A Splendid Ruin: A Novel Read online

  ALSO BY MEGAN CHANCE

  A Drop of Ink

  The Visitant

  Inamorata

  Bone River

  City of Ash

  Prima Donna

  The Spiritualist

  An Inconvenient Wife

  Susannah Morrow

  YOUNG ADULT FICTION

  The Fianna Trilogy

  The Shadows

  The Web

  The Veil

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2021 by Megan Chance

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781542022392

  ISBN-10: 1542022398

  Cover design by Shasti O’Leary Soudant

  For the cousins:

  Polly, Steven, Veronica, Morgan, Shane, Evan, Emmalee, Zia, and Ani

  CONTENTS

  PART ONE: SECRETS

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  PART TWO: LESSONS BLESSINGTON HOME FOR THE INCURABLY INSANE

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  PART THREE: RETRIBUTION

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PART ONE:

  SECRETS

  SAN FRANCISCO, JULY 1904

  When I arrived at the Nob Hill mansion belonging to my aunt Florence and her husband, Jonathan Sullivan, it was still more than a year from its fate as a crumbling, smoldering ruin, and I was still naive enough to believe in the welcome I found there.

  My mother had died two months ago and left me abandoned and lonely. I thought I knew to trust only myself. But I underestimated the astonishment of white stone and three stories, of windows glinting in afternoon sunlight breaking through a veil of fog, of the fragrance of roses and horses and men’s sweat blooming in the clammy, tangy air. Had I known what awaited me in that house, I would have done everything differently. But that day, I was too bedazzled by the men carrying chairs and boxes and crates up the marble steps and past the pillared portico to see the truth hidden by the Sullivans’ money and inclusiveness.

  The driver hefted my suitcase to the crushed white stone of the drive. “There’ll be a footman coming for it,” he said, moving back to the horses. “Au’s expecting you.”

  Ow? I frowned, but the driver climbed aboard and drove off to the stables, leaving me standing uncertain amid the fuss.

  Mama had never said anything of her family having such wealth, not once, in all our years of suffering. But then again, neither had she told me she had a sister. I should not be surprised. She’d kept so many secrets. But this . . . Why had she said nothing of this? Perhaps she had not known of her sister’s good fortune. I told myself that had to be the reason.

  I hadn’t thought to see such a house in all of San Francisco, much less an entire neighborhood of them. The driver had called the area Nob Hill, and it was nothing but mansions, Gothic style and Beaux-Arts, turreted and terraced, gimcracked with all the embellishments money could buy—and each probably holding more rooms than the sum of those on my entire street in Brooklyn.

  In the twenty-three years of my life, I’d dreamed of such houses, drawing their contents and imagining myself within them, but I’d never, never expected anything like this when I received the letter from the woman claiming to be my aunt Florence, expressing her sorrow over Mama’s death, and inviting me to come live with her family in San Francisco. I cannot bear the thought of Charlotte’s daughter alone in that terrible city. Please. You must come.

  The train ticket had been enclosed as if there was no question that I would agree. Which I did; I had nothing to leave behind but a job as a shopgirl selling gewgaws at Mrs. Beard’s Shoppe for Ladies, and a boardinghouse smelling of talc and mutton, where I’d shared a room with my mother that I could not afford on my own. I’d been days from having to find another establishment, and fearing an uncertain future.

  On the train to San Francisco, I had envisioned a hundred different things: another boardinghouse, a flat perhaps, or, in my most elaborate scenarios, a small house or a brownstone. And now, here I was, and none of this felt the least bit real.

  Nervously, uncomfortably, I made my way through the moving men, past pillars carved with cupids embracing a coat of arms. I paused at the open door.

  “Excuse me, miss.” A burly man pushed past with a crate of white roses. Their perfume engulfed me as I followed him into a foyer laid with rhomboid tiles in green and brown, pink and white. The ceiling reached two stories into a dome painted with angels. Unbelievable. The foyer, too, bustled with men unloading boxes and maids scurrying about.

  A huge golden-framed mirror with a velvet banquette was to my left. Beside it stood a gold and marble table where a filigreed, claw-footed silver telephone crouched amid a riot of vases and salvers. I’d never seen a telephone so decorated. I’d no idea such a thing existed. It shuddered to life with a raucous ringing, and I jumped, startled.

  A harried-looking Chinese man wearing a formal suit rushed into the foyer. He picked up the wooden-handled receiver and barked into it, “Sullivan residence.”

  It surprised me. There had been no Chinese in my old neighborhood, and the last thing I’d expected was to find one answering the phone in my aunt’s house. The domestics I knew in Brooklyn were almost always Irish. I’d never heard of anyone having a Chinese butler. When I stepped back, he noticed me and motioned for me to wait. “No, no,” he barked into the telephone. “The order was for ten, not four.” At the finish of the short conversation, he put the receiver into its cradle. “You are Miss Kimble?”

  His briskness and authority surprised me again. I nodded.

