She lounged in the bow of the skiff, watching Duke row. He’d rolled up his shirtsleeves to the elbow and had dispensed with his suspenders, letting them hang loosely against his legs as he strained against the oars. His skin had become nearly the same reddish gold as his hair and he was smiling, the lines on his face smoothed by the breeze coming across the water as the afternoon sun stretched long across the mountains behind him. She’d never seen him so contented.
“I think we ought to,” said Thelma, “though I doubt it will come as a great surprise.”
Duke’s grin broadened as he pulled on the oars. “I can’t imagine it will,” he replied. “It’s a yes, then?”
“To what? You’ve not properly asked,” she said, with the hint of a smile in her voice.
Duke stopped rowing. He leaned toward her, resting his hands on the oar handles. “I hope you’re not expecting me to go down on one knee. We might end up in the loch.”
Thelma leaned forward, too. She’d worried about her feelings, once: Did they match the depth of his? But here, in his element, Duke had shown her the life he was prepared to give her—and a love she wholeheartedly returned. She placed a hand on his cheek and kissed him—a long, crushing kiss, question and answer bound together. She’d played this moment out a thousand times and seen a thousand different futures: theirs the whirl of a summer romance, the madness of a fling transformed into the long and storied courtship of a couple meant to be.
She’d played this moment out a thousand times, but had never felt as sure as now.
They broke apart and Thelma leaned back on the gunnels of the skiff.
“Just so you know,” she said as Duke picked up the oars, “my answer is yes.”
* * *
Later that evening, Thelma sat at her vanity as Elise set her hair for dinner. Would Averill and Dickie be surprised at the news? Having gotten to know them, Thelma realized that Duke’s children always expected their father to remarry: Averill had said as much one evening as they brushed down the horses after a day on the moor, letting slip the fact that Duke hadn’t brought any other women to Affric Lodge.
No, thought Thelma. They wouldn’t be surprised.
She thought about writing to Gloria. Perhaps Duke would take her into town tomorrow to send a telegram.
Elise set a pair of amber combs in Thelma’s hair, then stepped back, nodding with satisfaction.
“It looks wonderful, Elise, thank you. The brown gloves, I think,” said Thelma, as someone knocked on the door.
Duke hadn’t yet changed out of his rowing clothes. His shirtsleeves were still pushed up, his suspenders still loose at his sides. He clutched a creased telegram between his hands.
Thelma knew its contents without being told. The air rushed out of her lungs as though she’d been struck in the chest, feeling Gloria’s grief—her own grief—hit her.
“Reggie,” she said.
* * *
The day after they received the telegram Thelma and Duke traveled into Inverness to place a transatlantic telephone call at the Royal Highland Hotel. “There was nothing they could do,” said Mamma, her voice sharp over the wires. “Internal hemorrhages—horrifically violent death, so I’m told. Alice wouldn’t let Gloria see the body. A kindness, I suppose...”
Thelma shied away from the image of Reggie, bloated and bloody against his bedsheets, his fate long since sealed by the vices he was too proud to give up—or too aware, perhaps, that doing so would make no difference. “I’ll leave for London immediately,” she said. “I’ll buy a ticket to New York.”
“You will not,” said Mamma. “What on earth could you accomplish here?”
Thelma let her outrage stretch across the silence. “I could mourn my brother-in-law,” she said.
“The funeral is in three days. You can’t possibly make it in time. Stay with Duke—let him comfort you.”
Thelma hung up the telephone, shaking at Mamma’s callousness, hating the fact that she was right. She spent the day of the funeral alone in Duke’s Arlington Street town house, surrounded by his austere collection of marble statues that looked more like graveyard monuments than works of art, dazed at the devastating change in Gloria’s fortunes.
Soon after, Thelma received more shocking news from New York: Gloria was bankrupt. Although he had provided generously for Gloria in his will, Reggie’s profligate spending—and his penchant for handing out IOUs—had left him so heavily in debt that, after probating the will, Gloria was declared virtually penniless. Aside from a $2.5 million trust fund for Little Gloria, every cent of Reggie’s estate was earmarked for creditors; and, being only nineteen, Gloria was unable to serve as guardian over Little Gloria’s sizeable inheritance.
“They’ve put a team of lawyers together as Surrogates to safeguard the money until she comes of age,” Gloria said, when Thelma telephoned. “I can collect the interest from her estate, but only if the money is used to provide for her well-being. For myself, I’ve got nothing. No money—no husband.”
Thelma’s cheeks burned when she thought of how unflinchingly she had accepted Reggie’s charity. Now, Gloria was forced to sell their honeymoon farm, all of Reggie’s magnificent purebred horses, even Little Gloria’s old crib.
“He owed $14,000 to a butcher. A butcher, Thelma,” Gloria continued, her voice numb. “How on earth does a man run a $14,000 debt to a butcher?”
Thelma gripped the telephone cord as Gloria explained that the lawyers would be holding an auction at Reggie’s farm in Rhode Island.
“I’m coming,” said Thelma. “You can’t possibly go through that on your own.”
Six
October 9, 1934
RMS Empress of Britain
The wood-paneled tearoom had begun to fill with passengers seeking refuge from the chill wind that blew off the sea, but Thelma was already stationed at a small table beneath a lacquered oriental painting of willow trees. She studied the painting, admiring the play of brown and gold in the leaves—did it look different in the morning light?—but was interrupted by the thud of a newspaper hitting the table.
“I’ve been looking for you all over this damned boat,” said Harry. He took the seat opposite Thelma’s and called for a waiter. “Did you see yesterday’s headline?”
Every newspaper in Europe, it seemed, was following the trial, basking in Gloria’s misfortune. “Vanderbilt Widow Penniless Without Heiress Tot;” “Fight To The Bitter End For Vanderbilt Girl.” There would be more articles waiting when they landed—Thelma was sure of it, given the scene she’d made when she boarded the Empress in Southampton.