Mirror Image

Book by Steel Danielle

The sound of the birds outside was muffled by the heavy brocade curtains  of Henderson Manor, as Olivia Henderson pushed aside a lock of long dark  hair, and continued her careful inventory of her father's china. It was a  warm summer day and, as usual, her sister had gone off somewhere. Her  father, Edward Henderson, was expecting a visit from his lawyers. Nestled  as they were in Croton-on-Hudson, nearly a three-hour drive from New  York, his attorneys came to see him fairly often. Edward Henderson ran  all his investments from here, as well as overseeing the steel mills  which still bore his name, but which he no longer ran himself. He had  retired from business entirely, two years before, in 1911, maintaining all  his holdings, but trusting entirely in his attorneys and the men who ran  the mills for him. With no sons, he no longer had the interest in  business that he once did. His daughters would never run his steel mills.  He was only sixty-five, but his health had begun to fail over the past few years, and he preferred viewing the world from his peaceful perch in  Croton-on-Hudson. Here, he could observe the world quietly, and it was a  healthy, wholesome life for his two daughters. It was not exciting,  admittedly, but they were never bored, and they had friends among all the  grand families up and down the Hudson.

The Van Cortlandt manor was nearby, as were the Shepards on the old  Lyndhurst estate. Helen Shepard's father had been Jay Gould, and he had  died twenty years before, and left the extraordinary property to his  daughter. She and her husband, Finley Shepard, ran it beautifully, and  gave frequent parties for the young people nearby. The Rockefellers had  finished building Kykuit in Tarrytown that year, with its splendid  gardens and magnificent grounds, and a house which rivaled Edward  Henderson's just north of them at Croton-on-Hudson.

Henderson Manor was a handsome home, and one which people came from miles  to see, peering through the gates into the lovely gardens. They could  barely see the house from where they stood, shielded as it was by tall  trees, and little turns in the road which led to the formal driveway. The  house itself sat high on a cliff, looking over the Hudson River. And  Edward liked to sit in his study for hours, watching the world drift by,  remembering times past, old friends, and the days when his life had moved  a great deal more quickly . . . taking over his father's mills in the  1870's . . . being instrumental in the many industrial changes at the end  of the last century. His life had been so busy then. When he was younger,  his life had been so different. Edward Henderson had married when he was  young, and lost a wife and a young son to diphtheria. After that he had  been alone for many years, until Elizabeth came along. She had been  everything any man could ever dream of, a bright shining streak of light, a comet in a summer sky, so ephemeral, so dazzling, so beautiful, and so  much too quickly gone. They were married within the year they met. She  was nineteen, and he was in his early forties. By twenty-one, she was  gone. Much to Edward's horror, she had died in childbed. After her death,  he had worked even harder than usual, driving himself until he was numb.  He had left his daughters to the care of his housekeeper and their  nurses, but finally, he realized that he had a responsibility to them. It  was then that he began building Henderson Manor. He wanted them to have  healthy, wholesome lives, out of the city. New York was no place for  children in 1903. They had been ten when he'd actually moved them, and now  they were twenty. He kept the house in the city and worked there, but he  came up to see them as often as he could. At first only on weekends and  then, as he fell in love with it, he began spending more time on the  Hudson, rather than in New York, or Pittsburgh, or Europe. His heart was there in Croton with his daughters, as he watched them grow, and little  by little his own life began moving more slowly. He loved being with  them, and now he never left them anymore. For the past two years, he had  gone absolutely nowhere. His health had begun to fail three or four years  before. His heart was a problem, but only when he worked too hard, or let  things upset him, or got terribly angry, which he seldom did now. He was  happy in Croton with his daughters.

It had been twenty years since their mother had died in the spring of  1893, on a warm balmy day that had appeared to him to be God's ultimate  betrayal. He had been waiting outside, filled with such pride, and so  much excitement. He had never dreamed it could happen to him again. His  first wife and infant son had died in an epidemic of diphtheria more than  a dozen years before. But this time, losing Elizabeth had almost killed  him. At forty-five, it was a near mortal blow to him, and he almost  couldn't bear going on without her. She had died in their home in New  York, and at first he felt her presence there. But after a while, he came  to hate the emptiness of it, and he had hated being there. He had  traveled off and on for months after that, but avoiding the house meant  avoiding the two little girls Elizabeth had left him. And he couldn't  bring himself to sell the house his father had built, and that he had  grown up in. A traditionalist to the core, he felt an obligation to maintain it for his children. He had closed it eventually, and it had  been two years since he'd been there. Now that he lived in Croton  full-time, he never missed it. Neither the house, nor New York, nor the  social life he'd left there.

And as the summer sounds droned on, Olivia continued her painstaking  inventory of the china. She had long sheets of paper on which she wrote  in her meticulous hand, making note of what they needed to replace, and  what had to be ordered. Sometimes she sent one of the servants to the  house in town to bring something up to them, but for the most part, the  city house was closed, and they never went there. She knew her father  didn't like it. Her father's health was frail, and, like him, she was  happy here in their quiet life in Croton-on-Hudson. She had actually spent  very little time in New York since she was a child, except for the brief  time two years before, when her father had taken them to New York, to  present them to society and all his friends. She had found it  interesting, but truly exhausting. She was overwhelmed by the parties,  the theater, the constant social demands made on them. She had felt as  though she were onstage the entire time, and she hated the attention. It was Victoria who had thrived on it, and who had been in a state of total  gloom when they returned to Croton at Christmas. Olivia had been relieved  to return to her books, their home, her horses, her peaceful walks high  on the cliff which led her sometimes to neighboring farms. She loved  riding here, and listening to the sounds of spring, watching winter melt  slowly away from them, seeing the splendor of the turning leaves in  October. She loved taking care of her father's house for him, and had  since she was a very young girl, with the help of Alberta Peabody, the  woman who had raised them. She was "Bertie" to them, and the closest to a  mother the Henderson girls had ever known. Her eyes were poor, but her  mind was sharp, and she could have told the two young women apart in the  dark, with her eyes closed.

She came to check on Olivia now, and asked her how far she had gotten.  She didn't have the patience, or the eyes, to do this kind of minute work  anymore, and she was always grateful when Olivia did it for her. Olivia  carefully checked the embroidery, the crystal, the linens. She kept an eye  on everything, and she loved doing it, unlike Victoria, who detested all  things domestic. Victoria was, in every possible way, different from her  sister.

"Well, have they broken all our plates, or will we still be able to  manage Christmas dinner?" Bertie smiled as she held up a glass of  ice-cold lemonade and a plate of gingersnaps fresh out of the oven.  Alberta Peabody had spent twenty years caring for the two girls she had  come to think of as "her children." They had become hers at birth, and  she had never left them for a day, not since their mother had died, and  she had first looked into Olivia's eyes and realized instantly how much  she loved her.

She was a short, round woman, with white hair in a small bun at the back  of her head. She had an ample bosom where Olivia had rested her head  through most of her childhood. She had comforted them whenever they  needed it, and whenever their father wasn't there, which had been often  when they were young. For years, he had grieved silently for their mother  and kept his distance. But he had warmed toward them in recent years, and  softened considerably since his health had begun to fail and he had  retired from business. He had a weak heart, which he attributed to the  sh...