The Prince of Spies (Hope and Glory #3) - Elizabeth Camden Page 0,5
Committee on Manufactures, which was Clyde’s only committee appointment, and he was eager to impress the young chairman.
Life in Congress had been a difficult adjustment for her father. He was used to helming one of the richest companies in America, but now he was a freshman congressman who answered to a man half his age. It was rare for him to return home before nine o’clock. And sometimes he didn’t return home at all.
As much as Marianne idolized her father, she wished he could be a better husband.
Still, she wouldn’t change this past year in Washington for anything in the world. She and Vera had grown extraordinarily close ever since moving here. Her mother had been nervous about leaving Baltimore, where she was the reigning queen of high society. Now she had to start over in a new city as a mere freshman congressman’s wife, and suddenly she had grown very dependent on Marianne. They did everything together. They shopped together, planned Vera’s tea parties together, and even gossiped together. For the first time in Marianne’s life, it felt like they had a normal mother-daughter relationship, and she savored every hour of it.
Vera wandered over to the sideboard where the week’s rejected photographs were in a stack. She pulled out the one of Luke and wiggled it suggestively. “This is the best of the lot. Go ahead and add it into the stack to show your father.”
Marianne considered the suggestion. Although the Department of the Interior primarily wanted photographs documenting specific government initiatives, they liked occasional artistic shots taken in the city.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Marianne said. Yesterday she’d told Papa about the incident with the dog, but not about the photograph. Something about it seemed too personal. It was a shared moment of communion between herself and a complete stranger as they embarked on a daring venture together. It had been one of the most exciting moments of her life, and she wasn’t ready to share it yet. Normally she let her father witness her entire life through her photographs. She showed him everything. But she didn’t want him seeing that man with the dog. Something warned her against it.
It was almost ten o’clock before her father arrived home, and masculine voices outside the door indicated Clyde had brought company. Vera immediately fled upstairs in horror. Her mother had already taken her hair down and wore nothing but a casual lounging dress without the painfully tight corset. Appearances were everything to Vera, and she would never let herself be seen so casually attired.
Marianne had no such qualms and did nothing aside from straightening the collar of her blouse before heading to the entryway to greet her father, who was already hanging up his jacket. His guest was a redheaded man with an enormous walrus mustache. She suspected he was Congressman Roland Dern, because Clyde had told her how much he disapproved of that mustache. Congressman Dern was in his mid-thirties and the chairman of her father’s only committee assignment. That meant Congressman Dern was her father’s boss.
“Roland, I’d like to introduce my daughter, Marianne. She’s the one I brag incessantly about.”
Congressman Dern gave a polite nod. “I’ve come to see your photographs,” he said. “I didn’t realize when we began our dinner that you have a standing appointment with your father every Thursday night. I’m sorry to have delayed the ritual, so let’s not beat around the bush. Show me your pictures.”
She looked to Clyde for permission. Normally the weekly ritual was an event she and her parents enjoyed together. Clyde seemed uneasy as he gave a stiff nod of consent. How awkward it must be for her father to be beholden to a man young enough to be his son, but Marianne pretended not to notice the tension as she led the way into the dining room, where the best of her photographs were on display.
The scent of cigar smoke lingered on both men as they circled the table. Her father paused before the photograph she’d taken of children playing in the snow outside the Library of Congress. The picture captured the spirit of unabashed joy as the children romped and played.
“This belongs in a museum,” Clyde said, chuckling at the snow-encrusted children. “The lighting, the expressions, the composition . . . all of it is sheer poetry captured on celluloid. It makes me want to pick those boys up and take them home with me.”