Just North of Bliss (26 page)

Belle glanced down at her reticule and then
up at Win. “No.”

“I thought women always carried primping
mirrors around with them.”

“I,” said Belle glacially, “do not primp. I
am a gainfully employed working woman, and I don’t have time to
primp.”

“Right, right. I know. I know.” He raked his
hands through his hair again. He wished he were still holding Belle
in his arms. She’d felt good there. Right, somehow. If only she
weren’t such a damned difficult female and so blasted Southern,
with a capital S, they might just be able to work out some kind of
profitable partnership.

The notion had no sooner entered his head
than it struck him all of a heap, as his English grandmother might
have said. His hands finished raking his hair and dropped to his
lap. “Good God.”

He didn’t realize he’d spoken aloud until
Belle said suspiciously, “I beg your pardon?”

“Huh?” Win shook himself out of his sudden
daze and found Belle staring at him, looking as suspicious as she’d
sounded. He opened his mouth to tell her the brilliant idea that
had just occurred to him, but his better sense made him hold his
tongue. He cleared his throat. “Oh. Nothing. Here. Let me row us to
shore. I can dock near Kate’s booth. She’ll help us out.”

“I am not going to appear in public looking
like this, Win Asher!” Belle sat up as straight as an iron rod and
glared at him. She was much better at glaring than she was at
glowering, he noticed unhappily.

“Dammit, I don’t have a comb or brush or
mirror on me, Belle. Be reasonable for once, will you?”

“Be
reasonable
? For
once
!”

Her shout startled the birds that had been
poking around in the bulrushes. They left off searching for
comestibles and exploded from the scenery with a noise like a bomb
blast. Both Belle and Win jumped, thereby rocking the boat. Win
caught up the oars and, with a good deal of trouble, stabilized the
craft. “For God’s sake,” he muttered, “quit hollering, will
you?”

Belle clung for dear life to the sides of
the boat. “Blast you, Win Asher,” she said after the boat stopped
rocking. “I am reasonable and I am not hollering. It’s not my fault
you’ve ruined my life.”

“Ruined your . . . ? Good God.”

She sniffed and turned her face away from
him. He had to admit that she looked pretty mussed up, with her
hair all tumbling down, and her shirtwaist wrinkled. He couldn’t
see an appreciable difference in the size of her waist now that the
corset was gone, but he imagined she felt sort of vulnerable. Damn
all southern maidens to the pit, anyhow. It was as if they didn’t
dare face the world without armor.

But that was neither here nor there. No
matter what Belle wanted—and Win expected she wanted to be whisked
via magic back to her safe little poverty-stricken home in
Georgia—he knew what they had to do. Kate Finney was the answer to
this problem. Kate wouldn’t think twice about helping Belle fix
herself up. Good old Kate. Although it was a pity her life had been
so rough up until now, at least Kate wouldn’t waste time in
questions or recriminations, which was an advantage Win could
appreciate, even if Belle couldn’t. He shoved away from the bank
against which the boat had been lodged, annoying another several
dozen birds, and started rowing.

Belle’s hands flew to her hair. “Stop
rowing! You can’t take me back to the Exposition looking like this!
I can’t be seen in public this way!”

Win heard his teeth grinding and made his
jaw relax. No sense ruining his teeth because he’d made a mistake
with a Southern belle. “You’re not going to be seen in public that
way. I’m taking you to Kate. She’ll fix you up.”

“No! I can’t be—

“Damnation, will you stop screeching? Unless
you want to face Mrs. Richmond looking like that, I’m taking you to
Kate.”

“Mrs. Richmond. Oh, my land.” She shrank
down in the boat as he rowed away from the privacy of their little
waterway and neared the lake. “I don’t want people to see me like
this.” Her voice had shrunk to a pitiful whimper.

“Nobody will see you like that,” he said
through clenched teeth. “I’ll pull up to within a dozen yards of
Kate’s booth.”

“I’ll still have to walk to the booth,” she
pointed out, sinking even lower in the boat.

“Certainly, but you won’t have to walk any
farther than that.”

“Oh, my land.”

As Win pulled out onto the lake, which fed
directly into the Grand Basin, Belle crunched down onto the bottom
of the boat, curling herself into as small a ball as she could. Win
would have rolled his eyes if he didn’t feel so guilty.

