Congratulations are due to Mr. Leland Bouchard and Miss Carolina Broad, whose engagement is being announced far and wide this morning. Invitations will, by all reports, go out today for a Sunday wedding at the Grace Church. While we long to be believers in love at first sight, the skeptic in us wonders if this mad dash to the altar is owing to motor car enthusiast Mr. Bouchard’s need for speed, or if it has more to do with the rather vast social difference between a girl whose connections do not go back even a year, and an august family who might, given enough time for reflection, come to think better of the match?
— FROM CITÉ CHATTER, WEDNESDAY, JULY 18, 1900
“IT SIMPLY WON’T DO,” CAROLINA SAID, STARING INTO a reflection that she had come, in a few days, to like more than she would ever have imagined. Was it possible she had grown taller in only a week’s time? Of course she was standing on the dressmaker’s box, and the six-foot triptych mirror now elongated her figure three times over. But surely her eyes were a purer shade of green. Her dark hair was pinned above her head, so that Madame Bristede — the dressmaker Longhorn had chosen for her during their short friendship — could better see to the elaborate lace-and buttonwork of the high neck, which Carolina knew to be very flattering even as she disparaged it. She and Leland had agreed, in the rush of their engagement, that they didn’t care what anybody thought, and that they had wasted too many years apart already. In less than a week they would be married.
“I am doing all I can, Miss Broad,” said Madame Bristede from her position by the pearl-encrusted hem. The elaborate dress had already been under construction for Carolina, but it had not been intended as a wedding dress, and so in the last twenty-four hours black netting had been painstakingly removed form the full, flouncing skirt and replaced with ecru point de gaze. Two young ladies in the corner with fatigued but agile hands were busy constructing a train embellished with ostrich feathers and opal beads. Near them sat a red-haired maid, who Carolina had insisted upon borrowing from Mrs. Carr for the week, watching the proceedings in quiet amazement and holding her temporary mistress’s street clothes folded in her lap. Ever since glimpsing her at the hotel, Carolina had been obsessed with finding a way to have her sister closer to her, and after the proposal, to see that Claire witnessed the wedding. Now she had. “But I have less than a week to finish, and so I am very sorry to say that it will have to do.”
Then the dressmaker looked up at Carolina, as though she had just remembered that she was no longer talking to a lucky nobody, but the future Mrs. Leland Bouchard. Part of Carolina wanted to rail about the monumental importance of this gown, this wedding, and, indeed, of herself; but the majority was too full of bliss at the impossible direction of her life to sustain anger. The memory of Leland’s quite public proposal rushed back for her — as it did several times an hour — causing her lungs to swell and her eyes to grow pleasantly moist, and then she found it impossible to persist in being difficult with Madame Bristede. She smiled. Madame Bristede smiled, and then returned to her task. No, she would save her exacting impulse for the florist and for Isaac Phillips Buck, who she had hired to oversee everything about her last-minute wedding, and who was now looming by the wall. It was very lucky that Penelope had not needed him for anything that week, she had commented earlier, to which he had responded with a politic silence that she simply had no time to interpret.
“Delivery for Miss Broad,” said the dressmaker’s assistant, poking her head around the door. It was true that Carolina had come to possess everything a girl might want, but her ears tingled pleasantly at these words anyway. “From Mr. Bouchard. The Lord and Taylor salesman is here to deliver it.”
“We are quite busy.” Madame Bristede did not glance up from her work. “Just have him leave whatever it is.”
“He says that he has a particular message, and that it is for Miss Broad’s ears only.”
The dressmaker looked up at her demanding client with weary, questioning eyes.
“It will only take a minute,” Carolina told her. She still felt nice about the idea that something was being given to her, although the phrase “Lord and Taylor” had not been a welcome one.
Sighing heavily, the dressmaker stood and motioned to the girls in the corner. Claire followed them, to her sister’s chagrin — but of course, both girls were extremely cautious of not appearing to have a special relationship. “Be very careful,” Madame Bristede said to Carolina, gesturing at the detailed skirt, after which they all left the room.
The bride-to-be stepped gingerly down from the box and walked to the worn blue velvet sofa in the corner.
“My dear Miss Broad, how enchanting you look.”
She twisted her neck to see, over her shoulder, Tristan’s familiar figure as he swaggered into the room. The sight of him did not do kind things to her mood.
“Mr. Wrigley, I hope you are delivering something very nice, as I have already paid you quite handsomely so that I might be spared your presence.”
“You did, it’s true, and promptly.” Tristan’s smile did not waver, and his gaze burned on. “But I’m afraid the bit about the package was a ruse.”
“Then I think you’d better leave,” she replied coldly.
“Ah, but we have business.”
“I think not. We had business, but that transaction has been completed.”
“Yes. That transaction has been.” Tristan moved forward with that same easy and attentive manner that made him so successful with silly women shoppers at the department store. “But that was before you became engaged to Leland Bouchard, which I should say makes you richer by at least half, not to mention brings you into one of those families who do still care about things like breeding, and would probably be less enthusiastic about their son’s choice of bride if they knew what she really was.”
Carolina’s stung lower lip fell, and a fresh dose of outrage began to course through her. “That’s robbery,” she replied indignantly.
Tristan shrugged. “Call it what you like. It doesn’t mean you don’t want me quiet and happy.”
He had ambled quite close to her. Now he leaned forward, bringing his face near enough to hers that if he spit a little when he spoke, she would feel the wetness.
“You revolt me,” she hissed, pulling away.
“I find that hard to believe.”
She reached for the small purse, which she had idly placed in the corner of the sofa upon her arrival, and removed a twenty-dollar bill, which she kept there in case of emergencies. “Here,” she said, without meeting Tristan’s eyes. “It’s all I have. I charge everything these days, you know, so I’m afraid you’ll just have to consider yourself lucky.”
“Ah, but Miss Broad, don’t you think—”
“Buck!” Carolina yelled shrilly. Tristan instantly drew back. Buck, meanwhile, came hurrying through the door, as fast as he could manage, considering his rather large person.
“Yes, mademoiselle?”
“This man is harassing me. Please see that he is not allowed near me again.”
She kept her eyes averted as Buck hustled Tristan from the room. His feet shuffled against the floor, but he went without a fight. Then she took a breath, and waited for the unpleasantness of the phrase “what she really was” to fade.
Carolina remembered how, as a child going to sleep, her mother would whisper she had been made for better things, and that if only her father had lived longer, he would have seen to it that she had a different kind of life. Mrs. Broud had been a beauty, and so Carolina had harbored the belief that she herself might someday be admired for her looks, and considered rather grand. But it was no longer merely a belief. She was a Bouchard, so it was a fact everybody would have to plainly acknowledge. Or anyway, she would be in a few days, she thought as she came up to her full height and stepped onto the dress box, dividing her reflection into three perfect pictures of a bride. After that there would be no questioning what she really was.