The Last Dance of the Debutante, page 7
That was what she really wanted. Friends. Real friends who laughed and cried with her. People she could rely on and look forward to seeing. And perhaps she’d found that here, tonight, with Leana’s group.
“She’s very beautiful, isn’t she?” Lily asked, gesturing a hand wildly in Leana’s direction.
Gideon glanced at Leana on the sofa. “She is. She also knows it. Always has.”
She smiled, remembering that Leana had said something to the same effect about Gideon just hours before.
“Is there anything wrong with a woman knowing that she’s beautiful?” she asked.
He shook his head, even as his expression darkened. “No, but there are some women who wield that beauty as though it’s power.”
“Because it is,” she said, and hiccuped. Her hand flew to her mouth. “Excuse me.”
“No,” Gideon said, seeming not to notice her hiccup. “All our lives Leana has known she is beautiful and that it can get her what she wants. That is part of her problem.”
Lily snorted. “What problems could a girl like that ever have?”
But when she looked up and caught Gideon’s eyes, there was such sadness there. “I think that you will be a very good friend to her, but be careful.”
“Why should I need to be careful?” Lily asked.
He leaned in closer and, when his lips were nearly touching her ear, he whispered, “Because I’m not sure yet whether Leana will be the same to you. And you, Lily Nicholls, strike me as a thoroughly decent person.”
She wondered at the sadness in his voice, when there was a loud thump. The champagne bottle had slipped from Leana’s arms and was rolling on the floor, spilling the dregs of the wine onto the hardwood.
Gideon gently spun Lily to a stop and stepped away. In a loud voice he said, “I think it’s time for all of us to leave our hostess to sleep.”
“Spoilsport,” Cressie called from across the room.
Gideon strode over to the record player and lifted the arm to cut the music short. “Come on, I’ll ask one of the servants to hail us taxis. Cecil and I have to report tomorrow anyway.”
The others shuffled out, but not before Lily took one last spin, desperate to memorize this evening.
Six
Lily’s detour to Hartford House meant she was not home to Harley Gardens by midnight. She wasn’t even home by one o’clock.
The first pale oranges and pinks of dawn were creeping up over the buildings of Chelsea when the taxi one of the exhausted Hartford servants had hailed for her pulled up in front of her childhood home. With no one around to see, Lily had walked careful as she could in her stockinged feet, high-heeled shoes dangling off her fingers. Even as the world spun, she’d let herself in with her key, careful to close the door so that the knocker didn’t rattle against its plate. Then she’d taken her dress and makeup off and fallen into bed in her slip, dead asleep in minutes.
Now, in the sitting room of a converted flat in Marylebone that served as the photographer’s studio where she and Mummy were due to meet Aunt Angelica and Georgie, she was trying desperately not to give in to the rolling waves of queasiness roiling her stomach or the incessant ache behind her eyes. All morning, she’d been nursing regrets about her late bedtime. Or perhaps it was the champagne. All that champagne.
Mummy turned the page of the magazine that she was reading with more aggression that was entirely necessary and hissed in a whisper, “I cannot believe that you were gallivanting across town, alone in a taxi, until all hours. What were you thinking?”
Lily was saved an answer when Aunt Angelica strode in wearing a teal suit, Georgie trailing behind her in more demure peach.
“Hello, darlings! I’m sorry we’re late. It was a nightmare rounding Hyde Park today. The taxi didn’t move for ten minutes,” said Aunt Angelica as she kissed them both on the cheek before pausing.
“Oh, Lily, you look positively green,” said Aunt Angelica.
“What is the point of having a session with the photographer if you show up to it looking as though you’ve been dragged under a bus,” hissed Mummy.
“Now, Josephine,” warned Aunt Angelica, “Lily looks nothing of the sort. She just needs a little more powder under the eyes, and she’ll be right as rain.”
There wasn’t enough powder in Britain to save her this morning.
Georgie slid in next to Lily, pressing a glass of water from the pitcher on the silver tray across the room into her hand.
