12
Adriane had been dreading the Jimsons’ summer ball for days. The annual event on the second Saturday in June was as expected in Louisville as the summer heat. The party known for its elaborate spread of food, fine music, and ostentatious decorations drew guests from far and wide with so many beautifully bedecked belles in attendance that it was rumored more than half of all Louisville marriages could trace their roots back to the ball.
Last summer, Adriane had made a long enough appearance to get an acceptable list of names for an enthusiastic report of the event in the Tribune. This year, as almost one of the family, she was expected to lend her support by being present hours earlier than necessary.
So now she sat with Stan, three of his sisters, and his mother in the parlor amid the smilax-bedecked mirrors and doorways as they awaited their guests. Adriane tried to console herself with the thought that there should be plenty of political talk at the party later. She’d be sure to overhear something she could use in a Colonel Storey letter.
Adriane slowly waved her fan back and forth in front of her face and managed to swallow yet another yawn as one of the sisters repeated an inane comment one of her children had made the previous day, or so the nanny had reported. Even Meta Jimson seemed bored by her daughter’s recital. Over the top of her own fan, Mrs. Jimson’s eyes kept flipping from Stanley to Adriane.
No one expected Adriane to talk, which was a relief. For about the tenth time Adriane smoothed the folds of her silvery blue dress, yet another one Nora had finished in record time. Adriane had picked the fabric chiefly because it was so different, and now here among the more ordinary yellow, pink, and cream dresses of Stan’s sisters, she wondered if once again she’d chosen poorly. Perhaps it would serve her better to strive for the ordinary.
She certainly hadn’t liked it when she’d come down the stairs to check on how the paper was coming before she left and Beck had barred her from the pressroom as he’d looked at her in wonder.
“You make a vision in that dress, Addie. One that don’t belong in here.”
She’d looked down at the flowing yards of fabric that seemed to pick up and reflect the sunlight streaming in the window next to the front door and knew he was right even if she didn’t want him to be. Then Duff, pounding in from outside with some bit of news, had stopped in his tracks at the sight of her.
“Is that you, Miss Adriane?” He whipped off his hat and stared at her with wide eyes. “You look like a princess out of a storybook.”
The way they had stared at her as if she were not only someone they didn’t know but someone they were afraid to meet had been much more distressing to Adriane than the look of disapproval in Meta Jimson’s eyes. The woman’s lips curled down now as she said, “That’s a most unusual color for a dress, Adriane.”
“Yes, it is,” Adriane agreed mildly.
“But it is lovely, isn’t it, Mother?” Stan spoke up quickly, his eyes lingering a long moment on Adriane.
“Very lovely if one doesn’t mind being so conspicuous.” Mrs. Jimson sniffed with disapproval and turned her eyes from Adriane to Stanley. “Fetch me another cushion, Stanley dearest. All this sitting is straining my back.”
Stan had already fetched her a glass of tea, a fresh handkerchief, and a low stool to prop up her feet under her dark purple silk dress. Each time Stanley jumped to satisfy one of his mother’s whims, she smiled a little at Adriane as if she were winning some kind of point. Adriane wanted to tell the old dragon she didn’t care if Stan did handstands in the middle of the floor for his mother. In fact it might even be amusing. Heaven only knew something amusing needed to happen before they all fell out of their chairs with boredom. Another of the sisters began talking about the trouble she was having with her cook. The woman just could not learn to make a proper meringue dessert and couldn’t Papa possibly give her a new cook.
Adriane turned her mind away from the conversation before she could think too much about what she would do when “Papa” started giving her and Stanley cooks. Adriane hadn’t thought at all about what would happen after the wedding since that seemed hurdle enough to face, but now it dawned on her slowly and not very pleasantly that she would be expected to have slaves as servants.
She suppressed a sigh. Here was yet something else about which she and Stan would have to come to an understanding. Her eyes drifted over to Stan. He hadn’t been very understanding about anything of late. They had argued three times during the last week. Twice about how Adriane needed to take more care styling her hair before they went to socials, and once about Blake Garrett pulling Adriane from the path of the carriage horses.
