by Gina Welborn
“Why would I treat them any other way?”
“Your compassion for the wounded won’t let you.”
Moments passed as she said nothing. “I still don’t understand why they don’t want to take the gifts to the orphans.”
“Look around.”
Her gaze fluttered from one orphan to another chasing goats, tossing baseballs, and running around the field. She looked back at him. “I don’t understand.”
“The girls had such joy in picking out gifts this morning to donate to these orphans.” He cradled her cheek. “Being here, seeing orphans in nicer clothes than what they are wearing, reminded the girls that they are actually less fortunate than the children they have gifts for. They remembered who they are, Letty. And what little they have.”
“Who they were,” Letty corrected in a tone that brooked no argument. She drew his hand away from her face. “That is not who they are anymore, and I won’t let them believe that.”
She was magnificent. For all her beauty, charm, and tendency to waste time metaphorically sniffing flowers, this woman would go to battle for those she loved. He pitied anyone who came against her. He pitied anyone not at her side.
“You’re right,” he said softly.
“In my attempt to bond them together, I ended up embarrassing them.” Her voice was low and tight, her emotions restrained. “I tried to do something good, and it went all wrong. I have to make this right. I have to fix this.”
Jakob bent his neck to see beneath the brim of her hat. “We both agreed to let the girls bring donations to these orphans. Even though it was unintended, we’re both responsible for causing their embarrassment, so together we’ll find a way to make it right.”
She looked up at him. “How?”
Jakob untied the crates stacked one atop the other on the carriage back. “If you have any ideas to treat them to a one-day holiday in St. Paul, I’m open to hearing them.”
Letty bumped her shoulder into his. “I’m excellent at coming up with fun ideas.”
He bumped his shoulder into hers. “So am I.”
“Is that a challenge?” she taunted.
Jakob answered her with a smile.
* * * *
The Windsor Hotel
Fifth Street and St. Peter Street
The next day
Colette glanced over her shoulder to see Ada, Hazel, and Victoria leaning against the elevator cage’s ornamental wrought iron walls. They’d conveniently “slept” yesterday during the three-hour carriage ride from the orphanage back to the hotel and had been “happy” to let Colette have a bed to herself. Conversation over breakfast had been as minimal as during supper last night.
Their attempt to punish Colette for her unintentional embarrassment of them had crushed her heart…until Mr. Jacobs pointed out that they’d unified as she’d hoped they would. Granted, it was unison in offense against her for humiliating them. But still they had bonded together. A three-fold cord wasn’t easily broken.
She looked up at Mr. Jacobs. “You’re brilliant.”
His lips turned upward a fraction, that adorable I’m-delighted-I-impressed-you smirk he frequently wore. “Feel free to remind me of that as often as you like.”
“Indeed I will.” Colette tightened the drawstring reticule she wore around her left wrist.
The youthful elevator operator, in his smart red uniform, turned the handle to stop the cage. He looked through the iron bars and grumbled to himself. Colette wrapped her right arm around Mr. Jacobs’s left one as the elevator bounced in the operator’s clearly inexperienced attempt to adjust the cage to be level with the lobby’s terrazzo floor.
Mr. Jacobs leaned close to Colette, the action causing her heart to quicken. “Even if they don’t have fun,” he whispered, “we will.”
One of the girls behind Colette—either Ada or Victoria—made a guttural noise that was something between a cough and a gag.
“Watch your step, please,” ordered the elevator operator.
Colette admired the majestic décor as Mr. Jacobs escorted her through the lobby. It was no wonder the Gaineses had recommended the Windsor. The food served in the restaurant was premier—and only 75 cents for up to a five-course meal! She loved the red carpet, curtained booths, and stained glass border on the plate-glass windows in the main dining room. She could spend an evening sitting in the lobby listening to the string quartet play “Home, Sweet Home!” as they were now.
“Home, sweet home,” Colette sang, “where lips of love are greeting.”
The girls continued to follow them as they exited the hotel and turned right and strolled headed south toward Third Street, which the concierge had insisted was the city’s fashionable promenade.
