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  The Luxe

  ( Luxe - 1 )

  Anna Godbersen

  Pretty girls in pretty dresses, partying until dawn.

  Irresistible boys with mischievous smiles and dangerous intentions.

  White lies, dark secrets, and scandalous hookups.

  This is Manhattan, 1899.

  Beautiful sisters Elizabeth and Diana Holland rule Manhattan's social scene. Or so it appears. When the girls discover their status among New York City's elite is far from secure, suddenly everyone--from the backstabbing socialite Penelope Hayes, to the debonair bachelor Henry Schoonmaker, to the spiteful maid Lina Broud--threatens Elizabeth's and Diana's golden future.

  With the fate of the Hollands resting on her shoulders, Elizabeth must choose between family duty and true love. But when her carriage overturns near the East River, the girl whose glittering life lit up the city's gossip pages is swallowed by the rough current. As all of New York grieves, some begin to wonder whether life at the top proved too much for this ethereal beauty, or if, perhaps, someone wanted to see Manhattan's most celebrated daughter disappear...

  In a world of luxury and deception, where appearance matters above everything and breaking the social code means running the risk of being ostracized forever, five teenagers lead dangerously scandalous lives. This thrilling trip to the age of innocence is anything but innocent.

  Anna Godbersen

  The Luxe

  Luxe-1

  For Suzanne and Gordon

  It was the old New York way…the way of people who dreaded scandal more than disease, who placed decency above courage, and who considered that nothing was more ill-bred than “scenes,” except the behaviour of those who gave rise to them.

  Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence

  Prologue

  On the morning of October 4, 1899, Elizabeth Adora Holland the eldest daughter of the late Mr. Edward Holland and his widow, Louisa Gansevoort Holland passed into the kingdom of heaven. Services will be held tomorrow, Sunday the eighth, at 10 a.m., at the Grace Episcopal Church at No. 800 Broadway in Manhattan.

  — FROM THE OBITUARY PAGE OF THE NEW-YORK NEWS OF THE WORLD GAZETTE, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 7, 1899

  IN LIFE, ELIZABETH ADORA HOLLAND WAS KNOWN not only for her loveliness but also for her moral character, so it was fair to assume that in the afterlife she would occupy a lofty seat with an especially good view. If Elizabeth had looked down from that heavenly perch one particular October morning on the proceedings of her own funeral, she would have been honored to see that all of New York’s best families had turned out to say good-bye.

  They crowded Broadway with their black horse-drawn carriages, proceeding gravely toward the corner of East Tenth Street, where the Grace Church stood. Even though there was currently no sun or rain, their servants sheltered them with great black umbrellas, hiding their faces etched with shock and sadness from the public’s prying eyes. Elizabeth would have approved of their somberness and also of their indifferent attitude to the curious workaday people pressed up to the police barricades. The crowds had come to wonder at the passing of that perfect eighteen-year-old girl whose glittering evenings had been recounted in the morning papers to brighten their days.

  A cold snap had greeted all of New York that morning, rendering the sky above an unfathomable gray. It was, Reverend Needlehouse murmured as his carriage pulled up to the church, as if God could no longer imagine beauty now that Elizabeth Holland no longer walked his earth. The pallbearers nodded in agreement as they followed the reverend onto the street and into the shadow of the Gothic-style church.

  They were Liz’s peers, the young men she had danced quadrilles with at countless balls. They had disappeared to St. Paul’s and Exeter at some point and then returned with grown-up ideas and a fierce will to flirt. And here they were now, in black frock coats and mourning bands, looking grave for perhaps the first time ever.

  First was Teddy Cutting, who was known for being so lighthearted and who had proposed marriage to Elizabeth twice without anyone taking him seriously. He looked as elegant as always, although Liz would have noted the fair stubble on his chin a telltale sign of deep sorrow, as Teddy was shaved by his valet every morning and was never seen in public without a smooth face. After him came the dashing James Hazen Hyde, who had just that May inherited a majority share of the Equitable Life Assurance Society. He’d once let his face linger near Elizabeth’s gardenia-scented neck and told her she smelled better than any of the mademoiselles in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. After James came Brody Parker Fish, whose family’s town house neighbored the Hollands’ on Gramercy Park, and then Nicholas Livingston and Amos Vreewold, who had often competed to be Elizabeth’s partner on the dance floor.

