The Bad Luck Wedding Dress (15 page)

“He says that?”

“Yep. You’re the thinker, Mari’s the doer, and I’m still trying to make up my mind. I do know two things, though. I don’t want Miss Fortune to marry that man, and I don’t want that old Ethel lady to get Miss Fortune’s cloth.”

Emma nodded slowly and shifted her gaze toward the mantel clock. “The train leaves here at eleven-thirty.”

“Yep,” Maribeth said. “They changed the schedule last week.”

“Good. And the wedding is at four tomorrow afternoon, so we should have plenty of time to arrange everything.”

“If we hurry.” Maribeth jumped up and headed for the stairs.

“It won’t take more than five minutes to sneak the crowbar we need from the blacksmith’s,” Emma replied, motioning Katrina to come along as she followed Maribeth downstairs. “We might have trouble finding Casey, though. Especially if we have to go into the Acre to look for him.”

Maribeth groaned. “The Acre! Papa will really kill us.”

“That’s stupid, Mari. What difference is there between killing and really killing?”

“The number of blisters on our backsides.”

“Oh.”

The girls peered cautiously around a doorjamb, then darted past Mrs. Wilson, who was busy dusting the parlor furniture. Once outside, they headed first toward the Tivoli Restaurant where they hoped to locate Casey Tate. The owner of the Tivoli often provided the boy a meal in exchange for work.

They found Casey munching on a plate of fried chicken, and Emma outlined their plan without delay. Casey was able to provide both the crowbar and a quilt to hide it in, and soon the three girls were hurrying through the streets toward the Texas & Pacific depot at the far south end of town. They had a close call at the intersection of Fourteenth and Houston, when they nearly ran right into Mrs. Wilhemina Peters. Thankfully, the editor’s wife looked in the opposite direction, staring with disapproval at a painted lady headed toward the Acre.

The sisters reached the train yard without further incident, and as they drew to a halt near the massive, hissing iron engine, Maribeth leaned over and said, “There’s a bunch of freight cars. Where do we start looking?”

Emma’s brow wrinkled in thought, then she said, “I think we should try the last one. It makes sense that goods to be unloaded at the first stop would be in the last car, don’t you think? They might just unhook it and leave it behind.”

Maribeth agreed, and the two older girls turned to their younger sister. Emma pointed toward the front of the train and murmured, “You know what to do, Kat?”

The little girl nodded. “I’ll do a good job.”

“We know you will,” Emma replied, smiling. “Good luck.”

Katrina’s eyes shone with anticipation as she skipped toward the front of the train. Then, with a last glance toward Emma and Maribeth, she turned her back, lifted her face toward the sky, and wailed at the top of her lungs.

Immediately, all eyes around the train depot turned in Katrina’s direction. Maribeth and Emma used the diversion to clamber into the boxcar nearest the caboose on the train departing for Dallas and points east at eleven-thirty.

Their sister’s cry built to a crescendo as they went to work, and they paused just long enough to share a smile. “She’ll be an actress when she grows up, sure as shootin’,” Maribeth stated.

The open door on the boxcar provided plenty of light to see, but the sheer number of crates made it difficult to move around. To complicate matters, many of the boxes looked strikingly similar to the one for which they searched. “This is gonna take forever,” Maribeth grumbled.

Emma ignored her, checking the address markings on each crate she came to. “Here’s one for Dallas. Hand me the crowbar, Mari.” She held out her hand as her sister retrieved the tool from near the door.

“Well, is that it?” she asked impatiently as Emma worked to open the large square box.

Emma lifted the lid and peered inside. “Nope. It’s leather goods. But here,” she passed her sister the crowbar and pointed toward a crate in the corner. “I think I see a Dallas stamp on that one. Try it, all right?”

The second box failed to yield their treasure, as did the third, fourth, and seventh boxes. But the eighth time they pried up a lid, their eyes lit at the sight of rectangular bundles wrapped in brown paper. Emma reached into the crate and tore a slit in the covering, exposing a swath of delicate pink lace. “Mari, we’ve found it!”

Carefully, they unloaded bolt after bolt, inspecting every one until they discovered the midnight-blue silk. “Oh, it is beautiful,” Emma marveled, unwrapping a length of the cloth. “No wonder Miss Fortune wanted this so badly. Look, Mari, see how the light catches the metallic threads and makes it shine?”

