The Gilt Set: A Very DeVere Christmas

The Gilt Set

By Christmas evening, the hotel’s private dining room had been transformed.

The flowers from the previous night’s ball had been rearranged, candles placed along the tables, and the elaborate decorations Calista had commissioned were enjoying a second appearance for which she considered them entirely suited.

There were no assigned seats.

Margaret found this deeply troubling.

“You cannot simply allow people to sit wherever they please.”

“Apparently I can.”

“People will be confused.”

“They’ll recover.”

“What if someone sits beside a person they don’t know?”

“Margaret, that’s generally how people meet.”

“Not in Charleston.”

Calista adjusted a candle. “Then perhaps Charleston could use the practice.”

She was dressed in a crisp white blouse with pleated cuffs and a deep evergreen skirt patterned with pale bows. The emerald brooch rested just below her shoulder.

Margaret had chosen a long burgundy plaid dress whose tailored shape suited her tall frame beautifully. She had apparently decided that Christmas dinner, whatever its social shortcomings, did not excuse a woman from looking magnificent.

Calista would have told her so, but Margaret had received quite enough compliments over the past two days.

The guests arrived in small groups. Some knew one another. Others had only a passing acquaintance with the DeVere family, which did not prevent them from accepting the invitation with enthusiasm.

Ruth Bell arrived with her mother.

Calista spotted them near the entrance and crossed the room to greet them.

“Ruth! You came.”

“I told you we’d try.”

“And this must be your mother.”

“Mrs. Bell,” Ruth said, making the introduction.

Calista took the older woman’s hand. “I’m delighted to meet you. Your daughter has been keeping Charleston beautifully dressed, although I have a few questions about her professional discretion.”

Mrs. Bell glanced at Ruth.

“The tartan?”

Calista laughed. “So you knew about that too?”

“My dear, I helped cut both dresses.”

“Then I suppose I should thank you. Margaret hasn’t been that entertaining in months.”

Mrs. Bell smiled. “Ruth gets her sense of humor from her father. I taught her to keep a straight face.”

Calista decided immediately that Mrs. Bell was going to be excellent company.

She had spent most of her life working with her hands, first at her own sewing machine and later helping Ruth establish her dressmaking business. There was something reassuringly practical about her, and Calista suspected she would be considerably more difficult to impress than the women who had attended the previous evening’s ball.

“I hope you don’t mind the short notice,” Calista continued.

“My dear, I once made Christmas dinner for nineteen people with three hours’ notice because my sister forgot she’d invited her husband’s entire family. I think we’ll manage.”

“Then I shall insist you sit near me. We clearly have much to discuss.”

Ruth glanced past her and spotted Margaret approaching.

“Mrs. Evans. Merry Christmas.”

“Miss Bell.”

Margaret looked from Ruth to Calista and back again. “I trust neither of us has ordered the same dress for this evening.”

Ruth’s expression remained perfectly composed. “I couldn’t possibly discuss another customer’s wardrobe, Mrs. Evans.”

“Of course you couldn’t.”

“Although I’m pleased to see you’ve both chosen different fabrics tonight.”

Calista covered her smile with her glass.

Margaret narrowed her eyes. “One day, Miss Bell, you and I are going to have a conversation about that tartan.”

“I look forward to it, ma’am.”

Calista was still laughing as they went in to dinner.

Within half an hour, Ruth found herself seated beside Margaret, discussing her dressmaking business.

Margaret had assumed Ruth employed several seamstresses, given the amount of work she appeared to produce. Ruth explained that she did, although finding experienced women had become increasingly difficult. “There’s no shortage of girls who want to learn,” Ruth said. “The difficulty is finding someone who can afford to teach them.”

Margaret looked up from her plate. “Surely there are training programs.”

“There are. Most cost money the girls don’t have, and some require them to leave Charleston. It’s rather difficult to spend a year learning a trade when your family needs what you earn every week.”

Margaret considered this. “And you train them yourself?”

“When I can. I have two girls working with me now. One’s quite talented at patternmaking. The other can look at a dress and tell you what’s wrong with the construction before you’ve even put it on.”

“She sounds delightful.”

“She reminds me of you, Mrs. Evans.”

Margaret raised an eyebrow. “I shall choose to take that as a compliment.”

“You should. She’s usually right.”

Across the table, Calista listened with growing amusement.

Christmas dinner was not a particularly orderly affair.

People changed seats. Someone spilled wine. Two children persuaded the waiter that a second helping of dessert was necessary for their continued emotional well-being.

Virginia Castleberry, who had somehow secured an invitation despite Calista’s certainty that she hadn’t been sent one, spent twenty minutes complaining about the informality before discovering that the woman beside her had known her mother.

