Beautiful Wild - Anna Godbersen Page 0,88
her in his bemused way, and she suddenly felt very foolish.
“I’m sorry, I’m being very stupid. You’re laughing at me. You don’t know why I’m still here.”
“No, I just want to remember you like this. In the morning, with no makeup, and your hair not brushed at all. Like you were there.”
Vida’s mouth formed around a response that she could not summon. She was thinking of that afternoon on the beach, of the moment just before the moment when she saw the little ship in the distance. Sal had said something to her. He had just said something that was really important. It had been lost in the excitement of what happened next, but she hadn’t forgotten it. It was here now in her thoughts. He’d said that she was strong, and that if she didn’t know what she wanted, then it was because she hadn’t tried to know.
She asked herself—she asked, What do I want?
And then quite unexpectedly her fingers fluttered up, brushed his lips, his jaw, gently pinched his earlobe. The space between them shrank. A sharp winter breath filled her chest and her mouth found his mouth. For a moment he did not respond—yet she knew she had not made a mistake. Then he returned the pressure of her kiss, and she knew what it was to want and be wanted in equal measure.
The carriage was rocking to the gait of the horses and the uneven pavement of the city as they kissed. They kissed again, and his hand found her hair, and his nose brushed her nose. He sighed, his whole body seemed to sigh, and she felt the sigh move through her, too.
Then she heard the driver’s hand on the door handle and she drew back as quickly as she could.
“Mademoiselle,” said the driver.
Panic froze Vida’s features. “When will I see you?” she asked. Already the driver was supporting her, was very nearly lifting her and placing her down on the street.
“Now you understand why I have to leave. I’ve already booked passage, for Friday night.”
“That’s the day after tomorrow.”
“Yes.”
She was trying to think of something sensible to say but her brain was uncooperative. “The night of the party.”
“Yes.”
“But,” she said stupidly, desperately, “you must go to the party.”
“I’ll come, then, to say goodbye.”
She could feel the eyes of the driver on her, and beyond him, the eyes of all the windows of all ten stories of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Her clothes were loose but the rest of her life was constricting, was holding her tight, limiting her movements. “Well, in that case, I will look forward to seeing you there,” she said in as impersonal a voice as she could manage, and curtsied as best she could, before retreating, under the golden awning, where she watched the carriage draw away from the hotel, its wheels finding the darkened grooves in the snow before disappearing into the uptown traffic.
Twenty-Nine
Celebration to be held for the next Mrs. Farrar
by Dame Edna Sackville
This evening, at the house of Winthrop Farrar, the shipping magnate, and his wife, the former Isabella Carlton, a period of mourning for their elder son will end, and a period of celebration will begin. A party shall be held to formally announce the engagement of Fitzhugh, the younger son and now sole heir of the family concern, to Vidalia Hazzard, the daughter of a prominent San Francisco family and one of the survivors of a trial on a desert island which was covered in a thrilling, much celebrated four-part serial by this column. The fast set are all competing with one another to look their best. Not invited? Don’t fret, I am—the bride-to-be is a particular friend of mine, and you can read all the details tomorrow in these pages.
Days of frantic and competing newspaper accounts had whipped up a frenzied public interest in the engagement party being thrown at the Farrar Palazzo on Fifth Avenue, with the unhappy result that deliveries had to be made through a difficult-to-part crowd, and many ill-starred oranges had rolled from crates carried aloft, been ground by sundry boot heels into two-days’-old snow. At dusk, a police detail arrived to clear a path for the guests to be carried over the slush at the gutters and to the mauve carpet that had been laid over the limestone steps to protect the elegant footwear of the members of New York’s oldest and best families—eminent ladies and gentlemen who were also, in their own understated way, manic with curiosity about the