But she had turned the wrong way. So much for the grand exit. She looked around her. There were no real footmen to direct her, of course, only the mincing, masquerading kind.
Tess retraced her steps and swept past them all. When she reached the door, it was held open for her by someone in a goatee and wearing a gardener's outfit.
"Allow me," he said. He was graying and rather slightly built and looked vaguely Mediterranean. He had a hawkish nose and carefully absent look. In one hand he held a small hand-rake.
She turned on him, ready for battle. "I don't suppose for a moment that you're a real gardener," she snapped.
"I'm a complete fraud, my dear," he agreed, closing the door behind them.
They were standing under a starless sky, and for the first time it occurred to Tess that she was several unlit miles from a house she dared not return to. No moon, and her new shoes hurt. A wave of despair, as sickening as her recent fury had been exhilarating, rolled over her.
"God. What now?" she whispered.
"I can hardly wait to see," the gardener offered.
She looked at him with contempt: another idle hanger-on, like Edward Hillyard. Newport was crawling with them. "Go away."
"Oh, my."
Was that a drop of rain? Tess hugged herself close. Her cape had been left behind, her best cape.
Let it rot.
She stepped gingerly into the drive. If only it weren't so dark. Her father would have to take her in, but she couldn't stay; there was no room. Tomorrow she would look for a job, but not in Newport. No one would hire her now, anyway.
"You understand that you'll be soaked through and run into a ditch before you're halfway to town, I assume," said the helpful gardener.
Portsmouth. There were large estates in Portsmouth. But no. Too close still. Providence. But how to watch over Maggie? Another drop of rain; and another.
"You might allow me to drop you off wherever it is you think you're going. At least you'll avoid pneumonia."
She turned to him in a daze. "I don't have pneumonia. What are you talking about?"
He was strolling beside her comfortably. "I'm talking about your prospects, my dear, which at the moment seem rather cheerless."
"Thank you so much for the information. I'm sure it will come in handy." She strode out ahead of him. He quickened his pace.
"All right!" he said, and stopped suddenly. There was such bedrock authority in his voice that Tess automatically stopped too. "You've had your moment in the spotlight, Miss Moran, and you were magnificent. Now it's time to face reality. You have no place to go and no way to get there. Short of striking out boldly into the night, do you have a plan?"
"Don't condescend to me," she nearly shouted. "I won't stand for any more of it. It's absolutely none of your business but yes, I do have someplace to go. My family lives on the harborfront."
"I'll take you there."
"Oh dear! And leave the merriment behind? I wouldn't hear of it!"
"I've told you," he said quietly. "The time for grand gestures is past."
He put his fingers between his teeth and whistled, a night-splitting sound that startled Tess, used to more genteel behavior in Newport. She jumped. She heard the droll smile in his voice as he explained, "It's the only way to get a cab back in New York."
Somewhere out of the blackness behind them a brougham emerged: black, shiny, unadorned by the family crests so favored by Newport's fledgling dynasties. The coachman wore no livery. Tess, whose father so recently had been a groom, was quick to see the spit-and-polish elegance of the rig, almost English in its understatement.
She turned to the man in gardener's clothes. "Just who are you, anyway?"
"My name is Aaron Gould. Yes, I'm from New York and no, I don't have a little gilded cottage in Newport. I do enjoy the town, however, whenever I can. I'm an observer, and Newport is filled with spectacle. Where would you like to go?"
"I ... all right. Waite's Wharf."
He gave his coachman their destination and helped Tess into the brougham. Coach lanterns threw a golden glow over varnished cherrywood and polished leather. It was a beautifully cared for coach and reminded Tess of Wrexham, where she'd sometimes helped her father buff and shine Sir Meller's coach.
"This is very nice, Mr. Gould," Tess said pleasantly, and then she burst into tears. It was all over for the Moran family. Maggie would be dismissed for certain, and they would all end up in the almshouse. Keeping up a defiant, brave facade was not only pointless now; it was impossible.
"As bad as all that, is it?" Gould asked, not unkindly.
"It couldn't be worse," she cried between bitter tears. "It couldn't be worse."
"Do you want to tell me about any of it?" he asked, handing her a fine silk handkerchief.
So she did. Everything. From her mother's troubles in Wrexham to her brother's cruel mishap. It came out in bits and pieces, with long stretches of weeping as Tess reexamined each bitter blow in turn. Everyone in her family had looked to her; she was the strong one, the steady one, and now she had failed them all. The silk handkerchief had practically dissolved under her repeated nose-blowings; Tess stared at the stringy wet rag with a look of horror, and Aaron Gould laughed.