  “The family has been expecting you. This way, miss.” He turned on his heel so sharply that the braid trailing between his shoulder blades jumped. He led me past a curving set of stairs and down a hallway that branched every few feet in what seemed a dozen different directions before he stopped at an open doorway and announced, “Miss Kimble has arrived.”

  “Excellent!” pronounced an enthusiastic male voice.

  I stepped into a relentlessly lavish drawing room as a tall, slender man dressed in a well-tailored suit rose to meet me. His close-cropped beard was the same red gold as his oiled hair. Every bit of him was expertly turned out, so much so that I might have found him intimidating if not for the warmth in his protuberant pale eyes, and his hands outstretched in greeting. “Miss Kimble, I’m Jonathan Sullivan, your uncle Jonny. How pleased we are that you’re here at last.” He clasped my hands with a smile that further eased my nerves. “We were so sorry to hear of your mother’s passing. No
one can replace her, of course, but I do hope we can help to ease her absence.”

  “I’m grateful that you sent for me, Uncle. And you must call me May. Please.”

  “May, you’ll want to meet your cousin.” He stepped back, gesturing to a young woman almost hidden amid the gold-flocked wallpaper, ornate woodwork, and bibelots crowding every surface.

  When I saw her, there was no noticing anything else.

  “I’m Goldie.” She got to her feet with a grace and poise I envied. From that first moment, I was dangerously spellbound. Her smile made me forget I’d ever been lonely.

  I had never met anyone who matched a name as perfectly as did my cousin. Her blue tea gown was the color of her eyes and cut to show off her fashionable hourglass figure. Her blond hair was artfully pompadoured in the style featured in all the latest magazines. The electric light glaring off the wallpaper haloed her, making her an angel to match the hordes of painted and porcelain ones decorating the house.

  Uncle Jonny said, “Why, look at the two of you! A perfect match! I’ve no doubt at all that you will become fast friends.”

  Goldie enfolded me in a jasmine-scented embrace. “How wonderful that we’ve found you. You look so like family that I think I would have known you on the street.”

  It was an exaggeration, but a kind one. Goldie was about my age, or perhaps a bit younger, but there any similarities ended. My cousin looked more like my mother than did I. Mama had been beautiful, too, and I’d often despaired at my unremarkable brown eyes and hair and sallow skin.

  Now, I felt my lack even more, and it didn’t help that I was dust and travel stained, or that my sleepless nights must be reflected on my face. I looked around for the woman I’d come three thousand miles to meet. “And Aunt Florence?”

  My uncle and cousin exchanged a quick glance. Uncle Jonny said, “She wished to be here to meet you, but I’m afraid that—”

  “She has a headache,” Goldie put in.

  “Oh.” I tried not to betray my disappointment. I had so many questions for this aunt I’d never met. My mother’s secrets, the mysteries of her life, of mine . . . But that afternoon, I believed there was plenty of time to discover those things. I’d only just arrived.

  Goldie took my arm in a flurry of animation. “You must be dying to change out of those clothes. The train is so awful, isn’t it? I swear it’s impossible to travel in anything nice at all.”

  This morning, I had changed into my best suit, wanting to impress my relatives. I knew Goldie could not see the mend in the shirtwaist—it was at the back, hidden by the smart jacket Mama and I had sewn to match my brown skirt—but it seemed suddenly horribly visible.

  My cousin rushed on before I had time to register my humiliation. “We shall have so much fun! I’m simply dying to introduce you to everyone.”

  “Everyone?”

  “They’re all so excited to meet you. The talk has been wild for days. You were even mentioned in the Arrivals column of the Bulletin!”

  Uncle Jonny made a face.

  “It shows we are people of note,” Goldie said pertly to her father. “It’s of course why Mrs. Hoffman is coming.”

  “You’re confusing May, my darling,” Uncle Jonny said kindly, and then, to me, “I do hope you’re not too tired from travel. Goldie insisted you wouldn’t be.”

  “No woman is too tired for a party, Papa,” Goldie said.

  “A party?” I asked.

  My uncle explained, “In your honor. I hope you don’t mind. We felt it the best way to welcome you and show you off to our friends.”

  Goldie said, “Why else do you think all these servants are underfoot? I ordered fifty dozen roses and enough candles to light the entire street.”

  Uncle Jonny winced.

  “Oh hush, Papa. It will look beautiful, and it will smell divine, and isn’t it worth it to welcome my long-lost cousin? Are you all right, May? Oh, please don’t tell me you are too tired!”

  “Perhaps she’s a trifle overwhelmed, my dear,” Uncle Jonny suggested with an understanding glance to me.

  A trifle? Much more than that. “Never give Them a reason to think you don’t belong,” Mama had always said. She had meant Society. This was the life for which I’d been trained, though I’d never expected to need Mama’s lessons. I was a shopgirl in Brooklyn, and at best, I’d thought Mama’s teaching would help me get a job at one of the bigger department stores, where my perfect manners might impress a customer into buying a more expensive brooch.

