by Merry Farmer
“You’re here now. That’s all that matters to me,” Wendy reassured her. She raised an eyebrow and glanced to the Bonneville sisters. None of them dared meet her eyes, or Olga’s or Mr. Gunn’s. So that’s how they were going to play this.
“There’s a crowd of women in the lobby already,” Olga went on, pressing a hand to her chest, eyes bright. “Preston is trying to serve them breakfast, but not a one of them wants to take time out for it. They’re all eager to have their measurements taken for the dresses.”
“Then I see no reason to delay them,” Mr. Gunn said. “But first, a reminder of the rules.” He looked directly at Melinda as he spoke.
Melinda gave him her prettiest, most falsely innocent smile.
“The fabric is for both of you to use,” Mr. Gunn stressed. “It will remain on the center table unless you are in the act of cutting or measuring it. I’ve asked a few of Haskell’s more prominent citizens to be present to help enforce that rule. Mr. Pete Evans will be here shortly.”
“Mr. Evans?” Vivian made a disgusted face.
Melinda kept her charming grin where it was. “I’m sure there is no need to have anyone regulate my behavior. I can’t say the same for…well, for less desirable sorts.”
Wendy exchanged an unexpected smirk with Honoria. She’d had worse comments thrown her way. Melinda was an amateur when it came to insults. Honoria seemed to share Wendy’s opinion. The two of them were forced to look away from each other to keep from laughing.
“Second,” Mr. Gunn went on, “We will break for an hour at noon each day for lunch, and all sewing must be completed by eight in the evening. At that time, you must leave your work and return home, or to other parts of the hotel in your case, Mrs. Montrose. The ballroom will be locked at night to ensure no outside work is done.”
“That hardly seems fair,” Melinda complained.
“I understand.” Wendy nodded.
Melinda glared at her, but Wendy kept her composure.
“All right.” Mr. Gunn clapped his hands again. “Seeing as we have ladies eagerly waiting already, I’ll let them in so that you can begin taking measurements.”
Wendy’s pulse soared. “Thank you, Mr. Gunn.” If she’d known how excited this competition would make her feel, she would have sought something like this out before.
“Yes, thanks,” Melinda rushed to add. She spun away from Mr. Gunn and Wendy, dragging Honoria away to the far end of the room as Vivian and Bebe whispered their plots at her from either side.
Wendy turned to Olga, shaking her head. “I assume they’ll be trouble.”
“Of course.” Olga smiled, surprisingly bright. “Bonnevilles are always trouble. It’s their purpose in life.”
The two of them shared a laugh and started off toward their end of the room.
“Can you take measurements?” Wendy asked as she veered off to organize her drawings and check on the foolscap for pattern-making.
“Ja, in my sleep,” Olga answered proudly.
“Good. Then I’ll set you to work taking those measurements while I cut pattern pieces.”
The plan was a solid one. Minutes later, the ladies of Haskell were let into the room. It was as if a whirlwind had been let loose in the ballroom. Wendy wasn’t the only one filled with excitement. The walls rang with chatter and laughter as ladies lined up to have their measurements taken and to give the seamstresses their opinions on fabrics. Mr. Pete Evans showed up shortly after the doors were opened looking as though he’d rather attend a lecture on paint drying. He stood guard by the fabric table and did his duty well, though. Twice he caught Bebe attempting to slip a bolt of something or another away when clearly Melinda wasn’t anywhere near ready to start cutting.
Toward the end of the initial burst of activity, while Wendy was pinning together stacks of pattern pieces she’d cut as Olga finished with each of her client’s measurements, Travis strolled into the ballroom. Wendy caught sight of him out of the corner of her eye. It was as if every ounce of energy in the buzzing room swarmed around him, lighting him up. Her heart leapt to her throat, and she jabbed herself with a pin. Travis scanned the room, brow lifted in surprise, and when he spotted her, his entire body relaxed into a smile.
