To match a European title with American dollars is so tried and true a matrimonial route, it is hardly worth commenting on, although it ought to be remembered that they do things differently there, and a mother should be wary during the courting process, lest the young lady catch a little Continental moral lassitude.
— MRS. HAMILTON W. BREEDFELT, COLLECTED COLUMNS ON RAISING YOUNG LADIES OF CHARACTER, 1899
“SO WHICH ONE OF THESE FELLOWS IS MY RIVAL?” the prince asked, bending in Penelope’s direction with an air of conspiracy, allowing his eyes to linger on the soft white skin of her décolletage before glancing at the other guests. The gauzy white part of her dress floated down around her feet, and the chandelier light played at the rings and bracelets that adorned her hands.
“Mr. Schoonmaker is acting strange this evening,” she answered, liking the word rival more than ever. It made her feel all doused in gold. “So I don’t expect you will meet him.”
“Ah.” There was glitter in the prince’s eyes when he met hers again, and though Penelope could not be sure, she thought she felt his hand brush against the back of her upper thigh. His appearance, in the blue military jacket, was especially crisp and robust. “All the more for me, then?” he went on in a quieter, more carnivorous tone.
The Schoonmakers’ guests were accepting second glasses of champagne now, and the ambience had grown festive. It was the height of summer, and they all wanted to see and be seen before they went off for Riviera cruises or to their cottages at Newport for August. Isabelle was whispering something to Bradley behind her fan, and Penelope realized as she watched that none of her confidences were safe with her mother-in-law when that lady had taken a paramour. Even now she was probably repeating verbatim things Penelope had said about the prince of Bavaria, and to a man with no reputation to keep.
“Everyone is looking at us, you know,” Penelope said after a pause, enunciating each word to let him know she believed they were, indeed, in the midst of something quite worth looking at.
“But all of their eyes are averted,” he countered.
“Yes, that’s how we do it in this country.”
“I am not unfamiliar with the technique.” The prince surveyed the people before him, lifting his champagne as a kind of punctuation, so that the light shot through the pale liquid. “But what could we possibly have done to inspire such interest?”
The large blue disks of Penelope’s eyes floated toward her upper lashes as she averted her gaze in a false display of modesty and confusion. “Do you suggest, my prince, that we have not done enough?”
She briefly wondered if she had again gone too far, but then a smile flickered at the corner of his mouth. “My darling, one can always do more.”
He kept his eyes on her as he swallowed the rest of his drink, and then he took her arm and placed his lips near her ear and instructed, in a voice growing pleasantly gruff: “Show me the grounds, why don’t you?”
Penelope glanced back at the guests she was leaving behind — slyly, from the corners of her eyes — as she and the gentleman in epaulets strode out into the main hallway. She made no attempt not to be seen. Earlier in the evening, when she still had yet to encounter the prince, she had held a suspicion that she looked especially well put together, and an inclination not to waste such a pretty showing. But her sense of her own beauty had reached another level entirely, and as she walked arm in arm with her first royal admirer, she felt as though she were traveling a foot above the ground.
“As you can see, we have very fine tapestries in this house…,” she said as they moved down the hall. She had returned to a rather distanced manner of speaking, as though she were any young matron showing off the family treasures. “But then I suppose you are a little sick of tapestries.”
“Yes,” he answered in a banal tone that belied the movement of his hand from her elbow to her waist, “we have far too many tapestries in my own country. I did not, my incomparable Mrs. Schoonmaker, come all this way to search out more.”
They had walked through a series of corridors, and the chatter and the music of the party had become far away and indistinct. Around the corner and down a short flight of stairs was the entrance to the greenhouse, which had been a favorite assignation spot for Henry, back when he still wanted her. “What would you be interested in seeing? We have plenty of statuary, and all manner of hothouse flowers—”
The prince dropped his arm and drifted away from her for a moment, as though he really were considering what part of this fine home he was most curious about. He batted down a smile and lifted a well-manicured finger, placing it against Penelope’s exposed clavicle. Then he drew it down, across the smooth skin of her chest, to the elaborate gold embroidery at the edge of her black velvet bodice, and then slowly along the embroidery until he reached her right arm, at which point he began tracing a line upward to her opposite clavicle. He had taken his time, and when the gesture was over her chest was rising and falling rather more quickly, and his mouth stood open.
The noises from the rest of the house had grown clamorous, and she realized the mood of the party was ascendant. She was the hostess, and she would soon be missed. The fragrance of flowers and loamy earth emanated from the greenhouse, which for her had always meant one thing. She was inclined to show the prince the rest of her, but knew there wasn’t time. She extended her neck and waited for his kiss. When it came, it was with such force that she felt the wall against her back and the medals on his jacket sinking just slightly into her skin. That, she thought to herself, just before she heard the servants shouting from down the hall that both Mrs. Schoonmakers were needed, was how kings must kiss. Footsteps were growing closer, and she knew that she was at a very great risk of being found out, but she remained in place, staring into the prince’s eyes, feeling him press in against her, for as long she possibly could.