  They stood still with downcast eyes, waiting for Henry Schoonmaker, who emerged last. The refined mourners could not help a little gasp at the sight of him, and not only because he was usually so wickedly bright-eyed and so regularly with a drink in hand. The tragic irony of Henry appearing as a pallbearer on the very day when he was to have wed Elizabeth seemed deeply unfair.

  The horses drawing the hearse were shiny black, but the coffin was decorated with an enormous white satin bow, for Elizabeth had died a virgin. What a shame, they all whispered, blowing ghostly gusts of air into one another’s ears, that an early death was visited on such a very good girl.

  Henry, his thin lips set in a hard line, moved toward the hearse with the other pallbearers close behind. They lifted the unusually light coffin and stepped toward the church door. A few audible sobs were muffled into handkerchiefs as all of New York realized they would never again look on Liz’s beauty, on her porcelain skin or sincere smile. There was, in fact, no Liz, for her body had not yet been recovered from the Hudson River, despite two days of dragging it, and despite the handsome reward offered by Mayor Van Wyck.

  The whole ceremony had come on rather quickly, in fact, although everyone seemed too shocked to consider this.

  Next in the funeral cortege was Elizabeth’s mother, wearing a dress and a veil in her favorite color. Mrs. Edward Holland, née Louisa Gansevoort, had always seemed fearsome and remote even to her own children and she had only become harder and more intractable since her husband’s passing last winter. Edward Holland had been odd, and his oddness had only grown in the years before his death. He had, however, been the eldest son of an eldest son of a Holland a family that had prospered on the little island of Manhattan since the days when it was called New Amsterdam and so society had always forgiven him his quirks. But in the weeks before her own death, Elizabeth had noticed something new and pitiable in her mother as well. Louisa leaned a little to the left now, as though remembering her late husband’s presence.

  In her footsteps was Elizabeth’s aunt Edith, the younger sister of her late father. Edith Holland was one of the first women to move prominently in society after a divorce; it was understood, though not very much discussed, that her early marriage to a titled Spaniard had exposed her to enough bad humor and drunken debauchery for a whole lifetime. She went by her maiden name now, and looked as aggrieved by the loss of her niece as if Elizabeth had been her own child.

  There followed an odd gap, which everyone was too polite to comment on, and then came Agnes Jones, who was sniffling loudly.

  Agnes was not a tall girl, and though she appeared well dressed enough to the mourners still pressing against the police line for a better look, the black dress she wore would have been sadly familiar to the deceased. Elizabeth had worn the dress only once to her father’s funeral and then passed it down. It had since been let out at the waist and shortened at the hem. As Elizabeth knew too well, Agnes’s father had met with financial ruin when she was only eleven and had subsequently thrown himself off the Brooklyn Bridge. Agnes liked
to tell people that Elizabeth was the only person who had offered her friendship in those dark times. Elizabeth had been her best friend, Agnes had often said, and though Elizabeth would have been embarrassed by such exaggerated statements, she wouldn’t have dreamed of correcting the poor girl.

  After Agnes came Penelope Hayes, who was usually said to be Elizabeth’s true best friend. Elizabeth would indeed have recognized the distinct look of impatience she wore now. Penelope never liked waiting, especially out of doors. One of the lesser Mrs. Vanderbilts standing nearby recognized that look as well, and made a virtually inaudible cluck. Penelope, with her gleaming black feathers, Egyptian profile, and wide, heavily lashed eyes, was much admired but not very generally trusted.

  And then there was the fact uncomfortable to all assembled that Penelope had been with Elizabeth when her body disappeared into the cold waters of the Hudson. She had, everybody knew by now, been the last person to see Elizabeth alive. Not that they suspected her of anything, of course. But then, she did not look nearly haunted enough. She wore a cluster of diamonds at her throat, and on her arm, the formidable Isaac Phillips Buck.

