The world seemed to drop out from under Elizabeth. She pressed in between them, and with her shaky gloved finger, wiped a stray crumb off her daughter’s face.
“She is a miniature of her mother,” he said.
Struggling to breathe, Elizabeth turned. “You won’t–”
He hesitated, deep in thought. After a long, pregnant silence where Elizabeth’s heart stopped, he said, “I promise.”
.
Chapter Four
“Elizabeth, darling, are you ready?” Alva Taylor Spencer sailed into Elizabeth’s room in a headlong trot with a choking tsunami of violet and tuberose perfume “Now tell me how I look.”
How did her mother manage to make every request a demand? Not surprising. The formidable grand dame of New York society possessed the distinguished pedigree of the Knickerbockers, in company with the tour de force of old money and tradition. Elizabeth’s mother decided who entered the upper echelons of New York society and ruled with absolute authority. Alva was aware of matrons scheming to procure social climber status to gain the coveted “card”. No one went up against Alva, and a social snub from her stung for years.
“You look like a rising Venus, Mother,” Elizabeth’s sister, Louise, volunteered while reclining in an elegant peacock brocade chaise lounge. During Elizabeth’s absence six years ago, her fiancée, Roderick Hawkes, cried off and married Louise. A covetous scheme set into motion by her sister who craved anything that belonged to Elizabeth. As far as Elizabeth was concerned, Louise did her a favor.
Not interested in marriage at all, Elizabeth sat at her vanity and finished applying a dab of lavender. She rolled her eyes to Fiona who closed the door on the way out. Her hand shook returning the stopper to the crystal perfume bottle, remembering her encounter with the frontiersman at the orphanage. So upset, she’d been forced to make hasty acknowledgements to the donors, bidding her adieus with apologies in an impolitic manner. To be anywhere Mr. Rourke was not.
Every nerve in her body shrieked with the uncertainty of Mr. Rourke’s promise. From a young age her mother’s iron-clad notion that any kind of contact from a nonentity of society was questionable.
Elizabeth’s fingers seized her silver hairbrush. Her secret gnawed at her insides. Warnings bombarded her. Endless extortion and blackmail weaved a searing path through her consciousness.
She swallowed. Never would she see the dreaded man again. They traveled in different circles. He had been at the orphanage for one day to entertain the orphans. She’d avoid the Fitzgeralds, and as much as it pained her, she’d not go to the orphanage for a few days. That was all she had to do.
From behind, her mother leaned over to study her reflection, startling, Elizabeth. “You still haven’t answered me,” her mother pouted.
Elizabeth cringed. Her mother showed considerable lines at her eyes and scattered strands of silver in her raven’s wing hair. Elizabeth had once overheard an unkind remark of her mother, saying she resembled a walrus stuffed into a corset with a slight waddle. “You look exceptional.”
“She lies,” said Louise. “Just like the cover up for her having a baby she couldn’t remember. What a tragedy for our family.If that news ever reached the tabloid press it would be the ruination of our family.”
“Keep your mouth shut, Louise. If a servant were to hear of Elizabeth’s disappointment” Alva said, spitting out her eldest daughter’s vulgar imperfection.
Elizabeth held her head up despite her mother’s and Louise’s sharp tongues so quick to remind her of her scandalous liaison in which she’d no recollection.
With her mother, Elizabeth expected to never receive any comfort only scorn.
Louise? Weren’t sisters supposed to be close? How she yearned to have a normal, loving relationship with her sister. No matter how many times Elizabeth demonstrated kindness, Louise, a cut-out of their mother was quick to perceive it as weakness and lived to skewer Elizabeth with cruel and hurtful taunts. Was it the stark dichotomy of nurture versus nature? Elizabeth glanced at her sister in the reflection of her mirror. Louise toyed with her jewelry like Cleopatra. No. Nature and nurture were intrinsically linked. Part of Louise’s hostility was her innate character, the other, her mother’s cultivation of condescension, conceit, and envy.
“Why isn’t your father home yet?” demanded Alva. “He promised to be home by seven.”
“It’s six o’clock,” said Elizabeth. “He has plenty of time before dinner.”
“I feel a headache coming on. Nobody knows what it is like to be me. Why is it so hard to deal with everything?” Alva said in her ear-splitting, high-pitched childish voice.
Alva was needy, whining and manipulative, often pretending poor health to gain attention. She drained Elizabeth and her father.
To find escape, Elizabeth picked up her embroidery, spreading the bit of cambric over her knee to inspect the tinystitches that blossomed into an exquisitely formed swan riding the crest of a wave.
“Elizabeth, pay attention to Isaac Havemeyer. We must rectify your problem as soon as possible. He’s heir to the largest sugar fortunes, and from what I hear may be knighted. To think my daughter could be an inheritor of a title.” She tittered and clapped her hands. “What a feat that would be. All the other ladies would be green with envy.”
Elizabeth’s disgrace was defined as the “problem”. “I’m not interested in marriage.”
“Not interested in marriage. No one would ever have you,” Louise said, flouncing her skirts.
“Elizabeth, it is not your choice,” Alva scoffed. “You have a legacy to uphold. Your father is one of the wealthiest men in America, perhaps the world. And included in that legacy is my pedigree.”
Elizabeth gritted her teeth with Louise’s needling and her mother’s unending designs for her future. How she’d like to be the swan in her embroidery and fly away.
