A Sisterhood of Secret Ambitions, page 18
His eyes were such a soft color, they seemed to burn with a candle spark of intensity as I met his gaze. “Exactly,” he said. “I hate pretending.”
“I think growth feels like pretending to most people. But honestly, I don’t think that everyone in there is being false. I think there are a lot of people here who genuinely do care about the world, about making things better.”
His presence was near enough and warm enough to realize how close we stood. Close enough I could see my reflection in his smudged glasses.
I pulled off his glasses and wiped the fingerprints and dust away with my cotton shawl. He stood very still as I slid those glasses back over the bridge of his nose.
“There,” I said, my voice quiet. “Now at least you’ll be able to see those people you’re about to meet. Maybe if you look close enough, you’ll see there are good people standing in front of you.”
“I can see one,” he said softly.
He meant me. He reached his hand forward and twisted his fingers around mine. A chill ran up my neck.
Try, my mother’s voice echoed. I glanced down at our hands and rubbed my thumb up his finger. I glanced up at him through my eyelashes and inhaled heavily.
Someone should be here to interrupt this. I know that Greta knew where we were by now. She should be here.
“We should go in there,” I said with a shaky voice. “There are people in there who are dying to meet you.”
“We should.”
Again we didn’t move. We breathed together, but I didn’t dare look at him. I didn’t dare smile or push it forward. Greta still needed her turn, and then Bea again. But my ambitions would not let me step away. He smelled like stories. His jaw pulsed with our nearness. If my friends were here watching, I would have done what I was supposed to do. But Greta was late. Why was she late?
This was an opportunity.
I met his eyes. My training and my beauty left his gaze swimming with desire and hunger. I felt my lips sliding into a smile. “No more stalling, Andrew. Be brave. Open that door.” I arched my chin and looked him right in the eye. A challenge and my consent in one look.
He leaned in closer, his eyes closing. But I kept mine open, aimed for his lips like I’d been trained to aim, and I kissed him, soft and short, for two seconds like I’ve been trained to kiss him in the peach kiss. I drew my chin down, giving him the victory, making myself the trophy. Leaving him wanting more, leaving him breathing in want where I felt nothing but lips on lips.
My training gave me the look that would draw him back. I knew the smile that would end the kiss but leave that line open for the next opportunity. I knew what to do to give my friends their chance, no matter how late Greta was.
But I knew his name and his future and I wanted to find our sparks. I wanted Nora’s happy ending. I wanted him to choose me. I wanted the power and the path, and was it so wrong to let a good man love me? So I twisted his collar in my greedy grip and I drew him back to me and I kissed him like I was thirsty and would drink him dry. Like if I kissed him hard enough I could claim his life. Not my place beside him, but the place in the center of it. The place on the ballot. His place in history. I kissed him like I could blot out his name and pencil in my own.
He drew back, breaking the kiss like he was breaking the surface of a whirlpool I was dragging him down. We both gasped for air.
I touched my lips and didn’t meet his eye. I couldn’t. My shoulders tensed with shame, because even with all the passion that I possessed, there was nothing there between us. Not a single spark. I knew sparks. Patch had lit me up like a firework.
If Andrew chose me, I’d have to pretend every day of my life.
Bea wasn’t pretending. Didn’t Andrew deserve something real?
Didn’t I?
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I shouldn’t have…” I met his wide eyes, and my words trailed off.
He swallowed and stepped closer to me, and only then did I realize how far he’d had to pull away from me. “That was…”
My lipstick had rubbed on his lips. I rubbed it off with my thumb, and his lips curved in a smile beneath my hand.
I knew my training had charmed him well past sense. I knew his loyalty would mean he’d close the door on his feelings for Bea and be mine until I let him go, or proved myself unworthy.
I was the front-runner now. I’d won the competition and the mentorship with those women who led our society. I’d won his heart.
But did I even want it?
