Want to win a copy of My Foolish Heart for your very own? Leave a comment on this post and share (all the juicy details please!) (Okay, not that juicy!) with my readers the most romantic date you’ve ever had.
My favorite date will win movie tickets and a copy of My Foolish Heart and 5 runner’s up will win a copy of the book.
On your mark, get set, go! (Contest ends July 15th.)
Thank you so much for entering the giveaway! I’m blessed by your enthusiasm and I hope you enjoy My Foolish Heart. May you all find “a foolish love.”
Thank you, too, for entering the Trivia contest! It’s a delight to see your answers – some of them I like better than the truth.
Congratulations to Victoria Just! You’ve won a copy of My Foolish Heart! Email your mailing address to amy@litfusegroup.com!
Congratulations to Mary Ann Hake! You’ve won a copy of My Foolish Heart and the gift certificate of your choice (Amazon, iTunes, Starbucks)! Email your mailing address and choice to amy@litfusegroup.com!
Congratulations to Laurie Carlson! You’ve won a copy of My Foolish Heart! Email your mailing address to amy@litfusegroup.com!
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Congrats to Jimmy N Matthews Mom! You won a $25 dollar gift certificate to Krispy Kremes Doughnuts! Email your mailing address to amy@litfusegroup.com!
Congrats to James McGowan from Maine! You were with winner of the Win a Romantic Night on the Town from Miss Foolish Heart Giveaway! Send your mailing address to amy@litfusegroup.com and we’ll get your Romantic Night on the way to you!
Just a quick reminder about the My Foolish Heart Giveaway. It ends Thursday at noon and the winner will be announced that night at my Miss Foolish Heart Facebook Party! Can’t wait!
Read what the reviewers are saying here at My Foolish Heart.
Have you heard about the contest? Well if not, here you go… I’ve put together a romantic night on the town for one lucky couple. One grand prize winner will receive a Miss Foolish Heart prize package worth over $200!
The winner of the Romantic Night on the Town Prize Pack will receive:
* A $100 Visa Gift Card (For Dinner)
* A $100 Gift Certificate to a Hyatt/Marriott Hotel
* The entire Deep Haven series
To enter just click one of the icons below. But, hurry, the giveaway ends at noon on June 16th. The winner will be announced that evening during Susan’s Miss Foolish Heart Party on Facebook! Susan will be chatting with guests, hosting a book club chat about My Foolish Heart, testing your Deep Haven trivia skills, and giving away tons of great stuff! (Gift certificates, books, donuts, and more!) Don’t miss the fun and BRING YOUR FRIENDS!
It’s a big event.
See, we have this little donut shop in our town. It’s called the World’s Best Donuts. Because…it is.
The secret of their success is that they are only open in the summertime. From May to September. It’s a long, cold winter and about the end of April, people start doing drive-bys, and the buzz begins…”Do you know when the donut shop is opening?”
Usually, they open right before Memorial Day, and on the first day, they give out free donuts.
Free.
It’s a perfect marketing ploy because right then, you realize what you’ve missed for the last six months. You wonder just how you’ve lived without them. And you make a silent pledge to yourself not allow one day to pass without sneaking in and picking up an 85 cent donut.
So far, it’s working.
I love World’s Best Donuts so much that I put the cute little shop in my recent book, My Foolish Heart. I gave the donut shop to a cute girl named Lucy and threw in some fictionalized local drama, including her old flame returing to town to help save the donut shop from ruin. (egads!) It’s a fun, lighthearted, and romantic subplot that gives readers a hint of life in Deep Haven.
To add to the fun, I decided to document our First Day of Donuts this season. My son put together this little video. Hope you enjoy it.
Sadly, they don’t ship, but you can get a gift certificate. (which means you’d have to visit the lovely town of…um, Deep Haven! ). http://www.worldsbestdonutsmn.com
Off to get my daily donut! (I only have 103 days left until they close for winter, sheesh.)
