“What are you doing here?” Pandora demanded. “Someone might have seen you come into my room.”
“You don’t care about that sort of thing,” Archie declared, settling on an armchair. “Or you wouldn’t have gone to the pavilion with Harley alone.”
Realization dawned on Pandora. She faced Archie angrily.
“You didn’t come to the pavilion for blankets, you were following us!”
“I had to; I couldn’t let you stay in the pavilion with Harley by yourself.”
“It was still daylight, and I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself,” Pandora snapped.
“I see that now.” Archie took off his straw hat. He pulled fretfully at the brim. “Since you’re the one who kissed Harley.”
“How did you see? You must have been spying on us!” Pandora had never been so furious. Her blood boiled, and rage surged through her chest.
“I didn’t mean to spy, and I wasn’t going to follow you,” Archie said, looking the slightest bit guilty. He recovered himself, and his own anger returned.
“When you and Harley took off across the field, I was going to ask if I could join you. Lucy was prattling on about visiting me at Princeton,” he explained. “I was worried about you. You went inside, and I had to see what was going on. As I walked through the door, you slipped from the closet shelf, and I saw you kiss Harley.”
Archie’s liquid eyes settled on Pandora, and she could see why he was successful with girls. His tender expression was impossible to resist.
“I’ll tell you what was going on.” She walked to the window and gazed out. “Harley was about to express his feelings for me, and you interrupted. Who knows if he’ll get another chance.”
Archie was silent for so long, Pandora wondered whether he’d left.
“You can’t marry him, Pandora. You hardly know each other.”
“Of course I can’t marry him.” She whirled around. “Because he hasn’t proposed.”
“You were hoping he would; that’s why you kissed him,” Archie responded.
“You like Harley.” Pandora frowned. “And he genuinely cares about me.”
“Harley isn’t self-centered like Owen, and he’s one of my best friends,” Archie conceded. “It’s something else. I can’t say exactly—it’s more a feeling. Trust me, it wouldn’t work out.”
Pandora searched Archie’s face for a clue to what he was talking about. His closed features reminded her of one time when they were children and Archie ate a pudding cake meant for a dinner party. Archie told Esther that his dog Speckles took the cake, but Speckles’s paws and nose were clean. Archie finally admitted it when he was doubled over in bed with a stomachache from eating the whole thing.
Suddenly she knew why Archie was discouraging her relationship with Harley.
“You don’t want me to marry well! You want me to stay poor Pandora, grateful for any attention you and Virginia give me. You’ll marry Lucy and have all this”—she waved out the window at the English-style gardens—“while I’m taking dictation from a middle-aged boss who expects me to work twelve-hour days and let him get under my skirts.
“You say you’d rather be a professor at Princeton, but you don’t have to choose. You can have that too. Some honorary position after you and Lucy donate a building. Even Virginia will end up marrying a Dinsmore or an Astor after she’s had her fun of playing benefactress to the arts. After she’s married, she’ll keep supporting a few poets and authors. It will give her the same thrill other society women get from having a lover.”
Pandora stopped, horrified at herself. Archie and Virginia had always treated her like a sister. Every birthday they carried out the same traditions they did for themselves: flapjacks for breakfast followed by opening presents and a game of Marco Polo in the swimming pool. And they supported her accomplishments. When she was in the finals in a school tennis tournament, Archie had come home from boarding school to watch her play.
No one could have been a better friend than Archie when they were children. She thought about the leaves they collected every fall. Whenever she felt dejected, she’d pull down the box from its hiding place in the nursery and read their wishes and hope they would come true.
And she knew what his parents wanted for him wasn’t what Archie wanted for himself. She felt terrible, as if she had been trying to hurt him.
But she had to stand up for herself. There wasn’t any reason for her not to marry Harley.
“You don’t mean that, you’re upset,” Archie said.
“If you think I don’t love Harley, you’re wrong,” Pandora said. “And I know he loves me too.”
Suddenly she had a rushing sensation, as if she were swimming in a cool, clear river. Today was the anniversary of his brother’s death, yet Harley was attending a house party because he didn’t want to miss seeing Pandora. He must have feelings for her.
Her mind went over all the times they spent together during the past month. Buying cherries from a fruit stand, picking flowers along the riverbank. Making a pie together in Blythdale’s kitchen and afterward sitting on the lawn with Adele, while Taffy, the Enrights’ cocker spaniel, ran circles around them. The plays at the Poughkeepsie playhouse and the ice cream sundaes at Finley’s drugstore in Hyde Park.
Being with Harley was so relaxed and easy it was almost like they were already married.
And he valued her opinion. Harley was the first person besides Virginia and Archie who was truly interested in what she said.
“You better go,” Pandora said to Archie. She walked purposefully to her closet and took out her gown. “I have to dress for dinner. Lucy wouldn’t approve if she walked in while you were here and found me in my slip.”
“Forget I said anything,” he huffed. His jaw clenched and he strode to the door. “Don’t worry, I won’t offer my advice again.”
Pandora decided then and there to forget about her disagreement with Archie and enjoy the night.
The evening felt torn from the pages of Edith Wharton’s novel The Age of Innocence. Dinner was served in the Vanderbilts’ dining room. The coffered ceiling came from an Italian palazzo and had a mural in its center. The Persian rug was one of the largest in existence and stretched twenty by forty feet. Each guest had their own server. Additional waiters formed a line like toy soldiers in The Nutcracker.
The women wore couture gowns bought in Paris and London, complemented by sapphire and ruby pendants. Pandora remarked to Virginia that it looked like there were more precious jewels in the room than at Tiffany’s. Virginia whispered back the Vanderbilts could buy Tiffany’s with the household money in their cookie jar.
Pandora’s own dress had a metallic lace bodice and gradually tiered skirt. She had found the fabric in a chest in the Van Luyens’ attic, and she’d accentuated it with hand-sewn beading and embroidery. The finished effect resembled an Asian lacquered screen that Coco Chanel kept in her workroom, which Pandora had seen in one of her fashion books.
Virginia had lent her a shimmery evening bag and long white gloves. Rhinestone clips held back Pandora’s hair, and she had dusted her cheeks with pale pink powder. When she descended the staircase, she felt as beautiful and confident as any woman in the room.