Beautiful Wild - Anna Godbersen Page 0,93

one man, and married to another.”

“Yes, something like that.” Camilla removed the tumbler of brandy from Vida’s unsteady hand. “Your heart is frantic now. I can see its flutters through your dress. But these passionate impulses, they go away. Today I would trade anything to have my husband back, though he never thrilled me the way—the way the . . . other did.”

“But what if it doesn’t?” Vida whispered. “What if the happiest I will ever be was on that beach? What if this feeling I have for Sal doesn’t ever really go away—what if it just withers and dies from neglect?”

“Then I suppose you had better go find him. But Vida, I know you. I see who you are, what you want. Isn’t it this—a very grand life, tours of Europe, new clothes every season, belonging to that rarefied company who decides who eats at the best tables, who is invited into the finest rooms, and who isn’t?”

“Well, yes,” Vida sighed. That had been what she wanted. When Camilla put it that way it seemed ridiculous to disavow an old and long-held dream for something that had already sailed so easily into and out of her grasp.

“Good,” said Camilla. “Now drink this up and let’s go down.”

Vida did as she was told. When she stood up she was dizzy and the room dazzled her with the stars that exploded in her field of vision, and she was glad of Camilla’s support as she moved into the hallway. “But Sal. On the island we were . . . we could have . . . I felt that . . . what I mean to say is, what if I love him? What if I love Sal? What if that was real love?”

“Hush,” Camilla said.

There, suddenly, and then passing very close in the other direction, was Dame Edna Sackville. Where did she come from? Vida wondered. Then she felt the keenness of the gossip’s gaze, it was blinding, and saw the emerald of her gown, so reminiscent of another, long-ago party. When Vida saw it she remembered the way Dame Edna had described her in the column—the glamorous Miss Hazzard—and she straightened up and tried to look the part.

But her heart wasn’t in it. She felt hollow inside and couldn’t move her face at all; Camilla had to nudge her back in the direction of her fiancé.

Thirty-One

For the second time that week, Vida woke up shaky all over. There was a piercing, throbbing feeling somewhere in the region behind and just south of her smooth forehead. When she moved too quickly her stomach lurched and she knew she must not do that again. In the not-so-distant past, she had experienced days of dehydration and hunger, sunburn, and the innumerable agonies of living mostly outside without any suitable footwear. The combination of the feeling behind her forehead and the complaints of her stomach was, without qualification, much, much worse.

She had only herself to blame.

After she and Camilla returned to the ballroom, there had been champagne, and after the champagne had come burgundy, and after burgundy there had been champagne again. The waiters had made it easy, but it was undoubtedly she who had accepted. Just as Camilla had promised, no one else noticed her despair. But still, she had wanted to be anywhere else. Champagne had, briefly, taken her somewhere else.

That throb behind her eyeballs blunted her memory—she was sure that there were some things she didn’t remember at all. And yet other scenes rose in her mind, vivid and shaming.

Scenes of her too-loud laughter, her too-exuberant dancing, scenes of her gossiping spitefully with whomever had gossip worth hearing.

Someone had laid out the morning papers beside a carafe of water and a silver urn of strong tea. But why say “someone”? That someone was Nora, of course—Vida just didn’t like thinking of how Nora must have had to help her out of her dress, how Nora must have seen her so pathetic and awful. Vida had been rescued at sea, so she knew what it was to be saved, and yet it was nothing compared to the gratitude she felt regarding Nora’s circumspect kindness this morning.

With a teacup and saucer carefully cradled in one hand, Vida lifted the pile of newspapers and placed them on the coverlet. The front page of the New York Star had run an illustrated picture of her dancing with Fitz, and though she looked a little more gay than she supposed was strictly appropriate, the pen-and-ink version