The Light of Paris Read Online Free PDF

exciting,” Grace said, and the sparkle in her eyes matched Margie’s, even though Grace was assured of marrying Theo Halloway—their families had arranged it long ago—and might not have bothered coming out at all if her mother hadn’t practically run Washington society. “I saw the ballroom on the way in, Margie. It’s simply gorgeous. And your gown is really stunning. You look lovely.”
    â€œThank you,” Margie said demurely, though inside she fluttered at the compliment.
    Her father had said, “You look pretty, kitten,” but that was his job, and her mother had said, “Your tiara’s on crooked,” and then, after she had fixed it, “Nellie didn’t do a horrible job with your hair,” which was the closest thing to praise Margie had ever gotten from her mother, atiny, precise woman who had never understood the starry-eyed, lead-footed daughter she had managed to produce.
    â€œYou look pretty too,” she said to Grace. Under normal circumstances that might have been an exaggeration—it was a good thing Grace was so kind and her parents were so wealthy, because Grace was so plain—but not that night. Grace was dark and the pale yellow of her gown glowed against her skin, and she looked happy, and Margie felt a little rush of sentimental nostalgia for the girls they had once been and the women they were becoming.
    â€œLadies.” Grace’s mother, Mrs. Scott, appeared at the doorway. The Southern girls quickly pitched their cigarette ends out the window and Margie saw the flask of not-lemonade disappear into one of their skirts. Mrs. Scott sniffed the air and looked at them disapprovingly. “We are ready to begin.”
    Margie’s last name, Pearce, put her solidly in the middle of the line, right behind Emily Harrison Palmer, but that night she wished it were Robertson, or better yet, Zeigler, so she could savor the anticipation, the shiver in her stomach, the heat in her face. At first all she could see was the hallway and the line of debutantes in front of her, but as Emily Harrison began her slow descent, Margie saw it all laid out before her: the chandelier brilliant above, the pale glow of the girls’ dresses, light sparking prisms off hundreds of diamonds, setting the hall aglow. Her breath caught hard in her chest and she didn’t breathe, didn’t move, holding the moment in her hand like crystal, like snow, terrified it might disappear, shatter and whirl away in the air.
    She promised herself she would remember it all, hold on to every moment. But as soon as she set one satin-slippered foot on the stairs, it became nothing more than a lovely blur. She stored away memories of everything she could—the plush carpet beneath her shoes, Robert’s hand under hers, the fall of her dress around her knees when she executed hercurtsy, graceful and slow as a dancer’s plié. The sparkle of champagne on her tongue, and Robert standing beside her, stiff and formal in his white tie, and the kiss her father dropped on her forehead as they waltzed, and the sight of all the debutantes with their escorts, swirling around the enormous dance floor like flowers, like snowdrops, like everything beautiful and bright and enchanted.
    When the night was coming to an end, when the tables had been cleared and most of the fathers had left to smoke in the billiard room and the mothers were fluttering around the ballroom, chatting or passing gossip, or sitting at the tables, listening to the orchestra and remembering their own debuts in a more elegant time, a time when there was not so much sadness, when so many young men had not been lost and so many young women were not so bold and strange and unsatisfied, Emily Harrison came to fetch Margie and Grace. They had been standing alone at the edge of the empty dance floor, sighing happily at the music. “Come upstairs,” Emily Harrison said. “There’s a