New York_ The Novel - Edward Rutherfurd [239]
So if a New York gentleman happened to visit one of the guests, no one was likely to notice. And Frank Master had been in the St. Nicholas Hotel since Saturday afternoon.
The guest he was visiting also resided in the city. Her name was Lily de Chantal. At least, that was her name nowadays. When she was born thirty-three years ago in Trenton, New Jersey, it had been Ethel Cook. But the professional name she had chosen, when she’d still had hopes of being a soloist, was so pleasing to her and all those who met her, that she never bothered to use her old name at all now, if she could help it.
Some successful lady singers had big bodies to go with their big voices, and maybe Lily’s voice wasn’t quite big enough to propel her into the first rank of singers, but her body was certainly a very pretty package indeed. Her speaking voice was quiet, but she had trained herself to speak with an actor’s precision; so that, if her accent wasn’t French, you certainly wouldn’t have guessed—except for moments of private laughter, or passion—that she came from Trenton. You really couldn’t have said where she came from.
Lily de Chantal had only had five significant lovers in her life. She had chosen each of them in the hope that they might further her career. The first, and best, choice had been an impresario, the next a conductor, and the other three were rich men of business. Of those, the first two had been significant patrons of the opera. Frank Master went to the opera, but that was all, and perhaps her choice of him indicated that she had recognized the need to look for other insurance policies now.
But while she was yours, it had to be said, she gave you her entire attention, which was well worth having. Besides that, she was always amusing, often tender, and sometimes vulnerable. All her ex-lovers were her friends. If only her voice had been a little better, she’d have had everything she wanted.
Frank Master wasn’t really her lover yet. Though he didn’t quite know it, he was still on trial. She found him intelligent, kindly, somewhat ignorant of opera, but maybe improvable.
It wasn’t surprising that Frank Master should have met Lily de Chantal at the opera. Ever since the city’s opera had been set up as a going concern the century before—by Mozart’s librettist, no less—it had been a big thing in New York. Operas had been performed in numerous theaters, and not only for the rich elite. When Jenny Lind had sung for a huge open-air crowd, she had been the toast of the city. The main venue for opera these days, however, was the Academy of Music, on Irving Place, only a stone’s throw from Frank Master’s house in Gramercy Park. It was a handsome theater, seating more than four and a half thousand, with boxes for the regular patrons. Frank Master was a regular patron.
As far as Frank could see, it was time he had an affair. During most of his marriage, though he’d noticed other women, of course, he’d only really wanted Hetty. But the years of tension between them had taken their toll. And the sense that in her heart she did not really respect him had caused Frank, in self-defense, to say to himself: “I’ll show her, even if she doesn’t know it.”
Lily de Chantal had been singing in the chorus on the night he met her. On the pretext of talking about the opera house, he’d persuaded her to meet him for lunch at Delmonico’s the following week, after which she had invited him to a small recital she was giving. He had gone, and watched her with a new interest. He had liked seeing her standing up there alone in front of an admiring audience. It had impressed, and challenged, him. She had graduated that day from a pretty woman to an object of desire. All the same, he’d been quite surprised, at the end of the evening, when she’d discreetly intimated that, if he’d care to take her out to