Fortune Is a Woman - Elizabeth Adler [164]
Their house on K Street in leafy Georgetown was always full of committee ladies having lunch, or important visitors taking tea, or influential politicians at one of the “intimate” candlelit dinners for which Maryanne was famous. “Can you believe it, darling,” she exclaimed to him, laughing, “people are actually trying to bribe my friends for an introduction in the hopes of being invited. Isn’t it amazing?”
Buck looked at her presiding over his polished Georgian dining table with the gleaming eighteenth-century silver Paul Storr candelabra, the vermeil service plates, the carved crystal wine goblets, and the lavish but understated flower arrangements, and he knew she was in her element. But there was not one man at his dinner table that night he could call his friend and he suddenly felt as lonely as the lovely woman in the cloud-gray dress.
“Let’s invite friends to Broadlands for Christmas,” he said impulsively to Maryanne when their guests had gone. They were in her bedroom and her maid was hanging up the taffeta dress she had worn. Maryanne slipped on her rose-colored peignoir and sat down at her dresser, smiling at him in the mirror as she creamed her face. If there was one place she really loved it was her childhood home, bequeathed to her by her grandfather. “Why, of course, darling, what a wonderful idea. Christmas in the country with the children and friends, what could be nicer? I’ll draw up a guest list tomorrow and instruct the housekeeper to prepare everything.”
“It’ll be good for us to be together with the children,” he said seriously. “I see far too little of them these days.”
She sighed. “That’s true, darling, but there simply isn’t room in this tiny house and anyway they are much better off with the nurse and the governess and staying in their same schools. And we are always so busy …” She sighed again, stretching her arms over her head and yawning. “And I’m always so dog-tired at the end of the day I just don’t know where I’ll get the energy to face the next morning.”
Her eyes met his in the mirror and he saw emptiness in them and wondered sadly what had happened to their marriage. Their lives were arranged around his work and her ambitions for him. If it were not for the children and his political career he would be tempted to ask her for a divorce right there and then. Instead he said quietly, “Good night Maryanne,” closing the door softly behind him as he left.
New York in the couple of weeks before Christmas was Buck’s favorite place. He liked the strolling Santas ringing their bells outside the stores and the smell of roasting chestnuts from the peddlers on the street corners. He liked the frosty nip in the air that made him tighten his fringed cashmere muffler and brought memories of childhood winters, skating on the frozen duck pond and tobogganing on an old tin tray down the steep slippery slopes at Strawberry Hill, his maternal grandparents’ home in New England where his family had spent all their Christmases. He stared wistfully at the clockwork trains and magic sets and wooly animals in the windows of the toy store at the corner of Fifth and Fifty-ninth Street, remembering all those long-ago Christmas mornings with the fire roaring in the grate, the snow falling outside, and mysterious presents still to be unwrapped. He remembered the laughter of family and friends and children and the smell of good things cooking in the big kitchen, wishing himself back in time, wishing he could start all over again.
The last person Francie had expected to see was Buck Wingate. She stopped for a moment to watch him, a half-smile on her face, debating whether to say hello. She had just decided she had better not when he turned and caught her eye.
“Do you remember me?” she said shyly. “Francesca Harrison—we met at Annie Aysgarth’s party in San Francisco.” She held out her hand and added with a smile, “You looked like a little boy with your nose pressed longingly