The Bad Luck Wedding Dress (23 page)

The purple silk clung to her curves like a second skin, while the black lace sewn into the plunging neckline played upon a man’s fantasies as much as bare skin. “You’re not going out in public wearing that dress, Jenny McBride.”

Their bedroom was something different, however.

“We need to say good-bye to the girls before we leave,” she replied, ignoring his objection. “Are they still eating supper?”

He dragged out her name in a warning tone as he walked toward the staircase. “For-tune!”

Stopping two steps from the bottom of the stairs, she stood at Trace’s eye level. Unleashing a saucy smile, she said, “Be brave, McBride. This is war.” He came a hairbreadth away from sweeping her into his arms and carting her back upstairs.

Instead, he followed her toward the kitchen, groaning anew at the view of the dress from the back. “Jenny, you’ll have every man at that ball drooling like a baby gettin’ teeth.”

Glancing over her shoulder, she showed him that smile again. “That’s the plan. They’ll see their wives in Ethel Baumgardner’s gowns and imagine them in mine. I won’t lose my customers, by gosh.”

Trace sighed wearily as they entered the kitchen to find Mrs. Wilson placing a piece of green apple pie in front of each of his daughters.

“Mama, you look beautiful!” Katrina exclaimed.

Emma’s eyes rounded and she gave a wistful smile. “I wish I could grow up half as pretty as you, Mama.”

Maribeth spoke with her mouth full of pie. “Like your dress, Mama. Papa, I caught a black bass today and Mrs. Wilson said if I’m gonna bring ‘em home, I’d have to learn to clean ‘em. Would you teach me how to fillet a fish?”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full, Mari,” Emma scolded.

“That’s right,” Katrina added, snickering. “It sounded like you asked Papa to teach you how to
play
a fish.”

Normalcy. Thank God for his daughters. His humor on the way to being restored, Trace frowned. “Once you learn the scales, it’s not difficult to play a fish, Maribeth. Just don’t ask me to tune a fish.”

Jenny and Mrs. Wilson groaned. His daughters all giggled. With the sound ringing in his ears, Trace’s step was lighter as he escorted his provocatively dressed wife to their carriage for the drive to Fort Worth’s Third Annual Harvest Ball.

Pumpkins, gourds, and cornstalks decorated the ballroom at the Cosmopolitan Hotel. Dancing had yet to begin when they arrived, although a string quartet played in the background. The hum of conversation and occasional bursts of laughter drew to an abrupt halt the moment Jenny Fortune McBride stepped into the room. The silence lasted only a moment, then a tide of men surged forward, begging a dance.

Trace managed, barely, to hold his temper.

Jenny didn’t fare so well. Every time she turned around she saw or heard something that set her off. Amanda Tompkins’s dress was a copy of one of her designs, as was Martha Clark’s. Wilhemina Peters sported a silk gown of Ethel Baumgardner’s design, and even Trace, who knew a fig’s worth of fashion, said it was downright ugly. “Somebody needs to bell that woman,” he said, eyeing the black- and-white monstrosity. “Bossie got loose from the pasture again.”

“Trace McBride!” Jenny didn’t put any heat behind her scolding. In his own sarcastic way, Trace was defending her. Wilhemina was up to her old tricks again, spreading the news about Mary Rose and nonsense about the wedding dress. Seeing what was happening, Trace admitted to Jenny her strategy was sound. He told her he’d join the battle, but she’d owe him.

“Expect to pay up as soon as we get home,” he told her, his steamy gaze dropping to the swell of her breasts, teasingly hid by the lace. “You can leave the dress on.”

Then, although it obviously bothered him to do so, he abandoned his efforts to fend off her admirers and went to work. Jenny observed in amazement. Her husband was amazing. The twist he put on the story went a long way toward neutralizing the effects of the gossip. While it annoyed her that the townsfolk seemed to accept a man’s word over a woman’s, she wasn’t fool enough to look a gift horse in the mouth—especially not one who’d advanced to the trot, walk, and stop stage.

Jenny smiled at her own metaphorical wit as she spotted young Casey Tate handing her husband a message. He frowned down at the note, then looked up, his gaze unerringly finding hers. He shrugged and tucked the paper into his pocket.

Jenny excused herself from the dance she was tolerating with Martha Clark’s wandering-handed husband and crossed the room to Trace. She identified annoyance rather than concern in his expression, so she knew the note had nothing to do with the girls.

“What is it?” she asked upon reaching him.

“Nothing much. An old customer of mine at the End of the Line is traveling through town. He was looking for me down at the saloon. Wanted to have a drink.”

