The True Love Wedding Dress (26 page)

With his fingers on the doorknob and one foot across the threshold, he shouted in a particularly gruff voice, “Tell Liza I’ll be home in time for her dinner.”

P
enny studied herself in the mirror, turning first left, then right. She tweaked the satin bow at her waist and fluffed her forest green skirts.

“Well, it isn’t gray or brown,” she said approvingly, as she reached for another pin to tame her hair.

Mrs. Murphy, having learned that Penny owned only two dresses, had insisted on cutting down one of her old gowns, claiming that such a young girl shouldn’t be dressed, as the widow described it, “in the color of spit or mud.” Penny had been reluctant to accept the widow’s charity, but Eliza’s wheedling had ultimately melted her resolve.

Having made a final adjustment to the bow, Penny was feeling very glad that she had accepted the dress in spite of her misgivings. Except for those magical moments dancing through the attic in the ivory gown, Penny had never felt so feminine. So pretty.

She knew there was no reason to be making a fuss over her appearance. In fact, it would have been far wiser to have worn her old brown linsey and left her hair in its slipshod topknot. But since yesterday she’d been feeling as though she wanted to take a bit more care with her toilet and had been attempting to convince herself that this impulse had nothing to do with her reaction to seeing Eliza’s father in the bathtub.

Truth be told, she had been stunned. Stunned speechless. Breathless.

In the first place, she had not expected to find anyone in the kitchen, so to have discovered a man bathing had been sufficiently shocking. But then, after realizing that the filthy, hairy beast she had identified as Josh Cooper had transformed into someone young and handsome with muscled arms and sleek, dark hair . . .

Penny frowned at her reflection and gave her cheeks a robust pinch, which was done more as a reprimand than to bring color to her complexion.

“Gracious, aren’t you ridiculous?” she chided herself. “Why, he doesn’t even want you here, you ninny.”

Besides, a bath and a shave only changed a man so much. Josh Cooper was still Josh Cooper, and from the little she knew of him, she suspected that he must be a hard man. After all, what kind of father left his daughter alone for weeks at a time with no one but Macgorrie for companionship?

Holding fast to that question, and to her resolve not to behave foolishly, Penny went to see about dinner. She hadn’t gone more than two paces down the hall, however, before she stopped. She sniffed.

Smoke?

By the time she reached the dining room, her hair had already begun to tumble from its carefully wrought coiffure, and her lovely bow had come loose.

“Oh, dammit,” she murmured, glancing upward to where smoke drifted into the ceiling’s corners, appearing very much like the ribbons of fog that regularly drifted above Elliott Bay. She supposed this was her comeuppance for being overly ambitious. She ought to have begun simply, as the widow had counseled, with just the blancmange.

“Don’t worry,” Josh said, coming up from behind her so that she nearly jumped from her skin. “Macgorrie saved your roast.”

“How?”

“I believe that he has cut off the crusty black parts and put the rest into a stew.”

Penny covered her eyes, undecided if she wanted to laugh at her ineptitude or shed a grateful tear for Macgorrie’s assistance.

“All right, I’ve learned my lesson. From now on, I’ll leave the cooking to those who know what they are doing.”

“Nah.” Josh sidled a step closer, bringing with him a faint odor of spirits. “Everyone has to begin somewhere. You’ll do better with practice.”

Penny inched backward. “Maybe.”

“Trust me.”

However, at that particular moment, Josh Cooper appeared a million miles away from trustworthy. In fact, he looked to her to be positively dangerous, the way his slate blue eyes glinted, and with the half smile that lurked at the corners of his mouth. Standing so close, Penny was struck again by his height as he loomed over her, his shoulders nearly as wide as the doorway behind him.

“I, um—” She felt her mouth go dry.

Luckily, Eliza bounced into the room at that moment, her cloud of curls unusually buoyant.

“I think it’s going to rain,” the child announced. “Look,” she invited, pointing to her head. Eliza held to the theory that she could predict wet weather by her hair’s degree of unruliness.

