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Chapter Text

Standing in front of the mirror in her childhood bedroom, Bertha Randolph – formerly Bertha Livingston, and soon to be Bertha Russell – tries on her new name for size. She repeats it, out loud, until it rolls off her tongue easily, without so much as a hint of the potent mix of hatred, derision, and – more recently – envy that normally colors the word Russell when it is spoken in this house.

That done, she adjusts the angle of the lamp beside her so she can examine her appearance carefully for any fault. She is a little thinner and sallower than she would like to be, thanks to the meagre bread-and-potato diet to which the household has been adhering for the past eighteen months or so. But at least she is out of mourning now, with a year having passed since Lewis’ death. Black has never done her any favors, and the modest blue suit she is wearing in place of her widow’s weeds brings out her eyes – even if there is precious little she can do to disguise that it is two years out of fashion. As satisfied as she can be under the circumstances, she tucks a stray strand of hair back into her chignon and reminds herself that the hairstyle, while not as flattering as she would wish, is the best that the housemaid who has taken on the duties of her recently dismissed lady’s maid can manage.

It's not that she cares particularly about looking nice for George Russell. But she wants to remind him that he is getting something out of this arrangement of theirs, too. She’s never met the man before – of course she hasn’t; he’s hardly the type one might encounter in Mrs. Astor’s ballroom – and so her image of him is drawn entirely from the caricatures that often accompany the accounts of his business dealings in the financial papers. She’s well aware that the Times’ illustrators have a penchant for exaggeration, and yet she cannot picture Mr. Russell as anything but a life-size version of the rotund, red-faced, beady-eyed figure the papers depict. She expects that he bathes irregularly, makes crude jokes, and spits when he talks.

He is, in short, the last person she ever dreamed she would marry. But eighteen months ago, her husband and her father were among the group of men who decided to take a short position on what they called “that upstart Russell’s railroad company,” and while all of them lost unfathomable amounts of money, none were ruined as completely as Lewis Randolph and Stephen Livingston. Lewis, despite what the rumor mill may say, did not actually shoot himself in the aftermath, but Bertha privately thinks that he may as well have, for how little he did to fight the heart condition that killed him within months. And with his death came what her father thinks – and what Bertha has reluctantly come to agree – is their one possible path to salvation. George Russell, long a widower, needs a wife who can grant him entrée into the New York social circles that have previously been closed to him and – more importantly – bring his daughter, soon of marriageable age, into proper society. This is easier said than done since no respectable woman would consent to finding herself across a crowded room from Russell, let alone to marrying him – excepting one, of course, who is in no position to turn down a man who can fund her son’s remaining years at Harvard and pay off the heavy mortgage on her family’s ancestral home. Even if she does harbor occasional fantasies of poisoning said man’s cognac or strangling him in his bed.

Bertha doesn’t know exactly what kind of conversations her father and Russell have been having these past few weeks – she isn’t even sure whose idea the marriage originally was – and she prefers not to think too carefully about the particulars of being traded from one man to another like a horse or sack of grain. Instead, she is doing her level best to stay focused on making a good enough impression in their first meeting today for Russell to go through with the wedding and settle her family’s ever-growing list of debts. Then she can see his daughter married off, after which she will decamp to Newport or Bar Harbor until he does her the favor of leaving her widowed once again, which – if the rumors about his grueling schedule and habit of eating to excess are true – will hopefully be soon.

…

There is a small commotion outside as the Russell carriage arrives at the Livingston doorstep, but peering around the edge of the lace curtain gains Bertha nothing save for a quick glimpse of the black curve of a hat brim before its wearer disappears into the doorway. Then there are muffled voices from below, and she cannot justify hiding any longer. Chin up, she reminds herself, as she walks down the two flights of stairs and across the shabbily carpeted hall to the drawing room.

Her father has taken the seat facing the entrance, so at first all she can see of Mr. Russell, opposite him in a high-backed chair, are neatly groomed dark curls that remind her, suddenly and illogically, of Larry. Then both men are rising, her father is introducing her with a grandeur the occasion does not call for, and – oh.

He is not at all what she was expecting. Tall – even if she were wearing her highest-heeled shoes, which she is not, the top of her head would barely brush his chin – and broad-shouldered, with a well-muscled physique, more suited to a farmhand than a financier, that his finely-cut suit cannot quite disguise. His clothes are no different from those of any respectable gentleman in her social circle, and yet he commands the room in a way that most of them could only dream of. His face is – well, not red, in any case, and his eyes are far too warm a shade of brown to ever be described as beady.

“Mrs. Randolph,” he says politely, inclining his head at her. His face is inscrutable; surely she’s only imagining that the right corner of his mouth is curling up ever so slightly in a smile.

“Mr. Russell,” she replies, satisfied to find her voice is steady.

For the narrowest of moments, she can’t think what she’s supposed to do next. Mr. Russell is still looking at her, as if he expects her to say something more; her father is studiously staring at his shoes. Suddenly she remembers that she must sit down before either of them can.

She chooses the fraying chintz sofa, and the awkwardness is alleviated slightly by a bustle of activity as the butler – who represents one third of their entire staff at the moment, the other two being the cook and the maid – serves the tea. Her father, showing his nerves, prattles on senselessly about the weather and the market conditions. Meanwhile, Bertha is momentarily distracted by how small the teacup looks in Russell’s hands, and then by how faded and chipped the china is. In fact, the whole room is faded, and slightly discolored rectangles of wallpaper betray just how many pictures they’ve had to sell off lately. She wishes she had at least thought to cover the gaps with some of her own work, however poor in comparison to the pieces that used to hang here, but of course it is far too late for that. And it’s not as if Russell doesn’t know exactly how dire the straits are in which they find themselves.

That thought prompts her to recover her bearings enough to ask a few polite, superficial questions about his taste in horses and the opera. His equally polite answers prove that he’s hardly the philistine she’s been given to expect, but she gets the sense that he is as bored as she is by the inane conversational track down which she has led them.

“And how is Miss Russell?” Bertha finally asks, having run through her mental checklist of other appropriate small talk topics. The stock maneuvers that got them into this situation are, frustratingly, not appropriate, even if she is dying to know how he managed it.

It’s immediately clear that she chose her question correctly; for the first time, he smiles. “In fine form, thank you. She’s a kind-hearted young lady, and already cleverer than most of the men who work for me. You’ll like her, Mrs. Randolph.” The pride in his voice is unmistakable. So, the unscrupulous robber baron – who grinds his workers into dust and crushed her entire family under the heel of his boot without a second thought – loves his daughter. Interesting.

“I’m sure I will.” She keeps her voice neutral, but she’s inordinately pleased to have hit upon a topic he really wants to talk about, and conversation flows easily after that as they trade stories about his daughter and her son.

When the tea has been drunk down to its dregs, Russell suggests a walk in the nearby park, and Bertha – glad of the chance to talk to him without her father hovering – accepts with unfeigned graciousness. She slips her hand around his proffered elbow and is surprised all over again by the solid bulk of his arm, warm even through his coat sleeve and her glove. The housemaid – playing the role of lady’s maid this afternoon, in a too-large black dress that belonged to her predecessor – trails behind them as they walk, far enough away for them not to fear being overheard.

Having grasped that Russell is disinterested in small talk, she waits for him to break the silence.

“I know the situation is far from ideal,” he says finally. “I won’t say I’m sorry for what befell Mr. Randolph, but I do regret—”

“I understand,” she says swiftly. She is, in fact, aware that whatever her father may claim, Mr. Russell didn’t just wake up one day and decide it might be fun to decimate their family fortune. She knows Lewis cooked up the whole idea and got the others to join him in striking the first blow, and from the start she has been far, far angrier with him than she ever was with Russell, even if the latter’s revenge proved mightier than anyone anticipated. And in the intervening months, as she sold the home she and her husband once lived in along with all its contents and found the amount to be insufficient to cover even half his debts, her anger at Lewis has only grown. “My late husband, God rest his soul, tried to play a game for which he had neither the brains nor the nerve. We need not dwell on it.”

If she’s shocked him with her bluntness, he does not let it show. “Yes, well, as I was saying, this is hardly a romance for the ages, but I think we’ll get on fine. I won’t order you about or, erm, force my company on you. I’m not a cruel man, whatever you may have heard.”

Somehow, she believes him. In any case, his offer is the best she can hope for, and far more than she expected.

“You’ll see much more of Gladys than of me, and I do think you’ll like each other. All I need from you is – not to mother her, exactly, she’s nearly grown, but to look out for her interests.” He sighs and rakes a hand through his hair. “She’s already being inundated with marriage proposals from men three times her age who are clearly fortune hunters, and she isn’t even out yet. To be frank, I’m out of my depth.”

For a moment, she has to tamp down the ridiculous urge to smooth his now-mussed curls back into place. You fool, she castigates herself, silently, fiercely. You’re no better than a giggling pink-cheeked debutante. Perhaps the stress of the past year and a half is finally getting to her. Perhaps she is going mad. But it’s not just his good looks she hadn’t bargained for, or his decent manners. It’s the honest way he’s speaking to her, matching her bluntness with his own. “New York society can be rather a den of vipers,” she agrees mildly.

“Especially when you’re not properly in it.”

“Even if you’ve grown up in society, navigating your first seasons without a mother to guide you is – challenging.” She remembers, all too well. At eighteen, she thought she had done so well when she secured Lewis’ hand in marriage; even with her mother long dead, she had done everything she was supposed to and found a man of whom everyone approved. And look how that turned out for her. “But I know how to manage these matters, you can rest assured of that.”

“Good. Well, in that case, I’m amenable if you are.” She could swear that he is smiling again. Just a slight pulling at the corner of his mouth, perhaps a crinkling of his eyes. “Would you like me to get down on one knee?”

“Please don’t,” she says, alarmed. Anyone might see them. “But I accept your proposal.”

“I trust I can leave the wedding planning to you. How long do you need?”

He won’t want a huge society affair like the one she and Lewis had, twenty-odd years ago. She mentally ticks off the necessities – an available curate, a wedding license, a few updates to one of her nicer gowns, since she has neither the time nor the money to order a new one. Perhaps a small wedding breakfast in the parlor of that beautiful Fifth Avenue house of his. “A week,” she decides.

“Fine. Shall we plan on next Wednesday?”

Just like that, all has been settled. They complete the rest of their tour through the park quickly and without speaking further. And although Bertha burns with the thousand questions she wants to put to him – Did you love your wife? What did you really think of Lewis? Do you ever worry about the working conditions at your mills? – the silence is not uncomfortable.

Chapter Text

The closer they get to the agreed-upon date for the wedding, the more George becomes convinced that he has bitten off far more than he could possibly ever chew.

He thought – foolishly, it seems now – that he knew what to expect when he walked into the Livingston house for the first time this past Tuesday. For one thing, he had been vaguely aware of Mrs. Randolph’s existence for years by then, even if he hadn’t met her previously. Her late husband – a boorish dilettante who nevertheless seemed to be capable of the occasional ingenious business maneuver – had confounded him at first; then, from the occasional offhand comment, George gradually came to suspect that it might be the man’s wife who was truly behind his best ideas, which made a great deal more sense than the other more outlandish explanations George occasionally heard discussed among mutual acquaintances. (Having now met Mrs. Randolph, he no longer needs to suspect. He knows.) When he became aware that Randolph had died and left his widow in penury, his first thought was that if she were a man, or if they lived in a different kind of world, he’d offer her a job at his bank, where she would no doubt cause a stir – to his benefit – while digging herself out of the financial hole that Randolph had burrowed for her. Some time passed before it occurred to him – insidiously at first, and then more insistently – that there was, in fact, a way he could fix her troubles and his own in one fell swoop. So, he made a few discreet inquiries, and in return, he heard only good things about her grace, her charm, her beauty. But nothing could have prepared him for the actual sight of her – for the imposing planes of her face or the arresting figure she cuts, for her unflinching way of looking at him or the ability she has – clear to him almost instantly – to see straight through to the heart of things. Poised, proud, and seemingly impossible to rattle. Always one for a good challenge, he’s spent more time these past few days than he’d care to admit dreaming up ways he could get her to blush, or smile, or even roll her eyes at him.

