1. Long Island, January 1912
The fishing villages still showed signs of life. Gas lamps held out against the heavy grip of damp, frigid nights. A trickle of travelers shuffled forth from the Montauk Line, huddled in wool and flannel. The lanes were shoveled of snow, and the backyards and beaches boasted footprints, sled tracks and snowmen.
But beyond the villages, the summer homes of the wealthy stood dark and stony like massive mausoleums. No one came or left; the owners were tucked safe in their Manhattan townhomes, and even the groundskeepers didn't venture up at this time of year. The winding private lanes, summer homes to Oldsmobiles and Renaults, now hosted only snow and ice. The expansive lawns were as smooth and white as marble.
Only the Bowers mansion had electric lights in its windows and cars in its cleared drive. A modest crowd of New York's elite had come and gone one day, quiet and dressed in black. Patriarch Robert Bowers and his grown sons had been spotted riding into the city for business, their valet scanning the passing countryside for desperate tabloid writers. Otherwise the Bowers estate was a world unto itself, growing tenser and smaller by the day.
Robert Bowers was approaching sixty and still a strapping man, tall and broad-shouldered. And yet he looked small, sitting slouched in one of the floor-to-ceiling windows in the drawing room, staring out into the sleeting night.
His wife Sophie came and plucked a forgotten whiskey glass from his hand. Her straight blonde hair, just beginning to pale with age, was immaculately piled above a pearl-studded headdress. She wore a string of pearls, and a black velvet dress that strangely toed the line between mourning and seduction. One would think she had places to go tonight. She wished she did.
"Darling, what's wrong?" she cooed. Her voice was deep and silky, her accent over-refined.
"Nothing," he replied. "It's been decided. Julian's wedding is postponed."
"What?"
Sophie straightened, her ring-bedecked fingers tightening around the whiskey glass. Postponed? After all she had done? She had stepped in on behalf of the bride's ailing mother, planning the wedding of a stepson she disliked and a girl she barely knew. She had to send misspelled invitations back to that incompetent printing shop twice, and now that they'd finally been sent out, it turns out they announced the wrong date?
"When?" she asked.
"This summer. June, perhaps."
They were supposed to be married next month! Sophie bit back her anger and took a swig of the whiskey. "For heaven's sake, Robert, I've already sent out the invitations, and the catering order. Hasn't she already disrupted our lives enough?"
"Rose is a sweet girl."
"You know that's not who I meant."
"Darling, please. It isn't just… Vivian's passing."
Sophie paused. She wasn't accustomed to Robert looking up at her. From this angle, his cunning brown eyes looked lost and exhausted. For eighteen years now the rumor mills had dubbed him a 'dirty old man.' She didn't let the 'dirty' bother her. But was he finally getting old?
"It's these awful lies the press is spreading," he said. "It may take some time before we can show our faces in town. Rose has agreed to it; in fact she likes the idea of a smaller affair, here on the grounds."
"Good," Sophie retorted. She knocked back her drink. "Then they can marry out on the lawn next month. How poignant, to have her promise 'for richer or poorer' while shivering.'"
"Sophie!"
"Life in our family requires sacrifice. The sooner this girl learns that, the better. Rayburn!" She called for Robert's valet. "Another whiskey!"
Robert rose from the windowsill, cast off his untied four-in-hand and stared Sophie down. Now this was the Robert Bowers to whom she was accustomed. She shuddered and held up her chin. The valet appeared with a tray of drinks. Robert dismissed him with a wave before Sophie could take a new glass. All the while the couple never broke eye contact.
"Why are you so upset by a girl from tattered 'old money' marrying into this family?"
"And why are you so eager to show kindness to another young woman?"
"Enough," he snapped. "It has been decided."
(scene)
There wasn't much for Rose to do in Long Island. Mother often needed to rest in her guest room with the curtains drawn, and the Bowers' staff insisted on tending to her in Rose's place. Julian went into the city for work in the mornings and came home late and drunk- if he came home at all. Julian's brother Edward had barely spoken to anyone since his wife and daughters left after Vivian's funeral. Sophie gave Rose a subtle yet distinct impression of unwelcome, and for Rose to socialize with Robert anywhere beyond the dining room table would be highly improper.
The default assumption seemed to be that Rose would socialize with Amelia Bowers, the only child of Robert's second and current marriage. The servants had placed Rose in the guest room nearest Amelia's suite. Sophie, in a rare moment of near warmth, invited Rose to browse "Amelia's library," a pair of built-in bookshelves surrounding a sunny window seat on the third floor. (It turned out to be an eclectic mix of political theory and pulp fiction.) When Rose's thin old sketchbook ran out, Amelia was quick to lend her a hardback book of high-end pastel paper, weighty as cardstock and smooth as silk.
"Don't mention it, Fiancée," she said.
