The Bad Luck Wedding Dress (3 page)

Telling himself he did this only for education’s sake to discipline his daughters more appropriately, Trace hunkered down and peered into the opening.

He couldn’t see a thing. He glanced toward the doorway, checking to see that the girls hadn’t sneaked back to watch him. Then he knelt on his hands and knees and put his eye to the hole.

What he saw nearly blinded him. Miss Jenny Fortune stood directly beneath him, the Bad Luck Wedding Dress in her hands. She was stripped down to her corset.

Good God. How the hell had he ever thought her plain?

If you put one sock on inside out,

you must set it right before taking a single step to avoid bad luck.

CHAPTER 2

SOME DAYS WERE SWEET as ginger cookies, Jenny thought, gazing into the dressing room mirror.

Today was buttermilk gone bad.

Her eyes felt gritty from all of her weeping, and her nose glowed as red as a porch light in Hell’s Half Acre. She hated to cry. She considered it a surrender to weakness. Or, to a trait even less admirable.

Jenny had grown up watching her mother use tears to manipulate those around her. She had promised herself long ago never to stoop to such feminine wiles.

Weeping in private wasn’t quite the same thing, she tried to reassure herself. And after the scene with Mrs. Peters, then finding the dress on her doorstep and reading the threatening note, crying had seemed the natural thing to do. She’d carried the gown inside, locked the door, and proceeded to all but ruin the fabric with her tears.

To top off her day, at that point her mother had shown up.

“I’ve a train to catch,” Monique Day had said, breezing into the shop on a trail of spicy French perfume. “I’m off to visit your father. I’ve only a few minutes to spare, but I wanted news about these rumors I’ve been hearing.”

“Rumors?” Jenny had repeated, curious as to what nonsense had reached her mother’s ears. Monique lived thirty miles east of Fort Worth in Dallas. Richard Fortune lived another hundred miles east from there. The trip to Fort Worth had not been a casual visit, no matter how abbreviated the stop.

“The seamstress in Dallas has been telling the local ladies something about bad luck.”

Ethel Baumgardner
. Jenny had silently cursed the woman’s name. Central Texas was big enough for two dressmakers. Ethel didn’t have to go out of her way to hurt Fortune’s Design.

“Well?” Monique had demanded.

Jenny appreciated her mother’s concern, but even more welcome was the news that the stay would be brief. Monique could be as taxing as hundred degree heat.

After filling her mother in on the details, Jenny had acquiesced to the demand to see the infamous dress modeled. “Blast Ethel Baumgardner, and blast Wilhemina Peters, too,” she now muttered, stepping into the skirt of the exquisite white silk taffeta gown. “At least Ethel has a reason for spreading rumors. Wilhemina simply has a gossiping tongue. I hope she bites it. I hope her husband replaces that column of hers in the newspaper with a cattle report.”

“Now, dear. No need to moo on about it,” Monique called from outside the dressing room curtain. Laughter at her own joke filled the small shop.

Jenny sighed. Her problems weren’t Mrs. Peters’s fault, or Ethel Baumgardner’s either. They hadn’t coined the term now being used for this dress. That was all Big Jack Bailey’s doing.

Monique was right, and her daughter found the fact profoundly annoying.

“I need help with the buttons, Monique,” she called as she pushed her arms through the sleeves of the two- piece dress. Tugging the material over her shoulders, she smoothed the bodice, then stared into the mirror. The gown had survived both the Baileys’ mishandling and her own waterworks with little obvious damage. It
was
a lovely dress. Her masterpiece.

Jenny’s laugh echoed hollowly in the tiny room. Her nightmare, more to the truth.

“What is it, child?” her mother asked, pushing back the curtain and stepping inside.

“It’s the Bad Luck Wedding Dress.” Jenny lifted her hand and her fingers trailed over the chiffon trim and seed- pearl-beaded fringe, then across the swag of pearls down the skirt front panel. “I billed Big Jack Bailey five hundred dollars for this gown—enough for a small farm—and although he fussed about it, he paid the price.”

Monique withheld comment as she fastened the row of pearl buttons up the back. She stepped away and both women studied the results.

Elegant simplicity was the look Jenny had intended, and she’d achieved it with this design. This dress should have secured her reputation and her future. She stood on tiptoe, lifting the hem from the floor, and a wry smile touched her lips. The dress was giving her a reputation, all right.

