Splendor: A Luxe Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

HEAT WAS STIFLING, AND EVERY CONCEIVABLE inch of floor—from the shiny granite of the foyer, up the polished oak of the spiral staircase, to the herringbone parquet on the parlor level—was file://C:\Documents and Settings\nickunj\Desktop\book.html 10/28/2009

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    obscured by black dress shoes or sweeping skirts. Perfume and innuendo filled the air, although one could scarcely hear the voice of one’s neighbor, if that lady or gentleman were speaking at anything like an appropriate level. Music played, but only the best dancers kept going, for space was at a premium and everyone would have thought poorly of a less talented couple throwing their limbs about at a time like this. The throng pressed against the ivory-and-rose-flocked wallpaper of the first three stories, and although the windows had been left open, the air inside remained stagnant. Of course, no one dreamed of leaving. On that Friday evening, there was no place any of them would have rather been.
    Through the crush and up and down the stairs darted the hostess, Carolina Broad. She caused a little stir wherever she went, and not only because of the lavender silk dress that revealed her shoulders, hugged her hips, and trailed behind her like a bridal train. The beadwork on her bodice was so minute, it might have escaped the attention of her guests, had it not been for the incandescence those beads created in the chandelier light. There had been a time when she would have hidden her shoulders—they were big and bony, and in the summer they were darkened by freckles the same way her nose was—but she had learned not a few things since inheriting the mighty fortune of her late benefactor, Mr. Carey Lewis Longhorn, and among them was that a girl, if she is clever, owns what she already has. She had come from a Western family, a copper-smelting fortune, which was somewhat modest compared to her current holdings. That was the official story, at any rate, and her big, bare shoulders, their pale skin adorned with auburn flecks, the teeth that were slightly oversized for her mouth, confirmed it. Now, if she seemed a little large or coarse in places, it only enhanced her aura.
    The evening was a triumph, but she could not begin to enjoy it. The one person whose presence she cared about was somewhere out on the Atlantic.
    Perhaps to distract herself from disappointment, she moved hurriedly, setting off little currents and eddies among the guests who filled the halls and galleries of her new townhouse—No. 15, with a redbrick façade and tall, narrow layout. She had wanted one of those grandly squatting monoliths that they built on Fifth Avenue nowadays, but she had been very specific about wanting a home on this particular block, and number fifteen had been the only one available. To her surprise, this choice had proved advantageous to her. Everybody knew that she could afford someplace grander, but they applauded her in the press, and over decadently laid dinner tables, for choosing something elegant and appropriate to a young heiress without a family.
    These days, and especially tonight, everyone wanted to whisper in her ear. Carolina smiled and posed, and when her cheeks grew a little red from the warmth, that only served to make her green eyes look especially so in contrast. She exchanged coiffure compliments with Mrs. Reginald Newbold, née Adelaide Wetmore, who was stationed with her new husband under the life-size portrait of Carolina as a horsewoman that hung over the mantel in the third-floor library. It was the largest of the late Longhorn’s collection of portraits of society beauties, and his final commission. Halfway down the stairs she exchanged cordial hellos with Agnes Jones, who had at one time been a charity case of Carolina’s childhood friend Elizabeth Holland. Agnes was not in and of herself an interesting person, but she did—
    Carolina had recently discovered—feed bits of gossip to the New-York News of the World Gazette society