by Gina Welborn
Félicie sighed. “Nothing I can do will convince him to break the engagement.”
Mama Helaine stood next to her. “He is as stubborn as you are.”
That she believed.
“He is more insufferable too,” Félicie said, and noted how pathetic she sounded. “If Carpenter would break the engagement, no one would think the worse of him. He is their hero.”
“Perhaps being their hero is exactly why he will not.” Mama Helaine stepped between Félicie and the mirror. “Man scales burning building yet flees marriage to woman half his size. Makes him look like he is a coward, does it not?”
Félicie considered this for all of two seconds. This was the same man who insisted they stay engaged for the free meals. She couldn’t admit that and risk Mama Helaine thinking poorly of Carpenter. So she just said, “Given time, people would forget and return to adoring him. I will lose the only job I have ever—” Blinking away the sudden tears of frustration, she held up her ink-stained fingertips. “Even when I spill an entire ink bottle over a day’s work, I still love being the calligrapher for the Carey House, the grandest hotel in all of Wichita. I’ve worked too hard to give it up.”
“Then you have no choice but to marry Carp.”
“We don’t want to be married,” she argued. “We made a list of why it would be detrimental for both of us. Neither of us can cook. Neither of us knows what to do with a crying infant. Neither of us likes to share, and the ability to share and compromise are key components to a successful marriage.”
Mama Helaine smiled.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“You talked about having children.”
Félicie let out an exasperated sigh. “Not about having them together. We discussed children in the general sense of their existence—loud and smelly existence—and that is not relevant to the matter at hand. You must tell Mrs. Grbic it is impossible to have the wedding dress finished until October—no, make it November,” she corrected, “because then Mrs. O’Brian will bring up how lovely Christmas weddings are. Mrs. Dillingsford loves all things Christmas, so she will insist we schedule it for then. Mrs. Topping will mention how much her husband loves egg nog. From there, they will discuss recipes, debate if it is possible to make a good egg nog without alcohol, and all attention to wedding details will be lost.”
Mama Helaine frowned. “You are asking me to lie.”
“I’m asking you to sew at a snail’s pace.”
“How is that not lying?” Mama Helaine pointed out.
“Ugggh.” Félicie drew in a breath and sighed. “I’ve reached the point of desperation. Mr. Eaton called me into his office this morning. He agreed I could have a two-week holiday at the end of June. That’s next month.”
“Why do you need a two-week holiday in June?”
“For the honeymoon Carp’s ‘parents’ have planned! What am I supposed to do on a honeymoon for two weeks?” Félicie pointed at Mama Helaine. “Stop—you may not laugh.”
Mama Helaine’s lips leveled even. “This is no laughing matter.”
“Indeed,” Félicie agreed. Her shoulders slumped as much as they could in a corset. “I keep getting asked about wedding invitations. Proper etiquette is two weeks before the wedding, which Old Man Ralley kindly reminded me this morning. Why do people think we are getting married in June? We never agreed to a June wedding. June is a terrible month for a wedding.”
“Actually, it is quite a lovely one.”
Félicie gave Mama Helaine a slant-eyed glare.
“I apologize,” Mama Helaine said with a not-so-repentant smile. “You should be happy about marrying Carp. I like him.”
“Everyone likes him.”
Mama Helaine’s brows. “Except you?”
“He has his...pleasant moments,” she acknowledged, “but that does not mean I wish to marry him. Please, Mama, will you help me stall this wedding?”
Tears pooled in Mama Helaine’s beautiful eyes. “Bien sur! I will do whatever necessary to see to my little girl’s happiness.”
Félicie kissed Mama Helaine’s cheek then relaxed as they held each other. “I should have let you adopt me,” she whispered. If she’d had, her life would have taken a different course. She would be happy and married to a man she loved instead of being engaged by accident to the wrong one. “You have been more a mother to me than my own was. You are my mother. I’m sorry I waited this long to tell you that.”
Mama drew back, tears streaming down her cheeks. She smiled. Whatever words she had were clearly held hostage by her emotions.
