The value of secrets is ever fluctuating, although ladies who have been in society for a long time learn that a secret kept can be worth more than a secret told.
—MAEVE DE JONG, LOVE AND OTHER FOLLIES OF THE GREAT FAMILIES OF OLD NEW YORK
LINA WALKED BETWEEN THE WHITE AND BROWN patches of lawn and the sparsely leaved trees of Union Square at a pace that was neither hurried nor careless. She walked like a girl wearing a new fur coat, which in fact she was. It was made of broadtail, with a high chinchilla collar. Tristan had helped her pick it out that morning. And she was trying to walk as she remembered Elizabeth Holland walking: as though she were sublimely indifferent to the cold, and to the passing, bundled girls who looked in wonder at the rich pelts she wore when out for a stroll, trailed by an obedient maid. She wasn’t really a maid, of course. But Lina had instructed her sister to walk behind her today at a cautious distance.
“What if we see Mrs. Carr or one of the others?” she had explained, and Claire, giddy at the thought of her little sister socializing with such fine people, had agreed.
“That is a very fine muff,” Claire said now. She was referring to the Persian lamb muff that Lina had purchased, what seemed a lifetime ago, with her Penelope money. Lina’s hands were protected by it now, as protected from the chill wind as a fine pair of white hands that had never seen a day of work might be.
“Isn’t it?” Lina replied over her shoulder. The muff didn’t seem so special to her now that she had the coat. She liked to think that, framed by the collar, her neck appeared longer, more imperious, like the neck of a girl named Carolina. At moments like these, her feelings for Will dimmed slightly, and she thought that she could stand to be in New York just a little longer, to practice her manners that much more. Certainly passersby, noting the quality enveloping her long body, would read her faint freckles as exotic and her sage green eyes as too aloof to be categorized as green or gray. But it was the muff that Claire had noticed—and Lina, sensing a way to begin telling her tales of all her fantastic new friends, had lied. She’d said that Longhorn had given it to her, like he’d given her the coat.
“You will have to be careful to take good care of it.”
“Oh, I will.” For a reason Lina couldn’t quite pinpoint, this comment gave her a little shiver. Claire could not have meant to, but her warning reminded Lina how tenuous her grandeur was, even now that she had accepted Longhorn’s proposal. Tristan had admonished her again that morning for a failing she was beginning to care more about; he had reminded her how short-lived her social career would be if she did not win the friendship of some female other than Mrs. Carr. “I know how, after all.”
“That is true.” They were moving forward, past wrought-iron benches, across the octagonal stone pavement, and Lina could hear the crunch of the remains of the last snow under her feet. It was too cold that day for a stroll, and so there were few people in the park. “I only wonder what Mr. Longhorn will expect in return for such a present.”
“Oh, no, you don’t have to worry about that. Tristan says—”
“Who’s Tristan?”
Lina stopped walking and her irises rolled to the sky. The sound of his name was both confusing and pleasing to her. She hadn’t told her sister about Tristan when he was just a department store salesman, she certainly didn’t know how to explain now that she knew what he truly was. Or, rather, now she knew that he was more than he seemed. And also now that he had kissed her. When she imagined how she would begin such a story, she wondered if the whole thing didn’t sound a little mad. No, better not to bring up Tristan. She turned and took Claire—who looked almost surprised to have come face-to-face with her newly grand sister—by the arm.
“I’ve talked so much about me.”
“Oh, but I like hearing about all your new friends.” Claire, who was wearing a black cloth coat and a hat that matched it in color and age if not in style, smiled through her shivers. Her nose had grown almost painfully red. Lina drew her toward one of the benches and removed her muff. Over the tops of the leafless trees, they could see the high stone roofs of the buildings on the east side of the square.
“Try it on,” she instructed. When Claire demurred, she continued with an “I insist.”
Two female servants in plain coats were passing with goods from market, and it was only once they had passed that Claire took the glossy black piece and considered it. She was slow to put it on, but once her hands had disappeared inside, a pleased expression began to take hold of her features.
“You should keep it,” Lina said impulsively. As soon as she had spoken, the thought of losing the muff, which now seemed sentimentally like one of the first fine things she had purchased for herself, was terrible to her.
“Oh, no, I couldn’t, Lina, it’s yours—and anyway, what will Mr. Longhorn say when he sees you’re not wearing it?”