Time and time again, he reminds himself that he has promised her a chaste marriage. A mutually beneficial arrangement in which her only responsibility is to watch over Gladys. It’s no different than hiring a new governess; lusting after her is as inappropriate as lusting after Miss Grant would be. Although Miss Grant doesn’t have the kind of rich, mellifluous voice he could listen to all day, or spun-silk hair his fingers are twitching to unpin…

Enough. He musters up every etiquette lesson he’s ever gleaned to write the most scrupulously polite note of his life to Mrs. Randolph, inviting her and her father to his study at home on Saturday morning to hammer out the details of the marriage settlement. He chooses a time at which he knows Gladys will be at a painting class, since this meeting is unlikely to pose an opportune moment for her to make the acquaintance of her future stepmother. When the day comes, Church announces their arrival at ten o’clock sharp, and George resists the urge to check his reflection in one of the stained-glass window before rising to receive his guests.

“Mr. Russell,” Mrs. Randolph greets him as she sweeps into the room on her father’s arm. She is striking in a grey-blue morning dress with a white lace neckline through which he can make out just a hint of collarbone. Is he imagining it, or is there real warmth in her tone? Surely, he must be. Surely these are only her famed elegant manners on display. “Thank you for including me.”

He can hardly have not included her – this is her future they are talking about, after all, and it’s obvious she has a better head on her shoulders than her father does.  But within five minutes of their sitting down it becomes clear that her proximity – close enough for him to reach across his desk to take her hand or cup her cheek, even if she’d likely spit in his face if he tried – is going to drive him mad. How on Earth is he supposed to survive being married to her? Of course, he will – he must – eventually get used to her, once they’re living in the same house and he’s seeing her at dinner every day. In the meantime, luckily for him, Mrs. Randolph is all business, and he’s forced to set aside his thoughts as she opens her family’s ledgers across his desk.

She’s most concerned about her son’s education, and so they discuss that first and find the matter easily settled: the boy must be as clever as his mother, for he’s pieced together enough in the way of scholarships to cover the past three semesters’ tuition and expenses, and George assures her he’ll wire next semester’s payment first thing on Monday and settle a reasonable allowance on Larry Randolph while he’s at it. Their exchange turns gnarlier from there as they dive into the details of the late Mr. Randolph’s estate, which are, in short, even worse than George expected. It’s a marvel his widow has managed to stay afloat this long. Mrs. Randolph – her face gone bone-white save for twin spots of color high on her cheekbones – narrows her eyes at him, as if daring him to say something critical. He clears his throat instead – Good God, if his rivals could see him now, practically stammering his way through what should be a straightforward meeting, his firm’s stock price would be plummeting – and raises the matter of the brownstone mortgage. Perhaps he made a mistake in bringing her here, he realizes, and forcing her to listen to all this. But surely, she must be tired of having men making financial decisions behind her back that directly affect her? And her scrupulous record-keeping does make things easier.

“Well. I think that’s everything relevant,” George finally says, shortly after the clock in the hall strikes noon. He closes the last ledger with a thud.

“What of my daughter’s allowance?” Mr. Livingston presses.

“Father,” Mrs. Randolph warns quietly.

“My lawyers will ensure you’re granted access to all my accounts on Wednesday,” he tells her. “I trust you’ll discuss any major financial decisions with me first.” He’s surprised her. Good.

“We should also consider re-leasing my old box at the Academy of Music,” Mrs. Randolph says, just as she is about to take her leave. Mr. Livingston has already stepped out into the hallway, and for the moment, it’s just the two of them, standing by his desk. He supposes Livingston has contrived to give them a minute alone; or perhaps he’s simply oblivious. “Miss Russell should be seen there when the time is right.”

“Fine. Whom do I contact about that?”

She looks startled, and he realizes that despite his best efforts, he’s mis-stepped. “That’s kind of you,” she says gently, “but the request might be better coming from me. And there’s no rush.”

Dammit, now she thinks him a fool. “Why don’t you and your father come for dinner on Monday, and we can discuss it further? And your son, too, if he can manage it.” He makes the invitation before he can think it through properly; once the words are out of his mouth, his mind races to catch up to the implications. Of course, this is only sensible – she still needs to meet Gladys, ideally before Wednesday, and introductions over a meal seem preferable to sitting around awkwardly with tea. On the other hand, he’ll have to brace himself for seeing his future bride dressed for dinner when he can hardly keep his thoughts straight around her in the practical high-collared dress she’s wearing today.

“My father and I would be happy to come. But I’m reluctant to interrupt Larry’s studies, Mr. Russell. I hope you understand.”

“It will just be us four then. I suppose that saves us having to balance the numbers.” He hesitates. “You know, under the circumstances, you really might call me George.”

She blinks at him, as if that was the last thing she was expecting him to say, and he feels momentarily discomfited. Has he said the wrong thing again? He hasn’t felt this wrong-footed so often in one conversation since he was a boy of twelve.

When she responds, after a beat, it is with irreproachable neutrality; he cannot detect so much as a hint of either approval or displeasure in her tone. “Certainly. And I suppose you ought to call me Bertha.”

“Until Monday, then,” he says as he walks her to the door. He’ll simply avoid calling her anything at all, to her face at least, until he’s surer of himself.

Once she is gone, he sinks back into his seat and buries his face in his hands.

“What have I done?” he groans out loud. Louisa, smiling faintly at him from the faded sepia photograph framed on his desk, makes no response. What would you think of me if you could see me now? he wonders. There was a time when he missed her – dead of scarlet fever before Gladys’ second birthday – like a drowning man misses air to breathe. But since then, the tide of his life has carried him inexorably away from her, away from the tenement stoop where the two of them once played with broken toys together and the Brooklyn back alleys through which they chased each other, barefoot. He still mourns her, with more tenderness now than grief, but he can no longer imagine what his life would be like with her still in it.

You’d probably tell me to quit moping around, he sighs to himself. And to get on with it. The wheels are already in motion, spinning far too fast for him to stop the thing at this point. So, he rises rather heavily to his feet. Gladys ought to be back by now, and it’s past time to tell her there are going to be some changes in her life.

He finds his daughter curled up in the window seat in the schoolroom, bent over the watercolors she was working on in class today. “You’ll strain your eyes like that,” he calls from the doorway.

“Father,” she smiles broadly as she straightens. He’s pleased that she is still glad to see him, and at an age at which he knows many girls can hardly stand to be in the same room as their parents. Those of his friends who are on the more involved side as fathers tend, in their sentimental moments, to profess to miss the days when their children were small enough to curl up in their laps during visits to the schoolroom or the nursery. Although he supposes their daughters have mothers to take their troubles to, which does rather change the equation.

He takes the seat beside hers and can’t resist tugging on the end of one of her plaits as if she were a much smaller child and not a woman nearly grown. She lets him and beams at his compliments over her latest painting – lilies on a sun-soaked pond – for a minute or two before she ducks away from his arm and turns to face him. “You didn’t come here in the middle of the day to talk about my artwork,” she guesses.

“No,” he admits. For a moment, he’s at a loss for how to proceed. He’s beginning to feel that way more and more when it comes to Gladys, who, he’s started to notice, now inadvertently draws men’s eyes to her whenever she so much as ventures out of the house. That is why you’re doing this, he reminds himself. That is the only reason. Still, the challenge is that he’s been telling Gladys for years that she must settle for nothing less than a love match, and that is so at odds with how he’s chosen his own bride that he’s a little uncertain how to explain himself while still making it plain that her own future spouse must be much more thoroughly vetted. Mrs. Randolph, after all, is proof of what a bad marriage can do to a woman.

He decides it’s best to just blurt out the truth of the matter. “I’m getting married next week,” he says, without any softening introduction.

Gladys opens her mouth, and then closes it again.

“On Wednesday,” he adds, as if that were the part that is confusing her.

“I see,” Gladys says finally. Her eyes are round as saucers. “So soon. And the bride is to be—”

“You’ve heard of Bertha Randolph?”

“Lewis Randolph’s wife?” It’s clear she understands the nature of the arrangement. She may be young and sheltered, but she is no fool; she asks him questions about his work and listens to the answers. And she reads the newspapers. “And you’re always warning me about fortune hunters.”

“Gladys,” he admonishes. Well, he did see this coming. “That is not the same at all. Mrs. Randolph is a decent woman in a difficult position, and she has agreed to become my wife and manage your debut, for which we both should be very grateful.”

“Well, yes, I can see how she would be helpful,” she starts slowly. “But it seems so –” Drastic? Machiavellian? Heartless? Or just plain idiotic? George can think of a number of ways to finish that sentence. “– well, sudden, for one thing.”

“It was all settled earlier this week,” George says, by way of answer. “Mrs. Randolph and her father will be coming here for dinner on Monday. Do try to make a good impression.”

And with that, he gets to his feet, planning to leave her to her thoughts. Gladys grabs his hand to stop him.

“Do you like her, at least?”

She’ll know if he lies. It’s been just the two of them for so long; she knows him too well. “I do like her. Very much. And I’m certain you will, too.”

Something akin to relief replaces the concern written clear across her face, and she smiles. “Well, that’s good, then.”

He leaves the room with the distinct feeling that he’s given too much away.

Chapter Text

Saturday afternoon – not three hours after the end of the meeting with her fiancé that had her choking on her pride as if it were a fishbone lodged halfway down her throat – finds Bertha sitting beside a cozy fire in the Fane’s drawing room, across from her cousin and lifelong best friend, who is currently staring at her aghast.

“Surely things cannot be that bad?” Aurora gasps.

“I’m afraid they’re far worse than you know.” Bertha has done her best to keep the extent of her financial troubles quiet, even from those closest to her, but there is little point in continuing that now: the extreme measure she is taking will reveal to all and sundry just how dire her situation has become. “We’re on the verge of losing my father’s house. After three generations in Livingston hands! It’s meant to be Larry’s one day. And Larry –” She’s doing this for Larry, she reminds herself. She would do far worse for her son. “He’s applied to every scholarship he hears of and it’s barely enough. He has to rely on the kindness of his classmates for his living arrangements.”

“But –” Aurora – who, Bertha thinks uncharitably, has always possessed a tendency towards naïveté – is wide-eyed at the news. And no wonder; Charles Fane was involved in the failed plot against Russell, too, but he, at least, was not so reckless as to sink his entire fortune into it, and as such he has managed to land on his feet. And even if he hadn’t, the Fanes would have had Aurora’s father to fall back on. Eighteen months ago, Aurora and Bertha were commiserating over their shared situation as wives of men who had so unwisely fallen afoul of Russell; now, the gap between their circumstances has grown into a gulf. “But my dear, Mr. Russell is not a gentleman.”

Just a week ago, Bertha would have been quick to agree, but today, in spite of herself, she bristles slightly. George Russell, after all, has probably shown her more respect in the past five days than Lewis did in twenty years. She may not be thrilled about marrying the man, but she is not fool enough to take for granted his including her in this morning’s meeting and actually listening to what she had to say. “Do you know, no one’s ever been able to give me a satisfactory definition of the term gentleman. We all assume we know one when we see him, but go back far enough and surely half of Mrs. Astor’s inner circle had ancestors who were serfs toiling in the mud of Europe. I’ve heard it said that last generation’s upstart is this generation’s gentleman.”

“That may be,” Aurora says, her normally gentle voice sharpening. “But it’s clear what a gentleman is not. He is not, for example, a ruthless robber baron with no formal education and parents from God knows where.” She softens again. “I’m worried about you, that’s all, shut up in that great palace with a man like that. Surely there must be another way?”

Bertha shakes her head, decisively. “It’s done. There’s no use fretting about it now.” She was bracing herself for so much worse prior to her first meeting with Russell that what she currently feels, more than anything else, is relief. Larry and her father will be taken care of, she can live in comfort, and it looks like she won’t even have to grit her teeth through years of marriage to an odious toad in exchange. Mr. Russell hardly seems the type to bully or demean her. She can think of worse prices to pay than warming his bed and sharing his table. Perhaps, in time, they may even become friends, of a sort.

“But –”

To her satisfaction, Bertha discovers that despite her change in circumstances, she can still quell her friend with a single glance. Aurora purses her mouth shut, and when she opens it again, it is only to sip her tea.

“You won’t drop me over this, will you?” Bertha asks lightly, drawing on years of social training to make sure there’s no trace of uncertainty in her voice.

Aurora reaches out to grip her hand in both her own. “Of course not,” she says, holding tight. “We’re family.”

