Villa America by Liza Klaussmann Read Free Book Online

all? Oh, really,” Diana said. “But of course, he’s married to Jennie, née Jerome, more recently Lady Randolph Churchill. It’s been going on forever. Since you met her on that boat…which one was it?”
    “The Mauretania, ” Sara said.
    “An amour?” Adeline said vaguely.
    “An affair,” Hoytie said, casting an impatient eye at their mother.
    “Yes, well, since you met her. And now the Cornwallis-Wests are separated, but divorce…that’s proving more complicated,” Diana said. She rubbed her thumb and index finger together.
    “Why would anyone want to be married twice?” Adeline’s hand rose to clutch her mauve evening bag. (Sara hated that bag, a relic of the 1890s; it reminded her of cold drawing rooms and mutton.)
    “My feelings exactly,” the duchess said. “Once is most certainly enough.”
    If Sara liked Mrs. Pat, she was in awe of Violet Manners. She had never known a woman like her. She could remember the first time she’d met the duchess, at a weekend party at Belvoir Castle: she had descended the staircase in a midnight-blue gown, a string of the most glorious pearls Sara had ever seen twined about her neck and fastened, curiously, with diamond earrings, one at each shoulder. That small touch, that tiny, frivolous fragment of creativity, had moved Sara. (Why? Why? Who cared about earrings? It was just that, Sara reasoned; they were supposed to be earrings, not clasps, not epaulettes, not rings, not chairs…but by reinventing them, she’d given them importance somehow.)
    The duchess had been an artist when she was younger and part of a bohemian set called the Souls. It was said, and not that quietly either, that she’d had a number of lovers throughout her marriage, and some of the more persistent gossipmongers suggested that neither Diana nor her elder sister was actually the natural child of the duke.
    Sara thought there was something grotesque about affairs or amours or whatever one wanted to call them, as if romantic love and family were not compatible, as if logic and just plain good taste demanded they be separated. She wasn’t naive enough to think that great matches were made for love, but she wondered about the worth of great matches at all.
    She had only a nebulous notion of what she wanted her future to look like, but it was nothing like any of the society drawing rooms she’d seen. Still, once ensconced in Belvoir Castle, she couldn’t help admiring the way the duchess and her daughters lived their lives. There was an artistry to everything they touched, discussions not just of gossip but of painters and musicians, of politics and writers, that she had rarely experienced at home or anywhere else. And she had added that to her indistinct dream, filling in a small part of the bigger picture. “Oh, I do hope there’ll be some sort of scandal,” Diana said as the box conductor led them around the grand circle to their seats.
    “I wish everyone would stop talking about riots and scandals,” Adeline said.
    When Stravinsky debuted his Rite of Spring in Paris the month before, the music, along with the famous dancer Nijinsky’s choreography, had caused an out-and-out brawl to erupt in the theater. Women had thrown themselves at men on the other side of the aisles, beating them with their fans and, in one report, a shoe. Men had fallen to slapping each other across the face with their programs and calling for duels.
    Sara, however, was expecting a tempest in a teacup and the possibility of a nice long nap. She was slightly disappointed to find herself seated at the front of the box rather than the back, where it was darker and more discreet.
    As the lights went down, Diana was still scanning the room with her opera glasses, and Sara could hear Hoytie sighing behind her. The duchess let off just the faintest rustle of satin and Narcisse Noir.
    The introduction began with the melancholy notes of the bassoon, all at once sliced viciously by a set of flutes. They trilled, stopped,