Envy (11 page)

She pushed herself up on the chair and assumed the tone of a marriage-obsessed debutante. “They seem
so
happy,” she trilled.

“What, them?” Grayson, who had been lying in the chaise next to her, sat up suddenly and removed the newspaper, which he had been using to protect his eyes, from his face.

“Don’t you think?” Diana drew her knees to her chest coquettishly and wrapped her arms around her legs.

Grayson shrugged. She could see that the question had never occurred to him, and also that whatever he had done the night before had left him very tired. “I suppose,” he said, furrowing his brow. “Although I think she fears what the servants think, and you had better believe I wouldn’t be along on this trip if she felt confident of his loving her.”

“Oh!” Diana found she remembered how to smile again. There were great, bulbous clouds in the sky, but they were moving quickly, and in a few hours, perhaps, there would be only infinite blue.

B
Y FIVE O’CLOCK THE LIGHT HAD BEGUN TO FADE
in Palm Beach, although the humid air had lost none of its heat. The guests of the Royal Poinciana had undergone their fourth change of clothes and were gathering in the Coconut Grove for tea and cake topped with coconut shards. It was a quiet hour out on the grounds of the hotel, where two people who had dressed independently but seemingly with the same idea in mind walked under a canopy of trees. High above them palm fronds drooped like the great lazy wings of prehistoric birds, as the sounds of canaries punctuated their silence. There was also the sound of gravel underfoot, although quietly and occasionally, for they were moving at an easy pace.

“I am glad you felt well enough to walk,” Teddy Cutting said eventually. Like his companion, he wore simple white linen. His button-down shirt was tucked into slacks, and his only ornaments were the gold cuff links at his wrists. Elizabeth wore a white shirtwaist and skirt, and there was just a hint of gold on her too, in the form of a chain and cross around her neck.

“I am as well,” she replied with a hint of gracious embarrassment.

She had not been a very good party guest thus far, and she had hoped to help her sister so much more than she’d been able. The motion sickness she’d felt on the train had stayed with her when they arrived, which surprised her, for proximity to the seashore had always been soothing—indeed the quiet breezes did, at this moment anyway, have a calming effect.

“I’m not much fun!” she exclaimed, trying to laugh a little. “I suppose I haven’t been myself for a long time.”

“I imagine it must have been a terrible year,” Teddy ventured politely, in the way he had been brought up to. He watched Elizabeth with his serious gray eyes, and she knew that he wanted to say more but did not know how. “I am sorry we have not been able to talk as we used to. I have not been a very good friend to you.”

“Oh, Teddy!” Elizabeth surprised herself by emitting a very natural, ringing laugh. Somehow it was all she could do when faced with such a straightforward characterization of recent events. “It has been a very hard year. But you’ve been the perfect gentleman, as always.”

Teddy shook his head and looked at the arch of green above them. “That never seems to do anybody very much good, does it?”

They took several steps in which neither of them spoke.
Elizabeth wondered what he could possibly mean by that, and then she asked him as much.

“During your engagement to Henry…” he began, but was unable to finish.

There was a delicate anguish in his expression, and as Elizabeth watched him she marveled at how like her former fiancé he was in appearance, and yet how different the effect was. For Teddy was tall as well, and he had the strong, slender features of American nobility. But where there was a perpetually amused carnivorousness about Henry, there was a subtle constancy to Teddy. She remembered now what a good friend he’d been once upon a time, for though he’d flirted with her and commented on her beauty, he had also posed philosophical questions that he had mulled during his coursework at Columbia, and was always curious about her opinions. When her father had died he had taken her for carriage rides in the park and sat patiently by her and never expected her to make any kind of conversation.

“I knew it wasn’t a good match,” he said finally. “I might have done something.”

“What could you have done?” Elizabeth replied lightly. “I accepted his proposal after all, and I knew better than anyone.”

Teddy’s arms were clasped loosely behind his back and he glanced at her when she spoke. “You never loved him?” he asked with sudden seriousness.

“It’s not a secret anymore that my family has fallen on hard times.” Elizabeth spoke cautiously, choosing each word before she uttered it. “What I did—what I
would
have done—was all for them.”

“Henry is my friend, but I am glad you did not marry him. I had feared for you that it would be a loveless marriage. Not that I am implying there was anything good about your…ordeal. But if there was something good…” Teddy’s voice had grown low and rushed, as though he had unexpectedly sailed into uncharted conversational waters, and was astounded by the new view. When he returned to the usual fine spun formality she felt a little sad. “I hope you don’t think I am being too personal.”