Her gaze caught on the pearl-trimmed rosette at the neck. The wedding gown was perfect, as beautiful as any Worth, himself, might have designed. A sense of purpose filled her and chased any lingering sadness from her eyes. “I’ll tell you this, Mother. I refuse to allow these silly rumors to ruin my future. I’ll save Fortune’s Design if it’s the last thing I do.”

Arms folded and a tender smile on her lips, Monique nodded. “The gown is everything I heard it was. My congratulations. You obviously get your flair for design from me. So, what do you plan to do?”

It went without saying that Monique would support her daughter as best she could. It also went unspoken that Jenny preferred to deal with her problems herself, experiences of her youth having taught her the advantage of such a course. One should not depend on others. They would fail a person when she needed them the most. Independence must be the ultimate goal.

That way, the only person able to fail you is yourself.

“I don’t know,” she told her mother. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Well, you must decide. You must have a plan.”

Minutes passed as Jenny stared at her reflection in the mirror, considering and discarding different methods of dealing with these ruinous rumors. “I’d like your advice,” she said finally. “Converting difficulties into advantages is one of your specialties, after all.”

Monique’s smile was almost wicked. A sculptress of renown in Europe, Monique and Dr. Richard Fortune had been the source of so much scandal that the pair had fled their home in England, eventually landing in Texas a year before Jenny was born. Texas proved to be a good place for Monique to live and work. The state attracted all sorts of strange characters, so the outrageous artist and her single-minded lover had fit right in.

At least, for a time. Texas grew more conservative with every year that passed; Monique Day’s reputation kept pace in the opposite direction. She thrived on scandal, and the proof of it now glimmered in her eyes. She thoughtfully tapped a finger against her lips, then said, “You should take the Bad Luck label and turn it into something women covet.”

“I want the entire subject to fade quietly away,” her daughter grumbled.

“But that will never happen, will it?”

Jenny shrugged. Although she took after her mother with her penchant for autonomy, she also was a realist, a side of her nature she inherited from her father. As surely as the dress in the mirror was white, this rumor wouldn’t go away without help. So, what was she going to do about it?

Jenny turned sideways, eyeing the profile of the dress. Simple and elegant and too tight in the bust. Those Bailey girls were flat-chested women. “If I were to wear the dress, I’d need to let out the seams in the bodice and take them in on the skirt. I’d need—”

Monique clapped her hands. “Wait. Don’t say another word.” She gazed shrewdly at the dress and said, “Yes. It’s perfect!”

“What’s perfect?”

“Why, for you to wear the dress, of course. What better way to disprove this silly idea that a dress can create bad luck than to wear it yourself? Preferably at a wedding. Your own wedding.”

For just a moment, Jenny considered it. Then she sadly shook her head. “It wouldn’t work, Monique.”

“Certainly it would,” her mother replied. “Trust my judgment in this. After all, didn’t you just ask for my advice?”

“But—”

Monique interrupted with a martyred sigh. “That’s the story of my life. She asks and then she never listens.” Lifting her nose into the air, she exited the dressing room in a whirl of petticoat and perfume.

Jenny followed, searching for the words to convey both her appreciation for her mother’s efforts and her doubts about the outcome of such a plan. Monique took a seat at her daughter’s worktable and flipped through a stack of designs. She pointed to a sketch of a ball gown with a plunging neckline and said, “I’d like one of these. In yellow, I believe. For the Christmas Ball.”

“Yellow in December?”

Her mother gave her a droll look. “Jenny, you forget to whom you are talking.”

“No, I don’t.” Despite her troubles, a smile tugged at the corners of Jenny’s mouth. “I’m fully aware that you could wear a costume toga to a formal ball and still be the belle of the evening.”

Monique nodded, taking the compliment as her due.

“But I have a bolt of emerald silk perfect for you,” Jenny continued. “I love sewing for you, Monique. You do my designs better justice than any other woman in Texas. Although, now that I think about it, for your figure I believe I should alter the line of the—”

“Whatever.” Monique grasped her daughter’s hand. “I trust your judgment where fashion is concerned, Jenny. But in other areas…” She gave the fingers a squeeze. “I’ve been waiting for you to marry for years. Not for grandchildren, mind you,” she added with a shudder. “I’m not that old.”

“Monique, I’m happy by myself. I don’t need a man.”

Her mother dropped Jenny’s hand, held her own hands palms up, and lifted her face toward the heavens. “That a daughter of mine would actually put voice to such drivel.”

“Mother.”

“Sit down, Jenny.”

“But—”

“Please?”

Jenny sat.

