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TO
    BUSINESS, REAL ESTATE, AND PERSONAL PROPERTY, TO _______________.
    H ENRY SCHOONMAKER PRETENDED TO STUDY THE piece of paper for another moment, and then he did what he always did when he found something too serious or too boring to bother trying to comprehend. He spread his long thin lips back from his perfectly white teeth and laughed.
    “Awful morbid, Dad,” he said. “We left a party for this?”
    His father stared back at him, large and unsmiling in his black suit and thick, dark muttonchops.
    William Schoonmaker had small eyes skilled in intimidation and dyed his hair an inky black out of vanity. Because of his frequent turns to rage, his skin was a patchy red, and his mustache curled down around his pink chin. But one could see, under all that, the fine, aristocratic features that he had bequeathed to his son.
    “ Everything is a party to you,” his father finally said in reply. Henry saw the father he knew best emerge now—the full, unpleasant personality Mr. Schoonmaker reserved for when he was in his own home or office. Henry had been raised by his governesses, and so his father had always seemed a distant and awesome figure, charging about the house while a fleet of underlings made awkward, obsequious gestures in the vain attempt to please him.
    Henry pushed the sheet of paper back across the polished walnut pedestal table toward his father and stepmother, Isabelle, and hoped he wouldn’t be bothered about it again for the rest of the evening. Isabelle smiled apologetically at him and gave a surreptitious little roll of her eyes. She was twenty-five—only five years older than Henry himself, and they had often been dance partners before her marriage last year to the richest and most powerful of the Schoonmaker men.
    It was almost strange to see her in his own house; she still looked like Isabelle De Ford, who was 24 ♥elavanilla♥

    always good for a flirt and a laugh. It might have been all about money, but Henry still felt secret respect toward the old man for winning her.
    “You shouldn’t be so hard on Henry,” she said in a high, girlish voice and brushed a golden curl away from her face.
    “Shut up,” his father replied in his deep rasp, without so much as turning to look at her. Isabelle made a frowning face and continued playing with her hair. “Get those silly looks off your faces, both of you. Henry, pour yourself a drink.”
    Henry did not like to appear overly obedient to his father, and they avoided each other enough that indeed he rarely had the opportunity. But there was about his father the rangy, discriminating air of all extraordinarily powerful men, and there was a part of Henry that craved his attention, that longed for the man to notice his actions and approve. At this particular moment, however, he chose to listen to his father because what he most wanted in all the world was a drink. He crossed the room and poured himself a Scotch from one of the cut-glass decanters on the side table.
    The room was dark and heavy with the cigar smoke that attended all his father’s dealings. The walls and ceilings were of ornate carved wood—the virtuoso Italian craftsmanship so familiar to Henry that he barely noticed it anymore. So this was the sort of place where business got done, Henry mused with a touch of wonder. His life was so absolutely crammed with play that the serious mood of this room felt like a foreign territory. Earlier, he had dined at Delmonico’s on Forty-fourth Street, and then there had been an interlude at one of those downtown saloons where one could hear rags and dance with working girls, and then off to Penelope’s grand fete.
    He got a little perverse thrill from being slightly tipsy in the midst of his father’s serious decor.
    The elder Schoonmaker shifted in his seat. His young bride yawned. “So tell me about you and Miss Hayes,” Henry’s father said abruptly.
    Henry sniffed his drink and studied himself in the mirror over the bar. He had the smooth