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chin and slender features of a man of leisure, and his dark hair was pomaded to the right. “Penelope?”
    he repeated thoughtfully. Though he had little or no desire to discuss his romantic entanglements with his father, it was a subject mildly preferable to family wills.
    “Yes,” his father urged him on.
    “Everyone thinks she is one of the great beauties of her generation.” Henry thought of Penelope, with her gigantic eyes and dramatic red dress, which seemed calculated to frighten people as much as to seduce them. He knew from personal experience that Penelope was not frightening—
    but then, he knew how to enjoy her. He wished he were back at the party, moving her exquisite body across the dance floor.
    “And you?” his father went on. “What do you think?”
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    “I very much enjoy her company.” Henry took a sip of Scotch and savored the burning tingle against his lips.
    “So you want to…marry her?” his father asked, leadingly.
    Henry couldn’t help a little snort at that. He caught Isabelle staring at him, and he knew that she was now thinking not like a stepmother, but like all the other girls of New York, obsessing over how and when Henry Schoonmaker would marry. He lit a cigarette and shook his head. “I haven’t met a girl I could think about so seriously, sir. As you have often pointed out, I am not serious about much.”
    “Then Penelope is not someone you could see as your wife,” his father confirmed, leveling his fierce eyes at Henry.
    Henry shrugged, remembering last April when Penelope had been staying in the Fifth Avenue Hotel. Her family had left their old house on Washington Square, and the new one wasn’t yet completed. Even though he hardly knew her, she’d invited him up to the suite she’d had all to herself and welcomed him in nothing more than stockings and a shirtwaist. “No, Dad. I don’t think so.”
    “But the way you were dancing…” He paused. “Never mind. If you don’t want to marry her, that’s good. Very good.” He clapped, stood, and came around the table to tower over Henry.
    “Now, who do you think would make a good wife?”
    “For me?” Henry asked, managing to keep his face straight.
    “Yes, you good-for-nothing boulevardier,” his father spat out, his momentary good humor quickly evaporating. The famous Schoonmaker rage was one parental touch that Henry had not been deprived of in his childhood, and it had arisen at everything from broken toys to bad manners. William Schoonmaker sat down noisily in the baby-soft leather club chair next to Henry. “You don’t think I’m just idly curious about your paramours, do you?”
    “No, sir,” Henry replied, blinking his dark lashes at his father. “I do not.”
    “Then you’re smarter than I give you credit for.”
    “Thank you, sir,” Henry said, meaning it. He wished his voice wouldn’t get so small at times like these.
    “Henry, I find your louche lifestyle personally offensive.” His father stood again, pushing the club chair backward across the parquet floor, and began circling the table. “And I am not the only one.”
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    “I’m sorry for that, Dad, but it’s my lifestyle, not yours,” Henry replied. He had regained his voice and was forcing himself to keep his gaze steady in his father’s direction. “Or anybody else’s.”
    “Possible, but doubtful,” his father went on, “since it is my money—inherited, yes, but multiplied many times over by my hard work—that has allowed your lifestyle.”
    “Are you threatening me with poverty?” Henry asked, glancing at the will as he lit a new cigarette with the old one. He tried to look careless as he exhaled, but even saying the word poverty gave him an unpleasant feeling in his stomach. The word had a sick lilt to it, he had always thought. His first semester at Harvard he had shared a suite with a scholarship boy named Timothy Marfield—his father’s idea of character-building, Henry