“Your mother and I have solved your problems,” Edmund’s voice resounded. “Our plan is simple and to the point. We need only your agreement to put it into motion.”
“That’s right.” Monique opened the door of Jenny’s display case and removed a silk fan. Studying the butterflies painted on its face, she explained, “Edmund needs to marry, too. After I left here last time I remembered a conversation I had with his mother. I fear there’s been a scandal of some sort involving him and …” Her mouth dipping in a frown, she sought the name from her memory.
“Elizabeth Randolf,” Edmund supplied with a laconic smile.
“That’s right. The Randolfs are in banking, I believe. I’ve met the family on a number of occasions. The daughter is a beauty, but that mother of hers has woefully neglected her teeth. Why, if I were her, I’d—”
“Moth—er,” Jenny protested.
Monique batted the fan and wrinkled her nose at her daughter. “Anyway, Edmund’s moth—er explained that her son’s scandal involving the shipping magnate’s daughter threatened the Wharton family’s personal fortune. His father has issued an ultimatum: Find a wife and settle down or risk disinheritance.”
Jenny looked at Edmund. Leaning against the wall, his arms folded across his chest, he lifted a shoulder in a casual shrug. She wasn’t surprised by his predicament. It fit with everything she knew about the man.
She had met Thomas Edmund Wharton III last year while visiting her mother in Galveston. He had declared himself smitten within hours of their first meeting, and he had pursued her from that moment on. Jenny had found his attentions flattering at first, but her opinion changed following an incident during the second week of her visit.
While her mother was busy taking the island society by storm, Jenny had sneaked off to a secluded beach to be alone and contemplate the proposition she intended to pose to her father the next time she saw him—the idea of moving away and starting her own business.
The day had been warm, the gulf waters inviting. Believing herself to be quite alone, Jenny had indulged in a swim, dressed in only her chemise and drawers. She’d been gliding along in chest-high water when she met up with the shark named Wharton.
Flashing an enormous smile, he informed her that Monique had sent him to bring her daughter back to Wharton mansion for afternoon tea. He urged her to continue her swim, stating that they weren’t in a hurry and that he’d enjoy the opportunity to spend time with her. He swam in circles around her, offering views and opinions of popular topics of conversation. Although he acted the gentleman, Jenny found herself eyeing his back for a dorsal fin. She’d headed for the beach as quickly as possible. He’d sworn to avert his eyes as she exited the water, but the heat of his gaze was tangible as she gathered her clothes and dashed for the cover of the dunes.
From that moment on, she could not look at Edmund Wharton III without picturing him as a shark who swam on land. Over the months that followed, he’d continued his pursuit every time circumstances placed him and Jenny in the same location at the same time. This was the first time, however, he had migrated to the waters of Fort Worth, Texas.
Jenny found herself glancing around the shop for a harpoon. She addressed Edmund. “You don’t mind my mother telling this story?”
“Not at all.”
Jenny pulled out her work chair and sat down. She had the distinct feeling she’d best save her strength to get through the remainder of the day.
Monique continued. “Once I remembered Edmund’s trouble, I realized I had the perfect solution for you both. I telegraphed him and here we are.” She snapped the fan shut with a flourish.
“And your ‘perfect solution’ for me is marrying Edmund?”
“Isn’t it wonderful?”
“Wonderful is hardly how I’d describe it, Mother.”
Edmund pushed away from the wall. “Monique has told me how important your dress shop is to you, and I’ve agreed to do what I can to help you keep it. I suggest we live together long enough to satisfy my father’s edict and reverse the townspeople’s fears about the Bad Luck Wedding Dress. After that, we may enjoy a more liberal, less restrictive marital state.”
“It’s how your father and I structured our second marriage,” Monique informed her. “It worked fine for a time. Had Mr. Montgomery not become so … proprietary, I believe the experiment would have had a more satisfactory outcome.”
Mr. Montgomery, a south Texas cotton planter, hadn’t understood the dynamics of Richard and Monique’s arrangement, and Jenny remembered the duel between her father and the gentleman to this day. Thank God they both were such pitiful shots.
