Just North of Bliss

by Duncan, Alice

  “All right, all right,” she snapped. “I don’t want to talk about it. There’s no way on God’s green earth that you’ll ever understand my point of view.”

  “And there’s no way you’ll ever understand mine.”

  “Absolutely.” Belle sucked in about ten gallons of air and wondered how in the world such a blissful evening could turn so quickly into something horrid. It was all Win’s fault, she decided instantly. He would talk about civil wars. She stormed to the dressing table and lifted the hairbrush Win kept there for the subjects of his photographs to groom themselves with. With long, vicious strokes, she brushed the tangles out of her hair, pondering the quirks of fate.

  Win’s back was to her; she could see it, broad and powerful, in the mirror as she brushed. He’d finished with his trousers and was searching for his shirt. She saw it, fallen into a wrinkled coverlet to his camera, but she didn’t tell him so. Rather, she watched, brushed, and fumed.

  He was such an irritating man. And she was so devilishly attracted to him. Well, she thought with an inner snort of contempt for herself, obviously she was attracted to him. She’d just given him, free of charge and with no strings attached, a woman’s most precious treasure.

  Belle frowned into the mirror as that thought smote her. While she continued to brush and watch Win search for his shirt, she considered her last thought. What, she mused, was so dad-gummed precious about a maidenhead? Granted, it proclaimed a woman’s status as virgin, but proper people didn’t go around talking about such things. Who’d ever know, unless a girl was so unwise as to become pregnant.

  Her hand stopped wielding the brush and she gaped into the mirror, stunned. Could she be? Oh, my land. She’d better count up days fast. After a quick calculation in her head, Belle deduced that she probably couldn’t be pregnant. Thank God. Thank God. There was more to this virginity business than she’d heretofore guessed. However, that wasn’t the point of this cogitation.

  Why was virginity a quality so prized by the world’s bridegrooms? Most men didn’t give a hang about remaining pure for their wives. Why should women remain pure for their husbands? Belle thought she knew. A woman’s purity was prized because men didn’t want to think of women as people on their own. They wanted to consider them objects; as property; as prizes won or lost in mating rituals. And they wanted fresh goods. No leftovers for most men. No, sirree.

  She snorted aloud. Men. Thought they owned the world. She frowned at her reflection. The idiots did own the world, blast them. And if any of them knew what she’d done with Win Asher this evening, none of them would ever pay her the so-called compliment of asking her to become his slave. She meant wife.

  “Same thing,” she growled.

  Well, so what? Thanks to her partnership with Win, and as long as her looks lasted, she wouldn’t need to be the slave of any blasted man.

  “Bah,” she muttered as she twisted her long hair into a simple knot. Realizing she hadn’t considered her pins, she turned to scan the booth, holding her hair to the top of her head.

  At that moment, Win looked up from fastening his belt. He appeared somewhat bemused by her expression of ill nature. “What’s the matter, Belle?” he asked mildly.”

  “I need my hairpins.”

  “Um, there ought to be some in that drawer in the dressing table. I’ll look for yours, and you can use those for the time being.”

  She hadn’t anticipated his conciliatory tone. All at once, Belle felt like crying, which was absurd. Steeling her nerves and stiffening her spine, she said, “Thank you,” and turned to open the drawer.

  The only sounds in the room then were the scrape of wood on wood and the soft rattle of hairpins as Belle drew some of them out and dropped them onto the dressing table. As she stabbed pins into her knotted hair, she made the mistake of looking for Win in the mirror. She caught his eye and swallowed. He looked like a little lost boy watching his very most precious toy drift away on a riptide. What did this mean?

  He lifted his hands and extended his arms to her. “I’m sorry, Belle. I didn’t mean to start an argument.”

  It took Belle approximately two and a half seconds to drop her pins, her hair, and her fury. Then she turned around and flew into Win’s arms.

  Chapter Seventeen

  He’d have to marry her. Walking home from the Congress Hotel, where he’d left Belle at the door to her room—she wouldn’t let him kiss her because she was embarrassed to do so in public, although there wasn’t another soul around—Win pondered the probability of a marriage between himself and Belle Monroe.

