The Luxe by Anna Godbersen Read Free Book Online Page B

the other young women on the Holland staff. She’d been too shy to maintain her childhood friendship with Will without the buffer of Elizabeth. So she had watched him grow taller and finer looking from afar. There had been dark years for him, too—she had heard stories of his drinking and fighting from the housekeeper,Mrs. Faber, and had wondered what dissatisfaction lived in his heart. It was only that summer—when, with Elizabeth gone, she was temporarily and gloriously freed from her regular duties—that she and Will had become friends again. They shared cigarettes after his long days were done and jokes at the expense of Mrs. Faber. They imagined aloud what their lives would be like if they were free to do as they wished. Before, she always wondered where he used to disappear to. Now she knew that he wasn’t dangerous at all, that he spent nearly every moment he wasn’t working with a book. Books about the excesses of the leisure class, and the theory of democracy, about politics and literature, but most of all about the West and how anybody with drive could make his way there. Now the summer was almost over, and she still hadn’t found a way to tell him that she wanted to go out West, too. With him. That she was in love with him.
    Lina was brought back from her thoughts of Will by the actual sight of him. One of the Hollands’ broughams came to a stop in front of the house, and Will leaped down from his perch to hush the horses and open the door for the ladies. She looked at his back, wide at the shoulders and long at the torso, with the poignant X of black suspenders across it. Elizabeth came first, holding up her arm for Diana, who, for all her big talk, was looking rather fatigued. And then Will put his arm up for Mrs. Holland, whose small black figure came quicklyto the ground. Then the women walked one after the other through the still night and up to the door. Lina could hear Claire welcoming them as Will walked the horses around to the carriage house.
    She knew Elizabeth would soon be advancing up the main stairs, and she felt a rebellious instinct rise up in her. Once she arrived, Lina would have to undress her young mistress, and wouldn’t be in bed herself until after morning’s light. Just imagining the very task she had performed thousands of times, but escaped for months, caused her body to flush with resentment. She pushed herself up from the sill and shuffled hurriedly out of Elizabeth’s room and down the long carpeted hall. She reached the back servants’ stairs in a few moments, and then hustled down two steps at a time.
    As Lina moved toward the kitchen, she could hear the Holland women on the main stairs, going up. She paused and considered whether she would be punished, and how, for abandoning her duties on Miss Holland’s first night back in New York. But she wanted to tell Will about all the French airs her mistress had acquired. She wanted to see him laugh and know she had caused it. And maybe…maybe she would find a way to tell him how she felt. So she gave herself a little nod and dashed through the kitchen and out the rear pantry door, which Elizabeth had installed last fall to facilitate deliveries from the grocer.
    Then she stepped lightly onto the hay-covered ground of the carriage house. Will had been removing the equipment from the horses. It lay there on the ground in neat rows so that he could clean it before putting it away. The threadbare cotton of his blue collared shirt clung to his skin from working with those gleaming black animals. His sleeves were rolled above his elbows, and his hair was damp where it hung beneath his ears.
    He took a step forward and met her eyes, then stopped as though he had realized something.
    “Hey,” he greeted her quietly. He looked over her shoulder, toward the door, and then smiled tightly as he refocused his eyes on her. “Shouldn’t you be upstairs, helping the Misses Holland?”
    Lina stood still near the door and smiled