The Age of Desire Read Online Free PDF Page A

envelope: “I wish you all the best, my dearest dear. Teddy is a fine fellow, and I know he will treat you handsomely. Yrs. W.” The letter made Edith furious, somehow. Even in his magnanimous note, he was attempting to get the upper hand. Calling her his dearest dear! The nerve. She would never win when it came to Walter Berry!

    And then there was the business of being married. Her mother felt it was her duty—no, her
right
—to choose where and when the wedding would take place, what the guests were to eat, and how Edith herself should dress. Edith let her. There was no winning over Lucretia. She was even more formidable than Walter Berry!
    Three days before the wedding, as the dressmaker placed the finishing touches on a high-collared elaborately pleated gown, as the cooks gathered provisions for Lobster Newburg and Cherries Jubilee, as the diamond tiara that Lucretia had worn for her own wedding already sat aglint on Edith’s dressing table, Edith simply needed to speak to her mother.
    “I wouldn’t go in there right now,” Anna Bahlmann said, standing by the door of Lucretia’s boudoir. “I believe she would not be good company.”
    “But I
have
to see her, Tonni.”
    “You know as well as I do, Edith, that one must pick one’s times with your mother.”
    Anna often gave sage advice when it came to Lucretia’s unpredictability. But Edith couldn’t heed her today. She was about to vow to love, honor and obey Teddy Wharton and she had no idea what that meant. She knew
something
would take place in the marriage bed, but what? She had asked her mother vaguely in the past and had been told it was unseemly to bring up the topic. Now it was imperative.
    Edith stepped quietly past Anna and knocked on the mahogany door.
    “Come in if you must,” Lucretia said. She was sitting ruler-straight at her silk-skirted dressing table, pinning up her graying hair. Lucretia had a maid, but she always took her hair down as soon as the maid left the room and redid it.
    “Mama. Do you have a moment to speak with me?” The pounding of Edith’s own heart deafened her.
    Lucretia spun around and her slate eyes flashed with annoyance. “You can see I’m dressing to go out.”
    “It’s important.”
    “And what’s your idea of important?” Lucretia asked. Her voice sounded to Edith like the snap of dried twigs in a frosty forest.
    “The wedding. I need to know . . . what’s expected of me. . . .”
    “What’s expected of you?”
    “I need to know . . .”
    “You’re expected to keep your head high and say as little as possible. Your role as bride will say enough. Chatty brides are intolerable.”
    “I mean after the wedding. I mean . . . on my wedding night. I need to know . . . what will . . . happen to me!”
    “I never heard such a ridiculous question!” The icy shatter of her words fell as she turned her back on her daughter and continued stuffing pins into her silver hair.
    “But I don’t know what will happen, Mama. I’m afraid!”
    Her mother made a noise that could have been a sigh, except it came from the vicinity of her nose and sounded irritated and damning. She did not speak for a long while, and Edith had to stand and listen to the pump of blood in her ears. “You’ve seen enough pictures and statues in your life, Puss. Haven’t you noticed that men are—made differently from women?”
    “Yes.” Of course she’d noticed. She’d stared at Michelangelo’s
David
when she was twelve. She’d seen paintings of naked men. And she had brothers who didn’t always lock the bathroom door, much to her mortification and their amusement. But what did it mean? So what if they were made differently?
    “Well, then,” Lucretia said, as though that settled everything.
    Edith was speechless. She fished hard for a question that would not make her a fool. “But . . .”
    “For heaven’s sake, don’t ask me any more silly questions, Edith. You can’t possibly be as stupid as you