The Forgotten Room (14 page)

I turned back to the bed. “Good night, Captain.”

“Good night, Doctor,” he said with a secret smile.

I headed toward the stairs, chill bumps erupting on my skin, as I felt again the unmistakable sensation of a cold breath of air running down my spine.

I scooped up my stack of change from the nickel thrower in the glass booth at Horn & Hardart Automat, her rubber-tipped fingers impatiently tapping the counter as she stared past me without any expression whatsoever. Hurrying over to the long wall of square glass compartments, I quickly selected my coffee, macaroni and cheese, cucumber salad, and tapioca pudding, sliding in my nickels and turning the chrome-plated knobs with porcelain centers. I waited briefly before each glass door opened and I pulled out my food.

After scanning the crowded room, I found Margie already seated at one of the highly lacquered tables, her feet and pocketbook on the only available chair. As I approached she slid her feet to the ground and removed her purse.

“Sorry,” she said. “It was the only way I could keep it from being taken.” She scowled up at a matronly woman who approached the chair with an expectant look. The woman stepped back in alarm, then continued her hunt for a chair.

“I'm sorry I'm late,” I said. “Dr. Greeley doesn't want to let me out of his sight. I had to sneak away just to telephone you to set this up. And he wants me back in thirty minutes.”

She watched as I settled myself in the chair, dropping my pocketbook on the floor beside me. “Well, that's an idea.”

“What's that?” I asked, arranging my dishes and placing a napkin on my lap.

“The telephone. Why don't you just call Captain Ravenel's family?”

I quickly stuck a forkful of macaroni and cheese into my mouth so I'd have time to think. “I don't believe that information was on any of his paperwork.”

“But you're not sure.”

I met my best friend's gaze. “I don't think I looked.”

Margie sawed into her Salisbury steak, then dipped it into mashed
potatoes. “Because for some reason you're not too eager to get them here, despite your protests to the contrary.” She smiled. “Even though it gave you a good excuse to snoop through his duffel.”

“I wasn't snooping. I had a legitimate reason. The man nearly died and yet there's been no contact from his family whatsoever.”

“But he hasn't suggested calling them, either.”

I paused. “No.”

Margie smiled as she chewed, her expression like the clever cat who'd figured out where the mouse lived. She picked up her pocketbook and opened it, then took out a small, rectangular, robin's-egg-blue-colored box. It was worn and frayed along the edges, but I knew the inside was lined with white silk and bore the name of Tiffany & Co. jewelers. She slid it across the table to me.

“I'm just dying to know why you need this now. Your date with the doctor was last night.”

I quickly began shoving the cucumber salad into my mouth, desperate to eat every morsel of my lunch since I wasn't sure when I'd be eating dinner. I took a quick sip of tepid coffee, then slid the box into my own pocketbook. “In the miniature portrait, the woman is wearing a ruby necklace. One that looks remarkably like this one.”

Margie sat up straighter. “No fooling. Where'd it come from?”

“It's the only thing of real value—besides the mink coat—that I inherited from my mother. She never wore it—which is why I'm pretty sure my father hadn't given it to her. But sometimes I'd catch her trying it on and looking at herself in the mirror. I always assumed it came from her mother, but my grandmother was a baker's wife. I can't see how he could have ever afforded a piece of jewelry from Tiffany's.”

Margie leaned toward me, her eyes wide. “Maybe it was stolen. And maybe you're about to open a can of worms that you can't shove back once they're out.”

“Or chances are it's just a similar necklace and means nothing. I just
want to show him. He's not sure who the woman in the portrait is, but maybe he knows something about the necklace.”

“Or maybe you're just looking for an excuse to talk to him.” Her wide eyes gleamed.

“The woman looks
just like me
—complete with dark hair, green eyes, and a pronounced widow's peak. I can't simply ignore it.” I took one bite of my tapioca, then slid it across to Margie. “I've got to run—it's yours if you want it.”

But Margie wasn't looking at the pudding. “Be careful,” she said.

I paused. “Of what?”

“I'm not sure.” A deep vee formed between her brows. “It's just that this is all so . . . strange.”

I stood and pushed my chair under the table, my hand barely leaving the top of it before the chair was taken by a tall man in a dark suit and hoisted over his head. “Don't worry. I can take care of myself.”