By dessert, they were discussing family photographs with the intimacy of lifelong friends.

Margaret watched this transformation with suspicion.

“Well,” she murmured, “that’s unsettling.”

“What is?”

“Virginia appears to be enjoying herself.”

“Good heavens.”

“I know.”

Calista smiled into her wine.

Margaret was now asking detailed questions about training costs, apprenticeship arrangements, and how many young women Ruth might be able to employ if she had additional assistance.

Calista caught her eye.

Margaret looked back. “What?”

“Nothing, darling.”

“Then why are you smiling?”

“I was merely wondering whether I ought to appoint you to the scholarship committee.”

Margaret set down her glass. “Calista, don’t threaten me at Christmas dinner.”

Ruth laughed.

Calista watched the two women return to their discussion. Her mother’s scholarship might finally be in competent hands.

She made a note to tell Margaret later. Preferably after another martini.

At the far end of the room, her father was entertaining the stranded family with stories about Charleston. Mrs. Bell had become acquainted with the florist, and Ruth was explaining to two guests why one of her apprentices wanted to study fashion design.

The evening had grown noisy, and occasionally unruly, and Calista found she was enjoying herself enormously.

She had spent so many years believing a successful party depended upon the perfect guest list that it had never occurred to her how much fun might be had when the guests were actually pleased to be there.

Later, she brought Eleanor’s old guest book into the room.

It had been lying open on the writing desk when she left the suite. She thought of the crossed-out name, the photograph, and the extraordinary amount of unhappiness one black line had caused.

She placed it near the door for anyone who wished to sign.

Ruth came over as the evening was ending.

“Is this your mother’s?”

“Yes.”

“It’s beautiful.”

“She used it for years.”

Ruth turned the pages slowly.

There were names she recognized, old Charleston families, people she’d met, people she knew only from newspaper photographs.

Then she reached the page from 1959.

Margaret’s name was still there beneath the black line.

Ruth looked at it for a moment.

She said nothing.

Calista handed her the pen.

“If you’d like.”

Ruth smiled, turned to a fresh page, and signed her name. Then she passed the book to her mother.

Mrs. Bell signed beneath her daughter.

Across the room, Margaret watched.

Calista caught her eye.

Neither said anything.

For once, there was nothing that needed improving with a speech.

By ten o’clock, most of the guests had departed.

The dining room was quiet, the candles had burned low, and the hotel staff had begun clearing the last of the glasses.

Calista stood beside the guest book, running one finger over the new signatures.

Margaret approached.

“No assigned seats,” she observed.

Calista looked up.

“Your grandmother would have died.”

“She already has, darling. Try to keep up.”

Margaret laughed so hard she had to set down her glass.

When she’d recovered, she looked at Calista for a long moment.

“You look like Eleanor tonight.”

Calista glanced down at the emerald brooch.

“I suppose I do.”

“She would have been proud of you.”

Calista considered the words.

“She would have had several suggestions.”

“Naturally.”

“And at least one complaint.”

“Probably the seating.”

Calista smiled.

Then she looked toward the dining room, where the last few guests were making their farewells.

“I wish she could have seen it.”

Margaret’s expression softened.

“So do I.”

For a moment, they stood together without speaking.

Calista had spent years trying to recreate her mother’s Christmases, to understand the woman she’d lost, and to find some way of returning to a time when Eleanor was still at the end of the table telling people what to do.

She knew now that she could never bring those evenings back exactly as they had been.

She could only decide what was worth keeping.

Margaret touched her arm.

“Come along. We should get you upstairs.”

Calista looked at her.

“Why?”

“Because you’ve been entertaining since breakfast and you must be exhausted.”

“I am.”

“Then go to bed.”

Calista glanced at the clock. “Margaret.”

“What?”

“It’s only ten.”

“Precisely.”

Calista looked offended. “Darling, Christmas isn’t over.”

The invitation arrived at a quarter past ten.

It had been left with the concierge earlier that evening and addressed, rather pointedly, to Margaret Jewell Holt Evans.

Mrs. Virginia Castleberry was hosting a private Christmas nightcap at her residence. A little champagne, a few close friends, and the sort of gathering whose principal attraction was knowing that most of Charleston hadn’t been invited.

Margaret read it in the suite while Calista stood beside the Christmas tree examining the remaining ornaments.

“Virginia is having people over.”

“How nice.”

“She’s invited me.”

Calista turned.

“Only you?”

“Apparently.”

“How extraordinary.”

Margaret looked at the card again.

“There’s a note.”

“From Virginia?”

“Yes.”