Wendy raced to organize her piles of pattern pieces, then stepped around the end of the table to greet him with, “Travis, how nice to see you. What brings you into town in the middle of the day?” She was well aware of the tremor in her voice…and of the half dozen sets of curious eyes focusing on the two of them.
Travis slowed his steps to a downright strut as he closed the distance between them. “I thought I’d stop in and see how my lovely wife is faring with her dressmaking enterprise.” He reached for her hand and raised it to his lips.
Several of the ladies watching sighed and giggled. Wendy’s cheeks flushed bright red.
“The competition has only just begun.” She was amazed that she managed to put more than two words together on end. “We’re just finishing up measurements, and I’m cutting pattern pieces.”
“Pattern pieces?” Travis blinked, his smile shifting to curiosity. “How does that work?”
“Um.” Wendy glanced down to her hand. Travis still held it, his thumb brushing across her knuckles. It took her a moment to gather her thoughts enough to say, “Dresses are made from patterns, but when designing a new style, the seamstress has to create the pattern.”
“Oh.” Travis smiled, his eyes never leaving hers. “I didn’t know it was that complicated.” He continued to hold her hand.
“It isn’t particularly complicated,” Wendy tried to explain. “Just a necessary part of the—”
“Honoria, you clod!”
Melinda’s shout from the other side of the room turned everyone’s heads. Travis dropped Wendy’s hand and frowned at the scene unfolding in the Bonneville camp. Honoria was bent over one of the tables, pencil in hand. At the other end of the table, much closer to Bebe than Honoria, the roll of foolscap had been knocked off the table and had run away and unrolled like a child’s toy. With her expert eye, Wendy noted that Melinda hadn’t cut out a single pattern piece. In fact, she wasn’t even standing close to the table. She was too busy preening in the center of a group of her friends.
She laughed as soon as she noticed the attention she’d gathered. “That Honoria. She’s so clumsy,” she said, overloud. “But I can assure you, she’s just my assistant. She’s no one important. Now, tell me again about that exclusive, difficult embellishment you want on your hem, Mrs. Kline?”
“Is she doing any work at all, or is she having Honoria do it?” Travis asked, leaning closer.
Wendy breathed in the fresh, rustic scent of him, nearly forgetting the question. “I don’t expect she’d be able to finish her orders in time if she relied on Honoria to do it all.” She tilted closer to him and added, “But I wouldn’t put it past her to try.”
A giggle from behind brought home just how close she and Travis were standing. She cleared her throat and stepped away, turning to find Estelle Tremaine and Olivia Garrett smiling at her.
“Are you certain you’ll be able to get your orders finished with such a delightful distraction standing by?” Estelle teased her.
If Wendy wasn’t already hot and flushed, she would have turned scarlet. She liked Estelle and Olivia, so rather than wilt under the comment, she grinned and replied, “Perhaps charming husbands should be banned as unfair distractions?”
Travis held up his hands, blushing with satisfaction. “I only wanted to come by to see if you needed anything.”
“Oh, I think she needs something, all right,” Olivia murmured. She and Estelle exchanged knowing giggles.
Wendy wasn’t sure if she wanted to scold them or laugh along with them. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had friends to tease her. No one had dared at Hurst Home.
“There.” Olga emerged from behind the wall of screens with Lucy Faraday, who was fastening a brooch to her collar. “That’s the last of the measureme
nts. Have you ladies picked out your fabrics yet?”
Estelle and Olivia clucked and fluttered and headed off with Lucy to the center table to see what their choices were, reminding Wendy that there was work to be done.
“I should really go consult with them,” she told Travis, stepping away from him. It was as if her feet didn’t want to move.
“By all means.” Travis nodded. “Do your work. I’ll just hang back here and admire the view. And if you need anything, I’m your man.”
Something about the phrase, about the glint in his eye as he said it, made Wendy want to drop everything and spend the day with him. They still had so much hanging over their heads—her potential business, where they would live, how they could both do the jobs they loved, intimacy.