An excuse to leave! Jenny almost kissed him right there in public. She’d had her fill of fending off both subtle and blatant masculine advances. “Wonderful. You can drop me by the house on the way to the Acre.”

He took a step toward her. “You want to leave already? What happened? Did somebody bother you? Say something? What?”

My, the man looked fierce. Jenny smiled. She’d been right. They had progressed to the trot, walk, and stop stage. “Nothing. I—or I should say we—have accomplished what we came for.”

He called for their buggy and retrieved their coats. They made the trip home quickly. As he helped her from the carriage, Jenny asked, “Do you think you’ll be long with your friend? I need to prepare myself for my … punishment.”

Emerald eyes blazed in the moonlight. “How long do you need to prepare?”

She shrugged. “At least two hours.”

“I’ll be home in an hour and a half.”

He walked her to the door, then took her in his arms. Bending his head, he took her mouth in a thorough, yet gentle kiss. “One hour,” he said, his voice low and rough.

Jenny smiled to herself as she entered the house. Seated on the horsehair sofa in the parlor, Mrs. Wilson looked up with surprise from the book she was reading. “Home already?”

“Yes. Trace had some business to attend to. I was glad to leave. Even though she wasn’t in attendance, Ethel Baumgardner was everywhere I looked.”

They talked about the ball for a few moments, the dresses the ladies wore and their reaction to Jenny’s. Mrs. Wilson offered the news that the girls had conked out early and had all ended up in Maribeth’s room that night.

The housekeeper departed for home and Jenny went upstairs. Peeking into Maribeth’s room, she noted three shapes piled beneath the bedcovers. She stepped into the room intending to kiss them good night when the doorbell rang.

Mrs. Wilson must have forgotten something.

Jenny hurried downstairs, hoping to catch the door before the bell rang again. Katrina was a light sleeper and the chimes had awakened her upon occasion in the past. As much as she loved the girls, she looked forward to her husband’s return. She’d rather avoid interruptions from a sleepy, doorbell-awakened seven-year-old.

The chimes sounded again just as she reached the bottom of the stairs. “I’m coming, Mrs. Wilson,” she said a tad bit impatiently.

Jenny flipped the bolt on the lock and opened the door.

Right into the barrel of a gun.

THREE SHADOWS ran through the streets, keeping close to buildings and hedges in hopes of reaching their destination undetected. They raced silently and swiftly and managed to stay well hidden until the rising moon emerged from behind a cloud and illuminated three sets of pigtails.

Leading the way, Maribeth looked over her shoulder and said, “We’re gonna get caught and Papa’s gonna kill us.”

Emma, in the rear, muttered, “Hush, Mari. We won’t get caught if you run with your feet instead of your mouth.”

“My tummy hurts,” Katrina whined. “Can’t we stop for just a little bit?”

“No!” her sisters cried in unison.

“Why not?”

At the murky mouth of an alley where darkness shielded them from discovery, Maribeth stopped short and whirled on her sister. “Because we have to get home! Mrs. Wilson might decide to do more than simply look in on us. Or even worse, Papa and Mama might come home early. They come kiss us every single night. They’re bound to notice they’re kissing our pillows rather than our faces.”

“Let’s go,” Emma insisted, pushing past her sister. “Every minute counts. We’ve been awfully lucky so far tonight.”

That much was true. Eagle-eyed Mrs. Wilson had actually been distracted this evening. Ever since the railroad robbery, she’d become a real problem, keeping tabs on the three of them with a zeal that bordered on religious. Lucky for them tonight she’d lost herself in the suspenseful pleasures of a novel she’d yammered on about most of the day. They’d been able to sneak past her with relative ease.

“I don’t know why y’all are being so fussy,” Katrina said, a whine in her voice as she clutched a squirming bundle to her chest. “Nothing bad happened. Sassy didn’t hurt a thing.”

Maribeth grabbed hold of one her younger sister’s pigtails and tugged her along, muttering in a whisper as they ran. “She would have if we hadn’t gone to let her out after you told us you’d left her inside Fortune’s Design. That was so stupid, Kat. That animal is not a house pet. She’s an armadillo! They’re night hunters, you know. She might have shredded Mama’s midnight-blue silk with gold and silver threads!”

“Let me go! You’re hurting me! And Mama keeps that bolt of cloth at home. I’ve seen it under hers and Papa’s bed.”

“Hush, you two,” Emma snapped.

