”

  “Did you want that book as well, Miss Bradford?”

  Startled, Willough closed the slim volume with a snap, set it down, and brushed the dust from her fawn gloves. “Certainly not!” She managed to smile uneasily at the clerk, though she could still feel her heart pounding beneath the amber silk bodice of her gown. She prayed that she wouldn’t blush and make a complete fool of herself. “How can people write such foolishness?” she asked primly to hide her embarrassment.

  “Mrs. Buchanan has a large following, miss,” said the clerk gently.

  “I suppose there are those who find it worthwhile to read romances. As for myself…if you will arrange to have delivered to me the volumes on iron and steel production that I ordered…and Mr. Ruskin’s latest lectures, if they have arrived.”

  “Certainly, ma’am. I’ll see if they’ve come in.”

  Willough nodded and turned away, glad for the opportunity to compose herself. She felt like a child who’d been caught stealing cookies in the pantry. Thank heaven it had only been the clerk and not one of her father’s friends who had found her reading that frivolous book! What would Daddy have thought of her then?

  She sighed. It was always the same. She never meant to look at the foolish things, so silly and romantic, with their sighing heroines forever needing to be rescued from some scrape or other. Falling helplessly into the arms of passionate and totally unreal men. As though a woman had nothing better to do with her life! That’s what Daddy would say.

  And yet—and this was what was so strange—she was always drawn to the books, almost in spite of herself, the words leaping out of the pages, setting her heart to thumping and her pulse to racing madly beneath the fine kid of her wrist-length gloves. The handsome men in the romances, who loved their women with passion, still treated them with honor and respected their virtue. She smiled ruefully to herself. In all her twenty-one years, there had never been a real man who had been worth a second glance; they were all so earthy, the lustful animal within kept barely in check. They seemed so possessive, wanting…she hardly knew what. Her independence. Her freedom. And something more. Something dark and nameless that she scarcely understood—yet somehow feared. Perhaps that’s why she’d always concentrated on the future she’d mapped out for herself, one that virtually excluded men. If, by some chance, the right man should come into her life, she’d surely know it. He’d be far grander, more worthy of her pure love and respect than the callow young men who had come courting in the last few years. She knew it with a certainty! Maybe that was why the heroes of the books held such a fascination for her, despite her attempts at indifference.

  The clerk had returned, bearing her order pad. “The Ruskin book has not arrived as yet, ma’am. We expect it within a day or so. Shall I have the ironworks volumes sent out to your coachman?”

  “No. I shall be in the north of the state for a good part of the summer. You may send the set to me there. Miss Willough Bradford, Saratoga Springs.”

  The clerk frowned, writing. “W-I-L-L-A?” she asked. “Is that how it’s spelled, Miss Bradford?”

  “No. W-I-L-L-O-U-G-H.”

  “What an unusual—and lovely—name!”

  “Thank you.” Willough smiled. “You will notify me at my Gramercy Park address when the Ruskin arrives?” Without waiting for a reply, she swept up the pleated train of her skirt and made for the door of the bookshop. She nodded at the young man who held open the door, then waited on the stoop, surveying the noise and hustle of Fourteenth Street, while her coachman brought up her open carriage. He jumped from his seat and held out his hand to assist her. She stepped into the open carriage and sat down, smoothing her taffeta skirts.

  The coachman scrambled onto his seat and turned to her. “Will you go to Lord and Taylor now, Miss Bradford?”

  Willough pulled at the elastic watch fob on her bodice and snapped open the little case. Three thirty. “No,” she said, closing the watch and settling back against the leather cushions. “It’s nearly time for tea. I’ll go straight home.” She opened her parasol to shade her complexion from the strong May sun. It was surprisingly warm in New York City for this time of year. Far warmer than it had been in Chicago with cousin Hattie. Well, she’d be off to Saratoga in another two or three weeks, before the weather got too hot. And before she had become so thoroughly sick of her mother’s company that she hardly could be civil. To avoid being with her mother, she had spent very little time at home in the last six years. The years at Vassar, the tour of the Continent with the Reverend Gordon and his wife, the visits with cousin Hattie. And of course the months at a stretch when she lived with her father in his house at Saratoga.

  She was startled out of her reverie. The carriage had stopped between Third and Fourth avenues, where a group of squalid urchins was fighting in the road. Willough frowned in dismay at their obvious poverty, feeling helpless, wishing she’d brought a few coins in her purse. The coachman cursed and waved the boys out of the way. Willough looked up as the carriage began to move again. Just to her right was the large red brick building of the Tammany Society, the most powerful political club in all of New York City. Even in Chicago over the winter, the papers had
been filled with the accounts of Mr. Tweed’s trial for bribery, forgery, larceny, and all manner of political chicanery. The trial had ended with the jury being unable to render a verdict. A month later, fifteen new indictments had been handed down against Tweed, with the new trial scheduled to begin sometime in June.