“Excuse us!” yelled a youth. He bumped Colette’s arm as he ran by.
A dozen or so boys and girls followed him, dashing past like a herd of elk running from a mountain lion.
Colette glanced over her shoulder. The girls continued to follow, yet their heads kept turning as they took in the buildings, shops, the hired hacks, buggies, horse riders, bicyclists, and numerous pedestrians. Fascination with grand city life had replaced their dour expressions.
Mr. Jacobs’s hand rested over Colette’s hand holding on to his arm. “Here it is.” He released her arm then held open the door to the secondhand clothing store they had visited yesterday to buy clothing for the orphanage. While the clothes were not distinguished for fashion, they were sold at a reasonable price. Not that price mattered to Colette. They merely had no time to buy custom-tailored clothing.
She took a step inside, then stopped. She moved back to stand in front of Mr. Jacobs to give the girls room to pass. “Pick whatever you want,” she said as they stood frozen on the sidewalk. “As much as you want.”
Hazel was the first to speak. “Shoes?” she asked in a voice part hopeful and part disbelieving.
“Anything,” Colette stressed, yet Hazel continued to hesitate. “There is a shoe store farther down on Third Street, if you would prefer brand-new shoes. I’ll buy you boots, too. And if you don’t find anything you like here, we can look in other shops.” Which Colette fully intended to do because the girls should have at least two current fashion dresses—one for Sunday worship services and one for cotillions and tea parties. The key was finding a dressmaker with gowns in need of little to no alterations.
Hazel’s dubious eyes focused on Mr. Jacobs. “Can we, sir?”
“Yes, you—” Before he finished saying “can,” she dashed inside. Ada and Victoria exchanged glances before running after Hazel.
Colette started to go after them, but Mr. Jacobs’s hand—the one not holding the door—slid around her waist and kept her from moving. He leaned down to whisper, “Letty, we agreed to buy them a dress. One dress.”
She turned to look up at him. He was close, so close she could see the brown flecks near the center of blue-as-a-robin’s-egg eyes. She could so easily fall in love with a man like him. With him. With a man who gazed at her as if she was his everything.
Only an insensible girl fell in love with a man after so short an acquaintance.
But oh, how she could love him if she wanted to!
And she could feel her heart breaking because she had promised to marry Robert. He never looked at her as Mr. Jacobs was now. If she didn’t marry Robert, she would prove, again, to her parents that she was fickle, that she didn’t know what honoring a commitment meant.
Colette looked away. “I’ve never been good at measuring my love, Mr. Jacobs. I can’t—I won’t—change to fit another person’s standards of giving. If you want to buy them one dress, then buy them one dress. Since I cannot give them the home and life I’ve been blessed to have, I will buy them an entire wardrobe.” She drew in a breath. “I draw the line at allowing them to look like impoverished orphans when they arrive at the academy.”
Her heart leaped, and her breath quickened, something that was becoming too regular an occurrence when he was near. He couldn’t be in love with her, no matter what his expression said or words implied. Love took time to build. Whatever it was she felt for him wasn’t love either. It was attraction grown from finding someone who saw her for who she was and didn’t fault her for it or ask her to change.
“I cannot know what is in your heart, Mr. Jacobs”—Colette stepped backward, freeing herself from his hold—“but I know what is in mine.” She looked into the shop. “Hazel, Victoria, and Ada.”
His Adam’s apple shifted as he swallowed. “I apologize for speaking out of turn.”
“It is nothing.” Not true. His words made her yearn for something she didn’t have—love. She wanted a man who loved her, and who she could love as her parents loved each other. And Robert wasn’t that man. She was a fool not to have realized that until now. She forced a smile. “Are you sure you don’t want to stay and help us shop?”
He shook his head. “Meet me at the intersection like we planned.” He released the door the moment she stepped inside.
Colette stepped to the window display and watched him continue on toward Third Street.
“He likes you, and you like him, too.”
Colette started, then whirled around to see Victoria standing there empty handed. “Did you find anything?”
