I stared at the delicate cluster of the embroidered nucleus as Elinor quickly pinned up my hair. Several minutes later, I realized she had finished and was back to straightening my room, and I stood. In the mirror, I saw an antique hair comb nestled in my hair… the atomic symbol, wrought in platinum, diamonds sparkling from the nucleus. My house, my bed, my hair—it all belonged to my family. To my father.
I murmured a thank-you, and left my room. But something kept me from returning downstairs. Mother would be angry, but I’d rather face a lecture tomorrow than the stifled conversation and blatant elbowing for David Dana’s attention tonight.
Instead, I climbed a wide set of stairs that led to a third-story balcony. It hung above the doors to the ballroom, open for the party, and I could hear the delicate clink of china and silver, the low cultured murmur of the guests. Sweet music spilled out over the terrace and down the stairs to the garden where thousands of lights were strung.
It all looked so beautiful and effortless. It was easy to forget the days the gardeners had spent tending to the garden, the hours the servants spent hanging lights and dragging out solar heaters so that the paths would always be the perfect temperature for strolling.
I sat down on a bench and took off my uncomfortable shoes.
“Hello,” someone said from behind me.
I jumped.
A young man stepped forward into the twinkling garden-lit balcony. The lights shined on his white-blond hair and sharp but pleasing face. I recognized him immediately from Marianne Wilder’s foyer.
“You,” I said.
He lit a cigarette. “Yes, me.”
“Do you always hang around in the dark, smoking?” I asked, irritated that my hiding place had been claimed.
“Only when beautiful girls come visit me.”
He emitted charm like a particle emitted light—I could feel it in the way he leaned toward me, the way he drew out his vowels in a slightly southern drawl. But I could feel something caustic underneath all that charisma, something trapped and restive.
“Would you care to dance with me later?” he asked. “I love to dance.”
“Which would explain why you spend most dances hiding from everybody?”
“Maybe.” A wide grin—I could see his teeth gleaming in the dark. “You are very opinionated, you know.”
“And you are in my way.” I indicated the doorway. “I’m leaving now.”
He came closer. “Please stay.”
I felt a tug somewhere in my stomach, begging me to linger on the balcony with him. Stop being stupid, I told myself. He wasn’t different from any other guy I’d gone to the academy with.
“Despite all appearances to the contrary, I would like some company,” he said. “You’re the most interesting person I’ve met so far, and that includes the famously intimidating Alexander Landry. Now tell me again what you think about the Rootless?”
“What do you care?”
He leaned against the doorway and tapped his cigarette, thinking. Then he changed the subject, looking down off the balcony to the trickle of guests wandering in the artificially heated garden with their glasses of champagne. “It’s the superiority that’s the worst,” he said. “It was like this in Atlanta, too. And at the same time that they’re congratulating themselves on being the happiest people in the world, they’re either being manipulated or trying to manipulate someone else. It’s wearing.”
“You come from Georgia?”
“I just moved here with my mother. The name is David, by the way.”
“David? You are David Dana?”
“What, you thought I was a leprechaun?”
I sat back down. “No,” I said. “It’s just the way people talked about you, I thought you would be… different.”
He raised his eyebrows. “How so?”
I coughed a little. What I meant was that I had anticipated someone like the Lawrence brothers: spoiled, arrogant, handsome in the way that made you think of movie stars and clothing models. I hadn’t expected David to be as bored as I am with dinner parties, and I hadn’t expected him to be so quick and honest with his conversation.
It must have shown on my face, because he gave a little laugh. “I see. You were thinking I’d be more like those boys down there. Well, maybe I am.” He took a step closer. “Would you still like me if I was?”
“Who said I liked you in the first place?” I said.
“You sat back down, didn’t you?”
I brushed my fingers across the skirt of the dress Mother had commissioned for me to trap a husband. A leprechaun would be easier to deal with. “My feet hurt.”
David grinned a self-satisfied grin, which nettled me into standing once more. He ignored me and walked over to the balcony, leaning over the railing. “I suppose the army will be the same way,” he continued soliloquizing. “After all, it’s just a place for gentry boys with no estates and middle-class boys without enough money. A chance to claw out a living and some influence.” He tossed his cigarette onto the path below the balcony. It slowly winked out against the cold rocks. “My father was in charge of the Atlantic fleet when I was a boy, a navy man through and through. It’s why I chose the army instead. That, and I get seasick.”
At that moment, high-heeled footsteps echoed in the hallway to the balcony.
“David?” Cara called. “We’ve missed you. The dancing is about to begin.”
I considered a moment. If Cara saw me alone with the man she was currently pursuing, there’d be no end to her anger, and I needed her amenable when I approached her for answers.
“David?” Cara called again.
I scrambled away from the bench and hid behind a large potted plant, tucking my dress behind me. David opened his mouth to answer, frowning in my direction. I held a finger up to my lips and shook my head.
“I was just having a smoke,” he said smoothly.
Cara stepped onto the balcony, giving him a flirtatious smile. ”I would have come with you if you’d asked,” she remarked, sliding an arm around his.
“Well, if there’s dancing, we should hurry back,” David said. They headed inside, arm in arm, with him casting an intrigued look back at me before disappearing out of sight.
Strange. David Dana was certainly exasperating and self-indulgent. And there was something jarring about him. But it wasn’t unpleasant. Not unpleasant at all.
I couldn’t help wishing I could have spent more time on the balcony with him.
I passed the rest of the evening lingering at the edges of the party, avoiding my mother and trying to catch Cara alone. But she was in full coquet mode, clinging to David’s arm, claiming every dance and doing everything she could to monopolize his time.
I went to bed vowing I would find her later this week. If she was well enough to attend a dinner, then she was well enough to have me over for tea and tell me what had really happened the night of Marianne’s debut.
6
“It’s me again.”
I startled out of a doze, a book sliding off my stomach and onto the now snowless lawn. The blanket I was lying on was bunched and twisted underneath me, and it was slightly damp from the wet grass.
David Dana stood above me, squinting in the sun. In the long light of the afternoon, I could see his face in full detail. He wasn’t as handsome as the pictures that had been circulating on the wall screens made him out to be, or even as good looking as I’d thought him last night. His nose had too much of a curve to it, and his smile was too wide, showing too many teeth—like a wolf. His blond hair was too pale and too fine, and his skin was almost swarthy from a winter spent surfing and drinking on tropical beaches. He looked like an overgrown boy.