“What does it say?”

Margaret read aloud.

Calista stared.

“Commotion?”

Margaret folded the invitation.

“I believe she means you.”

“I know perfectly well what she means.”

“Then why did you ask?”

“Because I was hoping you’d find it as offensive as I do.”

Margaret smiled.

“Calista, you’ve just hosted a Christmas dinner that included half the hotel’s available staff, a dressmaker and her mother, a florist, and a woman Virginia hasn’t spoken to since 1954. I think a little commotion is precisely what you’ve caused.”

“Well, I had a lovely time.”

“So did I.”

Calista looked up.

Margaret appeared almost surprised by her own admission.

Then she held out the invitation.

“Come with me.”

Calista blinked.

“To Virginia’s?”

“Yes.”

“She didn’t invite me.”

“I know.”

“She’ll be furious.”

“Probably.”

Calista studied her.

“Margaret, are you suggesting we arrive at a private gathering to which I was deliberately not invited?”

Margaret considered this.

“Yes.”

There was a long silence.

Then Calista began to smile.

“Oh, I think I’m going to enjoy having an ally.”

“Don’t become sentimental. It’s very unattractive.”

Calista disappeared into the bedroom.

Twenty minutes later, she emerged wearing a champagne-colored sequin mini dress, its pale feather trim moving softly as she walked.

Margaret looked up from the sofa.

“Good Lord.”

“What?”

“You’re wearing that to Virginia’s?”

“Certainly.”

“Calista, it’s a small gathering.”

“Then she’ll be able to see me more clearly.”

Margaret shook her head.

“You’re impossible.”

“And you’re still dressed for Christmas dinner.”

Margaret glanced down at her burgundy plaid.

“I was intending to remain perfectly comfortable.”

“Darling, you can’t possibly arrive at Virginia Castleberry’s wearing the same dress you wore to dinner.”

“Why not?”

“Because she’ll think you’ve run out of clothes.”

Margaret stared at her.

For one horrifying moment, she realized that Calista had used precisely the sort of reasoning Margaret herself might have employed under different circumstances.

The alliance was already becoming dangerous.

Ten minutes later, Margaret returned in a champagne sequin skirt edged with pale feathers, paired with a beautifully cut white blouse.

Calista looked her up and down.

“Oh, that’s magnificent.”

“Thank you.”

“You might even be prettier than Virginia.”

“I should hope so.”

Calista laughed.

Then she reached for the bottle of champagne left chilling beside the sitting-room table.

“One last toast before we go.”

Margaret accepted a glass.

“To what?”

Calista considered the question.

“To Mother.”

Margaret lifted her glass.

“To Eleanor.”

They drank.

Calista glanced toward the guest book resting on the writing desk. “And to Ruth.”

Margaret nodded.

“To Ruth.”

Then, after a moment, Calista smiled.

“And to the people who find us absolutely intolerable.”

Margaret raised an eyebrow.

“That’s rather a long list.”

“I know. We may need another bottle.”

Their glasses touched.

A few minutes before eleven, the two women descended through the hotel.

The lobby had grown quiet. The Christmas tree still glowed beneath the chandeliers, and the polished floors reflected the lights in long ribbons of gold.

Calista walked ahead in her champagne sequins, looking entirely too pleased with herself.

Margaret followed in the matching shimmer of her skirt, carrying her evening bag and an expression of practiced indifference.

The concierge looked up as they approached.

“Good evening, ladies. Shall I have the car brought around?”

“Please,” Margaret replied.

Calista glanced toward her.

“Do you think Virginia has heard about the scholarship?”

“Undoubtedly.”

“And the dinner?”

“Certainly.”

“Then perhaps we should prepare ourselves for an unpleasant reception.”

Margaret smiled.

“Calista, you’ve been preparing for unpleasant receptions your entire life.”

“Yes, but I’ve never had anyone quite as useful to bring along.”

Margaret considered this.

“Remember, darling, the alliance is provisional.”

“Of course.”

“And I reserve the right to disagree with you.”

“Naturally.”

“And if you embarrass me at Virginia’s, I shall deny any association whatsoever.”

Calista looked at her.

“Margaret, after the past two days, I don’t believe there’s a woman in Charleston who would believe that.”

Margaret laughed.

They paused beneath the Christmas tree as the doorman prepared the car.

Margaret adjusted her evening bag.

“Come along, Calista.”

“Where’s the hurry?”

“Virginia’s expecting us.”

“Margaret, Virginia is expecting you.”

Margaret smiled.

“Then I suppose she’s in for a surprise.”

The doorman opened the doors.

And the two women stepped out into the Charleston night.