“She was drunk, Angelica,” Mummy whispered.
“Oh, who of us hasn’t been? It’s not 1921 any longer, darling,” said Aunt Angelica.
“Are you saying I shouldn’t scold her? She is eighteen!” Mummy snapped.
“Precisely. She is eighteen, and she was just having a bit of fun. If the Season wasn’t fun, girls wouldn’t do it,” said Aunt Angelica.
Lily took a small sip of water and fantasized about closing all of the curtains and lying down on the cool oak floorboards while the other women argued.
“Have you had anything to eat, Lily?” asked Aunt Angelica.
“No,” Lily managed, her stomach rolling at the idea of food.
“Well, after your session with Jacques, we’ll make sure you eat. You have Lydia Turow’s drinks at the In and Out club tonight, and it won’t do to faint in the middle of it,” said her aunt.
Mercifully, the photographer’s assistant chose that moment to reappear and show Lily and Georgie to the powder room with a strong suggestion to Lily that she might like to “fix” her makeup.
In front of the vanity surrounded by bulbs, Lily slumped down on a floral-patterned chair. “I can’t do this.”
“You’re having your photograph taken, not going to war. Now lift your chin up so I can see what I can do to help,” said Georgie.
After a quick assessment, Georgie unclasped the top of her handbag and began to pull out pancake, a sponge, a cake of mascara, blush, and an array of lipsticks.
“How large is that handbag?” Lily asked.
“Large enough. You’re lucky we have the same coloring, even though my hair’s red. Now, I want you to tell me everything,” said Georgie.
And she did, right down to Leana’s cutting of Cecil, the drive over—fast and daring—with Gideon in his Jaguar, dinner, drinks, more drinks, dancing to the record player.
“It sounds romantic and chaotic all at once,” said Georgie, laying pancake on under Lily’s eyes.
“It was,” breathed Lily.
Georgie stopped to assess her work and then pulled out a pencil and began touching up Lily’s brows. “Leana, though…”
“What about her?” she asked, wincing when her cousin poked her a bit too hard with the pencil.
“Sorry. I was just thinking, Leana sounds as though she might be a little…”
“Difficult?” she provided.
“Yes.”
“Maybe she is, although she could just be impetuous. I have the impression that she’s used to having her way in most things, and when I tell her no, it seems to surprise her.”
“Are you sure that’s something she’s going to continue to welcome?” Georgie asked.
She shrugged. “So far she has been.”
“I just hope you’ll be careful. I’ve known girls like Leana before. They can be like kittens one moment, but then they remind you that kittens have claws.”
Lily nodded, wincing as the movement made her head throb.
“I’ll be careful,” she said gingerly, remembering Gideon’s similar warning the night—morning?—before.
“And what about this Gideon? I don’t remember meeting him at Isabel’s,” said Georgie as she put away the pencil and began applying blush to Lily’s cheeks.
“He’s fun.”
“And handsome, it sounds like,” teased Georgie.
She laughed. “And handsome. But I hardly know him.”
“Well, it sounds like the Season is the perfect reason to know him better.” Georgie sat back and then nodded. “There. I’ve done my best, which is pretty good, if I must say so myself. Choose a lipstick and then you’ll have to pull out the most incredible acting you’ve ever done to try to look serene and innocent.”
“I’ve never acted before in my life,” she said.
“Weren’t you in your school’s production of The Tempest?” Georgie asked, tidying the makeup into her handbag.
“It was Twelfth Night, and I made the costumes.”
Georgie rolled her eyes in mock horror. “Heaven help us.”
* * *
Lily managed to hold herself together as the photographer Jacques snapped away, stopping to direct her and Georgie to pose, first together and then apart. He told them they were beautiful, “the perfect debutantes,” and that the photographs would be “the best I’ve shot all year.”
“I bet he says that to all of the debs,” Georgie leaned in to whisper to her while Jacques was occupied changing rolls of film.