Have a great donut day!
Susie May
PS – if you can’t load the video, here’s the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=er_sZzjyoCg
PSS – If you want to watch a video of the REAL World’s Best Donuts… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9Y_nNyKN5E
If she could, Dottie would simply erase the next three days off her calendar.
More than any other holiday, Christmas had the power to rip her asunder. A thousand tiny shards of excruciating memory bombarded her as she ventured through Berman’s Grocery store on the annual requisite journey to pad her pantry for the holiday.
Christmas was for those with something to celebrate, with family, and the hope of a better tomorrow. Even Berman’s Grocery store believed that. As if emboldened by the optimism of the new decade, and casting away the specter of rationing over the past five years, they advertised a holiday special on Rock Cornish game hens at thirty-nine cents a pound.
Dottie Morgan picked up the packaged hen. It fit well into her gloved hand, weighing two pounds, maybe a bit more. In all her forty-four years, she’d never had a Rock Cornish game hen.
Behind her, a mother in the bakery section corralled two giggling schoolchildren. Dottie peeked at them—Minnie Dorr, with her little tykes, Guy and Hazel. She recognized the grade schoolers, dressed in their blue-checkered wool jackets, belts hitched around their bulky waists and sweltering in their knitted caps, from the library’s young readers program. Six-year-old Guy could wheedle right under Dottie’s skin like a burr.
Or, a curl of warmth, if she let him.
Dottie turned away from them, dropping the hen back into the cooler. She didn’t need a cart, but hung her wire basket on her arm, passing by the turkeys. She hadn’t purchased a bird in…well, she knew she shouldn’t have stopped by the store on the way home. Today, the place bustled with women stocking up for the holiday, celebration in the air, and it only stirred up the old aches.
Near the canned cranberry sauce hung an advertisement of a jolly Saint Nicholas slaking his thirst with a Coca-Cola, smiling upon two pajama-clad children surrounded by gifts.
At the end of the bakery section a giant velvet stocking bulged with candy canes, Pfeffernusse cookies, and popcorn balls.
A display of ice-skates and holiday lights reminded patrons to visit Berman’s Hardware, next door.
On the radio, Bing Crosby crooned out “Silent Night.”
Memories simply couldn’t be dodged at Christmastime.
Dottie stilled, her hand on a bag of flour, as she watched widow Cora Sundeen march past, her blond hair pulled back from her pretty face and tucked into a black boiled wool hat. Her son hung onto the hem of her matching coat. His ruddy cheeks and blue eyes could devour Dottie whole.
Cora caught sight of Dottie and slowed, her face betraying a second of hesitation before she produced a smile. “Mrs. Morgan! I was just telling Cliffy how, when I was young, we’d celebrate Christmas Eve at the library, with cookies and a story.”
Dottie calculated when she’d last seen Cora, seated at her knee at the library’s Christmas Eve reading, and put the woman at twenty-seven, or older, which meant little Cliffy must be nearly six. Cora probably had only a handful of memories of her fallen soldier husband.
“Oh, Cora…” Dottie looked away, perspiring under her wool coat, wishing, yes, she’d driven straight home. Who needed Cornish hens and eggnog, and plum pudding and fruitcake? After all, who exactly would Dottie cook for? “You know I haven’t had the Christmas story hour…well, it’s been a few years.”
“I know.” Cora’s voice lowered. “But perhaps it’s time to start the old traditions again.” Her arm curled over the shoulder of her son. “For the next generation.”
Dottie had no next generation, but she refused to show that on her face. “Have a lovely holiday, Cora,” she said. She added a smile to soften her librarian tone and turned away from Cora’s fading smile.
The radio announced, “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” and Dottie headed for the door.
Tomorrow. She could return tomorrow when the place might be nearly abandoned, every woman in Frost, Minnesota at home preparing for the holiday weekend.
