The Van Alen Legacy by Melissa de La Cruz

yourself,” she said.
    He was dressed as a Mogul

prince, in a fine gold brocade riding jacket and a white turban atop his

caramel-colored hair.
    In answer, Oliver took her

bejeweled hand and pressed it to his lips, sending a delicious shiver up her spine. Her

friend and her familiar. They were a team. Like the Los Angeles Lakers, unbeatable,

Schuyler couldn’t help thinking. She always made corny jokes when she was nervous.
    “What’s this?” she asked, as

Oliver pressed something into her palm.
    “I found it in the garden

earlier,” he said, showing her the crushed fourleaf clover. “For

luck.”
    I don’t need luck, I have you,

she wanted to say, but she knew Oliver would think it was cheesy. Instead, she accepted the

flower and tucked it into her sari with a smile.
    “Shall we?” he asked, when the bhangra pop ended and the orchestra switched to a waltzy version of the

Beatles’ “Norwegian Wood.” He led her out to the middle of the dance floor located in the grand

ballroom just off the courtyard. The room was festooned with floating Chinese lanterns, delicate

orbs of light that looked incongruous against the French classical architecture. There were only

a few people dancing, and Schuyler worried they would look conspicuous as the youngest people on

the dance floor by several decades.
    But she had always loved this

song, which wasn’t so much a love song as the opposite of one. “I once had a girl, or should I

say, she once had me.” And she loved that Oliver wanted to dance. He held out his arms and she

stepped into them, resting her head on his shoulder as he circled her waist. She wished dancing

was all they had to do. It was so nice just to live in the moment, to enjoy holding him so

closely, to pretend for a little while that they were merely two young people in love and nothing

else.
    Oliver led her smoothly

through every dance, a product of mandatory ballroom lessons from his etiquette-obsessed mother.

Schuyler felt as graceful as a ballerina in his confident direction.
    “I never knew you could

dance,” she teased.
    “You never asked,” he said,

twirling her around so that her silk pants floated prettily around her ankles.
    They danced through two more

songs, a catchy polonaise and a popular rap song, the music a schizophrenic mix of high and low,

Mozart to M.I.A., Bach to Beyonce . Schuyler found she was actually enjoying herself.

Then the music stopped abruptly, and they turned to see what had caused the sudden

silence.
    “The Countess of Paris,

Isabelle of Orleans,” the orchestra conductor announced, as an imposing woman, very beautiful for

her age, with coal black hair and a regal bearing entered the room. She was dressed as the Queen

of Sheba, in a headdress made of gold and blue lapis. Her right hand held an immense gold chain,

and standing at the end of it was a black panther wearing a diamond collar.
    Schuyler held her breath. So

that was the countess. The prospect of asking that woman for shelter suddenly seemed more

daunting than ever. She had expected the countess to be plump and elderly, frumpy even, a little

old lady in a pastel suit with a bunch of corgis. But this woman was sophisticated and chic; she

came across as remote and distant as a deity. Why would she care what happened to

Schuyler?
    Still, maybe the countess only

looked imperious and inaccessible. After all, this party could not have been easy for her.

Schuyler wondered if the countess was sad to have lost her home. The H’tel Lambert had been in

her family for generations upon generations. Schuyler knew the recent global financial crisis had

humbled even the grandest houses and the richest families.
    The Hazard- Perrys had invested well: Oliver told her they had gotten out of the market years before it crashed. But

all over the Upper East Side, Schuyler heard, jewelry was being auctioned, art appraised,

portfolios liquidated.