With a slow, in-drawn breath, Félicie faced the crimson-velvet curtains. Carpenter was out there, tired, hungry, irritable, and ready to be done with her. He had to be. Any man in his right mind would be. No more stalling. She strolled to the curtains, grabbing at the last second a red feather which she promptly stuck into her bun.
“Now that’s a hummer of a gown!” Carpenter exclaimed the moment she stepped into the showroom. He’d removed the black coat to his uniform and looked at ease in a snug white jersey undershirt that defined every muscle in his chest. No wonder he had been asked by a lady sculptor to pose for her students. Paintings, drawings, and sculptures of his naked form—
Her heart started beating a little faster.
Rena, sitting next to Carpenter with Miss Trudy-Bleu in her lap, gave him an annoyed look. She pointed at Félicie. “You like this one best?”
As he looked at Rena, his brow slowly furrowed with indecision, which Félicie didn’t believe for a moment. He turned his attention onto her. The corner of his mouth indented, and the back of her neck warmed.
Félicie started to turn around, but Mama stopped her and whispered, “You can do this.”
“Now that you mention it...” His gaze shifted from Félicie’s head down to where the green-beaded fabric pooled at her feet. “It does make her look short.”
“It wouldn’t make me look short,” Rena muttered.
“It hasn’t been hemmed,” Mama explained.
He grinned. “Then it’s perfect! You wouldn’t have one in blue, would you?”
“Blue?” blurted Félicie, but upon realizing how impatient she sounded, she gave him a sweet smile. “Darling, the first three gowns I tried on were blue. How about I go get them and you—”
“No, no, sweetheart. Those were all plain blue.”
“He’s right, Fay,” Rena said. “They were rather plain. This one is much prettier on you.”
“So you are fine with me wearing your dress?” Félicie asked.
“Certainly not.”
Mama smoothed the beads on Félicie’s left shoulder. “Carp, what shade of blue would you prefer on our girl?”
Carpenter looked over his shoulders, this way and that as if trying to find something in the rolls and bolts of fabric about the showroom. “The color needs to be more airy. Like a bird.”
Rena appeared to think. “A blue jay is iridescent blue.”
Carpenter’s face scrunched. “What is iridescent?”
Felice ignored his foppish question altogether. “He means the color of the sky.”
“Almost.” Carpenter pointed to a roll of turquoise silk. “Add that to a parakeet.”
“Eggshell blue,” suggested Mama. “Like a robin’s egg?”
“Possibly.” Carpenter stood up so quickly his chair fell to the floor. He walked around the shop and touched every piece of fabric he passed. “No, no, no.” He opened the drawers and looked through the laces and trims. Finally he withdrew a green ribbon the exact shade of a lime. “This is it,” he said, slamming the drawer. He walked to Félicie and draped the ribbon over her shoulder. “If this green was about six shades lighter and not so bright and a little softer looking and yellow about three-days-old, you’d have just the color.”
“Like a sunflower?” prompted Mama.
“Exactly.”
Félicie’s jaw dropped into an openmouthed gasp. “Carpenter Yeary, you are only doing this to—�
�� She breathed through her nose and steadily released it. She looked to Mama. “The first dress I tried on will do.”
Carpenter opened his mouth.
“Shhh,” she said, pointing a finger at his face.
His mouth shut.
Rena looked confused. “That one isn’t yellow.”
“And the fabric was stiffer than a tarp,” Carpenter said with a dramatic wave of his hand. “It needs to be more like mosquito netting with flowers growing out of the bottom and have a red sash. Not real red. A kind of pink, a soft, dull pink, something like a pig’s snout or chicken—”
Félicie glared at him.
“—feet,” he finished then fell silent, looking contrite.
Mama waved at Rena. “On the workroom table upstairs is exactly what Carp wants. Run up and get the fabric. Bring every shade of pink tulle.”
