Elizabeth,
A most miraculous, most unforgivable event has occurred. Your sister has just been returned to my care, by two army men, arrived this day from Cuba. She will be punished, of course, and not all owed out of the house or my sight. I am relying on you to show her the error of her judgment. We are coming to your home for dinner this evening, and I want you to impress upon her how poorly your adventures outside of New York indeed proved.
Yours, Mother
IN THE CAIRNS BROWNSTONE, ON AN EMINENTLY respectable stretch of Madison, everything was in its place and an air of prosperous well-being floated throughout the rooms. The cook was preparing dinner, for all the Holland women would be dining there that evening. Elizabeth had had a busy week, but she’d finally managed some rest that afternoon, and now that order had been established, and the place was looking so much more like a home, a healthy aspect had returned to her cheeks. So Elizabeth thought, anyway, as she lingered a little while longer in front of the ormolu mirror with the embossed ribbon detail in her bedroom. Behind her in the frame were the white-canopied bed and garnet-colored wallpaper. Her complexion had always been pale, but as she studied her reflection, she thought she detected a hint of the pinkness that Will used to like, too. Ever since she had heard about the success of his oil field, she had been wearing black in a secret act of devotional widowhood, but it did not — she couldn’t help but notice — make her look any smaller.
Soon Diana would be coming through the door — Elizabeth could almost imagine how her soft little arms would be thrown wide in the expectation of an embrace, as she cried out: “But you’re so gigantic!” Despite the tenor of their mother’s note, Elizabeth knew that the old lady was relieved, as she was, to have Diana back. That was the main thing, and Elizabeth felt extra lucky to have such a nice home to welcome her little sister into. She had not paused the hectic business of making a household all week, and she was glad that she hadn’t, now that she knew what a homecoming it would be.
Of course there was another, barely conscious reason for her constant busyness, which was that whenever she paused too long her thoughts turned to the document that linked her and Will’s names long before they were actually married. How had her father realized, she would have liked to know. Had her first love confided in him? But she would never have answers to questions like that. The two men who could answer them were gone from her. And then there was the issue that turned her stomach a little sour, which was that her husband — the one whose name she was called by in public now, the one currently pledged to protect her, the one who she’d most recently promised to serve — had known of it for so long, and not told her. There was a tiny voice in the back regions of her mind, insisting that Snowden should get his hands off what had been intended for her and Will to share.
Elizabeth gazed at her reflection a long time, like the vain girl she used to be, and not the mother she’d soon become. When the bell rang below, she tucked a few stray hairs back into the twist rising from the nape of her neck and tried to pinch some color into her cheeks. How had it grown so late?
But when she came — hurrying, and yet not particularly fast — out into the hall, which joined the second floor rooms and ended at the steep stairs into the foyer, she saw the sun streaming in through the stained glass fanlight and realized that it was far too early for her family to be arriving. She came onto the landing and looked down. The carpet, which she had chosen at the beginning of the week for its handsome oriental design of burnt sienna and teal woven threads, spread from below the landing to the front entryway. She couldn’t help but pause, now, and feel a touch pleased with the choice. Presently Mrs. Schmidt walked across it and greeted the afternoon caller. Elizabeth stepped forward and rested a hand on the banister, but she couldn’t see who was there; a hanging lamp obscured her view.
“I’m sorry, but he’s not in,” Mrs. Schmidt was saying.
Elizabeth stepped left gingerly so as to peek at the housekeeper’s interlocutor. She felt an instinct, not yet fully comprehended, to be silent and secretive, even though it was her own house. As the man’s face emerged beyond the intrusive porcelain shade, pockmarked and swollen, she was glad of that instinct. For she knew him — but how? He was large, and neither poorly nor richly dressed. He was not a man of her class, but he did not appear to be a servant, either. Snowden had a retinue of men who worked for him when he was leading explorations, but this fellow was none of these.
His face was not handsome, but it was not exactly ugly, either. There was something large and boyish about him that did not seem to warrant reproach. But for Elizabeth, that face and that man had a distinctly awful quality about them. It made her feel cold all over — and for weeks now she had been enduring the kind of heat that ceiling fans were useless against.
“I’ll see he gets it,” Mrs. Schmidt said, and then she placed a note on the pink marble-topped cabinet to the left of the entry. The door closed, and Mrs. Schmidt walked toward the back of the stairs without once looking up.
Above, on the landing, Elizabeth sucked in air. The man was gone, but his face hovered in her mind. She could not begin to understand what it was about him that made her want to cower and hide, or why she now felt so nauseated. The note he’d left remained idle on the table. It was just a little thing, folded and white, and yet she was drawn to the scrap of paper as though it had some gravitational power. She descended — slowly of course, one hand clinging to the banister, the other rested against her protruding belly. The sunlight in the foyer, when she stepped off the final stair, was momentarily blinding.
“Mrs. Cairns — are you all right?”
Embarrassment stuck in Elizabeth’s throat as she turned, startled, to see Mrs. Schmidt standing in the shadows of the hall. Shame over her intention to read her husband’s private correspondence, as well as any black notions she might have allowed herself to harbor, swept over her. The fatigue must have done it, she decided. She was so tired she was only half capable of logical thinking.
“Can I do something for you?” The older woman came out from the shadows. She wore an apron over the heavy black dress she donned, even now, during the extreme heat.
Elizabeth drew herself up with what dignity she could manage, and smiled softly. “I heard someone at the door—” she began in a feathery voice.
“It was a caller for Mr. Cairns. He left a note. Perhaps you—”
“Ah, good,” Elizabeth replied with strained lightness. “Then I shall not have anything to worry about! I think I will go try to rest a little before my family comes.”
Mrs. Schmidt turned away her face in subservient acknowledgment of her mistress’s intention, and Elizabeth tried to maintain a superior mien as she moved heavily back up the stairs.
When she reached her room, she crossed to the bed, unable to meet her own eyes in the mirror again. She was, in truth, relieved that she had been interrupted before some nonsensical emotions led her to snoop in her husband’s mail, for she had never wanted to be that kind of wife. Though she did lie down, she did not in the end manage to fall asleep.