Disclaimer: This is a retelling of the story of The Luxe by Anna Gobberson, using the characters and locations of Vampire Diaries, that belongs to L.J Smith. In other words; I own NOTHING.
Chapter 1:
THE JONOTHAN GILBERT FAMILY
REQUEST THE PLEASURE OF YOUR COMPANY
AT A BALL IN HONOR OF THE ARCHIETECT
WEBSTER YOUNGHAM
ON THE EVENING OF SATURDAY
THE SIXTEENTH OF SEBTEMBER
IN THE CITY OF MYSTIC FALLS
COSTUMES ARE REQUIRED
"They have all been looking for you," Said Margret Bennett to Katherine, quietly but firmly.
Katherine had spent eighteen years being groomed as her mother's prized asset and had become, among other things, an expert interpreter of her tones. This one meant Katherine was to return to the main ballroom and dance with a partner of her mother's choosing at once, most likely a young man of enviable, if slightly inbred lineage. Katherine smiled apologetically at the girls she had been sitting with –Annemarie Albert and Eva Barbey, whom she had met that spring in France and who were both dressed as courtesans from the Luis VIX era. Katherine had just been telling them how very far Paris seemed to her now, though she had only stepped off the Transatlantic Steamer and back onto Mystic Falls soil early that morning. Her old friend Agnes Jones had been perched on the Ivory-and-Gold striped damask love seat as well, but Katherine's younger sister, Bonnie, was nowhere to be seen. Most likely because she suspected that her behavior was being monitored, which of course it was. Katherine's irritation at the persistent childishness of her younger sister flared up, but she quickly banished the feeling.
After all, Bonnie hadn't enjoyed the formal collision that Katherine had two years ago, just after her sixteenth birthday. For the elder Bennett sister that had been a year with a former governess –she and Elena Gilbert had shared her along with various tutors- and lessons in comportment, dance and the modern languages. Bonnie had turned sixteen last April with no fanfare during Katherine's time abroad. The family had still been mourning for their father, and a big to do had not seemed appropriate. She had simply started attending balls with Aunt Lucy in Saratoga during her summer there, so she could hardly be held responsible for seeming a little rough.
"I'm sure you are sorry to leave your friends," Mrs. Bennett said, steering her daughter from the feminine hush of the parlor and into the main ballroom. Katherine, in her shepardess's costume, of white brocade, looked especially bright, and especially tall next to her mother, who was still wearing her widow's black. Grayson Bennett passed away at the beginning of the year and her mother would be in formal mourning for another year at least. "But you seem to be the young lady most in demand for waltzes tonight."
Katherine had a heart shaped face, with delicate features and an alabaster complexion. As a boy who would not enter the Jonathan Gilberts' ballroom that evening once told her, that she a mouth the size and shape of a plum. She tried to make that mouth smile appreciatively now, even though she was concerned by her mother's tone. There was a new unsettling urgency in Mrs. Bennett's famously steely presence that Katherine had noticed almost as soon as she departed from the great ship. She had been gone since her father's burial nine months ago, and had spent all of spring and summer learning wit in the salons and how to dress on Rue De La Paix and allowing herself to be distracted from her grief.
"I've already danced so many dances tonight," Katherine offered her mother.
"Perhaps," she replied, "But you know how very happy it would make me if one of your partners were to propose to you."
Katherine tried to laugh to disguise the despair the comment raised her. "Well, you are lucky I'm still so young, and we have years before I even have to begin picking one of them."
"Oh, no." Mrs. Bennett's eyes darted around the main ballroom. It was dizzying, with its frosted glass ceiling, frescoed walls and gilt mirrors situated as it was at the center of a warren of smaller but equally busy and decadent rooms. Great potted palm trees were set up in a ring close to the walls, shielding the ladies at the room's edge from the frantic dancers gliding across the tessellated marble floor. There appeared to be four servants to every guest, which seemed ostentatious even to a girl who had spent the last two seasons learning to be a lady in the City of Light. "The one thing we do not have is time." Mrs. Bennett finished.
Katherine felt a nerve tingle up her spine and before she could prod her mother about what that meant, they were at the perimeter of the ballroom, close to where the lavishly outfitted couples gliding across the dance floor.
