Pamela Morsi (31 page)

“I do, however, find her methods for acceptance rather high-handed,” she said. “But I trust that she will do the right thing when it comes down to it.”

He nodded.

“She will,” he agreed. “She is not a bad person, but she’s made some bad mistakes.”

Rome was studying her. The intensity of his gaze was positively nerve-racking.

“As you are … her confidant,” Gussie told him, “perhaps you could suggest to her that there is a faster and more foolproof method of setting one’s reputation to rights.”

Deliberately she attempted to sound worldly-wise and knowledgeable.

“Please tell her that it is my highly considered advice that she marry with all due haste. A respected gentleman of the community would be a perfect choice. A business owner or perhaps a partner in a business. Someone … someone like … like yourself, Mr. Akers.”

Rome’s brow furrowed. His whole body seemed to tighten as he gazed at her, puzzled.

“Gussie, I …”

“It has been a busy day,” she said, fanning herself and feigning a light laugh. “I know you will certainly be surprised. I admit that I was myself. But apparently our little ploy yesterday worked perfectly. Amos Dewey walked right into my parlor this morning and proposed marriage, just as I had hoped he would.”

She attempted a cheery little laugh. It fell flat, but she went on without it.

“Please don’t say anything to anyone, of course. Certainly not to Mr. Dewey, for I haven’t given him my answer yet. A day or two on pins and needles will do the fellow a world of good after what he has put me through.”

Gussie looked into Rome’s eyes and saw raw pain. She didn’t know if it was his alone or her own reflected. She ignored it and kept talking.

“It seems at last as if all my dreams have come true. I can be married by the Fourth of July and you, Rome Akers, will have your partnership in my business just as I promised.”

He was stunned into silence for several long moments and then the painful truth burst from him.

“The partnership no longer matters to me,” he said.

“For heaven’s sake, don’t say such a foolish thing,” she scolded him. “You’ve worked very hard for this and you deserve it. Besides, it will go a long way to getting you out of your current predicament. With a partnership in Mudd Manufactured Ice, you can walk right back into the Monday Merchants meeting and not a soul can question your right to be there. Once you and Mrs. Richardson are wed, they’ll be treating you with the same cautious deference with which they will treat her. If you are both careful, if you live right, in a few short years that deference will turn into respect. You both will rise to prominent positions in the community and all of this current little whirlwind will be yesterday’s gossip. Only dredged up for recall on the most boring of cold winter nights.”

“I don’t love Pansy Richardson,” Rome stated with absolutely certainty.

Gussie fanned herself and lowered her eyes. The shards of her broken heart cut her to the quick.

“Not everyone is lucky enough to marry for love,”
she told him quietly. “A companion suited in both station and temperament might actually be better. Love is not a meaningful measure for matrimony. It can be very misleading and ofttimes powerful enough to obscure good judgment, to cause one to mistake desire for honor.”

They looked at each other as if across a chasm a thousand feet wide. It was like business, Gussie reminded herself. Never show fear when your note comes due. Never let them know when you’re broke. Whatever you’re selling, pretend you’re loath to even part with it.

“Rome Akers,” she said. “Look at you! You’ve got a new partnership in a growing company and soon a lovely wife who is wealthy, influential and lives in the finest house in town. Perhaps you should stop wearing that long face, sir. This is undoubtedly the luckiest day of your life.”

I
N THE WEEKS PROCEEDING THE
F
OUNDER’S
D
AY
Fourth of July Picnic, there was more gossip in Cottonwood than the entire half year prior. There was, of course, the tremendous hue and cry over what had come to be called the Sewer Swindle. The very afternoon that the news came out, Madeline Barclay had boarded a southbound train for Austin. She confronted the judge in his room at the Grand Hotel and, according to rumor, shot him dead, straight through the heart, with a smoking, pearl-handled pistol.

Mr. Potts at the Cottonwood
Beacon
, keen to get the facts right, reported that Mrs. Barclay had actually smashed her former husband over the head with a convenient whiskey bottle and that the man had required twelve stitches. But that story didn’t make the rounds in Cottonwood nearly as efficiently as the original tale.