Amelia had started off calling Rose "Julian's fiancée," then just "Fiancée" for short. She never called her Rose. The rest of the Bowers seemed to expect Rose's shock at their lifestyle excesses; Amelia was the only one to call her out for looking perturbed:
"Is there anything I can help you with, Fiancée?"
"Relax, Fiancée, the noise outside is just Edward shooting things."
"My maid and I were having an argument, Fiancée, is that alright with you?"
Amelia's attentions weren't always friendly, but at least someone was paying attention to Rose at all.
Amelia was to leave New York a week after Vivian's funeral and return to boarding school in England. She refused to let her mother help her pack, so Rose stepped in. Mostly, she watched as Amelia scoured all three of her suite's armoires for any black clothing.
"I'm not speaking to my mother," Amelia explained. "She's planning to auction off Vivian's things for charity. She's glad Vivian's dead." She shook her head. "Vivian always said my mother was awful. Perhaps she was right. She was getting better, you know. She hadn't taken Heroin in months. …That wasn't easy for her."
Rose had read anecdotes of Bayer Heroin addiction in the papers. Julian insisted the drug was not addictive, and was safe except in cases of significant overdose (like the one that killed Vivian.) But Rose still wasn't sure.
"Was she addicted?" she asked, hushed.
"No. She just had a bad cough for twelve years."
Amelia dropped a stack of black skirts unceremoniously into her foot locker and stared Rose down. Such wide, deep eyes for such a small young face. Rose felt compelled to embrace her. Then she thought of the times she had been driven to dark humor, and what she would have wanted in a friend then.
She let herself laugh. Amelia smiled back. And just like that, she was transformed back into youth.
"Help me pack the underthings." Amelia turned and opened a trundle in one of her mahogany armoires. The room was perfumed by a lavender satchel- Rose's favorite. "Go on! Oh but only the white ones- the other ones look ostentatious at boarding school."
"I'll say!" Rose marveled at Amelia's chemises. They were cotton of course, but almost silky to the touch; the thread count must have been ludicrous! They came not only in white but in robin's egg, mint, tangerine, coral. Amelia had an eye for delightful colors. And clearly, neither cost nor ease of laundering was a concern for the Bowers!
Amelia balled up a pair of plain white drawers and hurled it at her foot locker like a Yankees pitcher. She nodded for Rose to do the same with the white chemises. They giggled as they worked, moving on to stockings, corset covers and brassieres.
At first Rose was a tad self-conscious. Amelia's clothes were all smaller than hers. Rose was by no means overweight, but she hadn't been as slender as Amelia since she was a mere child. Rose had noticed the younger woman's easy grace, her unconscious projection of lightness even in this season of dark grief. She wondered if she was jealous. But then Amelia caught Rose glimpsing one of her bust ruffles and held it up against her smallish chest, grinning impishly. Rose remembered that her own figure came with its advantages, too.
The foot locker was soon bursting with silk and lace, cotton and linen, caught in a reckless tangle that had no logical purpose and yet seemed to make sense. The young women had to sit on the lid to get the clasps in place. They stayed there, only a hand's width between them. Amelia leaned one hand between them. Rose kept both of hers in her lap.
"Did you go to boarding school, Fiancée?"
"Only a girls' secondary day school, I'm afraid." Rose sighed overdramatically. "Tell me, what did I miss?"
"Oh, it's mahvelous, dahling. We have steak for dinner every night and never a boring lecture, I can tell you. And of course, the north of England, the weather is just lovely this time of year."
"Of course. Very conducive to art courses- I'm sure you have your easels out of doors most days."
"Will you write me while I'm there?" Amelia grew solemn again. "I can't talk about Vivian with anyone at school. And I know my family will ignore any mention of her in my letters."
Rose considered this. She still missed her father, for all his faults. She wished Mother was well enough for them to reminisce about him frankly. Leaving art school and getting engaged had caused Rose's old friends to drift. Amelia was intelligent, funny, and shared Rose's interest in art; she might make a very adequate replacement. She did keep Rose on her toes more than her old friends. But perhaps Rose didn't mind that.
"I will," she promised.
They embraced. Amelia was blushing when they pulled back. "I hope you can tolerate my rambling," she said. "Vivian and I had such adventures. I'd rather write novels about them than socialize with most of the girls at school."
"You must miss her terribly."
"You must be clairvoyant," Amelia teased. But it was gentler than before.
"I mean, I know the shock of it. My father's death was a sudden accident, too."
"Vivian didn't have an accident."
Amelia leaned in close. Now Rose could smell her perfume. It wasn't lavender like the clothes satchel- it was rose.
"She was murdered," she whispered.
Rose wondered if she had agreed to more than she'd bargained for.
A/N: I altered Sofia and Mia Bowers' names to better fit the time period. Also, what on earth is going on with Fanfic refusing to let me put asterisks or other common page-breakers between scenes? I've had to just write "(scene)" instead. Sorry.