If you’re concerned about another
run-in like the one we had at the
opera, I would be more than
happy to make arrangements
face-to-face at the place and
time of your determination.
Affectionately, I. W.
CAROLINA STEPPED INTO THE FIFTH AVENUE HOTEL in a cloud of expensive perfume, under a broad hat bedecked with cloth flowers, and felt the poetry of her selection of a meeting place. Her mission that afternoon gave her nerves, but she was wearing a fitted jacket of ivory-and-rose pin-striped linen and a matching skirt, both of which fit her exquisitely as only really expensive clothes do, and proved how far she’d come since the afternoon when she was run out of this very hotel by an unkind concierge. Now she knew better than to be intimidated by the Fifth Avenue, which faced Madison Square. It was not as modern or as fine as the New Netherland, where she had lived for a time, or the Waldorf-Astoria, which carried its royal associations in its name. In fact, she’d never returned because it had ceased to seem fancy to her long ago — and not because of any lingering fears about the concierge.
“Miss Carolina…”
She turned, surprised a little at herself for feeling so cool despite the heat of the day and the identity of the speaker — for there was no getting around the fact that he was a threat to everything she had fought her way toward. But it was dark and hush in the lobby of the hotel, and she had spent the last week being courted by an incomparably eligible bachelor. Her belief in her own powers of attraction, in her social grace, had increased tenfold in those seven days. If someone on Wall Street had put everything on her confidence the week before, he could have retired like Carnegie today. Her bee-stung lips gave up only half a smile as she confronted Tristan Wrigley’s golden gaze.
“Why, Mr. Wrigley.” The flat delivery had become part of her charm.
“Can I tempt you with a pot of tea, a pastry, perhaps a late afternoon aperitif?”
His brown waistcoat and white shirt were similar to the ones he’d worn the day they first met — she had been running from the concierge, and he had been leaving his job at Lord & Taylor, and they had collided on the sidewalk right there in front of the hotel. She did not like to think of it anymore, but what followed had been rather dissolute. When, on Wednesday, she had received the note from Tristan, it had momentarily conjured all her old gauche selves, along with several helpings of shame. But then she had noticed his unschooled handwriting, his rather clumsy choice of words, and told herself she should not be so worried about making him disappear.
She took a breath to steady herself. “No, Mr. Wrigley, I don’t think you could.”
Placing his hands behind his back, he bent his lean frame forward. It was a chivalrous gesture, but still a few seconds passed before it began to dawn on her that — though they were meeting because Tristan claimed he’d been cheated of a portion of her fortune — he was flirting with her.
“This is business, after all,” she added coyly.
“As you wish.” Smile lines emerged under his high cheekbones, and a twinkle passed in his hazel eyes. Then he swept his hand forward, like he was showing her around the glove department, and they moved together to the patterned velvet sofa best sheltered by potted palms.
She perched on the seat, her shoulders thrown back and her hands primly on her knee. Sweetly she began: “You feel you are owed something.”
“We both know you would be back to working as a maid, or far worse, if I hadn’t intervened,” he answered in the same charming tone.
“Mr. Longhorn knew very well what I was, and still he thought I should be taken care of.” She let her eyes drift to her skirt, and for a moment she stroked the fine fabric. When she spoke again, some of the sugar had gone from her voice. “But then, I know what you are, and I think you should be taken care of, too.”
Now she turned in her seat to look at him straight on. He had been gazing at her, and she wondered briefly if the desire he’d felt for her the night he pressed her against the wall of that elevator had grown a little unbearable, now that she was such a polished version of herself. “I knew you would not forget me, Carolina.”
“Perhaps you should tell me what kind of figure you had in mind.”
He placed his elbow on the back of the sofa so that he almost might have draped it round her shoulders, and brought his mouth close to her ear. The lobby hummed with the low sounds of elegant hospitality, and bellboys pushed brass carts back and forth across the thick, wine-colored carpets. A few guests lingered by the front desk, but as she had suspected, there was no sign of anyone from her circle anywhere near what had only once been the best hotel in the city. He exhaled and then whispered a sum that, half a year ago, would have sounded so impossible as to be hilarious, but which now to her only represented a moderately decadent holiday. After all, she was a girl whose total earnings in a year as a lady’s maid could not have bought her the suit she’d been buttoned into that morning.
She tipped her head so that her hat obscured the expression on her face, and then stood wordlessly. By the time her chin rose, exposing her features to Tristan, she had made them stony. His mouth opened, a dull, dark slot, and he watched as she extended a gloved hand.
“I will have a check made out to you for just that amount, and it shall be delivered to you at Lord and Taylor before the end of the day.”
“Could you have it instead delivered to me at my apartment?” he asked, a little too quickly. Then she knew that he had debts and needed the money badly, and soon, and that he didn’t want his employers or anybody else knowing about it. There was something hopeful and a little pathetic about him that she’d never noticed before.
“Of course.”
In moments it would be over, and yet she found that she was in no hurry to leave. It was as though, now that she was winning, she didn’t want the battle to be over already. She straightened her spine, and let her fist rest against her waist, proudly. This was a pose, and she had a sudden flash of how flattering the chandelier light was on her handsome figure.
“You look awfully pretty, Miss Broad,” Tristan grinned. He was relieved, too, she guessed.
The compliment sent a girlish sensation washing through her, and she found herself wanting to say a sentence that had been brimming on her tongue for days, but for which she hadn’t found the ideal listener.
“What is it about you?” he pursued.
The smile that followed was involuntary, and she couldn’t help the words that came out of her mouth next. “I’m in love,” she very nearly whispered. “It gives a girl a certain something, isn’t that what they say?”
Tristan’s eyebrows levitated, and in the following seconds Carolina felt very tawdry for even having mentioned her blooming romance with Leland while in the same room as the salesman who had known her at her worst. “Are you now?” he replied in a manner more sly than chivalrous. The snakelike slenderness and the coiled way he carried himself were again obvious. “With that Bouchard fellow?”
She cleared her throat and stepped away from him, trying to summon her late hauteur. But her nerves had returned. “You can expect that check, Mr. Wrigley. I don’t imagine we shall see one another again.”
Quick as she could, Carolina twirled about and strode for the exit, suddenly wanting for that last bit to be true more than ever before.