  And there was talk there would be more indictments to follow. The Tammany Hall cronies of “Boss” Tweed were quaking in their boots, according to The New York Times, and corruption would be rooted out from high places and low. Willough leaned forward and tapped the coachman on the shoulder with her parasol.

  “Is Mr. Gray expected for tea this afternoon?” she asked.

  “I don’t know, Miss Bradford,” he said, turning his head to speak to her. “We’ve not seen much of him this month. He’s been out of town. Albany, I think.”

  It was hardly surprising news. Willough nodded at the coachman and settled back again in her seat. Arthur Bartlett Gray. Man-about-town. Charming. Quite obviously wealthy, though he never seemed to do much except travel back and forth to Albany when the legislature was in session at the state capital. He carried himself like a man of breeding and birth, but he was always closemouthed in the matter of his antecedents. He was a lawyer who had never bothered to hang out his shingle. And a member of the Tammany Society and a friend of that selfsame William M. Tweed who was daily being pilloried in the newspapers. No wonder Arthur had arranged to be out of town for the last month or so!

  The carriage turned up the avenue toward Gramercy Park. Willough closed her parasol and tucked in a stray curl at her temple. It must be five or six years now since she’d seen Arthur. She had been home so seldom, and he had spent a great deal of time in Albany. They had always missed each other.

  Besides, she’d been unwilling to truly accept him or his visits to the house since the day she’d seen him kissing her mother.

  “I don’t know why you can’t call me Uncle Arthur as your brother does, Willough,” he’d said. All warm and friendly. Uncle Arthur. And then he’d gone off like a thief in another man’s house and kissed her mother. Was that why her father had bought the house in Saratoga?

  Still, it might be interesting to see Arthur again. There was a certain rakish charm to the man. He didn’t try to charm her often, but when he did, he could always make her laugh. Joking about her name, her awkwardness as she shot up in her teens, all gawky arms and legs.

  “Willough,” he’d say, laughing. “Willough. Are you sure they didn’t mean Willow? If you grow any taller, you must never wear a bonnet with leaves on it, or the birds will be tempted to nest.”

  “Oh, Mr. Gray,” she’d say, blushing.

  “And when you cry—which I fervently hope you do not—will they call you Weeping Willough?”

  She’d giggled. “Don’t be silly. They called me Willough for Daddy’s Grandfather Willoughby. I was supposed to be a son, not a daughter.”

  Willough sighed as the carriage pulled up to the curb in front of the elegant town house that faced Gramercy Park. She hadn’t thought about it much in those days, her name. But this last year, watching her father grow older, seeing the loneliness of his life, she felt a pang that was equal parts pity and guilt. Poor Daddy. A wife who cared for another. A daughter who should have been a son.

  Give me a chance, Daddy, she thought. I’ll make you proud of me.

  After alighting from the carriage, she mounted the stairs and passed through the hastily opened door to the cool vestibule. “Thank you, Brigid,” she said to the parlor maid who had opened the door for her. “I’ll go to my room until tea is served. I’ve some letters to write.”

  “Oh, Miss Willough…” Brigid said in her soft Irish brogue, “’tis Mrs. Bradford. She’s feelin’ very peevish today. Said she wanted to have tea straightaway as soon as someone came in. She can’t wait. She’s that impatient for her cup o’ tea.”

  “Why can’t she drink her tea alone?” muttered Willough.

  “Miss?”

  “Never mind. Is Mr. Drewry expected for tea?”

  “Your brother went out after lunch to the Academy of Design. He said he’ll be back. But you know what will happen if he gets to paintin’…”

  Willough sighed in resignation. “Very well. Tell Cook to put up the kettle.” She pulled off her gloves and laid them on a marble console along with her parasol and purse. She pulled out the hatpins that anchored the small, forward-pitched arrangement of horsehair and feathers and ruched ribbons that her father had bought for her in Paris last year. It was a very fetching hat, and still the height of fashion here in New York.

  She studied her reflection in the mirror. She was not displeased with what she saw: a serious face, strong and angular, with a straight nose and wide-set eyes. Her lips were thin—or perhaps it was just the way she held her mouth, firm and prim. Her skin was very pale and creamy, a striking contrast to the ebony curls swept back from her temples. She turned her profile to the mirror and patted the neat roll at the nape of her neck. The back hair had been twisted in a thick coil, then doubled back on itself in a vertical figure eight and pinned snugly to her head. She rather liked the new style—it made her look purposeful. More so than a cascade of ringlets.