She just about plowed over Lew Parsons ringing the Salvation Army bell just outside the door. His red velvet Santa-arm hung folded and pinned to his shoulder and he greeted her with a smile.
“Merry Christmas, Mrs. Morgan.” He used his schoolboy tone, despite the fact that he had last year married Henrietta Fitzpatrick and now had a child on the way.
Dottie tacked on the appropriate smile. “And to you, Lew.”
She probably should dig into her handbag and find a dime, but she couldn’t slow. She just might be suffocating, choking on the sweet aroma of too many families who had somehow survived this wretched decade.
As if to add gloom to her mood, the pewter Minnesotan sky had begun to drizzle icy droplets of despair, eating away the meager dusting of snow.
Dottie wrenched open the rusty door to her father’s faded yellow International Harvester truck and climbed onto the bouncy bench seat, the springs whining with the December cold. She’d long ago thrown a blanket over the seat, opting to cover the worn holes rather than replace the car. She wrestled the gearshift into place and eased the truck out of the dirt lot. The rain pinged on the windshield like bullets, as if it had already begun to turn to sleet. She turned on the wiper blades, but they cleaned only a pitiful swath in the middle. She leaned over the wheel to navigate as she turned onto St. Olaf Avenue and headed out of town.
Frost never suffered for holiday decorations. The entire town turned out in early November to embellish the lamps along the road with white pine boughs, hang lights from Miller’s Café and Soda Fountain, and add sparkling lights to Benson’s Creamery and the gilded window of the Frost Weekly News and the First Bank. The Snowflake Theater listed tomorrow night’s opening of Holiday Affair, featuring Janet Leigh and Robert Mitchum. Across the street, J.C. Penny’s boasted a window-sized red-berried wreath over their second-floor window, and at the end of the street, in the circular garden in front of the Frost Community Center—formerly the Germanic Center—the towering blue spruce glowed with twinkly lights against the rain.
Only the star remained absent from the top of the tree. Perhaps it’s time to find the old traditions again…
No. Not yet.
She watched Father O’Donnell throwing plastic over the wooden crèche in front of St Peter’s Catholic Church, then turned left onto Third Street, driving past the community center. Movement inside suggested the local women’s auxiliary bedecking it for tonight’s dance.
The whistle at the mill echoed over the soggy town.
The rain had begun to turn to ice, crystallizing on the windshield. The wiper blades bumped over the glass as they sloughed off the moisture. She passed Central Park, the cottonwoods and oaks shiny with an icy glaze, then crossed the creek at North Street. The river flowed, angry with icy chunks, its spittle grimy below the bridge.
When her father—land owner, banker, mayor of Frost—built their turreted Victorian on the outskirts of town, he’d expected the town to grow and overtake his vast acreage and add to the family coffers.
Unfortunately, the town had grown toward the flour mill side of town and toward the train depot and beyond, so that the ornate, green Victorian with the gingerbread trim and two balconies sat lonely under the knotted embrace of a grove of ancient cottonwoods, resembling something out of a Grimm storybook.
The house overlooked Silver Lake on the south side—more a slough now than a respectable lake. In November, wild turkeys and pheasants took refuge between the stiff cattails and dry milkweeds dissecting the parchment ice. How many times had she wakened to old Barnabus’s wild spaniel barking, or the bone-jarring crack of Gordy’s 16-guage shotgun shattering the pre-dawn air?
Worse, of course, was when she bolted from the bed, her face to the icy window, as if she might catch her son, Nelson’s form out there beside Gordy in the misty dawn, wearing his grandfather’s rabbit shopka, dressed in his brown canvass coveralls, leaning into Gordy’s every word.
Dottie fully blamed the loneliness of this holiday on Gordon Lindholm.
She made out the white pine in her front yard, blowing in the onslaught of the storm. Twenty-plus years it had centered the yard, protected the house from vagabonds who might like a peek into her front windows. Too many branches had turned rusty over the past few years—she would need to prune it to keep it alive.
