It was a lie; she hated the fact that such things were necessary, but she would not make a fuss over something that could not be changed.
“Miss Sophie,” Mrs. Harrison’s voice trembled.
Sophie reminded herself that Mrs. Harrison had raised Cap; she had been in the household when he was born and when his parents died, and all throughout his aunt May’s tenure. When Cap left this house for Europe she would never see him again.
“Yes?”
“He’s weak,” she said. “But he’s settled. I couldn’t say comfortable, but he’s so much more settled since—well, now that you’re here. He’s content.”
Content was a word Sophie disliked intensely. Content was constrained and devoid of hope for more or better. Content would not do for Cap. But she nodded and thanked the housekeeper for her help, and then she went up to him.
• • •
WITHOUT HESITATION SOPHIE opened the door, walked into Cap’s room, and then, quietly, closed the door behind herself.
It was a gesture more telling than any other, that they should close themselves off alone in a room. She took a moment to contemplate the significance of this simple thing, and then she turned to the windows.
He sat in a high-backed armchair, a folded blanket over his lap. He was smiling at her as she smiled at him behind her mask. The idea came to her just then that he would never see her face again, and that was simply unacceptable. Sophie let the mask drop to hang around her neck and walked toward him. She saw his expression shift from confusion to wariness to distress and stop just short of anger because by then she had knelt beside his chair and put her hands on his shoulders, leaned forward, and touched her cheek to his.
“Oh, no,” he said, his voice just a whisper. “No, Sophie. You shouldn’t have come if you can’t keep yourself safe from me.”
But he held on to her with all the meager strength of his arms, and Sophie was glad. She was glad to hold him like this, as little as it was.
She got up and went back to sit on the chair that had been made ready for her on the other side of the room; when she had mastered her voice she raised her face and looked at him.
“You have to promise not to do that again,” he said.
“I can’t make that promise.”
There was a small silence between them. Sophie waited, and then she said, “Did you think I would have no conditions of my own?”
He rested his cheek on the wing of the chair, his gaze unwavering. “Tell me,” he said finally. “What measures you are willing to take to protect your health.”
Sophie took a sheet of paper from her reticule and, walking across the room once again, put it on the table where he could reach it, turned, and went back to her chair.
Cap took the paper and read, his brow creased and disapproving. There was a familiar tick at the corner of his mouth; she was trying his patience, which was exactly her intention.
“I can’t agree to this first point. We cannot eat at the same table,” he said.
“We can,” Sophie corrected him. “But not from the same serving dishes or plates.”
“Then you will wear a mask or I will.”
“That will make eating quite a challenge.”
He glared at her and turned back to her list. As he read, the corner of his mouth jerked in something that went beyond irritation, all the way, Sophie was beginning to hope, to a resigned amusement.
“I will concede points one through eight,” he said. “But we cannot sleep in the same room. It’s just too dangerous.”
Sophie turned away for a moment, her eyes moving over the familiar four walls of this room he had had for all his life. Nothing changed here: books and paintings, the fossils and seashells and minerals brought back from his travels, carvings and small sculptures. She touched the chunk of raw amazonite brought back from a trip to the west, he said, because it was exactly the same blue-green color of her eyes.
She was making him wait for an answer, and found that it suited her to take her time. She stopped in front of a portrait of his mother at age nineteen, in 1854. Newly married against her father’s express wishes, already carrying Cap. In this photograph Clarinda Belmont always struck Sophie as somber or even mournful, as if she knew that the time left to her was short; she would lose her husband before their son was born, and then succumb to influenza in the first year of the war. It had occurred to Sophie that Cap was following her example in marrying against his family’s wishes. She wondered if the comparison would irritate or please him.
“I will take all precautions,” Sophie said finally, going back to her chair. “But I am talking only about sharing a room, not a bed. Think very carefully before you respond, because I am prepared, I will go away.” She folded her hands in her lap and watched him thinking.
I will go away, she repeated to herself. She couldn’t pretend to be a lawyer, but she was proud of this flexible turn of phrase.
He said, “There’s a box on the table beside you.”
“So I see.”
“Aren’t you going to open it?”
“You haven’t finished reading my list.”
There was something in the way he turned his head, something off.
“You’re taking laudanum.”
A spark of irritation moved across his face and then was banished. “I didn’t want to cough during this—interview.”
“Paregoric or tincture?”
He gave her a crooked grin. “I thought you might ask. It tastes of saffron and cloves. From Mr. Cunningham. A reputable apothecary, you told me once.”
This was the Cap she knew, good natured even when he had been found out in a scheme. He wouldn’t lie; he considered it beneath his dignity. As a boy of twelve he had once explained himself to Mrs. Lee. A good lawyer, he said, can achieve his end without resorting to a lie. Mrs. Lee had laughed, but Aunt Quinlan had frowned and later took Cap aside to discuss the ways that manipulation made a mockery of honesty.
“From now on I will oversee the compounding of whatever medication you need. Without interference. So where do we stand?”