Thus reminded of her lie, Lina began to feel that she didn’t deserve the stole to begin with. “He will wonder what’s happened to it,” she replied darkly, “and I will tell him that I must have been silly and left it somewhere, and then perhaps he will buy me a new one. Or perhaps he won’t. It will be a little test to see how deep his affection goes.”
“Oh, Lina! You mustn’t be like that.” Claire smiled through her disapproval. “That would be such a Penelope Hayes thing to do.”
Hearing that name out loud did not, at that moment, improve Lina’s idea of herself—in fact, it raised a glowering shame for being so recently in a position of peddling secrets—and so she brought the conversation in a different direction in the only way she could think of. “How is Diana? You know, I ran into her quite literally at the opera.”
“Oh, yes, I know. I didn’t believe the Carolina Broad in the paper could possibly be you, until she confirmed it for me.” Claire looked around her, at the small park in its shades of gray with the skinny trees casting shadows even at midday. There was no one near them, and those at a distance had wrapped scarves and hats around their ears to protect themselves from the cold. She lowered her voice even so. “But you know, I am worried about her.”
“About Diana?” Lina said. “I can’t imagine why—she never worries about anyone else.” Her sister gave her a look and she grudgingly added: “I only mean that she’ll be all right because she’s always been so good at watching out for herself.”
“Perhaps not anymore…”
“What could you mean?”
“Well, I’m not saying anything about her at all. It’s just something I saw. Something that might not reflect well on the Hollands…” Claire shifted on the bench and curled forward a little as though she might somehow hide what she knew with her body. “Well, it was one of the Hollands, and I saw her with a young man. A young man who used to be very intimately involved with the family, so much so that he was likely to have married into it.”
Lina was irritated by her sister’s obfuscation, and couldn’t help but reveal a little of it in her tone. “You saw her with him?”
“Yes,” Claire answered miserably.
“But what do you mean by ‘with’?” Lina experienced a tingle of interest now, although it would be too wild if her sister was saying what she seemed to be saying.
“Well, you know…with.”
Lina’s eyes had grown wide. “No, I don’t know. With each other in the parlor yesterday afternoon?”
“With each other this morning, in each other’s arms, with their clothes in disarray.” Claire put her whole face into the muff and made a distraught sound from the back of her throat. “What can I tell her? I just wish I had never seen it. I wish it had never been.”
Lina could scarcely believe the story—it was too audacious, really. But Claire would never have dreamed such a thing in a million years, and Lina found herself unable to stop picturing it, as though she had come across an overturned omnibus in the middle of Broadway and was suddenly surrounded by a gawking and inert crowd, unable to look away. It was disgraceful but also romantic enough to make Lina’s heart turn. She pressed her lips together and watched her sister, who was quite visibly more ashamed of what had transpired than Diana Holland ever would be.
“I don’t think you need to tell her anything,” Lina began. She had not—for all her mixed emotions, for all her fascination, revulsion, jealousy—missed what acquiring this knowledge might mean for her.
“You don’t?” Claire’s features were scrunched together in a kind of moral agony.
“Surely just being seen will have made her realize how careless and dangerous her behavior has been.” Lina spoke slowly and tried to catch her sister’s eye, which she was unable to do. “Just knowing how easily she could have been caught by you or her mother or aunt will make her more circumspect.”
“Do you really think so?”
There was sudden moisture in the air. Lina observed her sister. She was so good with the Hollands, so selfless. It had always seemed wrong to Lina how they could spend all their hours treating Claire like their inferior and she could still behave toward them with the loyalty of blood relatives. That was why they showed her so much. That was why she saw into their bedrooms early in the morning, when they were not at all the kind of family that the world believed them to be. Of course, Claire would never use such information. But Lina, sitting on a wrought-iron bench in a nearly empty park on a wintry morning, knew that she could. A few days ago, she certainly would have.
“I’m convinced everything will come out right in the end.” Lina touched her sister’s shoulder, indicating that she should go, and they both stood. It had begun to snow, and tiny white flakes were catching in Lina’s coat. She looked at her sister in the shiny black muff, and said: “You must keep that fur, though. It will be my Christmas present to you.”
The furrows in Claire’s brow disappeared, and she smiled down at her new possession. Lina’s mind was occupied by this latest, outrageous information, and as they walked—arm in arm this time—to the northern entrance of the park, she found that she no longer minded the loss of the muff at all. The story she had just heard had reminded her that there were far more important things that she should concentrate on acquiring.