“I did, but you and Mr. Jacobs distracted me from shopping.” She tilted her head to the side as she studied Colette. “I thought you were a Marianne, but you really are an Elinor, aren’t you?” And with that she skipped back to the shelves of clothes.
Colette sighed. If she was the oldest Dashwood sister, she would go home to her room where she would be free to think and be wretched. If she was the oldest Dashwood sister, she wouldn’t have allowed herself to become engaged to a man who didn’t love her and whom she didn’t love. If she was the oldest Dashwood sister, she wouldn’t be chaperoning three teen girls rescued from prostitution.
She certainly wasn’t Elinor.
Nor was she Marianne.
The truth was more unpleasant to admit. She was Colette Vanderpool-Vane. And she was halfway home…and more than halfway in love with a man she wasn’t engaged to.
Chapter Nine
It is not what we think or feel that makes us who we are. It is what we do. Or fail to do…
—JANE AUSTEN, Sense and Sensibility
With the afternoon sun casting shadows on the sidewalk, Jakob watched Letty through the window display of Leake & Holderness’s Leather and Luggage Goods. She continued to talk to the proprietor as she paid him. What The Import Company was lucky to earn in a month, Letty had spent in the last three hours on clothes, shoes, hats, art supplies, books, baskets of fruits imported from the French Rivera, steamer trunks, hatboxes, tapestry travel bags, a silver bracelet for Mrs. Gaines, sheet music for Mr. Gaines, and delivery for all to her suite at the Windsor. And everything she bought, she paid less than the original price.
Jakob suspected “original price” was only a “starting price” to Letty Pool.
She’d proven to be an astute bargainer and a generous benefactor. He could easily imagine what a loving, mindful, and adventurous mother she would be someday.
“Ma would like her,” he reasoned aloud. “So would Pa.”
Frankly, who wouldn’t?
“Are you talking about Letty?” Hazel asked from the bench where she sat with Ada, who was reading a newly printed, leather-bound copy of Jane Eyre. Wearing secondhand linen dresses and new black boots, and their hair tied back with bows, they looked like every other girl their ages who was milling about the promenade of shops and eateries.
Jakob smiled before he could think better of it. “You heard me?”
Hazel nodded. “You mutter a lot.”
“No, I don’t. I don’t like muttering.”
Ada looked up at him. “That doesn’t stop the fact you mutter,” she said blandly. “Usually when you are looking at Letty. It’s all right that you like her. Are you going to ask if you can court—” She stood abruptly. “Oh, hi, Letty. Can we eat something? One half of my stomach has already shriveled from starvation.”
Letty strolled to where Jakob and Ada were standing. “One half of your stomach, you say?”
“One half at minimum,” Ada stressed.
Letty’s beautiful blue-gray eyes widened. “Why, this is wonderful news!” She clapped repeatedly like one did after a performance. “Just wonderful!” She stopped clapping and smiled. “I now only have to buy you half a meal.”
Ada’s amused gaze shifted to Jakob. “If you decide to ask, know you have my permission.”
“Mine, too,” Hazel put in.
“His permission for what?” Letty glanced back and forth between him and the girls.
“To cour—”
Jakob clasped his hand over Hazel’s mouth while giving Ada a warning look to stay silent. “To ask my favorite ladies to join me for an early supper.”
“We accept.” Letty looked from him to Hazel, to Ada, and to—“Aww, they’re still talking. It’s rather sweet, although a most unfortunate timing. Perhaps he’ll write to her.”
Jakob turned to where Victoria was sitting on the bench next to the young man she had met in the art shop; he’d walked with her to the bookstore, then to the jeweler and music shop, and now here. Jakob guessed the young man to be eighteen or so. Older than Victoria but not too old to court a girl of her age.
The young man said something that caused Victoria to nod. He grinned, then stood and helped her to her feet. Victoria’s smile could not grow any broader as they walked toward Jakob and Letty.