The following morning, the Shiny Sheet published its Christmas society roundup.

The first item concerned the DeVere Christmas dinner, which the paper described as an unprecedented gathering of Charleston families, hotel employees, and several people whose presence had required additional explanation.

The second was a good deal more interesting.

Beneath it appeared a photograph of the two women in champagne sequins, standing in the lobby at The Charleston Place.

Calista had already ordered six copies.

Margaret, who was preparing to return to Palm Beach, received hers with breakfast.

She examined the photograph. Then she telephoned Calista.

“Darling.”

“Good morning, Margaret.”

“Have you seen the Shiny Sheet?”

“Naturally.”

“They’ve photographed us together.”

“Yes.”

“At the hotel.”

“Yes.”

“Wearing sequins.”

“Well, we were wearing sequins, Margaret.”

Margaret closed her eyes.

“People are going to talk.”

Calista smiled into the telephone.

“Darling, when have we ever given them another option?”

Margaret sighed.

Then, almost reluctantly, she began to laugh.

“Oh, one more thing,” she said.

“Yes?”

“The Beach Ball is in April.”

“I’m aware.”

“I’ve already started the seating chart.”

Calista straightened in her chair.

“Margaret.”

“Yes, darling?”

“Don’t even think about it.”

Margaret smiled.

“Merry Christmas, Calista.”

The line went dead.

Calista replaced the receiver and looked once more at the photograph.

Then she reached for her stationery.

There was a friendship to maintain, a scholarship to organize, and a considerable amount of correspondence to attend to before April. She suspected Margaret would make all three unnecessarily difficult.

For once, she was rather looking forward to it.

Calista Beauregard DeVere died in November of 2025, at eighty-four, and for the first time in her life she did not invite anyone to watch.

She had left instructions. There was to be no funeral, no notice in the paper and no casseroles. She had spent eighty-four years giving Charleston something to discuss and saw no reason to supply the closing remarks.

Charleston found this deeply inconsiderate.

A week after Thanksgiving, her son Robert carried a trunk down from the attic on Legare Street and drove it across town. It was an old travelling trunk with a rounded top, brass corners and a leather handle that had given up some decades earlier. He set it on the rug in his own front room, in front of his wife and his daughter, and straightened up slowly.

“It was at the top of the attic stairs,” he said. “Your grandmother would have wanted you to have it.”

Meg looked at it from the sofa. She was twenty-eight, the age at which her grandmother had come home to Charleston with six suitcases and two hatboxes. She had inherited the DeVere chin, the DeVere hair and a complete inability to leave a closed lid alone.

“Did she say so?”

“She left two pages on the silver and a paragraph on the florist. The trunk wasn’t mentioned.”

“Then how do you know?”

“Because that trunk sat behind the Christmas decorations my entire life, and sometime this fall she had it moved to the top of the stairs with nothing stacked on it.”

Her mother, Dawn, regarded the trunk the way she might regard a relative arriving without notice.

“Your grandmother kept everything,” she said. “Grudges included.”

“No, she kept those downstairs,” said Robert. “The attic was for things she liked.”

Meg knelt and lifted the lid.

It smelled of cedar and of a perfume nobody had made in years. Gardenias, perhaps. There were hundreds of photographs. There were journals with the years stamped on their spines, letters tied in ribbon, jewelry cases, glass ornaments wrapped in tissue and a leather guest book embossed with the family crest.

Near the top lay a newspaper, folded in quarters and gone the color of weak tea. It was the Palm Beach paper, the one her grandmother had always called the Shiny Sheet, dated the day after Christmas, 1969.

Beneath the headline was a photograph of two women standing under a Christmas tree in a hotel lobby. Both wore pale sequins. One was plainly her grandmother, young and entirely too pleased with herself. The other was taller and had the look of a woman who had been talked into something.

There were five copies of the paper. Her grandmother had never ordered one of anything.

In the margin of the top copy, in the handwriting Meg knew from every birthday card of her life, were four words.

“Dad. Who’s Margaret?”

Robert took the paper and held it at arm’s length.

“Margaret Evans. Palm Beach. She and Mother were...” He considered. “I never did find the word for it.”

“Friends?”

“I wouldn’t have said so in front of either of them.”

“Why did Grandmother never mention her? Not once.”

“It was complicated. As I understood it, they could go a year without a civil word. But I’m fairly sure they kept in touch. There was a card every Christmas with a Palm Beach postmark.”

Meg went through the jewelry cases one at a time. At the bottom of the last was a velvet box.

It was empty.

“Where’s the emerald? The brooch she wore every Christmas Eve when I was little.”