They were the Bennetts' peers, only seventy or so families, only 400 or so souls dancing as though there would no tomorrow. And indeed, tomorrow would probably pass them by while under their silken canopies, waking only to accept pitchers of ice water and shoo away the maid. There would be church, of course, but after an evening so glittering and epic, the worshipers would surely be few and be entertained, punctuated occasionally by the reinvested of their vast fortunes in new and even more lucrative prospects.
"The last man to ask for you was Percival Coddington." Mrs. Bennett told Katherine as she positioned her daughter next to a gigantic rose-colored column. There were several such columns in the room and Katherine felt sure that they were meant to impress. "Mr. Coddington inherited his father's entire estate" he mother went on. "As you well know."
Katherine sighed. The warm thought of the one boy she knew would not be at the Gilberts' costume ball that evening could not have made the looming prospect of Percival Coddington any less appealing. She had known Percival since they were children, when he was the kind of boy who avoided human contact in intentionally harming small animals. He had grown into a man of welling pores and frequent snorts and was known as an obsessive collector of anthropological artifacts, although he himself was too weak stomached ever to travel on an explorer's ship.
"Stop." Scolded her mother. Katherine blinked. She hadn't thought she's betrayed any emotion. "You would not be so complaining if your father were here."
The mention of Mr. Bennett caused Katherine's eyes to well and she felt herself softening to her mother's cause.
"I'm sorry," Katherine answered trying to keep her voice level. She felt the dryness in her throat that always proceeded tears and willed them away. "It's just that I wonder if the accomplished Mr. Coddington will ever remember me when I have been so long away."
Mrs. Bennett sniffed as the Misses. Wetmore, who were one and three years older than Katherine, passed. "Of course he remembers you. Especially when the alternative is girls like them. They look as if they were dressed by the circus." Mrs. Bennett comments coldly.
Katherine was trying to think of something nice to say about Percival Coddington and missed what her mother said next. Something about someone being vulgar. Just as her mother pronounced the word, Katherine noticed her friend Elena Gilbert on the second floor mezzanine. Elena was wearing a ruffled, poppy colored gown with a low bodice and Katherine could not help but feel so proud to see her friend looking so stunning.
"I shouldn't of have dignified this ball with my presence." Mrs. Bennett went on. There was a time when she would not so much as called on the upstart Gilbert women, despite her husband's having a hunting invitation from Jonathan Gilbert once or twice, but society's opinion had moved on without her and she had recently begun acknowledging them. "The papers will report that I condone this sort of tacky display and you know what kind of headache that will give me."
"But you know it would have been a bigger scandal if we hadn't come." Katherine extended her long slender neck and gave her friend a subtle, knowing smile. How she wished she were with her instead, laughing at the poor girl whose bad luck had forced her to dance with Percival Coddington. Elena, gazing down let one darkly make-up eyelid fall –her signature slow smoldering wink- and Katherine knew that she understood her. "And anyways," Katherine added turning her attention back at her mother. "You know you never read the papers."
"Right." Her mother agreed. "I don't." then she jutted the one feature she shared with her daughter –a small dimpled nub of a chin- as Katherine offered the subtlest shrug to her best friend on the mezzanine.
They had become friends during the period of her early teens when Katherine was most interested in what it meant to be a young lady in fashion. Elena had shared that interest, though she was ignorant of the rules of the society she so desperately wanted to be a part of. Katherine, who was only just beginning to care about all those rules had cultivated as a friend anyways. She had quickly discovered that she liked being around Elena –everything seemed sharper and frizzier in the company of the young Miss. Gilbert. And soon enough, Elena had become a deft player of society's games; Katherine could think of no one better to have at her side during the evening's entertainment.
"Oh look!" Mrs. Bennett's voice rang out sharply, bringing Katherine's focus back to the ballroom floor. "Here is Mr. Coddington!"
Katherine put on a smile and turned to the inevitable fact of Percival Coddington. He attempted a bowlike gesture, his glance darted across the low cut square of her bodice. Her heart sank as she realized that he was dressed as a Sheppard, in green jodhpurs, rustic boots and colorful suspenders. They matched. His hair was slicked back and long at the neck and he breathed audibly through his mouth as Katherine waited for him to ask her to dance.
A moment passed and then her mother singsonged, "Well, Mr. Coddington, I've brought her to you."
"Thank you," he coughed out. Katherine could feel his eyes lingering on her uncomfortably, but she kept herself upright and smiling for she was by training, a lady. "Miss. Bennett will you dance?"
