“Some women are wooed by titles,” Edith said, holding a pair of Cornelia’s earrings up to her ears.
“You should wear those tonight,” Cornelia said. Then, back to the matter at hand, “I am not interested in any man’s second-rate title.”
“But finding true love?” Edith asked.
Cornelia laughed and said, sneakily, “That situation is of high interest.”
“Darling, you must keep an open mind,” Edith said. “I would never force you into anything, but you simply cannot predict who you will fall in love with.”
You simply cannot predict who you will fall in love with played on repeat in Cornelia’s mind several hours later. The car had stopped by Bunchy’s house to pick her up and the two had gone together to the party, unaccompanied by a chaperone. My, how the world had changed in the past few years. Cornelia loved it.
Light danced in every window of the commissioner’s imposing brick home, which stood right around the corner from the vice president’s house. Tall luminaries lined the path, which was crowded with ladies and gentlemen dressed in their finest costumes, waiting to be received by the commissioner, his wife, and whatever other dignitaries they had deemed suitable for the receiving line.
Mrs. Rudolph, dressed as a charming Marie Antoinette, curtsied deeply to Cornelia and Bunchy, and they all giggled. How she managed to balance that enormous wig on her head, Cornelia would never know. “Thank you for inviting us into your lovely palace, Miss Antoinette,” Cornelia said.
“It’s my pleasure,” she said with a wink.
Excited chatter, punctuated by laughter, rose and fell with the beautiful music playing in the distance. The country’s nobility had been transformed for the evening into Elizabethan pages, corpulent kings, storybook characters, and daring knights.
As Cornelia and Bunchy entered the house and made their way into the ballroom, they stopped to look around. “This is positively glorious,” Bunchy whispered. Three massive crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling created a romantic atmosphere, and each of the dozen or so tables around the perimeter were bedecked with huge candelabras holding dripping wax candles and surrounded by flowers. A twelve-piece band entertained the very full dance floor.
Cornelia smiled as Bunchy took two champagne coupes from a tray and handed one to her friend. The bubbles tingled in her mouth as she took a sip, a precursor of the fun they were about to have. As she took her second swig, Cornelia caught the eye of a tall, handsome man from across the crowded room of costumed socialites. His gaze was locked on her, and when her eyes caught his, he smiled, and she swore she could see a mischievous glimmer in them. But maybe it was the candlelight. As he began walking toward her, she stood straighter.
“What is he wearing?” Bunchy asked in awe as the striking stranger strode toward them.
His golden armor and large helmet, which was bedecked with a massive plume of red feathers, couldn’t help but turn the heads of every person in the room.
Once he reached Cornelia, he smiled. “Why, there she is. The woman I’ve been waiting for.”
Cornelia generally felt very strong and very in control. But at the sight of this man, she reddened—and found herself quite out of words.
“The Cleopatra to my Mark Antony,” he clarified, which was when she noticed that his accent was decidedly British. She wanted to use it as a black mark against him—he was a foreigner, after all—but found that she could not. It was as if lightning had struck her. “John Cecil,” he said, taking her hand. “But my friends call me Jack.”
“Cornelia,” she replied breathlessly. Then she thought of her brief encounter with Ruth, the lucky coed in Chapel Hill, the one whose ranks she had never joined, and added, “Vanderbilt.”
She broke her trance long enough to glance at Bunchy, who was dressed as a garden nymph and wearing a bemused expression on her face. Cornelia knew that she was finding this all terribly funny, as Cornelia was not the type of woman to be befuddled. Not when teachers at Miss Madeira’s tried to stump her. And certainly not now by something as common as a man. She gathered herself enough to say, “So, are you telling me this so that I will call you Jack, or so that I won’t?”
He smiled. “Cornelia Vanderbilt, Cleopatra, you may call me anything you see fit. Anything at all.”
She held her glass up to him, and he clinked it with hers. “Are we beginning our own Society of Inimitable Livers?” she asked, referring to the name Antony and Cleopatra had given their club of drinking friends. Instead of responding, he asked, “Would you do me the very distinct honor of a dance?”
She felt a touch disappointed. He hadn’t gotten the joke. But a man couldn’t have everything, right?
Regaining her composure, she said, “Why, of course. For the good of Egypt, I mean.”
They both laughed. For a split second, she had a horrifying thought. It was her mother who had told her to dress up as Cleopatra. What if she had sent this British aristocrat dressed as Mark Antony to woo her? What if this was a trap?
But as Jack pulled her close and led her around the dance floor, that thought drifted away. If her mother had sent him, maybe it was because she knew something Cornelia didn’t. Perhaps it was because she knew this man was right for her. Or perhaps this was simply fate.
“So what’s it like?” he asked as the music played.
“What’s what like?”
“Being a Vanderbilt, of course.”
“What’s it like being a duke or a lord or whatever ridiculous thing I assume you are?” she asked snappily.
He laughed. “I am none of those things, unfortunately. I am nothing more than a grandson of a marquess.”
A marquess. In spite of herself, Cornelia was the slightest bit impressed. He was being honest with her. She was rarely honest with anyone. People seemed to have all sorts of preconceived notions about her. It was the price she paid for her family name. Bunchy, her mother, and Rose were the three people in her life she truly let see into her heart.
She looked up at Jack. Usually she changed the subject when people asked how it was to be a Vanderbilt. Or she extolled its glorious virtues, because who wanted to hear one of the richest women in America complain about her life? But there was something in his eyes, something that made her feel uncharacteristically unguarded.
“I don’t know what it’s like to be the grandson of a marquess, but being a Vanderbilt can be lonely,” Cornelia admitted.
“Lonely?” Jack questioned, meeting her eye. The music stopped and she went to pull away, but he held fast—much to her delight. “With all those servants around? All those friends to entertain?”
She shrugged. “I hate being in the spotlight, the papers talking about everything I’ve eaten that day and what I wore, who I sat with, what occasion I celebrated. And sometimes I’m afraid to bare my soul to anyone at all for fear that my innermost thoughts will end up on the AP wire the next day.”
“Hmmm.” He nodded knowingly. “I’m actually going to phone all this in momentarily.”
Before she could formulate a witty response, another man Cornelia didn’t recognize tapped Jack on the shoulder. “May I cut in?”