“The first gown I tried on is fine,” Félicie said, but Rena had already left the showroom. The workroom was next to the kitchen, and since Rena had missed dinner too, the likelihood she would return immediately was small. Non-existent, really.
“That one wasn’t yellow,” muttered Carpenter.
“It is fi—”
Mama squeezed Félicie’s arm, silencing her, and then stepped around to stand next to Carpenter. “Carp, help me understand. You want a happier version of”—she moved her hand up and down in front of Félicie—“this?”
“He doesn’t know what he wants.”
Carpenter gave Félicie an odd look. A look making her skin prickle with awareness. A look telling her he knew exactly what he wanted. A look making her stiffen and tingle and want...and wish...and...
She didn’t know. Heaven help her, she didn’t know what she wished for, but she could feel the pull, the ache. It hurt. The intensity of it—
Félicie focused on the dress, smoothing the beads as she blinked rapidly to stop the tears from forming. She hated crying. She hated staring at the door and waiting for it to open. Doors closed. People left and didn’t return no matter how much they said they loved you. Love made people run. Love made people die. She knew that. She knew that as much as she knew that whatever it was Carpenter Yeary wanted, it wasn’t her. They had an understanding. They had an incompatible list.
He didn’t want her.
She didn’t want him.
Félicie moistened her lips. She looked to Mama for help filling the silence, but Mama was walking to the service counter. She didn’t dare look at Carpenter.
Except she did.
His gaze fixed on hers, and it took every ounce of fortitude for her not to speak. To ask him why he was looking at her that way. No, not at her.
His attention was solely on her lips. As if he wanted to kiss—
Her breath caught. Not once in the last eighty-seven days had he kissed her. Not her hand. Not her cheek. Not her lips. He’d been a gentleman through and through.
His hand, moved toward her face...
Carpenter plucked the red feather from her hair. “Can’t have people calling you Félicie Navidad.”
Mama chuckled.
He cocked his head to the side and boasted, “I should have been a man-dressmaker. That’s what I should have been.”
Félicie gave her head a little shake. A man-dressmaker? At that moment all she could do was imagine him with measuring tapes draped around his neck and pins pinched between his lips. Cowhide, he would mutter, is the newest thing in outerwear. It’s all the rage in Topeka. The laugh started as a bubble in her chest and... She pinched her own lips tight, but that sent air through her nose and she snorted. The more she tried not to laugh, the more tears welled in her eyes. Her chest hurt. And... and she couldn’t breathe. She was going to cry. Right her. In front of Carpenter and Mama and...
She breathed deeply to control the spasms in her chest. Her throat tightened. She rubbed her forehead to keep Carpenter from seeing her eyes.
Mama grabbed her sketchbook from the counter. “Carp dear, let’s have a seat and you can describe what you are envisioning.”
“Since you two...uhh, I’ll go.” Félicie whirled around and walked as steadily as she could to the fitting room.
“She’s crying.”
She heard Mama’s soft words as she stepped through the curtains. Félicie reached behind to hold the curtains closed, to stop someone from entering. She hadn’t realized she was crying but now that she knew...
Her chin trembled.
She pinched her eyes closed to stop the tears. It hurt. She hurt. Every muscle in her face hurt.
She couldn’t do this anymore. She couldn’t keep lying. She couldn’t keep allowing the circle of friends to plan a wedding that wasn’t wanted. She couldn’t keep pretending it was real. Nothing about this was real. Every enjoyable moment with him was a façade. She wanted real. She wanted love. She wanted to be treasured. And she couldn’t have that until the make-believe world with him ended.
“Félicie,” came Carpenter’s soft voice.
Sniff. Félicie schooled her face and breathed deep. She released the curtain. While wiping the tears off her cheeks, she blurted, “Stay out. I am changing.” She hurried into the room and began searching for the button hook. Where was it? She jerked the lime-colored ribbon off her shoulder. Where had Mama Helaine put the button hook?
He stepped through the curtains.
“Go away. Please,” she added to be polite. She tossed the ribbon onto the vanity. “It is not appropriate for you to be in here.”