Maribeth ground her teeth in frustration as she hurried with her sisters down the black streets of the residential neighborhood. Knowing she was as much at fault as Kat made her feel miserable. It had been her idea to take the baby armadillo along on their visit to the Cosmopolitan Hotel to show Mrs. Raines. Kat would never have taken Sassy to Fortune’s Design if Maribeth hadn’t hauled it into the hotel first.

As they ran through the streets, she glanced into the sky, praying for a cloud to block the moon. They were bound to get caught; she just knew it. “Papa’s gonna tan our hides for sure.”

Emma would have told her sister to hush again had her lungs not been straining for breath after the run up the hill toward home. She tried not to breathe too loudly as she led the way along the side of Willow Hill. Abruptly, she stopped and her sisters piled into her. “Oh gosh,” she whispered, staring in horror at the scene playing out on the front porch. “Oh, my gosh.”

Hearing Katrina start to speak, she quickly shoved a hand across her mouth. “Hush, Kat,” she whispered in her ear. “Fairy’s promise.”

Fairy’s promise was an old McBride Menace tradition that meant something along the lines of “I’m being serious, and you need to pay attention to me.”

Maribeth leaned forward as Katrina nodded. Emma laid a finger against her mouth, and in the dim light of the moon she watched her sister’s eyes round with concern.

“What’s going on?” Maribeth mouthed.

“It’s Mama!” she hissed.

Just then, a man’s threatening voice rumbled through the night. “Well, well, well, if it isn’t the blushing bride. Just the person I was looking for.”

Emma heard Jenny ask in a sharp tone, “Who are you? What do you want?”

“Who am I?” His sinister chuckle sent shivers up Emma’s spine. “Don’t tell me you don’t recognize me, darlin’. Why that purely breaks my heart.”

Maribeth scooched next to Emma, peered around the corner, then whispered in her sister’s ear, “Who is he?”

“I don’t know.”

“Neither does Mama.” Katrina stated the obvious, her voice quavering.

The gunman said, “We met only once before, Mrs. McBride. Of course, you were Miss Fortune then. But I’ve heard a lot about you, more than I ever cared to hear, to be truthful. Now, I want you to walk with me out to the street nice and easy like.”

“I’m not going anywhere. I don’t have to. My husband undoubtedly has a gun pointed on you this minute.”

“Your husband is down at the End of the Line, looking for someone who isn’t there.” He gestured for her to move along.

Jenny hesitated, but when he lifted the gun threateningly, she did as he demanded. “Who are you?” she asked. “What do you want? Where do you think you are taking me?”

“I have a wagon waiting, and we’re gonna enjoy a nice little ride out to the Lucky Lady.”

“The Lucky Lady?” There was a moment’s silence, then Jenny exclaimed, “That’s it! You’re a Bailey, the one from the train.”

“You can call me Frank, darlin’. After all, considering the plans I have in mind for you, I reckon we should be on a first-name basis.” He laughed softly.

The sound crawled down Emma’s spine. She had the sudden notion she might hear it again in her nightmares. She watched fearfully as he gestured for her to descend the front steps.

Jenny took but a single step. “What plans?”

He said something softly that the girls couldn’t hear, but their mother’s reaction told them plenty.

“No!” she cried, lunging for the gun.

Bailey swept the revolver high above his head and out of her reach. Then he slammed her up against the house. Emma gasped, Katrina squeaked, and Maribeth murmured a naughty word. They didn’t need to worry about being overheard, however, because the scuffle on the porch was becoming quite loud.

Jenny struggled with the Bailey man. She kicked and fought and grabbed for his gun, but he managed to drag her down the steps into the yard. He had one arm wrapped around her, and his hand covered her mouth. “Be still,” he growled. “I don’t want to hurt you now, but I will if I have to.”

“Enough of this,” Maribeth said, starting forward. “We have to help Mama!”

Emma grabbed her, holding her back. “You can’t Mari. He’s got a gun. Mama wouldn’t want you to. We’ll go get help. One of the neighbors.”

Katrina tugged on Maribeth’s blouse. “Let’s go get Papa. He’ll help.”

“But—”

Her protest was interrupted by Frank Bailey’s muffled cry of rage. “Goddammit. You little bitch!”

“She bit him!” Katrina exclaimed, clutching Maribeth’s arm. “I saw her teeth. Did you see that? She bit him.”

“He sounds so angry. Let’s get help now. Come on!” Maribeth darted down the hill toward the nearest house and Katrina followed on her heels. Emma hesitated, sending one last glance in her mother’s direction. What she witnessed in that instant was the worst thing she’d seen in her entire life.