  I composed myself quickly and smiled. “I’m delighted. You are both so very kind.”

  Uncle Jonny said, “We could do no less. You are family, after all. Why don’t you show May to her room, my dear? Are you hungry, May? I’ll have tea sent up.”

  “Before a party, Papa? No woman wants tea before dancing.” Goldie dragged me from the drawing room and again into the vast and bustling foyer, expertly angling past the activity. She took me up the stairs, which were laid with a murky green runner the hue of algae skimming a stagnant pond.

  “Papa’s asked Mr. Sotheby to perform tonight.” Goldie gave me an expectant look.

  It was obvious that I was supposed to know the name and be delighted. “What a treat.”

  “I expect everyone who matters in San Francisco will be here. I sent Alphonse Bandersnitch an invitation, so it will undoubtedly be written up in the Bulletin.”

  “Alphonse Bandersnitch?”

  “He writes the best society column in town.”

  We reached the next floor, the green runner abruptly ending at a carpet of orange and red and gold flowers. The pale blue walls wore stucco flourishes, and mirrors in gilded frames ran the full hall, bouncing reflections back and forth, endless Mays walking with endless Goldies. A hall table teemed with more china angels and gold-spotted fawns worshipping a large marble cupid with a harp.

  Goldie stopped at a door. “This is your room. Mine is just on the other side of the bath. I decorated it, so I do hope you like it. Papa is hopeless. You would have had boring gold stripes if it were up to him.”

  Which might have been more restful than the mauve wallpaper blooming with pink and red roses and bluebirds making nests in tangled green vines. Pink cabbage roses clustered the carpet. Two sets of pink curtains, one lace and one velvet, opened to reveal a view of fog peppered with the tops of buildings and ships’ masts. The room was also as full of things as had been the drawing room. Perfume bottles and gilded lamps, enameled boxes and glass bowls and porcelain cherubs in all manner of poses. I could only stare at the almost aggressive profusion.

  Idly, Goldie picked up one of the cherubs, stroking its gilded hair. “I suppose you couldn’t go to many parties while your mother was ill. Was she sick for a long time?”

  Her question distracted from the decor. “No. She wasn’t ill. Her death was very sudden. Her heart—”

  “Oh? But her letter made it sound quite expected.”

  Even more confusing. “She wrote to you?”

  “To Mother. How else do you think we found you? Mother had never mentioned you at all.”

  How had I known nothing of this? Nothing of a family. Nothing of a letter. The questions that had bedeviled me since I’d received my aunt’s summons returned, along with a familiar flicker of anger. “But why? Why did they not speak of one another?”

  Goldie shrugged. “Who knows?”

  “You never asked?”

  “No.”

  “Did she say anything in the letter about my father?”

  “Your father? No, not at all.” Goldie glanced away. “Well, I’ll leave you to get ready.”

  It was an obvious evasion. I’d had enough experience with Mama to recognize a deliberate change of subject. Perhaps I’d been too eager. That I had family at all was such recent news that I still had trouble believing it. One sister in San Francisco, the other in New York. The distance would have been enough excuse for a lack of knowledge once. But distance was nothing now. A train could bridge the gap in days.
A telegraph in no time. If Mama had sent a letter, then she’d clearly known about her sister’s location, as well as her wealth. Why, then, had she never mentioned my aunt?

  So many, many secrets. A lifetime of them. “I made a promise to your father, May,” she’d told me, “and what are we if we cannot keep our promises? He will not forget his debt to me, or to you. He was a good and honorable man.” Honorable? Honorable to whom? Certainly not to us. And what had Mama promised in return? Had it something to do with why we’d been so poor? Mama had refused to answer my questions, telling me only that he was a member of New York City society, one of Mrs. Astor’s famous Four Hundred families, the social elite, and that “he would love you if he knew you.” Why, then, did he not know me?

  What I saw was that Mama refused to ask him for help, and he didn’t care enough to find us, and I wore boots with cardboard soles that dissolved in the winter slush and threadbare coats donated from charity organizations managed by sanctimonious women of my father’s class. But Mama never wavered in her conviction that he would keep his end of their bargain, whatever it had been. Oh, how she believed and believed and believed. She would not hear a single word against him, and I soon learned to keep my criticisms to myself. I thought that he’d lied to her and abandoned us both, and I had long since grown tired of waiting for whatever he’d promised—and impatient and angry with my mother’s faith in an obviously faithless man.

  At twelve I’d insisted upon being taken out of school so I could work. Every spare hour we had together, Mama had schooled me in etiquette and French, dancing, and watercolors. I had always been poised between two lives: the one I lived daily in Brooklyn, and the one my mother had promised me, “One day you’ll want for nothing. You don’t belong here. You are meant for something finer than this.”

  But no rich society father had materialized upon her death. Perhaps this was the life she’d been promising instead, with my relatives. Perhaps her promises to my father had something to do with Aunt Florence and San Francisco. But, then, why never mention the Sullivans? What had she written to them? When? I’d never known anything about an illness.