Read Suzanne Robinson for Free Online Page B

Pokey Depew back in New York?”
    “That was a long time ago,” Mattie said. “We were girls.”
    She stopped as she remembered how Allington had humiliated her. Yet there seemed to be no way of retaliating without appearing either spiteful or wounded. She was supposed to be above spite, and she had no intention of revealing her distress. Besides, maybe a child’s prank was just the thing to assuage her and teach Allington proper conduct. Slowly Mattie began to smile. It was a smile at home under rocks in the desert, that basked in the sun and waited for small rodents to pass by.
    “I’ll need the fixin’s.”
    “Leave that to me,” Narcissa said. “It’s almost time, so you go look at the place cards while I slip down the back stairs. I’ll meet you in the dining room.”
    Her spirits restored, Mattie gave her friend a peck on the cheek and hurried downstairs. Dinner was to be held in the saloon, the oldest room in the ducal mansion. Mattie had learned from a book on great houses Mama had made her read that it was one of the finest remaining examples of a great chamber.The old medieval solar had become, in Elizabethan times, the great chamber, the room in which lords entertained. In the Baroque and Palladian periods this became the saloon, and finally most of these enormous rooms ended up as picture galleries. Of high architectural style, the great chamber was still a nobleman’s setting for great gatherings. The Duke of Bracewell’s saloon was indeed a chamber fit for any such occasion. Its ceiling rose over thirty feet high, and no fireplace broke its symmetry. The doors were set in alcoves surrounded by marble arches, topped by carved shells that reached fifteen feet above Mattie’s head.
    Mattie avoided the gallery, walked across a drawing room and opened one of the saloon doors. They were so heavy she had to use both hands and lean against them. Life-size murals of spectators leaning on balconies decorated the walls, making Mattie feel as if a crowd of seventeenth century dandies and ladies were spying on her. She hid in the alcove while two servants brought in covered dishes and left. Then she raced to the dining table set for thirty and found Allington’s name near the middle, all the while whispering imprecations against titled Englishmen. Not that American men were much better. After five years she still cringed at the memory of Samuel Pinchot.
    She’d been eighteen, fresh from a ladies’ finishing school in New York, the pride of Marcus and Elsa Jane Bright. Mama and Papa had organized an enormous coming-out party for her. Oblivious to socialprotocol, they invited every last one of the four hundred, plus as many other notables as they could squeeze into their new stone mansion on Fifth Avenue. Mattie got all dressed up in her gown by Paquin, but nobody came. No, that wasn’t true. None of the four hundred came because Mrs. Astor hadn’t called on Mrs. Bright. Since she hadn’t, the Brights weren’t known to the Astors in the social sense, and thus weren’t among those eligible to receive the honor of Mrs. Astor’s company. Labeled parvenu by this social demigoddess, the Bright family might as well have lived in a tugboat for all the recognition they got from the American aristocracy.
    So Mattie had stood in the middle of the marble-and-gold ballroom in her gem-studded gown with the extra-long train, waiting to receive people who never came. She’d shivered with humiliation while the dozen or so people who showed up talked loudly to one another in an attempt to make the cavernous room seem filled. Just when she thought she’d burst into tears and complete her disgrace, Samuel Pinchot, the son of one of the oldest Knickerbocker families of New York, was announced. To the Pinchots, the Astors and Vanderbilts were vulgar newcomers. Burly, bumptious, and shortsighted, Samuel bounced over to Mattie and rescued her from mortification.
    “My dear Miss Bright,” he chortled, grinning at her