Hard head stone from the hillside and fields made up a wall that partitioned the main driveway from the Third Street extension. She eased the old International up the hill toward the barn, which served more as a garage for her father’s eccentric collection of cars and electronics. Like the 1929 Roadster. Her father had also owned a Packard Clipper, a sedan he’d purchased right before his death. Dottie had shipped it right back to Minneapolis when it arrived, months later.
Her father always did live too extravagantly. Too many big dreams.
She’d inherited that bit from him, she supposed. But she couldn’t blame her father’s peculiarities for the tragedy of her brief marriage.
No, the state of her life, the lonely creak of the barren house, could only be attributed to her own desperate mistakes.
Dottie slid out of the truck, the rain soaking through her wool coat, the mud slopping over her black dress boots as she tramped to the door of the barn and opened it. She drove the truck inside and parked. In the breathy expanse of the barn, the rain stirred the musty smell of forgotten hay, the remnant odors of the horses that once dwelled within, only bony Ollie left to lounge in the corner stall. Her grandfather’s winter carriage sat dusty and abandoned in another stall, age rusting its steel runners, cracking the two leather bench seats.
Dottie checked on the feed for the horse. Someday she should sell the animal. He hadn’t been ridden in years, ornery as an old mule. In fact, only her son had ever been able to cajole the horse into service.
She closed the barn door and hiked up to the house, her stomach already relishing the beef soup she’d left in the ice box.
Tomorrow, perhaps, she’d purchase one of those game hens, stuff it, and roast it for Christmas day.
Maybe even set the grand table in the dining room for one.
For Nelson, she might try to acknowledge the day of God’s grace for the world, even if His grace hadn’t been extended anymore to her.
Or, perhaps, and more likely, she’d stay home, under her mother’s wedding ring quilt and listen to the silences collect her memories.
If she could summon the courage.
The rain turned her skin to ice, dribbling down her back by the time she reached the mudroom door. Stamping her frozen feet on the mat, she hung her coat on the peg, noticed the woodpile needed stocking, then opened the kitchen door and entered the heat of the house.
Or, rather, no heat. An icy breath clasped the grand house with its too many rooms—fifteen in total—in a crisp silence. No clanging of the old coal stoker, no heat blasting from the giant grate heater in the middle of the family room floor. The chilly floorboards protested, however, as she walked across the kitchen, plunking her purse onto the oak table.
She listened to her heartbeat, closed her eyes. If she wanted—she didn’t even have to try hard—she could hear Nelson’s voice, feel his presence entering the kitchen after her. I’ll check on the stoker. The auger might be clogged. I’ll go break it free.
The rain battered the window and she saw Nelson in her memory, his shoulders broad now, hardened by playing football, or chopping wood, or even loading flour at the mill. He grabbed paper and matches to restart the stoker, tugged on her father’s work jacket—now his—tucked on a derby, and headed outside, around the house to the cellar door.
He had a song on his lips, something from Jack Armstrong, the All American Boy.
“Wave the flag for Hudson High, boys, Show them where we stand.
Ever shall our team be champions.
Known throughout the land. Rah, Rah. Boola boola, boola boola,
Boola boola, boola boo…”
She sighed as the song faded into the deathly still of the house. How she longed to hear him breaking apart the coal, the hammering pinging through the catacombs of their house until finally the auger began to turn again. The fire would rest in the coal furnace, heat whisking out of the giant floor grate and into the house.
If she looked up, she might catch him carrying the heavy clinker out to the debris pile behind the barn.
No. See, too easily Nelson crept into her hollow places, entering without permission. She ran the palm of her hand against her wet cheeks then retreated to the back room. Stepping into her father’s high-topped galoshes, she grabbed paper and pulled on the work jacket. Nelson’s scent clung to it, woodchips and teenager sweat, the smell of coal and oil and grease, and way too much charm.