By the time that the session was done and Lily, Mummy, Aunt Angelica, and Georgie were all in a cab heading back to Harley Gardens, Lily was beginning to feel more like her usual self, only exhausted. Her stomach even growled when Hannah hurried them into the morning room, clucking that luncheon was nearly ready.
However, if Lily and Georgie had hoped that this meal would be a welcome break from the preparations for the Season, they were sorely mistaken. As soon as the starter of salad Nicoise was cleared away, Mummy’s and Aunt Angelica’s diaries came out, and Lily and Georgie dutifully pulled out their own.
“Next week is looking rather thin for invitations, Lily,” said Mummy. “Just one tea on Tuesday and cocktail parties on Thursday and Friday. You should have spent more time at Isabel’s meeting other girls.”
“I spoke to so many people,” said Lily.
“But were they the right people?” asked Mummy.
“I have Victoria Donaldson’s drinks on Wednesday. I could telephone her and hint that you’re free that night,” Georgie offered.
“That is sweet of you, Georgina, but I don’t think things are dire enough for that quite yet,” said Mummy, reaching for the bell next to her plate. She rang it, and a moment later Hannah appeared.
“Yes, Mrs. Nicholls?” the housekeeper asked with her hands folded behind her back.
“Could you please bring in the afternoon post?” asked Mummy.
“Yes, madam,” said Hannah.
“We’ll check to see if any appropriate invitations have come,” said Mummy.
“It sounds as though I can’t be too picky when it comes to what’s appropriate,” muttered Lily.
“You still need to be discriminating, and it’s far more efficient with Angelica here. She can warn you so you don’t have another repeat of Cecil Towey,” said Mummy.
“Cecil Towey of the Gloucestershire Toweys?” Aunt Angelica asked.
“He’s a very nice young man,” said Lily, conjuring up a vague memory of Cecil winging across Leana’s drawing room with her in a haphazard dance to an Elvis Presley song.
“Handsome, too, if you like glasses,” said Georgie.
The door opened again, and Hannah carried in two stacks of letters on a silver tray, which she lay between Mummy and Lily. “It only just came through the letter slot.”
“Thank you, Hannah,” said Lily, picking up the first note.
“Wait a moment,” said Hannah slyly, pulling another bundle of letters out of first her right apron pocket, then her left. “It looked like a mountain of paper in the entryway.”
“This is all for me?” she asked in disbelief, shuffling through the letters. Nearly every single one of them was uniform in size. Invitations.
Across the table, Mummy asked, “Are you certain?”
“Well, well,” said Aunt Angelica with delight.
“It looks as though you’ve become quite the thing, Miss Lily,” said Hannah with a bright smile.
“I can’t think why I would be,” she murmured, but when she picked up her paper knife to slice open the first letter, she realized that Hannah was right. Inside was the telltale snow-white card of an invitation.
“That will be all, Hannah.” Her mother waited until the door was closed before demanding, “Who is it from?”
“ ‘Mrs. Patrick Sanders at home, Tuesday, the eighth of April, six o’clock,’ ” she read out, scrunching up her nose. “She’s Beatrice Sanders’s mother, isn’t she?”
“There’s a photograph of you with her at Claudia Lessing’s tenth birthday. I remember sending you with Georgie,” said Aunt Angelica.
“Beatrice is nice enough. We see each other riding sometimes,” said Georgie.
“What does the next one say?” asked Mummy.
Setting the invitation aside, she opened another. “ ‘Lady Anne Faulks at home, Monday, the fourteenth of April, half past six.’ I don’t think I know any Faulkses.”
“Horsey girl. Good stock from Somerset. Her grandfather was an admiral,” rattled off Lily’s aunt before frowning. “Georgie hasn’t had an invitation from the Faulkses yet.”
“Don’t worry, Mummy. If she’s horsey, we’re bound to be invited to the same luncheon sometime soon,” said Georgie with a laugh.
