Rumors: A Luxe Novel by Anna Godbersen

Author:Anna Godbersen [Godbersen, Anna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General, Juvenile Fiction, Historical, Social Issues, Adolescence, United States, Girls & Women
ISBN: 0061345717
Google: jM_ccDoyJC4C
Amazon: B0015DWILK
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2009-03-17T07:00:00+00:00

Twenty One

With our many modern conveyances, arrivals late at night and early in the morning are highly avoidable, as any polite house guest well knows. A hostess cannot always select her guests according to their manners, however, and should make herself presentable and gracious at whatever hour is required.

––VAN KAMP’S GUIDE TO HOUSEKEEPING FOR LADIES OF HIGH SOCIETY, 1899 EDITION

WHEN DIANA ENTERED HER FAMILY DRAWING ROOM late on a Tuesday evening it was with a composed appearance her older sister might have strived for. She wore a simple black dress that circled in to display her small waist but disguised her other physical gifts, and her hair was more neatly in its place than it had been all evening. She carried herself with quiet dignity across the carpet to the unlit fireplace where her aunt Edith was waiting as though engaged in some kind of performance, and indeed it seemed to Diana that several layers of artifice would be required to disguise the emotions she felt within. Henry loved her again; her whole body was beating with it.

“Mr. Cairns,” she said, extending her hand but letting go of his grip before he could kiss it. Snowden Cairns had been her father’s occasional business partner and sometime fellow adventurer. The poor man, she thought. He was looking at her so earnestly, and she knew that her skin was lit up like some Hudson River sunset and that her pupils were dark and wide. “It’s been so long.”

“It has, a fact I regret. I hope you received the letters of condolence that I sent after your father’s passing? And news of your sister’s untimely end has recently reached me. You must accept my deepest apologies for not being here for either funeral…. I have been traveling, and there are times when returning to the eastern seaboard is too complicated even on the gravest occasions.”

Diana gestured for him to sit, and she herself moved backward into the faded bergère chair beside the one in which her aunt sat. Snowden went on saying kind things about her family, but she was having difficulty following every word. It wasn’t that Snowden didn’t seem earnest and well meaning, and though she had always thought of him, when she thought of him at all, as a friend of her father’s, he did not look nearly old enough to play the part. His nose was short and blocklike and his eyes, which shifted from green to brown, were set far apart under straight, thick brows. His face was not unhandsome, despite its appearance of having weathered a great deal of time out of doors. He had thick, preternaturally blond hair that rose back from his forehead on either side of a middle part, and he made a nice presentation of himself. But he was not Henry. He was only the reason that she was not with Henry now.

She had been reliving the sensations of that unexpected kiss when she noticed that her visitor was still standing. “How is your mother?” he asked, his tone gentle and considerate.

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