For a few minutes Jenny sat and thought about her mother’s idea. A more liberal, less restrictive married state, he’d said. She knew firsthand just how unfair such an agreement was on children. She wouldn’t dream of bringing a child of hers into such a situation. Was she willing to give up future daughters or sons for the sake of Fortune’s Design? A few weeks ago, she wouldn’t have hesitated to say yes.
But a few weeks ago, she hadn’t grown to love the McBride Menaces.
“I appreciate the effort to which both you and Edmund have gone,” she said. “I’ll need time to think about it.” Standing, she continued, “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to check something in the back.”
What she wanted to do was escape for a bit. That and change her clothes. She’d made it a practice to keep a few things here at the shop, and now she was glad she did. Before the meeting this morning she’d donned her most stylish day dress in the hopes of gaining the schoolteacher’s patronage. Her choice, she silently insisted as she entered the dressing room, had nothing to do with the fact that she’d be seeing Trace McBride.
“Lot of good it did,” she muttered. The teacher obviously didn’t give a fig for fashion.
And Trace had walked away without looking back.
As Jenny yanked at the buttons on her bodice, her mother’s voice intruded. “Now, now. For a seamstress you’re being horribly rough with that fabric, Jenny. Please don’t be so careless.”
“Monique, I’d appreciate a little privacy.”
“You don’t need privacy; you need a husband. Tell me what the problem is so I can see to solving it.”
Jenny sighed. “I can’t tell you what the problem is because I don’t know what it is myself.” She might suspect, but she wasn’t about to admit it.
“Is it your father? Have you changed your mind about living with him?”
“No,” Jenny said without hesitation. “I do want to remain in Fort Worth. I want to restore the reputation of Fortune’s Design and make it the success it once was.”
“Then why aren’t you happier about the solution I— at great trouble I might add—have offered?” Monique paused and gave her daughter a considering look. “Don’t tell me you’ve managed on your own. Have you done it, Jenny? Did you find your own man to marry? Could it be this Mr. McBride? He’d a look about him. Possessiveness. It clung to him as nicely as that shirt he wore.”
Jenny heard Trace’s words echo through her mind. Surety you didn’t think I was asking you to marry me, he’d said. I’ll never marry again.
“No, Mother. I have no marital prospects at the moment.”
Monique tapped a finger against her mouth. After giving her daughter a long, considering look, she shrugged and said, “Yes, you do have a marital prospect. You have Edmund! He’s perfect. He needs you as much as you need him.”
Trace McBride needs me. The thought flashed through Jenny’s mind as she stared at her reflection in the mirror. It was true. He did need her. For his children, and maybe even for himself. He was simply too big a fool to realize it.
He might need me, but he certainly doesn’t want me.
Monique continued to talk, reiterating her arguments. Jenny listened, growing colder by the moment, and a grim smile spread across her face. She had more pride than to pursue a man who didn’t want her. It was time to forget about Trace McBride entirely, forg
et her foolish dreams.
Marriage to Edmund wouldn’t be all that bad. She’d regain her professional reputation. She’d have Fortune’s Design. Certainly, her fate could be worse. She could return to East Texas and work as her father’s research assistant.
Marry Edmund and save Fortune’s Design. Save her independence, her autonomy. Monique was right. It was a perfect solution.
If it made her want to cry, so what?
She exhaled the breath she had been holding and exited the dressing room. Edmund leaned against her work-table, flipping through a sketch book. When he looked up, Jenny nodded and said, “All right. I’ll marry you, Edmund. As soon as possible, if you don’t mind.”
He flashed a mouthful of teeth and walked toward her. As Edmund’s mouth swooped down on hers for a kiss, she shuddered and wondered, Dear Lord, what have I done?
AFTER LEAVING Fortune’s Design, Trace sent the girls upstairs while he unloaded foodstuffs from the back of the wagon. Returning the conveyance to the wagonyard could wait, he decided, hoisting a pair of boxes into his arms. Experience had taught him that leaving the girls alone for more than a few minutes when they were this upset invited trouble.
Besides, he sort of wanted to keep an eye on the situation downstairs.