“I will concede on the medication—”
“As if I’d allow anything else.”
He raised a brow. “And I will concede on sharing a bedroom. But the arrangement of the room and the beds is mine.”
“The rest of it?”
He glanced at her list. “I agree to the other points.”
“Without reservation?”
“Of course I have reservations,” he said. “But I am willing to compromise.”
“You will concede to my decisions in medical matters.”
“Yes, I said I would.”
She allowed herself a smile. “You have the same scowl now you do when you’re losing at cards.”
Cap’s glare was both affronted and amused. He said, “Another condition occurs to me. We must see each other every day until we leave for Europe.”
It would be difficult to manage, but Sophie nodded.
“Now will you open the box?”
She knew what he was offering her. There was a portrait of his mother in the parlor in her wedding gown. She wore pearls and emeralds at her ears and around her neck, and a wedding ring that had at its center a diamond that had come down through the Belmont line. That very ring was in the small box he wanted her to open and then to put on her hand. When the photographer came to take their portrait, Cap would want it in plain sight, because the ring made all things clear in ways words could not.
Sophie said, “I am so angry at you.”
He inclined his head, but there was no confession forthcoming.
“When did you first write to Dr. Zängerle?”
He waved a hand, as if the question could be shooed away like a fly. “A year ago.”
“What a lot of time to waste when every minute is so precious.”
She made her voice firm.
His gaze was sharper now. “Last year at this time would you have agreed to go to Switzerland as my wife?” And then: “You know you wouldn’t have. So will you wear the damn ring, or not?”
Sophie opened the box and looked at this ring she had never thought to wear.
“I know,” Cap said. “It’s truly hideous.”
The ring his mother and grandmother had worn had a yellow diamond as its centerpiece. The stone was set against foil on a wrought silver band, with sapphires to either side that only made the stone look more yellow.
Sophie bit her lip and then laughed out loud.
“I could have the stone reset,” he said.
“Do you think it would make a difference, really?”
He lifted a shoulder in agreement.
Any number of women would put this ring on without hesitation and declare it the prettiest thing ever made by man, but tomorrow their fathers would look up from the morning paper and say, Cap Verhoeven is going to marry that mulatto woman.
She slipped the ring onto her finger, her hands chapped and a little swollen, as they always were. Like gilding a wooden nickel, as Mrs. Lee would put it.
Cap’s ring pinched, just slightly.
• • •
WHEN ANNA CAME into the dining room on Saturday evening Aunt Quinlan had already taken her place at the head of the table, with Margaret and Sophie to either side. The little girls, Margaret told her in a subdued tone, had had their supper and baths, and were already settled for the night. From the looks of things, there was an argument going on.
Anna said, “You know how I dislike coming in on the middle, so start again please. At the beginning. What are we arguing about?”
“We aren’t arguing,” Aunt Quinlan said in a tone that said just the opposite.
“This isn’t about a corset for Rosa, is it?”
Somehow it was the right thing to say, because Aunt Quinlan and Sophie both gave a startled laugh. Margaret continued to frown into her soup bowl.
“No,” Sophie said. “It’s not about that at all.” She drew in a deep breath. “I saw Cap today. We’re going to Switzerland.”
Anna got up, went to Sophie, and hugged her hard enough to make her protest. She picked up her cousin’s hand and looked at the ring.
“You must really love the man if you’re willing to wear this ring. It’s awful.”
“I know,” Sophie said, grinning.
“Agreement on all points?”
“With some very small concessions, on both sides. Anna, you’ll break my ribs.”
“Does his family know?”
“The announcement will be in tomorrow’s paper, but Cap’s aunts and cousins will already have received word by messenger before that point.”
“This is no surprise to you,” Margaret said to Anna, her brow pulled down in displeasure.
“Of course not.” Anna hugged Sophie again and returned to her place, where she fell into her chair with an unladylike plop. She couldn’t stop smiling. She smiled through the kisses and hugs and tears; she smiled especially when Mr. Lee came into the dining room—something he almost never did, despite many invitations—and took Sophie’s hand between his own two hands and wished her every good thing.
“We must have wine to toast the happy couple,” said her aunt. “All of us.”
“This is hardly something to celebrate without reservation,” Margaret said irritably.
“Margaret,” Aunt Quinlan said. “Two young people who love each other are getting married. That is something to celebrate.”
Margaret waited until Mr. Lee had left the room, shifting uneasily. Anna thought of suggesting to her that her corset was too tightly cinched, a childish impulse that made her want to laugh anyway.
Before Margaret could get started with her questions, Anna asked what seemed to her the crucial question. “Margaret, why should you object?”
Aunt Quinlan answered for her stepdaughter. “Margaret is upset because Sophie is the only Catholic among us, and she thinks the Catholic Church won’t let the little girls stay if she leaves.”
“Margaret is upset,” Margaret said, “because it is unfair. We should never have allowed the girls to stay if we weren’t all prepared to stay with them. Just last week the Catholic Church took a baby away from a Protestant couple. It was in the paper, if you don’t believe me.”
