PENELOPE HAD DONE IT DOZENS OF TIMES BEFORE. She pulled her black wool cape around her and let the hood fall down over her eyes. Then she slipped around back of the Schoonmaker residence and let herself in through one of the servants’ entrances. She moved through the familiar back arteries of the house, lifting her skirts as she went, quietly and cautiously, to the room where she knew she would find Henry. It was well past midnight, and she had already had a full evening of dancing and being talked about. She was not in the least tired.

Determination was coursing through her instead. She felt alive with the trespass, and beautiful, and a tad hateful. Elizabeth had been her usual self all night, smiling quietly through her humiliation. Henry had never shown, of course. He had gotten caught up with all the sparkling wine that Buck had arranged to be poured into his glass throughout the day. Everything had gone just as Penelope had planned it: Henry had spent the day drunk and then drunker on his yacht. He had grown happy and then rowdy, and he had forgotten all about his pesky obligations to his new fiancée. It had unfolded exactly as she’d hoped it would, except that Elizabeth had been graceful and lovable even in defeat.

Penelope would have enjoyed tearing Elizabeth’s blond hair out of her pretty head. She would have liked to rip that expensive pink skirt to shreds. But Penelope was not playing for quick victories; she was playing to win. And she could not win by attacking the sweetheart of Old New York. So she moved invisibly through the third-floor hall, looked back once to make sure that she had not been seen, and entered the study that adjoined Henry’s room.

“Henry,” she whispered as the carved oak door closed behind her. Henry was lying across the deep brown leather couch in the center of the room. His eyes drooped, and a lit cigarette rested between his lips. “Henry,” she said again, a little louder this time. Slowly, he reached up and plucked the cigarette from his mouth and then turned to her.

“Oh,” he said, his dark brow rising slightly. He was as burned by the sun and the drink as a real sailor, but he was still excruciatingly handsome.

“You look like a prole, Henry.”

He looked down at himself, at his white dress shirt unlinked at the cuffs, and his light blue trousers rumpled by his day on the river, but ignored the comment. He replied flatly:

“How was the party?”

“You mean the party you never showed up to?” Penelope let her hood fall back now, but her smile was subtle enough that Henry might not have noted it.

“Yes, that one.” Henry lifted the cigarette back to his lips.

Penelope pulled off a long white glove and began idly swinging it back and forth. “Say, wasn’t that the party where you were supposed to make some kind of entrance with Elizabeth?”

Henry exhaled a white puff of smoke. “I’d rather not, Penelope.”

“But don’t you think it’s meaningful, Henry? That somehow you forgot to attend the opening night of your own engagement? Her mother was furious, you should know.”

“Was she?” Henry said softly.

“You know, there was a time,” Penelope said, crossing the parquet floor and taking a seat on the leather couch near Henry’s feet, “when you would have found that funny.”

Henry didn’t answer. He took a drag of his cigarette and stared past Penelope’s shoulder. She reached for his cigarette case, which rested on his stomach, and lit one.

“Henry.” She paused for a few thoughtful drags, drawing her knees up so that her skirt overflowed onto the couch. Her voice grew soft now that she was close to him. “Why didn’t you tell me, Henry? Why did it have to be such a mean surprise?”

“Well, Penny…” Henry pushed the crown of his head back into the leather couch cushion and looked up at the fresco on the ceiling, which depicted a happy garden party in the new, loose style. “I did try to tell you, actually. Perhaps if you weren’t in the habit of burning my letters, you would know that.”

This was an unhappy realization for Penelope, that Henry was capable of breaking things off with her in a note. Her pride smarted as she remembered what they had done while that card burned. She was beginning to feel that she might lose control of the situation altogether. “I had no idea I was so…nothing to you.”

“It’s not like that.” Henry took a last drag of his cigarette and put it out in the cut-glass ashtray on the ground. “I didn’t mean for it all to be so awful for you. But you’re going to have to believe that this is what I have to do.”

Penelope stood up sharply, so that her glistening reddish-orange train came hurrying along behind her. There was a strange echo to his words that she disliked. She walked in the direction of the bookshelf, with all its unread books, and spat, “That’s exactly what Elizabeth said to me.”

“Really?” Henry pushed himself up on his elbows and followed Penelope with a curious gaze.

“Yes. Now really, what’s going on here? You don’t love her, I know you don’t. She’s a mannered little priss, and if you don’t know it yet, you will soon.” Penelope turned quickly and moved across the room. She landed at Henry’s side, her hand on his, her legs folded beneath her on the floor. “Henry, you are in love with me. Can’t you see I’m the only one who can keep up with you? Who else could possibly—?”

The darkness around Henry’s eyes had taken on a far-off quality. Penelope stared at him, her mouth agape, wondering what else she could say. She had just put it as clearly as she knew how. The logic was obvious.

He lifted his hand away from hers suddenly and stood up. His hair, which was usually so perfectly pomaded into place, was comically mussed. A black bunch of it stood up in back.

Penelope stiffened. “Where are you going?”

“My dear Penny,” Henry replied. He appeared to have to concentrate on balancing for a moment. When he had collected himself, he went about tucking in his shirt and combing his hair with his fingers. With a few gestures, he was again the dashing figure she was so proud to be seen dancing with, even if he was wearing day clothes at night. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to excuse me. I have an errand to run.”

“An errand? At this time of night?” Penelope pushed herself against the couch and put on a petulant expression.

“And after I went to all this trouble to visit you.”

Henry went over to the desk, where an elaborate samovar sat. He poured coffee into a small silver cup and drank from it. Then he turned back to Penelope, lifted and dropped his shoulders, and let his gaze linger on her for a minute. The light in his eyes danced. “You know, I don’t feel drunk at all anymore. And I was in a real state earlier.”

“I know,” Penelope said bitterly. She had had nothing but Vichy water all day, so as to better fit into her dress, and she was feeling awfully empty all of a sudden. “I arranged it.”

“Really.” Henry took a final sip of the coffee and then put the cup back down. “That doesn’t surprise me, I guess. Oh well.”

“Oh well? Henry, I’m here. I am right here.” She raised her eyebrows and tried to give him the same flirtatious look she had given him so many times before. “What else do you need?”

Henry crossed over to the couch, where Penelope was still lounging on the intricate parquet-wood floor, and kissed her airily on either cheek. “I don’t think you’d really understand.”

Penelope looked up at him, her great blue eyes narrowed to angry red slits.

Henry returned her expression with an almost careless smile. “You know how to find your way out, don’t you? I’m sorry I can’t escort you myself, but right now I have to go make my amends to the Holland family.”

Penelope sat on the floor in a pile of red silk, still unable to grasp what she was hearing, as Henry plucked a straw boater from the post of a chair. His step was light as he exited the room, and he did not pause to look behind him. Watching that slender, slightly rumpled figure walking out the door, Penelope felt, for perhaps the first time, humiliation tinged with the worst kind of loneliness.