“Beware of what you wish for, Waldorf.” Though she remained calm and moved with her regular slow grace, she was fuming. She left the game room, got back into her carriage and rode off, thinking of ways to retaliate.
When she returned home, she told Thomas she was thinking of moving and turning her townhouse into a horse stable. “That would show him,” she said. “Can’t you just imagine the stench of manure infiltrating every room of Waldorf’s hotel?”
“With all due respect, Mrs. Astor, what I cannot imagine is a horse stable with your name on it.”
She smiled.
“Have you been to the Waldorf?” he asked tentatively.
“Most certainly not.” She looked at him as if to say, How dare you ask such a thing. Then she thought for a moment. “Why? Have you?”
He shrugged apologetically. “Only once. It’s quite nice but I think you could do better.”
“Better how?”
“Well, if Mr. Waldorf Astor wishes to see something more laudable next to his hotel, I say give it to him.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“Build another hotel. A bigger hotel. A better one.” He smiled and tweaked his mustache.
“Thomas!” Caroline’s eyes flashed wide. “You never cease to amaze me.”
The next day Caroline enlisted the help of Jack, and together they engaged the services of Richard Morris Hunt to build a new home at Sixty-Fifth Street and Fifth Avenue that Caroline would share with her son and his family.
And starting in the spring, they would demolish her townhouse and begin building a new hotel at Thirty-Fourth Street, right next door to the Waldorf. Caroline’s hotel would be larger, seventeen stories compared to Waldorf’s thirteen. It would have a bigger, grander ballroom large enough for 1,600 guests, and a rooftop garden, too. Richard Hunt told her it would take two years to complete but Caroline didn’t care, as long as its every detail was designed to upstage and dwarf the Waldorf. She was going to name it the Astoria Hotel.
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
Alva
“Take them,” Alva said to Consuelo the day before her wedding, closing her daughter’s hands about the strand of pearls.
“But Mamma, not these, too. These were the first jewels Father ever gave you.”
Alva had already given Consuelo all the other jewelry from Willie. Those pearls, once belonging to Catherine the Great, were the last of it.
“I can’t accept these,” Consuelo said, handing them back to Alva.
“Of course you can. You’ll need those pearls after you’re married. Don’t forget, you’re going to be a duchess.”
“A duchess.” She said it as if the word weighed fifty pounds.
“Ah, what’s wrong?”
“I’m sorry, Mamma. I’m just—well, I’m just having second thoughts about everything.”
“Perfectly normal,” she said rather dismissively, busying herself with the pearls.
“But I can’t stop thinking about Winthrop—I hurt him so.”
Alva froze in place.
“And, well . . . I still love him, Mamma. I do.”
Alva dropped the pearls.
“I know we couldn’t have children of our own,” said Consuelo, “but there’s all those orphanages. So many children without homes . . .”
“Adoption?”
“I know it’s not the same but—”
“Your children will have Vanderbilt blood, and that’s all there is to it.”
Consuelo went silent for a moment, summoning the courage to say, “But you divorced Father because you didn’t love him anymore.”
Alva toyed with a pair of emerald earrings. There was gnawing in the pit of her stomach. All this had run in the back of her mind, that nagging truth that she was a hypocrite. Up until now she’d found ways to justify it: Consuelo didn’t understand. She was young, only eighteen. She didn’t know what real love was . . .
“I don’t love Sunny,” said Consuelo. “And I know he doesn’t love me.”
Alva turned very still and set the earrings back down. It finally hit her. The evidence had been mounting even as she tried ignoring the signs, pretending not to see the sadness in her daughter’s eyes. The criticisms had been coming from Willie, from his family, her sisters—even from Oliver. For weeks and months, everyone had been begging her to call it off. And now Alva could no longer escape the fact that no one—other than herself—wanted this wedding. She had orchestrated this whole union against everyone’s wills. Yes, the groom wanted the money, but any bride with the right financing could have become the duchess. This was a business transaction, not a marriage.
After everything she’d suffered through—telling herself and others that she’d endured the disgrace of divorce on behalf of women everywhere. Women everywhere—but not her own daughter. How could she have let things get this far? She’d stood up for women—nameless, faceless women—and turned around and sold her daughter off.
“Listen to me,” she said, taking Consuelo’s hands, “I love you more than anything in this world. I want you to be happy.”
Consuelo blinked, releasing a trickle of tears.
“If you feel that strongly,” said Alva, “if you really think you can’t go through with it, we’ll call off the wedding. But—”
Consuelo’s mouth had dropped open.
“But if we break this off, you cannot marry Winthrop. That would be the greatest mistake you could ever make, and I can’t sit back and let that happen. And,” she said, “you need to know that it won’t be easy on you. There will be gossip. There will be ridicule. You can be sure the press will run stories about it. It could make things much harder for you to marry well in the future. Are you prepared for that?”
Consuelo’s shoulders were shaking as she wept into her hands. “I’m so confused. I’m so scared, Mamma. I don’t know what to do.”
Alva pulled her into her arms and let her cry, tears soaking her shoulder. All she could think was, Dear God, forgive me for what I’ve done to this poor child!
“It’s not as though I’m not fond of Sunny,” said Consuelo, trying to compose herself. “I am fond of him, but I don’t actually love him.”
“Sometimes love is not enough. I was madly in love with your father,” she said, recalling when she and Willie met, when she’d first set eyes on him. “Love just wasn’t enough for us. At least with Sunny you’ll have a chance for happiness,” said Alva. “And children—you’ll be such a wonderful mother. You’d have a title, and your future and your children’s futures will be set for life. That’s why I’ve been pushing so hard for this.”