Gilded Age by Claire McMillan Page A

Her face was hot now.
    “I’m saying you’re a pragmatist. Aren’t you?”
    Perhaps she’d upset him more than she realized by not returning his calls. “That sounds vulgar,” she said.
    “You think you’re the only one?” He looked around the room. “How many of these marriages are based on less than that?”
    She considered the Wetheralls in front of her, a union based on his business connections and her social ambitions. Just looking at them made Ellie depressed.
    “How many still have passion?” he asked, waving a hand.
    “I don’t think anyone really knows what goes on inside anyone else’s marriage.”
    “Right.” He shrugged.
    “Passion is fine,” she said, grasping his glass and taking a sip. “What I really want is freedom.”
    He raised an eyebrow. “Freedom in marriage?”
    “Freedom from everything—from money, from poverty, from ease and anxiety, from all the material accidents. That’s the only thing money can buy.”
    “Money doesn’t buy that,” he said.
    “The hell it doesn’t,” she said with a snort.
    “What you are talking about is a republic of the spirit, a context of the soul.” He deposited his now-empty glass on a silver tray and took the full flute offered by a waiter. “It can’t be bought.” He ran a hand through his unruly hair. “What you are talking about has nothing to do with money and everything to do with your state of mind. You’ve had money.”
    “That’s where the passion comes in. Need that too.”
    He grasped her wrist. “Ribbon’s gone.”
    “Fell off.” Ellie shrugged.
    “You need another,” he said. He looked at the couple next to them, saying good-byes now that the cake was cut. “The Hindus say the rich man and the poor man have the same troubles, except the rich man has money,” Selden said to her.
    “Eastern wisdom from a corn-fed midwestern boy—you know that’s annoying as hell, right?”
    “Want me to read your aura?” he asked, smiling.
    “You can do that?”
    “No, but I actually read things besides Vogue magazine.”
    “Didn’t realize you read Vogue magazine,” she said with a smirk.
    He snorted. “You know what I mean.”
    “You mean I’m an idiot.” Ellie took a plate from a passing waiter and turned toward Selden. “Lemon,” she said, offering him a forkful of cake as a little peace offering.
    “You’re not an idiot.” He ate the bite from Ellie’s fork. After he swallowed he said, “It means we all have to deal with the same shit. Some can throw money at it, but they still have to struggle with the same major questions of life. Always have.”
    Just then Jack Stepney came over with Randall Leforte. Ellie kissed her cousin and congratulated him on his bride, his happiness, his beautiful day. Selden leaned back against the doorjamb again, watching her. Randall Leforte bent low over her hand and kissed it with a loud smack.
    “Yes, we’ve met,” Leforte said when introduced by Jack. “At the orchestra. I’m a big patron. I love music.” He said this with a flourish that embarrassed Ellie. The man may have been rich and not bad looking, but he was impossible socially. Now was the time to glide over any awkwardness and introduce him to Selden, to be her usual charming self, but she couldn’t. She didn’t want Selden to think she was hunting Leforte. Selden had that effect on her. He invited her into his own world to abide by his views. They were brave views and romantic. Her concerns were trivial and small when she was with him. It was when they were apart that his heroic stance was hard for her to maintain on her own. She was smiling distractedly and silently at Leforte, who was gradually reddening.
    “I hear you’re a good friend of Gus Trenor’s,” Leforte said. “I was playing squash with him the other day.” She thought she saw Selden smile at this thudding name-drop.
    “Gus and Julia are some of my best friends.”
    “I love your dress,” Leforte said, grasping at conversational