"I don't mean to seem callous," he said quickly. "It's just that the last time I saw a look like that was many years ago, when our young governess dropped our little daughter on her head. The child survived, and so, I expect, will the handkerchief. "
The hint of a self-conscious smile played over Tess's tear-stained, swollen face. She was not used to crying and had not learned to transform the act into an alluring appeal for help and sympathy. "I'm being so stupid," she murmured, realizing that she'd just poured out her soul to a stranger. "I don't even know you."
"It may require a certain leap of imagination," he said dryly, "but think of me as a surrogate priest. You needed to get something off your chest, and regular confession probably isn't until next Saturday. So? Feel better?"
She nodded and tried to smile, but new tears welled up, this time for no particular reason. The brougham rolled to a stop. Apparently they were at Waite's Wharf; she recognized nothing through her tears and in the drizzling dark. Sudden panic took over as she thought of facing her family with the news.
"What will I tell them?" she wailed. "I can't let them see me like this."
"Do you want more time?"
"Oh, please."
Gould thought for a moment, then leaned out the window and said, "To the launch." The brougham clip-clopped south along cobblestoned Thames Street.
"I need a plan," Tess said, almost fiercely. "I don't mind telling them about tonight, if only I can hold out some hope for them."
"Admirable psychology. What are your options?" He was leaning back in his seat now, facing her. The fingertips of his hands were pressed together in a considering gesture; the hazel eyes above them flickered with a let's-hear-your-offer interest. He might have been buying a piece of Manhattan.
"My options? I'm ... not sure. I have to find work. I'm very skilled with a needle, but a position as lady's maid is impossible now. Once I hoped to have my own shop, but I have no money. I could try to find work in the Fall River mills, but that's too far from home, and jobs are scarce now anyway. I could try finding work in New York—I have distant cousins there—but then I'd never see my family. And without a reference anyway—"
"What kind of shop had you hoped to set up?"
She looked away. "A milliner's shop. That was a silly dream; I never should have mentioned it, only—well, I've told you everything else, haven't I?"
"Everything? You've scarcely touched on Edward Hillyard," he said calmly.
Surprised into a blush, Tess answered, "What is there to tell? I allowed myself to become attracted to a man well above my station. I got no more than I deserved."
"You don't believe that."
She sighed. "No—no, I don't. It seems a very cruel trick."
"You think it was cruelty on Hillyard's part; it wasn't. He's idealistic but poor, which is an unhappy—and perhaps unavoidable—combination. It makes for an angry young man. He can be ill mannered but, I'm sure, not with you: no doubt there's a note of regret calling off the rendezvous in your room at Beau Rêve."
"Do you think so?" Her bottle-green eyes lit up with hope. If everything was only a misunderstanding ....
Gould's smile was sympathetic. "He's a homosexual, Tess. You knew that, of course."
She stared at him blankly. Was this a word she should know, like "matriarchal"?
"It's a barbarous word, I know: it means he might well prefer my company to yours, Tess, though only God knows why."
Still Tess stared. Snatches of conversation from the Servants' Ball shot meteorically into her consciousness, illuminating nothing. It's only women he has no use for.
"It wasn't because you're a maid that nothing came of it, Tess," he explained patiently. "It had nothing to do with you. Some men are simply like that."
Some men .... A long-forgotten memory from her childhood returned, of a man who stopped her on the streets of Cork to ask directions in heavy, broken English. "Vich vay?" he had asked. His accent was odd but he looked even odder, with his brightly rouged cheeks and scarlet cravat, and Tess had giggled and run away.
"But … Edward Hillyard?" She said the name so timidly that Gould gave her a sad and reassuring wink.
Her breath broke from her in a rush; she shook her head slowly, incredulously. And yet so many things made sense now: he had never kissed her, for one thing. And he despised the women in Newport. She felt as if she'd been pushed violently on a dark street by some stranger who wanted nothing from her and had no reason to harm her.
"Why?" she whispered to Gould.
He shrugged. "Put it out of your mind."
"How can I?" she cried. "I made a fool of myself, ruined myself and my family—but not for love? There was never any chance for love?"
"You are young; you believe in the power of love. And you are Catholic," he added with a smile. "You believe in miracles."
"Yes! Yes, I do!" Her breath was coming fast, and a slow, angry flush drove out the tear-stained paleness of her face. "I think you can do anything for love, all kinds of love—anything!" Edward Hillyard could have loved her; he should have loved her.