  Isaac was a distant relation of the old Buck clan so distant that his lineage could never be proved or disproved but he was still formidable in size, two heads taller than Penelope and robust at the middle. Liz had never cared for him; she had always harbored a secret preference for doing what was practical and right over what was clever and fine. Isaac had never seemed to her like anything more than a tastemonger, and indeed, the gold cap now on his left canine tooth matched the watch chain that extended from under his coat to his pants pocket. If that lesser Mrs. Vanderbilt standing nearby had said aloud what she was thinking that he looked more flashy than aggrieved he likely would have taken it as a compliment.

  Once Penelope and Isaac passed, the rest of the crowd followed them into the church, flooding the aisle with their black garb on the way to their familiar pews. Reverend Needlehouse stood quietly at the pulpit as the best families of New York the Schermerhorns and Van Peysers, the Harrimans and Bucks, the McBreys and Astors took their seats. Those who could no longer stop themselves, even under that lofty ceiling, began to whisper about the shocking absence.

  Finally, Mrs. Holland gave the reverend a brusque nod.

  “It is with heavy hearts ” Reverend Needlehouse began. It was all he managed to say before the arched door to the church went flying open, hitting the stone wall with a resounding bang. The ladies of New York’s polite class itched to turn and look, but of course decorum forbade it. They kept their elaborately coiffured heads facing forward and their eyes on Reverend Needlehouse, whose expression was not making that effort any easier.

  Hurrying down the aisle was Diana Holland, the dearly departed’s little sister, with a few shining curls coming loose from under her hat and her cheeks pink from exertion. Only Elizabeth, if indeed she could look down from heaven, would have known what to make of the smile disappearing from Diana’s face as she took a seat in the first pew.

  One

  THE RICHMOND HAYES FAMILY REQUESTS THE PLEASURE OF YOUR COMPANY AT A BALL IN HONOR OF THE ARCHITECT WEBSTER YOUNGHAM ON THE EVENING OF SATURDAY THE SIXTEENTH OF SEPTEMBER AT NINE O’CLOCK AT THEIR NEW RESIDENCE NO. 670 FIFTH AVENUE IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK

  COSTUMES ARE REQUIRED

  “THEY HAVE ALL BEEN ASKING FOR YOU,” LOUISA Holland told Elizabeth, quietly but firmly.

  Elizabeth had spent eighteen years being groomed as her mother’s prized asset and had become, among other things, an expert interpreter of her tones. This one meant Elizabeth was to return to the main ballroom and dance with a partner of her mother’s choosing at once, most likely a young man of enviable, if slightly inbred, lineage. Elizabeth smiled apologetically at the girls she had been sitting with Annemarie D’Alembert and Eva Barbey, whom she had met that spring in France and who were both dressed as courtesans from the Louis XIV era. Elizabeth had just been telling them how very far away Paris seemed to her now, though she had only stepped off the transatlantic steamer and back onto New York soil early that morning. Her old friend Agnes Jones had been perched on the ivory-and-gold striped damask love seat as well, but Elizabeth’s younger sister, Diana, was nowhere to be seen. Most likely because she suspected that her behavior was being monitored, which, of course, it was. Elizabeth’s irritation at the persistent childishness of her younger sister flared up, but she quickly banished the feeling.

  After all, Diana hadn’t enjoyed the formal cotillion debut that Elizabeth had two years ago, just after her sixteenth birthday. For the elder Holland sister there had been a year with a finishing governess she and Penelope Hayes had shared her, along with various tutors and lessons in comportment, dance, and the modern languages. Diana had turned sixteen last April with no fanfare during Elizabeth’s time abroad. The family had still been in mourning for their father, and a big to-do had not seemed appropriate. She had simply started attending balls with Aunt Edith in Saratoga during their summer stay there, so she could hardly be held responsible for seeming a little rough.

  “I’m sure you are sorry to leave your friends,” Mrs. Holland said, steering her daughter from the feminine hush of the parlor and into the main ballroom. Elizabeth, in her shepherdess’s costume of white brocade, looked especially bright and especially tall next to her mother, who was still wearing her widow’s black. Edward Holland had passed away at the beginning of that year, and her mother would be in formal mourning for another year at least. “But you seem to be the young lady most in demand for waltzes tonight.”

