The person who advised that it is always best to tell the truth undoubtedly led a very sound life, although it is difficult to imagine that he would have lasted very long in a society like ours, where appearances are so savagely maintained.
— MAEVE DE JONG, LOVE AND OTHER FOLLIES OF THE
GREAT FAMILIES OF OLD NEW YORK
BY THREE O’CLOCK CAROLINA HAD REMOVED THE veil, although she still wore the white dress that had been the pricey product of a week’s frenzied labor. She had stopped worrying about rumpling the back, and had sat down in the comfortable stuffed chair that Buck had placed in her dressing room that morning. There was a polished silver tray with sandwiches and tea, but she had not touched them. She could not think about consuming anything. She had often heard of delicate ladies suffering from complete lack of appetite, but she had never before this experienced anything of the kind. All her uneasy thoughts gravitated toward Leland, wherever he was. When they were alone, she had begun to explain who Tristan was, with the half-formed notion that she could serve him just a sliver of the truth and smile contritely and hope for his forgiveness. But before she could help it she had told him everything, down to her real name, her place of birth, her real family, her former position as a lady’s maid, her meeting with Longhorn. He had listened carefully and taken everything in, and then he’d told her, in a calm voice, that what he wanted was to be alone and walk. But he would come back. He had promised to come back.
A few hours ago she had feared some small embarrassment of wardrobe or wording. She could not have anticipated anything as mortifying as what had come to pass, and yet, in the event, she found that she thought only a little about the contempt of her well-heeled guests, or of the scandalized reports that would no doubt run in the papers the following day. If she could, she would have traded the whole of Longhorn’s estate for the assurance that Leland still loved her. She would have given away her house just to know what block he was on at that very moment.
The loneliness of waiting was more profound than any she had ever known. It occurred to her that maybe her sister was close by, that perhaps Claire, with her reserve stores of reassuring goodness, would make soothing company until her groom’s return. But along with the cool cleanness of confession had come the realization that asking one’s natural-born sister to play a silent maid on one’s wedding day was a very callous thing to do, and that she deserved none of Claire’s comforts anymore.
There was no urge to cry. As desperately as she wanted some piece of Leland, there was another part of her that had become quiet and settled during her hours of waiting. Since she had become Carolina Broad, her every minute had contained a lurking paranoia that she might somehow betray her past and her secret, cloddish, low-born self. But now she had revealed those things to the only person whose opinion really mattered to her anymore, and that fact — while horrid — made her feel that she might, at last, be able to put her feet up.
The room was small and quiet, but the ceiling soared, and there was something cathedral-like and hushed about the space. She ought to pray, but she didn’t know how. Yet, even with no prostrations on her part, Leland kept his promise. He walked back into her dressing room presently — far less animated this time, and with an ashen complexion. She gazed at the deep black jacket he wore and the fine weave of his dress shirt, which, even wrinkled and smeared with blood, hung handsomely on his large frame.
For a while neither spoke. She stood, all of the fabric and lapidary detail rustling as she brought herself upright. The noises her finery made seemed especially loud in the monkish silence of that room, between those two souls. The man who should already have been declared her husband looked at her with pale blue eyes, but perhaps it was painful for him to do so, for he quickly averted them.
“Carolina—” he began, just as she blurted:
“I am so sorry—”
“Don’t be.”
“What?” Her heart, and all the other delicate tissue within her, swelled upward, as if with a summer breeze.
“I understand,” he went on, sounding quiet and defeated and keeping his eyes on the floor. “I understand why you lied about who you were. Who you are. In a way I think it was quite audacious of you, really, to put those ninnies on and make them think you were just as grand as any of them.”
“You do?” she whispered, stepping forward, listening to the stiff petticoat brush against the stone. The shadows on his face were driving her mad, for she wanted nothing so much as a clear vision of him and the chance to show him her full, true self.
“Yes. But of course none of those people ever really impressed me particularly, and I never cared for their parties and clothes and conversation all that much. I guess I always knew you were different from them, and that’s what made me want to have you. I’ve been walking for hours asking myself, if you had told me from the beginning that you were a maid, and not an heiress, would I have fallen in love with you in the same way?” Now he did finally bring his face up, so that the natural light of the high window could fully illuminate his features, so that his eyes were cast directly at her. “I think I would have, Carolina. I think I would have loved you anywhere.”
Her lips parted and a noise unlike any she had ever heard — something between a gurgle and a wail — came up from her throat. She wanted to be able to say something back to him just as beautiful as what he’d said, but there were now tears brimming on her lower lids, and even if there hadn’t been, there was no possible way words could have approximated the magnitude of her feelings at that moment. Already she was picturing a very small ceremony, perhaps onboard a ship, as she and her husband sailed away from the city and its vitriol. She stepped forward and reached for his hands.
“I wish you had told me from the beginning. Or once we had gotten to know each other a little.” His hands gripped hers, and squeezed. Then he let them go. “But that you called yourself an only child, when you have a sister. That you pursued Longhorn’s friendship for financial gain — even if only in a small way. That you grew up right here, so close to me, and thought you could conceal the fact over a whole lifetime together. You lied to me for too long, and I don’t believe I’ll ever be able to forgive you that.”
“No…please!” she gasped. In seconds it had all gone to pitch inside. She threw herself forward, reaching for him, and he took her up and let her rest her face against his chest. The tears were a flood now and the sobs rocked her whole body. She was soaking his shirt, but she couldn’t care about that anymore, and he didn’t seem to mind. When her emotions were somewhat less violent, but no more bearable, he began to rock her. “But I love you,” she wailed in that stupid, futile way of hers.
“I loved you, too,” he said, and then for a long time they stood there, silent, as they were.
She was glad of his arms around her, but she sensed that already the quality was different. As long as he let her, she went on pressing her face into his chest and tried to store up whatever comfort she could, for she knew the devastation, within and around her, was only just beginning.