  The notion of marriage hadn’t really occurred to him before he met Belle. But now, after what they’d done together . . . Well, he’d have to marry her, or he’d never be able to look himself in the eye again.

  Not that he could look himself in the eye now unless he used a mirror, but . . . “Aw, hell.”

  Win kicked a crumpled paper lying on the sidewalk and contemplated the nature of fate. Was there such a thing, or was life and everything in the universe governed by pure chance? Had fate sent him his annoying and marvelous southern Belle? The thought of marriage had always before made his blood run cold. The thought of letting Belle get away from him made it run even colder.

  It occurred to him that perhaps Belle didn’t want marriage. That notion cheered him momentarily until he realized how ridiculous it was. Belle? Refuse a proposal of marriage now? After they’d consummated the marriage act before the fact? Win grinned in spite of himself.

  His darling Belle was probably the most stuffy, proper, well-bred, civilized, genteel lady—and he used the word on purpose in this context—he’d ever met. Even the society debutantes he’d been forced to dance with during his adolescence and whom he only had to photograph these days were less ladylike and refined than his Belle.

  Until tonight. His heart floated around in his chest like a hot-air balloon and his sex stiffened when he thought about tonight. She hadn’t been a lady tonight, by damn. She’d been—she’d been—she’d been . . . Aw, hell, he couldn’t even find words for how magnificent their joining had been.

  He should, however, have anticipated her passionate underpinnings. After all, she’d not only tried to fend him off that first day in order to protect the Richmond children, but she’d beaned Kate Finney’s father to within an inch of his life in order to save Kate from strangulation. He grinned, remembering. If that wasn’t spunky, he didn’t know spunk.

  Ah, Belle. She was an unexpected treasure, his Belle. If he had to marry, and he did have to, because no matter what Belle thought of him or how many roguish airs he liked to claim for himself, he remained a gentleman because he couldn’t help it, he guessed Belle was the best choice. She was at least the best choice of the females he’d met until now.

  The idea of ever meeting another woman for whom he could feel the same combination of emotions and frustrations as he did for Belle entered his mind only to be rejected. It wasn’t possible. Belle was unique.

  Besides all that, he had no choice. He’d bedded her. Now he had to marry her. It was the gentleman’s code. It was probably the lady’s code, too, although Win doubted there was a woman alive who’d admit it.

  Oddly enough, the notion that he had no choice in the matter made him feel a good deal more cheerful. Took the strain out of having to make a decision, and all that. He was whistling by the time he got to his flat on 59th Street.

  # # #

  Belle’s own emotions were not sanguine as she let herself into her hotel room. She prayed that Gladys hadn’t waited up for her to return. Belle wasn’t sure she could conceal from her perceptive and good-hearted employer the tumble of emotions rioting through her.

  The new Belle, the adventuress who had led her to abandon caution and tumble into bed with Win, seemed to have hidden herself in a closet. The old Belle, the Belle who’d had propriety drummed into her from Day One, was having a serious attack of panic. What if Win refused to marry her now? What if he didn’t even ask her to marry hi
m?

  “The cad,” she whispered, her agitated heart twisting like a wrung-out rag in her chest. “The beast. The villain. The—the—” The most vile epithet in her vocabulary came to her rescue. “—the damned Yankee.”

  Marriage was de rigueur once a woman had succumbed to the lures of a male. Belle knew it. She’d known it before she could talk. In her childhood, she’d strained to hear the scandalized whispers of her elders, longing to know what was so ghastly that it couldn’t be spoken of aloud. Always, when such whispered conversations had taken place among her mother, aunts, and other female relatives and acquaintances, the topic of conversation had been some young lady’s ruin. Although, as Belle mulled over the matter now, she couldn’t recall ever perceiving any sign of ruin on the young ladies involved. And she’d inspected them closely, too. The signs of ruin had ever eluded her. They did now, too.

  She tossed her hat onto a chair, a breach of conduct she perpetrated on purpose because she was mad at the world, and muttered, “Ruined. Pshaw.”