  Elizabeth had a heart-shaped face with delicate features and an alabaster complexion. As a boy who would not enter the Richmond Hayeses’ ballroom that evening once told her, she had a mouth the size and shape of a plum. She tried to make that mouth smile appreciatively now, even though she was concerned by her mother’s tone. There was a new, unsettling urgency in Mrs. Holland’s famously steely presence that Elizabeth had noticed almost as soon as she’d departed from that great ship. She had been gone since her father’s burial nine months ago, and had spent all of spring and summer learning wit in the salons and how to dress on the Rue de la Paix and allowing herself to be distracted from her grief.

  “I’ve already danced so many dances tonight,” Elizabeth offered her mother.

  “Perhaps,” she replied. “But you know how very happy it would make me if one of your partners were to propose marriage to you.”

  Elizabeth tried to laugh to disguise the despair that comment raised in her. “Well, you are lucky I’m still so young, and we have years before I even have to begin picking one of them.”

  “Oh, no.” Mrs. Holland’s eyes darted around the main ballroom. It was dizzying, with its frosted glass dome ceiling, frescoed walls, and gilt mirrors, situated as it was at the center of a warren of smaller but equally busy and decadent rooms. Great potted palm trees were set up in a ring close to the walls, shielding the ladies at the room’s edge from the frenetic dancers gliding across the tessellated marble floor. There appeared to be four servants to every guest, which seemed ostentatious even to a girl who had spent the last two seasons learning to be a lady in the City of Light. “The one thing we do not have is time,” Mrs. Holland finished.

  Elizabeth felt a nerve tingle up her spine, but before she could prod her mother about what that meant, they were at the perimeter of the ballroom, close to where their friends and acquaintances waltzed, nodding hello to the lavishly outfitted couples gliding across the dance floor.

  They were the Hollands’ peers, only seventy or so families, only four hundred or so souls, dancing as though there would be no tomorrow. And indeed, tomorrow would probably pass them by while they slept under silken canopies, waking only to accept pitchers of ice water and shoo away the maid. There would be church, of course, but after an evening so glittering and epic, the worshipers would surely be few. They were a society whose chief vocations were to entertain and be entertained, punctuated occasionally by the reinvestment
of their vast fortunes in new and ever more lucrative prospects.

  “The last man to ask for you was Percival Coddington,” Mrs. Holland told Elizabeth as she positioned her daughter next to a gigantic rose-colored marble column. There were several such columns in the room, and Elizabeth felt sure that they were meant to impress as much as to support. The Hayes family, in building their new home, seemed to have seized on every little architectural feature as an opportunity for grandeur. “Mr. Coddington inherited his father’s entire estate this past summer,” her mother went on, “as you well know.”

  Elizabeth sighed. The warm thought of the one boy she knew would not be at the Hayeses’ costume ball that evening could not have made the looming prospect of Percival Coddington any less appealing. She had known Percival since they were children, when he was the kind of boy who avoided human contact in favor of intentionally harming small animals. He had grown into a man of welling pores and frequent snorts and was known as an obsessive collector of anthropological artifacts, although he himself was too weak-stomached ever to travel on an explorer’s ship.

  “Stop,” scolded her mother. Elizabeth blinked. She hadn’t thought she’d betrayed any emotion. “You would not be so complaining if your father were here.”

  The mention of Mr. Holland caused Elizabeth’s eyes to well, and she felt herself softening to her mother’s cause.

  “I’m sorry,” Elizabeth answered, trying to keep her voice level. She felt the dryness in her throat that always preceded tears and willed them away. “It’s just that I wonder if the accomplished Mr. Coddington will even remember me when I have been so long away.”

  Mrs. Holland sniffed as the Misses Wetmore, who were one and three years older than Elizabeth, passed. “Of course he remembers you. Especially when the alternative is girls like them. They look as if they were dressed by the circus,” Mrs. Holland commented coldly.