We said our good-byes and I left, but it was her frown I was still seeing when I returned to the hospital only one minute past the time I was supposed to have returned. I looked around, waiting for Dr. Greeley or the reception nurse to scold me, but was surprised to find the foyer completely empty.

I dropped off my things in the nurses' quarters, then slid the jewelry box out from my pocketbook and carefully clasped the necklace around my neck. I'd never worn it, always feeling as if it belonged to my mother and not me, that I was somehow just its caretaker. But the gold filigree and the bright red stone felt heavy and cool against my bare skin, falling neatly below my collarbone, as if it had been made for me. As if it had always belonged there.

I buttoned up the collar of my dress, not wanting anyone to see it, then ran all the way up to the attic floor, unable to hold in my anticipation. I paused for a moment outside the door, trying to catch my breath,
and was surprised to hear a low murmur of conversation on the other side.

I knocked briefly, then stepped inside, immediately wishing that I hadn't. Dr. Greeley stood at the foot of the bed, expounding on his extraordinary efforts to save Captain Ravenel, while Nurse Hathaway stood back at a distance, as if unsure whether she should correct the doctor.

But my attention was focused on the woman sitting in my chair, which had been pulled up to the side of the bed, her graceful red-tipped fingers gripping Captain Ravenel's hand as if it belonged to her. Her almost white-blond hair was worn in a gentle flip, the curve of it around her face exactly like Carole Lombard's. Even before she turned to look at me with ice blue eyes, I knew it was the woman in the photograph.

“I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt,” I said as I hastily attempted to retreat from the room.

“Oh, no. Do come in, Nurse. I believe Captain Ravenel needs some water.”

The woman's voice was slow and rich like honey, but I also imagined it was full of bees waiting to sting. I paused with my hand on the doorknob. “Actually, I'm Dr. Schuyler. But I see all is taken care of here . . .”

“Dr. Schuyler, please. Come in.” Cooper's voice held an unfamiliar note to it, something that sounded a little bit like panic. “I'd like you to meet Caroline Middleton. My fiancée.”

The news that somebody had come for him should have made me happy enough to kick up my heels and brush my hands together. But instead, my feet felt leaden, taking all of my effort to cross the room to greet this woman. The whole time the ruby seemed to burn my skin where it lay under my dress.

She placed cool fingers in my hand, not bothering to stand as she
greeted me. “The pleasure is all mine, I'm sure. Dr. Greeley here was mentioning how you helped a little with my fiancée's recovery.”

I looked at Dr. Greeley and could see Nurse Hathaway behind his shoulders, rolling her eyes. “Yes,” I said. “I helped.” The necklace quivered against my skin as I turned to Cooper and then back to the ice queen in confusion. “Your name isn't Victorine?”

She threw back her head and laughed, the sound low and throaty. “Oh, no, my dear. Victorine is the name of the artist Manet's muse, a woman he dearly loved.” She turned her attention back to Cooper. “Just like yours is Caroline, isn't it, darling?”

I grabbed the empty water pitcher by the side of the bed, said a hasty good-bye while avoiding Cooper's gaze, then left the room. I was halfway down the steps before I thought to wonder why the woman he called out for in his dreams wasn't Caroline.

C
HRISTMAS
E
VE 1892

Olive

When Olive first set foot in the kitchen of the Pratt mansion, her jaw had fallen straight to the floor.

Of course, she'd already seen the plan in her father's architectural drawings, so she shouldn't have been shocked at all. Her fingers had once slid lovingly along the generous dimensions, lingering on the cupboards and counters, the massive oven—or rather ovens, for there were two of them—the larder, the silver closet, the wine cellar. Wondering what it might be like, to command a kitchen like that, so modern and large and efficient, lit and ventilated by special windows and shafts, so that you hardly noticed you were in the basement of a New York City town house at all.

But it was one thing to sigh over a set of two-dimensional drawings, and quite another to don apron and cap and walk through the doorway into the enormous and bustling three-dimensional room,
presided over by a cook who might have sent Genghis Khan to the devil. In a household that revolved around the precise and formal succession of splendid meals, the kitchen was the pulsing center, the steam engine driving the propeller that was Pratt family life. (Or was Pratt family life the steamship itself, and the food the propeller?) Regardless, just presenting herself in the doorway each morning, apron crisp and cap pinned in place, was enough to make Olive's heart fail at the magnitude of the work looming before her, the same damned Sisyphean boulder she would have to push up the hill yet again, just as she had the day before, and the one before that, unto (so it seemed, anyway, at five o'clock in the bleak winter morning) eternity.

