Love's Awakening (The Ballantyne Legacy Book #2): A Novel (22 page)

 22 

On matters of fashion, swim with the current, on matters of principle, stand like a rock.

T
HOMAS
J
EFFERSON

As thunder rumbled like whiskey wagons overhead, Jack ducked into the glass-fronted shop after studying the bold sign emblazoned with gilded scissors and a spool of blue thread.

W
ILLIAM
D
AVENPORT
, T
AILOR
.

The spacious room was empty, and he nearly sighed with relief. He couldn’t spare a day in town with the harvest under way, yet here he was, sweating and harried, his temper as sharp as the scissors on a near table. Davenport emerged from a back room, waddling more than walking, his portly frame encased in black. His eyes flared with surprise when Jack shut the door and walked toward him. Drawing up short behind a worn wooden cutting table, he gave a wary greeting. “Mr. Turlock, sir.”

“No need for formalities. Just call me Jack.”

“Well . . . Jack. What brings you to High Street?”

“I’m in need of a suit of clothes, and I hear you work quickly.”

The tailor cleared his throat, looking only slightly less nervous. “How quickly?”

“A fortnight.”

“Is this to be a formal occasion?”

“Regrettably.” Jack flinched as the man circled him appraisingly, removed the tape dangling about his thick neck, and pulled it tight about Jack’s waist. His balding pate shone in the dim light as he bent to measure a leg next, leaving Jack free to look about the tidy room.

Clothing hung from wall pegs in various stages of construction or repair—pants, shirts, greatcoats, and more. Beneath shelves stuffed with fabric stood an enormous sewing chest with manifold drawers. His gaze stopped circling, fastening on an elongated looking glass. The large mirror reflected a somewhat shocking image back to him. Tall. Slim. Straight. Dark as an Indian and maybe mistaken for one, but for his hair.

The tailor straightened. “I have the finest broadcloth in bottle-green or midnight-blue, and cut-steel buttons for suits. Do you prefer breeches or trousers?”

“Trousers.”

“Then you shall have a fine cutaway coat.”

Jack had no clue as to the details. He simply nodded glumly. If this is what it took to make a gentleman, he’d gladly go west and don buckskins.

“And the color?” The tailor’s clipped British accent was unrelenting.

“Color? Um . . . midnight-blue, I think you called it.”

The bald head bobbed in satisfaction as the tailor applied the tape to Jack’s shoulders. Jack bristled at the familiarity.
How in blazes did Davenport remember all the figures? “Shouldn’t you be writing this down?”

There was a derisive snort. “Mr. Tur—Jack, when you’ve kept shop as long as I have, there’s no need for such a crutch. Besides, your measurements are uncommon enough to be memorable. Now if you’ll kindly turn round.”

Jack did as he bid, enduring more taping. All for Chloe’s benefit. He’d read the misery in her eyes when she’d found the Ballantynes’ invitation crumpled in the study’s cold hearth, and it moved him more than any tirade ever could. He kept forgetting, despite her fierce demeanor, that she was still half girl. On more than one occasion of late, he’d found her upstairs playing with their mother’s old dolls, reminding him he needed to tread more carefully.

“All right, we’ll go,” he’d finally told her, his every word forced as he watched her press the wrinkles from the invitation with an agitated hand.

She looked up, lashes glistening with tears, reminding him of when she’d barely come up to his knee, all rolls and dimples, and he hadn’t been able to say no to her. “Promise?”

“Aye, but not a word to Ellie, understand? This is a . . . surprise.” A farce was more like it. He’d ignored the
répondez s’il vous plaît
at the invitation’s bottom, as he wanted to be able to back out at the last moment if his misgivings gained the upper hand. He feared they would.

“We’ll have to learn to dance, Jack. Otherwise we’ll both be outcasts.”

He shook his head. “No dancing. Period.”

Flashing him a determined glare, she disappeared upstairs and returned with a thin, dog-eared book. “It’s Playford’s
The English Dancing Master
. I found it in Ma’s old desk.”

“So?”

“Don’t you see? We’ll be able to memorize the steps to a
few country dances, at least. But,” she said pointedly, “we’ll have to have a fiddler like Ellie does for the dancing lessons you’ve denied me.”

“
Touché
,” he said, seizing on one of the few French words he knew.

Now, having agreed to it, he felt disbelief take hold. He’d hired not only a fiddler but a dancing master, both due this very afternoon. Guilt had snagged him, he guessed. He’d yet to tell Chloe he was selling River Hill and returning her to Broad Oak. Given that, he owed her a grand finish. The Ballantyne ball should suffice.

Davenport’s fumbling returned him to the present. “Have you never been to a tailor, Mr. Tur—Jack?”

“Never.”
And I’ll not make the same mistake twice.