# # #

Although the walk from the boat to Kate’s
booth didn’t take more than five minutes, to Belle it dragged on
like eternity. She felt like a pure fool the whole time. Win had
reluctantly agreed to let her borrow his jacket, which she threw
over her head.

“You look idiotic like that. People are more
likely to stare at you with that jacket flung over your head than
if you stopped trying to hide and just walked.”

“I don’t care.” Since she was keeping her
head down, her mouth was buried in the fabric of his jacket sleeve
and her voice was muffled. “They can stare all they want because
they can’t see it’s me.” She’d sooner drown herself in the Grand
Basin than admit it, but she got a good deal of pleasure from
smelling Win’s scent in his jacket. She presumed this was only one
more indication of how morally low she’d sunk since moving to the
depraved North.

“Good God. Nobody would know who you are
even if they could see your face.”

“Ha!” A note of satisfaction rang in Belle’s
voice. “Thanks to you, my face is all over the city of Chicago
today. Everybody would recognize me!”

“Huh.”

He didn’t have an answer for that one, Belle
noted with rancor, because he knew she was right. Fortunately for
her, Kate had no customers in her booth when they finally, after
what seemed like ten or eleven hours, got there.

“Hey there, you two,” Kate cried
cheerfully.

As soon as the door shut behind her, Belle
doffed the jacket, which had been all but smothering her. The
weather was warm enough without thick tweed muffling her face, even
if it did smell like Win.

“Holy smoke!” Kate gaped at Belle, who gazed
back ruefully. “What happened to you?”

Belle would never have hooked a thumb at Win
had she been in more refined company, but she knew Kate wouldn’t
criticize her for the crude gesture. “He did.”

Her eyes huge, Kate glanced from Belle to
Win. Belle was astonished to see the color in Kate’s cheeks deepen.
She was even more astonished when Kate cried, “Win Asher, you
devil, you!” Then she burst out laughing.

Feeling beleaguered and more than a trifle
embarrassed, Belle muttered, “It’s not
that
.”

“I didn’t do anything to her!” Win said
furiously. Then he crammed his hands into his pockets and muttered,
“Well, I didn’t do much.”

Belle didn’t want to go into what she and
Win had or had not been doing on that boat. If she related the
sequence of events to Kate, she’d die of mortification. “We had a
little accident,” she lied. “And Mr. Asher said you might be able
to help me tidy up before I go back to work.”

“Mr. Asher, is it?” Kate said in a voice
dancing with amusement.

Belle wondered sourly how the girl could be
so jolly only a day or two after her own father had tried to murder
her, but she didn’t ask. Instead, she said repressively, “Yes.”

With a cheerful shrug, Kate said, “All
right. I’ve got lots of stuff here you can use to tidy up, Belle.
Happy to help. After all, you saved my life.”

And with that, and with Belle blinking in
surprise—she couldn’t even conceive of anyone taking such a brutal
attack this lightly—Kate took Belle’s arm and led her to a curtain
in the corner of her booth. Whipping the curtain aside, Kate
revealed a small dressing table cluttered with boxes, bottles,
brushes, combs, and powder puffs. A chair had been placed before
the table, and a mirror hung on the wall. “I’ve got everything
you’ll need here to fix your hair.” She eyed Belle with a
professional’s disinterest. “And a little makeup wouldn’t hurt,
either. You look as though you’ve been through a war.” She shot Win
a grin. He grimaced back. Belle wished she could just die and get
it over with.

“Makeup?” She gulped. “Um, I don’t generally
wear paint.”

“Well, you’d better wear some today, because
otherwise, you’re going to look like somebody just tried to ravish
you.” Kate cast another humorous glance at Win, who grunted
something unintelligible. Belle wanted to sink into the earth and
disappear.

“Sit here,” Kate said, pushing on Belle’s
shoulder.

Responding to the pressure, Belle sat with a
plunk onto the chair before a dressing table. Curiosity began to
nudge her embarrassment out of the way. “Is this where you get
yourself up to look like a Gypsy?”

“This is the place, all right.”

