The American Heiress Read online

  There was a pause. Even the servants stopped weaving around the table.

  Then the Duchess put her head on one side and smiled at her son. ‘Ivo darling, how perfectly romantic. Dear Mrs Cash, you must forgive my impulsive son. He, of course, needs to consult with Mr Cash.’ Then her blue eyes opened wide and she said in mock dismay, ‘Oh, I hope there is a Mr Cash?’

  Mrs Cash moved her head by a fraction. She could find no words to express her feelings; shock, pleasure, outrage mingled in equal measure. ‘My husband is in New York.’

  ‘Then, Ivo, you must telegraph at once.’ With a great swish of satin, the Duchess rose to her feet. A footman scurried to pull back her chair. She ignored her son and looked at Mrs Cash. ‘Ladies, shall we?’ And with her blond head held high, she moved towards the door. As she walked the length of the table, the ladies got up one by one to follow her; even Cora was pulled to her feet. Only when she reached the door did the Duchess stop and look back at her son.

  He stood up and opened it for her.

  As she walked past him, she laid one gloved finger against his cheek. ‘Dearest Ivo, I should have come sooner. I never realised how much you minded.’

  It was much later before Cora realised what she meant.

  Part Two

  LORD BENNET.

  Eldest son and heir of the sixth Earl of Tankerville.

  The entailed estates amount to 31,00 acres, yielding an income of $150,00.

  The Earl owns the only herd of wild cattle to be found in Great Britain.

  Lord Bennet, who at present has nothing but a very small allowance, has served in the navy and the army, and is thirty-six years of age.

  Family seat: Chillingham Castle, Northumberland.

  Excerpt from ‘A carefully composed List of Peers, who are supposed to be eager to lay their coronets, and incidentally their hearts, at the feet of the all-conquering American Girl’

  Titled Americans, 1890

  Chapter 10

  Mrs Van Der Leyden Pays a Call

  New York, March 1894

  MRS VAN DER LEYDEN LOOKED AT THE LETTERS lying on the silver salver. She recognised her sister’s handwriting, the quaver in the way she wrote the words ‘Washington Square’, and her heart sank. Poor Effie, her husband’s ‘accident’ had been so unfortunate. To clean your gun with fatal consequences at the moment when there were widespread rumours about the bank was an unhappy coincidence. She knew that Effie’s letter would pain her. Her sister had let herself go and she dreaded the covert appeals for money on every page. She would help, of course, it was her duty; but it would be in a time and manner of her own choosing.

  Mrs Van Der Leyden put her sister’s letter aside and picked up a thin envelope that bore a foreign stamp. She recognised her son’s handwriting and duly picked up the silver paper knife that had been a gift to her from Ward McAlister on the occasion of her marriage. Her son’s letter was affectionate but brief. He would be returning from France on the Berengaria which docked on the fourteenth; he vouchsafed nothing about his plans for the future or the reason why he was returning months earlier than he had originally planned. She hoped that he had finished with painting and had come back to claim his rightful position in the family law firm, but Teddy had always been such a stubborn boy and she doubted whether, having fought so hard, he would give up so easily. And then a ghastly thought came to her and she rapidly scanned the page again. No, he made no mention of a companion, nobody that he was anxious for her to meet. That, at least, was a relief. A foreign daughter-in-law from God knows where would be a drawback even for a Van Der Leyden.

  Still wondering about her son’s state of mind, Mrs Van Der Leyden picked up the last envelope on the salver: a heavy slab of pasteboard – an invitation of some sort. She picked up the paper knife. Mr and Mrs Winthrop Cash request the pleasure etc. at the marriage of their daughter Cora to His Grace the Duke of Wareham at Trinity Church on 16 March. So Nancy Cash had found a title for Cora after all. Personally, Mrs Van der Leyden found the desire to link American money with European aristocracy rather vulgar, but then if you were fortunate enough to bear the name Van Der Leyden, a title was superfluous. She couldn’t really blame Nancy Cash for wanting a duchess for a daughter. The Cashes were rich all right and Nancy, of course, came from a fine old Southern family, but they weren’t quite the thing. Cora had only been chosen to dance the quadrille at the Patriarch’s Ball after one of the Schoonmaker girls had fallen ill with rheumatic fever. Isobel, of course, had been in the original eight, which was her birthright as a Van Der Leyden. It didn’t hurt Nancy Cash to be reminded once in a while that money couldn’t buy everything.

