Free Splendor: A Luxe Novel by Anna Godbersen Page A

and now that he is gone I really am an orphan, and all alone in the world….”
    “My poor Miss Broad!” he exclaimed as he reached out for her. “But you see you have two strong arms around you now, and you must not feel alone!”
    As the carriage rattled and shook in the direction of home, as she rested her head against Leland’s file://C:\Documents and Settings\nickunj\Desktop\book.html 10/28/2009

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    shoulder, she felt something wonderfully opposite of loneliness. It had occurred to her that Tristan’s interference had perhaps been fortuitous after all, for whatever little stories she had had to tell to make him go away had inspired Leland to draw her, protectively, possessively, closer to him. For the great majority of Carolina’s life, she had felt a constant mute frustration that events would never go her way, but then, all of a sudden, her luck had changed, and now it seemed every charmed second was sure to unfold in her favor.

    Nine

    Meanwhile, I have begun to wonder whether Diana Holland is ever coming back from Paris to begin the craze amongst New York’s well-dressed ladies for hair worn short.

    ——FROM THE “GAMESOME GALLANT” COLUMN IN THE
    NEW YORK IMPERIAL, SUNDAY, JULY 8, 1900

    “HOW LUCKY I FOUND YOU JUST WHEN I DID, because I’ve been looking forward to seeing the poet’s house, but I did not, in truth, want to go alone!” Diana Holland ceased her stubborn, boyish little march and turned to face Henry, wearing an expression of happy embarrassment for having babbled so long. He’d watched from behind as she walked away from him before, in anger, at times, or in sadness, but never had she moved the way the other girls of her set did, like Penelope or her sister—practiced, proud, as though their skeletons were made of platinum, and as though their heels never quite met the ground. Of course, at this particular moment, the place they were searching for was miles from rooms that demanded to be entered in such a formal manner. The scene was devoid of elaborate drapery, or dainty statues, or the kind of people who considered a lady’s gait a worthy topic of conversation. Beyond Diana’s figure, about which floated a dress of undyed fabric, there was only dense verdure and a steel-colored heavens. “I mean,” she amended in a softer voice as she gripped the broad straw hat that covered her absent curls, “I am so glad I get to go with you particularly.” The poet was some old Spaniard, long fled or long dead. Henry couldn’t quite grasp the name—it had a minimum of eight syllables, and in Di’s fluid pronunciation it sounded like nothing more than lovely nonsense. Who the poet was did not matter to him particularly (Henry owned many books, but few with cut pages), for it was Diana’s vitality he was pursuing, up the hill and away from the city; the literary shrine was, for him, incidental.
    “I am glad, too,” he replied simply. Then she took several steps back in his direction, gazed up at him with a face relaxed and glowing, and kissed him for perhaps the twentieth time that day. These were not the kisses of lawn parties, earned after hours of persuasion and the slow erosion of a debutante’s sense of file://C:\Documents and Settings\nickunj\Desktop\book.html 10/28/2009

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    propriety. They were not stolen or hidden—they were easy, and full of joy. Diana had always possessed a kind of gorgeous, reckless innocence, which he would have liked to drink in; she was even more courageous to him now that he knew she’d traveled so far, and by herself. Earlier he had made an observation along these lines, and she’d gleefully responded: “I am seventeen now!” with such touching irreverence he could only laugh. It was as though his life had begun again late Friday evening, and every hour since then had been as wondrous and full as a day in the book of Genesis.
    “There, I think I see it!” Diana withdrew her lips from his and pointed—pausing a kiss