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Andrew’s hand gripped mine as we walked through the server door. Tables full of elegant, powerful people turned their eyes to watch us, but I didn’t feel like Cinderella at the top of the staircase, I felt like a wicked stepsister who had stepped into Cinderella’s story.
Mrs. Brown watched me with her appraising eyes. Andrew brought my other hand to his mouth and kissed my fingers at the exact second that Bea glanced over.
My body went cold.
Greta danced with Johnson, both of them captured by each other, and I suddenly realized why she hadn’t come to stop me from kissing Andrew.
She’d found her own path.
So now I was stuck on this one.
Andrew’s mother made her way to us, like she was attached to a string someone else pulled forward. “Well, I guess it’s time for us to meet my mother,” Andrew said. He put a smile on like donning a mask. “Don’t worry, I will protect you.”
I rubbed my collarbone. Andrew and I could bond over our strained relationships with our mothers. Didn’t that just spell love?
Smile number five. The hostess.
“Andrew, darling,” Andrew’s mother’s voice carried, as though Andrew inherited her gravity-inducing voice. “Wherever had you gone off to?”
“Mother.” He scratched the back of his neck.
“Don’t slouch, darling,” she said in a quiet but firm voice. “You’ll wrinkle.”
“Sorry.” Andrew stood taller, but something in his expression seemed defeated.
I came to his rescue. I offered my hand demurely and met her eye with head held high. “It’s good to meet you, Mrs. Shaw.”
Andrew’s mother smelled of rose petals and vanilla. She took my hand with vigor, her smile proud and satisfied. “And you too, Bea.”
The smell soured.
“Mother, this is Elsie.”
“Ah,” she said as she tallied me up like the ingredients in a recipe, each part parceled, some clearly on her list for substitutions. “You’re Rebecca’s favorite.”
“Of all your children,” I answered quickly, “Rebecca is my favorite as well.”
“Ouch,” Andrew said playfully. “Let’s hope you didn’t kiss Rebecca like you did me.”
I winced, both from that accusation I could not take as a joke and for the secret kiss he’d just shared so loudly. There was no taking it back now.
Across the room, Mira had joined Bea.
The answer, of course, to a moment like this one was to underplay any awkward feelings. “I love your dress, Mrs. Shaw. Is that a Lanvin?”
Her perfect posture did not change. “It is.”
It wasn’t a play. I loved the wide pannier skirt, and the soft blue silk with romantic embroidery. “I love her. Her work is so feminine and detailed, not so stark and crisp like Chanel.”
Mrs. Shaw frowned. “Agreed. Chanel’s style seems to design based off a uniform.”
“But which uniform I wonder,” I said with my eyebrow raised knowingly.
“I have my theories.” She looked me over again as if reevaluating. “Her sympathies seem well established.”
Rumors said Coco Chanel had an overfondness for a new party growing traction in Germany. “They seem all the rage in Europe.” Even after the last war, fascism seemed to be infectious. It was growing at an alarming rate.
“Yes, it’s concerning,” Mrs. Shaw said.
“We’ll have to watch for her fall show.” I didn’t mean the dresses.
“You women and your ribbons and bows,” Andrew said. “I say if it fits and it’s on sale, well then, it’s good enough for me.”
“And that, my dear boy, is why I do your shopping,” Mrs. Shaw said with a smile I struggled to copy. We’d been talking about more than ribbons and bows, and to be dismissed so quickly was an unkindness I didn’t think he was capable of bestowing.
He might like me for now, but how could he see me as an equal if every word of substance had to be kept secret?
Over Andrew’s shoulder, I spied my friends across the busy ballroom. Far from me. Theirs were the only faces that reflected what I’d done. Greta glared openly, shaking her head in disgust, while Mira gave her words of solace to Bea, who mouthed the words I’m fine, I’m fine so clearly they scratched themselves into my bones. She did not smile.