“Oh, no. In fact…” Elizabeth found herself struck by the uncharacteristic compulsion to confess everything. And though she knew Teddy had loved her once upon a time and that he had believed the lie in the papers about her “rescue,” she felt somehow that he might understand about Will and the great lengths she had gone to be with him. “Last fall, when I was…kidnapped…Well, that wasn’t exactly how it…” Elizabeth glanced at Teddy, at his expression composed of nothing but kindness and concern, and stopped herself. She had wanted to be known completely, but the full weight of her deception descended, and her upbringing got the better of her. Now she was formal again, too. “Someday I would like to tell you the
whole story, Teddy. But it was partially my fault, you see, because I knew I couldn’t be in a loveless marriage, as well.” She laughed lightly and, thinking of Will’s callused hands and his skin turned brown by the California sun, added: “Even before my ordeal, I knew that Henry wasn’t the man for me. He is practically more delicate than I am!”

She had come to a halt on the walk. Teddy took a few more steps, realized she was no longer at his side, and turned to look at her. The leaves overhead cast shadows across both their faces, and out on the water the blaze of evening sun was doubled and elongated by its reflection. His gray eyes grew round and he took a step toward her, as if he was thinking of kissing her. Stranger still, she found herself imagining the soft pressure of his lips against hers, but then her eyes closed and she hoped that Will wasn’t watching her from above. She remembered how jealous he used to be and all the tortures she had put him through, and turned her face away demurely.

Then she forced a bright tone and changed the subject: “How
is
Henry?”

Teddy let out a sound that was not quite a laugh or a sigh. “I know she’s your friend, but I don’t understand it,” he said, gauging Elizabeth’s expression to see if he had offended before pushing on. “It’s like he sold his soul one night when he’d had too much to drink, and now the devil lives in his body. I don’t think he’s even in love with Penelope! She was
after him shamelessly when we all thought you were…gone, you know, and he wasn’t the least bit interested. I might even say he was disgusted, if it didn’t so contradict what happened next.”

“I think she might have been the one to sell her soul at a steep price,” Elizabeth replied quietly. She was thinking of what Diana had told her, about how Penelope had blackmailed her way to the altar, and felt a little sad realizing that Henry had not confessed this to even his closest friend.

“She wanted to marry him very badly?”

“Oh, yes, before even—” Elizabeth stopped herself and smiled at Teddy. She still felt uncomfortable being a gossip, even if Penelope was the object of the loose talk, and anyway, she knew that down that route lay her own deceit. But she was pleased to hear that, in Teddy’s estimation, too, Henry did not love his wife. The idea that her sister and Henry might still prove a great love story lifted her spirits.

They started off walking again, although they drew closer together now. They moved easily by each other’s side, their slender, white-clad limbs carrying them forward in neat tandem. They looked at each other, one after the other, but grew bashful and turned away. She glanced up again, the light dappling both their faces. She blinked, and Teddy returned her smile, which was very natural and based on nothing in particular, or maybe everything. For the first time in months
she believed her life could be long and not all clouded over with misery.

“Don’t worry, Liz,” he said. “I won’t make you talk about any of that anymore, or anything that makes you even a little uncomfortable.”

Then he took her arm, imbuing her with a lacy sensation of well-being, and they walked on below the soaring palms. Perhaps, she mused, the thick, clean air in Florida had been good for her after all.

F
OR PENELOPE, THE SECOND DAY IN PALM BEACH
began auspiciously enough. She pushed her black silk sleeping mask up on her forehead and saw that the maid had come already and drawn open the French doors so that a little bit of ocean breeze permeated the rich surroundings of her suite. After dinner the night before she had washed her hair, and it hung now like a dark question mark over her pale shoulder. The champagne-colored sheets were smooth against the skin of her arms—they were much finer than the ones the Schoonmakers used, and she made a mental note to find out where they came from. Most important, her husband was by her side, and though he was still asleep, and snoring quietly into his plump down pillow, it was the most intimate they had been since their marriage. She hesitated to wake him just yet.

She closed her eyes and rolled into the soft space just next to him on the bed, but she was careful not to come too close. She wanted him to stay there, just like that, awhile longer. He was warm, and she could sense the quiet working of
his body even though he was wrapped up in bedding. If she moved too quickly she might frighten him, and she knew he might sleep for a good while yet.

“Mrs. Schoonmaker?”