"Of course Mr. Coddington." She raised her hand so that he could take it. As his damp palm pulled her through the crowd of costumed dancers she looked back to smile reassuringly at her mother. She could at least have the gratification of seeing her pleased.
Instead she saw her mother greeting two men. Katherine recognized the first slender figure of Stanley Brennan first, who had been her father's accountant and then the imposing figure of Giuseppe Salvatore, patriarch of the old Salvatore clan, who had made a second fortune in railroads. His only son, Damon had dropped out of Harvard back in the spring and since then the daughters of Mystic Falls' elite families had talked of nothing else. At least the letter Katherine received from Agnes while she was away in Paris was full of his name and how all the girls were aching for him. He had a younger sister, Rebekah, who was a year or two younger than Bonnie, though she only wore black and was rarely seen because she disliked crowds. Katherine's impression of Damon Salvatore was still vague, thought she had seen him and heard his name spoken often enough in her younger years, usually attached to some prank or other.
Katherine's partner must have sensed her thoughts going elsewhere, because he brought her attention back with a pointed comment. "Maybe you wanted to stay in the drawing room with the ladies." Percival said, bitterness surfacing his voice.
Katherine tried not to stumble on her partner's poor footwork. "No, Mr. Coddington, I am just a little tired is all." She told him, not entirely falsely. Her ship had missed her arrival date by three days; she had been home for less than twenty four hours. She barely had her land legs yet and here she was dancing. Her mother had insisted by letter that she not retain the services of her French maid, so she had been left to do her own hair and care for her clothing all by herself during the entire journey. Elena had stopped by that afternoon to teach her the new dance steps and to tell her how furious she would have been had the ship been any later and cause her best friend to be a no show on one of the most important night of her life. Then she'd gone about some new secret beau, whose identity she would reveal later to Katherine, as soon as they had a moment alone. There were simply too many servants hovering during those pre-ball hours for the naming of names to be prudent. Elena had seemed even more competitive about her looks and dress than usual because of the boy and because the ball was the debut of her family's new home, Katherine assumed. Also adding to Katherine's strain, of course, was her mother's strange behavior.
Plus, there had already been quadrilles and dinner and polite talk with several of her aunts and uncles. She had had to give the same amount of her rocky transatlantic passage several times already. And just when Katherine finally sat down with her friends for a glass of champagne and a little talk about how absolutely stunning everything was, she had been forced back into the center of activity. To dance with Percival Coddington of all people. But she kept smiling, of course. It was her habit.
"Well, what are you thinking about then?" Percival frowned and pressed his hand onto her lower back. Katherine couldn't think of anyone she would trust less to move her backwards and across a floor of exuberant, slightly tipsy people.
"Uh…" Katherine started, realizing that she had been thinking that even the drawing room was not a total respite. Truthfully, she had been just a little bit relieved to leave Agnes, even though Agnes was such a loyal friend, because the leather fringed dress she wore was ill fitting and unflatteringly tight. Katherine had been distracted with pity during their entire conversation. Agnes seemed especially next to her new glamorous Parisian friends, like an embarrassing remnant of childhood.
She focused again on Percival's animated, ugly face and tried to keep her feet going one two three across the floor. She thought about the evening thus far, all the hours of mindless chatter and carefully accepted compliments, all the studious attention to appearances. She recalled the calculated luxury of her time in Paris. What had she been doing, really doing all this time? What had he –the boy she had been trying so hard to forget, indeed believed she had forgotten- been doing all the time she had been away? She wondered if he stopped caring for her. Already, she could feel the stunning weight of a lifetime of regret for letting him go and she knew it was enough to bury her alive.
All at once the room turned mute and violently bright. She closed her eyes and felt Percival Coddington's on her ear asking if she felt alright. Her corset which her made, Caroline, who preferred being called Care had practically sewed onto her hours earlier, felt suddenly horribly constricting. Her life, she realized, had all the charm of a steal trap.
Then as quickly the panic had come, it went. Katherine opened her eyes. The sounds of joy and giddy and indulgence came rushing back. She glanced up at the great domed ceiling glowing above them and reassured herself that it had not fallen.
"Yes, Mr. Coddington, thank you for asking." Katherine finally responded. "I'm not sure what came over me."
A/N: oohhh who's the mystery man? Guess. Yes I know this chapter wasn't very exciting, but it's only the beginning it'll get better as it goes on. I am also aware that Katherine and Elena have each other's personality. I made it like that, you'll understand further along. Remember: Review Review Rview !