She gasped and held a hand to her stomach at the thought of intimacy with Travis. She had no earthly idea how to begin that conversation. Maybe it was a good thing that her thoughts were so distracted with work now. It didn’t matter that the man was her husband, some things were just too precious to blurt out. There would be time to figure out tiny little details like actually being a married couple later.
Travis had always thought things like ranching and logging were the hardest work a body could engage in. Two days into the competition, and he was ready to admit that sewing was one of the most challenging occupations he’d ever seen.
“Do you have a plan for the day?” he asked Wendy as he hovered beside her worktable first thing on Wednesday morning. He’d arrived at the hotel bright and early, hoping to have breakfast with her before she got started, but when he entered the ballroom, Wendy was already hard at work stitching a seam.
“We managed to get the bulk of the patterns cut out and pieced yesterday,” Wendy answered without looking up from her work. “Olga started sewing the skirts for five separate gowns, and I’ve been pushing through some of the more delicate work on bodices.”
Travis was transfixed by the speed and agility of her long, tapered fingers. She drew her needle and thread in and out of some dark pink fabric pieces that must have fit together to make part of a dress, though he couldn’t figure out how. But as he studied her fingers, he noticed callouses and even a few spots of dried blood on her fingertips that he hadn’t seen before. Of course, if she used sharp needles all the time she was bound to—
“Ouch!”
Melinda’s cry from across the room was an eerie reflection of Travis’s thoughts. Wendy glanced up for only a moment, but Travis turned fully to see what the problem was. Theophilus Gunn—who was working through a ledger at a table in the middle of the room, doing hotel work and judging work simultaneously—glanced up in concern.
Across the room, Melinda was sucking on her finger and glaring at a pile of rumpled fabric on her table. “It’s not working, it’s not coming together right.” She danced in her seat, near hysterics. “What’s wrong with it? Why doesn’t it look right?”
Honoria jumped up from her chair at the end of the other table, where she was working diligently, a pair of spectacles balanced on her nose. She set her work aside and rushed to inspect Melinda’s. “You’re sewing the pieces together the wrong way around, see?”
As soon as she held up Melinda’s work, even Travis could see that two pieces had been sewn together wrong, so that the print of the fabric was upside-down on one half of what looked like a bodice.
Melinda shrieked loud enough for Travis to flinch. “This is all your fault! You pinned those pieces for me.”
“No, you pinned those ones.” Honoria’s voice was quiet and her fury barely contained. “You didn’t want me touching the silk, although I tried to explain to you that silk is too difficult to sew for a quick competition like this.”
“Shut up!” Melinda snatched her sewing back from her sister. “Just shut up. Shutty shutty up! This is all your fault, you useless, ugly cow.”
Honoria lowered her head, although to Travis’s eyes, that was more about concealing her rage than bowing to Melinda’s insults.
“Rip out this seam and pin it again,” Melinda demanded. “I’m going to work on something else.”
“All right,” Honoria sighed and turned away.
“A trained monkey could do a better job of being my assistant than you do,” Melinda went on. “Why, I’m certain we’d lose this competition if it wasn’t for those—”
She shut her mouth so abruptly that she squeaked. Her eyes shot across the room to where Travis was watching. Wendy continued to focus on the work in her hands, but her brow arched, indicating she’d heard.
“Ladies, is there something I can help you with?” Gunn started to rise from his chair.
“No!” Melinda yelped and turned bright red. “No, everything is fine here.” She added a false laugh and skipped across to Honoria to whisper something Travis couldn’t hear.
The show was over after that. Gunn resumed his work, and Travis sat against the side of Wendy’s table, watching her flying fingers.
It took a few seconds for his brain to catch up to what was wrong with the picture.
“Where is Olga anyhow?” he asked, straightening and searching the ballroom, as if she’d be hiding behind the curtains.
“I don’t know.” Wendy paused her work at last and looked up in concern. “She was here on time yesterday. I assumed she was just a little late today, like she was on Monday, but it’s…” She paused to check a brass watch broach pinned to her bodice above her heart. Her face fell. “It’s past nine o’clock.”