She cracked one eye open and glared at the girl who had come through the door. It was her maid, in her starched black-and-white uniform, and though her mouth was forced upward into something like a smile, the effect was more akin to distress. Penelope unlaced the sleeping mask and tossed it onto the floor, so that the girl had to tiptoe forward and bend over to pick it up. That was when Penelope noticed the newspapers that were folded under the girl’s arm and remembered that she had instructed her to bring all of the Schoonmakers’ clippings to her room personally every morning. Penelope knew that distance was the true engine of desire, and had hoped that in her absence all New York would again grow jealous of her many, many possessions.

“You can leave them there,” Penelope said, pointing to the table that had been erected and laden with juice and coffee and pastries in the middle of the large room. The girl obliged hastily, though perhaps a little too hastily—there was something ominous about the way she scurried from the room.

Penelope propped herself up and shook off the last, lazy vestiges of sleep. She let her eyes linger on Henry’s golden back for one second longer, and then swung her feet to the
floor. She tied her robe around herself and went over to the tray of breakfast things, where she had a sip of coffee, took a deep breath, and felt happy for the last time that morning. For in the next second she saw the headline, and all of the hateful parts of her personality surged up.

She read a few lines but stopped as soon as she realized the gist of the article. Then she stormed back to the raised platform, and up to the lavish, disheveled bed, and threw the newspaper at Henry’s head.

“What the hell?” he cried, coming to life and tossing off the sheets.

Penelope fell onto her knees and grabbed a pillow, which she aimed at Henry for good measure. He caught it in midair, and grabbed his wife by the wrist.

“What in God’s name is wrong with you?” he asked, holding her arms against the bed.

“What’s wrong with
you
?” she spat back at him, once she had freed herself and taken several deep breaths.

Henry picked up the paper and then he too fell back into the pillows. He read a few lines before putting the paper down on the heaps of bedding that separated his wife from himself. His hands pressed against his hair furtively, trying to get it all back in place. “I didn’t have anything to do with that,” he said eventually. His inability to meet her eyes did nothing to quell her ire.

“In what sense, Henry?” She brought her robe tight around her body, which still trembled a little in fury. She turned her face into a pillow, her jaw jutting petulantly, but kept him securely in her gaze. “You mean you didn’t personally write it? Or you mean you didn’t do anything to give anyone the sense that any of it might be true? Because I’m not stupid, and if you expect me to believe the latter, you are mistaken.”

“I only meant—”

“You don’t mean
anything
!” Penelope shrieked. “Even after you promised to be good, I saw you trying to speak with her yesterday at the beach. The way you look at her, with your pathetic, longing gaze, you idiot bastard!”

She rose to her knees again, and—only half-conscious of her actions, so heated was her blood—began to rip the paper to shreds. The strips of paper fell down around them, the cheap ink smudging the sheets she had moments ago taken such pleasure in. When she was done Henry just stared at her, his eyes as big as they ever got.

“Why should
I
look like the fool? I am the sympathetic one in all this. What I ought to do,” she went on, climbing off the bed and walking hotly toward the tray in the center of the room to retrieve her coffee, “is call the paper and tell them
my
version. I’ll tell them how I loved my husband, was faithful to him, packed his bags for his every trip. But
he
had eyes
only for Diana Holland, whose virginity he took one snowy night—”

“Don’t do that.” Henry stumbled off the bed and came walking toward her, still wrapped in a sheet.

Penelope turned her back on him and sipped her coffee. “What alternative do I have?”

She knew she had his attention now, and felt no need to turn around and confirm the fact.

“We’ll go to the beach again today,” Henry finally said.

“What good will that do?”

“It will show everybody that that column was fiction,” he went on tentatively. He had taken a few steps toward her; she could sense him at her back. “Maybe it will inspire some piece that contradicts the one you just tore to pieces.”

“It deserved to be torn to pieces,” Penelope shot back hotly.

There was a pause, after which Henry said, “Yes, it did.”

“You’ll take me to the beach?”

“If that’s what you want.”

“And later, you’ll sit with me at dinner, and dance all the dances with me?”

Henry was just behind her now, and he put an awkward hand on her shoulder. “Yes.”

Penelope kept staring away from her husband, and so he
couldn’t see that her winner’s smile had returned to her face. “Oh, and Henry?”

“Yes?”

She closed her eyes and enjoyed the placement of his hand for another few moments. She breathed deeply, and her whole torso moved with the breaths. “You’ll never make me look like a fool again, will you?”

“No,” he said at last. “Never again.”