The Luxe by Anna Godbersen Read Free Book Online

later discovered. Timothy’s father clerked twelve-hour days at a Boston bank to pay his son’s tuition, and Henry liked Tim, who knew all the best watering holes in Cambridge. But it was the first time Henry had ever really thought about someone doing that soul-crushing thing called working, and the realization still haunted him.
    “Not exactly. Poverty does not become a Schoonmaker,” his father finally answered. “I am here to suggest an alternative course. One I think you will find far more palatable than an empty bank account,” he went on, lowering his head and staring into his son’s eyes. “Marriage.”
    “You want me to marry ?” Henry asked, fighting back a laugh. There was no one less marriageable in all of New York, and even those sycophantic, underpaid society columnists knew that. He tried to picture a girl with whom he would actually want to trip across the lawns of Newport or the decks of European luxury liners forever—but his powers of imagination failed him. “You can’t be serious.”
    “I certainly am.” His father glowered at him.
    “Oh.” Henry shook his head slowly, hoping to appear to be considering his father’s proposal.
    “There would have to be a long search, of course, to find a girl worthy of becoming a Mrs.
    Schoonmaker…” he offered.
    “Shut up, Henry.” His father wheeled back around the room and put his large hands on his young wife’s shoulders. She smiled uncomfortably. “You see, I already have someone in mind.”
    “What?” Henry said, his cool beginning to evaporate.
    “Someone with class and sophistication and good family breeding. Someone whom the press likes and will embrace as your bride. As a Mrs. Schoonmaker , Henry. Someone who will come across as a conduit of civility and culture. I am thinking of—”
    “Why do you care?” Henry interrupted. He was fully mad now and standing. Isabelle made a little gasping noise when she saw the two Schoonmaker men facing each other down.
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    “Why do I care?” his father roared, pacing around the table.
    “Why do I care? Because I have ambitions, Henry, unlike you. You don’t seem to understand that every move you make is reported in the society pages. And the people I care about read those pages—however silly they are—and they talk. You make us all look ridiculous, Henry.
    With your dropping out of college and running around town…Every time you open your mouth, you tarnish the family name.”
    “Doesn’t answer my question,” Henry shot back. His father, with his explosive temper and famous love of money, would seem to have satisfied quite a few ambitions already. He had built a railroad company from scratch and made it hugely profitable, had treated the tenements built on his family’s ancestral lands like his own personal mint, and had married two society beauties and buried one. “I really don’t get it, Dad,” Henry said. “What do you want ?”
    Isabelle’s small, pointed elbows came excitedly to the table. “William wants to run for office!”
    she blurted.
    “What?” Henry’s face puckered. He was unable to disguise his incredulity. “What office?”
    His father looked almost embarrassed by the revelation, and it quieted the tension in the room.
    “I’ve been talking to my friend from Albany, and he wagered me that…” Mr. Schoonmaker trailed off and then shrugged his shoulders. Henry knew that his father was a longtime friend and rival of Governor Roosevelt’s, and he nodded at him to continue. “I admire the man’s call to public service,” William enunciated, his voice growing warm and stately. “Who says the noble class should not be involved in politics? It is our noblesse oblige. Man is nothing if he cannot rule his world in his time and leave it better off when he departs for—”
    “You don’t have to give me the speech,” Henry interrupted, rolling his eyes. He was infuriated by this stroke of bad luck. “What office do you want,