An Embarrassment of Riches (45 page)

‘Is he all right?' she asked anxiously. ‘Is he big enough?'

The midwife cast a practised eye over the little red and wrinkled bundle of humanity.

‘Six pounds or so I would say, wouldn't you, doctor?' she said, wiping mucus from the baby's face.

The doctor nodded in agreement. It had been a straightforward birth and he was well pleased. The baby was healthy and lusty and if six pounds was a little small, it was not so small as to give cause for anxiety.

‘Can I hold him?' Maura asked eagerly. ‘Oh please, can I hold him?'

‘The umbilical cord hasn't been cut yet, madam,' the midwife said, enjoying her position of importance. ‘Then he'll need to be bathed.
Then
you can hold him.'

‘Willie told me that the accounts of you having married in the middle of the Atlantic were greatly exaggerated,' Ariadne said as Alexander waltzed her around her sumptuously decorated and crowded ballroom with practised ease.

‘Did he?' Alexander asked with careless indifference.

Ariadne slid her arm a little higher on his shoulder. There was a devil-may-care negligence about Alexander Karolyis that had always attracted her. Before she had married he had been far too young for her to have considered him as a likely beau. Now he was twenty-two and old enough, and rich enough, to be highly eligible.

‘He thinks you've probably begun to find your little Paddylander a trifle boring.'

Alexander's jaw tightened. Dear God in heaven but one of these days he would deck Willie Rhinelander.

‘I'm
not boring,' Ariadne said insinuatingly.

The invitation was unmistakable and incredibly he felt a rising in his crotch. The birthday widow was making a pass at him, for Christ's sake! Just wait till he told Charlie!

‘What are you going to call him, madam?' the midwife asked as she laid the freshly bathed and shawl-wrapped baby in Maura's arms.

‘I'm not sure.' She looked down lovingly at her son. ‘My husband will decide.'

His hair was as black and as glossy as Alexander's. The eyes looking steadfastly up into her own were blue, but she had heard that all babies were born with blue eyes. Perhaps they would change later. Perhaps they would turn dark grey, like Alexander's.

‘Hallo,' she said tenderly to him. ‘I'm your mama.'

The baby made a tiny, appreciative sound.

‘He's hungry,' the midwife said knowledgeably. ‘He wants putting to the breast.'

Maura obediently lifted him higher, towards her nipple, knowing that the midwife was wrong. The little sound the baby had made hadn't been one indicating hunger. He had been telling her that he knew she was his mama, and that he was glad.

It was after breakfast before Alexander returned home. As well as providing three different orchestras for her guests to dance to, Ariadne had arranged for Miss Adelina Patti to sing to them and a troupe of ballerinas from the opera to dance for them. A banquet had followed at which delicately seasoned ortolans had held pride of place. The champagne had been of the finest and after supper there had been more dancing, an award for the most elegant costume, a poetic recital by Madame Rejane and dancing again. By the time the ball had come to a close the sun had risen and breakfast had then been served.

It was a fraught Stephen Fassbinder who hurried into the entrance hall to greet him when he arrived home and who broke the news to him that his son had been born.

Alexander threw his newly acquired evening cloak and top hat in the direction of the nearest footman.

‘For Christ's sake, why didn't you get word to me?' he demanded, striding towards the grand staircase.

‘I tried to, sir. I tried everywhere.' Stephen had to half-run to keep up with him. ‘Do you want me to arrange for flowers, sir?'

‘Jesus God! Haven't you done so already? Of course I want you to arrange for flowers!'

He sprinted up the staircase, taking the stairs two and three at a time. A son! And while he had been being born he had been waltzing Ariadne Brevoort around a ballroom floor. He dismissed the unpalatable thought from his mind. He wasn't to have known. The baby hadn't been due for another two weeks. Lots of babies were born without their father being near at hand.

He burst into the bedroom, scaring the nurse who was in attendance half to death.

‘Alexander!' Maura's face shone with relief and joy.

He crossed the room to her quickly, kissing her on the mouth. In a crib at the far side of the room the baby mewled.

He lifted his head from hers, looking across to the source of the noise with a look of wonder.

‘It's a boy,' Maura said radiantly. ‘And he's perfect.'

