Read Splendor: A Luxe Novel for Free Online

though all of her were some fragrant and enticing bouquet. She blinked and took in his height; his light brown hair, which was overgrown and tucked behind his ears; the pale, plainspoken blue of his eyes; the gorgeous width of his shoulders. All of these qualities contributed to the sense that her cool exterior was about to crack again.
    Men in black jackets and women in sweet silks were still all around, but they no longer mattered.
    Carolina’s smile overtook her face before she could help it, and then Leland smiled back in a way that caused her chest to swell pleasurably with air. She took the final step down and joined him on the shiny granite. In her fantasies of their reunion, she began by offering him a tour of the house or a glass of Scotch, but neither of these seemed worthy of the moment. She was now close enough to grip his upper arm in welcome. What she most wanted to do was not very ladylike at all—but then, she was from a western state, and maybe he would assume that what was appropriate for girls was different out there.
    When she next spoke, her voice had fallen to a near mumble: “How did Paris suit you?”
    “Oh…wonderfully. I saw all variety of new automobiles and traveled a great deal. I…” He paused and shook his head, as though his travels had lost all importance. “I thought of you so frequently—it quite surprised me.”
    For a moment the elegant Manhattanites leaning against the second-story railing, or pressed up against the cloakroom, or smoking on the landing, ceased to exist. It was late, anyway, and quite a few cases of champagne had been drunk already. She turned her face up toward Leland invitingly, and found that he scarcely hesitated before putting his lips discreetly against hers. When he pulled away, his eyes shimmered with silver and his voice had deepened.
    “Carolina—you aren’t like the rest of them.”
    Everyone on the second and third floors had concluded, several hours ago, that the hostess was a success.
    But now she saw that, for entirely different reasons, she was a success in the foyer, in a private scene that could not have been more perfect if she had scripted it herself in advance. Every inch of her skin radiated with the pleasure of Leland’s words. A confes sion played, briefly, on her tongue, and she considered telling her handsome neighbor exactly why she wasn’t like the rest of them. But then she didn’t want to ruin anything, and so went on beaming at him as the night lengthened and the party went on upstairs without them.

    file://C:\Documents and Settings\nickunj\Desktop\book.html 10/28/2009

    Page 17 of 128
    Five

    When a lady takes a less established girl under her wing, she always runs the risk that she will someday be outshone, which is why she must do so only sparingly and with the greatest care.

    ——MAEVE DE JONG, LOVE AND OTHER FOLLIES OF
    THE GREAT FAMILIES OF OLD NEW YORK

    “THEY’VE ALL GROWN SO SMALL,” PENELOPE SCHOONMAKER announced, several hours after arriving at the party, but when no one had yet asked her to dance. She had always been said to have dramatic features, but her eyes were especially wide now, in disbelief. The feel of the flocked wallpaper at Miss Broad’s had become hatefully familiar to her; she had never been the kind of girl content to go unnoticed. Three months of convalescing were behind her and she was dying for a little fun, but she was finding that not so easy to come by as before. “Buck, don’t they look small?” she repeated insistently
    “Not me,” replied her friend Isaac Phillips Buck with a little self-effacing laugh. His tone indicated he was joking, but what he had said was perfectly true, for Buck stood a full head taller than Penelope, and was several times her girth. Buck liked to give the impression of being from the august Buck clan, but this lineage was dubious at best, and his prestige was almost entirely based on his reputation for being indispens able when one was throwing a party.