Unrivaled (28 page)

The idea of marrying Mr. Arthur was becoming untenable. Especially when I dreamed of Charlie’s kisses at night. During the daylight hours, I fantasized of running away from the city. At night . . . at night I imagined a world where Charlie Clarke wasn’t my enemy. Where he was just some stranger with entrancing dimples and dreamy eyes who could take my breath away.

What had I done!

Nothing. That’s what I told myself. I’d done nothing at all. Charlie had kissed me first. I could never have kissed him back if he hadn’t started it. The whole thing was his fault. And if I ever saw him again, I was going to avoid him. I just . . . wouldn’t talk to him anymore. And I definitely wouldn’t think of kissing him.

It’s not as if I’d ever be kissing him again in any case.

Even if I wanted to.

Which
I didn’t. I couldn’t. I was engaged to Mr. Arthur, for goodness’ sake! What kind of woman engaged herself to one
man and then went around all moony-eyed dreaming about another?

Someone very wicked. And mean and bossy and selfish.

It wouldn’t be so bad if I could picture Mr. Arthur reaching for my hand, gazing into my eyes, seeking me out the way my uncle always sought my aunt. Always waiting for her, always watching for her. Always wanting her. If I could imagine my marriage would be like that . . . I sighed and looked out the other side of the carriage as I admitted to myself that even that might not be enough. Mr. Arthur’s regard for me would mean nothing at all if I didn’t return it. If I didn’t also reach for him. Long for him. If I didn’t want him the way my aunt always seemed to want my uncle.

They were a pair. Like eggs and sugar, butter and cream, I couldn’t conceive of one without the other. Yet I could imagine living quite happily apart from Mr. Arthur for the rest of my life.

I’d done it so far, hadn’t I?

It was possible I could come to have feelings for him. In time. But what if I didn’t? What was the point in being a peanut if there was no brittle to go along?

What if . . . what if I was making the biggest mistake of my life in marrying him?

What if I was? What was the alternative? Charlie Clarke? I nearly laughed. There was no way that would ever work out. I was stuck with the man I’d agreed to marry.

I couldn’t back out now . . . could I?

I slid a glance toward Mother. I couldn’t. She would never forgive me. Mr. Arthur would never talk to me, and St. Louis would never let me forget it. Better to live in a respectable marriage than to be forever linked to scandal.

Wasn’t it?

Was it?

I allowed myself to slump before I remembered ladies didn’t do that. A small voice inside my head whispered that ladies also didn’t kiss the friends of their fiancés or the destroyers of their family’s businesses or their avowed enemies either. Ignoring the voice, I straightened and dug into the tufting of the bench with a finger as I thought about what else there was to do.

“Stop fidgeting.” Mother’s voice only added to my anxiety. We were on our way to a benefit for the Confederate Soldiers’ Home. And I wouldn’t be fidgeting if could get Charlie out of my head.

Mother pulled my hand away from the tufting of the bench and held it between her own. “You need to bring all your efforts to bear on this tonight. People are already looking at you as the new Mrs. Arthur. And you will be, in less than a month.”

“I’ll be as charming as I can be.”

“I had hoped you would be more charming still.” Mother said it with a smile, but I could tell that she meant it.

The benefit began with a speech by the mayor, which was followed by speeches from several of the Home’s residents. My, but they were getting old! And so feeble. It was difficult even to hear them. Afterward, someone passed me an old lidless army coffee boiler and told me to solicit donations for a raffle. It wasn’t until after the band had struck up an old reel that I had the chance to look for Mr. Arthur.

I was hoping that I might somehow stumble upon him. I’d determined to let my first reaction upon seeing him be my guide. If it was pleasant, then perhaps there was hope for us after all.

But he wasn’t there.

I felt a surprising wave of disappointment wash up from the tips of my toes to the tops of my ears.

“Are you quite all right?” Mother whispered the words into my ear as we sat listening to the band.

“I’m fine.”

“Why don’t you go get some air?”

Some air. Exactly what I needed. Some space, some quiet, to think. I stepped out into the hall, pushed past the drivers who were waiting in the entrance, and walked down the steps to the sidewalk. The melody of the reel and the sound of stomping feet drifted out behind me. Exchanging the warmth of the building for January’s chill air, I left all of the conviviality behind me.

