Chapter Two

Disclaimer: This is a retelling of the story of The Luxe by Anna Godberson, using the characters and locations of Vampire Diaries, that belongs to L.J Smith. In other words; I own NOTHING.

Not sure if I can make it to your party tonight.

My apologies if that is the case.

-DS

"Little Bo Peep. That's too perfect for Katherine." Elena Gilbert says, as she said as she nearly said everything with a quarter ounce of venom.

"Well, at least she didn't forget her humble American origins while she was slumming with the frenchies." Her friend Jeremy Phillips Buck replied. "And at least she didn't go bland marquis et marquis like everyone else." He added with a sniff.

Elena gave a careless shrug. if he wanted to praise Katherine Bennett, whom she had long ago singled out as her principal rival, and thus her only possible best friend, and who was now circling the polo field sized dance floor with that toad Percival Coddington, it was fine with her. She was feeling entirely better how very impressed everyone was by her family's new house and hosting style. And of course, by her.

There had been a dark moment earlier, when the messenger arrived with the note. She had just returned from the Bennetts' where she had gone to welcome Katherine back and chastise her for nearly missing the party. Her heart had clenched, reading the careless missive and then she had flown into a rage that -she could admit this now- had not been especially fair to the maids attending to her before the party. It was not so much that she feared the writer of the note would not come to love her –how could any boy hold out really- but that this particular boy might miss this particular party. After all, what better place for him to realize she was truly the center of the universe, and that keeping their relationship a secret was a colossal waste?

Now, observing her family's ballroom from the mezzanine, her torso clenched between her flamenco dancer's red flounces to a perfect eighteen inches, she felt supremely confident that he would come. It was the evening of the Jonathan Gilbert's ball, the evening where they reached their apotheosis as a top drawer family –there was simply no place else to be- she was certain he would arrive shortly. Well, almost certain. Elena rested a confident hand on her hip even as she clenched and unclenched her fist around the note in her other hand.

"Would you look at Katherine, holding herself so high and mighty." Elena said. The dozens of delicate yellow gold bangles lining her forearm jingled.

Jeremy drew himself up to his full height and rested his hand on his rotund belly, which went undisguised by his jester outfit. "I think she is trying to keep out of the way of Percival's breath."

Then they laughed, as the always laughed: mouth closed and through their noses. Elena and Katherine hadn't really become friends until they shared a French tutor in their early teens. (Later Elena heard that this arrangement had been thought up by Mr. Bennett to perturb Mrs. Bennett, and had never forgotten the slightest). He had been an adorable and lanky fellow whom Katherine had enjoyed making blush by asking him for instance, to explain the difference between décolletage and décolleté. It was comical what lengths Katherine seemed to go to these days to prove what a proper little miss she was. Elena never worried much about anything, especially whether she was perceived as a lady which was well and good, since Elena was something less than a lady, at least from the point of view of members of the old Dutch families like Katherine's mother, who nonetheless had been enjoying the lavishness of the Gilbert's ballroom all evening. A ballroom, Elena couldn't help but thinking, far more vast and sparkling than the Bennett's ballroom. The Bennett's lived in a rather old and rather plain sort of mansion in Gramercy Park with a staid brown face and the rooms all in a neat straight row. And that wasn't an even fashionable part of town anymore.

Elena might have felt bad for Katherine that she still lived in such a backwater while the Gilbert family had moved on to Fifth Avenue uptown, with its strip of brand new residents, except that she knew very well that Katherine's mother was always talking about the Gilbert's, and how they were a made up family, it was true that the Gilbert fortune when Elena's grandfather, Odin Himont Jr., gave up his modest tailoring business in Maryland, and began selling cotton blankets to the union army for the price of wool. But ever since Granddad had moved to Mystic Falls, changed his name and bought a Washington square town house from a bankrupt branch of the Ryder family, the Gilbert clan had been entrenched in Mystic Falls society.

Now they'd left Washington square behind forever and resituated themselves in the only private home in Mystic Falls with three elevator banks and a basement swimming pool. They had arrived, and they had the mansion to prove it, or a palazzo as her mother constantly and irritatingly referred to it,

"Good work tonight, Jer." Elena said, her full lips breaking into a smile of enormous pride. In parlor chatter, Elena's beauty was occasionally derided as being all lips, but the jabbing hens who said so were certainly in error. Elena's lips were no more striking than her eyes, which were wide and brown and capable of welling with innocence or scorn in equal measure.

"Only for you." He replied in his nasally faux-British accent. Jeremy had something of a case of Anglo mania and it had lately spread to his diction.

Since Jeremy was only half acknowledged by the Buck clan as one of their own, he was obliged to work for a living and had made himself indispensible to hostesses like Mrs. Gilbert. He always knew where to get the freshest flowers and where to find the most handsome young men who were willing to dance and fun to dance with, even if they weren't exactly marriageable. He knew how to shriek at the cooks so that the meat would come out just done enough. Jeremy's shriek was not pretty, but his parties always were.

"I have to say," Jeremy went on drolly. "Everyone does look their best this evening. It wasn't all in vain. I mean the jewels alone. You could buy this whole town with those jewels."

"Yes." Elena agreed. "Though it never fails to shock me how people could dump a trainload of baubles over some piece of hide."

"Oh, that's just Agnes you're talking about, and she barley has any baubles. Anyway, I think she's supposed to be Annie Oakley, and I believe if you queried her dressmaker he would say the getup was suede."

"Hah. You know very well that Agnes doesn't have a dressmaker, Buckie." She smirked. "And Luka Martin as a matador? Please." She turned to her friend, one dark eyebrow high.

"Now, now. It's not every man who could look dignified in tights."