Bertha puts on her most practiced society smile as she squeezes back.

…

On Monday evening, Bertha changes her mind no less than three times about what to wear to dinner. She started dressing with half an hour to spare but is on the verge of being late by the time she settles on a pale pink silk gown with a slash of darker pink across the bodice and white lace froth framing her shoulders. Modest without being matronly, and timeless enough not to be obviously out of fashion, she decides. Emma, the poor overworked housemaid, pats her arm in sympathy as she slides the last hairpin into her hair.

“It’s perfect, ma’am,” she says. “Mr. Russell won’t be able to take his eyes off you.”

Bertha narrowly avoids giving a most unladylike snort. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she snaps. “Whatever do you mean by that?”

“Nothing, ma’am.” Whether accidentally or on purpose, Emma drops a comb at just that moment, and Bertha’s attempts to meet her gaze in the mirror are foiled by the speed with which the maid kneels to retrieve it.

Bertha forces herself to take a deep breath and paste a patient smile onto her face. The girl is young, and no doubt has a head full of romantic dreams. But she’s a good and uncomplaining worker who doesn’t deserve to be the target of Bertha’s frustrations. “You’ve done well,” she says, tilting her head to examine her coiffure. In the absence of jewels, they’ve trimmed her hair with a spray of fresh rosebuds. The effect is not unattractive. “And things will be easier for you soon. We’ll be able to bring the staff here up to snuff.”

“I’m staying here?” It’s clear Emma harbored dreams of being brought to the Russell house to be a proper lady’s maid, but Bertha, while fond of her, isn’t anywhere near fond enough to pass up the opportunity to replace her with someone who’s actually been trained to dress hair.

“Certainly, we can’t afford to lose you, not when you already know the house and Mr. Livingston’s habits so well,” she says, as kindly as she can manage.

The carriage Russell has sent for them is already waiting outside by the time Bertha finally descends the stairs, and her father is tapping his fingers against his leg and checking his watch impatiently. “You don’t have to do this, you know,” he says as they descend the steps together.

How very like him to balk at this point. “Yes, I do, so let’s say no more about it,” Bertha says sharply. She has little patience left for his qualms about seeing his prized only daughter sold off to the man he hates above all others.

They spend the carriage ride in silence, and Bertha wishes briefly that Larry had come down from Cambridge for this after all. He has the kind of easy charm that helps smooth over awkward occasions like tonight is sure to be. But she’s already wired him with the news of the upcoming wedding and instructed him that he is, under no uncertain terms, not to even consider coming to New York for it. She doesn’t need rumors of her situation spreading all the way to Massachusetts just yet.

The Russell house overwhelms her with its beauty all over again as the coachman pulls up to the front entrance. The exterior is imposing in its gleaming white simplicity; the interior lacks a single detail out of place. A part of her thrills at the chance to be mistress of such a mansion, especially after a year of practically hiding in her father’s increasingly dilapidated brownstone. And this house’s undeniable charm will be an advantage when it comes to getting Miss Russell accepted into the best society circles – Bertha can hardly think of a more fitting location for a charity bazaar or a coming-out ball. She may even come to miss it when the Russell girl’s future is settled and the time comes for her to leave New York and retire quietly to the seaside somewhere.

Mr. Russell and his daughter are already in the entryway to greet them when they arrive, and Bertha is struck once more by her future husband’s distinctive dark good looks. She forces her gaze away from him and towards his daughter, who, Bertha thinks, must favor her late mother – small, fair-haired, and wide-eyed as she is. I can work with this, Bertha decides at the sight of her. Gladys Russell is dressed more like a child than a girl of fifteen, with ribbons in her hair and all, and her posture could use improvement, but still, there’s no shortage of men out there who would jump at the chance to marry a young woman who’s pretty and sweet as well as rich. “I’ve heard so many good things about you, Mrs. Randolph,” the girl says guilelessly, with a shyness to her manner that they will need to address eventually.

Oh, what Bertha would have given to be a fly on the wall when Russell announced his engagement to his daughter. But if the girl is shocked or disapproving, she does a good job of hiding it; she is all timid smiles as Bertha returns the sentiment in kind.

They go through to the dining room almost immediately, and Bertha nearly swoons at the sight of the gilt-edged ceilings, so different is the space from the shabby surroundings she has become used to. She’s been placed at the foot of the table, opposite Russell, in the lady of the house’s position. I could get used to this, she thinks, as Russell pulls out her chair to allow her to take her seat. She almost doesn’t notice how careful he is not to touch her any more than strictly necessary, so taken is she by the glittering crystal wine goblets, the profusion of fresh flowers on each surface, the hundreds of candles that fill out the chandelier with no thought given to the expense of replacing them. She can just imagine the Fanes and Fishes and Astors gathered here. Miss Russell holding court, smiling charmingly in the candlelight, a few Goelet and Van Rensselaer boys hanging off her every word. Meeting Mr. Russell’s eyes across the spread of food between them and sharing a proud smile with him. Oh, yes, I can work with this.

If the way the table has been set today wouldn’t exactly pass muster for some of the more discerning guests Bertha plans to invite eventually, the food is irreproachable – consommé de volaille, then roast duck, beef fillets on a bed of fresh mushrooms, and a green salad crowned with delicately shelled beans and peas. Mr. Russell has clearly found a chef who knows what he’s about. And even Aurora couldn’t quibble with the man’s table manners; he may not be a gentleman, but he certainly eats like one.

An undemanding exchange about Gladys Russell’s endeavors in watercolors carries them well into the main course. Bertha notes that it’s mostly left up to her to keep the conversation going; her father is no doubt busy choking on his hatred for the Russell family and everything they stand for, while Miss Russell answers her questions politely enough but appears reluctant, whether out of shyness or something else, to return with too many of her own. As for Mr. Russell – there are moments when Bertha could swear she feels his eyes on her, but whenever she looks at him, his gaze is fixed on his plate or his daughter or the window, and he seems decidedly more reticent than he did during their previous meetings. Why, she can’t imagine. Is he having second thoughts? Surely, it is too late for all that?

“My father says you enjoy the opera, Mrs. Randolph,” Miss Russell pipes up, spearing a pea delicately with her fork. Bertha is grateful to see that the girl can raise a new topic of discussion, after all, even if she still wants to wince at the sight of her curved spine and hunched-in shoulders. What has that governess of hers been teaching her? They really will have to work on that.

“I enjoy going to the opera,” Bertha says, honestly enough, even if she could take or leave the actual opera part of the experience. “But I’m afraid I’m not much of a musician.” She is capable of plunking out a tune or two on the pianoforte if she absolutely cannot avoid it, but she’s never found much pleasure in musical pastimes.

“Oh, I’m quite hopeless when it comes to music myself, but I’m eager to be old enough to visit the Academy. I’d especially like to see Gounod’s Faust one day,” Miss Russell says, still with that innocent smile she’s been wearing all evening. “Miss Grant and I have been working our way through Goethe, although my German is not what it ought to be.”

“German. Goodness.” Bertha blinks. “How unusual.”

“I enjoy being able to read the works of the great German poets in their original language. After all, a translation is rather like a violinist repeating what a pianist has played. He may play the same notes, or try to, but he can never produce the same sound, don’t you think?”

Bertha suddenly realizes that she is being tested in a way she had not anticipated from such a seemingly shy young thing. “A very apt way of putting it.”

“In any case, I’m sure you’re familiar with the story of Faust. A man sells his soul to the devil for riches on Earth.” Miss Russell punctuates the sentence by setting down her fork on her now-empty plate with a decisive clink. “And he lives to regret it.”

So. The girl has spirit. Bertha likes her more for it. “I’m not sure who ought to be more insulted,” she says lightly. “Me, by being compared to Faust, or your father, by playing the role of the devil in your analogy.”

Mr. Russell recovers his dormant powers of speech at that. “I’m sure Gladys didn’t mean –”

“I apologize,” the girl interrupts. “That was unjust of me. I didn’t intend to imply anything untoward.”

Bertha is left with the distinct sense that somehow – perhaps simply by not playing dumb, or by not pretending to deny that she’s doing all this for the money – she’s passed Gladys Russell’s little test. And she feels a small, warm flicker of pleasure beneath her sternum at the realization that Mr. Russell won’t stand for her to be slighted, even by his own daughter.

That emboldens her to pose a test of her own over the cheese and fruit course. “Did Mrs. Russell ever live in this house?” She knows well enough that the late Louisa Russell, dead for nearly fourteen years, could never have set foot in this place; she can recall seeing it rise from the sidewalk, and that must have been less than ten years ago. She’s really just releasing a small test balloon, to see if this is the stifling kind of household where the dead are never mentioned. If she’ll be constantly sidestepping her predecessor’s ghost throughout her time here. “Your home is just so lovely. I thought I detected a woman’s touch.”

Mr. Russell, for the first time tonight, is looking at her openly, seeming more curious than offended or distressed.

“I’m afraid not,” Miss Russell says. “We were still quite poor when Mama died.”

This bald reference to the extreme newness of the family fortune prompts Mr. Russell to speak again. “Gladys,” he warns. “You’ll make Mrs. Randolph uncomfortable.”

“Not at all,” Bertha says, and means it. She is strangely flattered that the girl has come out of her shell so quickly, and pleased that she has nerve. She will need it in the ballrooms of New York, even if her wit needs to be finessed a little before she can be turned loose among the Knickerbockers. “I find little virtue in obfuscating the past.”

Russell narrows his eyes at that, and although he says no more on the subject, she suspects he’s wondering if she would feel the same way if her past were as checkered as his is. “The house was designed by a man named Stanford White. His firm handled the decorations and furnishings as well. Neither my late wife nor I can take any credit,” Russell explains, before Bertha steers the conversation into less perilous waters.

When they rise from their places at the end of the meal, she notices that the wedge of cheese and cluster of grapes on his plate are untouched.

…

Bertha is spared having to engineer herself a private minute with her fiancé at the end of the evening by the fact that one emerges quite naturally; Miss Russell excuses herself just after Bertha’s father dons his coat and heads out to the carriage to wait while Bertha adjusts the fastenings of her cape. The butler retreats into the shadows, leaving her alone with Mr. Russell, or as alone as they can expect to be for now.

“I must apologize again for Gladys –” he starts.

“There’s really no need. She’s a clever girl who knows her own mind. You’ve done well with her.”

He smiles at that, there is no denying it this time, even if it still seems rather like he finds it painful to look directly at her. “I expressly told her she was to make a good impression tonight. But I’m afraid she’s past the age where I can control her.”

“She would only resent you if you tried.” She meant it when she said he had done well, even if he does appear to have better prepared Gladys to be a clerk at his bank than a leading lady in society. He has clearly nurtured his daughter in a way Bertha’s own father has always lacked the capacity to do. At Gladys’ age, Bertha’s motherless state made her excruciatingly careful, terrified of putting so much as a toe out of line.

There’s a pregnant pause in which Bertha notices that Russell suddenly looks a great deal younger than his forty-one years. Is she dreaming, or is he about to reach for her hand, in the moment before he offers his arm to her instead?

“I suppose we’ll see each other at the church,” he says finally, as he walks her out into the cool, dark November night. “The day after tomorrow.”

Less than two days from now she will be crossing this threshold again as Mrs. George Russell, queen of all she surveys. Her hand in the crook of his arm again, his ring on her finger, his kiss on her lips.

“I look forward to it.” And then, with no small amount of effort, she addresses him, for the first time, by his given name. “George.”

If this is the devil claiming her soul, in payment for services rendered – well, Bertha thinks, not for the first time, she can imagine worse fates.

Chapter Text

Mrs. Bertha Randolph, only daughter of Mr. Stephen Livingston and widow of the late Mr. Lewis Randolph, was married yesterday morning at 10 o'clock to industrialist George Russell, the New York Times will report the next day. The phrases quiet and short and in the presence of only the most intimate friends will be used to describe the Saint Thomas Church ceremony, and the reception will be summed up by the sentence Mr. Russell then led the party to the dining room of his Fifth Avenue home, where a hasty wedding breakfast was served, and the health of the bride and bridegroom was toasted.

