A lady must retain always her composure. Even in a rainstorm, she must appear joyous and dry. When she loses her composure, then the respect of her peers and her staff will follow in short order.
— VAN KAMP’S GUIDE TO HOUSEKEEPING FOR LADIES OF HIGH SOCIETY, 1899 EDITION
ELIZABETH HAD LEFT HER PATIENCE SOMEWHERE in the riotous streets of Manhattan. All the time it would take to wash her face and take off all the layers of dress would have driven her insane. As soon as she knew her mother was in bed, she took the familiar back-of-the-house route, custom-made petal-pink dress and all.
Henry had never arrived at the ball, so Elizabeth could still feel the touch of Will’s mouth on her hand, unsullied by any potential encounter with her sham fiancé. They had ridden home in a Schoonmaker carriage Henry’s father, sweaty and clearly irritated by his son’s no-show, had insisted but even that couldn’t change the direction of her thoughts. She had gazed out its window at the explosions in the sky, and counted the blocks until she was home.
All night she had been thinking of Will. Even when she was dancing, moving gracefully through those golden hours with a smile for Brody Parker Fish or Teddy Cutting, she was counting the hours until she could be with him again. They were in love; they would find a way. Elizabeth felt dizzy and light with the possibilities. She was almost mouthing the words to herself as she crossed the empty kitchen and went hurtling down the wooden steps into a darkened stable.
“Will?” she whispered into the darkness. She kicked off her slippers and hurried toward where she knew the ladder to be. The old floorboards were soft against her feet, the hay sharp and ticklish. She pulled herself up the ladder with her hands and darted across the loft. “Will?” she said again. “Will, are you there?”
She fell to her knees on the bed, feeling the mattress in front of her. It was bare the blankets and even the sheets were gone. She pushed herself up and climbed backward down the ladder. Then she went running across the floor to the far side of the stable, between the stalls where the horses were kept.
“Will?” she called. “Will, are you there? Will?”
She could remember one previous time when she had come to visit Will and had been unable to find him. It was before her father died, when nothing seemed very consequential. She had tiptoed through the stalls, giggling and whispering his name, until she found him, standing against one of the wooden posts that separated the individual stables. His eyes had been half shut, and he had been drifting off into one of those dreams set on the other coast. He was almost sleeping standing up, the way the horses did. When she woke him by saying his name, he told her that Jumper, Elizabeth’s favorite thoroughbred, had fallen ill. Will had been sleeping by her side. That night, they had stayed up together till dawn, cooing to her.
But tonight there was no sign of a coachman sleeping amongst his charges. She ran back and forth, whispering his name, but there were only the black-lake eyes of the horses staring at her blankly over the Dutch doors of their stalls, and the sweet, grassy smell of the hay as her bare feet fell upon it. She turned, and turned again, bewildered by his absence. She had been so looking forward to seeing him all night. It was inconceivable that he wasn’t there, feeling exactly the same thing.
Elizabeth took a few breaths and went back up to Will’s loft. She was afraid of the oil lamp, because of all the hay and because she had never had to light one herself, but her eyes were adjusting without it. The naked mattress stared back at her plaintively. The wooden milk crates that he had once used as bookshelves were empty, and she knew without looking that the chest of drawers, a shabby piece that had been her father’s as a child, was now empty of his clothes. She went back to the edge of the loft and sank down to the place where Will had always waited for her.
Her hair was coming undone, and she pulled at strands until the pearls that had adorned them all night began to come loose and roll across the warped wooden floor behind her. The image of Will in front of the hotel was so fresh for her, it might have happened seconds ago. He had been looking at her with such intention, and she had taken it as confirmation of his love. He had taken her hand and kissed it, and she had taken this as a recklessly romantic gesture. She replayed the memory, like some jerky motion picture, and with a waterlogged heart she began to understand what Will had been doing. He had been trying to say good-bye.
She pulled her hair back from her face and felt her throat begin to close. The tears were coming, sobs racking her whole body. She bent forward and let them soak her skirt, quietly saying Will’s name again and again. She must have been going on like this for some time, when the voice broke in.
“What have you got to cry about?”
All of Elizabeth froze. “Excuse me?” She was too frightened to look up just yet and see who had caught her in her secret life.
“Your dress does look a wee bit ruined. Does that explain the tears?”
Elizabeth’s eyes rose slowly. There was Lina, her arms crossed against her chest, standing at the entryway where Elizabeth always paused when she was coming to visit Will. Lina was wearing that same ugly black dress, which fell, unflatteringly, to just above her ankle, and she was tapping her left foot.
“No,” Elizabeth replied. She sat up straight and steadied her voice. “Not the dress.”
“Well, what then? Is it Will?” Lina shook her head disgustedly, and added ironically, “Your Will?”
“What?” The skin around Elizabeth’s eyes tightened as she stared down at her maid. She was reminded of Lina as a child, crying because she felt excluded from Will and Elizabeth’s games. There was that same hurt look in her eyes, although she seemed more erratic and somehow frightening now. Elizabeth brought her legs up to the loft floor and scrambled to climb down the ladder. As she went, her skirt caught on the rough wood. She looked up only when she heard a ripping sound and saw that a heap of pink silk was caught at the top of the ladder, but she kept going. At that moment she could not have cared less about anything.
She landed on the ground with purpose and turned to Lina just as she was saying, “You never deserved him.”
Elizabeth wasn’t sure whether to argue with Lina or find some way to convince her not to tell anyone about the secret between her and Will. They stared at each other for a long moment. As the fierce beating of her heart slowed a little, she noticed the pained cast of Lina’s features. She was trying to be cruel to Elizabeth, but she too was clearly devastated by Will’s disappearance.
“You don’t know anything,” Elizabeth said in a firm, quiet voice. She could feel her cool returning. “And you most certainly are not where you are supposed to be.”
Lina’s smirk was constant. “And where would that be, miss? Up in your room, helping you off with your gown? Makes my job awful hard, having no mistress to serve.”
“That’s exactly where you are supposed to be. And don’t forget, you serve at my pleasure. You are an employee of my family.”
Elizabeth drew in her breath and propped a hand against her hip. She stared at Lina, with her nose darkened by freckles, and her big bony shoulders. She lifted a fair eyebrow and said, in as authoritative a tone as she could manage, “You must be such a disappointment to your poor sister. It is for her sake that I am not going to fire you.”
Elizabeth let her arm fall back to her side disgustedly. She pulled her torn skirt away from her feet with one hand and let the other one swing as she walked past Lina and toward the kitchen door. She paused with one foot on the first step and turned her head in Lina’s direction. “That’s why I’m not going to fire you yet.”
Lina stared back, her eyes narrow with hatred, but said nothing. Elizabeth tipped her head upward slightly and let the moment unfurl. The knowledge that Will was gone, one person lost in a vast country, was gnawing at her from the inside. But she kept herself from crying as she moved slowly and proudly away from her maid, and up those worn steps for the final time.