"Oh look, there's Klaus Cutting!" Elena surveyed the survey of costumes. Klaus with his blond hair and sparkly eyes, and inherited shipping fortune, was just the kind of boy Elena had been flirting with at balls since she'd come into society two years ago. Klaus had a crush on Katherine Bennett, which was the real reason Elena always made a point of dancing with him. She watched as the young women with their great starched skirts and puffed sleeves frocked to Klaus, who bowed gallantly and went about kissing each of their gloved hands.

"Klaus looks yummy." Jeremy let one hand float up to his chin. "He chose French courtier like everybody else, but he did do it well."

"Well enough," Elena replied nonchalantly, for wherever Klaus went there was usually a certain someone even better just behind. She snapped her fingers at one of the passing waiters, balled up the note she received earlier in the day, and dropped it into her empty champagne glass. She places her glass on his tray without meeting his eyes and then helped herself to two more flutes.

That was when Damon Salvatore strode through the arched entryway at the far end of the ballroom and the whole world seemed to faint just a little bit. Elena kept herself upright even as her heart to beat triumphantly and her face tingles in anticipation. Even among the dashing and rich, Damon Salvatore stood out for being so beautiful and so slippery all at once. He came to his friend Klaus's side and Elena rolled her eyes as he began kissing the flurry of gloved hands as well.

Damon always looked in good humor and good health, which was due in part to his penchant for outdoor sports and in part to the drink that was his constant accessory, and even across the largest private ballroom in Mystic Falls the tanned perfection of his skin was evident. He had the shoulders of a general and the cheekbones of a born aristocrat, and his mouth was often fixed in an expression of mild mockery. Like Katherine Bennett, Damon was the descendant of one of Mystic Falls' great families, but he was much, much less concerned with being good.

"Those girls are embarrassing themselves." Elena remarked of her cousins and friends below. She ran her fingers along the middle of her scalp and drawn her hair down to the nape of her neck, framing her perfect oval face. Intricate silver filigreed combs fanned out behind her head. "I think I'm going to save them." She added as though the thought had just occurred to her.

Then she gathered up the yards of red crepe de chine covering her legs and began to glide toward the curving marble staircase.

"Buckie," She called, a few steps down the stairway, she turned to meet his eyes with a look of particular intensity."That's the man I'm going to marry."

Jeremy raised his champagne flute and Elena beamed with her declaration. How could she fall when she had someone as wily as JPB on her side? Elena turned back down the stairs and in a few moments she was standing on the main floor of her ballroom. A reverential hush settled on the room as the faces in the crowd turned towards her in a wave. Amongst all the white satin and powdered wigs, her red dress made her stand out even more than usual. She cut through the group of girls she had pronounced fools and reached Damon Salvatore in a few breathless moments.

"Who let you in?" she greeted him without a smile. She placed her fist on her hip, causing the gold gypsy style bracelets to clatter down her wrist. "You're not wearing a costume. And it said very clearly on your invitation that this was to be a costume ball."

Damon turned towards her with a face of casual amusement, not even bothering with a faux self conscious examination of his black tails and trousers. "Have I done wrong Miss. Gilbert? See I don't have time to read my mail anymore, but a little bird told me you would be having a party tonight…"

It was whispered among the women of Mystic Falls that Damon always had the band paid off in advance because they frequently struck up a waltz just precisely when he needed to end a conversation. The band begun playing now, and Damon gave a gentle nod in Elena's direction. She could not stop the corner of her mouth from twitching smile like, for a moment he kept his intense gaze fixed on her as he began walking her backwards into the room until they were waltzing.

For a moment the crowd just stared, dazzled by the lightness of the couple moving across the floor. But Elena was very good at arousing jealousy, and her cousins and friends were not very good at standing still when they were jealous. Soon other less bright couples began dancing too, so that the gleaming pattern of the marble floor was blotted out by the bright swinging skirts of the girls and the nimble black feet of their partners.

There was plenty of eyes still on the flamenco dancer and the dandy of tails; Elena knew how much she was watched, so she spoke quietly as they moved. "Why did you send me that note?" she asked, tilting her head slightly as they turned.

"I like teasing you," He answered. "This way I'd know you'd be especially grateful to see me."

Elena considered this for a moment, but there was something in his lively blue eyes that told her he was lying, just a bit. "You were someplace else before you came here, weren't you?"

"Now, what would make you think a thing like that?" he replied with unwavering amusement. "I've been looking for this persises moment all day."

"You lie very well," She told him. "But I knew you wouldn't stay away."

Damon stared at her carelessly, and did not answer. He just pressed his hand into her skirt, somewhat lower than the small of her back and kept moving her through the crowd. She felt in that moment as though they were a known item and that all those lesser girls were already crying into their hankies at the thought of Damon Salvatore being married. The music seemed to be playing triumphantly and just for her. She could have gone on for her forever she might have too, had not the large whiskery figure of Damon's father appeared over his shoulder and pulled him out of the dance.

"Pardon me, Miss. Gilbert." The elder Mr. Salvatore said in a voice that was level but devoid of any apology. The rest of the dancers kept moving but Elena found herself horribly stalled in the center of everything. Her great performance curtailed by this large odious parental presence. She felt a fit coming on but somehow managed to contain it. The other dancers were pretending not to notice what was going on, but they were all terrible fakers. Elena wondered if Katherine was out there watching. She had wanted to reveal her secret relationship to her friend with maximum drama, and this exchange wasn't helping anything. "I'm going to have to borrow Damon for the rest of the night. It's quite urgent, and we must leave immediately, I'm afraid."

Instinct made Elena smile even through her misery and she tipped her hat. "Of course." She answered. Then she watched alone from the middle of that epic room, as her future husband disappeared amongst all the ordinary bodies. Elena knew despite the still dancing masses that for her, the party was over.

A/N: So, that was the third chapter tell me what you think.

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