I wandered along the sidewalk, wishing I’d thought to bring my coat. As I headed toward the shadow of the building, craving the loneliness of solitude, the glow of a cigarette caught my eye.

Someone else had gotten there first.

Continuing past, I might have gone all the way to the corner if I hadn’t heard someone call my name.

I squinted into the dark. “Mr. Arthur? Is that you?”

He stepped from the shadow into the glow cast by the streetlights, letting the cigarette drop as he came.

“I didn’t know you smoked.” And I didn’t know why it should bother me, but it did. In a peevish sort of way.

“I don’t. Not normally.” He shrugged. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine. It’s a shameful, dirty, detestable habit.”

At least we were agreed on that.

He glanced up at the building behind him. “I meant to go in, but I just . . . I couldn’t. Do you ever feel . . . if you went to one more dinner or one more ball or did one more thing you were supposed to that you might just . . . explode?”

Explode? “Not exactly. Although, I’ve often felt that I might someday just . . . dissolve. Into a puddle, rather like molasses, and run out into the gutter and just disappear.”

He’d been nodding along until I got to the molasses part. Then he’d stopped and started staring. I didn’t know what else to add, or how to explain myself any better, so I didn’t say anything.

And he didn’t say anything.

We stood there for quite some time saying nothing, listening to the music coming out of the entrance.

Then he sighed and let his head fall back, looking up at the smoke-smudged sky. “It’s just that I find myself wondering whether I’m meant to go on like this forever, doing all the things I’m supposed to, when I feel so unaccountably lonely most of the time. It defies explanation. Here I am, surrounded by people, and . . .” He straightened and glanced my way. “How rude that sounds. I apologize. Again. Please forgive me. I don’t know what I’m saying. It’s just that I’d hoped . . . with you . . . do you think . . .” He fished around in his pocket and when his hand came out, it was grasping a cigarette case. “I was hoping that with you I wouldn’t be so alone.” He took a cigarette from the case and lit it. “Not an auspicious beginning, perhaps, admitting I’m going into this for purely selfish reasons.” He took a draw, then expelled the air with tremendous force. “You could do worse, I suppose. But it’s up to you now . . . if you want the chance to do better . . . Please don’t misunderstand, I’m not trying to break our engagement. Unless you want to. I’m the one who proposed, after all. I’m only wondering if . . . if you actually want to be engaged.”

He was offering me a way out. And yet, though I opened my mouth to respond, the words wouldn’t come out. I couldn’t give voice to my feelings. He’d bared his soul to me. He’d been so honest, so genuine, that I knew I couldn’t break his heart. Not tonight and not ever. And I vowed that he would never know what had happened between Charlie Clarke and
me. As I’d said that night at the ball, there were too many things between us.

Taking the cigarette from Mr. Arthur, I let it fall to the sidewalk and then I linked my arm through his. “If we’re bound to have to do all these things anyway, then why not do them together?”

Alfred came up to me at the theater on Friday evening as intermission was ending and everyone was filing back into the auditorium. He held out his hand.

I gave it a shake.

“I need to ask you a favor. Could you meet me tomorrow down at Cleve’s? About ten?”

“Who’s Cleve?”

A smile split his face as he gave my hand another shake and clapped me on the forearm. “I keep forgetting you’re new to the city. It’s a what, not a he. A jewelry store down on Grand.”

I nodded, standing on my toes, searching for my father and Augusta. “See you there at ten.”

As Nelson opened the car door for me, I saw Alfred pacing in front of the window.

He wasted no time in opening up the door to the store and
shoving me through it. “I have to choose a wedding present for Lucy, and I need some advice. I’ve no idea what she likes.”

She liked air machines and adventure and candy. She liked waltzes and skirts she couldn’t walk in and the color blue. Though I should have excused myself from the job, I let him push me into the store anyway.

Alfred explained what he was after, and the clerk behind the counter moved toward a display case filled with pearls. He took out a necklace and laid it across a piece of velvet.

There were five strands to the necklace, each longer than the next, the pearls alternating with gold beads.

“No. Lucy doesn’t like pearls.” The words came out of my mouth before I could stop them.

Alfred looked at me, surprise in his eyes. “She doesn’t?”

I shook my head. I didn’t know for sure, but it just seemed like pearls were too . . . proper.

“What about some opals?” The clerk had already moved on to the next case. He pulled a large ring from the display and held it out to Alfred. The band had flowers and swirls carved into it.