It will all be true enough, what the papers print. The church is indeed mostly empty that morning – Gladys Russell with her governess and Richard Clay, Russell’s secretary, on one side of the aisle, Mr. Livingston beside Mr. and Mrs. Fane on the other. The Reverend does keep the service brief. Mr. Russell kisses his bride chastely on the cheek at the end of the ceremony, so lightly she can scarcely feel it, and the subsequent gathering, over trays of poached eggs and fish and fruit, is over within an hour, the guests ushered politely away.

…

The remnants of the wedding breakfast have scarcely been cleared when a telegram is delivered summoning Russell – George, she is meant to call him George – away on some urgent business. He apologizes, Bertha brushes it off, and the housekeeper, Mrs. Bruce, is left to take over the tour of the house that Russell intended to give her.

They start with what she has already seen – the cavernous entryway; the beautiful, gilt-edged dining room – followed by the remainder of the first floor: library, drawing room, a clearly underutilized music room that Bertha imagines will be a charming setting for small, exclusive concerts once it has been spruced up a little. Mrs. Bruce points out the doors to the master’s study and his smoking room but does not show her inside before leading her through a web of back passageways to view the kitchens and the servants’ hall, both as modern as one could hope for, and introduce her to the rows of neatly uniformed staff, whose politely downturned gazes cannot disguise their frank curiosity about her.

After that Bertha is swept up into a blur of guest bedrooms and stairwells and galleries, a playroom that Gladys has outgrown and a schoolroom she soon will, too. It’s all as vast and lovely and charming as she expected – thanks to Mr. Stanford White, she supposes – but there is something indefinably impersonal about the choice of wallpapers and pictures and objets d’art that would make it clear to any keen observer that this manor has never had a mistress. Her own quarters – around the corner from Russell’s, the inside of which she is also not shown – are larger than but otherwise virtually indistinguishable from the guest rooms in the other wing. She wonders, not for the first time, why he has waited nearly a full fourteen years to remarry. Most men, faced with the prospect of single fatherhood, would have found their child a willing stepmother by the time their mourning period was over, and surely, he’s had no shortage of options, with both his looks and his bank account being what they are.

Mr. Russell still has not returned when she retreats upstairs to dress for dinner, assisted by the housemaid who will be taking care of her until she has found a proper lady’s maid to hire. All her things have been transported from her father’s brownstone in boxes and trunks over the course of the day and unpacked by the servants, her clothes in the wardrobe with fragrant herbs tucked into their folds and her books lined up along the windowsills for her to find. Bertha fingers the lace-trimmed hems of her dwindling supply of formal gowns and reminds herself that her first order of business tomorrow should be making an appointment at the dressmaker’s. The polished shelves of the vast wardrobe are barely half full.

She sweeps into the dining room in dark blue silk an hour later to the news, delivered by the impenetrable butler, that Mr. Russell has been further delayed and that she and Miss Russell are to eat without him. Bertha picks her way through four undeniably delectable courses while trying not to look too often at the empty chair opposite her or wonder if this is what her mealtimes will be like from now on. Gladys restrains herself from any more cutting literary references, and they pass the time with a genuinely enjoyable, tripwire-free conversation about Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s works instead.

Back at her dressing table at the end of the evening, Bertha selects a nightgown of linen so fine it veils rather than conceals her body and sits patiently while the maid combs through her unpinned hair one hundred times before polishing it with a length of red satin until it gleams. The air becomes suffused with the scent of her bergamot and violet perfume.

Alone, then, with a book in hand she is only half-reading and in a blue silk dressing gown for warmth, she waits.

Distantly, she hears a grandfather clock somewhere deep within the house chime ten, then ten-thirty, then eleven. It’s nearing midnight by the time she hears footsteps – sharp clicks on the marble stairs, then soft thuds down the velvet-carpeted hallway – followed by a three-beat-long pause and a subsequent light knock.

“Come in,” she calls, and Russell opens her door halfway.

“I came to say goodnight,” her husband of about twelve hours says. He seems to be staring very determinedly at a point just above her right shoulder. “And –” he breaks off, tries again. “And to apologize for missing dinner today.”

Does he expect her to be angry? She’s hardly in a position to make demands of him. Was his late wife the type to order the cook to burn his dinner if he dared to not arrive home on time?

“Is everything alright at the office?”

“Everything is fine,” he says shortly. “A rather recalcitrant fool of a rival thought he could get the better of me. He now knows otherwise. But it took longer to sort out than it should have.”

“Well, never mind. It gave Gladys and me the chance to talk a little more.”

“Good,” he says. “Good.”

“Why are you hovering in the doorway?” She’s struck by such a bout of nerves as she tells him, again, to come in – as she rises from her seat and shrugs her dressing gown off her shoulders – that she feels temporarily transported to her first wedding night, twenty years ago. How terrified she had been then; how foreign Lewis had seemed to her as he shed his smooth and charming manners and gripped her under the cover of darkness. But she is no longer nineteen. She has known pleasure and is astute enough, she thinks, to recognize the spark of attraction when she sees it. It’s clear in George Russell’s face as he looks at her for the first time all evening – drinking in the sight of her slightly parted mouth, her exposed clavicle, the loose waves of hair that she is sure is shining in the candlelight, the curve of breast and waist and hip she has put on display.

Then, abruptly, he mutters something about leaving her to her rest and practically slams the door behind him as he leaves. She’s so shocked she doesn’t even realize she has sunk into her seat until she notices the hard edge of her dressing table stool beneath her. She can feel the burn of her blush travel all the way up to her hairline and down past her collarbones. She’s practically offered herself to him on a silver platter – her own husband, to whom she swore her love and loyalty just this morning – and his reaction was as offended as if she had spit in his face.

Perhaps, a part of her thinks vaguely, with time and some distance she will come to respect him for not assuming that sex would be a part of their arrangement. But as it is, there’s no space within her for anything but the red-hot wave of shame that sweeps through her, leaving an ever-deepening well of hurt and disappointment in its wake.

…

If there’s one blessing about the early days of her marriage, it’s that she is too busy to spend much time actively burning in the fires of humiliation. There is a great deal she needs to learn and re-learn about running a house as large and fine as this one, and she spends long hours sitting at her desk or walking with Mrs. Bruce, familiarizing herself with the account books and the weekly orders list and the names of the staff and her new home’s hidden nooks and crannies. There are renovations to be made, the most dramatic of which involve knocking down walls and ceilings in the east wing to transform what was once a cluster of secondary libraries and storage closets into a ballroom worthy of Mr. McAllister’s Four Hundred. But many of the public-facing spaces need at least small adjustments; the drawing room, in particular, needs to be done over, as it is a little too utilitarian for the callers she plans to host here eventually. Soon half the precious furniture is hidden away under dust cloths and the halls are ringing with the sound of hammer blows and workmen’s shouts.

Her mornings are often spent in the schoolroom with Gladys and Miss Grant as she probes the girl to find the holes in her education – and holes there are aplenty. She already suspected that Gladys has been raised in a way more fitting for a son planning to climb the ranks at his father’s company than a daughter preparing to take her place in society, but even so, she is a little surprised by how skewed the girl’s skills are towards the things that interest her most – Gladys speaks German and Latin fluently, but her French is abominable; she’s an accomplished painter but an awkward dancer and seems to be utterly tone-deaf. In conversation she often manages to somehow be both too shy and too forthright. And her friends are few – which is, perhaps, no surprise, caught as she has been between the world of the working-class offspring among whom she spent her early childhood and the robber baron circles her father has now joined, with no way to enter the more rarified social sets into which Bertha means to bring her. But at least the senior staff seems to have imparted some household management skills to her – even if, according to Mrs. Bruce, Mr. Russell has always insisted his daughter be treated as a child and not the de-facto lady of the house – and Bertha never doubted the girl was clever and quick to learn.

So, with no time to waste, she starts interviewing French tutors and dancing masters, and taking Gladys along to charity meetings and afternoon teas just about as often as is acceptable for a girl who isn’t out yet. At one particularly dull meeting of a charity committee for war widows and orphans, she spots Gladys and Carrie Astor giggling together over tea and lemon biscuits and allows herself a small, pleased smile. For the most part, she puts her own social life on hold; it may be best, she decides, to let everyone get used to the idea of her marriage before she tries to worm her way back into the Academy of Music or Mrs. Astor’s ballroom. Instead, over the course of a month, Bertha rejects no less than a dozen candidates for the position of her lady’s maid – one too nervous, another too haughty; one too pious, another too coarse, and so on. In the end, she settles for a poised, comely, and sharply observant young woman called Turner who comes with decent references – even if the woman’s sly smiles do occasionally make her miss Gibson, her own longtime maid from the days of her first marriage, who moved on to a new employer months ago. In any case, filling the position at least gives her someone to talk to other than Mrs. Bruce and an increasingly busy, increasingly distant Aurora Fane.

All the while, Bertha scarcely sees her new husband. She isn’t self-important enough to think that he is avoiding her, but perhaps her presence has relieved him from any obligation he previously felt to be home in time to dine with his daughter. Bertha insists he accompany her to church each Sunday for the look of things, but whole weekdays go by in which their paths do not cross, with him already at the office by the time she ventures out of her room in the morning and still to return when she retires at night. Overall, they probably average no more than ten words of conversation a day; when they do speak, they limit themselves to either trivial pleasantries or businesslike exchanges in which he gives his swift approval to some home improvement scheme of hers or another.

It’s enough to make anyone scream. Oh, on the one hand, it’s everything she could possibly have asked for – she’s living in the lap of luxury, she has the engrossing kind of social project she has always delighted in keeping her days full and her mind occupied, and God knows she has more freedom now than she ever did when she had Lewis or her father looking over her shoulder. George Russell doesn’t care what books she borrows from his library or whether she reads his newspapers when he’s done with them. He doesn’t even seem particularly interested in what she does with his money. But she had thought – never mind. She had been wrong.

…

The most extensive conversation of their marriage so far occurs as Christmas approaches and is prompted by a young nobody named Archie Baldwin trying, via Gladys, to wrangle an invitation to the Russell dinner table.

To Bertha’s surprise, when they discuss it in his study after yet another dinner that her husband was not home for, Russell seems inclined, initially, to agree to Baldwin’s request. “Gladys is very fond of him,” he says. “And his father seems a decent enough fellow, from what I know of him.”

“No well-brought-up young man worth the name pursues a fifteen-year-old girl who isn’t even out yet,” she says firmly. “He wants her money and thinks she’s too young and inexperienced to tell the difference.”

Russell studies her across his desk for a long moment. It always unnerves her when he looks at her like this – penetrating and unflinching – if only because he does it so rarely. “That’s a little cynical, don’t you think?”

She resists the urge to snap that it’s better to be cynical than naïve. “You don’t need to take my word for it,” she suggests instead. “Invite the boy here. Tell him you’ll pay him off with some advantageous job if he’ll give up Gladys. See what he does in response.”

“I haven’t got an advantageous job to offer him,” he protests. She gives him a look. That really is the least of his problems at the moment.

“Then find one. What’s the point in having powerful friends if you can’t ask them for a favor when you need one?”

If he were to accuse her of cynicism again, she would probably deserve it, but instead – surprising her once more – he laughs, and not unkindly. “Alright,” he says. “We’ll do it your way.”

Chapter Text

Gladys has taken to calling it the most beautiful winter she can remember. Looking out the window at the icy brightness of the sky, George can see her point, although he knows the freshly fallen snow will have been trodden into slush by the time he leaves the office tonight – earlier than usual for him but still late by most standards, since he’s been the first to arrive and the last to leave for months now. Being married, he thinks drily, has done wonders for his efficiency. He barely reduced his hours for Christmas last month – just long enough to attend church with his family, present the newly minted Mrs. Russell with a heavy string of pearls, and receive the thanks she delivered with her usual frosty politeness – and as they make their way into the new year, even Clay, not prone to gossip, has made a few discreet inquiries into whether everything is quite all right at home.

Everything is, in fact, quite all right at home. Gladys is flourishing, happy about her growing circle of friends and the invitation they’ve extended to Archie Baldwin for this evening. The household is running smoothly under Mrs. Russell’s guidance, the renovations proceeding apace and the staff satisfied with their Christmas bonuses. More significantly, a kind of mutual respect seems to have grown between his wife and daughter: on the rare occasion that he does sit down for a meal with his little family, he scarcely has to speak a word, for conversation flows easily and sporadic laughter rings out without his intervention. His exceedingly well-mannered wife does an excellent job of disguising her efforts to avoid being in the same room as him at any cost, and it’s rare for him to catch so much as a glimpse of disdain upon her lovely face. He has absolutely nothing to complain about.