My chest felt tight. “It was good to meet you, Mrs. Shaw,” I said as warmly as I could manage. And I meant it. We’d established the start of something. We weren’t rivals over Andrew’s influence, we were allies. Our oaths made sure of that.
“Shall we make the rounds?” Andrew said, his mask of a smile in place.
I leaned into his side and spoke in quiet tones. “You’re enough, Andrew. Don’t make me clean your glasses again.”
His false smile softened to genuine.
“There you are,” I whispered.
His mother watched us go with surprised approval, and I knew I’d just aced an exam.
Only to jump right into the next one.
Butter knives were crossed at tables I was supposed to avoid, knives perpendicular at tables where people needed to meet Andrew. Flowers hid messages inside arrangements, with ivy set at tables filled with scholars and poets who held wisdom more than stature, oak wreaths at tables with military men. I guided him by the codes, my hand in his arm a rudder.
From table to table, Andrew introduced me. My name was briefly in the mouths of people who could change my life forever. They said my name, spoke to me about poetry and politics, and I smiled the smile I’d been trained to give, and included Andrew inside the conversation in a way that made him look better, in a way that made him shine.
All those connections. They knew my name, but they left caring about Andrew’s future. All those powerful people only knew me as a possible asterisk in Andrew’s life.
And we were both miserably bored. Perhaps the problem with being pawns in a hundred-year-old society was that it made you feel like you too were one hundred years old.
Across the room, Bea and Mira were laughing with one of Andrew’s female friends, Greta slunk over Johnson, while Harper danced with Iris. They seemed young and free, and I was leashed by the hand held in my own.
A cork flew past my head, and I turned suddenly. Champagne. Andrew stiffened next to me. I glanced about. We’d met the mayor and several police officers in this very room, yet alcohol was flowing now without even a pretense of hiding.
The man holding the glass, whose name I’d just heard but somehow immediately forgotten, offered us a glass. He had a slick gray mustache and a stark black collar.
“No, thank you,” Andrew said, answering for us.
“Don’t be a wet blanket, man. It’s a party.” He gave us both a glass.
Andrew’s shoulders curled, and I suddenly remembered him buying several glasses for his friends when we met. He’d fallen under male pressure before. But now he stood steady. “You know my parents are the head of the local temperance league, right?”
A flash went off, and I turned.
“Cheers to your parents.” The man lifted his cup in a toast, and then he drank. “How about you, dollface?”
I knew in that second that Andrew needed support, but that he also needed the good opinion of this man whose name I still could not recall. I had to say no, but I had to say no in a way that made him feel like I had said yes.
Essentially, I needed to filibuster.
“I believe it was Mark Twain who said that ‘it is the Prohibition that makes anything precious.’ So while it’s a delicious rebellion for you to say no to the temperance laws, it is our own delicious rebellion to say no to an offer you’ve made so kindly.” I put the drink down on the table, and Andrew copied me. “I wish you a pleasant evening with your drink, and that we shall endeavor to have one without it. Our task, I dare say, is much harder. Shall we, Andrew.”
Andrew and I walked away, and once our backs were turned we both started laughing.
“Was that a British accent?” Andrew asked.
“I can’t say the word endeavor without sounding like an Anglophile.”
“Shall we dance and make merriment?” Andrew asked with a poor excuse for a British accent.
“Indubitably.” He took my hand and swung me around, and then he pulled me into a proper distance for dancing. There was a friendly level of comfort in Andrew’s arms. I definitely felt a kinship with him, or perhaps a friendship? Perhaps that would grow into something more. Perhaps this wasn’t hopeless.
“All this money,” Andrew said after a minute. “It seems wasted, when there are people going without food.”
“There are also people here who could change that. By law or charity or taxation.”
His jaw tightened, but he kept his smile in place. “Don’t let my father hear you say that. He’s not a fan of our high taxes, despite all the good they do.”
“Then maybe your father is one of those people whose opinions you could change. Your voice carries weight, Andrew. You can make the changes you’d like to see.”