The morning following her visit to Grace, Stanley had stormed into the newspaper offices, almost shouting about how she’d been seen in Blake Garrett’s arms out on the streets.
Adriane had pulled him back into the hall before her father could wonder at the commotion and come out of his office. In the process she smeared ink on Stan’s sleeve. For a moment she was uncertain which upset him the most—the thought of her in Blake Garrett’s arms or the ink stain on his sleeve.
As she rubbed ineffectively at the ink with her handkerchief, she did her best to calm his anger. “I was careless, Stan, and stepped into the street without paying proper attention. Mr. Garrett was good enough to pull me out of the way of a carriage.”
“I suppose he just happened to be on the walkway beside you,” Stan said with a sneer of disbelief.
“I have no idea where he was. I didn’t see him until he pulled me back up on the walk before I could be run down.” Adriane concentrated on breathing in and out slowly. It would do little good for her to let her temper rise to match his.
“Even if that’s so, it hardly explains why he had to hold you while two carriages passed by.” Stan’s voice was still too loud.
“I felt faint,” Adriane said.
“Faint? You’ve never felt faint in your life, Adriane Darcy.” Stan glared at her.
“I’ve never before been nearly run down by a team of spirited horses. The sight of hooves slashing the air above one’s head is a bit unsettling.” Adriane kept her voice calm. “And while I might have preferred to be rescued by someone other than Mr. Garrett, I can hardly claim to be sorry I was rescued, can I?”
“I suppose not,” he conceded. “But you shouldn’t have even been in that part of town unescorted. You need to remember your position.”
“My position, yes,” she echoed his words as despair swept through her the way it did every time she thought of what that position was. She pushed out one of her practiced smiles in an attempt to appease him. If she could mollify him, perhaps he would be on his way to whatever he did during the daytime hours when he wasn’t escorting her to socials. She realized she didn’t know what that was, and moreover, she didn’t care. She simply wanted him gone so she could return to her work in the pressroom and forget for a few hours the untenable position she was in.
But he wasn’t through. “And I do have to insist you not be seen speaking to that man Garrett ever again.”
She managed to suppress her resentment at his demanding tone as she chose her words carefully. “That might prove difficult, since he does seem to be at every event we attend lately. I don’t know how he could have been in Louisville for months without our paths crossing and now I see him everywhere I go.”
“I daresay it’s by design.” Stan’s face grew darker.
“I can’t imagine what you mean, Stan.” Adriane started to lay her hand on his arm again, but he flinched away before she could touch him. She looked at her ink-stained hand, then dropped it to her side. “Mr. Garrett is quite aware of our engagement.”
“Perhaps he has other reasons,” Stanley said with an odd, distracted look. So distracted that he left without kissing Adriane’s cheek or giving her any sort of farewell.
Adriane hadn’t worried about it then as she returned to the pressroom and the story he’d interrupted, but now remembering it, she looked over at Stanley. B
efore he asked for her hand in marriage, she would have said she knew him as well as any person in the world. Since then, he was continually surprising her.
Even today he was surprising her. He was handsomely dressed as always in a dark coat with his collar stiff and pristinely white, but his cheeks were flushed and his eyes were strangely animated as if he knew some sort of secret that no one could know but him. The most surprising thing about him was the way he looked when he satisfied his mother’s many whims. Even as he fetched and carried without complaint, his every movement carried a hint of defiance, and he practically radiated with that defiance whenever he looked at Adriane sitting there in their midst in her exotic gown.
A commotion in the hallway cut short the idle chatter among the sisters. A woman’s voice, strong and confident, carried into the parlor. “Dear Alec, what are you doing still here? Papa promised me he was going to give you your papers.”
“Now, Miss Margaret, don’t go fretting over me. Massah Coleman says he can’t get along without me.” The black butler’s voice was soft and friendly as he greeted Stan’s sister who had come down from the North to the summer ball.
