The Gilded Cage by Susannah Bamford Read Free Book Online Page A

always women, delicate, delicious, obliging women who characterized him so. Men might disparage him, ignore him, but women never did, never could. And now once again they would smooth the way.
    Lawrence had been blessed since childhood with an extraordinary sensitivity. He found people as transparent as glass. He had learned, living in a household where blows were the usual form of scolding, how to interpret the nuances of voice and gesture to discover what people really meant, despite what they said. It allowed him to move before the blow, sometimes to forestall it completely with the right words. That sensitivity was his greatest gift, and it had gotten him far.
    In just fifteen minutes with Columbine he’d learned much. He knew she was unhappy. How unhappy, he didn’t know yet. That knowledge was important, but it wasn’t the key.
    The key was what Lawrence privately termed the one fact about a woman he could turn on to ensure a seduction. Often it was flattery, but the key, the thing most men missed, was the particular form of flattery each woman needed. Some women tumbled for their beauty, some for their minds. Some women succumbed because they hated their husbands, some because they loved them. Some because they were bored, some because they were angry. Some because they had never understood sex, some because they understood it too well. Columbine might not be easy. But she was seducible. Lawrence loved celebrity, and she was too famous to resist.
    He picked up a ham sandwich and chewed thoughtfully. Columbine was the daughter of a duke, or a viscount—he could never keep track of English titles, but he knew she came from money. That was most likely why she knew Darcy Finn, who had thrown away her fortune to marry that blackguard Irishman with the threatening brows who had sent him packing. Thank God for the absurd delicacy of upper crust relations. Columbine would never know, he hoped, about his pursuit of Darcy Finn.
    Lawrence put his hands behind his head and looked up at the ceiling, picturing Columbine slipping out of her dressing gown. He smiled. If every bourgeois had his bomb, as the French anarchists sang, every woman had her key.
    On New Year’s Day, callers began to arrive at the house on Twenty-third Street in the early afternoon. Columbine, Bell, and Marguerite had been preparing since seven for the guests. Journalists, union organizers, poets, socialists, reformers, society folk, and a few extravagantly-clad ladies who were instantly recognizable as prostitutes, who stayed only a few minutes, to pay their respects to Columbine.
    There was no stiff formality, but fast talk and quick laughter, an argument or two. Columbine floated through it all, her honeyblond hair gleaming as the fire caught it on this dark January day. She wore a velvet dress the color of cognac that was trimmed with beaded black passementerie. The tiny diamond earrings Ned had given her for Christmas winked and shimmered in her ears. But Ned himself did not show up.
    Across the room, Marguerite saw the diamonds in Columbine’s ears and banged down the tray of sugar cookies on a small table. Columbine lived like a pauper, but she still shimmered in diamonds and silks, was still considered one of the most beautiful women in New York. She had an enormously rich lover, and she enjoyed the fruits of those relations. Marguerite wondered if it might be more fun to be a mistress than a wife, but instantly banished those wicked thoughts. Columbine had been married already. It was easier to take a lover when you had Mrs. as your title.
    As if her restless thoughts had brought him, Horatio Jones entered the parlor, his hat in his hand. His eyes didn’t meet Marguerite’s as he wished her an overly hearty New Year.
    â€œThank you, Mr. Jones. I hope the new year is good to you.” Marguerite smiled, deepening the dimple in her left cheek. “I hope you get everything you desire.”
    Her words dripped with a