Monique smiled gently and said, “I understand your feelings toward marriage. I know you think I don’t, but you are wrong. I hate to see you living alone. I want you to know the joy a woman can find with a man—the right man. A bliss such as what I’ve found with your father.”

“Bliss?” Jenny scoffed, rubbing her forehead with her fingers. “Monique, you’ve divorced him three times.”

Monique waved a hand. “Don’t confuse me. I’m attempting to make a point here.”

Jenny stopped herself from rolling her eyes. “And what point is that?”

“I believe you are waiting for love, am I right?”

Jenny didn’t want to talk about this with her mother any more than she’d wanted to talk about the Bailey girls with Wilhemina Peters. “Mother—”

“That’s your problem; you can’t expect too much too soon. True love isn’t something that occurs overnight. True love takes time to build; time and shared experiences to strengthen the bond between two people.”

“Like the true love you built with Papa?” Jenny asked sarcastically.

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Of course we didn’t have true love from the first. We had great passion. Love grew from that.”

“I don’t think we should be discussing this.”

The older woman gave a frustrated snort. “And who better to discuss such matters with than your own mother? Listen to me. This is important. You do not need love to lust for another, Jenny, and sometimes lust can lead to something deeper. You are twenty-three years old. Have you ever surrendered to a man?”

Jenny’s back snapped straight. “No, Mother, and I never will.”

Monique waved a hand. “Perhaps surrender was a poor choice of words, but you know what I’m asking. Jenny, are you a virgin?”

“What a thing to ask your daughter!”

“Well, you asked for my advice, and I’m simply trying to help. Marriage is the ideal solution to your problem and you’ve always been so set against it. I’m thinking a little experience might prove to you what pleasures you are missing.”

Jenny hung her head. This conversation was a perfect example of just how different her upbringing had been. Most young women were cautioned against surrendering to passion by their mothers; Jenny was being encouraged. She closed her eyes. “I appreciate your point, but I’m afraid I can’t view marriage and love and … relations with a man in the same light as you. I’ve never been the free spirit you are.”

“Your father’s influence, I fear,” the artist replied, sniffing with disdain.

Conviction rang in Jenny’s voice. “Nevertheless, I’d rather be a spinster than be trapped in a loveless marriage.” With that, she stood and walked regally to the dressing room, suddenly feeling the need to be free of both the wedding gown and her mother.

“Ah-hah.” Monique followed her, shaking a finger. “But that’s not the question, is it? The question is whether you would rather be your father’s assistant living at Thicket Glen than be married and run your own business.”

Jenny grimaced. “I’ll solve my problems another way.”

“Marriage would be the easiest.”

“Marriage is never easy. I’d think you of all people would admit that. And it would not work. A marriage made for such reasons is bound to fail.”

“Now, Jenny—”

“I know what you’re going to say,” she interrupted, her frown deepening as she noticed a tear in the dress’s trim. The taffeta rustled as she lifted the skirt to check for damage. “You know how I feel about divorce.”

Monique waved her hand. “Oh, all right. I don’t have time to waste time with that old argument, anyway. I do have a train to catch, you remember.”

“I can fix this.” Jenny murmured, then breathed a sigh of relief that had nothing to do with the rip in the trim. She simply didn’t have the energy to debate the merits of divorce with her mother this afternoon. As the product of such an on-and-off-again union as that of her mother and father, Jenny’s views on divorce differed substantially from Monique’s. They’d argued the question on numerous occasions.

The older woman’s brow lifted as she gave her daughter a pointed look. “You did ask for my opinion.”

“My mistake,” she muttered under her breath.

“I heard that, and I want to say you are being terribly unkind to a mother who wants only the best for her child. Proving the dress to be free of bad luck is a good idea, and I think you are foolish to dismiss it out of hand.”

Jenny knew she’d hurt her mother, and she felt guilty because of it. Adopting a conciliatory tone, she said, “You’re right, Mother. I’m sorry.” She worked the buttons on the left sleeve. “I’ll admit your idea has some merit, but I’m afraid it’s a moot point. I don’t have a beau.”

“Oh, dear.” Her mother groaned. “Not one?”

Jenny lifted her shoulders in reply.

Monique laid her hand against her chest. “I am scandalized. Simply scandalized. My heavens, you may have my features, but you certainly have more of your father in you than what is healthy. It’s bad enough that you disguise your beauty with that silly chignon and the dull colors you choose. You know I never have agreed with your idea that a modiste shouldn’t outshine her customers. It seems to me that you should be your own best advertisement.”