I told the clerk to put it back.

Alfred blinked. “I rather liked that.”

“It’s not right.” Lucy wasn’t some sentimental girl. She was a woman.

The clerk put it back into the case and pulled out a different ring. One with a sparkling green stone surrounded by—

“Are those diamonds?” Alfred had taken it from the clerk and was looking at it with interest.

“Five carats’ worth, sir.”

“I don’t think Lucy would like a ring.” I tried to give it back to the clerk, but Alfred wouldn’t let go of it.

“
I
like this ring.”

“But you don’t make candy, do you?”

He snapped his gaze to me. “Lucy doesn’t make candy. The confectionery makes candy.”

“She makes candy all the time.” Or she used to. Isn’t that what she’d said that night at the ball?

“Why? Don’t the Kendalls have a cook?”

I plucked it from his hand and gave it back to the clerk. “Trust me. She’d never wear this.”

“The point isn’t whether she’d wear it. The point is that I’m thinking of her. And I need to get her a wedding gift.”

“But you’re thinking of you, not her.”

“I wouldn’t buy myself a woman’s emerald ring!”

“You’ve got the wrong ring. Or the wrong woman.”

His glance was sharp. “Then what
would
she like? A bracelet?”

“You can’t just—”

“No rings, no necklaces, no bracelets. You’re not being very helpful, Charles.” He was frowning as he pulled out his pocket watch and flipped the cover open. “I’ve wasted enough time.” He surveyed the case of rings again. “I’ll take that emerald.”

The clerk nodded and pulled it from the case, box and all.

“But I don’t think—”

“I’ve spent enough time as it is. Besides, I don’t think she’ll complain. There are five carats of diamonds in that ring.”

What could I say? It was nice. And expensive. But was as unlike Lucy as Evelyn was.

I walked around the store, looking into the cases, as Alfred paid for the ring. Lucy wasn’t going to wear it. She wouldn’t even like it. Shouldn’t he know that about her by now?

What if—what if I told her
I
loved her?

This wasn’t a contest. And if it were, then Alfred would win.

Would win? He’d already won! They were getting married.

And anyway, why would she want to marry a man like me?

Because I knew her. I knew her in a way Alfred Arthur never
had and never would. And I would never see another woman the way he’d been seeing Evelyn. I nearly laughed. Since when had I become such a choir boy? It’s true I wasn’t the man I used to be. Since coming to St. Louis, I’d become downright respectable.

I’d never be able to make up to Micky Callahan for what I’d done. There was no one I could tell I was sorry. No matter how hard I tried, I’d never be able to make it better.

Winnie’s words came back to me.
“You’re not good enough and you never will be.”

That was the truth.

But what else was it she’d said?

“It’s about God. So it doesn’t matter what you believe, does it? It’s not about you and how you believe you have to make things right.”

I wish I’d listened to the preacher the past few weeks. Then maybe I’d understand what Winnie’d been trying to say.

So what was it about?

God. That’s what she’d kept saying. It was about God and what He’d done for me, not about what I was trying to do for myself.

I was a coward and a rotten friend. I stood by and watched while a man was killed. I was doing it to save myself, but it turned out the joke was on me. All I’d done was realize I wasn’t worth saving.

But what if Winnie was right? What if the problem wasn’t God? What if the problem was me? If that were true, then that was good news. I couldn’t hope to change the way the world worked, but maybe I could hope that He could change me.

“You ready?”

I jumped as Alfred clapped me on the shoulder. “Sure.”

“You thinking of getting married yourself?”

“What?”

He pointed to the display case in front of me. It was filled with engagement rings. “I can tell you it’s a trying business.”

“Don’t you like Lucy?”

“I like her fine.”

Fine? “If I were marrying a girl like her, I think I’d be feeling more than fine.”

He shrugged as he stepped past me toward the door. “I proposed. I can’t back out now.”

I hadn’t suggest that he should. But . . . “What if you could?”

He paused and gave me a long searching look. And then he sighed. “I can’t. It’s not done. And even if it were . . . it wouldn’t be right . . . would it?”

Confound loyalty and honor! But how could I tell him to do something that would only end up hurting her? “No. It wouldn’t.”

He patted the box he’d put into his pocket. “Then the best thing to do is get it over and done with.”