This exciting piece of news was actually good, Rome thought. Madeline Barclay might have done her best to ruin Pansy’s life once, but this time her quick temper and drive for revenge had made her ex-husband
the focus of attention. Giving people more to talk about than the wicked widow.

But Mrs. Richardson’s turn of leaf had plenty of attention from local townsfolk as well. And counter to everything Rome knew about her, she used that notoriety to her advantage. She was, in essence, blackmailing the town. But instead of her usual daring behavior, she showed herself sober, thoughtful and penitent. She didn’t force herself into anyone’s circle and she kept her own company almost exclusively.

She attended church for the first time in years. Rome wasn’t there and didn’t see her, but the story he’d heard at the barbershop was that she was dressed plainer than a Mennonite. Some people didn’t even recognize her.

Rome began to wonder if he would recognize her himself. She refused to see him except in broad daylight, standing in her garden in plain view of the Pearsall house. She even waited outside while he carried ice into her kitchen.

Her attitude was exactly opposite of his own. Although he was not guiltless, he felt betrayed by his friends. His liaison with Pansy was immoral and unsanctioned, he could not deny that. But both were unmarried. There were no spouses or children injured and they had been judiciously discreet. That didn’t make it right, of course. It should, however, have made it forgivable.

What galled Rome more was the demise of the rumor that he was somehow involved in the swindle. Gussie Mudd had made him a partner in her business. That was interpreted as indisputable evidence that he was not involved in any nefarious business practices. Huntley Boston apologized to him personally and politely asked him to allow the Monday Merchants to reinstate his membership.

“I was completely out of line,” Huntley said to him, backed by Joe Simpson and Perry Wilhelm. “I jumped to conclusions that were totally erroneous. My behavior was unforgivable, but I am asking you to forgive me.”

Rome didn’t want to forgive him. He didn’t even want forgiveness for himself. His whole world had turned upside down and maybe he liked it that way better.

It was all very much as Gussie had predicted. But then, Gussie always did understand the secrets of commercial success. It was the secrets of the heart for which she had little understanding.

The formal announcement of her engagement to Amos Dewey was met with shock, surprise and ultimately congratulation. They were clearly, in the opinion of the people of Cottonwood, the perfect couple. They were both a little older, a little wiser than most betrothed. They both were financially secure and ran successful businesses. They were prominent in church and community, interested in civic affairs and local politics. And, except for a small lapse early that summer, they had been keeping company for some time.

If the two seemed a little less giddy and ecstatic than typical young lovers, that could be accounted for by their sensible natures and temperaments and maturity.

Seeing them together was painful for Rome. Jealousy certainly played a part, but it was more than that. He loved Gussie. He loved her and he believed that he understood her. He wanted her to be happy. And though he liked and respected Amos Dewey, he no longer believed that the man was capable of making her happy.

He was convinced that only he, Rome Akers, was the one to do that. That short, sweet time when he and Gussie had been out of their senses and into their
dreams had convinced Rome that the two of them were meant for each other.

He wanted to talk to her, to plead with her. She acted as if that special night had never happened. She talked as if marriage to Amos Dewey were the choice she had wanted to make. Rome was not convinced.

She was certain that he’d had nothing to do with the swindle, but she was hurt by his relationship with Pansy Richardson. He wanted to explain himself. But perhaps there was no way. The town was going to forgive his indiscretion because it was forced to. Miss Gussie had no reason to forgive him. And obviously, she could not.

She was going to marry Amos Dewey as she’d planned. And cast their perfect night of love, the most sublime moment of Rome’s life, into the rubbish heap as if it were of no lasting value, a trivial folly, best forgotten.

“She will never find happiness married to Amos Dewey,” Rome stated with certainty.

Pansy Richardson agreed with him.

“They will stay faithful and true to each other and have a long life,” she said. “And it will seem even longer than it is. He will never bring out her humor. She won’t ever inspire his imagination.”