And yet, he knows he’s messed things up royally. That night after their wedding, he’d meant to reassure her again that he had no intention of forcing himself on her, but he’d been so woefully underprepared for the sight of her in that damnably sheer nightgown of hers that he’d ended up practically slamming the door in her face, all explanations forgotten. And since then, the ease that had been developing between them prior to the wedding has evaporated. When she brushed off his suggestion of inviting her son home for Christmas – afraid, no doubt, that he would infect her oh-so-carefully-bred son with his own low-class manners – he could almost feel the dislike rolling off of her in waves.

So, it is par for the course that she set Church to the task of reminding him about tonight’s small dinner party instead of doing it herself. Church dutifully brought it up twice – once last night, as he cleared away George’s port glass, and once again this morning, as he opened the front door for him. Both times, George told him to “reassure Mrs. Russell that I’ll be home with time to spare.” 

Time to spare may be an exaggeration, but he is in fact home and dressed for dinner by the time Mr. Baldwin is announced that evening. Looking at his pale, supercilious face, George is struck by the thought that his wife was correct to mistrust him. He may come from a respectable family and be not all that much older than Gladys, but it’s obvious from the start that he is no innocent. It makes George feel a great deal better about what he is about to do.

Nevertheless, the dinner goes smoothly; the staff, no doubt excited about this rare opportunity to entertain, has outdone itself, and young Master Baldwin says all the right things, complimenting the food, the house, the furnishings. Bertha, stunning in ivory and blue with her string of pearls looped thrice around her milky throat, is all smiles as she deflects some compliments and graciously accepts others, while Gladys is glowing, flattered by her suitor’s solicitousness.

As soon as the Baldwin boy has taken the last bite of his meringue, Bertha ushers Gladys out to the drawing room, casting a meaningful look at George over her shoulder as she goes.

In the end, it all proceeds much as Bertha expected; the scotch has barely been poured when the boy bursts out with the start of his little pitch. “I guess you want to know my intentions.” He hesitates for an almost imperceptible breath before adding, “Sir.”

“You’re very young to have intentions,” George says mildly. He’s deviating from the script slightly with this comment, but he can’t help his reaction.

“I’m twenty-four. It’s the same age my father was when he got married.”

So, they’re speaking openly about marriage already. In spite of himself – in spite of Bertha’s warnings – he is surprised. “And you want to marry my daughter.”

“I think she’s just about the best girl there is, sir.” No hesitation this time. “She’s clever and sensitive and beautiful –”

Flattery. Under other circumstances, it might not be the worst strategy. “You’re not courting me, Mr. Baldwin,” he interrupts.

The boy is clearly unused to being silenced mid-sentence. “No, sir.”

“You want to be an investment banker, I understand.”

“I am an investment banker, but not –”

“Not in a very exciting position?” The boy’s smirk turns ever-so-slightly embarrassed. If Gladys’ soft heart wasn’t hanging in the balance, George might be enjoying himself by now. “I can change that.”

Baldwin blinks, twice. “Pardon?”

“Here’s what I propose. You’ve heard of the Seligman brothers?”

“Who hasn’t?”

“They’re expanding fast. They have an interest in digging the new canal in Panama, and they invest in many railroads, including my own.” The boy is nodding along, clearly well-informed already. “I have spoken to Abraham Seligman, and he is prepared to take you on as a broker, with excellent prospects. In a few years, you could be a rich man.”

The poor boy’s slick façade is close to slipping completely. “I don’t know what to say.” He swallows. “But you won’t regret it, Mr. Russell. I promise I will make sure that Gladys –”

He thinks he’ll get the job and Gladys, too. George can practically see the dollar signs flashing before his eyes. “There are conditions,” he interrupts again, more firmly.

“Tell me.” The boy sits up a little straighter.

“You may send a final letter, and after that, you will never communicate with my daughter again.” He’s well aware of how compelling he can be when he sharpens his tone and stares someone down like this, but his conversational skills have abandoned him during so many of his recent interactions with his wife that it’s quite a relief to find he hasn’t lost his touch altogether. “You will not see her. And if you encounter each other socially, you will avoid any contact, providing you can do so without causing comment.” Bertha insisted upon that qualifier.

“But I – I thought –”

“You were mistaken, Mr. Baldwin.”

“And if I refuse?” He was just a bit too slow with that question, George thinks.

“If you refuse, which you are, of course, fully entitled to do, then things will continue as they are. And we can revisit the matter of Gladys’ future in a few years, once she has been brought out properly, and has had a chance to … consider her options.”

The boy opens his mouth, then closes it again. But it’s clear he’s only struggling with how to phrase what he wants to say. For him, this is a Hobson’s choice between the certainty of a large income now and the possibility of a larger dowry a few years down the road – if Gladys decides she still wants him once she’s seen who else is out there. Archie Baldwin, George can see, has already made up his mind.

…

“But what’s he done wrong?” They told Gladys to take a seat in the small sitting area outside of her bedroom, but she sprang back to her feet and started pacing as soon as George handed over the letter that was delivered earlier that afternoon. The boy writes as well as he speaks, it seems. Too well.

“Nothing,” George lies. “You’re too young for an engagement, that’s all.”

“If that were all, then you’d say we had to wait a few years, and I’d accept that, but instead –” Near tears, she starts to read out loud. “'Your father has asked for my word that we will not meet again. Or, if we do, that we should not attempt to speak in any private manner.'”

When she lowers the page, he sees that her tearfulness has been burned away by a flash of rage. Gladys may have her mother’s mild spirit, but there are times when he sees his own temper in her, and this is one of them. He and Bertha agreed they would try to conceal the worst of what happened after dinner yesterday, but clearly that won’t be possible.

“I suppose you bought him off. And if he took it, he wasn’t worthy of me.” Gladys crumples the letter in her fist. “This is your doing,” she spits at Bertha.

“Gladys Russell, mind your tone,” George snaps before this exchange can devolve any further. Bertha, beside him on the settee, touches his shoulder lightly to quiet him. It probably works better than she expected: even when she withdraws her hand, the echo of her touch remains, burning.

“You’re right on both counts,” she says. “This is my doing, because I have been in your position, and I know that a man who pursues a girl who isn’t yet of age and therefore has no other suitors as a basis for comparison is not to be trusted. And he wasn’t worthy of you. It’s for the best that we realized that at this point, before anything happened that’s harder to undo than a few letters and a dinner.”

Gladys sinks back into her seat like a deflated balloon. “I thought I loved him,” she says, sounding suddenly very young.

“I know,” Bertha says, with a terrible gentleness George hasn’t heard from her before. “It will get easier,” she continues. “With time. Most things do.”

He wonders, for a moment, if that last part was really meant for Gladys.

…

When he drifts awake to the faint sensation of warmth against his naked back – to a hand tracing the length of his arm, feather-light – his sleep-addled brain is at first convinced that Bertha has slipped into his bed under the cover of darkness. Then logic catches up to him, and he can’t get out of bed fast enough.

Match, lamp, robe. In the dim candlelight he recognizes the woman who woke him as his wife’s new maid, although if he ever knew her name, he cannot recall it now. “How did you get in here?” he hisses.

“Through the door,” she says idly, toying with the hem of a pillowcase. She seems more amused than anything else by his reaction.

“That –” he gestures in the general direction of her bare form “– is never going to happen.” Even if he didn’t have a wife right down the hall, he’s never been the type to search for diversions among his own household staff. Aside from the obvious moral issues, he values a peaceful home life too much.

“Really?” Her voice lilts. Her eyebrow quirks. He wonders if she’s tried this kind of thing before. “I believe you’re lonely. I’ve seen how Mrs. Russell treats you. She won’t give a man like you the time of day.” The woman – he still can’t remember her blasted name – sits up and lets her sheet – his sheet, that is – dip a little lower. “I know she’s barred you from her bedchamber. A lady’s maid always knows. She will never appreciate you the way that I can. The way I do.” As if she realizes that something she has said or done has hit a nerve, she smiles for the first time, warm and open, showing teeth. “Don’t you want a woman who thinks only of you?”

For a moment, just a moment, he can imagine it. Someone to laugh at his jokes, to rest her head against his knee and let him run his fingers through her hair. To light up whenever he enters the room. God help him, he is lonely. And Bertha, for all that she is his in name, is as much out of his reach as the stars on the far side of the galaxy.

But if he wants even the smallest chance of that changing one day, he could hardly do worse than to take her own maid into his bed. “I have no desire for a mistress,” he snaps. “Go back to your room now. Say nothing more, and we will never mention the subject again.”

Her smile doesn’t falter, but she blinks at him.

“My wife trusts you,” he sighs. He assumes this is true, at least; they’ve never discussed the matter, but he is vaguely aware that it took her some time to find a maid with whom she was satisfied, and he has no desire to force her to repeat the procedure. “I would not wish to spoil that for her because of your…misjudgment.”

He has to order her to go once more, but finally, she heeds him.

Left to himself in his room, then, he is suddenly so tired that it costs him a great deal of effort to put out the lamp. Reluctant to get back into bed, he settles into the nearest armchair with a spare blanket, but sleep eludes him. He feels the aching weight of his loneliness in a way he has not for a long, long time.

Chapter Text

It starts with small things – a hand laid casually against his upper arm on one day, then fingers pressed against the bare skin of his wrist, a hair’s breadth below the cuff of his coat sleeve, on the next. A raised eyebrow, a shared look that lasts just a moment too long. It takes Bertha some time to notice, and longer still until she can admit to herself the obvious truth: her husband has taken her maid into his bed.

Her own anger surprises her. It’s not as though she expected him to live the life of a monk; even men with normal marriages – men who don’t avoid their wives as though they carry some horrific infectious pathogen – keep mistresses, even if most of them, she hopes, have enough good sense to conduct their dalliances outside of their own houses. Fidelity may not be expected, but a certain level of discretion is. But then, she forgets sometimes that George isn’t of her own kind. Perhaps carrying on with one of your own servants is less frowned upon among newly minted railroad magnates.

In any case, there is little enough she can do. Firing the woman will only aggravate Russell and leave her with the added challenge of finding another adequate maid. After all, Turner, whatever her faults may be, is undeniably more than adequate in her work. And, as she often reminds herself, Bertha is not in a position to make demands of George. If she ordered him to set Turner aside, she might end up right where she was a few months ago – penniless, that is – with the stain of a failed marriage on her in addition. She’s not about to go begging to him for scraps of his esteem.

So, any rage she feels she folds up small, edges tucked in to prevent any leaks. She keeps her chin up and her face placid; she reminds herself of how much worse things could be. She’s far too good at this game to ever let her smile fall – at least, not while anyone might see.

…

Aurora drops by the Russell house for tea for the first time on a sun-soaked April Tuesday. They sit in the pale-green-and-gold drawing room to chatter about Aurora’s role in the ongoing efforts to join the Dispensary for Poor Women and Children with the Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children – Bertha privately hopes a new, slightly less dreary name is a part of the plan – and Bertha flatters her friend, who has shepherded two daughters through their debuts, by asking for minor advice regarding Gladys: which seamstress to take her to, how fashionable the pianoforte is versus the harp these days, that kind of thing.

After three quarters of an hour, Aurora sets down her teacup and smiles slyly. “Do I get to see the rest of this grand house?”

Bertha bites back her smirk. She knew when she invited her that Aurora wouldn’t be able to resist a tour of this place, even if her husband surely gave her hell about setting foot in “that ghastly man’s ostentatious mansion.”

“Of course,” she says. “Come with me.” They do a quick turn around the public-facing rooms downstairs, many of which now bear at least slight traces of her touch, before Bertha leads Aurora over to her pride and the house’s crowning glory: the newly finished ballroom. Including her study and her bedchamber, the ballroom is the only place in the house that truly feels like hers. She hand-selected every detail, from the width of the decorative carved and gilt-edged panels that frame each doorway to the exact shade of wood used for the polished parquet flooring. The result, if Bertha may say so herself, is stunning.

“It’s magnificent,” Aurora marvels. She turns in a slow circle in the center of the room, her head tilted back so she can take in the swirls of gilt above her. Bertha is reminded of the adolescent Aurora at their first shared dancing lessons and feels a sudden swell of tenderness for her.