The young man stopped in front of Jakob. He withdrew a silver case from the pocket of his gray-striped suitcoat, pulled out a white card, and handed it to Jakob before pocketing the case. “Sebastian Bellamy of Bellamy and Sons. We build sleighs, wagons, carriages—pretty much anything a person can ride in. And we sell bicycles.”
Jakob took the card, then shook Bellamy’s hand. “Matthew Jacobs. I’m the girls’ guardian.” Protector. Temporary father. He dipped his head toward Letty. “This is Miss Pool, their chaperone.”
She shook Bellamy’s hand. “Nice to meet you. Are you a St. Paul native?”
“Born and raised, ma’am. I start medical school next month at the University of Minnesota.” He gave Victoria a doting look before meeting Jakob’s gaze. “I would be honored if you and Mr. Jacobs would allow me to escort Victoria to the Palace Museum, since she’s leaving tomorrow and all. I’m a barker there.”
“What’s the Palace Museum?” Hazel asked.
Bellamy looked at Hazel as if he was sincerely interested in including her in the conversation. “The Palace Museum is a whimsical wonderland of illusions, mechanical wonders, and curiosities.” He tapped the tip of her nose. “‘Come hither, come hither by night or by day, there’s plenty to look at and little to pay. You may stroll through the rooms, and at every turn, there’s something to please you, something to learn. If weary and heated, rest here at your ease, there’s a fountain to cool you and music to please.’”
“His rhyme is sublime yet impressively in time,” Ada remarked with a tremendous lack of enthusiasm.
Hazel looked at Jakob in confusion.
He clenched his jaw, unsure of what Bellamy was talking about but knew Victoria leaving with the younger man wasn’t a wise idea.
“It’s a dime museum,” Letty explained to Hazel. “My friends and I visited the Palace last summer.”
Jakob fiddled with Bellamy’s calling card as Letty and Bellamy took turns telling the girls about the museum’s assortment of curiosities—Jo-Jo the Dog-Faced Boy, sword swallowers, tattooed men and women, malformed people,
and machines that, if you put a coin in and turned the handle, the pictures inside moved so fast that they looked like they were miniature people doing different things. A lady jumping on a chair to escape mice. Children playing with dogs.
“Can I go?” Victoria blurted out. “Please, Mr. Jacobs.”
“We can meet afterward,” Bellamy offered.
Nothing about the young man seemed disingenuous, and if anything happened to Victoria, Jakob could hunt down the young man’s family’s business. Sebastian Bellamy was nothing more than a young man infatuated with a pretty girl. Jakob knew the feeling.
“Mr. Bellamy, I’d be honored if you join us for an early supper at the Oyster Bay Restaurant.” Jakob tucked the business card in his waistcoat. “My treat. Then we can all go to the dime museum together.”
“Thank you, Mr. Jacobs, but I’d like to buy Victoria something at the Palace. How about Victoria and I meet you at Rice Park in”—Bellamy glanced at his pocket watch—“two hours? Victoria and I will bring bicycles.”
“Bicycles!” Hazel tugged on Jakob’s sleeve “Please, Mr. Jacobs, say yes.”
“Don’t you want to go to a dime museum?”
“Can we do both?” she asked hopefully.
Jakob looked over his shoulder at Letty, but her sudden silence, as much as her blank expression, gave him no clue as to her thoughts.
Bellamy’s throat cleared. “Sir, there’s a dime museum across the street from the restaurant. It’s smaller than the Palace but still a good one. You could take Victoria’s sisters there and still have time for us to ride bicycles in the park before dark.”
Jakob raised his brows at Ada in a silent What do you want to do?
“Anything…as long as I’m fed first,” she said matter-of-factly.
Jakob reluctantly nodded at Victoria.
She squealed in delight.
Jakob kept his gaze on the young couple as they strolled away. Where was the balance between being cautious and being controlling? He didn’t want to become a father who kept his children locked inside the house, away from danger. Pa never did that. Jakob had done enough dangerous things in his life. Once earned a broken arm from it. Climbing trees, chasing bulls in the field, and putting bottle caps on railroad tracks wasn’t the same as walking off in a metropolis with a practical stranger. It couldn’t be.