Slowly Alexander walked across the room to the lace-draped crib. He looked down at the baby and the baby looked up at him. Ridiculously, Alexander found himself wanting to cry. It was the most magical, most wonderful moment in his life.

‘The doctor asked me what name we were going to give him and I told him that I didn't know yet. That I was waiting for you to decide.'

The subject was one that had often been raised but whenever it had, Alexander had always said that he found the concept of naming someone who was as yet unknown to him, too difficult. He wanted to see the baby first.

Now he said: ‘Felix. He looks like a Felix.'

She had expected him to say Alexander or Victor.

‘Shall we call him Felix Alexander?' she asked, wanting the baby to share his name.

He didn't turn towards her. He was still looking down at his son, enraptured.

‘Felix Alexander Victor,' he said, so full of goodwill to all men that it didn't seem odd to him he should be giving his father's name to a child who had been born as a result of their vendetta.

Maura didn't demur. Nothing she knew about Alexander's father had endeared her to him, but she could understand Alexander wanting his father's Christian name to be perpetuated. If she had known her own father's name she would have wanted to include it among Felix's Christian names.

She felt a pang of sudden sadness. It was very rare that she ever thought about her unknown father. Her mother had never spoken of him and she had died without seeing fit to disclose his name to her. For all she knew he might still be alive. A footman at Dublin Castle perhaps. Or a clerk or a stable-boy.

Deciding that when they had a daughter, she would ask Alexander if she could be named after her mother, she banished the subject from her mind, not wanting anything to cloud the perfection of the present moment.

‘Why don't you pick the baby up?' she asked, leaning contentedly back against her silk, monogrammed pillows. ‘Nurse won't mind.'

Alexander didn't give a hang whether the nurse minded or not. Very gently he reached down into the crib, lifting the baby in his hands.

Felix gurgled appreciatively.

‘He knows who you are,' Maura said, her smile deepening. ‘He's a very bright baby.'

Alexander was sure he was. At that moment he didn't give a damn about his position in society. The Rhinelanders, the Brevoorts, the Roosevelts and the De Peysters could all go to hell as far as he was concerned. The birthday ball and Ariadne Brevoort were all forgotten. He had no thoughts for anything or anyone other than Maura and his son.

With the baby in his arms he looked across at her. ‘I love you, you know,' he said huskily, as if he were discovering the fact for the first time.

‘I know,' she said, tears of happiness sparkling in her eyes.

The idyll lasted until Charlie visited to pay his respects to Felix.

‘I wish I'd been in town when he was born,' he said, a silver commemorative mug with the baby's name engraved on it, in his hands. ‘I've been in Virginia. A duty visit to an aunt who is dying.'

He gave the commemorative mug to Maura and sat down beside her on the sofa. ‘How is the little fella?'

‘He's a month old,' Maura said scoldingly. ‘Not only did we have to have a godmother by proxy at the christening, we also had to have one of the godfathers by proxy!'

Charlie looked suitably sheepish. ‘I'm sorry, Maura, really I am. I've been getting roasted right and left. Ariadne Brevoort made me feel as guilty as hell for cutting her birthday ball.' He turned towards Alexander who was studying form for a race to be held at Harlem Lane. ‘She tells me you turned up though. She seemed very pleased about it.'

He turned back towards Maura, oblivious of the warning flash in Alexander's near-black eyes.

‘Rather nice that Ariadne is extending the hand of friendship and all that. She's rather full of her own importance but now that she's put you and Alexander on her list, the rest of the wives will follow.'

‘I don't think she has put me on her list,' Maura said, puzzled. ‘She hasn't left her card and I know nothing about an invitation to her birthday ball.'

‘It wasn't worth telling you about,' Alexander said crisply, tossing the form card on to a nearby side-table. ‘You couldn't have gone. The baby was due any minute.'

‘The ball was on the twenty-sixth,' Charlie offered guilelessly.

‘The twenty-sixth of February?' Maura's puzzlement deepened.

Charlie nodded, happily unaware of Alexander's ferment desire to throttle him.

She had never asked Alexander where he had gone when he had slammed out of the house after their row in the billiard-room. In the deep joy they had shared at Felix's birth it had seemed irrelevant. Now, however, she wasn't so sure.