As he climbed the steps to his apartment, his thoughts focused on Edmund Wharton. Trace didn’t like the look of the fellow one bit. His eyes were too close together, and he had an oily look about him. A fellow like that couldn’t be trusted.
Trace knew men like Wharton; he made his living off men like Wharton. They came to the Acre to drink away their troubles, gamble away their money, and throw away their marriage vows by bedding the whores.
Jenny Fortune deserved better.
Trace entered his apartment, dumped the boxes on the kitchen floor, then headed straight for his bedroom where his daughters were already in position, monitoring the events taking place in Fortune’s Design.
Emma lifted her eye from the knothole in the floor and begged, “Papa, don’t make us leave. Please. This truly is an emergency. You won’t believe what’s happened.”
Trace shook his head. “Scoot over, Emmie.”
“But Papa!”
“Hush, sweets. We won’t be able to hear a thing if you keep yammering.” With that Trace dropped to his hands and knees and put his eye to the spy hole.
What he saw made him seethe.
Thomas Edmund Wharton III was kissing Jenny Fortune.
FORT WORTH had seen more than its share of strange sights over the years. In a rowdy town of buffalo hunters and whores, cowboys and tycoons, bizarre incidents often proved the order of the day. But the sight that got the town to talking, the event that created more wind than a west Texas dust storm, was the gathering that took place in the restaurant of the Cosmopolitan Hotel that evening.
Mr. Thomas Edmund Wharton III, dapper in gray pinstripes, entered the dining salon with a beautiful woman on each arm. On his left walked the talented, notorious sculptress, Monique Day. On his right was Monique’s daughter, Jenny, infamous as the creator of The Bad Luck Wedding Dress. They took their seats with quiet aplomb, and the gentleman made a show of ordering a bottle of the Cosmopolitan’s best champagne.
As appealing as the two women proved to be, it was another sight entirely that stopped people on the street. A crowd gathered, pointing and murmuring as they gazed through the plate-glass window into the hotel dining room.
Trace McBride had brought his Menaces to dine in public.
“If a man didn’t know better, he might label those three pretty little girls angels,” a portly gentleman observed. “All dressed up in ruffles and bows, they certainly look the part.”
“Table manners!” a matron noted, shaking her head in disbelief. “Who would have ever thought.”
Finally Trace asked the waiter to see that the window curtains were closed. “I feel like a monkey in a cage,” he whispered to Maribeth.
“In a circus wagon, Papa,” Katrina piped up. “Did you hear the news? P. T. Barnum is bringing his circus to town. Isn’t it exciting?”
Jenny, in the first natural action Trace had seen in her that night, offered Katrina a conspiratorial smile. “Yes, it is. I can’t wait. The animals. The acrobats. It sounds so exciting.”
“I want to ride an elephant” Katrina turned to her father. “Can I, Papa? Can I ride an elephant? Will you take us to the circus, please?”
Trace gazed around the table. “Don’t have to, Katie- cat,” he said in a loud whisper. “We’re already there.”
Jenny laughed into her napkin, pretending a cough.
Katrina’s eyes clouded with worry. “But Papa …”
“I’ll take you, sweetheart. Don’t worry.” He winked at his youngest daughter, who clasped her hands joyfully together.
Her face beaming, she asked, “Can Miss Fortune go with us? We’d have ever so much fun.”
“I’ll be Miss Fortune’s escort, young lady,” Edmund Wharton said. He dabbed at his mouth with a pristine napkin and gave Jenny an intimate smile. “Ah, the circus. Mr. Barnum puts on quite a show, I’m told. The bareback riders are said to be unbelievably daring.”
Trace glanced around the table. No one but he seemed to have noticed how the light in Jenny’s eyes dimmed as she nodded in response to her fiancé’s comment.
Her fiancé. Memory of that kiss Wharton planted on Jenny had haunted him all afternoon. First thing tomorrow he intended to patch that damned spy hole in his bedroom floor.
