The True Love Wedding Dress (23 page)

Penny sank back against the banquette, undecided as to whether she was more cross than she was relieved, or more relieved than she was cross. How in the name of the saints had this wee thing, who couldn’t weigh even four stone, arranged to bring her here from a continent away? Why, the fact that the child had accomplished such a feat was remarkable. Unsettling, even.

Nevertheless, Penny knew she wasn’t in any position to be persnickety about gainful employment. Not when the most valuable item in her coin purse was the dried remains of a four-leaf clover. The truth was she’d simply had to get out of Boston, and this child had managed to make that happen. And at least the job would provide her with steady employment and room and board. Besides, she could scarcely start pointing fingers and preaching to the child about honesty and the like. Not when she herself had been less than forthcoming in this affair. As Lewis had always said, “Desperate times call for desperate measures.” And Penny was desperate, no question about it.

Even so, to work as a nanny for this little girl who gave every indication of being ten times too intelligent and a hundred times too clever for the likes of one Penelope Colleen Martin?

Yet . . . what choice did she have?

“What choice indeed?” Penny asked herself, as she rose from the chair, rubbing lightly at her forehead as though to wipe away the confusion of that day. Because once she had thought about it, she’d realized that she’d had no choice. There was nothing for her in Boston. Nothing but trouble. And she’d spent nearly two months sailing from one part of the world to the other so that she could start anew. So what else was there to do? If she could pretend to be a teacher, she could just as easily pretend to be a governess. . . . Couldn’t she?

Luckily—and Penny fervently believed in luck—she and Eliza had gotten along right from the start. Eliza had explained that because of his business, her father only visited from time to time, having placed the taciturn Macgorrie in charge of keeping the house. Eliza never did explain who was in charge of keeping her. Yet if Penny considered it an odd arrangement, she wasn’t about to say so. She didn’t know much about how rich folk lived, and it was evident that the Cooper family, with their grand house, lace curtains and Oriental rugs, were the wealthiest she’d ever met.

As a result, Penny and Eliza had arrived at an unspoken agreement over the last few weeks. They didn’t talk about the past. They didn’t ask each other many questions, instead choosing to pass the time picking blueberries, poring over catalogues, washing each other’s hair, and acting out Eliza’s beloved plays. Even when Penny’s lack of education became obvious during the first few days, Eliza made no mention of her governess’s apparent shortcomings. For this, Penny was grateful. Enormously grateful. As far as she was concerned, she had put Boston behind her, and she wasn’t looking back.

A half-hour later, after rummaging through wardrobes and closets and finding nothing suitable for Titania, Penny decided to have a look in the attic. Upon her arrival at the Cooper home, Macgorrie, who had since avoided Penny like the plague or a bothersome tax collector, had suggested that she could sleep in the garret; Eliza had overruled him and instead had moved Penny into a large, comfortable bedroom on the second floor.

Entering the attic, Penny smiled and mouthed a silent “thank you” to Eliza. Although she had inhabited less inviting quarters in her day, she was still very glad not to be sleeping among the attic’s spiders and dust.

An old rocking chair, a bassinet, a rolled-up carpet, half a dozen lanterns, a row of trunks, and various piles of crates nearly filled the drafty space. The faintest scent of rose water laced the musty dampness. Feeling like a child let loose in a candy store, Penny was wondering where to begin her search when she was drawn to one particular trunk. It was slightly more battered than the others, its leather dark with age, but its brass lock gleamed like a freshly minted coin.

As she walked toward the trunk, her pulse began beating faster. Even stranger, her fingers trembled as she unlatched the clasp. She hesitated, not sure what had caused her to pause. From her memory came the awareness that, months earlier, she had experienced this same sense of premonition when old Mr. Shakely, one of her oldest and dearest customers back in Boston, had pulled from his pocket the well-traveled letter.

Slowly, she pushed up the lid.

“Oh, my,” she whispered. “Oh, my.”

Inside the trunk was a gown. A gown made for a princess, a creation so beautiful that Penny felt the surprising prick of tears at the corners of her eyes. Like frothy mounds of freshly whipped cream, yards and yards of satin billowed and swelled, shimmering in the softest of ivory hues. Adorning the satin was lace as delicate and intricate as any that Penny might ever have imagined, much less seen.

She could not help herself. An inexplicable compulsion came over her, and she had to know what it felt like to wear such a gown. She did not question whose it might be. She did not worry that she might tear or soil it. She simply had to put it on.

With no concern for the cold, she stripped off her brown linsey dress, and pulled the ivory gown over her chemise. To her amazement, even though she wore no stays—her only corset had split yesterday—the dress fit her to absolute perfection. The skirt hung to the perfect length. The waist fit her exactly. And the décolletage molded to her bosom as though a seamstress had crafted it to her precise measurements.

So thrilled was she that she actually tingled from head to toe. She felt beautiful, wonderful, marvelous. Every girlhood dream of happily-ever-after felt possible when wearing such a gown.

Humming softly, she danced around the attic, dipping and swaying, careful to dodge the ceiling beams. If later asked, she would not have been able to say how long she pirouetted back and forth, savoring the melodious
swish-swish
of the silk, but it seemed scarcely a moment—yet also an eternity. Nevertheless, at some point she recognized that she could not dally in the attic all afternoon. Nor could she demean such loveliness by making use of the gown as a costume for a child’s play. With a deep sense of regret, she told herself that she must put it away. She must. She could not wear it forever. Even if it did feel like something purely magical. . . .

