Chapter 7 Welcome to the Season
Welcome to the Season
The Patriarch’s Ball
Ames
Angle: Validation
“The hair . . . the hair still isn’t setting.” Pearl Ames paces behind her daughter, who remains statue-still before her dressing room’s cheval mirror while her lady’s
maid and three additional temporary hires for the evening flit about, attempting to forge Arabella’s determinedly straight
hair into piles of curls.
Her daughter bites the corner of her lip, her eyes starting to well.
“It keeps! Going! Limp!” Pearl squeaks, picking up a lank, uncurling lock. “And rouge, we need rouge. She looks more like a mouse than a future queen.”
They cannot turn up to the first great social event of 1884 looking chintzy.
There will be snickers no matter what they do—“Ah, that family has arrived. Can’t recall their name.
Is it the Parvenus?” “I can smell the steel factory on them from here!”—and Pearl knows there’s no culling those backhanded jibes entirely.
Not without something to wave in their smug, old-guard faces. Like a royal title.
“I think we’re getting a bit ahead of ourselves, Mama,” Arabella whispers in a tone that makes Pearl wonder whether her choice
of insult was a little rash, in the way of a self-fulfilling prophecy. The girl’s always been self-conscious about her diminutive
height, her round ears, and timidity only renders her more mouselike. “We’ve only exchanged a few letters.”
Arabella’s gaze darts to her bedroom door, toward the little desk where she keeps the letters she receives from Prince Wilhelm
of Württemberg—in which he recounts his love for his country, his courage in the face of oppression, his grief over his late
wife and longing for new companionship, and his gratitude for these warm correspondences with his new American friend. Pearl
knows all this because she’s read every letter. What responsible parent wouldn’t? And how else would Arabella have known to
enclose just the right sketch of herself to send along with her last reply?
“Arabella, keep your head still.” Pearl huffs a breath, attempting to collect herself. Too much emotion, fretting, and she’s
going to begin to sweat and ruin the three coats of powder she applied earlier. She nods to the servants. “Twirl and pin a
few pieces like so, I suppose, and then we must just accept failure here and move on, or risk missing the event entirely.”
Pearl will not be compensating the extra help for this “acceptable failure,” but that can be addressed by her housekeeper after they’ve
left for the ball.
“The duchess will be there tonight, won’t she?” Arabella adds. “I must admit, I get a bit nervous in her presence.”
“As well you should, child. Your entire future rests on her opinion of you,” Pearl says. “If all goes according to plan, she
will become your sister-in-law—oh, and that reminds me. You must immediately take her young cousin under your wing. We wouldn’t
want the duchess to consider you entirely self-interested.”
“I’m not self-interested,” Arabella weakly protests. “I can’t think of a single thing I want for myself.”
“Well, that’s not exactly a useful attitude either, is it?” Pearl huffs a breath, praying for patience. “Listen closely, Arabella,
since you are new to all of this and I am not. Tonight is the Patriarch’s Ball. You, along with every other debutante in attendance,
have been invited for a reason, and that reason is to be presented to a bevy of bachelors, all proven eminently suitable by
the fact that they were invited in the first place. But they are mere distractions, as our sights are set far beyond ‘suitable.’ Across the Atlantic, mind you. International royalty. Do you understand?”
At that, Arabella seems to brighten a little, her eyes drifting away from her own reflection in thought.
“The cousin will make ripples, no doubt,” Pearl muses. “Even if she’s ugly. We must create the illusion of having been introduced
to her previously, so that all of society sees our place in the affections of the Württemberg royal family. And above all,
we must reassure the duchess that we are her greatest friends on these shores.”
Pearl’s heart begins to hammer against her corset’s boning.
She has successfully cornered the market on the duchess’s affections, has she not?
Though it has struck her that the duchess has only accepted her invitations for tea, never dinner.
Does that mean something? It’s only a matter of time before other families begin angling for her attention, as well as that of the eligible heiress in her charge.
And through them, a connection to the prince for their own unmarried daughters.
Real competition for his affections could start as early as tonight.
Pearl must move their relationship forward in some manner, immediately. Perhaps a shared personal detail, told in confidence,
in order to knit them together as bosom friends . . .
She realizes Arabella is staring at her.
“Mamma, have you thought about which bachelors might be in attendance tonight? Other friends and acquaintances with whom we might be afforded a reunion?”
“Are you sleepwalking, child? I just said they do not matter!” Pearl scoffs. “Except to introduce the cousin to, I suppose.”
Arabella steals a breath. “I did hear a rumor that Harry Peyton would be invited.”
Pearl startles at the name but waves to the maids. “This will do, thank you, time’s up. Now, the headpiece.”
After the maids secure two matching diamond wings into Arabella’s hair, they gather their things and go.
As soon as they are alone, Arabella continues, “I haven’t seen him in years.
Do you remember how close we once were? During those days of the railroad merger, when Father and Mr. Peyton were working together?
It’s been ever so long, and I know the Peytons do rather keep to themselves these days, but I had wondered whether Harry might step out tonight, given that he’s only a bit older than me and hasn’t gone off to university or anything like that, if the rumors are to be believed.
Which surprises me, as he always was so intellectually inclined during our lessons and in his letters . . .”
Through this insipid speech, Pearl steals a centering breath. Why her otherwise malleable child decides to be obstinate only
at wholly inconvenient times, she’ll never know.
Truth be told, Pearl does now remember how well Arabella and Harry got on when they were small. They shared the same governess,
ever together chasing butterflies in Central Park or making up games in the parlor as their fathers conducted business in
the library, and their mothers . . . Well, Harry didn’t have a mother. Dead in childbirth. As for Pearl, she was busy. Securing
her daughter’s future through society connections.
That was all before the Manifest and Midwest mess, obviously. Before the unpleasantness. Before Harold Senior collected his
substantial winnings and disappeared into retirement, eventually walling himself and that son of his in that Upper East Side
palace like Fortunato and Montresor.
She forces a dismissive laugh, severing Arabella’s monologue like a snip. “Why on earth are you thinking about little Harry
Peyton when the latest letter from the Grand Prince of Württemberg is sitting on your bedside table? Unopened!”
Arabella blushes. “I’ll admit there’s something in me that’s afraid to see what he’s written. To respond to it, to feel anything
at all—”
“Yes, yes, yes. Well, all of this is just to say, best not to concern yourself with the likes of Harold Peyton Jr. For goodness’
sake!”
In a rare display of affection, Pearl pinches Arabella’s cheek. Her daughter flinches.
Robert pauses mid-stroll down the hall, examining his pocket watch. Even in his beautifully fitted tuxedo, the wallpaper seems to absorb him entirely, as if his body is disappearing as quickly as his thinning hair.
“Doesn’t she look lovely, darling?” Pearl calls out to her husband.
He looks up, utterly incurious, and continues away without a word. Absolutely typical.
“We have far grander aspirations tonight than the son of a railroad man,” Pearl whispers peevishly to her daughter. “Come now. It’s twenty minutes to ten. We don’t want to be late!”