The task seemed especially impossible this morning, which happened to be both Christmas Eve (more work!) and the day after last night: a night that had concluded only three hours ago, as Olive tiptoed down the back staircase to the nunnery, slipped her Bible from the doorjamb, and crept into her cold bed. Except she hadn't noticed it was cold, had she, because she was aglow, aglow, dizzy with the promising adoration in Harry's eyes, the warmth of his smile, the understanding that filled the attic room in the sizzle of the coal fire. The smell of oil paint and human skin. The scratch of pencil, the rumble of laughter that moved her heart against her ribs. As she laid her head on her early-morning pillow, she had never felt warmer. She had never felt more alive.

It was only upon waking, a few scant hours later, that Olive found the cold.

“Having trouble sleeping, are you?” snapped the cook.

“I beg your pardon?”

“You've got circles under your eyes the size of quarters.” The cook's face was red and suspicious, and her thin black hair was already wisping away from the side of her cap. Christmas was her Armageddon, the
annual life-and-death climax of her struggle against the towering demands of an Important Family during the festive season.

Olive wanted to say that she had already laid the fires and scrubbed the floors and polished the silver for Christmas Eve dinner, and all before nine o'clock in the morning. She had served breakfast to Mr. and Mrs. Pratt and Miss Prunella Pratt at nine thirty (really, how many cups of coffee could a man drink?) and cleaned up the table afterward. She had done all this on exactly two hours and forty-eight minutes of sleep, and if she had circles under her eyes, she had damned well earned them.

On the other hand, if anyone in the Pratt mansion was working harder than Olive just now, it was Mrs. Jackins.

“I couldn't sleep,” she said instead. “It's so exciting, my first Christmas here.”

“It's a load of bother, is what it is,” the cook said, conciliatory. She tucked the loose hair back under her cap and glanced up at the clock. “And them boys not even awake yet. Up to no good last night, I don't doubt. Boys that age is never up to any good.”

Was it Olive's imagination, or did the cook put a bit of emphasis on those words?

She shrugged. “It must be nice, being rich.”

“Well, and so it
is
nice, but it's not for the likes of us working folk. Do you hear me, Olive? Now—”

But the sharp ring of a bell interrupted her words, and she glanced up at the row of them on the wall.

“Master Harry,” she said, sighing. “He'll be wanting his coffee.”

“I'll get it,” Olive said quickly.

“Oh, and you will, will you?”

“It's my job, isn't it?”

Mrs. Jackins put her hands on her spacious hips. “You and the half
dozen other housemaids who might take Master Harry his morning coffee.”

Olive took a tray from the cupboard and began to collect the coffee service. “Well, I'm here, aren't I? I might as well.”

“Now, Olive,” said the cook. “You stop banging that china around for a moment and listen to me.
Olive!”

Olive sighed and set down the sugar bowl.

Mrs. Jackins's right index finger appeared out of nowhere, scolding the warm kitchen air. “I've been in service near all me life, and I've never seen it turn out well.”

“Seen
what
turn out well?”

“You know what I mean.”

Olive marched to the nearest stovetop, where the enamel coffeepot sat on a round back burner, keeping hot. “I don't have the faintest idea.”

“You and Master Harry. I've seen the way the two of you look at each other. Like I said, I've been in service me whole life, and I knows a look when I sees it.” Under moments of emotion, Mrs. Jackins's original accent slipped out, a relic of her upbringing an ocean away. She had moved to America when she was eight or nine, she'd once told Olive over tea one evening, and had started as a scullery maid in a house off Washington Square, moving both upward and uptown as she grew apace with Manhattan itself. While Olive couldn't guess how old the woman was—her hair was still dark, but her face was red and wrinkled—she could well imagine that no aspect of downstairs life hid for long from Mrs. Jackins's experienced eye.