“There’s more to that story,” Aunt Quinlan said. “The mother left a note with the boy asking that he be raised Catholic.”
“According to the nuns,” Margaret muttered.
“Are you suggesting that Sophie send Cap off to Switzerland alone?” Anna was careful not to inject anything dismissive in her tone, but Margaret was determined to be insulted.
“Cap is a grown man, able to fend for himself,” she said.
There was a small but fraught silence while Anna tried to reconcile what she was hearing with the Margaret she had always known. Not the most effective or consistent of mothers to her two boys but deeply devoted. Stubborn, yes. A martyr to social convention, but not willfully cruel. Anna looked closely at Aunt Quinlan’s stepdaughter and wondered if she was unwell.
“Mr. and Mrs. Lee are members of this household,” Aunt Quinlan was saying. “They are Catholic, and in case you’ve misremembered, they’ve taken the girls to church with them every Sunday.”
“Yes. And they are also—” Margaret lowered her voice and then was unable to go on.
“Colored,” Sophie finished for her.
“Well, yes,” Margaret said.
“And so am I.”
“But you’re different,” Margaret said, growing more flustered.
Aunt Quinlan closed her eyes for the span of three heartbeats. It was a rare thing to see her lose her temper, but Margaret had managed to bring her to that point.
“Margaret,” she said with misleading calm. “I believe you had a letter from your sons today.”
Margaret started. “I did. But—”
“I take it they’ve decided to stay in Europe for another year. You miss them very much, I understand. Maybe it’s time you joined them.”
The color drained from Margaret’s face. “But the girls—”
“You needn’t worry about the girls.”
“But—”
“I raised five daughters,” Aunt Quinlan said, more sharply. “And a granddaughter, and two nieces. I think I can be trusted with two more.” She turned to Sophie. “Have you and Cap decided on a date?”
Hesitantly Sophie said, “Cap has legal matters to settle first. We would hope to sail at the end of May, and marry that same morning. Cap’s uncle Conrad has offered to give me away.”
Conrad Belmont approved then, which was a relief. Some part of the family would be opposed and vocal, but the support of the eldest living Belmont would go a long way.
“Just a small ceremony,” Sophie said. “For my side, just family and Mary and Abraham Jacobi. If they will come.”
“Of course they will,” Anna said. “They have always been your champions.”
“Anna. For someone so relentlessly logical and clear-thinking you can be oblivious,” Margaret said, pushing back her chair to stand up. “It doesn’t matter if every physician in the city attends or if the president himself gives Sophie away, it is still the color of her skin that will be the sticking point.”
“For whom, exactly?” Aunt Quinlan asked, her voice very low and calm. “Who exactly are you worried about? Do you think you’ll be cut in public because a niece of mine has married a Belmont?”
Margaret did an admirable job of gathering her emotions and calming her voice. She folded her napkin and stood.
“My mother was born in this house. I was born here and so was my brother. The law may say that the house belongs to you as my father’s widow, but in your h
eart you know that it’s wrong to put me out because I insist on speaking truths you would rather ignore.”
“This is getting out of hand,” Anna said. “Margaret, this is your home if you’re away for a day or a year. No one is putting you out. No one is sending you away. Aunt Quinlan was making a suggestion. Badly timed—” She glanced at her aunt and frowned. “But nothing more than a suggestion for you to take or leave.”
Margaret’s throat worked, but she said nothing.
After a moment Aunt Quinlan said, “I spoke more sharply than I should have, Margaret. I apologize. You must decide what you want to do for yourself, but you can’t decide anything for Sophie. And as a family we will support her in her marriage and we will find a way to keep the girls with us without sacrificing Cap’s medical treatment.”
The silence drew out for a long moment, and then Margaret turned and left them.
• • •
THE TRAFFIC LANES that fed onto the bridge from either side were still blocked off, and more than that, the terminal doors were closed. A sour-faced patrolman stood at the top of the stairs scanning the street as if he expected an invasion, but Jack never hesitated; he tipped his chin up at the patrolman—it seemed that this was the way police officers of all kinds acknowledged each other—and then he opened the door for Anna and they walked past him and into the terminal to the sound of hammers and saws.
Even on a Saturday after seven in the evening there were carpenters and painters and electricians working in the waning light. None of them took note of two strangers walking through the terminal, but two roundsmen called out to Jack, gesturing him over. Anna supposed it was inevitable; he couldn’t simply walk past a colleague without at least a short conversation. But she was so eager to be on the bridge that she found herself bouncing on the balls of her feet like a schoolgirl.
The conversation had to do with boxing. She tried to fix her face in a politely uninterested way, and realized that she was failing when Jack took her hand and tucked it into his coat pocket, where he squeezed it twice. Be patient, was the message. She pinched him, hard.
One of the roundsmen was looking at her. A grandfatherly type with a great waterfall of gray mustache and a complexion so weather-roughened it looked more like tweed than skin. But he had a kind smile.