  It could, however, secure a duke. Martha Van Der Leyden had never heard of the Duke of Wareham. But that was probably to his credit: last season there had been quite a clutch of English lords looking for heiresses. There had been the Duke of Manchester who had made quite a play for Isobel at first but had married a sewing machine heiress from Cincinnati. It was quite clear what he was after. No, she had never heard of Wareham, but no doubt he had a crumbling mansion in need of repair. Still, Cora was a handsome girl, who would make a perfectly creditable duchess. She was headstrong and perhaps a little fast (there had been that business with Teddy at the Cash ball in Newport – Teddy had never explained to her satisfaction why he had been alone on the terrace with Cora). No, Cora Cash would do very well and really the family was not an embarrassment. There was that business with Nancy Cash’s father killing himself in the asylum but, after all, thought Mrs Van Der Leyden looking at poor Effie’s letter, these things could happen in the very best families.

  It was only when she rang the bell to have the breakfast things cleared away that it occurred to her that there might be some connection between her son’s arrival and the Cash girl’s impending nuptials. But surely Teddy would not be foolish enough to imagine that he could prevent Cora from marrying this duke. Mrs Cash would let nothing come in the way of that marriage and for once Mrs Van Der Leyden agreed with her. Cora Cash might make a passable duchess but she was not a suitable candidate to be Mrs Van Der Leyden Junior. Really, she hoped Teddy had not come back with romantic notions. She would turn a blind eye to his artistic ambitions; she had heard some quite shocking things about artist’s models but she was prepared to ignore this, provided it was all safely in a foreign country. But to pursue an engaged girl, that would be a scandal that even a Van Der Leyden would have difficulty rising above.

  She put the paper knife down on the salver and noticed, to her disappointment, a speck of tarnish in the moulding. Pursing her thin lips, she went up the stairs to her bedroom and told the maid to fetch her hat and cloak. Her visiting dress was very much in last year’s style but she was of the generation that thought it was vulgar to be in fashion and she regularly packed away the new season’s clothes until the moment when to wear them would not be seen as ostentatious. It was time to pay a call on Mrs Cash. For a moment she considered walking the half mile or so to the Cash mansion at 660 Fifth Avenue – really, it was barely civilised up there – but when she thought of the marble entrance hall and the footmen in their matching livery, she decided to take the carriage.

  Fifteen years ago the Winthrop Cashes had been universally mocked for their audacity when they unveiled their plans for a town house in the far north of the island. But now the Cash mansion that occupied the whole block at 60th and Fifth was at the beginning of a strip of fashionable buildings that stretched as far as 70th Street. Although the Cash mansion no longer stood in isolation, it was still the most magnificent. In a city of brownstone houses, 660 Fifth was built of honey-coloured stone. It was Mrs Cash’s first house and she had, in her youthful enthusiasm, asked Spencer the architect to build her a castle, and had been delighted when he showed the plans complete with turrets and gargoyles. His designs for the interiors had come complete with tiny figures wearing doublet and hose and farthingales. Mrs Cash, who had visited the Loire Valley on her honeymoon in Europe, adored the whimsicality o
f his design, so different from the neoclassicism of the South or the drab narrow town houses of her adopted city. Winthrop had raised a few objections to living in the ‘wilderness’ above 44th Street but he soon realised that his bride was not to be deflected. She had shown the plans to his father the Golden Miller, who had goggled at the turrets and the eighty-foot dining room and had asked who was going to pay for all this. Nancy had turned to him, put one small white hand on his arm and, looking him straight in the eyes, had said, ‘Why, you are, Papa.’ There had been no more discussion. The house had been built and Nancy’s campaign to become ‘the’ Mrs Cash had begun.

  As the tall footman in the full Cash livery of purple and gold held the door of her carriage open for her, Mrs Van Der Leyden felt a shiver of irritation. She had grown up in a house where the door was opened by maids in stuff gowns and white aprons. This fashion for male indoor servants dressed up like peacocks was one of the many things brought over from Europe by the new rich of which Martha Van Der Leyden disapproved. To her Knickerbocker mind, men did outdoor work looking after the horses or tending the garden, they did not prance around in knee breeches doing the work of housemaids.