Travis clenched his jaw and peeked across the room to the Bonneville sisters. They had both resumed their work, although Melinda’s cheeks still burned bright. Assuming that apple hadn’t fallen far from its parental tree, something was definitely up.
“I’ll go see if I can find her,” Travis said at last. “You gonna be all right until I get back?”
Wendy glanced up at him, her lips pressed in a lopsided grin and her lashes forming a perfect frame around her teasing eyes. “Travis, I’ve been sewing since I was old enough to hold a needle. I can manage these seams without you.”
“Well, all right then.” He winked at her, then turned to head out. She might have just set him down, but he didn’t mind a set-down like that. Not when her eyes glittered the way they did.
He made it halfway across the ballroom before his grin and his mood dropped as Rex Bonneville marched through the door. The man’s self-satisfied grin did not bode well.
“Montrose,” Bonneville snapped, stopping short as he came nearly toe-to-toe with Travis. His brow fell into a scowl. “I want to talk to you. I’ve just received this from my lawyer in Cheyenne.” He held up a sheaf of papers.
The contract for working at Bonneville’s ranch. A sour knot formed in Travis’s gut. He’d forgotten all about the contract in the whirlwind of Wendy’s competition.
Travis took the contract as Bonneville held it out. “I’ll take a look at is as soon as I can.” He attempted to step away and search for Olga.
Bonneville blocked him. “You’ll take a look at it now.”
Travis pushed out an irritated breath. He opened the papers that he’d crumpled in his hand and turned them the right way up to read. Three words in, and the whole thing was a blur of legal mumbo-jumbo about not competing with Bonneville at any point during or after his employment. After? It didn’t sit right, but Travis didn’t have the concentration to decode it all.
“Look, sir, I’ve got an important errand to run. If you could just wait here, I’ll—”
He tried to get away, but once again, Bonneville stopped him by snatching his arm.
“Look, you,” he muttered. “I’ve had enough of your prevaricating. And at this point, there won’t be a job in my employ for you if you don’t put your wife in her place.”
The spite with which he said the word “wife” had Travis ready to pop Bonneville in the nose. The threat of having no job at all if he did steadied his hand.
He cleared his throat. “With all due respect, sir, my wife h
as been sewing since she was old enough to hold a needle,” he repeated what Wendy had just told him. “Seems to me, her place is as the finest seamstress Haskell—or Wyoming, even—has ever seen. You can’t convince me that your daughter really wants to work in a shop, in spite of this show.”
“It’s a matter of honor,” Bonneville growled, then went on with, “That kind of impertinence doesn’t do you any favors, boy.”
“I don’t expect it does.” Travis held his ground. Double his salary or not, working for Bonneville under any circumstances was growing less savory by the second. In fact, if he’d had any other prospects—besides going back to Howard and asking for his job back, likely making far less than he had before—he’d tear Bonneville’s contract to shreds. His life wasn’t just his to do with as he pleased now, though. He owed it to Wendy to have a stable income and a roof for their heads. Why wasn’t life as cut and dry as raising and tending cattle?
“Sign that contract,” Bonneville continued, teeth clenched as he spoke. “Teach your wife to mind her superiors and let the best woman win this competition, or not only will my job offer disappear, so will any other job offers from members of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association.”
Travis had to swallow the bile that rose up his throat.
“Gentlemen, is there a problem?” Gunn stood from his table, watching them with a frown.
Travis’s gaze slipped to check on Wendy. She was still sewing frantically, but by the tilt of her head, she was trying to listen to the conversation. He had to keep his sights on the mission he’d set out on—find Olga.
“No problems here,” he answered Gunn.
“All right.” Gunn sounded as uncertain as ever as he resumed his seat.
Travis spared one more stoic look for Bonneville, then marched past him and out of the ballroom. He was a complete idiot for letting himself be held hostage by Bonneville’s job offer. They would clash at every turn, and likely because Bonneville would try to ride roughshod over him. But that money could be the answer to the problem of how he was supposed to support a wife who was miles better than him.