nearby; on the sweep of her petal-pink dress spread over the deck chair and onto the polished boards of the deck itself; and the angle of her hat which, while protecting the pale perfection of her skin, still showed just enough of her face that if Fitzhugh were to come passing by he would see her immediately from her best angle.
A couple were ambling toward her in the direction of the bow. Her blood quickened. For a few seconds together her eyes were sure the man was Fitzhugh. The woman on his arm was uncommonly beautiful. Her dress was a shade of blue similar to the wide sky that went on forever and ever behind her. A broad hat decorated with little white flowers topped her head. Ropes of blond hair were twisted around her neck and down her breast, like a maiden in a fairy tale. Her mouth was a small red fruit and her eyes were wide lavender lakes. Vida’s heart sank a little with this sight, and even when her eyes adjusted and she realized it was not Fitzhugh, but merely a man very like him, she still felt a little helpless over how much she had cared.
“Striking similarity, don’t you think?”
Vida had been staring, she realized, and was so focused on the passing couple that she had not noticed Dame Edna arriving on the chair beside her.
“My, you do pop up,” Vida said before she could think better of it.
“Get used to it, dear. If you want to move in the best circles, that is. I long ago mastered the art of arriving in silence. One does overhear such things that way.”
The columnist, too, wore a hat, an impressively ribboned and bedecked thing of vivid green, and her coat was also of her signature color. As Vida took in the coat, she became aware for the first time that the air had a little freeze to it.
“Recognize him, my dear?”
“Oh!” Vida’s heart lightened as she came to understand. “That’s the brother, isn’t it?” She sat up and watched as the figure of Fitzhugh’s older brother, Carlton, ambled along arm in arm with the woman in blue. “And his wife, Camilla.”
“Yes. Pretty, isn’t she?”
“Very,” Vida replied, although it wasn’t really Camilla’s prettiness that concerned her, but what kinds of leisure activities she enjoyed and how Vida might sort of accidentally come across her, and become friends with her, thus making her conquest of Fitz all the more inevitable. Plus, when they were sisters-in-law, Vida wanted to be sure she was invited to all the best parties. “What’s she like?”
“Oh, she’s even fancier than he is, if you can imagine it. She’s an Astor on her mother’s side, and her father’s family, the Joneses, own half the copper mines in this country, and have been deciding who is and isn’t invited to things for half a century. Their wedding was one of the most anticipated matches of the decade—they were married in Grace Church, and it was a frenzy among New York society to be invited. Many who weren’t are still bitter.”
“And what sort of secrets do you have on her?”
The couple had disappeared between one of the ship’s mighty smokestacks, and Vida’s parents were on to discussing the comfort of the beds in the first-class cabin, the relative virtues of the sheets and softness of the pillows.
Dame Edna tilted her head and her mouth flexed in amusement. “I do have a little story, though you may not wish to know it.”
Vida hoped her face didn’t reveal how much she did in fact wish to know it. “Tell me,” she breathed. “I will be ever so much in your debt.”
“Well.” With an expert gesture Dame Edna had one of her little cigarettes lit, despite the wind, as though her powers were not just over the well-dressed, but also somehow over the elements. “She was with your fellow first.”
“My—” Vida broke off and her mouth bent in a funny way. She was flooded with such contradictory emotions that she hardly knew whether she should frown or beam with joy. That Dame Edna might so easily refer to Fitzhugh as her “fellow” made her feel as light and free as a balloon floating in the upper atmosphere. But that he had somehow belonged already to that other girl, whose incomparable qualifications Vida could never measure up to—even on the highest crest of her considerable confidence—made her heart black with possessive fury. “My fellow?”
“My dear, you do know I see all