boats, and swimming although the water was very cold. They visited other families at the lake, and it was a good respite from social life in the city, although at times they were just as busy at the lake.
The main house was almost as big as their mansion in the city, although life there was slightly less formal. They wore black tie for dinner, rather than white tie and tails, and sometimes had as many as twenty house guests on the weekend. There was an outdoor dining room and an indoor one. Charles had encouraged Alex to invite his two younger brothers up as well, which Alex was loath to do, and admitted to his future father-in-law that they were young and sometimes quite badly behaved. They were planning to visit friends in the East that summer, and he knew that his horse-mad brother Phillip was planning to play polo in Mexico. They were a handful, and he didn’t want to inflict them on his in-laws, and he knew that in a respectable older group, both boys would be bored, and he would end up scolding them all weekend for drinking too much or sleeping with the maids. They were too old for him to control now, and not old enough to want to settle down, so he turned a blind eye to their antics, and got them out of trouble when he had to. It was relatively harmless, though tiresome.
As head of the family by the time he was twenty-six, Alex had grown up at an early age, which Phillip and Harry hadn’t achieved yet, and had no reason to since they didn’t work. Their inheritances supported them lavishly and allowed them to indulge whatever prank they could dream up, which they did frequently, much to their older brother’s dismay. They knew every speakeasy in San Francisco. He loved them but they tested his patience. Eleanor had met each of them once, briefly, before she left, and they thought she was nice, but too circumspect for them. They couldn’t imagine why Alex wanted to get married and thought he should have some fun first. They thought him very dull, although they were fond of him, but had little in common with him, or his interests, particularly now that he was engaged. They were coming to the wedding of course, but Alex doubted that they’d behave. At least in a crowd of eight hundred guests, no one would notice what mischief they got up to, unless they did something truly outrageous, which they were capable of too. They had never been forced to be responsible and Alex often wondered if they ever would be. So far, his occasionally stern lectures fell on deaf ears.
Alex and Eleanor sat for a little while longer in the garden, basking in the joy of her return. He had to tear himself away and force himself to go back to the office. When he left, Eleanor went upstairs to look over their unpacking. She had bought a lot of pretty new things in Paris, and some summer evening dresses, and bathing suits by Elsa Schiaparelli to wear at the lake. She loved to swim in the icy cold water and then lie in the sun on the dock, or go out in the boats. She had learned to drive them, with one of the boatmen next to her, and she had learned to water-ski the summer before. Alex said he wanted to learn too. A million happy discoveries lay ahead of them. Eleanor could see her life ahead of her now, with Alex, and their children, spending summers in Lake Tahoe with her parents. Her father wanted to redo one of the houses on the property for them, and to have it ready by the following year. They were excited about that too. Her father was going to have an architect draw up some plans for her to look over with Alex. Eleanor wanted at least four bedrooms for all the children they hoped to have.
* * *
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The move to Lake Tahoe, two weeks after Eleanor and her mother returned from France, looked like the migration of an entire village. Eleanor and Louise took endless trunks, they kept clothes at the lake house but added to them every year with new fashions they couldn’t live without. Charles was happy to indulge them. “You know how women are,” he had said to Alex more than once. Louise and Eleanor went up on the private