  Who made up those rules, anyhow? Had God come to earth, shaken his finger at Belle’s Georgia kin, and said, “Thou shalt not consummate an act of love until Preacher Gideon Hawkins says you may”?

  Oh, very well, there was a commandment against committing adultery, but what she and Win had done tonight wasn’t adultery. It was fornication.

  Fiddlesticks. That was such an ugly word. Still, Belle couldn’t recall a specific commandment against fornication. Unless—

  Belle slammed a hand over her heart and stared, wild-eyed, at the door to her room. “Good God.”

  Win wasn’t married, was he? Had he ever mentioned his marital status or lack thereof? Had he led her astray, as so many married men had done to their unsuspecting prey? “My land.” Sheer horror made her collapse in a heap on her bed.

  But wait. He’d mentioned being a bachelor, hadn’t he? He’d said he’d been embarrassed to purchase that pretty wrapper because he was a single man.

  Relief propelled Belle up from the bed. She made her way to the bathroom attached to her hotel room, thanking her stars that the Richmonds were so wealthy that they could even afford built-in bathrooms in hotel rooms rented for their hired help.

  Guilt tapped her on the shoulder. The Richmonds. Oh, dear. She couldn’t just leave them high and dry, even though she was now going to be making scads of money and probably—almost certainly—married. She wasn’t that sort of person. She may have had to bend a principle or two in order to pose for Win in the first place, but she wasn’t so lost to decency that she’d quit on the Richmonds without giving notice.

  She shuddered to contemplate how many principles she’d downright shattered tonight when she and Win had made love. Remembered sensations rippled through her, and she hugged herself.

  What they’d done might have been wrong, but hadn’t felt wrong. It had felt perfect.

  As water filled the claw-footed bathtub in the bathroom, Belle disrobed, scanning her clothes for betraying wrinkles and stains. After an initial period of confusion, borne of Belle’s anxiety and Win’s befuddlement, Win had courteously handed her a damp cloth and then turned his back so that Belle could wash away the most betraying signs of her debauch before he’d walked her home. It had been embarrassing, but she was glad now that she’d taken the time, because her clothes remained unstained.

  As she sank into the water, which felt soothing to her body and soul, both, she decided not to make any firm decisions right this minute. She was too confused even to attempt a rational goal for the remainder of her life. Besides that, she was only nineteen years old; the notion of directing her future was rather absurd when contemplated in that light.

  She’d wait to give the Richmonds notice until she and Win had formalized their partnership and marriage plans, and she had a better idea of how much of an income she could expect. And when. For all she knew, it took years for royalty money to catch up with publication of photographs.

  “I’m too tired to think any longer,” she murmured as her eyes drifted shut and her head relaxed against the porcelain tub. She fell asleep a moment later, and it was only when the water got cold that she forced herself to finish her bath, get out of the tub, dry off, and fall into bed. She slept like the dead.

  # # #

  The dining room of the Congress Hotel gleamed with crystal and white linen, even in the glare of another sultry Chicago summer morning. Belle had donned a light-weight frock of cambric, had considered her corset, and had consigned it to the pit. She was already a fallen woman, whatever that meant. The same as ruined, she imagined. That being the case, what further good could a corset do her?

  Fearing she was late, she scanned the dining room in some agitation. A flood of relief filled her when she saw Gladys, Amalie, and Garrett just being seated by a dignified waiter. She hurried over to them, smiling for all she was worth. She didn’t want to smile. She wanted to go back to sleep. However had she turned into such a liar in such a short period of time?

  She didn’t know how it had happened so fast, but she was glad it had as the three Richmonds smiled happily at her approach. “Good morning!” she said brightly.

  “Good morning, Belle.” Gladys gave her a searching glance, making Belle want to squirm. She didn’t. Rather, she sat, still smiling, picked up her napkin, and laid it in her lap. Directing the question at no one in particular, she asked, “What do we have on the agenda today?” She longed to see Win, primarily because she was feeling dreadfully insecure this morning. She’d never say so.

  “Mama said we can go on the Ferris wheel again today, Miss Monroe!”

  Stifling a yawn, Belle kept smiling at the little girl. “That’s wonderful, darling.” She hadn’t looked at a clock last night, but she must have gotten to bed late because she felt as though somebody had thrown sand in her eyes.

