Читать книгу The Wedding Cake War - Lynna Banning, Lynna Banning - Страница 9

Dora Mae smoothed the creases in her royal-blue skirt, captured Lolly’s hand and tugged her across the floor. “May I introduce Miss Fleurette LeClair, from New Orleans. Miss Leora Mayfield.”

The green-silk-clad woman tipped her head. Her face wasn’t the least bit welcoming. It wasn’t even friendly. Her green eyes shot ice chips up and down Lolly’s plain black travel ensemble. Lolly tried to smile.

The perfect lips opened. “Wheah you from?”

“Um…well, I’m from Baxter Springs, Kansas. I used to run a news—”

“Oh,” Miss LeClair sniffed. “That explains it.”

Lolly’s mouth opened of its own accord. “Explains what?”

“All that black,” Fleurette drawled. “And, my heavens, yoah shoes.”

“What’s wrong with my shoes? They’re brand-new. I ordered them from Bloom—”

“It’s summertime, honey. Or have you not noticed?”

“And this,” Minnie interrupted with a flutter in her voice, “is Miss Careen Gundersen. Most everyone calls her Carrie, and she was born and raised right here in Maple Falls.”

Carrie extended her hand and enfolded Lolly’s in a firm grasp. “I don’t in the least object to black in the summer,” she murmured. “It’s quite elegant.”

Lolly smiled at her, then turned her gaze to include Miss LeClair. “I am pleased to meet you both, even under these rather odd circumstances.”

Her remark met with a prolonged silence.

“I mean, it is a bit odd, don’t you think? All three of us competing for the same—”

“Decidedly,” Miss LeClair acknowledged with a little nod that made her ringlets bounce.

“Perhaps just a bit,” Carrie allowed. “But you haven’t met Colonel Macready yet. He—” she drew the word out on a long sigh “—makes it all worthwhile.”

“Really,” murmured Miss LeClair.

Carrie beamed. “I’ve been calculating the odds. I’m quite good at mathematics, being a school-teach…”

Her voice trailed off as Miss LeClair pivoted and headed for the doorway, unfurling her parasol on the way.

“I am not interested in mathematical odds,” she said over her shoulder. “It is a lady’s breedin’ and accomplishments that will tip the scale.”

Her cool-as-silk tone hinted at an assumed superiority that made Lolly’s lips tighten. The back of her neck began to tingle. For a fleeting moment she imagined a jungle, tangled green vines full of twittering birds and silent, deadly snakes. Deep inside her a kill-or-be-killed instinct stirred.

Carrie broke the awkward quiet. “Let’s all go over to the hotel and have some lemonade, shall we?” Her earnest brown eyes rested on Lolly, then on Miss LeClair. Lolly watched Fleurette deliberately turn her back and address the Helpful Ladies.

“When am Ah to meet Colonel Macready?”

The older women looked at one another. “This afternoon,” Dora Mae replied.

“This evening,” Ruth said in the same instant.

Minnie’s hands swooped in front of her face. “Well, we hadn’t exactly decided when….”

Miss LeClair’s parasol spun to a halt. “This evening, Ah take it. And what will be the occasion? Ah ask because Ah wish to dress appropriately.” She cast a disparaging glance at Lolly’s traveling costume, then lingered on Carrie’s blue check. “Did you make that yourself?” she inquired.

“Why, yes. I sew quite a bit and…”

“Exactly,” came the murmured response. “Ah thought as much.”

That tone of voice, Lolly thought, was like the hiss of a poisonous viper. Rarely had she taken such an instant dislike to another human being, unless it was a braggadocio Rebel soldier exulting over some past victory or attacking her latest newspaper editorial.

Lady or not, Miss Green Eyes from New Orleans was just plain rude. And stuck-up. It would be pure pleasure to take some of the starch out of her no-doubt perfectly stiff petticoats.

Carrie just smiled. “Come on. I calculate it to be ninety-seven degrees in here. Doesn’t a glass of cold lemonade sound just about perfect? It will lower our body temperature at least two degrees.”

Lolly guessed there wasn’t a mean bone in Carrie’s slim, gingham-swathed body or her fact-overloaded brain. She might be a little pedantic, but that was because she was a trained teacher.

Lolly was educated, too. She had read her way through the Baxter Springs library shelves while she struggled to keep the newspaper going so she could care for her mother. Her education might have been a bit sporadic, but who cared if she’d discovered Shakespeare before she stumbled onto Plato?

Besides, she reasoned, there wasn’t one of the occupants in this musty-smelling schoolroom who couldn’t stand to learn something new. Herself included.

Lemonade sounded like a fine place to start.

“Do tell us, Miss Gundersen, Ah mean, Carrie, what do you know of Colonel Macready?” Fleurette swirled another teaspoonful of sugar into her lemonade glass.