"Well, you may be right," Gould answered coolly. "I wouldn't know." Glancing out the window he added, "Here we are."
Tess had no idea how long the coach had been stopped, or why. "I'm sorry. I'm taking up your evening—" she began.
"I've told you, I'm an observer of human nature," he said, climbing out of the carriage ahead of her into the rain. "Do you think a drama half so interesting is unfolding at The Ledge tonight? In any case, the guests will be preparing their own meal, and I think we deserve better than sliced tomatoes and onions on toast, don't you? I have a business proposition for you, which I mean to discuss over decent food."
He turned to the coachman. "That will be all, Fagan. Good night."
The coachman touched his whip to his cap and murmured good night, and before Tess could cry out or further embarrass herself, the horses were pulling away, leaving Tess and Gould at the entrance to a small alleyway that led to a pier at the south end of Newport harbor.
Tess was not exactly afraid: Aaron Gould struck her as neither violent nor impulsive. She was less than a mile from her father's waterfront shack; she could bolt right now if she wanted to. But she didn't want to. In half an hour this man had learned more about Tess than any other man on earth, and he had a business plan to propose. She waited cautiously to hear what he had to say.
He took her arm. "What an odd couple we are—me in my gardening get-up, you in the dress of a lady's maid, both of us getting soaked in the rain. I hope my crew allows us aboard, or we'll both end up in the street and starving."
"Aboard—what?" she asked, her heart leaping. "A ship?"
He was hurrying her toward the water. "No, Tess, not a ship. A yacht. My yacht."
A dark form stepped quickly out of the shadows, and Tess let out a little scream.
"Ah—there you are, Peterson."
"Beggin' your pardon, sir, if you'll wait here I can fetch some spare oilskins. Be but a minute, sir."
He left and Tess and Gould took up his place under the overhang of a closed-up shed. The rain was falling much harder now. A steady stream of water cascading from a break in the roofline above them was the only sound as they waited in silence for the crewman to return.
A business proposition. That could mean anything. His wife could need a lady's maid or his yachting blazer a spot of mending. He seemed kind; perhaps he knew of someone who needed a servant. Whatever it was, she would be glad to hear it.
The crewman returned with a black oiled cape-coat which he laid like a lead blanket on Tess's shoulders, and yellow oiled slickers for Aaron Gould. The three made their way quickly through the wind and rain to the west end of the pier, where a steam launch was tied up.
"Damn! I forgot about the tide," Gould muttered. "Can you climb down to the launch, Tess?"
Tess peered over the side of the dock. Ten feet below them, a sleek dark vessel pitched into the southwest chop. A ladder nailed to a pylon led down alongside the violently moving target. Tess nodded confidently, although it seemed to her a broken leg was the very least she could expect. She watched Gould scamper down the ladder with the ease of one who spends most days in a treehouse.
In for a penny, in for a pound, she told herself, and swung her wet skirts around to the top rung. The patent leather needle-tipped toes of her shoes caught on each rung as she descended carefully. She held the rungs above her head in a death-grip, and when she lost her footing on the green slime on the bottom rung, it was the strength in her arms alone that kept her from falling between the launch and the pylons.
Gould's arms were around her instantly. "All right, girl?" he asked.
"Yes, yes—I can manage," she said impatiently, and he let her go to find her own way around the smokestack and boiler to the fantail seat. The leather cushions had been stowed out of the rain. Tess took up a place on the varnished seat next to Gould, bowing her head into the slashing wind.
"Peterson! What do we have in sou'westers?" called Gould to the crewman, who had scrambled aboard and was starting the engine.
"Under the seat, sir."
Gould pulled out two wide-brimmed, oiled hats and handed one to Tess as Peterson hauled in the dock lines, letting the wind blow them off the dock. He put the launch in gear, and Tess, steadying herself on a brass grabrail, peered out from under the brim of her hat at the white-capped harbor. The launch lifted and fell as Peterson expertly played the crests, easing the launch to windward. The small steam engine puffed along with a minimum of fuss, cutting through the turmoil.
"It's a stinking night, Tess," said Gould. "I'm sorry."
"The weather's not your fault, s—Mr. Gould," replied Tess. She backed away from the "sir." She hated the very word.
"You seem to be enjoying yourself, in fact."
"I am," she admitted. "It's exciting."
Far more exciting than washing linen or brushing shoes, she thought. It was such a struggle to get where they were going; she assumed the end would be worth it.
