Read Online The Luxe by Anna Godbersen - Free Book Online

not how she was supposed to be feeling at all. It was her second morning back in New York, but she had not yet slept in her own bed.
    “What are you thinking about?” Will whispered, propping himself up on his elbow.
    “I hate that question,” she said, because she was again thinking about her mother’s warning, and how waking up in the warm crook of Will’s arm was the opposite of heeding her. She sat up and looked out the window onto the vegetable garden in the back. “I should go.” She could hear the lack of conviction in her own voice.
    “Why?” Will slid his hand inside her kimono and rested it above her heart. The touch made her conscious of howquickly it was beating, and that every moment she spent there made her more nervous about the goings-on in the house. Lina, despite her strange absence the night before, would likely be arriving soon with hot chocolate and ice water to find an empty bed. Elizabeth forced herself to give Will a quick kiss on his soft lips and then push herself out of his grasp.
    “You know why.” She stood, wrapping her robe around her. Elizabeth looked down at the horses stirring in their stables below and tried to look like she was doing what she thought was right. “If my mother found out that I come here—if anyone found out—it would be the end.”
    “But if we moved out to Montana…or California…nobody would care what we did. We could lie in bed all morning,” he said, his voice growing warm and persuasive. “And then, when we did get up, we could go for horse rides, or whatever we wanted, and…”
    Elizabeth had heard all this before, but she could tell that he’d thought about it much more in her absence. She liked it when he talked this way. He was the only boy she knew who looked into the future and tried to imagine how it would be better than the present. Will was the most frightening and beautiful and exacting person she had ever known. Being somewhere far away from New York, where they could be just any boy and any girl, was the prettiest idea she could think of. There would be no more hurtful misunderstandings,because she wouldn’t have to sneak around and visit him only when she knew the rest of the house was too exhausted to notice.
    She turned back, half-ready to entertain the fantasy, but she was silenced by what she saw: Will, wearing only his faded black long johns, his chest slender and strong and naked with a few errant hairs, raising himself up from the bed and onto one knee. Elizabeth had seen this position before. She knew what it meant.
    “Maybe you should be thinking about a new kind of life…” he said softly, and then reached for her hand. Elizabeth snatched it away instinctively as her heartbeat regained its rapid, nervous pace. She looked down at her palm and wished that her sense of propriety didn’t make her do things like that.
    “I’ll be back when I can, all right?” She forced herself not to look into Will’s face, which she knew would be twisted with confusion. If she did, she might realize how afraid she was of losing him. She might become neglectful of all the things a good girl like her must do.
    She climbed the familiar wooden steps into the kitchen, readying herself to scale the servant’s stairs to her bedroom, where she could do what the rest of the girls of her set were doing: sleeping off the first ball of the season, content in the knowledge that they could doze into the afternoon, dreamingall the while of the dresses they would wear and the boys they would dance with in the coming months.
    “Morning, Miss Holland.”
    Elizabeth turned to see Lina, sitting in her constant black dress at the heavy, uneven table in the kitchen where the cook took her breaks. While Elizabeth was in Paris, her maid had grown longer and skinnier, and the freckles splattered across her nose had increased in number. The sight of her, looking plain and a little sullen in the early morning, caused Elizabeth to gasp. She could feel sweat