The Luxe by Anna Godbersen Page B

household.
    Diana looked around at the taxidermy buck heads on the wall and the old heavy furniture. There was a great tin vase full of cabbage roses that were wilting with neglect, their petals browning and falling to the floor. The curtains were drawn, which seemed somehow appropriate. She returned her eyes to the lank figure of Henry Schoonmaker, very real before her, and felt a lovely kind of pain shoot through her chest. There were so many things he knew that she didn’t. She could tell by the way he stood that he was older than she was and he had done things she could never do. She wanted to take him upstairs and lock the door and make him tell her everything.
    “Truly kissed?” he asked, lowering his eyebrow, which somehow implied even greater skepticism. He leaned closer, his breath warm on her ear as he reached for the hat. For a moment, everything was still. His body was so close to hers that she felt they were already touching. And then, as he gently took the hat from her curls, he turned his face just enough to brush his lips across hers. Her chest rose and fell. The touch of his mouth had been electric.
    He was looking intently into her eyes, the corner of his mouth resisting a full smile, and then he leaned in again, bringing his mouth flush against hers. That was it, Diana thought. That was how this was supposed to feel. It was supposed togo all the way down to your toes and make them dance, just a little bit.
    Henry drew his lips away and winked at her, his eyes lively and knowing. Then he put his hat back on his head and stepped into the hall without another word.
    “Sweet ladies, it seems I got lost on the way from the cloakroom to the door,” Diana heard him say. There was laughter in his voice and she knew that even though he was speaking to Claire and Elizabeth, he was sharing a secret joke with her. “Good afternoon.”
    “Good afternoon,” Diana heard a miffed Elizabeth say. Then the door sounded and he must have been gone. Diana, still listening from inside the lesser parlor, was consumed by the thought of what she had just done. I just kissed Henry Schoonmaker, she thought, repeating it over and over in her head. I just kissed Henry Schoonmaker.
     
    It was later, after Diana had successfully tiptoed back to her room undetected, that the mysterious package arrived. Claire stood there demanding to know what it was, and Diana had been tempted to open it immediately. She and her maid had often whispered secrets about boys, and traded fantasies to each other that involved ocean liners and heirs to the thronesof small European countries. But something about this was too real to share, so she apologized to Claire and hugged her and asked to be alone.
    She listened for Claire’s footsteps away from the door and then shimmied the round gold-embossed box top open. Nestled inside the charcoal-colored velvet lining was a very familiar hat, and a note:
    Keep it. It looked so good on you I can’t stand the sight of myself in it anymore…nor the thought of the context in which I shall have to get to know you better.
    — HS
    She read his note maybe two hundred times trying to make sense of it. The thought of the context in which I shall have to get to know you better? What could that possibly mean ? Then she put the hat on her head and felt dangerously in love with someone she hardly knew.

Eleven
    The first stab of love is like a sunset, a blaze of color—oranges, pearly pinks, vibrant purples….
    –– FROM THE DIARY OF DIANA HOLLAND, SEPTEMBER 17, 1899

D IANA DID NOT TAKE THE HAT OFF UNTIL SEVERAL hours later, when she heard a soft knock on the door. Then she scrambled up from her idle writing position, pulled the hat from her head, and dropped the card inside it, quickly shoving both items under the bed and out of sight. The anemic rat-tat-tat on her door repeated itself, and she tucked her diary—whose pages recalled the secret meeting that was inspiring all those dramatic bursts of