He didn’t move. “I’m your fiancé.”
“Not a real one.”
“Real enough.” He gave her a look daring her to argue.
“Go.” She pointed to the curtain. “You win, Carpenter. It is impossible for me to be more insufferable than you are.”
“Of course. You’re too kindhearted and pragmatic to do anything that would actually make me dislike you.”
“How can you say that? You know I’ve made your life miserable at times.”
“You think you have,” he said with sigh. “Truth is, Félicie, you don’t have a mean bone in your body. You inform everyone I have to eat more vegetables to help with my constipation issues. You give my housekeepers a list of foods I can and can’t eat because of those imaginary issues. A horrible person would put something in my food to actually make me constipated. Being a nice person isn’t a flaw.”
Félicie held her hands up in defeat. “Fine. The engagement is over. Done. Finished.”
He looked over his shoulder at the curtains. Then back at her, his head shaking in—in what? Disappointment? Frustration? Or maybe it was in annoyance that Mama Helaine and Rena were behind the curtain listening. She would not put it past them.
He crossed his arms. “You can’t end it yet.”
“Why not?” Félicie bit off.
“Do you realize how much money has already been spent on our engagement ball?” His voice held none of the silliness from earlier. His tone, like his expression, was serious. “You—we have to give them this ball. It’s good form.”
Félicie reached up and rubbed the side of her neck. Every muscle in her body seemed to ache. She sighed. That’s what her life had come to—one continual sigh.
He must have taken the slow wag of her head to mean no because he said, “Hear me out. I’ll leave the shop in a huff. Anyone who sees me will think I’m upset. If we avoid each other, the gossips will do the dirty work for us. You arrive late for the ball. We give the appearance of trying to be cordial to one another despite our irritations, and on Saturday, I’ll neglect to show at the kaffeeklatsch. In the natural gossip that will follow, word will spread that the engagement is over. A mutual decision.” He held up his hands, as if in surrender. “No harm, no foul to either of us.”
“More lying,” she muttered.
His gaze hardened. “Everyone lies.”
“And that makes it all right?”
“No,” he answered in an unusually snippy tone. “I’m saying everyone lies. To other people, to God, to ou
rselves. Especially ourselves. We tell ourselves we’re happy and content with our lives. We insist we have no regrets over choices we’ve made. We say we like ourselves, we have no fears, and we don’t need anyone’s help. Truth is…we are lying. We are putting on a show because we are afraid if we don’t and people knew all our flaws and secrets, then no one would like us. Everyone lies.”
“You agree—no more pretending to be happily engaged, no more pretending to be in love, no more pretending to want to get married?”
He gave a curt nod of acknowledgement. “We follow my plan.”
She scowled. “Why does it always have to be your plan?”
“What do you propose we do?” he burst out.
“After the ball, you,” she said with considerable emphasis, “inform Mrs. Grbic and her circle of friends that you have reached the conclusion that we will not suit. You apologize for the inconvenience and you thank the ladies for everything.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
His arms crossed.
And she could hear his silent, “A gentleman’s reputation is no less important than a lady’s.”
Félicie’s heart pounded in her chest, her breath quickening. “I am tired,” she said, “of you using your reputation as an excuse for why you can’t do the right thing. You had no problem with anyone thinking badly of you for posing in the nude. And don’t tell me again how you are only doing this so I have food to eat and strong relationships that will last after you exit my life. I had enough food and friends before you came along. I didn’t need you to rescue me. I don’t need rescuing.”
He stared at her, his jaw hard. Then—
“They were art students.”
Of everything she said, that was what he focused on?
“How many female art students saw you naked?” she asked.
“Why does that matter?”
“Because if your reputation truly mattered to you, you wouldn’t have done that.”
His face reddened. “Wear whatever dress you want! I don’t care.” He jabbed a finger in her direction, emphasizing his words with each jab. “I’ll see you at the ball. You’d better be late.” He turned and left, the curtains swishing behind him.