“I expect you're rather sorry you settled on the armory for your charity bazaar,” she laughs, and Aurora nods ruefully. “Well, if the armory falls through, you can always come here. You’re always welcome, you know that.”

“I do admire you,” Aurora says thoughtfully. “I was worried about you, but – you’re making the best of things.”

For a moment, Bertha is so tempted to pour her heart out about the state of her marriage – if one can even call it that – that she has to literally bite her tongue. She and Aurora have traded plenty of confidences over the years – shared complaints about oppressively strict fathers and rebellious children and unsatisfying marriage beds – but that was back when their situations in life were more or less the same. How could she possibly make Aurora understand all the ways in which George Russell both is and isn’t exactly what she feared?

“Oh, do show me what you’ve done with the music room,” Aurora says, tucking her arm into Bertha’s, and just like that, the moment for confessions has passed.

…

Not a week later, she finds out from the Times that the armory has, in fact, fallen through, and so Aurora’s bazaar will be held instead at the expensive but decidedly-less-fashionable-than-it-used-to-be Fifth Avenue Hotel. Although she throws the paper and her breakfast tray besides, she’s not nearly as angry at Aurora as she is at herself.

She stares down at the mess she’s made of her breakfast on the hardwood floor – blessedly, the carpet has been spared – and ponders the relative advantages of trying to clean it up herself versus ringing for a maid. As it turns out, the decision is taken out of her hands by the housemaid dusting down the hall, who, having heard the commotion is at her door before Bertha has fully decided what to do. Well, she was leaning towards the latter option anyway.

“I’m afraid I’ve been terribly clumsy this morning,” she says apologetically, as the wide-eyed girl sets about soaking up spilled coffee with a napkin.

“I’ll need to fetch more rags, madam,” she says. “Would you like a fresh tray?”

“No,” Bertha decides. “But send Turner up, please.” She’s wide awake and may as well get dressed; she could hardly settle back down now for her usual leisurely cup of coffee and half-hour with the society pages, normally the quietest part of her days.  

This deviation from her usual schedule, however, means that George is still at home finishing his breakfast when she ventures downstairs, and they end up passing each other in the hall.

He takes one look at her face and does a slight double-take, that crease between his brows deepening. “Has something happened?”

She means to brush him off, she really does, but before she can stop herself the whole story is spilling out of her. “I’ve known Aurora Fane my whole life,” she finishes bitterly. “We’re first cousins, did you know that? I carried her train at her wedding, and now she won’t even deign to set foot in my ballroom. And I had to find out about it from the Times.”

“I’m sorry,” he says gently. She expected either pity or impatience from him, but more than anything else, he looks guilty. “I know it’s little consolation, but it’s nothing to do with you. It’s difficult to fault her for not wanting to be publicly associated with me.”

“Well, she ought to grow a backbone.”

“No one could accuse you of needing more backbone,” he says lightly. “Have a little pity on the rest of us mere mortals.”

He squeezes her shoulder as he leaves, the most intimacy she’s had from him since the morning of their wedding. She wouldn’t have thought it possible, but he’s actually made her feel a bit better – enough, at least, to prevent any further outbursts. No doubt the staff will be relieved.

…

When the day of the bazaar rolls around, George is strangely insistent about their needing to show their faces at the opening. Bertha thought that it might be best, strategically, for them to make their entrance later in the day and thereby duck Mrs. Astor, and she fully expected to have to drag George there by the ear, since it seems like the absolute last place he would like to spend a Saturday morning, but in the end, and at his urging, they sweep into the hotel at ten a.m. sharp. It gives them just enough time to notice that the hall is, in fact, decidedly less impressive than their ballroom – although, to be fair, most rooms in New York City are less impressive than their ballroom – before Mrs. Astor opens the bazaar with the kind of disproportionate grandeur that only she could possibly pull off. A queen among her people, Aurora likes to call her. A marvel.

Of course, Aurora would never do anything to upset her. She’s never liked needling Mrs. Astor the way Bertha has often enjoyed doing, not even when they were younger and carefree.

“Ah, Mrs. Fane,” George says loudly, too loudly, as Aurora bustles towards them, doing her best impression of the effortless way Mrs. Astor commands the room. “How nice to see you again. And is Mr. Fane here?”

Aurora regards him as one might regard a particularly unpredictable wild animal. “He’s hoping to look in later.”

“Then he may miss it.” Bertha blinks, uncertain if she’s misheard him. No one will believe her when she swears, afterwards, that she had no idea what he was about to do.

“I don’t understand,” Aurora laughs lightly.

“You will,” he says, and suddenly there is steel in his too-loud voice. “So, you and your friends decided my wife's ballroom was not good enough to raise money for your charity?”

The color drains from Aurora’s face, although Bertha can’t be sure if it’s out of guilt or embarrassment at the scene he’s starting to cause. A part of Bertha wants to quiet him. Another, a larger part, can’t wait to see how this will play out. “Mr. Russell, there's no need –” Aurora starts, but he ignores her, seemingly unaware of his unspeakable rudeness as he turns his back on her and strides towards the nearest stall and the pink-cheeked, dark-haired girl selling little embroidered needle cases there.

“How much money do you hope to raise over the next three days?”

The girl looks as if her fainting is not out of the question, but to her credit, she answers promptly. “I suppose I'm hoping for thirty … or even forty dollars?”

“Here's one hundred dollars,” he announces with the finality of an auctioneer declaring something sold. He pulls a crisp banknote out of his billfold, and the girl goes paler still at his having such an incomprehensibly large amount at hand like that. Her eyes flicker, perhaps involuntarily, towards Bertha, who makes sure her face is politely neutral. It wouldn’t do to be seen smiling at this point, even if the realization of what he’s doing has brought with it a small but irrepressible frisson of delight. “On one condition.”

She looks almost afraid to ask. “What?”

“Everything on this stall must be delivered to my house on Fifth Avenue within the hour.” His voice has taken on a briskly efficient tone, as though he has switched from actively putting on a show to ticking his way down a list. Bertha supposes there’s a logic to that. The focus of the whole bazaar is on him; he could reduce his volume to a whisper and the young women in the far corner would still hear every word. “This is my card,” George continues. “Can you do it?”

“Uh, yes? I suppose we can.” She grips the proffered banknote and card between delicate gloved fingers, handling it as gingerly as a bomb that might explode at any moment. “Thank you?”

“You will also close and dismantle your stall,” he orders. The crowd murmurs. Bertha hears shock and disapproval on the surface, of course, but there’s also a clear undertone of glee. This is, no doubt, the greatest drama many of them have witnessed in some time.

The first girl begins dutifully packing up her needle cases, and George turns his attention to the glove-seller to her right. “This is my address on Fifth Avenue,” he says. “One hundred dollars. I'm buying everything, but it must be delivered within the hour. And the stall will be closed and taken down at once.”

“Bertha, for God’s sake, can't you stop this?” someone behind her hisses. Bertha turns to see the pale, pinched face of Anne Morris, Aurora’s perpetual partner in crime.

“Why?” She arches an eyebrow. “The bazaar will be the most successful of the season.”

“It won't help you, you know,” Anne huffs. “This sort of stunt does not impress the people you want to win over.”

“Oh, Anne,” she says, almost indulgently. “This sort of stunt impresses everyone.”

“One hundred dollars, Miss Brook?” George is addressing a pretty young blonde whom Bertha vaguely recognizes as their neighbor and one of Gladys’ new friends.

Unlike virtually everyone else in the room except for Bertha and George himself, Miss Brook is suppressing a grin, and her eyes are sparkling. “I feel I should say five hundred, and we could transform the whole endeavor,” she laughs. “But I'll take one hundred.”

Bertha is standing close enough to hear her say something under her breath that sounds an awful lot like “It's not every day you get to watch Sherman march into the sea.”

“Well,” George announces grandly. “I think that's everyone. Your party's over, Mrs. Fane.” Bertha is struck by the ridiculous thought that he would have made a more-than-decent circus ringmaster in another lifetime. “You are to be congratulated. It's been a great success. And now it's time to go home.” He offers Bertha his arm in an exaggerated show of chivalry. “Are you ready, my dear?”

Perhaps she should take him to task for making such a spectacle of them, she thinks as he helps her into their carriage outside. But she already knows she won’t. She realized even before they were wed that he wouldn’t suffer any insult against her, but she could never have imagined how public a show he would make of defending her, or how much she would relish it when he did.

“I rather enjoyed that,” he smirks as he settles into the seat beside her, and the carriage jolts into motion at his knock. She is not quite sure who first reaches for the other’s hand – she thinks it might have been he – but in any case, she curls her fingers around his and squeezes lightly.

He’s gone to bat for her, she thinks as they spend the rest of the ride in a comfortable silence, so it’s only fair if she does the same for him. It’s time for her to step up her efforts on Gladys’ behalf. That means this spat with Aurora needs to be put to bed, and then the two of them together can approach Ward McAllister for assistance. New York society is about to find out just how much she can do for the Russell family – her family – now that she has really put her mind to it.

Chapter Text

As spring progresses, George can’t help but become increasingly aware of every skirmish in the war his wife is waging – ostensibly on his behalf – on New York society. This loss of blissful ignorance occurs partly because things have been easier between them since the now-infamous charity bazaar and he no longer feels the urge to avoid his own house quite so studiously, and partly because Bertha’s plans do occasionally require his presence as well as his pocketbook. (They’ve now hosted more than one luncheon at which Ward McAllister has been the guest of honor; George privately considers the man an insufferable blowhard, and Bertha seems disinclined to argue the point, instead merely insisting that his approval is essential to Gladys’ future.)

Mostly, however, it’s because Gladys has now stormed into his study on more than one occasion to complain about the fact that her stepmother has taken exacting control over every aspect of her life, from what she wears each time she leaves the house to which pieces she learns on the piano. The first time, George just reminded her that it was only for a few more months – the date of Gladys’s coming out ball had already been set for the autumn – and then she would be an officially grown woman with all her freedom returned to her and then some, and Gladys sighed but grudgingly accepted that. This second time, Gladys is not so easily placated. And George himself is becoming a little irritated about the extent to which Bertha is discouraging Gladys from spending time with Miss Brook, whom he likes, and pressuring her instead to hang around young Miss Astor, to whom he is indifferent. He’s vaguely aware, by osmosis, that Miss Brook is a penniless nobody with only a half-decent pedigree, but still, the whole thing strikes him as a little mercenary, even by his standards.

And so, reluctantly – things have been going so well – he brings up the subject over breakfast one day. Bertha has taken to venturing downstairs early once or twice a week and joining him for the tail end of his morning cup of coffee, asking him questions about his plans for the day and listening intently to the answers; occasionally she’ll offer him some incisively pertinent insight into one of the men he’ll be meeting later. It’s fast become one of his favorite parts of the day.

“Gladys tells me you’ve been quite hard on her lately,” he says that morning, as mildly as he can manage. Gladys has, in fact, not phrased her complaints quite so diplomatically, but he sees no reason to turn this into an argument right off the bat.

Bertha seems neither surprised nor offended by the comment. “You married me to manage Gladys’ debut, so let me manage it,” she says airily. She rises, elegant as always, and busies herself with straightening one of the floral centerpieces to indicate she considers the matter closed.

There are many things he could say in response to that, and some he probably should, but the first thing that comes to mind is That wasn’t the only reason. It’s on the very tip of his tongue, and it takes such effort to bite it back that by the time he’s recovered his powers of speech, she has already changed the topic to the state of Julius Cuyper’s finances, and all his plans to insist that Gladys needs a little more freedom will have to wait for some other day.

…

When news of the train crash reaches them from Millbourne, Pennsylvania – via Church, who interrupts dinner to whisper gravely in George’s ear that Clay is there at the house long after working hours have ended and wants to see George very urgently – George isn’t really surprised, just resigned. His tendency to expect the worst has served him well in life, and he’s been so lucky for so long — his riskiest investments paying off, his bluffs not called, his rivals never quite as clever as he expects — that it was only a matter of time, he has always known, before something calamitous occurred. And so, where another man might rage against the injustice of it all, he can do naught but greet misfortune like an old friend, with an oh, it’s you, you’re back again.

“They say the three dead are men, so far, but we can’t count on it,” Clay is telling him when Bertha knocks on his study door and, without waiting for a response, slips inside.