  “George and I will be visiting the Agricultural Exhibit today, Belle. I fear we’ll have to leave the children in your care for most of the day.”

  “Yeah,” said Garrett, scowling at his napkin. “Who wants to see a bunch of vegetables?”

  “Garrett, really.” The way Gladys looked from her sulky boy to Belle gave Belle the impression that Belle expected her to object.

  Oh, dear, had she been neglecting her duties of late? Her brain scrambled to remember. She didn’t think so, but . . . “That’s perfectly fine, Gladys. I’m sure the three of us will have a grand time.” She smiled at Amalie, who smiled back, and at Garrett, who still looked sulky. She sighed before she could stop herself.

  “Are you sure, dear? You’re not too tired? I, ah, stayed up, but finally went to bed before you returned to the hotel last night.”

  Ah-ha. Gladys was worried about her virtue. As well she might be, Belle thought glumly. She smiled more brightly yet. “Mr. Asher brought me home after we’d concluded our business.” She’d never say what kind of business. “I suppose it was rather late.” She was surprised when Gladys laid a hand over hers.

  “Is everything all right, Belle? I mean between you and Mr. Asher? I, ah, don’t mean to pry, but . . .”

  Instinctively, Belle turned her hand over and squeezed Gladys’s. Gladys was such a genuinely sweet person. And Belle knew she only had her welfare at heart. Therefore, there was no earthly excuse for her to have felt a flash of annoyance at Gladys’s question. “You’re too good to me, Gladys. Everything is fine.” Deciding it would soothe Gladys’s fears a trifle if she were to admit to a part of last night’s adventures, Belle went on to say, “Mr. Asher has offered me a partnership in his business, as a matter of fact.”

  Belle wasn’t surprised when Gladys gazed at her blankly. “A, um, partnership? Um . . .”

  “A fifty-fifty partnership,” Belle went on to explain. “Evidently, he believes he can market photographs of me and make us both a good deal of money.”

  “I see.” Gladys still appeared puzzled. Belle wasn’t surprised. “Um, does this mean you’ll be leaving us?” the older woman asked at last.

&nbs
p; “No!”

  This spontaneous eruption came from Amalie, and Belle’s guilt skyrocketed. She squeezed Gladys’s hand again and reached for Amalie’s. It was sticky with jam, but Belle didn’t mind. “Good heavens, no. Er, not immediately, I mean. It all depends on whether or not Mr. Asher’s predictions for financial success come to pass.”

  “I don’t want you to go!” Amalie wailed.

  Oh, land. Belle wasn’t up to this today. She needed sleep, not tantrums from Amalie. “I won’t go, Amalie,” she cooed, squashing an urge to slap the child’s bustle-padded bottom.

  “My goodness,” said Gladys. She no longer appeared bemused. In fact, she smiled at Belle. “I do hope it works out for you, dear. You deserve so much more than to have to work as a nanny.”

  Belle told herself that she ought to have become accustomed to Gladys’s kindly disposition by this time, but the dear woman’s words made tears pool in her eyes. She felt stupid and mean and deceitful, although she probably had no reason for the latter. She’d told the most important part of the truth as it might affect the Richmonds. Her personal life was her own affair. So to speak. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  Gladys started snuffling in reaction to Belle’s heightened emotions. Dabbing at her eyes with her napkin, she said, “Nonsense, Belle. You’re a lovely young lady. And I feel as if you’ve become part of the family.”

  “Mr, too! What’s wrong with being a nanny?” Amalie demanded. “We love you, Miss Monroe!” Tears dripped down her cheeks, too.

  “Hunh,” said Garrett.

  Belle’s heart felt as if it were being rent in two. “I love being with you two, Amalie,” she said thickly. “But I have an unusual opportunity with Mr. Asher.”

  “Oh!” wailed Gladys.

  Belle’s attention swerved to her. She’d never intended to cause this degree of upset in her employer. “What’s the matter, Gladys?” Something occurred to her, and she gripped the table. Good God, she didn’t know something awful about Win that Belle didn’t, did she?