Harmony (25 page)

Edwina was taken aback. The younger woman charged headfirst into the closet and produced the green nun's veiling.

“All right,” Edwina begged, “I'll go. But not in
that.”

Gingerly fluffing the collar, Crescencia said in a wistful tone, “Why, if I had the opportunity to have dinner with
a man as good-looking as Mr. Wolcott, I'd wear something so beautiful he couldn't take his eyes off me. You're missing an opportunity, Miss Edwina.”

An opportunity . . . that's precisely what she had. Why, left alone with Mr. Wolcott, she might do or say something she'd regret. She didn't know him at all. The best way to do so would be by staying on neutral subjects, exchanging pleasantries. And with another present, that couldn't get muddled.

“Cressie, dear, you're coming with me.”

The eyes behind the lenses widened like saucers as she hung the dress on the top of the open armoire door. “Me? I can't go with you.”

“Of course you can.” Edwina took Crescencia's hands into her own. “It's better for a couple, when making their first appearance in public, to be seen with a chaperone.”

“I-I'm no ch-chaperone,” she stammered. “And besides, Mr. W-Wolcott wouldn't want me to come along . . . I'm certain.”

“Quite the opposite. He'd welcome your presence. He told me he thought you were a very attractive young woman.”

“H-he did?” Her palms grew clammy in Edwina's. “Oh, this is terrible. I don't want him to find me . . . that way. I don't think of him l-like that.”

“Well, then you'll just have to come along with me, and we'll make sure he understands that you don't think of him in a romantic capacity.”

“Oh . . . but I just couldn't come. Papa wouldn't like it. . . . I'd have to tell him what I was doing. . . .”

“We can speak to him on the way. When he finds out you're with me, he'll make no fuss.”

“Yes, but . . .” In a desperate plea, she blurted out, “I'm not attired appropriately at all!”

“Never you mind, dear. I've got just the thing. And it's perfect for you.”

10

“M
r. Dufresne,” Edwina said with a start upon seeing Shay Dufresne standing with Tom Wolcott on her doorstep.

“Miss Stykem,” Mr. Dufresne blurted out in a surprised tone, ignoring Edwina and directing his undivided attention on Crescencia.

Not immediately acknowledging Shay, Crescencia gaped at Tom Wolcott with clear disapproval. “M-Mr. W-Wolcott.”

“Miss Huntington,” Tom said in greeting, his low voice a little awkward.

After their round of mismatched salutations, a strained silence blanketed the four of them.

At length, Edwina and Mr. Dufresne said together, “Well.”

Edwina smiled.

Mr. Dufresne laughed.

“You ladies are looking especially becoming this evening.” Mr. Dufresne spoke to both of them, but gazed only at Crescencia.

The nun's veiling dress on her was almost the color of summer twilight reflecting in a meadow; her pale face and orange-red hair were enhanced by the matching hat that Edwina had loaned her as well.

“Yeah, fetching,” Tom mumbled, shifting uneasily on his feet.

Edwina noted that Shay Dufresne wore a crisp new shirt beneath his opened coat; the smell of cedar chips that Mr. Treber kept in his cabinets drifted across the air. Tom, on the other hand, hadn't gone to any trouble for this evening's dinner. From the part in his duster, she saw he'd chosen a faded blue plaid that had seen better days. The Stetson on his head was the beaten-up one he wore while on hunting jaunts; the band was marked with a rim of sweat, and the creases on the brim were well set. But she could make no criticism of his attire. She had dressed in a black worsted voile skirt with a plain tucked shirtwaist.

It would seem neither of them had expected anything more than a simple meal and general conversation.

“Miss Stykem, this is a pleasant surprise,” Mr. Dufresne said. “I hope this means you'll be accompanying us to dinner.”

Her arm trembling, she brought a handkerchief to her nose and delicately took a small sniff of the salts concealed within. “I-I s-suppose I-I am. I d-didn't expect t-to see y-you here.”

Shay knocked Tom on the upper arm. Tom glared at him. “Tom insisted that I come. Glad I said yes.” To Edwina, he went on, “I really am glad Miss Stykem is coming.” His tone sounded accusing, as if he were trying to make her understand something.

Looking pointedly at Edwina, Tom remarked, “You must have been thinking what I was thinking by inviting a friend along.”

“As the saying goes, the more the merrier.”

“I'll vouch for that,” Mr. Dufresne said with a chuckle. “Shall we be off?”

Crescencia turned her head to Edwina, her eyes beseeching. A blush worked its way up her neck as she mouthed, “Papa.”

“Leave that to me, dear,” Edwina replied as if nothing were wrong.

The ladies gathered cloaks and put them on; then the two couples left the porch and began walking down Sycamore Drive. The members of each sex kept their distance from one another, the women in the front, the men bringing up the rear, their voices droning in some private conversation—somewhat heated from the inflections Edwina could hear.

“Whatever am I going to say to my papa?” Crescencia murmured behind her hand. “You didn't tell me Mr. Dufresne was coming.”

“I had no idea,” Edwina whispered. “But we'll still follow the plan. We'll go to your house and tell your father that you're having dinner with me.”

“And t-two gentlemen,” she squeaked.

“That's a minor detail.”

“Not to my papa. He doesn't think a man's attentions toward me will be honorable because I'm an old maid, so he'll want to know why Mr. Dufresne wants to take me out to dinner. He'll interrogate him like he was in the courtroom and Mr. Dufresne was on trial. It'll be the most embarrassing thing I'll ever have to live through.”