She seems at least as well-informed as George himself is; whether that’s because she has been listening at the door or because she gathered data from the servants, George does not bother to inquire. He isn’t surprised she’s chosen to involve herself in the discussion; she’s savvy enough to know that this is the kind of thing that will trickle into every aspect of their lives. “It’s so awful,” she says. “Do we have a number for the injured?”

“Not yet,” Clay tells them both. “Scores, at least.”

She’s a little paler than usual, but if George might once have expected a woman of her breeding to swoon at news like this, the past few months have taught him better. “Can I do anything?” she asks. Her voice is steady.

He’s about to assure her that of course there isn’t, that he has everything under control and there’s no need for her to worry, when it occurs to him that there is, in fact, something she can do. “You’ve been in contact with Miss Barton, haven’t you?”

“A little,” she says slowly. He can practically see the cogs in her brain turning. “Promoting the Red Cross is more Anne Morris’ project, but I’ve made a few donations lately, just in case –”

“Just in case something like this happened,” George finishes. He isn’t surprised, either, to learn she shared his unspoken conviction that something like this would strike them one day. “Wire Miss Barton with the details and ask her to get to Millbourne if she can. I’ll meet her there tomorrow. Please say we’ll give her whatever she may need.”

“Do you want me to come with you?” Bertha asks.

“It might be good optics –” Clay starts.

“No.” George interrupts. “Wire Miss Barton, and then you and Gladys should both stay out of public view for a little while.” A crash like this could bring him and his company down, he knows that, depending on how things play out and whose side the press takes. But there’s no reason for Bertha to be brought low alongside him. She has already survived one disgraced husband; she can survive another.

He doesn’t say any of that out loud, of course, but from the searching look she gives him as she leaves his study – to compose the message to Miss Barton as instructed while he and Clay discuss strategies for controlling the news coverage – he thinks she understands already.

…

Despite his best intentions of keeping both Bertha and Gladys as uninvolved in the unfolding disaster as possible, he finds himself discussing each new development with Bertha almost as soon as he hears of it – over breakfast, in his study in the evening, in the sun-soaked morning room on Sundays after church. She’s a calm, keen listener, and that keeps him sane as it becomes clear that the crash was caused by more than just some stroke of bad luck.

“One of the axles broke,” he tells her, a week after the news first reached them.

“How could that be?” He may well be imagining the hard note of accusation in her voice, but if he’s not, he can hardly blame her. She knows better than anyone how much pride he takes in his work.

“It was substandard,” he admits bitterly. “All of the axles on the engine were substandard. Someone in my organization used old and damaged axles on the engine, stealing my money and killing five men –” the death toll has risen from three to five in recent days, and it’s small comfort that he’s been assured that it’s unlikely to increase further “– in the process.”

“We must try and control the damage,” she murmurs.

Even as he reassures her that the company’s stock price seems to be climbing back, he knows that’s not what she means.

“Can you manage the papers?” Her voice, even now, is as calm and firm as ever. So far, she has taken each new piece of news with far more equanimity than he could possibly have hoped for, but he knows that cannot last.

“Within limits. Unless it goes to trial.” He pauses, wonders if it might be better to keep the newest revelation to himself just a little while longer. He’s not quite ready to return home one evening and find that she’s vanished, taken the jewelry and all her fine clothes and run. “I was told today that the police found the man responsible for the axles. Dixon,” he spits the name. “He’s the head of the team that built the engine.”

Her eyes narrow, cat-like. “Well, that’s good, isn’t it?”

“He’s told them I gave the order.”

Bertha flicks a dismissive hand. “That’s ridiculous.”

And it is, oh, it is. And yet – “The police say he has proof,” he says. “Written proof.”

He tries to imagine what will be left when the dust settles. A man and his daughter, heading west on someone else’s train with only the clothes on their backs, perhaps, planning to start anew. Even in the best-case scenarios he imagines, the man’s wife is long gone.

…

“Church said you were here,” Bertha calls as she strides into the dining room a week later, in a whirl of swishing blue-silk skirts and clicking high heels. It’s late; the west-facing open-curtained windows reveal an ink-dark sky.

“I told him to,” George says. After the afternoon he’s just had – a long meeting with his lawyers, poring over a note that he has no memory of but may, in fact, have written under any number of circumstances, followed by a longer-still debrief with Clay – he’s determined not to put off this conversation with Bertha any more. “I hope you don’t mind that I haven’t changed,” he says, momentarily distracted by the fact that, despite the hour, Bertha is attired so elegantly she looks ready to host royalty.

“Not at all,” she says, a little impatiently. She takes the seat at his right hand. “Did the lawyers keep you this late?”

“No, but after they’d gone, I stayed talking to Clay.” He shakes his head. The man’s loyalty hasn’t faltered yet, any more than Bertha’s has. “Poor devil. I doubt anyone’s kept dinner for him.”

“And?” She’s not even trying to hide her impatience anymore.

He rubs a hand against his temple tiredly, then pushes his plate away and turns so he and Bertha are fully facing one another. “There will be hearing to determine if a crime has been committed and, if so, whether it should go for trial.”

“But haven’t they already found the man to blame?”

“That depends. Some people may think the man to blame is your husband.”

She waves that away. “How can anyone believe you’d make direct contact with some minor little cog like Dixon? It’s absurd.”

“It’s not,” he sighs. “I do write notes to people in every department. They can prove that easily enough.” The price is ridiculous. Find a cheaper option. I don’t care what it takes or how you do it. It certainly sounds like him.

He reaches out to cover her hand where it is resting lightly against the tabletop. He hasn’t yet grown used to how slim and warm it feels beneath his, and now he never will.

“Prison is a very real possibility, Bertha,” he tells her. She starts to shake her head, to pull away, but he holds fast. “Listen to me. If I’m put on trial, you ought to consider that divorce might be the lesser of two evils for you.”

She laughs out loud at that. “What?”

“It will be a scandal, I know, but better than the alternative.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she snaps. “It won’t come to that.”

“But –”

“No,” she says sharply, and tugs her hand out of his grip. “I won’t hear of it.” Abruptly, she stands and strides for the door, throwing it open. When she turns back to look at him from the threshold, her face is ablaze with fury. “You give up far too easily,” she rages. She doesn’t do anything as uncouth as slam the door, of course, but when it clicks shut behind her, he flinches, nonetheless.

Chapter Text

Do you never doubt? He asks her that one day, and the honest answer is that she has doubts aplenty, but not when it comes to this. She’s never once for a moment believed that George might have caused the train crash by cutting a few corners. She knows the man – he may be ruthless, he may be avaricious, but he’s not sloppy, and using old and damaged axles on a train engine is sloppy. And she simply has too much faith in the world order to doubt that before long, the judge at the hearing – if not everyone else – will come to the same conclusion.

“No,” she says crisply. “Not about this.”

“You hearten me.” His fingers are entwined with hers, which is no longer an unusual occurrence. He touches her often – casually, thoughtlessly – and sometimes she catches him watching her when he thinks she isn’t paying attention. She’s pleased by how much he’s come to rely on her: she’s self-aware enough to admit to herself that she’s always liked being needed.

And yet, increasingly, it bothers her that hers isn’t the only support on which he can lean. He and Turner may have become more subtle recently, but there’s still enough of a charge between them when they’re in a room together that Bertha can’t trick herself into thinking she was mistaken about them. It’s both a vindication and a relief when Gladys’ friend Miss Brook squirms through an awkward tea explaining that Turner has been seen, in public, with a man — ostensibly Miss Brook’s flawlessly pedigreed cousin. Oh, but this is too good. She’s quite certain she gives no indication of it to Miss Brook, but she wants to throw her arms around the girl in gratitude. She has the reason she needs to send Turner away, and George can hardly object now that the maid is tied up with yet another man so scandalously that others have noticed.

She brings it up with George, offhandedly — she’s doing some of the best acting of her life these days — later that afternoon, after checking in on him and his paperwork to make sure he hasn’t lost track of time and forgotten – again – that dinner is near. Sometimes she thinks he wouldn’t eat at all these days if she didn’t make him.

“I’m going up to change,” she announces, voice light. “Turner will be waiting.” She heads for the door, then pauses. “By the way—” she adds, as if it has only just occurred to her. “Miss Brook called this afternoon, asking me to dismiss her.”

“What?” He seems surprised but not concerned as he turns in his seat to face her. “You’re to dismiss Turner?”

“Isn’t it strange? Mrs. Van Rhijn thinks she’s been having an affair. I’m not completely sure, but I think the culprit must be her son.”

“Oscar van Rhijn? I had a letter from him today.”

Well, either feelings between him and Turner have cooled dramatically, or he’s an even better actor than she is. He appears more interested in the mention of the van Rhijn boy – the van Rhijn man, she supposes she ought to call him, he’s closer to her age than Gladys’ – than in the discussion about Turner.

“What did he want?”

“Just to lend me a bit of support.”

She hums dismissively. That useless dandy is hankering after Gladys, no doubt. She may not know him well, but it’s well enough for her not to trust him.

“So will you? Fire Turner?” George has turned back to his paperwork.

She watches his face carefully as she responds. “Do you think I should?”

“It’s not for me to say,” he answers, and that seems to be all he has to offer on the matter, for he’s paging through his letters again now and says no more.

A small, petty part of her is practically giddy at the thought of finally seeing the back of Turner after all these months of trying to convince herself she can stand her just fine.

“Turner, I’ve been thinking,” she muses, thirty minutes later, as the maid fastens a heavy silver necklace around her throat. “I wonder if it isn’t time for us to take a rest from each other.”

In the mirror, Bertha can see Turner’s fingers twitch as she fastens the clasp, and for a wild moment she wonders if the maid will outright try to strangle her. But of course, that isn’t her style. Women like her will always stay sickly sweet on the surface.

“We don’t get on as we used to,” Bertha shrugs. She is rather enjoying this.

“Is this Mr. Russell’s idea? Because —”

“Why, has he tired of you lately?” Turner’s mouth twists. “No, it’s not his idea. But he’s asked me to give you a good reference, and despite some misgivings, I will. There’s no need to imply your work’s not excellent.” George has asked her to do no such thing, of course, but it will be worth it to see the back of her.

“He —” Turner looks like she might to absolutely anything in that moment. Scream, throw something. Instead, with what appears to be a supreme effort, she pinches her mouth shut.

“What were you going to say?” Bertha busies herself with fastening her earrings, then rubbing lotion into her hands and wrists.

“Nothing, madam,” Turner says from behind her. “It’s only that next time, you really ought to speak to your husband before you let jealousy get the better of you.”

She’s gone before Bertha can ask what that is supposed to mean.

…

That night, Bertha knocks on the door that Mrs. Bruce pointed out as George’s on her very first day as mistress of this house. She’s had no reason to go near it since.

“Bertha?” He’s confused and somewhat bleary-eyed as he ushers her inside, but aside from his coat and tie, he’s fully dressed, thank God for small mercies.

“What happened between you and Turner?” He – or Stanford White, more likely – did well in designing this room, some distant corner of her brain notes idly. With its crimson velvet hangings and carved mahogany furnishings, it is vast but still manages to feel inviting.

“Turner?” he repeats. “Your maid?”

Impatiently, she waves away his show of confusion. “I thought she was your mistress, but –”

He looks rather like he’s managing to choke on thin air – or perhaps his own tongue – at that. “You thought what?”

She blinks at him pointedly. She’s not going to repeat it.

“What on Earth made you think that?”

“She seemed … overly familiar with you.”

“Familiar,” he mutters. “That’s one way of putting it.” Then, louder: “She came into my room one night and … propositioned me, I suppose. I sent her away. That was the end of it, I swear to you.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did you send her away?”

There’s any number of perfectly valid reasons she’d accept from him in this moment. He takes his wedding vows seriously on principle; he has either moral or logistical objections – or both – to the practice of making a lover of an employee; he finds Turner annoying; she simply isn’t his type. But what she isn’t expecting is what he blurts out next, seemingly against his will.

“Because I knew it would ruin any chance that I might have with you!”