  I look like a woman capable of running a business, she thought with satisfaction. And I know I can. I’m not like other women. Not dependent and dishonest, like my mother, who has to wheedle every penny out of Daddy and pretend to the world that they’re not estranged.

  She frowned, searching her face in the glass. She was a little less pleased with her eyes. Blue-violet. Soft. Velvety. They made her seem weak and helpless. She would have much preferred to have eyes like her brother Drewry—ice-blue, and as cold as he wanted them to be when he was angry.

  Her figure was another matter; she viewed it with a certain ambivalence. She was tall, and still as willowy as she had been when Arthur had made fun of her, but her bosom had developed at an alarming rate since those days. From the point of view of fashion, she knew her figure was perfect, with the voluptuous curves necessary to wear the severe-cut bodice they called en princesse, after Princess Alexandra of England.

  On the other hand, it was the kind of figure that made her look almost too feminine, attracting unwelcome stares from men. And hardly designed to persuade her father that she could be as useful to him as a son, the proper heir to his vast enterprises.

  Steeling herself, Willough crossed the vestibule toward the parlor, where her mother waited. Isobel Bradford was reclining on an overstuffed chaise; she looked up as her daughter entered. Willough had to admit she was beautiful, in a frail way, though she was beginning to show her years in her thickening waist, slight puffiness around the chin, gray streaks in her glossy black hair. She was wearing a tea gown, a frilly garment of ruffles, tiers, and swags, extravagantly trimmed with lace. And loose enough, Willough knew, so she could discard her corsets.

  Isobel smiled sourly at her daughter and sighed. A martyr’s sigh. “You might have given a thought to me, Willough, while you were gadding about on your errands. But never mind.”

  “I’ve sent for tea already, Mother. Have you had your tonic?” It was a foolish question. Willough could see from the brightness of her mother’s eyes, the way her hands fluttered and fussed at the small lace cap perched on her hair, that the daily dose had not been forgotten.

  “It did nothing but give me a headache! I know I shall never sleep without a bit of laudanum tonight. Not that your father would care,” she said bitterly. “When you’re in Saratoga with him, you might mention that I could use a larger bank draft next month. Mrs. Astor has recommended a wonderful doctor, but his fees are extremely high.”

  “What’s the matter with Dr. Page?”

  Isobel Bradford sniffed in disdain. “They say when Mrs. Lenox suffered her sick headaches last month, Dr. Page could do nothing for her.”

  “Mrs. Lenox drinks too much,” said Willough dryly. “But of course Mrs. Astor’s recommendation goes without question!” Or Mrs. Belmont, or Mrs.
Goelet, thought Willough with disgust. Anyone whose name was better than theirs.

  Her mother looked shocked. “The Astors are among the finest families in the city!”

  “I daresay.”

  “Don’t you take that tone with me, Willough! I shan’t forget I’m a Carruth, though you might!”

  Willough felt her insides churning, as they always did when her mother began her genealogy lecture. “Let’s have it again, Mother,” Willough said tightly. “The Carruth name goes back over two centuries, while the Bradford name…”

  “The Bradford name didn’t exist thirty years ago.”

  Willough crossed to the window and pulled back the lace curtains. She felt suffocated, wishing herself out-of-doors with the children who played in the street, laughing and romping in the park across the way. “Whatever possessed Daddy to change his name for you?”

  Whatever possessed him to marry you? she thought in anguish. An insufferable snob.

  Her mother laughed. “I was a Carruth! I could never have married a man whose name was MacCurdy! Mrs. Brian MacCurdy! It’s absurd.”

  “But you didn’t mind the MacCurdy money.”

  “If I had thought for a minute it was to be doled out in niggardly fashion, the way it is to me—and to you and Drewry too!—I should certainly have thought twice about marrying him!” It seemed to Willough that her mother’s very tone revealed the endless hours she had spent collecting and nursing her grievances. “Ah, at last. Tea!” Isobel said as the door opened and Brigid struggled in, carrying a large tray. “Not near me, Brigid,” she snapped. “Can’t you see I’m not well today? Over on that table, where Miss Willough can pour.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” The maid turned clumsily with her burden and just managed to set it down in front of Willough’s chair. The sudden jolt of the tray on the table set the teacups rattling, earning for Brigid a scowl from Isobel. She curtsied hastily and fled the room.

  Isobel struggled to pull herself upright on the chaise as Willough poured the tea and handed her a cup. “These girls will be the death of me,” she said, casting her eyes to heaven. “They come off the boat with no manners, not a lick of training…”