That charm got Nelson out of trouble too many times. Probably what cajoled Dottie into agreeing in that brief, wretched moment, to allow him to march off to war.
She stepped outside into the rain, hunching her shoulders against the pellets of ice now sleeting from the sky as she splashed through the slick yard to the cellar. The hasp lay unlocked, and she wrenched open the door, hesitating before she closed it behind her to keep out the rain. Once, when Nelson was about fourteen, the latch had flipped over, locking him inside for two hours. She’d found him sitting in the cold, pounding on the floorboards, after she returned from work.
Dottie tugged on the overhead electric light and checked the coal stoker. Unlit, indeed.
The coal man had dumped her allotment into the bin in early November. It remained half full of dark chunks, too many of them the size of anvils. Putting on her gloves, she climbed into the bin. Sure enough, a chunk wedged between the auger and the stoker hole. Grabbing the sledgehammer, she picked it up—not without a groan, and dropped it onto the coal. It broke in half. She dropped it again, and the piece tumbled free.
She climbed out of the bin, listening to the wind whine outside. It shook the cellar door.
Taking the paper from her pocket, she shoved it into the middle of the clinker inside the stove, added a piece of coal, and lit it.
The furnace flickered to life, flames gnawing at the paper. The auger began to churn coal into the stoker. Until the house heated, she’d curl up in a quilt and build a fire in the family room.
She removed her gloves, laid them on the steps, and pushed on the cellar door.
It didn’t move.
Again.
She heard the hasp rattle against its mount, but it didn’t give. She closed her eyes. Then, with a cry, she banged her hand against the door, hard, sharp. The action was probably too violent, for pain spiked through her, up her arm, into her shoulder.
The door only shuddered.
She turned on the steps, sat down, and lowered her head to her hands, listening to the memory of Nelson’s song fade into the howling wind.
They’d probably find her frozen, emaciated body sometime in May.
Heiress Part 1: Sisters 
New York City
1896
[Excerpt]
Esme might be playing a game, but she’d do it by her own rules.
She was like Nellie Bly, undercover journalist.
She stood at the edge of the ballroom, filing away every detail. For tonight’s article, she’d start with overstuffed and snobby Mrs. Astor greeting her four hundred ball guests, affecting the air of a royal in her black velvet dress with lace appliqués and tulle, bedazzled in a diamond tiara and an armada of diamonds. Then she’d catalog the ostentatious bevy of flowers and decorations, from the holly and ivy dripping from the standing chandeliers, the snowballs of white carnations eclipsing the candelabras, to the thirty-six red satin stockings stretched across the white marble fireplace, filled with toys and bonbons. A giant bough of mistletoe centered on the balcony, tempting would-be dancers while the orchestra warmed up for the after-dinner cotillion.Esme wouldn’t soon forget the buffet dinner, either, the way her stomach now gurgled. She tasted the sweetbread climbing back up her throat, although it might not have made it all the way down to begin with, what with the competition with the consommé, the pâté de foie gras, and the bonbons. She pressed her hand against her stomach, although it would hardly move, given the way Bette had strapped her into her corset.
She had even managed a glimpse of the fellow dancers, from J. J. Astor Jr., to Mr. and Mrs. F.W. Vanderbilt, to Mr. and Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish, names among names in society.
She’d catch it all, just like Nellie Bly, in a tell-all article, betraying the dalliances and follies of society.
She hoped Oliver caught their pictures. She spied him, assisting Joseph Byron and his son, Percy, as they posed society’s finest, capturing their images for Town Topics and their own prideful posterity. Oliver had taken her picture at her debut ball, and perhaps the truth had hit her at that moment, when she’d seen herself reflected upside down.
She didn’t fit in this world.
But she wasn’t sure, exactly, where else she might belong, who indeed she was supposed to be.
She heard Jinx’s voice, an echo chasing her to the party. Behave in a manner befitting the heiress of the Price family. What, exactly, might that be? She certainly didn’t feel like an heiress.