Rome didn’t know much about humor or imagination. But he had learned a lot lately about love. And those two would never find it together.

“Well, can’t we do something to stop it?” he asked.

Pansy looked at him as if he had lost his mind.

“I am through plotting and scheming,” she told him. “And the way things have turned out for you, I would think you have had enough of it as well.”

“I love her, Pansy,” he admitted.

She nodded sorrowfully. “I was afraid that you did,” she said.

“I can’t let her marry him.”

“I don’t know how you can stop her.”

Rome didn’t know either.

“She told me that I should marry you,” he said.

Pansy raised a questioning eyebrow and laughed lightly. “She does understand the game. She’s a smart woman. But she lacks my experience.”

“What do you mean?”

“She’s right that having us wed would suit folks here in town. It would be nice and neat and acceptable,” Pansy explained. “Making an illicit alliance into one blessed by God and community would be a smart move if getting back in everyone’s good graces could actually make someone happy.”

“But it can’t?” he asked, already knowing the answer.

Pansy shook her head.

“Gussie Mudd has never been married,” she pointed out. “She hasn’t known what it is like to live with a man you love. If she did, she’d never consider anything else.”

Pansy’s mood had turned melancholy; purposely she forced a smile to her face.

“I was loved once,” she said. “I want that again. But I’ll live alone the rest of my life before tying myself into a marriage without it.”

That was exactly what Gussie was doing and Rome felt powerless to stop it.

She never saw him alone or gave him an opportunity for a private word. Since the announcement of their upcoming nuptials, Amos Dewey was close by her side on every occasion.

The barber began closing up his shop early in order to sit on Miss Gussie’s porch while Rome made his report. Ostensibly this was done so that Amos could learn the business.

“I’m turning the company over to Mr. Dewey as soon as we are wed,” she announced one afternoon.

Rome was dumbfounded. He glanced over at Amos. The declaration was no surprise to him and apparently gave him no cause for concern. Rome would run the company and Amos would oversee it.

“Miss Gussie assures me that I can count on your expertise, and I know that I can count on your cooperation,” he said.

Rome couldn’t believe it. Mudd Manufactured Ice without Gussie Mudd? It was inconceivable.

“What will you do, Miss Gussie?” Rome asked her.

She seemed startled by the question and did not immediately have an answer.

“She’ll be my wife,” Amos replied, as if that were obvious. “I can provide for her even without her business.”

Rome looked at Gussie again. Still she said nothing.

“This should be good news for you,” Amos continued. “Miss Gussie has told me how you’ve been saving money to buy into the business. I would be perfectly willing to allow you to gradually buy me out completely.”

Rome was stunned into silence. It should have been good news. His own business, wholly his at long last. And a very lucrative and exciting business as well. He should have been shouting for joy. But he found that he could not muster any enthusiasm for his good fortune at all. What possible pleasure could a profitable business bring to an empty life?

“Thank you,” he managed to get out.

He felt no sense of elation, only loss.

289 * *

It was always good when a plan worked out like you thought it would, even if it took some unexpected twists and turns along the way. That’s what Gussie told herself as she went over the list of details for her wedding to Amos Dewey. It was to be the perfect wedding. The wedding she had always planned.

Miss Ima had been commissioned to construct a dress that could show Miss Gussie’s figure to its finest advantage, without corseting her into collapse. She was busily stitching up a confection of frothy lace and white silk that would be the dream of every young girl in town.

With the help of Constance and Madge, every invitation had been handwritten and hand-delivered. Phrases like
request the honor of your presence
and
to be united in the bonds of holy matrimony
flowed with flourishes from their ladies’ fine pen points with the ease of grocery lists.

Gussie was carefully watering her garden in the early-morning hours. And shading it in the worst of the afternoon sun. She wanted to ensure an abundance of beautiful flowers decorating the church as well as a stunning bouquet to carry. There would be no puny hothouse blooms arriving by train for her, she insisted.