The two women gazed at each other in the
mirror. It was a trifle disconcerting to see her fair Southern
self, in rather more than slight dishabille, cheek by jowl with an
exotic, dark-skinned Gypsy maiden with rings in her ears, big green
eyes, and a splashy striped scarf tying her hair back, but Belle
didn’t comment on the phenomenon. Kate appeared seriously
enthralled at the prospect of fixing Belle up, which Belle knew she
should appreciate. She guessed it had been a good idea of Win’s
that they come to Kate, although she was as yet unwilling to thank
him. For anything.

“Okey-dokey,” Kate said, picking up a brush.
“I suppose we ought to work on your hair first.”

“Thank you,” Belle mumbled. “I have some
hairpins here.” She dug in her skirt pocket and eventually came out
with three pins. She sighed.

“Don’t worry about it,” Kate said with a
laugh. “I’ve got lots of hairpins.”

Thank God for that. Belle said only, “Thank
you,” in a muted sort of voice. This was so utterly embarrassing,
she wasn’t sure she was going to survive. She almost didn’t want
do. Drat Win Asher.

Kate hummed softly as she brushed out
Belle’s hair. “Your hair’s very pretty,” she said after a
moment.

“Thank you.” Belle felt silly. She wasn’t
accustomed to anyone fussing over her. Her mother had deplored the
fact that the family couldn’t afford servants, but as far as Belle
was concerned, she’d rather fend for herself than have people
hovering about her all the time. Belle liked her privacy.

And anyhow, her mother had only lived a very
few years with the luxury of servants—oh, very well, the luxury of
slaves—so she really ought to have become used to doing without
them by this time. But Mrs. Monroe had ever preferred to curse the
darkness than light a candle, so to speak.

Belle heaved a dispirited sigh.

“What’s the matter?” Kate asked around a
mouthful of hairpins.

“Nothing. Thank you very much for doing this
for me.”

“It’s nothing. I love working with hair and
makeup.”

Belle smiled at her in the mirror. Kate
smiled back. Inside, Belle wasn’t smiling. She was berating herself
for once again being disrespectful of her family. Yet Belle really
couldn’t understand what was so wonderful about being unable to do
anything for oneself. She thought self-sufficiency was an admirable
quality in a person. Look at Kate, for heaven’s sake. According to
Win, she was supporting herself and her mother both, and having to
fend off a brutal father into the bargain.

As far as Belle was concerned, being
dependent on a horde of hirelings or slaves to do something so
simple as dress oneself or brush one’s hair seemed positively
ridiculous. She’d never, in a hundred years, say so to her mother.
Not unless she wanted to have to run for the smelling salts to
revive her mother from a swoon. Without her consent, a giggle smote
her.

“What’s the matter? Am I tickling you?”

When Belle glanced into the mirror, she saw
that Kate had stopped brushing and looked concerned; almost
frightened, actually. Strange. “I’m sorry, Kate. No, you’re not
tickling. I was thinking about—something.”

“You might tell me,” Win said bitterly. “I
could use a laugh.”

Belle glanced into the corner of the booth
and saw him sitting on a stool, his chin in his hands, and his
elbows resting on his knees. He looked dejected. The bounder. She
sniffed.

“I could use a laugh, too,” said Kate,
resuming with the hairbrush. She gathered Belle’s hair in one hand,
laid the brush aside, and twisted the shiny chestnut mass into a
complicated pattern.

“Oh, I was only thinking about my mother,”
muttered Belle, watching with interest. She’d never considered
anything but a straightforward bun for her hair, but what Kate was
doing looked pretty.

“Hmmm,” Kate murmured. “Lucky you, if
thinking about your mother makes you laugh. Thinking about my ma
only makes me want to cry most of the time.” Instead of crying, she
laughed.

Belle stared at her in the mirror. “Good
heavens,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

Kate shrugged. “Ma’s been sick,” she said
shortly.

Belle got the impression she didn’t want to
talk about it. “I’m awfully sorry.”

“It’s all right. Shoot, we all have to play
the cards we get dealt, I reckon. So, why does thinking about your
mother make you laugh?”

Oh, dear. Belle wished she’d never started
this conversation. She caught Kate’s glance in the mirror, though,
and a sudden urge to unburden herself smote her. She’d never had
such an urge before this very minute. With a sense of recklessness,
she said, “Well, you know, I come from the South.”

“No, really?” The mirror reflected Kate’s
eyes as huge with disbelief.

Belle almost fell for it until she heard Win
snort and grumble, “Gee whiz, Kate, how could you tell?”