Hooked (3 page)

Tweedy unsympathetically laughed, thinking Gage would do likewise.

But when Ben looked at the reporter, his expression wasn't so bored anymore. In fact, he was thoughtfully puffing on his cigar while staring intently at Vernon Wilberforce.

1

M
eg Brooks was going to get married if it was the last thing she did.

Marriage hadn't been her cause until recently. What she'd really wanted to do was go into the hotel business. After all, her family owned the Brooks House Hotel and she knew more about it than anything else. She'd assumed,
expected,
to be able to contribute to the hotel's operation once she graduated from finishing school.

But when she'd approached her father, he said she was too young and inexperienced to take such a responsibility on. She wasn't asking to run the hotel by herself. Merely to improve it. She tried to explain to Father that by giving her a chance, she would gain the experience. And when she pressed on and spoke her suggestions, he thought her ideas on lobby renovation were silly.

Silly.

The word still hurt.

George Brooks's decision had been final. Too stubborn
to accept defeat, Meg had written letters of qualification to hotels in the area. The responses were all the same: No thank you. So Meg had to accept that her dream of eventually running the family hotel would never come to pass, and she had to pin her hopes on something else.

That something else was a man.

On her mother's insistence, Meg had enrolled in Mrs. Wolcott's Finishing School, formerly Edwina Huntington's Finishing School. Miss Edwina's lessons on propriety and proper feminine protocol had proved to be so well-founded, Miss Edwina herself had landed a husband last year.

A fact that Meg's mother never missed an opportunity to point out.

For most of her life, Meg had fought against being like Iris Brooks. Refined and stuffy and no fun at all. Meg had been a terror as a little girl, doing whatever she pleased; usually boy things because she tagged along with her brother, Wayne, and his gang of mischief makers. She'd been fearless and fancy free.

It was only after sitting through several of Mrs. Wolcott's classes, that Meg realized in order to gain a potential husband's attention, a woman must act like a suitable wife. The three Cs: cultured, civilized, charming.

Three things that eluded Meg—she had to pursue them.

This past fall and winter, Meg had attended the finishing school but she hadn't put her heart in it. She hadn't wanted to wear her hair in a high twist She hadn't wanted to have to remember her gloves. She didn't want to know about proper teatime conversations. To learn what to say and when to say it.

Meg had just continued to be, well . . . Meg.

Now that she had distanced herself from the rebellion against her mother's idea, she saw that Edwina Wolcott was blissfully happy. As was Crescencia Defresne, a former student who had married last December. With marriage, and the love of a man, perhaps Meg could find her own contentment.

So she'd recently reformed and turned herself into a lady. What had worked for Miss Edwina and Crescencia could work for her. Meg was now Margaret, the Sophisticate. Polished and poised. She could succeed at this. After all, she'd gotten the wardrobe down pat. Well, almost . . .

“Margaret, why do you insist on displaying your petticoat?” This came from Ruth Elward, Meg's longtime friend. Her white-blond hair was artfully braided in a twist beneath her hat. Dark brown eyes grew inquisitive as she awaited Meg's reply.

“Yes, why?” The second query was uttered by Hildegarde Plunkett. A pretty girl with a round face and slightly ungainly figure.

To an observer, the three young women in spring-colored dresses, with gloves and open parasols, strolling along Birch Avenue looked the epitome of fashion and refinement. Except for the small detail that Meg Brooks didn't keep in tune with the others' footsteps. With a springy bounce to her step, she kept getting ahead of them.

Meg momentarily gazed at her feet as she walked. The insteps of her silk-vested top shoes barely showed because indeed lace flounce fell a half inch below her skirt hem.

Raising her eyes, Meg replied, “It's a fashion rage. I read about it in
Harper's Bazaar.
The article said a
flirt of underskirt is considered vogue and is supposed to do wonders in catching the attention of the opposite sex.”

Hildegarde twirled her parasol. “My mother would say, if it takes a peek of petticoat to catch a man these days, then you're trying to catch the wrong type of man.” Then she wistfully paused. “I read the same article. I wanted to take my petticoat hems down too, but my mother wouldn't let me.”

“Margaret, would you please slow down,” Ruth chided.

“Yes,” Hildegarde seconded, walking even slower, “you're making us look like we're in a hurry.”

Meg
was
in a hurry. Her two friends kept a pace as slow as a snail's. Today Meg had something very important to do, just as she had the past few days. Ruth and Hildegarde knew full well why she was excited to be on her way, but they didn't see her shortterm involvement with the hotel as anything special.

“What's all this about not having the attention of a man?” Ruth asked. “Have you forgotten about Harold Adams?”

Meg
wanted
to forget about Harold Adams. He'd taken a sweetheart's interest in her only recently—as soon as she'd “conformed” and given up her old ways, he'd come knocking on her door.

With a sigh, Meg clarified, “Harold Adams isn't the type of man a woman envisions herself married to.”

Ruth asked, “What's wrong with him?”

Meg lowered her voice, “Don't you think his Adam's apple sticks out too far?”

“I hadn't noticed,” Hildegarde offered.