Peterson positioned the launch alongside the gangway of an elegant black-hulled steam yacht anchored in Brenton Cove in the lee of the howling southwest wind. Peterson yanked at the launch's steam whistle, and before they reached the top of the teak and brass companionway, a uniformed crew member was waiting for them with a large black umbrella.
"Never mind, Pratt," said Gould, "we're soaked through, anyway. Take these oilskins. We'll find our own way below. Ask Oberlin to see me straightaway, would you?"
He took Tess's arm and hurried her along a side deck and through a paneled and windowed mahogany door, alongside of which hung a white life-ring with the vessel's name leafed in gold: M/Y Enchanta. They were in the main salon, a large, beautifully paneled cabin marked by the unfussy elegance of a gentleman's study. Silver humidors on small rosewood tables and ashtrays in brass stands waited confidently next to overstuffed chairs, expecting to be needed. The walls were hung with old etchings and oil renderings of epic battles at sea. Brass oil lamps, set on brackets shaped into sea creatures, threw off a golden, flickering light. It was a man's refuge, devoid of a woman's touch, and Tess said so.
"As a matter of fact, before she died my wife had never been aboard. As all women do, she looked on boats as competition for her drawing room and her affections. She was right, of course." He was holding open a stateroom door for Tess. "You'll find dry clothes in there. When you've finished, join me in my cabin across the way. I'll have something hot brought in."
He excused himself and Tess was left standing on a silk Persian rug in her wet shoes. She unbuttoned them immediately and pulled them off, then tiptoed barefoot to the built-in armoire. Rather timidly, she slid open one of the paneled doors. Inside was a collection of exquisite dressing gowns in an array of flattering colors: creams, mauves, pale blues. They would not have belonged to Aaron Gould's wife, of that Tess was sure. They were too young, too utterly feminine, too intimate for a woman who apparently had preferred to spend her days presiding over high tea. Possibly they belonged to his daughter, who must be grown by now? Possibly.
She passed over the wraparound versions in favor of the only one with actual buttons, a heavy, creamy silk brocade. There was a selection of opera slippers in soft, luxuriant kid—in different sizes. Not the daughter's, then. Tess's heart turned upside-down in her chest for a moment, then righted itself and went on beating: he had given his word, a gentleman's word, that she was free to go ashore whenever she chose.
But in the meantime her own dress was sodden; she had no choice but to change. She stripped down to her drawers and corset, no further than that, and slipped the dressing gown over her head. In the full-length brass mirror she looked too ... fine.
Never in her life had she felt the luxury of brocade next to her skin. Panic set in: Off with the gown.
She was fumbling with the top buttons when a knock came on the door. It opened: Aaron Gould, in a wine-colored smoking jacket, said, "There are combs and brushes somewhere in that bureau. Is there anything else you need?"
She shook her head. He left, and Tess felt better. Aaron Gould was treating her with perfect courtesy. If the armoire was not stocked with muslin Mother Hubbard gowns and felt slippers, it was for the same reason that she was not standing on China straw matting just then: the wealthy did things differently.
She located the brushes, combed her hair as dry as she could and pulled it back with two tortoise-shell side-combs she chose from among a drawer filled with them. It seemed obvious to her that Aaron Gould had a lover, or a collection of them; but she pushed the thought away. She was not interested in his private life.
The door to his cabin was open. Tess stepped across the cabin sole and peeked in. Gould was staring out a brassbound porthole, absently scraping the bowl of a Meerschaum pipe with a pen-knife. Tess stepped boldly into the room.
He turned to face her. "Excellent. Almost nothing left of the poor drowned kitten." His look was coolly appreciative. He pulled a sturdily built mahogany chair away from a small linen-covered table, which glowed discreetly with candlelight and sterling.
"You look enthusiastic," he said with a smile. "Are you so very hungry?"
"Well—that too," she admitted, coloring. "But I was admiring your yacht. It's very pretty. Have you had it long?"
"Seven years. An intense love affair. I can't help thinking it contributed to my wife's death two years ago."
"You can't mean that!"
"I'm afraid it's true. We could never agree on the proper way to summer. I preferred knocking around in the Enchanta; she liked to install herself in or near a European court. Two summers ago I was here, she was there, and during a hunt she was thrown from her horse and killed. If I'd been there I should have tried to prevent her going out."
"You don't approve of women riding?"
"I don't approve of the hunt. Secretly I cheer whenever the critter gets away."
"All the same, it must have been horrible for you."
"Very sad—but not horrible. We hadn't lived as husband and wife for years. Will you have an aperitif?"