‘Is that where you were the night Felix was born?' she asked, looking across at him. ‘At the Brevoort birthday ball?'

Alexander nodded and then said to Charlie: ‘Are you going to Harlem Lane tomorrow, Charlie? There's some expensive trotters being tried out there.'

Charlie was dimly aware that things were not quite as they should be. Alexander was being oddly abrupt and Maura seemed to have forgotten that he was in the room. It was obviously about time he made his departure and he rose to his feet.

‘I may do,' he said, tempted. The racing at Harlem Lane was always at hot speeds and with high betting. ‘' Bye, Maura. Say goodbye to little Felix for me.'

‘'Bye Charlie,' Maura said, wondering why Alexander had not mentioned the Brevoort Ball before; wondering if the invitation had been for Mr and Mrs Alexander Karolyis; wondering why the thought of Alexander going there, hard on the heels of their quarrel, filled her with such dismay.

It was a subject she longed to pursue but she did not do so. Alexander was obviously unwilling to talk about it and she suspected that he was deeply ashamed of it.

She linked her arm in his. ‘Shall we go into the nursery and spend some time with Felix?' she suggested, and no further reference to the birthday ball was made.

The next day, in his study, she stared in bewilderment at the array of embossed invitation cards littering the desk.

‘Can I help you, Mrs Karolyis?' Stephen asked her a trifle nervously.

‘I was looking for my husband. I've just received a message from Mr Henry Schermerhorn asking if we will meet him for lunch at Delmonico's.'

There were invitations for supper parties, dinners, anniversary balls. The names were those of all the people Alexander had so fumed at being cut by, De Peysters, Roosevelts, Stuyvesants, Van Rensselaers.

‘Mr Karolyis is in the Chinese drawing-room with Mr Kingston.'

A slight frown puckered Maura's forehead. They were all addressed to Alexander only. Not one card was addressed to Mr and Mrs Alexander Karolyis.

‘Shall I inform Mr Karolyis that you wish to see him, madam?'

Maura dragged her attention back to the harassed Stephen. ‘No,' she said, knowing very well that if Alexander was with Lyall Kingston he would not want to be disturbed. ‘If he should want to know my whereabouts tell him that I am lunching with Mr Henry Schermerhorn at Delmonico's.'

It was a sign of how totally unaccepted she was socially, that she was able to dine out with Henry at a public restaurant. She knew very well that no high society matron would have dreamed of doing such a thing.

She was just about to tell Henry that there were advantages to her bizarre social standing when he said suddenly: ‘There's an awful lot of garbage being talked at the moment, Maura. Can't Alexander put a stop to it?'

‘What kind of garbage, Henry?' she asked, spearing a mushroom with her fork.

Henry looked unhappy. More unhappy than she had ever seen him.

‘Garbage about your marriage. Astor buttonholed me at the Knickerbocker yesterday and asked me if I knew that the marriage aboard ship had been only a sham. I told him he was talking out of the back of his head, of course. If it was only Astor getting hold of the wrong end of the stick I wouldn't bother Alexander with it, but it isn't. The rumour that Alexander merely pulled a tasteless prank is all around town. It needs stopping, Maura. It needs stopping fast.'

Maura put her fork down, the mushroom uneaten. Her throat was dry and there was a sickly sensation in the pit of her stomach.

‘Why would anyone spread such a rumour? What could possibly be gained from it?'

Henry sighed and leaned back in his chair, toying with his glass of claret. ‘New York high society can ill afford to ostracize a man who owns half the city. And it wants to present a united front to the war-profiteering
nouveaux riches
trying to storm its ranks. It can't bring itself to accept yourself and so this is a neat way of not having to do so. If the marriage was a sham and a prank it doesn't have to extend social invitations to yourself, only to Alexander.'

He gave a mirthless laugh. ‘It's ridiculous of course, because Alexander would never accept any invitation that excluded you. All he has to do to put an end to it is to scotch the rumour that you're not legally married.'

Maura's face was very pale. She thought of the shoal of invitation cards on Alexander's desk; his acceptance of Ariadne Brevoort's invitation to her birthday ball; his shame-faced nervous tension when Charlie had carelessly revealed that he had attended it.