Trace stabbed his beefsteak with his fork. Why had he come here tonight? Why was he putting himself and his girls through this? After Emma informed him that Jenny had accepted Wharton’s proposal moments before the kiss he witnessed, he’d decided not to go anywhere near the Cosmopolitan Hotel that evening. But as the girls took to hammering him about stopping Miss Fortune’s wedding, he’d decided the best thing for them—and possibly himself—would be to demonstrate how he supported the dressmaker’s decision to marry.
The problem was he didn’t support it. Not one bit. Not to this fellow.
He lifted a bite of meat to his mouth and observed Edmund Wharton while he chewed. The man was a snake, a sharper. Trace couldn’t imagine Jenny Fortune married to a man like that. She needed someone scholarly, someone more reserved and cerebral.
Wharton would give her physical.
The steak’s flavor turned sour at the thought, and Trace forced himself to swallow. His hand clenched around his fork as he imagined his fist crashing into the pretty boy’s face.
The violence of his reaction—both this afternoon and again this evening—had shown him the necessity of supporting the dressmaker’s decision to marry. He realized he was dangerously close to falling under the woman’s spell himself. A wedding ring around her finger would put an end to that, thank God.
Trace didn’t mess with other men’s wives. He knew just how destructive such an action could be.
Watching Jenny smile at something Maribeth said, Trace reminded himself that marriage between Wharton and the seamstress would also mean the finish of the foolish fantasies his girls had indulged in concerning him, the lady, and marriage vows. What a blessing that would be!
Ever since Emma’s birthday picnic, the Menaces had wrenched up the harassment. That foolishness with their teacher was but a small part of it. Hell, they’d done everything but book a church and preacher.
He lifted his water glass to his lips as Monique turned to him and said, “Before I forget, allow me to compliment you on the quality of spirits you serve at the End of the Line, Mr. McBride. I was quite impressed with the entire establishment, in fact.”
Trace damn near choked on his drink. Clearing his throat, he said, “You’ve visited my saloon?”
“Yes. I accompanied Jenny this afternoon while she visited the whorehouse across the street.” Emma’s and Maribeth’s heads jerked up and their mouths fell open. Before Trace found his voice, Monique forged ahead. “The madam and I had a long chat about y
ou, and I wanted to see your place of business. I will caution you to watch the bartender named Bob. I believe he was watering the whiskey. Pete, however, poured a nice strong drink.”
When his older daughters shared a scandalized look, Trace smothered a groan and turned his attention to containing the damage. “Girls,” he said, offering his daughters a pointed smile, “you may be excused.”
“But, Papa, we’re not ready to leave yet.” Emma’s gaze darted from her father to Monique, desire to hear more written all across her face.
“That’s right,” Maribeth added. “We can’t go yet. Look at Katrina’s peas. All she’s done is smush them. She hasn’t eaten a one and you said—”
“Now, Maribeth.” Trace’s tone brooked no argument. “Mrs. Raines is upstairs in her apartment waiting for your visit.”
With one look at her father, Maribeth’s mouth snapped shut. She scooted from her chair without another word, as did her sisters. The Menaces knew not to push him any further today.
He’d given them plenty of warning. Before they left home he’d laid out his expectations concerning their behavior at dinner. No whining, no back talk, and absolutely no shenanigans or they would suffer dire consequences.
As they politely said their good-byes, Trace was thankful he’d previously made arrangements for his daughters to go upstairs after dinner to visit with the hotel proprietor’s invalid mother. The girls liked the elderly Widow Raines and usually enjoyed the weekly visits that had begun following an incident involving a rock, a window, and a bruise on Mrs. Raines’s head.
At this particular moment, he wished he had a rock to chunk at Edmund Wharton. The oily bastard was sipping at his drink, his lip; twitching in smug amusement.
Like well-mannered young ladies, his daughters filed from the room. They spoiled the effect somewhat by making a mad dash up the staircase clearly visible through the French doors that separated the dining area from the hotel lobby.
Monique’s eyes were wide with innocence as she said, “Oh, dear, did I speak out of turn?”
“Of course you spoke out of turn, Monique,” Edmund drawled, lifting his wineglass toward Trace in mock salute. “Few men care for their dealings with whores to be discussed at the dinner table. Am I right, McBride?”
The Bad Luck Wedding Dress Page 12