Since she'd never had one before, Tess didn't know. "That would be nice," she said vaguely. He poured the sherry and she sipped cautiously. "Does your daughter enjoy the yachting life?" she ventured.
"As a matter of fact, no. She prefers winter sports. I suppose that comes of attending a school in Switzerland."
"But it's not winter now," Tess pursued.
"No. It's not."
Tess felt the rebuff and it showed, because he added, "Vanessa stays with an aunt outside of Paris in the summer. We aren't that close—at least, geographically. But tell me about your family, with whom you obviously are close. Your mother died on board ship, you said? I truly am sorry to hear that."
"Well, it was all so sudden and most of the family was seasick. I think in an odd way that that eased the pain for us. We were all in steerage at the time." She felt obligated to spell out the difference between a first-class cabin and steerage: "In steerage the bunks are built of hard-edged wood along the inside of the ship; in our ship there was also a second row of bunks that ran parallel. In one of the very first storms my mother was thrown from her bunk into the corner of another one in the next row. She never got conscious after that."
Tess declined to say that her mother had been sleeping off the effects of a bottle when she was hurled out of her berth. That secret was stitched inside a canvas shroud, resting at the bottom of the Atlantic.
"I'm sorry. It must be painful for you still. Steerage can be a dangerous place in a storm. I once rode out some bad weather there myself, when I was a boy."
"You?"
"I emigrated from France with my father when I was twelve. My father had been an apprentice in one of Henri Rochefleur's banks. He came over here, eventually to oversee Monsieur Rochefleur's American interests. The Rothschilds had their August Belmont; Monsieur Rochefleur had my father. We arrived in plenty of time for the war, during which my father remained loyal to the Union and refrained from all but the most discreet profiteering, unlike many of his colleagues. A widower, he earned everyone's gratitude but no one's heart—it's never been easy being a Jew in Newport. He died wealthy but quite alone, and it became up to me, the junior Aaron Gould, to prove that it is possible to attain both love and money in one lifetime."
He gave Tess an ironic smile. "Unfortunately, I failed. Perhaps I was naive. It takes longer than one generation for new money to cool off. My well-born wife would never have accepted me if she hadn't been in dire straits financially. I have great hopes for Vanessa, however. She is beautiful, well-educated, fair-skinned, and nicely dowered. She also happens to be a very kind young woman." He poured himself more sherry. "Yes, about Vanessa I am quite sanguine."
The steward, wearing a silver-buttoned jacket, came in bearing a large silver salver. The repast he laid before them was simply prepared but substantial: galantine of veal, pigeon pie, boiled lobsters, fruits and cheeses, and a hot and spicy crab and spinach soup. Tess sat self-consciously still as the steward opened a bottle of champagne for them. When he left it was obvious that he was not expected to return, which bothered her.
Nonetheless, she breathed more easily after that, listening raptly to a lively but outrageous tale of how Aaron Gould saved his West Indian cook from the clutches of a holdout band of Carib warriors on the island of Dominique. That took them through the soup course.
An hour and a half later they were spreading creamy cheese on thin wafers, and Tess, filled with a sense of well-being, was complaining that her cheeks were tired from laughing so much. Aaron Gould was a raconteur of the first order, well-traveled, but not on beaten paths; well-spoken, but in a candid, self-deprecating way. She felt as though she'd known him for years. While the early part of the evening had seemed endless, now she did not wish it to end. She suspected she might be light-headed with exhaustion; or maybe it was the sherry. Tess had resolutely refused champagne, knowing of its potency secondhand. But it hardly mattered.
She sighed happily, allowing him to fill another of her glasses with a dark red liquid, and sipped. Fire! She put the snifter down too late; its magic heat was already racing through her veins. She smiled and tried to shake her head clear of its crystal cobwebs. "I must begin to think about tomorrow."
"But tonight brings good wine, good food, good company—is there more to life than that?"
"Yes, there is! Of course there is—but I can't seem to remember ... just what, somehow. Tomorrow …?" She sighed.
He hesitated, then said, "All right, then—tomorrow. Suppose we set your mind at ease about it, so that we can return to enjoying today." He dabbed at his lips, threw down his monogrammed napkin, and rose and went over to a built-in mahogany sideboard inlaid with intricate veneer. When he returned he was carrying an exquisite enameled box; he handed it to Tess.
"For you," he said, "with one silken thread attached."
More baffled than thrilled, Tess lifted the lid from the small rectangular box: it was filled with money. How much, she had no idea. She was seeing hundred dollar bills for the first time in her life.