“She got fed up with the clasp,” Robert said. “It never did hold. Her mother swore there was an angle to it. I haven’t seen it in years.”

“She wouldn’t have lost it.”

“Your grandmother never lost anything. She occasionally declined to say where things were.”

Meg was still on the rug long after her parents had gone up.

Beneath the guest book she found an address book in green leather, its alphabet tabs worn soft. Most of its pages were a record of revisions. People had moved, married, died or given offense, and each change had been entered and the old line struck through.

Under E there was one entry nobody had touched.

Mrs. Margaret Holt Evans, and a house number in Palm Beach, written once in ink and never corrected.

Meg typed the name into her phone. The first result was the Shiny Sheet, from April.

Beneath it was a photograph of a very upright old woman surrounded by a great many younger ones, none of whom appeared to be standing where they wished.

Meg took the stairs two at a time. Her father was reading in bed.

“She’s alive.”

He looked at her over his glasses.

“Who?”

“Margaret Evans. She’s eighty-five and she’s still in Palm Beach. Is that true?”

“I didn’t know that.” He went back to his page. “But only the good die young, so probably.”

Meg booked the morning flight.

The house stood behind a hedge clipped to within an inch of its life. Meg rang the bell with the newspaper folded in her bag and no clear idea of what she intended to say.

A woman of about sixty opened the door. She wore linen and pearls, and her face had the patience of someone who had spent years answering for a difficult person.

“Yes?”

“I’m so sorry to come without calling. My name is Meg. I think my grandmother knew Mrs. Evans. Calista DeVere.”

The woman stared at her with wide eyes.

“I’m Renee. Her niece.” She stepped back from the door. “You’d better come in. She’s been dressed since seven every morning waiting for you.”

The receiving room was long and cool, with tall windows onto a garden. Margaret sat at one end of a beautiful old sofa with a blanket over her knees and a cup of tea at her elbow that she did not appear to have touched. Although she was eighty-five, nobody had dared to inform her posture. On the table beside her, in a silver frame, was the same page of the same newspaper.

Margaret looked Meg over the way she had once looked over seating charts.

“Well. You have the hair. Eleanor would have had a great deal to say about it.”

Meg held out the paper.

“Mrs. Evans, I found this in my grandmother’s trunk.”

Margaret did not take it. She had no need to.

“She ordered six. She kept five and sent the sixth to Virginia Castleberry.”

“Then you know she’s...”

“I know, child. She wrote to tell me herself. It came the day after. Calista never trusted anyone else to deliver her news.”

Margaret folded her hands on the blanket.

“You took your time. She said a fortnight.”

“It’s been three weeks.”

“Yes. I’ve been counting.”

She turned her head a quarter of an inch.

“Renee. The safe. The letter and the small box. And take this tea away. I’ve been polite to it long enough. I’ll have a martini.”

“Aunt Margaret, it’s ten in the morning.”

“Then bring two.”

Renee came back with an envelope and a small leather box. Margaret put both in Meg’s hands. Her name was written across the envelope in her grandmother’s hand. It had not occurred to Meg that she would ever again receive something new from her.

“The letter first,” Margaret said. “She was very particular about the order.”

Meg read it twice.

“She called my mother a trollop.”

“Oh, she called her a great many things. That is the only one she put in writing. Her name is Dawn...”

Meg stared at Margaret for a moment and then opened the box.

The emerald sat in a gold and diamond cathedral setting. It was the most beautiful green she had ever seen, with hints of blue in it, like deep water. It caught the light from the tall windows and threw a little of it onto the ceiling.

For a moment she only looked.

She had seen that stone every Christmas Eve of her childhood, pinned just below her grandmother’s shoulder. She had once been told she could touch it if she washed her hands first. It had come down through more women than she could name, and it had spent the last of those years in a safe in Palm Beach, waiting for her to be nosy enough to find it.

She slid it onto her finger.

“It fits.”

“Naturally,” said Margaret. “Your grandmother did not leave that sort of thing to chance.”

Meg turned her hand in the light. Her eyes had filled, which annoyed her.

“My father says the two of you could go a year without a civil word. But she kept your newspaper for fifty-six years, she never once changed your address, and she left her mother’s emerald in your safe.”

Meg looked up.

“So which was it, Mrs. Evans? Did she hate you or did she love you?”

Margaret considered the question with appalling seriousness.

“Yes,” she said.

Then she smiled. Meg had seen that expression once before, in a photograph.

“Where do you think you got your name?”

Meg had been Margaret on her birth certificate and Meg to everyone since.

She sat down on the other end of the sofa. Renee set a martini in front of each of them.

“We shall have so much to discuss.”

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