  A moment later Mrs Van Der Leyden sat erect on one of the Louis sofas in Mrs Cash’s drawing room. A lesser woman might have been intimidated by the sheer scale of the room with its original French boiserie, Flemish tapestries and an Aubusson carpet that was reputed to be the largest ever made. But Mrs Van Der Leyden sat secure in the knowledge that without her presence, no social gathering in this city was considered truly respectable. She had no fear of finding Mrs Cash ‘not at home’.

  Her hostess sailed across the Aubusson towards her. Mrs Cash did not, as a rule, receive callers so early (it took so long to arrange her veils and gauze to her satisfaction) but this was an exception. She was looking forward to seeing her new status as the mother of a future duchess acknowledged by the redoubtable Martha Van Der Leyden.

  ‘Dear Mrs Van Der Leyden, what an unexpected pleasure. I have hardly seen a soul since we returned from Europe, we have been so busy with the preparations with the wedding. I hope you received your invitation. It is quite the wrong time of year to get married, as everyone is so busy with the season, but Cora and Wareham are so impatient, dear things, that they would not wait. I am sure that dear Isobel would not be as inconsiderate as my headstrong girl!’

  Both women knew, of course, that Isobel Van Der Leyden’s matrimonial prospects looked increasingly remote with each passing year.

  ‘I must congratulate you, Mrs Cash. Tell me about the Duke, I am so ignorant of the English aristocracy. I don’t recall seeing him here.’ Mrs Van Der Leyden lowered her gaze.

  ‘Oh no, Wareham has never been to America. Cora and he had a notion to be married in the chapel at Lulworth, which is the Maltravers country seat, but I was determined that Wareham should see something of his bride’s country. Sometimes I believe that the English think we still live behind stockades.’

  Mrs Van Der Leyden nodded gravely, not by a flicker did she betray her understanding of just how much the wedding of her daughter to a duke meant to Mrs Cash.

  ‘It is only fitting that Cora should be married from her family home.’

  Mrs Cash smiled gratefully. If Mrs Van Der Leyden thought it was fitting then all was well.

  ‘But forgive me for all this wedding talk. How is dear Mr Van Der Leyden? Is he still bicycling in the park? Such youthful vigour. I would be quite alarmed if Winthrop took up anything so energetic.’

  ‘Cornelius has always been the first to try things. I believe we were the first house in the square to have electric light. Personally I see nothing wrong with the way things are, but the Van Der Leyden men are all for Progress. When Teddy returns from Paris next month I shall be quite outnumbered.’ Having introduced the real reason for her visit into the conversation, Mrs Van Der Leyden observed her hostess closely, but Mrs Cash did not seem perturbed.

  ‘You must be so happy that he is coming back. Cora, I know, will be delighted. And of course I owe your son so much.’ Mrs Cash gestured poignantly towards the veiled side of her face. ‘I hope he will be back in time for the wedding.’

  ‘Yes, his ship gets in on the fourteenth.’

  ‘The Berengaria? Why, that is the vessel that the Duke and his party are on. The Duke is bringing his mother, who is Duchess of Buckingham now. I am so looking forward to showing her New York.’

  But Mrs Van Der Leyden had no interest in duchesses, her business with Mrs Cash was finished: she had warned the other woman of her son’s return. She pulled on her gloves and made to leave.

  ‘Do give my regards to Cora. I am sorry not to see her today, but I shall look forward to seeing her as a bride.’ And Mrs Van Der Leyden walked the length of the Aubusson, reassured that Mrs Cash, who surely had the most to lose, had not shown even a flicker of concern over the imminent arrival of Teddy.

  As she walked down the wide marble steps, she saw Cora coming in with her maid, followed by a footman bestrewn with parcels. Even to Martha Van Der Leyden’s disapproving eye, the girl looked radiant. She was wearing a brown tailor-made costume of such severe cut that on another girl it would have looked quite forbidding, but on Cora with her conker-coloured hair and shiny eyes it was simply a frame. The older woman understood why Mrs Cash had not been concerned by Teddy’s arrival. For the first time in many years, Mrs Van Der Leyden, who had seen everything, was surprised: Cora Cash was clearly in love. That look was unmistakable. Mrs Van Der Leyden was so used to seeing it in unbecoming places that she was almost touched at the idea that a girl of such beauty and wealth might actually be marrying a Duke because she loved him.

  Cora looked up and saw her.

  ‘Mrs Van Der Leyden, I am so glad to see you. Now I know I am really in New York. Everyone else tries so hard to be European, I hardly know where I am, but now I have seen you, I know exactly which country I’m in. How are Isobel and Teddy?’ Cora could not help but smile when she said Teddy’s name and for a moment Mrs Van Der Leyden felt her misgivings return.

