“IT HASN’T COME, DARLING,” LEONARD HOLMES NAIR SAID, WIPING the tip of his brush on a rag. “We have to be patient.”

Iris Ellingham sat in front of him in a wicker chair, usually used in better weather. She shivered under her white mohair coat, but Leo suspected it was not against the cold. It was a relatively mild day for mid-February on the mountain, just warm enough to go outside to work on a painting of the family and the house. Around them, students from the new Ellingham Academy hurried from building to building, bundled in their coats and hats and mittens, arms filled with books. Their chatter broke the once crystalline quiet of the mountain retreat. This palace—the work of architecture and landscaping—this marvel of engineer and human willpower . . . all of it for a school? It was, in Leonard’s opinion, like preparing the most divine of feasts and then taking it outside to watch it be devoured by raccoons.

“Surely you have a little,” Iris said, shifting in her seat. “You always have something.”

“You need to be careful. You don’t want the candy to get the better of you.”

“Enough moralizing, Leo. Give me some.”

Leo sighed and reached into the deep pocket of his smock and pulled out a small enameled box in the shape of a shoe. Using his nail, he scooped out a pinch of powder into her open palm.

“That really is all of it until I get a delivery,” he said. “The good stuff comes from Germany, and that takes time.”

She turned her head and sniffed delicately. When she faced him again, her smile was brighter.

“All better,” she said.

“I regret introducing you to this.” Leo dropped the container back into his pocket. “A little now and then is fine. Use it regularly and it will take you over. I’ve seen it happen.”

“It’s something to do,” she said, watching the children. “We can’t do anything else up here now that we appear to run an orphanage.”

“Take it up with your husband.”

“I’d have better luck taking it up with the side of the mountain. Whatever Albert wants . . .”

“Albert buys. It’s a terrible situation, I’m sure. There are a lot of people who wouldn’t mind being in it, to be fair. There is a bit of a national crisis going on.”

“I’m aware,” she snapped. “But we should be back in New York. I could open a kitchen. I could feed a thousand people a day. Instead, we’re doing what? Teaching thirty kids? Half of them are our friends’ children. If their parents want to be rid of them, they could send them to any boarding school.”

“If I could explain your husband, I would,” Leo said. “I’m just the court painter.”

“You’re an ass.”

“Also that. But I’m your ass. Now hold still. Your jawline is exceptionally placed.”

Iris held still for a moment, but then she slumped a bit. The powder had begun to relax her. The perfect line was lost.

“Tell me something,” she said. “And I know your position on this, but . . . Alice is getting bigger now. At some point, it will be good to know . . .”

“You know better than to ask me that,” he replied, dabbing his brush on the palette and swirling a vivid blue into a gray. If Iris was no longer in focus, he could look at some of the stonework along the roof as it melted into the sky. “I gave you something nice. This is no way to repay me.”

“I know that, darling. I know. But . . .”

“If Flora wanted you to know who the father was, don’t you think she would have told you? And I don’t know.”

“But she would tell you.”

“You are testing my friendship,” Leo said. “Don’t ask me to give you things I can’t give.”

“I’m done for the day,” she said, pulling out her silver cigarette case. “I’m going inside for a hot bath.”

She stood, sweeping her coat around her as she strode across the top of the green to the front door. Leo had given her the powder to help alleviate her boredom—small doses, now and again, the same small doses he took. Recently, he had noticed her behavior was changing; she was fickle, impatient, secretive. She was getting more from somewhere, taking it often, and getting anxious when there was none around. She was becoming hooked. Albert had no idea, of course. That was so much of the problem. Albert ran his kingdom and entertained himself, and Iris spiraled, having too little to occupy her agile mind.

Perhaps he could get back to New York. He and Flora and Iris and Alice. It was the only sensible thing to do. Get her back to a place that stimulated her, get her to a good doctor he knew on Fifth Avenue who fixed these kinds of problems.

Albert would balk. He couldn’t stand to be away from Iris and Alice. Even a night was too much. His devotion to his wife and child was admirable. Most men in Albert’s position had dozens of affairs, mistresses in every city. Albert seemed loyal, which meant he probably only had one. Perhaps she was in Burlington.

Leo looked up at the subject in front of him, the brooding house with the curtain of stone rising behind it. The late-February afternoon sun was a white lavender, the bare trees etching themselves on the horizon, looking like the exposed circulatory systems of massive, mysterious creatures. He touched the paint to the canvas and drew back. The three figures in the painting stared at him expectantly. There was something wrong, something incomprehensible about this subject.

There is the mistaken notion that wealth makes people content. It does the opposite, generally. It stirs a hunger in many—and no matter what they eat, they will never be full. A hole opens somewhere. Leo saw it all in a flash in that dying sunset, in the faces of his subjects and the color of the horizon. He examined his palette for a moment, concentrating on the Prussian blue and how he might make a ruinous sky of it.

“Mr. Holmes Nair?”

Two students had approached Leonard while he was staring at the painting, a boy and a girl. The boy was beautiful—his hair genuinely golden, a color poets wrote about but rarely saw. The girl had a smile like a dangerous question. The first thing that struck Leo was how alive they looked. In contrast to the surroundings, they were bright and flushed. They even had traces of sweat at the brow lines and under the eyes. The slight confusion of the clothes. The errant hair.

They had been up to something, and they didn’t mind that it showed.

“You’re Leonard Holmes Nair, aren’t you?” the boy said.

“I am,” Leo said.

“I saw your Orpheus One show in New York last year. I liked it very much, even more than Hercules.”

The boy had taste.

“You are interested in art?” Leo said.

“I am a poet.”

Leo approved of poets, generally, but it was very important not to let them get started on the subject of their work if you wanted to continue enjoying poetry.

“Would you mind very much if I took your photograph?” the boy asked.

“I suppose not,” Leo said, sighing.

As the boy raised his camera, Leo regarded his companion. The boy was pretty; the girl was interesting. Her eyes were fiercely intelligent. She had a notebook closely clutched to her chest in a way that suggested that whatever was in it was precious and probably against some rules. His painter’s eye and his deviant soul told him the girl was the one to watch of this pair. If there were students like those two at Ellingham Academy, perhaps the experiment was not a total waste.

“Are you also a poet?” Leo asked the girl politely.

“Absolutely not,” she replied. “I like some poems. I like Dorothy Parker.”

“I’m glad to hear it. I’m a friend of Dorothy’s.”

The boy was fiddling with the camera. It was one thing waiting for Cecil Beaton or Man Ray to find the right angle, but quite another to wait for this boy, however good his taste. The girl seemed to sense this and lose patience as well.

“Take it, Eddie,” she said.

The boy immediately took the photo.

“I don’t mean to be rude,” Leo said, intending to be as rude as he wished, “but I am losing the light.”

“Come on, Eddie, we better get back,” the girl said, smiling at Leo. “Thank you very much, Mr. Nair.”

The two continued on their way, the boy going one direction, and the girl another. Leo’s gaze followed the girl for a moment as she hurried toward the small building called Minerva House. He made a mental note to tell Dorothy about her, which he promptly misplaced on a cluttered side table in his mind. He rubbed between his eyes with his oilcloth. He had lost his vision of the house and its secrets. The moment was gone.

“Now is the cocktail hour,” he said. “That’s quite enough for today.”

2

“I WANT TO TALK ABOUT HOW I’M DOING,” STEVIE LIED.