Still, Olive had no choice but to brazen it out. She poured hot coffee into the elegant porcelain pot, replaced the lid, and set it carefully on the tray, without so much as glancing in Mrs. Jackins's direction. “You're imagining things. I wouldn't dream of looking at Master Harry, and as for
him
, why—”

A hand closed gently around her arm. “Now, Olive. You just listen
to me one minute. One single minute; that's all. I'm not casting no stones. I'm not after tattling on you to herself. But I seen all this before, masters and servants, and trust me, my dear, no good can come of it. No good, do you hear me?”

“It's not like that,” Olive whispered.

Mrs. Jackins removed her hand and sighed. “And there it is. All you girls think it's different for you, that you're the special one. It'll all work out for you, won't it? But listen to me, dearie. Listen good.” She leaned toward Olive's ear. “It never does. You ain't special. The world don't work that way. Masters and servants, mixing together. Never did, never will. Take my advice, Olive dearie. If you want to be happy, set those sights of yours a wee bit lower. A fine man like Master Harry might fancy a pretty housemaid like you, but curse me if he ever marries her. Why, we had a housemaid just last summer, didn't we, who set her cap for Master August and wound up in a right fix—”

Olive pulled away and picked up the tray. Her face was hot and tight. “Thanks very much for your advice, Mrs. Jackins. I'll just run this coffee upstairs, now, won't I?”

Mrs. Jackins rolled her eyes upward and turned away. “Have it your way, dearie. But Master Harry leaves for college in less than a fortnight, and where will you be? Right here on Sixty-ninth Street, ironing them tablecloths, hoping you ain't in a fix of your own.”

The tray was heavy, but Olive was strong. She bore Harry's coffee up the five long flights of stairs until she arrived at his door, which was closed. Propping the tray against one arm, she knocked with the other. “Coffee, sir!” she said, into the paneled wood.

“Come in!” called Harry's familiar voice.

She turned the knob awkwardly and backed her way in.

She had entered Harry's room before, of course. Many times, in fact, since he had returned home from college. Dusting and polishing the family's rooms was part of the ordinary course of her duties, and while one of the more senior housemaids usually attended the boys' rooms—or so they were called, anyway, though both Harry and August had long lost any resemblance to their innocent younger selves—she often filled in. She knew the details intimately. There was Harry's bed, still unmade, probably still warm, hung in green damask and plump with white pillows. There was his desk, covered with sketches and half-finished letters. His wardrobe stood open, in need of a thorough thinning out, or perhaps the services of a professional valet. The bookshelves at one end were crammed full in a comfortable, messy-scholar way that Olive found endearing. She set down the tray and turned to the chair, where she expected to find Harry himself, dressed and smiling, but it was empty.

“Oh, it's you.”

Olive spun around and gasped, filling her eyes with the sight of Harry's bare chest, which gleamed a beautiful pale gold between the open edges of the dressing gown that hung from his shoulders. His face was half-spread with shaving soap, and the wicked edge of a razor hovered above the other side, ready to strike. He grinned and turned back to the mirror above the sink, framed by the open doorway of his private bathroom. (Her father's own design, naturally.) “I was hoping they'd send you up. I don't suppose you have a moment or two before you have to go back?”

Olive was too astonished to speak. Harry stroked the blade in confident lines across the foam that adorned his cheek, while the soap-fragrant steam from his recent bath billowed around him. He looked radiant and well rested, lean and marvelously built: each contour immaculate, like an Italian marble touched by God's finger and brought to life. Her eyes dragged helplessly along the width of his shoulders, the
lines of his waist, the curves of his calves beneath the edge of the robe, and she felt as if someone had doused her in kerosene and set her quietly alight. Her mouth watered and her insides melted. He was too much. He was too exalted, too magnificent. He was unreal, a different species altogether.

Mrs. Jackins's voice echoed in her head:
Masters and servants. Masters and servants, mixing together. A right fix.

Harry set down his razor, patted his cheeks with a towel, and turned toward her. “Why, what's the matter?” he said, stepping forward.

Olive stumbled back. “I should leave.”

“No, you shouldn't.” Harry grinned his most charmingly piratical grin and strode toward her, robe swinging dangerously. He lifted his arms and spread his palms as if to grasp her by the cheeks, to pin her to his lips like a butterfly in a collection, and Olive turned and flew out the door, out of Harry's comfortable room, out of sight of that bed that had only just been vacated, that bookshelf full of volumes a mere housemaid would never, ever have time to read.