That stops her short. With her. With the wife he chose for rigorously pragmatic reasons, towards whom he has been so careful, these past few months, to never show the slightest hint of attraction. She shakes her head as if to try and nudge this new piece of information into place. “But I don’t understand,” she says slowly. “I am your wife. You could have come to me at any time…”

He’s pacing now, and under other circumstances she might be amused to see his composure, which has held fast through all the trials and tribulations of the last few weeks, fail him now. “And had you gritting your teeth throughout our time together? You must think very little of me if you think I’m the kind of man who would force his attentions on someone unwilling.”

“I am not unwilling,” she snaps. She may as well make herself as plain as possible, seeing as stripping half-naked on their wedding night seems not to have sufficed. “I don’t know what I possibly could have done to give you that impression. You ridiculous man.” But she says it fondly, because she can see it all so clearly now – how he must have stumbled his way through the awkwardness of that wedding night encounter, blinded by his good intentions.

He opens his mouth, then closes it again. So, she has finally managed to strike the great George Russell speechless. With an almost scientific fascination, she watches a muscle in his jaw twitch slightly. The look on his face – those flashing coal-dark eyes – they strike her breathless. She couldn’t manage to speak now, either, even if she wanted to, she realizes, and that is her last conscious thought for some time. For then she is in his arms, and his fingers are grasping at her waist while hers twist into his hair, and every last inch of her glows warm.

…

Despite all the many, varied pleasures of that night – the way he cocks an eyebrow and asks her will I do? when she undresses him, which makes her roll her eyes and tell him that fishing for compliments is beneath him; the wet warmth of his tongue tracing the shell of her ear; the scratch of his beard against her inner thighs; the low rumble of appreciative laughter she can feel as well as hear deep in his chest whenever he coaxes a sound he particularly likes from her – the thing that will remain the most distinct in her memory long into the future is laying with her head pillowed against his chest afterward, in the small hours of the morning, listening to his heart beat and feeling his hand stroking through her unbound hair.

…

As wildly irrational as it is, she is tempted to cancel her and Gladys’ planned trip to stay with the Fanes in Newport and instead simply spend her summer days haunting the halls of this house, waiting for George to return home from the office each evening so that she can spend every possible minute in his company. If she were twenty or so years younger, she might do it, too, but – as she reminds herself frequently – she’s far too old for flights of fancy, and with the train crash hearing looming, it’s more important than ever that they put on a show of acting as if nothing is wrong.

So, she and Gladys leave Manhattan on a morning in June as cloudlessly blue as any in a fairytale. The proud smile on her face is unfeigned as Gladys keeps her chin up while the footman helps her into the carriage. This graceful young woman is a far cry from the awkward girl she met this past fall.

As promised, George sends her near-daily updates on the hearing via telegraph. Even in his pared-down, neutral sentences, she can feel his mounting worries, and her own fears grow to match until her smile freezes on her face during tennis matches and promenades along the beach. When his message arrives on what is scheduled to be the last day of the hearing, nearly a month into her time in Newport, her hands tremble so badly she almost has to ask one of the servants to unfold it. Then she has to read the words cleared of all suspicion thrice before they finally sink in. She skims the rest of the message – something about their neighbor Miss Brook and George’s own stenographer, of all people – before she feels happy laughter of the kind she has not indulged in since she was a child bubble out of her.

He arrives at the Fanes’ Newport cottage the next day. From around the cream-lace curtains trimming the sitting room window, Bertha sees the carriage pull up outside the front door, and as a familiar figure descends, she’s reminded suddenly of her first glimpse of him – of watching the brim of his hat disappear beneath the awning over the doorway of her father’s house, back when she could not possibly have imagined what he would come to mean to her. She rushes down the stairs as if she were a girl of Gladys’ age and is in his arms before he’s even made it across the threshold.

There’ll be gossip about her behavior later, no doubt – they’re in full sight of a half a dozen servants – but just at this moment, she cannot bring herself to care.

Chapter Text

When Bertha invites her son to spend the summer holidays in Newport with them, it feels to George like a greater sign of acceptance than anything else has in their relationship. If she’s finally given up on her unspoken mission to keep him as far from her son as possible, then it means that not only has she fully accepted him into her life, but she also wants what they have to last.

For that reason alone, he would be glad to meet Larry Randolph, who tumbles haphazardly out of a carriage in front of the Fane’s cottage on a breezily pleasant day in late June, with his hair turning into a riotous mop despite liberally applied pomade and the strap of the satchel slung over his shoulder tugging his collar askew. (Bertha sighs in fond exasperation at the sight of him.) But as it turns out, George also likes the boy for his own sake – his inherent good-naturedness is evident at first glance, and the quick wit and capacity for strong feelings he inherited from his mother are clear to anyone who spends more than ten minutes in his company. He also acts unfazed by the sudden introduction of a stepfather into his life; he seems to have decided that as long as his mother is happy enough, her marriage is none of his business, which does make the atmosphere easier.

Although Larry is well-read enough to carry out a decent conversation on any number of topics, it quickly becomes obvious to George that his true passion is architecture, and that only politeness is keeping him from inundating Mrs. Fane, his godmother, with a constant stream of ideas for renovations. Although this means that George can do less for him than if he’d shown an aptitude for banking or civil engineering, he does put him in touch with Stanford White, and the disbelieving wide grin Larry gives in response is almost as satisfying as Bertha’s delicately curved half-smile. Almost.

The summer passes faster than he would have believed possible, with George spending weekdays working long hours in the city so that he can take the ferry to Newport each Friday to delight in Bertha’s company. The children are out of the house with their friends often enough that July, full of Saturday evening walks along the beach and lazy Sunday mornings, feels like the honeymoon they never had. All too soon, Larry is back at Cambridge with a promise of an apprenticeship at White’s firm in his back pocket, and the Fanes’ cottage is closed down for the season as New York society descends upon Manhattan once again. George would be indifferent to the change of scenery, but the end of the summer means that Bertha throws herself into planning Gladys’ ball with a fury that even the most dedicated businessmen, George included, would find intimidating. He scarcely sees either his wife or his daughter from August to October, busy as they are with their plan to wrangle Mrs. Astor into appearing – which, as far as George can tell, seems to boil down to making the ball sound so appealing that the youngest Astor daughter won’t be able to stand being left out. He feels an unexpected stab of sympathy for the great Lina Astor: everyone knows that her husband deigns to set foot in his own home no more than once a year, and now her daughter is being pitted against her, too. He wouldn’t have been able to stand a falling out with Gladys, either, in the days when it was just the two of them. The whole plot is, he must admit, quite brilliant in its simplicity.

The most effective plans are often the simplest, he reflects as he pages through a clerk’s report on Kneynsberg and Cuyper just hours before the ball is scheduled to begin. A little old-fashioned blackmail, for example. Also on the desk in front of him is a spare invitation he filched from Bertha’s desk a few days ago and ordered his newly hired replacement stenographer to address. He isn’t quite as confident in his social maneuvering skills as Bertha is, and if this doesn’t work out, he doesn’t want her to know.

“Mr. Cuyper is here, Mr. Russell,” Clay announces, and George rises.

“It’s kind of you to see me,” Cuyper says with all the unforced joviality of a man who has enjoyed every imaginable privilege since birth.

“Not at all.” George matches his tone. “Shall we get straight to the point?”

He’s smiling slightly, which Cuyper clearly takes as a good sign. “We’re good for the loan?”

“Yes. You may have overextended yourselves a little, but there is nothing fundamentally wrong with Kneynsberg and Cuyper.” All of this is true enough. “So, I'll have the papers drawn up for signature.”

“Thank you.” Cuyper is, George notes idly, being borderline rude with his eagerness to be out of this office, as though low birth is catching. “Now, I shan't take up any more of your valuable time.”

“There is one more thing…” George interrupts the man’s not-so-graceful exit. “An invitation to a ball my wife is giving this evening – for you and Mrs. Cuyper. I look forward to seeing you there.”

Cuyper regards the outstretched invitation as if it might bite him. “Alas, with no warning…” he begins delicately. “I'm now sure our diaries will allow it.”

“I’ve not made myself clear. I will see you there, if you want the loan.” Cuyper suddenly bears a striking resemblance to a goldfish, as he gulps wordlessly. George bites back a smile at how delighted Bertha will be when she sees Mrs. Cuyper sweep into her ballroom tonight. “Don’t think you can go elsewhere. I have a list of reasons why not to invest in your bank, and I will send it to anyone you approach.”

“Isn’t that against the law?”

Ha. He knows exactly how likely it is that Cuyper, left vulnerable by his depleted cash reserves, will approach his lawyers with this.

“You are not a gentleman, sir,” Cuyper says in a low voice, as if he cannot think of any greater insult. But George has never had much patience for people who tell him things he already knows. “Very well. I will attend. But I cannot promise that my wife will.”

The thought of Cuyper venturing into the Russell ballroom alone is so amusing that George is almost tempted to agree to this compromise. But of course, it’s Virginia Cuyper whose presence really matters, and besides, Bertha will be annoyed if someone unbalances the numbers tonight. “The loan hinges on her presence.”

“But suppose she is engaged tonight?”

The man’s protestations are becoming a bit boring. “I am sure, when you explain the situation, she will find that she can join us after all.”

George’s smile grows as Cuyper is ushered out of his office. Tonight is shaping up to be quite the success despite everything. Bertha will be pleased.

…

Any concerns George may have harbored about possibly having to waltz around an empty ballroom are long allayed by ten o’clock that night, when the steady stream of arrivals has thickened enough that the borrowed footmen are starting to look a bit overwhelmed. Although it has long been his habit to avoid social events of this size, he is thoroughly enjoying himself; Bertha looks regal at his side in a striking black-and-white ensemble unlike anything else on display tonight, and Gladys looks so grown-up in the floating lilac gown Bertha chose for her that he sometimes feels he has to blink hard in order to recognize her. He could have sworn she was a child small enough to perch on his knee just yesterday.

“Mr. and Mrs. Julius Cuyper,” Church announces. While Cuyper looks as if there’s something unpleasant-smelling directly beneath his nose, his wife is putting on a better show, with a serene expression to rival Bertha’s.

Bertha herself, meanwhile, allows herself no sign of surprise save for a slightly raised eyebrow. “Oh? How did you manage that?” Her head is inclined towards George’s, close enough for him to catch a trace of the faintly floral scent of her hair.

“I just asked them nicely,” he whispers.

Gladys appears at Bertha’s side once the Cuypers have been greeted. “People are starting to go through to the ballroom,” she frets.

“Don’t worry.” Bertha pats her arm distractedly. “They won’t start dancing until I say.”

“What are we waiting for?”

Just then, Church’s voice rings out. “Mrs. William Backhouse Astor…and Miss Caroline Astor.” The whole hall goes quiet, and Bertha raises her chin a notch higher.

“That,” she says. Her face is alight with triumph. The sight of it, George thinks, is breathtaking.

…

When Gladys makes her entrance in her third gown of the evening – an understatedly elegant number, also in lilac – and declares herself ready for her first public waltz, George sneaks a glance at Bertha beside him, expecting to see her irritated by Gladys’ choice of partner – she’s made no secret of her dislike for Oscar van Rhijn, after all. But instead, Bertha’s face is awash with a mix of pride and tenderness that could not have been more potent even if Gladys had been her own child. He sees a blink-and-you’d-miss-it smile of acknowledgement pass between his wife and daughter, and then Gladys turns her attention to the dance.

A year ago, when he first conceived of the idea of marrying Bertha, he imagined tonight would involve a nice party in a rented hotel ballroom full – he hoped – of agreeable, well-educated young people among whom Gladys felt at home. Bertha, in this version of reality, would survey the scene with muted contentment at a job well done, ready to slip out of his life with as little fanfare as she had entered it. He was a fool back then; he’s never been so happy to be wrong.

“What will you turn your mind to next, now you’ve managed the impossible and got Mrs. Astor to say good evening to me without spitting in my face?” he teases as he and Bertha join the growing number of couples on the dance floor. Out of the corner of his eye, he notices how striking Larry – down from Cambridge for the occasion – and Miss Brook appear together.

“I’m sure we can find some new project for me,” Bertha says airily.

“Something that will keep you close, I hope,” he muses in her ear. Someday soon, he will tell her that he loves her – wholeheartedly, irrevocably. But this isn’t the moment for it – she won’t thank him for making a scene on the dance floor – and in any case, he suspects she already knows, and will respond in kind.

She laughs, letting out a bell-like peal of which he could never grow tired. “I think we can manage that.”

~fin~