“No, it won't. I'll be with you and I won't let your father do anything to make you uncomfortable.”

Crescencia lived one house up from the corner at Sugar Maple, and as they approached, Edwina's steps slowed.

“If you'll excuse us a moment,” Edwina said, “there's something we need to do.”

Edwina linked her arm through Crescencia's and they hurriedly took the walkway and went inside. Mr. Stykem lounged in a smoking jacket, the parlor thick with cigar smoke. When Crescencia came bursting in, he looked over the newspaper's edge.

“What's that dress you've got on, Crescencia?” he asked, then gruffly accused her. “Are you wearing French perfume?”

“Oh, heaven's no!” she lied. “I wouldn't ever . . . I'm . . . allergic. And the dress—I borrowed it from Miss
Edwina,” she blurted out. “We're going to dinner at the restaurant because I haven't eaten any dinner—”

“I'm aware of that. I don't smell anything in the oven—”

“There's corned beef in a tin and bread's in the pantry. The can opener's in the drawer by the sink and . . . and, well, that's all. I won't be home late. Good-bye, Papa.”

She dragged Edwina from the room before she could get a word out, and the pair scurried down the porch steps. They'd barely reached the street when Alastair Stykem's lawyer voice boomed from the veranda.

“Crescencia, what's all this folderol? Who's out there? Is that you, Wolcott?”

Mr. Dufresne stepped forward, gently took Crescencia by the elbow, and guided her up the walkway. “I believe I should get your father's permission to buy you dinner.”

That was the last Edwina could hear. She and Tom stayed on the sidewalk, neither making eye contact with the other. Both gazed at the porch, where Mr. Dufresne seemed to be doing all the talking while Crescencia intermittently buried her nose in her handkerchief and held onto the railing.

Tom reached into his breast pocket for a pack of cigarettes, one of which he tapped out. Edwina was obliged to give him a reproachful glare.

“Sorry,” he muttered, and put the pack back. Then he hunched his shoulders while digging his hands into his pockets. “Going to get cold tonight.”

“Do you think it will snow on Halloween?” she returned, her question just as unimaginative.

“The almanac said it's a possibility.”

She rolled a pebble beneath the toe of her patent leather shoe. “We didn't have snow on Halloween last year.”

“Do you like snow?”

“I don't mind it.”

Edwina wanted to scream in agony. This was ridiculous. It wasn't as if they were meeting for the first time.
He'd seen her in her bare nothings—twice. They were beyond strangers. Or rather, they were—sort of, but more along the lines of intimate strangers. They should have been able to carry on a conversation that wasn't meaningless.

“Aside from the time I took you home, I've never been on this street.” Tom's eyes fell on the tree-shadowed lot next to Crescencia's home. A sign with
FOR SALE
written on it had been stuck in the weeds.

Edwina followed his gaze. “It's a nice street.”

“North-end,” he replied simply.

A layer of quiet so heavy descended upon them, Edwina's shoulders ached. Fortunately, Crescencia and Mr. Dufresne soon returned. Crescencia actually had the hint of a smile on her mouth. “Papa said it was okay that I accompany you. He gave Mr. Dufresne permission to walk me home afterward.”

Edwina detected a glow on the other woman's cheeks, but unlike that of her shy blushes, this was born of optimism. From where she got her courage, Edwina couldn't be sure. But it must have been something Mr. Dufresne had said, because no longer were her words clipped with stutters.

This time when they set out, there was a distinct pairing of the couples. Mr. Dufresne and Crescencia took the front—her hand tucked into his arm on his kind insistence, while Edwina and Tom strolled in back. A twinge of envy took hold of Edwina. But she ignored it.

As they passed residences, gentlemen returning from their outings and the few ladies who happened to be at the door to receive their husbands all hushed as if at a funeral. Nobody had ever seen Crescencia Stykem and Edwina Huntington in the company of callers.

Walking by the town square gazebo with its honeysuckle vines going bare for the winter, they ran into Mrs. Plunkett. She nearly dropped her parcel but didn't utter a word other than a muffled greeting as she proceeded on her way with light feet unbefitting of a woman her size.

As soon as Mrs. Plunkett had cleared them, Edwina glanced over her shoulder and saw that the woman had broken out in a cumbersome run—heading straight for Mrs. Elward's residence.

Edwina knew that soon the ladies would be like bees in a stirred beehive. Voices would be buzzing in the thickening dusk. Gossip would be swapped over side fences and humming through Harmony better than by any telegraph line.

•  •  •

Edwina held her skirt high enough to elude the mud on the sidewalk, but not so high as to reveal an instep. The nighttime scene around them was quite different from that when the four of them had gone to the restaurant. Lamps had been lit in houses, and people had tucked themselves into parlors for the night. No one came out to their stoop to get a good eyeful. What they'd already seen had been enough to last them through the week.

Nobody could find fault in the two couples' being together. That wasn't what had caused the commotion. Ladies and gentlemen of unmarried status often went out singularly or in couples. In this instance, the chatter had been ignited by the fact that Edwina and Crescencia had never before been asked to do so. To the town, they were old bachelor girls resigned to solitary lives.

Edwina had gone through the motions of dinner, not tasting her food or even relaxing enough to enjoy the conversation Mr. Dufresne monopolized with Cressie. The other woman had calmed enough that a time or two, she'd actually tittered behind a coy handkerchief. The transformation was incredible. What could Shay Dufresne possibly have said to Crescencia's father?