“My,” Penny agreed, glad for the distraction as she walked over to peek out the window. “If those curls are any indication, a monstrous storm must be brewing.”

Despite the lingering smell of burnt beef, the birthday dinner proved to be a success, thanks to Macgorrie’s quick thinking and the almost edible blancmange. Josh poured blackberry wine liberally, while Eliza steered the conversation time and again to any trivial commonality shared between Josh and Penny.

“Isn’t it interesting, Papa,” Eliza commented, “that you and Penny both like to play hazard?”

Or, “Did you know, Penny, that Papa’s birthday is in March, just like yours?”

One particularly frivolous observation concerning a shared fondness for asparagus caused Josh and Penny to exchange knowing glances across the table. However, as soon as their eyes had met, Penny wished she had not looked in his direction, for there was more in his regard than merely amusement. She nervously cast her gaze to her fingers twined together in her lap.

She, better than most women, recognized the effects of drink on men; she understood why Josh’s mood continued to improve in direct relation to the amount of wine he’d consumed. Still, she felt strange and uncomfortable as she sat there, examining her tattered fingernails, his gaze upon her.

Although Penny had years of experience in deflecting the interest of drunken men—and was admittedly skilled at it, having mastered all sorts of tricks involving bony elbows, hot drinks, and broom handles—never had she found herself in a situation where she felt attracted to any of those same tipsy men. But she had a niggling suspicion, even a growing fear, that she might be attracted to Josh Cooper. How else might she explain her cotton-dry mouth, her restless hands, her uneasy stomach?

Well, to be fair, the blancmange might have had something to do with her unsettled stomach. But what about the rest of it?

He wasn’t at all the kind of man she had imagined she would be attracted to. In her fantasies, she had pictured a princely gentleman, fair-haired and charming, who spoke French. Or maybe Italian. He would be poetic and suave, with big, brown, expressive eyes. She snuck a peek across the table. He wasn’t supposed to have cobalt eyes flecked with shards of silver that seemed to cut right through her as if she were made of warm butter.

She took a breath, thinking that her insides rather felt like warm butter. Soft and pliant. Perhaps she had had a wee bit too much wine herself.

“Well, if you’ll excuse me.” She stood, suddenly eager to retire. “It’s been a lovely party and a very long day, so I’ll bid you all a pleasant good night.”

“So early?” Eliza asked, her disappointment plain.

“It’s not that early,” Penny said. “In fact, I think it’s close to your bedtime, as well.”

As she pushed back from her chair, thunder cracked overhead, followed by the gentle ping of the storm’s first raindrops. Eliza proudly announced, “I told you so” to no one in particular, while Penny popped her head into the kitchen to thank Macgorrie for washing the dishes, although he had grumpily informed her several times that she shouldn’t be thanking him for doing what he was paid to do.

Eliza was pleading with her father to let her stay awake another hour when Penny quietly slipped away to her room.

She did not know how long she’d been sleeping when she abruptly sat up in bed. The house was dark, the wind like a mournful dirge through the trees. She listened, uncertain as to what sound had awoken her. Had it been Eliza, frightened by the storm? Or had it been the thunder and wind?

Knowing she wouldn’t be able to fall back to sleep without checking, she threw her shawl over her shoulders and tiptoed down the chilly hall. The parlor’s grandfather clock chimed two o’clock. The child’s bedroom door stood ajar. She stole a quick look through the narrow opening and saw that Eliza lay as peacefully as a veritable angel, her white-blond hair spread across her pillow. Penny was about to withdraw when a flash of lightning cast a glow into the room, illuminating a figure in the chair beside the bed. Her breath caught before she recognized Josh Cooper.

She inched backward, careful not to draw his notice. But his attention was fixed on the sleeping child, as he sat there simply staring at his daughter. Curious, Penny hung back, watching him watch Eliza. What was he doing here at this time of night?

She probably stood there a minute or two, until another burst of lightning flickered through the room, allowing her a fleeting glimpse of Josh’s face. The ghostly light threw into relief the sharp planes of his cheekbones, the strong line of his jaw. But what caused her heart to turn over was the raw emotion she read in his expression. She would not have believed she knew the man well enough to see all that she saw in his face, yet she could not deny what she had witnessed. And what she felt.