As he’d grown up, his clothes had been made by Broad Oak slaves or ordered from Philadelphia by his mother for special occasions, none of them memorable. She’d shunned Pittsburgh’s shops, calling them countrified. And he, hating civility and fuss, had simply worn the clothes left in his grandfather’s wardrobe since his passing.

At last Davenport ambled over to a near shelf, where he selected a length of rich blue fabric. “Is the color and nap to your satisfaction?”

Reaching out a callused hand, Jack found the broadcloth soft as felt. “Aye, but if you dare give me the look of a dandy . . .”

“Say no more. I know how a man of your station and reputation should look. The suit shall be done a week from Wednesday.”

As the fiddle music ended, Jack uttered an oath and collapsed in the nearest chair. Chloe, far less perplexed, simply succumbed to a fit of giggles atop the ballroom floor.

“Dancing be hanged! I’d rather swing a scythe any day.” Wiping his brow with a rolled-back sleeve, he glanced out an open window toward fields he couldn’t see. His astonished farm manager had come to the door half an hour before, interrupting a rousing reel to report finding rust among the winter wheat.

Jack dismissed him with a shrug and a promise to ride out and investigate before dusk . . . if the lesson ever ended. Baffled by a great many intricate steps and trilling notes, he ached to be out-of-doors amidst windrows of grain, fatigued in the old familiar way, not laid low by silly maneuvers in a dusty ballroom.

Thunder growled, but it was a distant rumble, a threat he hoped would soon dissipate. Hay-making waited on the morrow, and dry weather was needed—as was he.

“Blast, Jack!” Chloe was on her feet, arms crossed. “You tripped me midstep on that last country dance and almost sent me sailing out a window!”

He exhaled, tugging at his banded collar in a bid for air.

“You’d best not do the same with Miss Ellie the night of the ball.”

Ignoring her, he studied the finely paneled walls and wondered if New Hope’s ballroom resembled River Hill’s. The dog ears of the three French doors facing the river were trimmed with mahogany rosettes, the elegant plasterwork ceiling a rich ivory bearing the O’Hara crest. He was Irish to the bone on both sides, though the Turlocks were of less impressive pedigree than the landed O’Haras.

This was the very room where Ellie’s father had shifted his allegiance from Isabel O’Hara to Eden Lee so many years before. Jack had never understood it till he’d succumbed to their daughter in the shadows of the blue room, frantic and half sick with alarm at what had befallen her along the back road. If Eden Lee had half the charm of the lovely Ellie . . .

“Jack, are you listening?”

He lowered his gaze to take Chloe in, thirsty for some switchel, and pushed up from his chair. “Nay.”

Her flushed face turned entreating. “You simply need to memorize the steps. Remember what Master Playford said—very nippy, keep the turns tight, always be aware of other dancers. And if you go wrong, recover!”

He left the room grumbling.

The following day, Jack could see Chloe and Ben at the edge of the half-mown field. Concern crowded in, but he didn’t want to break the rhythm of the eight-man team he was aligned with, so he kept on moving. Chloe was supposed to be at her lessons, reading the books Ellie had left her, though he knew the hum of the harvest was as tempting to her as it was him.

Rain was in the air, its heaviness mingling with his own sweat, turning the day sultry, his shirt damp. Low-hanging charcoal clouds pressed in, threatening to burst. Studying the sky, he picked up his pace. Hay making was akin to dancing, he decided, requiring grace and careful execution, staying in careful step with one’s fellow mowers, every swipe of the blade laying the grass low in neat windrows.

If only he could perform as flawlessly in New Hope’s ballroom.

They’d been at work since first light, and it was now the nooning. Half a dozen tenants’ wives stood waiting at the fringes of the field, bearing baskets of food and small kegs of switchel spiked with cider. On harvest days the midday meal of meat, molasses bread, cheese, and watermelon was a feast, indulged for a full hour before the men began cradling again.

When the scythes finally slowed to a stop, Chloe made a
beeline toward Jack, Ben in tow. Unfolding a square of linen, she revealed a loaf reddened and studded with raisins. “Mrs. Malarkey sent you some watermelon cake.”

A staple of the harvest meal. Jack wagered every basket contained it.

He lowered himself onto the shaded grass of a solitary oak, slightly apart from his tenants, eyeing Ben as he tugged the leather strap of the switchel keg off his shoulder.

“Want some?” Jack asked, gesturing to the cake.

“I’ll give you a shilling if you can swallow it,” Chloe dared Ben, grimacing at the crusty piece.

Jack chuckled and reached into the basket she’d brought. Mrs. Malarkey hadn’t ruined the meat and cheese, at least, though the hearty bread she’d packed looked as dry and leathery as the cake.

Chloe looked heavenward as a slice of lightning rent the landscape. “You’d best be building some haystacks right quick. With a good many thatched roofs.”