Fortune Is a Woman - Elizabeth Adler [42]
She stood there between her powerful father and her handsome brother, looking as pretty as any girl could in white lace and roses and her mother’s diamond tiara. She greeted her guests without so much as a smile on her pale face. She sat, frozen with nerves, at the top table and not a morsel of food or drink passed her lips. She looked terrified as she led the dancing with her father and then old Count von Wurtheim danced with her. In fact, the count monopolized her—Mrs. Brice Leland saw to that. Of course, he was old enough to be her grandfather and everybody knew he had no money, but he had an ancient title and vast estates in Bavaria. There was a lot of cynical laughter and raised eyebrows—it was so obvious that Mrs. Brice Leland was matchmaking. Everyone was talking about it. Then someone commented on it a little too loudly. “Everybody knows Harrison’s trying to marry off his crazy daughter,” he said, “giving her away with a million dollars just to be rid of her.”
The color drained from Francie’s face; she turned absolutely chalk white and then an ashen gray, and with a cry of distress she picked up her skirts and fled from the ballroom. People parted in front of her like the waters of the Red Sea, staring astonished at her as she ran past. Her father went after her and Mrs. Brice Leland went after him, but they soon came back. It seemed they hadn’t been able to find her. The dance went on as normal with everyone pretending nothing was wrong, but they were all watching and waiting to see what would happen next.
Then her brother came rushing in and they watched as he spoke to his father. It was Harmon Harrison’s turn to go pale, only this time they all knew it was from anger. He strode from the room trying to keep his dignity, but he looked fit to kill someone. And that’s what he almost did when he found her on the balcony, sobbing her eyes out. In the arms of a handsome young waiter.
And while the ball to celebrate her debut continued downstairs Francie was locked in her room again. She flung herself across the bed, her cheeks burning with humiliation, pounding the pillows with anger. After a while she got up and stood in front of the mirror and looked at herself, “the crazy daughter,” dressed in her foolish finery with an invisible label pinned to her shoulder that said “one million dollars.” Her father had humiliated her in front of the whole world. Everybody but she had known he wanted to be rid of her, everybody knew he thought she was crazy, wicked, unfit to be in society. And she had just proven him right.
With a wail of despair she tugged off the beautiful diamond tiara and flung it against the wall. She tore off the fabulous lacy dress and ripped away the rustling silk petticoats and stomped on them. She flung off the fine kid gloves, the embroidered satin shoes, the achingly tight corset, and sobbing and cursing her father, she looked at herself again in the mirror, half-naked, her long blond hair in disarray, her face pale with anger and her eyelids swollen from crying.
“This is who I am,” she told herself, “this real person in the mirror. Not a dressed-up doll to be given away to an old man with a title who doesn’t want me—only my father’s money.” And then she flung herself on the bed again and cried some more.
When all the tears were finished and the first pain and anger had subsided she remembered the poor waiter who had helped her. He had grabbed her arm as she had run blindly through the hall, pulling her onto the terrace. She had been shaking so badly her teeth had chattered, and he had taken off his jacket and flung it over her shoulders. Then he’d put his arms around her and held her tight.
“It’s all right,” he’d said soothingly. “It’s all right, miss. Nothing can be this bad. I know, because I’ve been through it too. It only hurts for a while and then things get better again. Come on now, miss, stop crying and tell me about it. Maybe