She backed away, strangely moved by the tenderness in his expression. But it had been more than tenderness; she had also sensed vulnerability and yearning. As if he were a man desperate for something that would forever elude him.

Her thoughts heavy, she wrapped the woolen shawl more tightly around her and headed back down the shadowy hallway.

 

Josh wasn’t a praying man, but sometimes he wished he was, because he damned sure could have used some divine guidance from time to time. Like now.

Leaning forward, he pulled the blanket up to Eliza’s shoulders to ward off the chill night.

God, just look at her.
She was so beautiful. So perfect. How could anything so delicate and precious have come from him?

Her hand lay outstretched on the satin counterpane, her lips slightly open, parted by shallow breaths. She lay in the darkness, so trusting. Trusting that he would take care of her. Trusting that he would make the right decisions for her.

If only he knew how.

At eleven years old, she seemed to know a lot better than he did what she needed.

After watching Eliza and Penny these last couple of days, Josh had gained a much clearer picture of what had caused Eliza to hatch her harebrained scheme in the first place. Apparently, a young girl needed giggling and petting and cooing. The feminine fussing over colored ribbons, and the messy dipping of cookies in milk, and the gentle humming while brushing out wet hair.

He didn’t know how to give Eliza all of that. He didn’t know how to be a mother.

But perhaps . . .

Perhaps he could
give
her one.

He dropped his head into his hands, laughing softly at himself.

Hell, who was he kidding? He was merely looking for excuses, wasn’t he? Was his greatest concern really finding a mother for Eliza? Or, could he be honest for once and admit that he wanted that redhead for himself?

He squeezed his temples until he could feel the blood pounding beneath his fingertips.

Stop it,
he told himself. Just because a man got an itch in his pants didn’t mean he married a woman he barely knew. Particularly not after managing to dodge every other matrimony-minded miss who had crossed his path these last six years. Then again, he had married Madeline when he’d known her not at all. And he sure as hell hadn’t been itching in his pants for her.

Josh felt a pang of regret, thinking of Madeline, aware that he hadn’t been much of a husband to her. He had wanted to love her—he’d tried. And she had been a fine, decent woman in many ways. She just hadn’t been his woman.

No, he needed someone fiery and sassy and earthy. A woman who was strong enough not to be intimidated by him or his wealth or by the challenge of frontier living. Someone with curvy hips and long legs and a mouth that was made for—

“Christ.”

Josh burst out of the chair.
Enough.
He didn’t care if it was the middle of the night, he was going to run over to Rose’s and take care of business even if he had to knock down the damned door.

In his rush, he didn’t see the figure at the other end of the hallway until he’d nearly walked into her. She wore a plain cotton night rail and a shawl.

“What are you doing awake?” he asked in a hoarse whisper, irritated that he’d not seen her, and even more irritated that he hadn’t the sense to march away that very instant.

“I thought I heard Eliza.”

She was too close. She smelled too good.

“You should go to bed.”

“I will.”

Yet she did not move. What was the matter with her? Couldn’t she tell that he was as randy as the proverbial goat? That he was seconds away from doing something insane that he couldn’t blame on whiskey and wine?

As a test—of himself or of her?—he placed his hand on her elbow. “Go to bed. It’s cold. You’ll catch a chill.”

But where his fingers wrapped around her arm, there was nothing but heat. Heat spreading up into his shoulder, across his chest, everywhere.

Still she did not pull away.

Slowly he bent toward her, waiting for her to wrench free of his grasp. He came closer, his gaze fixed on her mouth, giving her plain notice of his intent and ample time in which to say no. Her lips trembled, but she merely let her lashes flutter closed as she leaned into him.

A voice inside warned him that he was playing with fire, flirting with madness. By God, he was supposed to put the woman on a steamer next week. All the same, since the moment he had seen her in the attic, a radiant vision in white satin, he had scarcely been able to think of anything else.