Maribeth had only a moment to see the feature her sister pointed out. With a shuffling roar, the boxcar door slammed closed, plunging the girls into darkness.

“Oh, my!” Emma squawked.

A whistle blew two long blasts, then slowly, the train began to move. “Heck fire, Emma,” Maribeth groaned. “We’ve stepped in the cow chips now.”

THE NOONTIME sun pounded down upon Fort Worth, unusually warm for a late-September afternoon. Taking inventory of her shop’s dwindling supplies, Jenny fanned her face, frowning as she attempted to recall when she had used the last of her pumpkin-colored thread. It wasn’t like her to fail to replace her stock.

“But then it isn’t like me to count pennies in order to buy spools of thread, either,” she grumbled. She plunged her fingers into a button tin, rattling the contents in a fruitless search. She had not misplaced what she needed; she simply didn’t have it. No pumpkin-colored thread.

And no European shipment.

That blasted Ethel Baumgardner. Jenny wouldn’t put anything past that woman. She’d out and out copied some of Jenny’s designs and tried to pass them off as her own. She’d been pea-green jealous when the Bailey daughters chose the Fort Worth designer to create their wedding gown. Shoot, if not for Big Jack’s superstitious nature, Jenny would suspect Ethel of inventing the Bad Luck Wedding Dress myth. The woman certainly had done her share of spreading the tale. Of that, Jenny had no doubt.

She’s a poisoned-mouth old biddy—even if she is not more than five years older than I am.

Jenny was replacing the buttons on the storage shelf when a child’s fearful shriek sounded just outside her door. She jerked toward the noise, her hand bumping a box in the process, and a dozen spools of white thread spilled from the container and clattered to the floor. They rolled in every direction, but Jenny paid them no mind as she flew out of her shop.

Katrina McBride was yanking open the door that led upstairs, yelling at the top of her voice, “Papa, Papa, Papa!” Yellow ribbons trailed from rich brown pigtails as the young girl climbed frantically toward the family rooms above.

Jenny called, “Katrina, what’s wrong?”

The girl glanced over her shoulder but didn’t slow down. “Help, Miss Fortune. I have to find my papa.” She pushed open the door and disappeared inside the McBride home.

Filled with apprehension, Jenny followed Katrina up the stairs. Trace was never home this time of day. “Isn’t your father at work?” she asked as she went inside.

“I want him to be home! I have to tell him. He has to hurry to catch them.” She ran through the parlor and the kitchen, then back to her father’s bedroom, crying, “Papa, please be here!”

A wide-eyed Mrs. Wilson trailed Katrina from the kitchen, wiping wet hands on a dishrag. The two women shared a brief, worried gaze before Jenny caught up with Katrina as she made a turn back through the parlor, headed for the stairs and the attic.

“Whoa, there, sweetie,” Jenny said, kneeling before the panicked child. “I want you to tell me what’s wrong.”

Tears spilled down rosy cheeks. “You have to take me to Papa’s saloon, Miss Fortune. I prayed he’d be here because I mustn’t go there on my own. He has to save them!”

“Save whom?”

“Emma and Maribeth. The train took them away!”

With a little more coaching, the story poured from the young girl, and as Jenny held her and listened, she had to stifle a groan at the implications of the tale.

They’d done this for her. For her! A wave of emotion washed through Jenny, a peculiar combination of love and guilt. Those foolish, reckless, wonderful children. She wrapped Katrina in a fierce hug and said a silent prayer for the safety of the sisters. Poor Emma and Maribeth. They must be so afraid.

Immediately, she planned her course of action. First she spent a few moments assuring a sobbing Katrina that she’d find Trace and help him return the older girls safe and sound. Next she hurried to Main Street where she hopped the trolley for the fastest transportation to Hell’s Half Acre, only to discover a closed sign and a locked door at the End of the Line Saloon.

Where was he? Jenny banged on the door, then on the window. She paused to peer inside to the gloomy interior. Nobody was there.

“Of all the times for him to go missing,” she muttered as she crossed the street to inquire after him at Miss Rachel’s Social Emporium. Having no luck there, she checked the saloons on either side of the End of the Line, but again came up empty.

She stared frantically up and down the street. Where was he? What kind of father was Trace McBride to up and disappear when his daughters needed him? A responsible parent would always be available in the case of emergency.

