would treat her so well. He wasn’t some twenty-two-year-old boy who had years of growing up to do. Alex Allen was a man, and an honorable one, and Charles gave Alex his blessing with tears in his eyes and a firm handshake, and reported it to Louise immediately afterward. She cried for the same reason as Charles, sad to lose her daughter but delighted for her.
Alex didn’t waste any time, and proposed to Eleanor that night. He proposed to her on bended knee before they went out to dinner, and presented her with his mother’s engagement ring. It looked enormous on her hand, and was a very impressive ring for a girl her age. Eleanor gasped in astonishment when he asked her. She didn’t know he had met with her father, and thought they would go along for some time, being in love, and dreaming of a distant future. She had no idea that the future would become the present so quickly, but as she stared at him with wide open eyes filled with love, she accepted and he kissed her. Then they went to find her parents and tell them. They celebrated with champagne, and after two glasses, she felt giddy when she and Alex went out to dinner. There was so much to talk about and think about now.
She was the first of her season of debutantes to get engaged. It was announced in the society pages of the newspaper that weekend. Floods of letters and telegrams of congratulations started pouring in immediately. It seemed fitting to everyone, and they were particularly pleased for Alex, who had mourned his lost fiancée for so long. Two royal banking families were about to form a sacred bond through marriage. What could be better or more suitable?
They set the date for the marriage at the beginning of October, to give her mother time to plan the wedding. Louise estimated that there would be eight hundred guests at the reception. They would hold it at home, but tent their large garden to accommodate the number of guests. Their garden filled most of the square at the top of Nob Hill.
In March, Louise told Eleanor that they would be going to Paris in April to order her wedding dress. She hadn’t decided which designer they would choose this time, and she was studying fashion magazines while she thought about it. Eleanor was amazed at how quickly it was all happening. Three months before she had been looking forward to her debutante ball, and in seven months, she would be a married woman. The best part of it was she was going to be married to Alex. She could hardly wait. She didn’t even want to go to Paris this time, and leave him for a month. But he encouraged her to.
“You’ll have fun with your mother, and it will help pass the time.” In June, the Deveraux family would be moving to their estate at Lake Tahoe for the summer, and Charles assured Alex that he would be welcome to join them there as often as he liked, and to stay as long as he wanted. They would be there from June until September, and come back to town to attend to the final details before the wedding.
They stayed in Tahoe every summer, and had thousands of acres on the lake, which Charles’s grandfather had bought when it was worth nothing. They had a private train to take them there, and a beautiful property with a large main house, several guesthouses, and other buildings for the servants. They took a very large staff to the lake with them, to serve them while they were there, in addition to the staff who stayed on the property year-round, among them the boatmen who cared for the fleet of speedboats they kept at the lake. Charles was delighted at the prospect of having a son he could hunt and fish and enjoy masculine pursuits with.
The months ahead seemed extremely enticing to all of them, and Eleanor finally, reluctantly agreed to go to Paris with her mother to order her wedding dress, although she didn’t like leaving Alex for so long. She’d be away for at least six weeks, a week of travel each way by train and boat, and a month in Paris to select the design, and for fittings. Charles booked passage for them on the French Line’s SS Paris for the end of April. More than ever, Eleanor hated to leave Alex