An American Beauty


 
 
 
 
 Table of Contents
 
 Praise
 Also by
 Title Page
 
 Copyright Page
 Dedication
 PROLOGUE
 Part I - The Champagne Girl
 CHAPTER 1
 CHAPTER 2
 CHAPTER 3
 CHAPTER 4
 CHAPTER 5
 CHAPTER 6
 CHAPTER 7
 CHAPTER 8
 CHAPTER 9
 CHAPTER 10
 CHAPTER 11
 CHAPTER 12
 Part II - The Mistress
 CHAPTER 13
 CHAPTER 14
 CHAPTER 15
 CHAPTER 16
 CHAPTER 17
 Part III - The Shadow Wife
 CHAPTER 18
 CHAPTER 19
 CHAPTER 20
 CHAPTER 21
 CHAPTER 22
 CHAPTER 23
 CHAPTER 24
 CHAPTER 25
 CHAPTER 26
 CHAPTER 27
 CHAPTER 28
 Part IV - The Lover
 CHAPTER 29
 CHAPTER 30
 CHAPTER 31
 CHAPTER 32
 CHAPTER 33
 CHAPTER 34
 CHAPTER 35
 CHAPTER 36
 CHAPTER 37
 CHAPTER 38
 CHAPTER 39
 Part V - The Second Wife
 CHAPTER 40
 CHAPTER 41
 CHAPTER 42
 CHAPTER 43
 CHAPTER 44
 CHAPTER 45
 CHAPTER 46
 CHAPTER 47
 CHAPTER 48
 CHAPTER 49
 CHAPTER 50
 CHAPTER 51
 CHAPTER 52
 CHAPTER 53
 Part VI - The Widow
 CHAPTER 54
 EPILOGUE
 AUTHOR’S NOTE
 Teaser chapter
 
 
 
 
 
 Also by Shana Abé 
 
 The Second Mrs. Astor 
 
 
 
 Shana Abé is the award-winning New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestselling author of sixteen novels, including the Sweetest Dark series and the Drákon series. She has a bachelor of fine arts degree from the University of Southern California and currently lives in the mountains of Colorado. Visit her online at ShanaAbe.com
 
 EPILOGUE 
 MRS. COLLIS P. HUNTINGTON WEDS NEPHEW 
 —special cable to Town Topics Manhattan, New York July 17, 1913 
 
 
 After many years of rumors of an impending engagement (always answered with steadfast denials), it has been confirmed that the wealthy widow of famed railway baron Collis Potter Huntington, Mrs. Arabella Duvall Huntington, has indeed wed the nephew of her late husband, Mr. Henry Edwards Huntington. The ceremony took place yesterday in Paris. 
 It may be recalled that Mr. H. E. Huntington was sued for divorce by his first wife, Mary Alice Huntington, in 1906 on grounds of desertion. Since that time, he has been seen in the company of his aunt nearly nonstop. H. E. Huntington, formerly of the Southern Pacific Company, also inherited millions from his uncle. But as the founder of the electric railways in and around Los Angeles, he is prosperous in his own right, and has built a tremendous Beaux-Arts mansion on the idyllic grounds of the old Shorb Ranch near Pasadena, California. The parcel is five hundred acres large, and a place some claim was purchased by H. E. H. with the wooing of his aunt forefront in his mind. 
 Mrs. Huntington is known to have offered her invaluable advice regarding the planning and construction of the new residence and its gardens, as well as on matters of décor and rare objects of art for the home. 
 The newlywed couple, both of an age (it may be delicately stated) when one typically dreams of endings rather than beginnings, plan to divide their time between California and New York. 
 Cheers to them. 
 
 
 AUTHOR’S NOTE 
 About a zillion years ago I went to the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens (www.huntington.org) in San Marino, California, for the first time. I was a college student, dead broke, no car, so I’d taken the bus to get there (if you’ve ever traveled across the labyrinth of Los Angeles by bus, you know what an exercise in surrealism and fatigue this is). I’d heard about this fantastical place, this marvelous, gorgeous, astounding place that housed priceless paintings and tomes and objets d’art inside Beaux-Arts mansions, all amid acres of lush, themed gardens featuring flora from around the world. 
 None of it disappointed. I wandered around enthralled, came back again and again. I brought my friends and family there, showed them my favorite garden walks, my favorite paintings, my favorite quiet nooks often overlooked by the other patrons. Once I even saw a ghost in one of the gleaming halls, no kidding. (I was with a friend and she saw it too, so there.) 
 It was not the ghost of Arabella, but a man, smiling at me. Even so, something like that sticks with you, stays shivery down in your bones. 
 Arabella likewise has stuck with me over the years. It took a while for me to recover enough from the gilded splendor of The Huntington to contemplate the couple behind it, Belle and Henry Edwards Huntington. Belle, the scandalous second wife of Edward: his aunt, his contemporary, his equal in wealth and ingenuity. Belle, the unabashed mistress of Edward’s uncle; the unabashed woman who didn’t care that high society never liked her, who accepted their shunning of her with grit and grace and went on to live her fabulous life exactly as she wished. 
 My hero. 
 Belle worked very, very hard to shroud her origins. She lied freely and frequently about her age, about where she had been born and even her first (maybe!) husband, Johnny Worsham. (An image I found of her 1908 passport application showed she’d coolly knocked eight years off her real age and then signed the document, under oath, with aplomb.) 
 What isn’t in doubt is that she became the mistress of Collis when she was either in her late teens or early twenties, and that she rose from obscurity and poverty in Richmond, Virginia, to suddenly have a lovely home in Manhattan, not far from Collis’s Park Avenue mansion (as did her family). From then on, she only soared higher. 
 She became a great philanthropist in her lifetime, giving freely to a variety of causes. Devoted abolitionists, both she and Collis gave important sums to the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute and the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute. Among his and her many other public gifts and interests: the Huntington Free Library and Reading Room in Westchester, New York; the Hispanic Society of America; the