He looked down. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
Another flashbulb went off. I turned to find the camera, but it was too crowded.
“Tell me more about your family,” Andrew said. “What’s your father like?”
I missed a step. And for a second I heard my father’s voice telling me that a good girl was silent.
And Andrew noticed. “Oh. I’m sorry. I’m truly sorry. I didn’t—”
“—You didn’t do anything wrong. My father is very much alive.”
“Oh good.”
“I just don’t really know what to say. About my father. I’m protective of him, I guess. I don’t know why. I hardly see him, and when I do it’s always at some event or another where he’s looking at anything except me.” I smiled softly. “He’s always surprised at how tall I am, how mature. Every time he sees me he says, ‘Is this my little girl?’ and for a second I am. I’m that little girl who hung on his knee, or who danced in his arms, or who played with the dolls he’d bring back from his trips.”
Andrew stared into the crowd, his eyebrows pressed together in concern he didn’t voice.
“It’s strange, really,” I said. “I’m never angry with my father even though he deserves it, but I’m nearly always mad at my mother.”
“It’s a protection,” Andrew said in a voice so calm. “You know your mother’s love can withstand your anger, but your father’s…”
If my father saw the storm inside me, I doubt he would stick around. “People usually come to me to be understood like this,” I said sincerely. “I don’t often share these things about myself.”
“Well, I’m honored.”
“I think it’s more than that. I think you understand me.”
“You’re easy to talk to,” he said, again turning the conversation on me.
I touched his arm. “Perhaps our brains are similar.”
“I…” He glanced over like he was weighing whether or not to trust me. “I’m mad at my father quite a bit.” He let out a soft chuckle. “But I have no arguments with my mother. We’re not particularly close, although she’s extremely involved in my life. Some might say too involved. My friends specifically think my mother is far too involved in my choices. She’s placed all her ambitions on me, but I don’t think she sees me at all. She wants me to be important. Not happy.”
“Are you happy?” I asked.
He scratched his neck. “I’m … happiest when I’m helping others.” He glanced at me. “And I’m very happy to be dancing with you.”
I put on a smile and then turned quiet as we swayed to the music. For a moment I’d forgotten to pretend. I liked spending time with him much more when I didn’t have to pretend to be falling for him.
Because it was pretend.
But was a friendship so bad?
In the crowd someone held up a camera to his chest, a large silver flashbulb at the side. He was dressed as a waiter, or a reporter, looking like an outsider in clothes too old and worn compared to the tuxes and tails around him, his dark hair hanging over his eyes and his strong nose. Then he looked up through his hair and I froze.
Patch.
How was a human being so beautiful? All those sparks I couldn’t feel for Andrew sent my stomach warm and my fingers tingly. How did he get in here? I know the Spinsters had raised their watch level on him. There were far too many influential people here for them to have lost track of him. How did he get past the Gossips and the Spinsters?
His eyes were storming.
A moment I should not have asked for lingered in the silence of our stares. He pressed the trigger on the camera, the flashbulb bright and blinding as a bullet.
He took that picture for himself. Perhaps to hang on his wall or press between pages of our favorite book.
But that was just me being romantic and foolish. He wasn’t here for me. The flash earlier. He’d taken a picture of Andrew holding a glass of alcohol. He was here to blackmail the Shaws, and who knew how many others of these people.
I flashed a signal to Iris. She caught it with one glance, searched the ballroom, spotted Patch as he ducked past a server. I turned back to Andrew.
The Spinsters could handle him. They’d take the camera away; they’d get him to leave. And then they’d do something to scare him away from the Shaws for good.
But a chill ran up my neck, and no matter how I tried to silence it, I saw Patch’s little brother, that boy who depended on him for everything.
Had Patch done enough to deserve the Spinsters’ punishment?
If the society could be wrong about Rebecca, how did I know they wouldn’t be wrong with how they handled Patch?