  ‘They are both quite well and looking forward to seeing you married. Your mother has been telling me all about the wedding. It will be quite the spectacle.’

  ‘Oh, you know Mother, everything has to be the best. But did you say that Teddy would be coming to the wedding? I thought he was in Europe. I was planning to look him up on our wedding trip. Why has he come back so soon? I thought he was going to study in Paris.’

  Mrs Van Der Leyden smiled faintly. ‘Who knows what makes young men change their plans? Perhaps he has lost his heart to a French marquise and has come back to ask for my blessing. You young people seem to find Europe so romantic.’

  She was rewarded by seeing Cora flush and the wide smile falter.

  ‘When is Teddy coming back? I would so like to see him. Ivo and I are leaving directly after the wedding. I hope I don’t miss him as I really don’t know when I will be back.’ For a moment she looked a little forlorn as she felt the width of the Atlantic between Fifth Avenue and her destiny.

  Mrs Van Der Leyden patted her on the arm. ‘I received Teddy’s letter this morning, I’m sure he will be here for your wedding.’ She saw no reason to mention that Teddy was travelling on the same boat as Cora’s fiancé. She would leave that to Mrs Cash. ‘Goodbye, my dear.’ Mrs Van Der Leyden pecked her on the cheek. She could feel the heat of Cora’s skin against hers. The girl was burning up. It was high time she was married.

  In Cora’s bedroom, Bertha was unpacking one of the thirty trunks that had arrived yesterday from Maison Worth in Paris. After the engagement, Mrs Cash had not lingered in Lulworth even though Cora would have liked to stay longer. Mother and daughter had gone to Paris where they spent a month having fittings at Maison Worth and buying shoes, hats, gloves and jewels. Mrs Cash had been planning for this moment for years. A year ago she had had Worth take Cora’s measurements so that he could start creating her trousseau. When Cora had found out just how far her mother had be
en planning in advance, she asked her how she could have been so sure that she would marry within the year. ‘Because that had always been my intention,’ said Mrs Cash.

  Bertha picked up a tissue-wrapped parcel and opened it carefully. It was a corset. As she held it out, Cora walked in carrying a magazine.

  ‘Bring that here, Bertha. Is that the one Mrs Redding writes about in Vogue? “The bridal corset is made of pink satin, embroidered with tiny white carnations and trimmed at the upper edge with a deep pointed border of Valenciennes lace. The clasps, the large hook, and the buckles on the attached stocking supporters are all made of solid gold studded with diamonds.” All correct except for the diamonds of course. Why would anyone put diamonds on their corset? I am embarrassed that anyone would think me so foolish.’

  Bertha said nothing. It was not her place to point out that Cora’s corset even without the diamonds would pay her salary for the next twenty years. The clasps were fashioned from twenty-one-carat gold and the silk from the corset had been woven to order in Lyons. And this corset was only one of five in Cora’s trousseau. The lace alone on the numerous nightgowns, peignoirs, wrappers, bedjackets, and petticoats was probably worth more than diamonds, as all of it was handmade, some of it worn by the French queen who had had her head cut off.

  And then there were the dresses, all ninety of them. Each dress packed in yards of tissue paper and suspended over a tape frame so that it would not be crushed. There were plain day dresses for writing letters in the morning, riding habits in dark blue and bottle green, visiting dresses with the widest of leg-of-mutton sleeves and passementerie fringing around the hem, strict tailor-mades for yachting with no ornament but braid, tea gowns frothing with lace and with such a forgiving silhouette that they could be worn without a corset; there were theatre dresses with high necklines and long sleeves, and opera dresses with lower necklines and short sleeves, dinner dresses with half high necklines and elbow-length sleeves, and ball dresses with full décolletage and trains; and of course the wedding dress itself which had so many pearls sewn on to its train that when it swept along the floor it made a faint crunching noise like fairies walking across gravel. Not to mention the furs: Mrs Cash had ordered a sable cloak for Cora modelled on one the Grand Duchess Sophia had worn in Paris. It was so heavy that it could really only be worn sitting down. Bertha remembered the damp chill of Lulworth and thought that Cora might be grateful for the cloak, and for all the other stoles and fur-trimmed dolmans, muffs and mantles that Mrs Cash had thought necessary for a duchess.