Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly EPUB & PDF – eBook Details
- Author: Martha Hall Kelly
- Genre: Women’s Sagas, Historical European Fiction, U.S. Historical Fiction
- Publish Date: 5 April 2016
- Size: 5 MB
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Status: Avail for Download
- Price: Free
Caroline
SEPTEMBER 1939
If I’d known I was about to meet the man who’d shatter me like
bone china on terra-cotta, I would have slept in. Instead, I
roused our florist, Mr. Sitwell, from his bed to make a
boutonnière. My first consulate gala was no time to stand on
ceremony.
I joined the riptide of the great unwashed moving up Fifth
Avenue. Men in gray-felted fedoras pushed by me, the morning
papers in their attachés bearing the last benign headlines of the
decade. There was no storm gathering in the east that day, no
portent of things to come. The only ominous sign from the
direction of Europe was the scent of slack water wafting off the
East River.
As I neared our building at the corner of Fifth Avenue and
Forty-ninth Street, I felt Roger watching from the window
above. He’d fired people for a lot less than being twenty minutes
late, but the one time of year the New York elite opened their
wallets and pretended they cared about France was no time for
skimpy boutonnières.
I turned at the corner, the morning sun alive in the gold-leaf
letters chiseled in the cornerstone: LA MAISON FRANÇAISE. The
French Building, home to the French Consulate, stood side by
side with the British Empire Building, facing Fifth Avenue, part
of Rockefeller Center, Junior Rockefeller’s new complex of
granite and limestone. Many foreign consulates kept offices
there then, resulting in a great stew of international diplomacy.
“All the way to the back and face the front,” said Cuddy, our
elevator operator.
Mr. Rockefeller handpicked the elevator boys, screening for
manners and good looks. Cuddy was heavy on the looks, though
his hair was already salt-and-peppered, his body in a hurry to
age.
Cuddy fixed his gaze on the illuminated numbers above the
doors. “You got a crowd up there today, Miss Ferriday. Pia said
there’s two new boats in.”
“Delightful,” I said.
Cuddy brushed something off the sleeve of his navy-blue
uniform jacket. “Another late one tonight?”
For the fastest elevators in the world, ours still took forever.
“I’ll be gone by five. Gala tonight.”
I loved my job. Grandmother Woolsey had started the work
tradition in our family, nursing soldiers on the battlefield at
Gettysburg. But my volunteer post as head of family assistance
for the French Consulate wasn’t work really. Loving all things
French was simply genetic for me. My father may have been
half-Irish, but his heart belonged to France. Plus, Mother had
inherited an apartment in Paris, where we spent every August,
so I felt at home there.
The elevator stopped. Even through the closed doors, we
could hear a terrific din of raised voices. A shiver ran through
me.
“Third floor,” Cuddy called out. “French Consulate. Watch
your—”
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