Lolly watched Carrie’s heart-shaped face come alive at the mention of the man’s name. With such a pronounced case of hero worship, she wondered how the young woman could stomach having two rivals sipping cold drinks at the same table.

“Oh, the colonel is…well, he is just wonderful. Simply, truly…wonderful.”

“Wonderful,” Fleurette echoed dryly. She tapped her spoon against the edge of her glass and laid it on the tiny pink tea napkin provided. “Wonderful, how?”

“Oh, in every way, I assure you. I’ve known him all my life, you see. He came to live here in Maple Falls when I was four…or was I five? Let’s see, I am nineteen now, and the colonel arrived right after the war. That’s sixty-five subtracted from seventy-nine…. Yes, I was five. I remember it was on my birthday.”

“More to the point, how old is he?”

Carrie giggled. “Oh, I calculate he’s old enough to be my father and then some. But Dora Mae Landsfelter is years younger than her husband, and she said such things don’t matter in the least.”

“Carrie,” Lolly said, her voice gentle. “Could you calculate how old the colonel is exactly.”

Carrie closed her soft brown eyes for a moment. “Forty-three.”

Fleurette lifted her lips away from her lemonade. “Ah do wonder why he has not married in all this time.”

Lolly’s hand stilled on her glass. The question had occurred to her, as well. How had the town’s prize catch remained uncaught for fourteen years?

“Well,” Carrie began, lowering her voice, “some people say he lost a sweetheart in the war and never recovered. Others say he’s stubborn and set in his ways and he never before wanted a wife for fear she’d change him.”

Lolly’s ears burned. Stubborn? Set in his ways? The same had been said of her ever since she turned fourteen.

“He hardly lets anyone female into his house,” Carrie went on, “except for old Mrs. Squires. She’s kept house for him for years, but the colonel does all his own cooking, and Mrs. Squires says he even irons his own shirts. Can you imagine?”

“If he married, he would require servants,” Fleurette murmured. “Ah have had servants all my life.”

Lolly bit her tongue. Slaves, more likely. She squashed down a ripple of anger and decided to change the subject. “What is his home like?”

“It’s a big white house with gray shutters, and it has three whole floors and a music room and a library. I’ve never seen the library, but once I attended a recital in the—”

Fleurette cut her off. “Why would a bachelor purchase such a mansion?”

“Oh, he didn’t purchase it. He inherited it from his great-aunt Henrietta on his father’s side. She married a Northerner and came out west, but she died of the quinsy soon after the war…. Why, what’s the matter, Leora? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Lolly unclenched the fist she hid in her lap. Mama had died of the quinsy a month after Papa had been killed at Chancellorsville. She spoke over a tightened throat. “Nothing is the matter.”

“Do Ah understand that Colonel Macready is a Southerner?” The excitement was evident in Fleurette’s voice.

“Oh, yes, he’s a real Southern gentleman. From Virginia. He has the most courtly manners, when he wants to, that is. And he’s so tall and well formed and…” Carrie blushed and gulped her lemonade.

“Why—” Fleurette paused, pinning her gaze on Carrie “—since you seem obviously smitten with the gentleman, has he never courted you?”

Carrie gaped at her. “Me! Every single female in this town, and even some not so single, are smitten with Colonel Macready. He’s never courted any of us!”

“Perhaps because he is a Southerner, and y’all are Yankees,” Fleurette murmured.

“Or perhaps,” Lolly said in a level tone, “because he wants to be the Smitten and not the Smittee. So to speak.”

Carrie gave a whoop of laughter and clapped her hand over her mouth, then continued. Lolly watched the green-eyed, golden-haired Fleurette straighten her spine and crook her little finger into a dainty arc.

“Ah’m sure that is exactly right, Miss…May-pole. A gentleman’s heart is not easily won.”

“Mayfield. It’s Mayfield.”

“Why, of course it is,” Fleurette purred.

“In this case,” Lolly continued, “the gentleman is willing to donate his heart to finance a schoolhouse. Apparently he doesn’t care one way or the other whether he’s smitten or not.”

Fleurette tipped her head to one side like a curious robin. “We’ll have to wait and see about that, now won’t we?”

Carrie’s hand drifted down from her mouth. “It won’t matter, ladies. The colonel has given his word on the matter. He will marry whichever one of us wins the competition. Oh, I do hope it will be me!”

“Why, my dear, Ah’d say you are enamored of the gentleman.”

“Actually,” Carrie said. “I don’t really know him very well. I’m just one of dozens of females in town who adore him and simply swoon when he smiles. But he treats us all exactly the same.”

A calculating look came into Fleurette’s eyes. “You don’t know the first thing about this man, do you? Except that you swoon when he smiles.”