Now, Jenny, be fair,
her conscience scolded. She had to acknowledge the difficulty of such an aim, especially when a family had but one parent. And Trace was trying. She couldn’t forget his offer of a job. A hired mother.

She chuckled humorlessly. Trace McBride didn’t have to pay her to worry about his girls.

The image of Emma and Maribeth, frightened and alone and trapped inside a dark, swaying railroad car played over and over in her mind. Jenny knew then what she must do.

Purpose fired her blood as she hurried away from the Acre and made three quick stops: her home, the McBride’s home, and the wagonyard, where she rented the fastest horse and buggy available.

When Trace stopped to inquire after her almost an hour later, he was told by the proprietor, “That crazy woman lit outta here like a prairie fire with a tail wind. What the hell is she up to?”

A faint smile played about his lips as he replied, “That crazy woman is trying to save my girls.”

TRACE RODE alongside
the parallel troughs carved over time by the wheels of hundreds of wagons that had traveled the thirty-mile stretch between Fort Worth and Dallas. The past two hours had near to worn him to a frazzle, and his day was far from over.

The Menaces had struck again, and this time if not for a little luck, the consequences could have been disastrous. Thank God that as of an hour ago—when he’d saddled up and headed east out of town—Emma, Maribeth, and Katrina were safely ensconced in their bedroom with strict instructions not to set so much as a big toe across the threshold until school the next morning. In light of today’s events, he felt reasonably sure that they’d mind him. This time, at least.

As he scanned the golden grasses of late summer stretching across the prairie, Trace was still a little woozy from all of the worry. He felt certain he would remember until the day he died that moment when Emma and Maribeth had burst through the doors at the End of the Line with scraped hands and knees and a tale that had turned his knees to water; Kat missing from the train depot, Em and Mari banged up from jumping off a moving train.

He’d probably aged ten years between that moment and when he rushed into his kitchen and spied Katrina sitting at the table drinking a glass of milk. In those next few moments, his body had gone limp as a dishrag put through the wringer and hung out to dry.

He didn’t feel much better than that now. Giving his mount a little kick, he spurred him to speed. He needed to hurry if he intended to catch up with the dressmaker in time to bring her back to Fort Worth before dark. And Trace had every intention of doing so. It’d be asking for trouble to spend the night, just the two of them alone on the prairie beneath a star-filled Texas sky.

As he eyed the sun’s position, his brows lowered in a frown. He gave his horse an extra kick.

Crazy woman. The fellow at the wagonyard had been right. The day before her wedding day, Miss Fortune forgets all about herself and rides off to rescue his children. Of course, it shouldn’t have come as any great surprise. He’d known she was that kind of person when he offered her the job. She’d done what any good mother would have done under the circumstances.

She wasn’t anything like Constance.

Shame curdled in his gut like sour milk every time he thought of his actions that day at Rachel’s. And he thought about it a lot. He couldn’t seem to forget it. Not the way she’d tasted or the way she’d fit so perfectly in his arms. He especially couldn’t forget the little sigh she’d made when she touched him.

Damn. He had to stop this. The woman was getting married tomorrow.

Marriage. That’s what she’d been fishing for that day at the swimming hole. He had been slow to pick up on it, true, but he wasn’t stupid.

Or maybe he was stupid. He’d actually considered it. Only for a second, true, but the fact that the idea had even entered his thoughts made his skin crawl. “Good Lord,” he muttered, gigging his horse. He was acting as absurd as Big Jack Bailey.

It must be the fatigue. His bones ached with it. As grateful as he was to Jenny for trying to rescue his girls, he’d rather be back at the End of the Line getting drunker than a hoedown fiddler than chasing after her with the news that the rescue wasn’t needed. Not this time anyway. Between the worry and the hard gallop across the prairie, he was near to being played plumb out.

At least one good thing had come from today’s debacle. Reaching down, he gave his horse’s neck a pat. For the first time in a long while, he didn’t feel guilty for having indulged his passion for fine horseflesh.

He’d bought the roan gelding Maribeth had named Ranger shortly after arriving in Fort Worth, and he’d spent more than he could afford at the time. Living in town, he didn’t actually need a horse, but owning one was a habit too hard to break. Riding a horse like Ranger was the lone pleasure in this chase after Miss Jenny Fortune.