Page 44 of The Scarlet Ball

“Where are you? Where are you? Come back.”

The last was a command, and if Ginny had materialized then and there, I would not have been surprised. In all things, Mrs. Howard would be obeyed.

For my own part, I was pleased when she left me alone, and politely obedient when she wished my company, which was seldom enough. I was becoming used to my small amount of independence when Mielle came to my bedside early one morning to say that we were to have an outing: myself, Mrs. Howard, and Mr. Howard.

As Mielle busily selected my clothes and shoes, I shook out my loose braid, letting my hair spread over my shoulders before I went to stand at the window. Even against Howard House’s relentless protective warmth, the cold still seeped in past the glass, little pricks of ice against my bare arms making the hair there rise like I was a hackling city dog. It had snowed the night before, the street already churned to filthy mud, but on the hedges before the house, along the rails and spear points of the iron fence, the snow sat beautifully undisturbed.

“You know, there was a time when you all knew to be afraid of winter,” Mielle said, coming to the window. I thought it very nearly the first idle thing she had ever said to me. “There was a time when you never forgot that it is a killing season.”

“Still, it is beautiful,” I said, refusing to give up my pleasure at the view. It was made all the better for a pane of thick glass and cold iron gates between us and the rest of the city, and I did not wish to be denied.

“Then you will be pleased to hear you will be out in it soon enough,” Mielle said. “Don’t worry, it’s not for a good cause,” she added, correctly interpreting my expression. “You are off to have fun.”

AN HOUR LATER, I stepped out onto the street, my borrowed face reddening immediately in the cold, my hands jammed into a black mink muff. Black mink likewise trimmed the collar of my coat and my Russian-inspired hat, but even underneath the fur and the wool, the cold was vicious, slipping in between the stitches of my clothes.

“I should turn right back around and go inside,” I muttered, and I was apparently loud enough that Mrs. Howard heard me.

“Of course you won’t,” she said calmly. “Instead you are going to do what you are told, and when you start to think that perhaps that is too hard, you will think of that house you dream of and that money you want to spend.”

She was right, of course, and I begrudgingly got into the carriage, tucking the toes of my shoes against the flannel-wrapped hot brick that had been set before my seat. The coachman cracked his whip sharply, but we jerked to a halt almost as soon as we started.

The two sleighs came fast down the street, heralded by shouts and screams, the drivers cracking their whips and the horses’ hooves pounding thunder. I leaned toward the window to see them pass, and they went by like the strike of a snake, first a team of chestnuts and then a team of grays. The driver of the grays was crouched on the seat, laying the whip on hard enough a spray of blood flew up from the horse’s lathered flank.

In a moment, they were gone, and Mrs. Howard sighed as we pulled into the street.

“Such foolishness, and made all the worse by those accursed new sleighs. Don’t let me see you getting into one of those things. I cannot have you haring off today.”

Well, you won’t see it, anyway, I thought. I had thought the sleigh race exciting, and I would not mind a turn at the reins myself.

We came to Central Park. Despite the cold, everyone in the city seemed to share a restless desire to be out and doing, as if the sunlight was something besides an early December trick. It was easy to imagine the New England winter luring the heedless and the unwary with all this beautiful sunshine, with the glitter of untouched snow and laughter as people came out to play, before swallowing them down the throat of early January.

But even knowing that didn’t take away from the delight of feeling the sun on my face or hearing the racket of voices raised in pleasure. I wouldn’t bet on whether they’d be so happy that evening, but they were happy now, and that counted for something.

The closer we drew to our destination, the denser the crowds became. There was a carnival aspect to Central Park in winter, the bright sun and the crystal-cold air giving it a kind of frantic energy, and that was before you ever came to the beer tents where the kegs were stacked in perilous towers and the entrepreneurs sold bottles out of leather bags slung over their shoulders.

In Germany they might have called it a Christkindlmarkt, in Strasbourg the Marché de Noël. In New York, to be different, it was called the Snowflake Festival, and it was a Vanderbilt affair. It had gone on long enough and with enough success that even old New York came out to see and be seen there, and that explained Mrs. Howard’s somewhat pinched look.

Last year, I had been so sick that I thought I had died in bed. Katie McMahon from the shop brought me back a piece of maple candy, and I hadn’t even had the strength to fight when my roommate stole it. Now I stared out the window trying to drink it all in: the chestnut sellers, the pack of little girls hanging on to a long ribbon to keep them together, the flash of blue serge and copper buttons as a naval officer joined the fray.

The carriage driver let us out on the shores of an iced-over pond, and Mr. Howard was there to greet us. In the peerless black of his coat, he looked like a burn in the fabric of the world. He handed me down from the carriage with a smile, but instead of giving Mrs. Howard his hand, he took her by the waist and lifted her down.

“It’s slippery,” he said earnestly. “I wouldn’t like to see you fall.”

Mrs. Howard brushed him aside, and I wondered if the slightly lost expression on his face was pretend as well. It lingered in the back of my mind as we walked the wide and very crowded track around the pond.

No matter their discord, Mrs. Howard stuck close to her husband’s side, letting him bear the brunt of the crowd. If she took any pleasure in the lively mess of New York in bright midwinter, she gave no sign, not to the orphans in their matching marrow-colored coats singing “Fount of Purity,” or the Black girl with dozens of silk ribbons larksheaded around her arms, trailing red, blue, green, and yellow in her wake as she shook them out for buyers.

I caught a red ribbon as she went by, stopping her in her tracks, and she spun back to me with a grin.

“I’ll give you that one for a nickel,” she said, and I laughed because it should have been two for a penny.

“I’ll take it,” I said, fishing a nickel out of my reticule.

Once it was in my hands, I could see how shoddy it was, the ends already fraying to threads, and Mrs. Howard frowned.

“Don’t let me see you wearing that.”

“I’ll buy you better,” Mr. Howard promised.