“We’ll see about that. A promise is a promise.” Her voice was strident.
Inside the parlor, Meta Jimson stiffened and stopped fanning for a moment as she and Stan exchanged an uneasy look. Two of the sisters appeared totally unnerved, and even Pauline, the oldest, looked up from her needlework with a concerned frown etching lines between her eyes.
Stan recovered first. He stood and managed a smile as he said, “That’s our dear Margaret. Isn’t it wonderful she could make it down to our little party this year?”
The sisters all pushed their smiles back into their proper places as they bobbed their heads in agreement. Even Mrs. Jimson pushed out a smile as she looked toward Adriane. “I’m sure she made the special effort because she’s so anxious to meet dear Adriane.”
Before Adriane had time to decide whether that remark was supposed to frighten her, the sister from Ohio swept into the room, looking a bit formidable in her plain, dark brown traveling costume among their ball gowns. She was nearly as tall as Stanley, and though she was not exactly fat, the trunk of her body was uniformly thick and appeared totally free of the constraints of a corset of any type.
She wasn’t pretty. Her dark hair was yanked back in a tight bun with no hint of curl at her temples to soften the severity of the style. Her nose was too large and her chin too jutting, but her face was interesting. The woman’s eyes practically slammed into Adriane as soon as she entered the room, and Adriane rose from her chair to meet this new, very different sister.
“My heavens, Stanley, she’s beautiful. How in the world did you get her to say she’d marry you?” the woman said.
The color drained from Stan’s cheeks and then rushed back redder than ever. Adriane almost felt sorry for him as he sputtered for something to say.
His mother came to his rescue. “Don’t be rude, Margaret. Come kiss your mother and then Stanley will properly introduce you to his intended.”
Margaret obediently pecked her mother on the cheek before turning to offer her own cheek to Stan. “Do forgive me, brother, but I was assuming you had warned your fiancée about my unladylike habit of saying what I think.” Her eyes gleamed with the pleasure his discomfort was giving her, but the sparkle faded as she turned to Adriane again.
Their eyes locked as they sized one another up. After a moment, the sister’s appraising look changed and seemed to become almost sad as she reached out to grasp Adriane’s hands in hers. “So you’re Adriane Darcy.”
Stan watched his sister warily as he said, “Soon to be Adriane Jimson.”
“I’ve heard so much about you.” Margaret kept talking as if Stan had not spoken. “And I’m Margaret Jimson Black. I rather doubt you’ve heard anything about me.” Her eyes slid sideways toward Stan, then back to Adriane.
Adriane searched for something to say that might relieve the strange tension in the room. “Of course I have, and I’ve looked so forward to meeting you. Stan told me you have four sons. Are they with you?”
“Heaven forbid, no,” Margaret said. “They travel poorly, and since I must go back tomorrow, it didn’t seem worth the aggravation to drag them along, especially since Papa’s summer gala is hardly a fitting place for youngsters. Their heads would be quite turned by all the pretty belles, and I intend to keep them in the schoolroom and nursery a few more years yet.”
“What a shame you can’t stay longer, Margaret,” Stan said with no regret at all in his voice.
Her eyes went back to him. “Yes, a real shame.” Then she glanced around at her mother and sisters. “You look like lovely roses sitting around waiting to be picked.”
“Honestly, Margaret. The things you say,” her mother said. “When you know we’ve all already been picked.”
“Yes, I suppose you have.” Again there was the wicked grin. “And deflowered. Except of course for Adriane who looks more like an elusive moonbeam in that dress than any kind of rose.”
“Elusive now, perhaps.” Stan slid his arm around Adriane’s waist to draw her as close to him as the fullness of her skirts would allow. “But not for long.”
Adriane thought icy thoughts but could not keep a blush from climbing into her cheeks. Stan noticed and laughed as he tightened his arm around her.