“Why, no,” Carrie said. “If I did, I’d surely tell you both. We’re all in this together, are we not?”

“Precisely,” Fleurette said, her voice light.

Lolly didn’t like her tone, pleasant as Fleurette had tried to make it. Again, the back of her neck tingled.

The scent of the young woman’s perfume, something cloyingly sweet and heavy, like gardenias, made Lolly’s head swim. She turned away to draw an untainted breath and spied young Hank Morehouse lounging in the dining room doorway, sending hand signals in her direction. Satchel. Upstairs. Room 3.

Lolly nodded. No sooner had the boy disappeared than a blur of royal blue sateen announced the presence of Dora Mae Landsfelter.

“Ah, here you are,” she trumpeted. “I have an announcement.” Dora Mae clasped her hand over her still-heaving bosom. “This evening, at eight o’clock…” She panted.

The three candidates froze, fingers curled around their lemonade glasses.

“The Helpful Ladies will host a reception in the hotel ballroom. And at that time…” She paused dramatically. “You will meet Colonel Macready. She slanted a look at Fleurette. “Dress will be ladies’ evening attire.”

Fleurette gasped. “My trunks! Have they arrived?”

“They have. Mrs. Petrov had all three moved up to your room at her boardinghouse.”

Lolly sat stricken, unable to move. Trunk? Her trunk had been on the train; in her agitation about disembarking she’d completely forgotten about it. Now she realized all her possessions, except for what she obviously carried in her travel satchel—clean undergarments and a shawl and her toiletries and her Bible—were still on the train and headed for Portland.

How could she have been so scatterbrained? All she had to wear this evening was the black faille traveling suit, which at this moment felt heavier—and hotter—than ever before. She desperately needed something light and airy. Something summery and man-catching, with flounces and ruffles and…

What in heaven’s name could she do? Borrow something?

Don’t be a goose. Both Carrie and Fleurette had slim, girlish proportions, while she… Well, she was as rounded as a model in a Rubens painting, her hips and bosom blooming generously above and below her tightly laced-in waist. Besides, the smug expression on Fleurette’s perfect pink-and-cream face was enough to squash any such idea.

Carrie leaned toward her. “You look white as a huck towel,” she whispered.

“I am trying to think,” Lolly whispered back.

Carrie patted her hand. “You didn’t bring trunks full of gowns like Fleurette, did you?”

Lolly shook her head. She’d die before she confessed to being so addlepated at the train station. She finished off her lemonade to shore up her spirits. Between now and eight o’clock she had to come up with a fairy godmother, or else something she could turn into a—

“Of course!” she said aloud.

“You’ve thought of something?” Relief edged Carrie’s tone.

Would it be too daring?

“What is it? Oh, do tell me!”

It would be daring, Lolly decided. Outrageous, in fact. But, with her trunk rolling toward Portland, she had no choice.

She squeezed Carrie’s small hand. “I will wear…black. That’s all I can tell you at the moment.”

Lolly unpacked the contents of her satchel, stripped down to her camisole and drawers, and began to experiment. Her two-piece travel dress hung on hangers at the window, the plain gored skirt rippling in the breeze and the separate buttoned jacket turning this way and that as if undecided which direction to face. Already the creases were disappearing from the tight-woven fabric.

She sponged off her sticky body, then stretched out on the blue bed quilt to assess the situation.

The room was spartan but tidy. The mirror over the matching bureau reflected the white china ewer and basin she’d used for her sponge bath; her Bible lay next to the fluted glass lamp.

The tall cherry armoire opposite the bed confronted her accusingly, waiting to be filled. But she had nothing to put in it but her nightgown and one clean petticoat.

How, how? could she start a new life with one black dress and a Bible? The Heavenly Father had done it in six days, but He was God. She was a mere mortal, and female at that.

And more frightened than she had ever been in her life. No one could possibly know how the turmoil in her brain or the twitters in her stomach made her lightheaded and nauseous. Setting columns of type, even under a tight deadline, was easy compared to dressing up, especially when one had nothing to dress up in. Even protecting her printing press with her father’s revolver when her abolitionist editorials riled up the townspeople paled in comparison to the terror she felt at meeting Colonel Macready and the rest of the Maple Falls citizenry in nothing but her plain black dress, a bit of imagination and a lot of daring.

She donned her long black skirt, then lifted the black Spanish lace shawl from its tissue-paper nest in her satchel and approached the mirror. Tucking one edge of the delicate lace into the top of her camisole, she wound the long ends around her body, leaving her shoulders exposed. At her cleavage, she formed a soft knot and let the shawl fringe dangle.

There. It looked…exotic. Risqué.

Elegant. Sinful.

Dear Lord in heaven, what if they arrested her?