“Here’s one I do recognize,” Lily said, pulling free the next invitation. “Geraldine Prichard has finally sent me an invitation to her ball. She spent all last autumn talking about it, and lorded it over all of us that she was going to be quite selective about who she invited from school.”
“You should attend,” said her mother.
“Mummy.” She laughed. “You can’t be serious. I know that Mr. Prichard is a friend of yours, but Geraldine is awful.”
“Not only are Richard and Agatha Prichard well-connected, Geraldine has three older brothers, all bachelors,” said Aunt Angelica.
She looked between her aunt and Mummy, waiting for Aunt Angelica to make a joke about how the girls should be buzzing bees dancing from flower to flower this Season or some such nonsense, but there was none. Not only were both her aunt and mother serious, both had their heads bent over their diaries, taking notes. Across the table, Georgie just shrugged.
She worked methodically, opening invitations and spreading them out over the empty spaces at the table where Papa and Joanna might have sat if their family had still been whole. In the end, nineteen invitations—all nearly identical in look—lay before them, along with twelve handwritten notes inviting her to less formal teas and deb’s lunches to get to know the other girls she’d come out with.
“Goodness,” said Georgie softly.
“There are so many,” she murmured.
“It appears, Lily, that you’ve made quite a splash. I think you should be jealous, Georgie,” said Aunt Angelica.
“I think I am,” said Georgie.
“Oh, please don’t be, Georgie,” she said.
Georgie reached across the table to her. “Don’t worry, darling. It’s a healthy kind of jealousy. I’ve become rather complacent with my little group of school friends and horsey girls.”
Despite her cousin’s reassurances, Lily’s stomach still turned, and it had nothing to do with her sorry state that morning.
“You’ll have to start deciding which you should decline, which you can double up, and which you should attend the entire night,” said Mummy, still studiously copying down dates and times. “And we’ll have to look at your wardrobe. Perhaps we should have gone to Harrods for more of your things. Someone is going to ask where you had your dresses made.”
“Mummy, you know why these have all come this morning, don’t you?” she asked.
Mummy looked up from the diary. “You did very well at Isabel’s drinks yesterday.”
“It was Leana. She’s popular.”
Georgie nodded. “You were seen leaving Isabel’s dinner with Leana. I was speaking to Ivy Wark, and she commented on it.”
One dinner, and everyone knew that Leana was Lily’s friend, and since Leana was invited everywhere, it looked as though London society had decided to extend Lily the same privilege.
“Josephine, there’s no use in being stubborn. You know the girl is right,” said Aunt Angelica.
“Fine,” Mummy said. “Be friends with Leana Hartford, just promise me that you will stay as far away from Ethan and Ruth Hartford as you can.”
Slowly Lily nodded.
“Well,” said Aunt Angelica, clearly trying to break the tension in the room, “I do hope whatever Hannah has planned for the main course is as good as the first.”
* * *
The following day, Lily found herself summoned to join Grandmama after Grandmama attended church at St. Paul’s Knightsbridge. Mummy was pointedly left off the invitation.
Grandmama had declared that Lily’s diary would be too full during the Season for regular visits, but Lily should have guessed that she would soon be summoned. She dressed carefully in a navy suit with white piping at the collar and took the bus to the corner of Pont and Sloane Streets.
Once the usual pleasantries were done and the tea was poured, Grandmama came right to business. “I’ve heard that you had a very successful evening Friday.”
“It would seem so,” she said.
“May I see?” Grandmama asked.
Lily handed over her diary and watched Grandmama peruse the names and dates of the invitations she intended to accept.
“This is very good, Lillian. I’m very pleased,” Grandmama announced, handing her back the light blue diary.
Lily breathed a sigh of relief.
“However, it is imperative that you do not lose momentum now,” said Grandmama.
“It’s only the first official weekend of parties,” Lily said.
“The Season is a long marathon, and not for the faint of heart. You may not realize how much of a disadvantage your sister’s past has placed you in,” said Grandmama.