And, if Mrs. Astor’s high society knew who penned the articles featured on her father’s Page Six, highlighting their escapades, they wouldn’t treat her like one either. They would feel betrayed, and stamp her an interloper.
“There you are, Esme. Were you hiding from me?” Her mother appeared, her skin flushed, the sour hint of wine upon her breath.
“Of course not, Mother. I’m simply blistering. And tired. And, like I said, I believe I am allergic to tulle. Please, must we remain?” After all, she’d already seen enough to detail this night in her anonymous submission to her father’s paper.
“Bite your tongue. We are staying until Caroline Astor turns out breakfast.” Phoebe lowered herself to the settee beside her, her gown less cumbersome than Esme’s, a simple yellow satin edged in French lace with diamonds stitched into the bodice.
Across the two-story ballroom, in an alcove opening off the second story, the musicians in the gallery began to play an opening number. They played under the view of the gods and goddesses sculpted into the coved ceiling. Guests from all corners of the house returned to the dance floor.
“Truly, I feel unwell. My stomach is churning. Every time I dance, it threatens to betray me. I must escape this corset.” She wasn’t exactly lying. And the longer they stayed, the more her mother’s words about the night burned into her thoughts. I believe it may be a special one, for many reasons.
She needed to leave before her parents decided that tonight would be the night to sell her into marriage. She’d been playing the debutante’s game in order to secret herself into this world, uncover the excesses, the scandals. She wanted to reveal to the starving world stories about Christmas cards encrusted with diamonds, dogs eating from silver bowls, and the millions of diamonds on Mrs. Astor’s tiara, all while her servants netted less than five hundred dollars a year.
Someday, she might reveal her name. And then she’d be among the ranks of Jacob Riis, chronicler of the slums and tenements, and Nellie Bly, crusader for women. She’d be her father’s star reporter. Be commended by the President of the United States, have supper at the White House. Prove to the world that, although she’d been born into wealth, she hadn’t been born without a soul.
“Your upset stomach is simply nerves. I noticed you were inviting with your fan the attention of a suitor. To whom were you directing your invitation?” Her mother smiled, anticipation in her eyes.
“I was using the fan to cool myself, Mother, nothing more.”
Phoebe’s countenance fell. “That is not its purpose—you should know better.” She rearranged the smile on her face. “Did you see Harry Lehr dance with Elizabeth Drexel Dahlgren? She seems quite smitten with him.”
“He only wants her money.”
“Esme! Sometimes your tongue!”
“She’s a widow with a fortune. And he’s a flirt.”
“He’s the best social coordinator in the city. He plans all Mrs. Astor and Mrs. Vanderbilt’s parties. Please, stop talking.”
Laughter trickled in from doors open to the grand entrance off the ballroom, and with it the crisp allure of fresh air. Esme leaned into it, closed her eyes. With over four hundred dancers packed into Mrs. Astor’s ballroom, the place swam with the odors and humidity of exertion. That and…oh, never again, sweetbreads.
“Let me see your dance card.”
Esme handed it to her and Phoebe perused it. “Yes, good. I am glad to see Foster Worth’s name for the waltz, and the lancer. Very good. But no one for the Mazurka?”
“The speed upsets my stomach. Why must they schedule that dance first?”
“You mean to tell me that you turned down a partner’s request?”
“I will sit it out. It will not be a snub.”
“Esme, the sooner you are married and your rebellious ways corralled, the better.”
No, the sooner she figured out how to turn her anonymous articles unwittingly published by her father into a full-time job, just like Nellie Bly, the better.
Her father had no idea that by publishing her anonymous social commentary, he had begun to set her free. Yes, she still had to rely on Oliver to submit her opinions of society high life along with his photographs of their soirées. Sometimes, he’d also described for her the photographs he captured as he patrolled the streets looking for crime. His heartbreaking shots of orphans sleeping under doorsteps or the illegal five-cent beds in the tenement house or the pictorials of the misery of life in Hell’s Kitchen moved her so that she’d taken his impressions, put words and opinions to them, then he’d submitted those pieces with his photographs.