J
oshua Cooper needed a hot bath, a warm bed, and a willing woman. And not necessarily in that order. He’d been riding since well before sunrise, which meant that this was the third day in a row he’d spent fourteen hours in the saddle. On top of that, his shoulder ached like the devil, thanks to his horse having shied and tossed him earlier that morning after a run-in with an ornery trio of skunks. Although he was pretty sure he’d not broken any bones, Josh was less than pleased with the tumble he’d taken. Already sore to the bone and filthy to the core, he had been in a foul enough humor before that unforeseen roll in the mud. Now he was downright cranky.

Grimacing, he spat, the taste of dirt still clinging to his mouth and beard. This last trip, he decided, had been too long. Either that or maybe he was getting too old for this work. Sleeping on the cold, wet ground, living on moldy hardtack, and riding halfway across the Territory and back every few months were taking a toll on his body and his sanity. And what the hell for?

God knew he had enough money stashed away to live like a king for the rest of his days. So why did he keep pushing himself? By all rights, his foremen, competent and trustworthy men all, should be managing the day-to-day operations. There was certainly no need for him to be personally overseeing each facet of his business from Walla Walla to Portland. But old habits died hard, and Josh had been running full steam ahead for twelve years now. Did he know how to slow down? Did he want to?

As he crested the hill, his property came into view, and a sense of pride pulled him a bit taller in the saddle. One of the largest houses in Seattle, it sat on the town’s outskirts on a sizable piece of land. It wasn’t overly fancy like some he’d visited in San Francisco, but it was a proper house, complete with stables, a white picket fence, and a fireplace in nearly every room. It was the kind of house that said the man who owned it was a success.

Josh rode into the stables, hopeful that Eliza had spied him from a window and begun preparations for his bath. But after rubbing down his tired mount, he limped into the back door to find the house disappointingly quiet. Macgorrie wasn’t in his room off the kitchen, and there were no kettles boiling in anticipation of a hot soak, although the lingering aroma of bacon stirred his empty stomach. His daughter, the troublesome imp, was nowhere to be found.

Feeling even more out of sorts because he was going to have to see to his own bath, Josh was kicking off his mud-caked boots when he heard the fall of footsteps from above. He turned his face skyward, realizing that the noise came not from the second floor but from the attic.

“That girl,” he muttered, scratching at his beard. Josh figured if he lived to be a hundred, he’d never understand what Eliza found so interesting about poking through piles of old junk no one had thought about in years.

Stifling a sigh, he headed up the stairs, his steps slow with fatigue, his stomach grumbling with hunger. As he approached, the sound of light footsteps was replaced by a quiet humming. At the back of his mind, Josh wondered if Eliza was suffering from a sore throat—he remembered her voice as being pleasant and musical, not this scratchy, off-tune warbling.

His daughter’s name was poised on his lips as he crossed the attic threshold—

And then he went still.

Silhouetted before the garret’s lone window stood a woman. A woman half clothed.

Her thin white chemise, backlit by the summer sunshine, appeared nearly transparent, displaying firm legs and bountiful curves in agonizing detail. Agonizing to Josh, that is, since he’d not had a woman in more than three months, and his body’s swift response to such a vision bordered on painful.

She was in the process of removing a gown, and thus was slightly bent forward, revealing more creamy flesh than any sane man dared dream about while living alone on the trail as long as Josh had done. A handful of bright coppery-red curls teased her neck, and her expression was soft and dreamy.

Soft and dreamy, however, proved to be all too short-lived. In the next instant, a piercing shriek nearly shredded his eardrums, causing Josh to rear back in surprise and smack the back of his head on an exposed rafter.

As he cussed richly and soundly, he reached for the knot already swelling on his skull, noticing how the woman’s green eyes grew wide. For less than a second, a hint of guilt came over him as he worried that he’d frightened her, but then the trespassing miss boldly ordered, “Out!”

Frantically, she set about dragging the dress over her pale limbs, as Josh felt an annoyed scowl dig into his forehead. Goddammit, what was going on here? Who was this woman who thought she could order him out of his own home? And what in the name of Moses was she doing practically naked in his garret?

“Shoo!” she yelled again, waving him off as one would a stray dog.

That disdainful “shoo”—coupled with his throbbing scalp, shoulder, and groin—pushed Josh from being merely annoyed to feeling full-blown anger.

“Just who the hell are you?” he growled, perhaps more loudly than he had intended.

To his astonishment, the woman straightened to her full height, which wasn’t all that impressive, and shoved her fists onto her hips. The gown, a pretty white frothy thing, clung to every inch of her.

“And just who the hell are
you
?” she retorted, challenging him with a defiant thrust of her chin. Her accent, an odd blend of the deep South and something vaguely Irish, surprised Josh almost as much as the ease with which she swore at him.

“I,” he replied slowly, each word clipped, “am the owner of this house.”

Uncertainty flickered across her face—a lovely face, Josh decided—as she looked him over from the top of his aching head to the tips of his stockinged feet.

“You’re Eliza’s pa?”

Josh would have sworn that her nose actually wrinkled and, while he realized that he probably wasn’t looking his best, he didn’t much appreciate the way she was studying him as if he were a slug on her dinner plate.

Before he could answer, however, or demand the name of the nose-wrinkling intruder, Eliza’s high-pitched voice drifted up from the staircase, calling out, “Hello? Penny, are you up here?”

The woman started.

“I thought,” Eliza continued to call out as she rounded the landing, “we could begin
Midsummer Night’s
—”

In ordinary circumstances, Josh might have laughed at the comical sequence of emotions that played across his daughter’s face. Initially, her eyes lit with delight to see him, and she made a movement to rush into his arms. But just as quickly that light faded to visible trepidation, and she pulled up short, her gaze darting to the woman Josh now assumed to be “Penny.”