“Oh, you're just trying to be nice,” Meg insisted, picking up her pace once more. With her swifter
stride, she nearly tripped on the low hem of her petticoat; she even faltered a little but quickly caught her step. “You can't help noticing the way it moves up and down when he talks. It hits you right in the eyes. I try not to stare, but sometimes I can't help it.”

Meg exhaled her frustration. “And to make matters worse, he had to go and have the last name Adams just to remind everyone. I know the girls in class call him Harold Adam's Apple.”

Reluctant nods were her answer.

There. She knew it.

Thankfully they'd reached the hotel and Meg didn't have to talk about Harold Adams anymore. But it wasn't that thought that put a lightness in her walk. For the next month or so, while her parents were away in Niagara Falls on an anniversary tour, Meg was in charge of the hotel lobby.

In reality, her grandmother had been left to oversee the operation of the Brooks House Hotel; but dear Grandma Nettie trusted Meg to change whatever she felt needed improving. For that, Meg was extremely grateful. She wished Grandma Nettie lived with them all the time, not just when her parents were away. Even though, Grandma was a bit . . . militant.

Meg and her friends said their good-byes and parted company. As she took the hotel steps, Meg forgot to hold her skirts up and she felt a tug on the waistband of her petticoat. Discreetly hiking the elastic up through the soft fabric of her shirtwaist, she entered the lobby and confidently strode to the registry counter where her grandmother stood.

Meg's grand spirits momentarily faltered when she saw what Grandma Nettie was doing.

Spry for her age of seventy-two, she rearranged the
two-foot length of bicycle chain with self-locking shackles and bronze metal lock, in a long spill across the front of the counter—smack next to the guest book.

After a soft bite on her lower lip, Meg hesitantly asked, “Grandma, do you have to set that out?”

Grandma Nettie's fingers fiddled with the chain until its links were perfectly straight. Meg watched. Even though her grandmother had told her she was going to put the bicycle chain on exhibit, Meg had wished she hadn't.

Of course the old Meg was intrigued, but the new, improved Margaret was supposed to be appalled. Especially because Grandma had been telling every last guest exactly what it was for.

“Don't you go getting delicate on me, Margaret, like your mother.”

“I'm not,” Meg assured, then suddenly realized that once indoors, she should have closed her parasol and removed her gloves. Such a nuisance to remember every little detail.

With a tug, she collapsed the circular canopy and deposited the parasol into the umbrella stand next to the front door. Then she pulled her gloves off and tossed them carelessly behind the registry.

“Don't get me wrong,” Grandma went on. “I love your mother as if she were my own daughter, but she can be a tad . . .
too
delicate.”

“A tad?” Meg said with exasperation. “She's a good deal more than that. Mother calls a chicken leg the limb. And the breast a bosom because she won't say breast at the dinner table, or anyplace else for that matter. She'll say to Father, ‘Papa, slice me the bosom.' Honestly.”

“Honestly, is right.” Wizened smoky blue eyes lifted to view Meg over the narrow lenses of Grandma's spectacles. “And in answer to your question, I most surely do. This chain represents the militant movement that I intend to personally bring to President McKinley's attention. That is, as soon as your parents get back from Niagara Falls.”

Meg asked, “But do you have to chain yourself to the White House in order to make him notice you? Couldn't you simply write him a letter?”

“This is the fighting age, Margaret. Women have to get themselves arrested to attract attention to the cause. A letter won't get me thrown in the hoosegow. My fellow sisters and I plan to convene on the steps May the eighth at noon. We have it on good authority that's the hour the president takes his lunch on the State Floor in the northwest dining room.”

As Meg listened, she asked herself what right-minded gentleman would want to marry into such a family?

A proper lady would never consider doing such a thing as getting arrested for making a public fuss. Although there was an appealingly brazen and defiant ring to causing such trouble.

No!
Meg determinedly squelched the flash of excitement over the prospect of being put in jail.

Grandma Nettie forged on. “Our intentions are to ruin his meal by locking ourselves on the ornamental iron fence along the north facade. Mrs. Gundy is even going to swallow her key. I'm hiding mine down the front of my corset. Let it be said, that the man who dares try and retrieve it will be sorry he ever laid a hand on my person. I know how you incapacitate a
man with physical force. Have I told you how, Margaret?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Don't be afraid to do it if the need arises.”

“I won't.”

Grandma Nettie's limber arm rose into a position much like the Statue of Liberty's. “We shall fight for equality and the right for all women to have the vote.”

“But I don't want to vote,” Meg replied.

“Margaret, of course you want to vote.”

“No I don't.”

“Why with your intelligence, you could be anything you wanted to be.” With robust enthusiasm, she declared, “I think you'd make a fine first woman president.”

“I'd rather be a hotel proprietress. Or, at the very least, irresistible to men.”

At this rate, she'd settle for agreeable to one man—any man, as long as he was tall, dark, and handsome.
Oh, all right,
she recanted. As long as he didn't have an Adam's apple that stuck out too far or sweaty hands, and didn't wear too much pomade in his hair.

A voice called out, “Good afternoon. Welcome to the Brooks House Hotel,” as the porter, Delbert Long, opened the double front doors and escorted a guest inside.

“We'll continue our talk about this another time, Margaret.” Grandma left the desk to greet the new arrival.