Adriane forced herself to continue to breathe calmly and keep smiling while she deliberately and carefully turned her thoughts back toward what would be happening at the Tribune offices. The galleys would be ready unless her father was holding one for some late story entry. Beck and Duff would be checking the presses, which would soon be clanking out the words. They’d run through the first copies, and her father would check them to be sure they were right since she wasn’t there to do it.
The Tribune would get out without her there. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was she wanted to be there instead of here. The problem was she wanted to be anywhere but here today or any day, but she made herself keep smiling at Margaret as if she were the happiest girl in the world.
The woman squeezed Adriane’s hands tighter. “The two of us must talk, Adriane.”
“That will have to be later,” Stan said quickly. “You barely have time to dress before the first guests arrive.”
Margaret laughed. “Yes, I’d best go see if I can disguise my thorns and attempt to turn myself into a rose as well. Even if I too have already been plucked.”
When she bustled out of the room, she seemed to take all the life with her. Unable to bear the thought of sitting back down to another session of fanning and hiding yawns, Adriane sweetly asked if she might explore the gardens. After a quick glance at Stanley, Pauline offered to accompany her.
The Jimson garden was noted for its blooming plants and bushes from the earliest bit of warmth in the spring to the first snow in the winter. Now the roses and flowers along the bricked path had erupted in blooms to fill the air with bright colors and sweet fragrances. A green hummingbird darted between the red and pink clusters of hollyhocks while a black and yellow butterfly nearly as large as the tiny bird floated lazily back and forth in front of Adriane and Pauline as they walked.
“It’s always so lovely out here. So quiet and peaceful,” Adriane said. The sun began to sink low in the west behind a bank of dark clouds, withdrawing its rays slowly, almost reluctantly from the garden.
“It is. Mother had the garden designed for both beauty and privacy.” Pauline frowned as she glanced up at the sky. “I do hope it doesn’t rain and spoil some of the romance our summer gala is so noted for.” Her smile returned as she nodded toward an iron bench surrounded by an arbor of greenery. “That’s one of the so-called proposal benches because of how many young men are said to have gone down on their knees in front of their sweethearts here. Is this where Stanley proposed to you?”
“No.” Adriane wondered what Pauline would think if she knew how Adriane had forced Stan to propose to her in the
carriage. Pauline was the sister who never said much, except for an occasional quiet word to keep the peace between her two younger sisters, and while Adriane hadn’t exactly figured out which of the children might belong to her, all of them listened immediately when she spoke.
Adriane knew she was expected to listen too, and so she wasn’t surprised when Pauline began talking about Margaret.
“You mustn’t pay too much mind to Margaret or anything she says.” Pauline paused on the path to pluck a bloom from a hollyhock stalk. She ran her fingers over the silky smooth pink petals as she added, “Especially about Stanley.”
“Oh?” Adriane said.
“All families have their little difficulties getting along at times, don’t you think?” Pauline looked at her a moment before she dropped the hollyhock bloom and began walking again.
Adriane kept in step with her without answering. She had no idea what Pauline expected her to say, and she had no desire to start off on the wrong foot with this sister who appeared to be the one most willing to help Adriane fit into the Jimson family.
Pauline didn’t seem to notice her silence as, after a few steps, she went on. “Margaret’s the youngest besides Stanley. I suppose since she’d been the baby for five years, it was hard for her to relinquish that favored spot. And dear Stanley was so fragile as a child that Mother had to give him all her time and attention. We older sisters didn’t resent that, but I fear Margaret did. Not only that, but before Stanley was born, Margaret had rather taken it upon herself to try to fulfill Papa’s desire for a son by becoming rather boyish in her activities. She was always climbing trees and catching toad frogs or crickets. Why, one time she even tried to keep a squirrel as a pet.”
“Do they make good pets?” Adriane thought of feeding a squirrel a nut from her hand the way she fed the old dog the extra biscuits she baked for him.
Words Spoken True: A Novel Page 13