They’d even made money. Stringers, he called the two of them.
The paper had published those shots, those opinions, and named her byline simply… Anonymous Witness.
Indeed, she might never get married. Simply travel the world, writing stories about foreign places. Europe. China. The American West.
And, someday soon, no longer anonymous.
Once her father discovered her pen, the articles she’d published, he would welcome her into his world with her own editor’s desk. She would wrest herself out of her corset stays and into a life with her own byline. Maybe someday she might even run the paper.
“At least you will dance two with Foster,” her mother was saying, still perusing Esme’s dance card.
“Only because he is an old friend of the family, Mother. I have no interest in him.”
“He is the son of Frederic Worth, and he’s just returned from Europe. Of all the bachelors in this season, Foster is the most eligible. He would be a suitable match and you would be fortunate to receive a proposal from him.”
“I am not going to accept a proposal from anyone, Mother, especially not Foster. Yes, he’s handsome, in a way that good breeding begets, with his dark hair slicked back, his broad shoulders. But he has clammy hands, and there is something rather…unsettling about the way he looks at me, as if I might be something edible. And, worse, he has cold eyes. I mentioned to him once the plight of the newsies—the orphans sleeping below the steps of Father’s paper, pandering the daily for a nickel, and he actually said, ‘Where do you expect them to live?’ Like that kind of life might be acceptable.”
“For their class of people, it is to be expected.”
Esme’s mouth opened. Closed. “Have you not read Jacob Riis’s book? The plight of the poor? He asks, ‘How shall the love of God be understood by those who have been nurtured in sight only of the greed of man?’ We need to take care of the poor—”
“Henry Riis is not appropriate reading for someone of your stature.”
“Mother, it is our Christian duty to care for the underprivileged—it’s not just the noblesse oblige, Jesus commands it. Did you hear nothing of D.L. Moody’s speech last year?”
“I did. He said to obey your parents. Which is to be married. Have a family.”
“I love children, but mother, I have other plans. I want a career, something besides hosting parties and raising children and running my husband’s household. That’s Jinx’s ambition, not mine.”
Phoebe stared at her, a spark of warning in her eyes that should have silenced Esme. A year ago, before she had heard Mr. Moody speak, before she’d heard him say, “We can stand affliction better than we can prosperity, for in prosperity we forget God,” it would have.
She had forgotten God, until that night when she’d stared at her upside-down figure reflected in Oliver’s lens. Had forgotten that she had a duty to love justice and be merciful. That day of her debutante ball, a light turned on in her head as bright as Oliver’s flash, and she realized that she could use her debutante season to be like Nellie, go undercover, tell the truth.
Perhaps shame would wake up high society.
“A career? You will stop that thinking immediately. I don’t know where you get it from.”
“I get it from Father.”
“Hardly. You get it from those books you bring home.”
“Father respects my ideas.”
“Your father laughs at your ideas.” Her mother turned to her, her dark eyes sharp. “He puts up with your whimsy because you have always been his favorite. But mind my words, Esme, he wants you matched well. It wouldn’t hurt your father’s resources to have you married to a shipping magnate, one who owns department stores around the world. Imagine the advertising they would buy. Foster Worth has shown an interest in you, and you will reciprocate.”
“He could have anyone, Mother. Didn’t you hear the other buds in the dressing room tonight? His name was on everyone’s lips, including Carrie Astor’s. He doesn’t want the girl who beat him in tennis when she was twelve.”
“I daresay he let you win.” Her mother reached out, took Esme’s hand. “The Worth boys have always had a special eye out for my daughters. I’m just thankful that one of them turned out with marriageable qualities. With all Bennett’s womanizing in Europe, Mamie needs her eldest to restore the family name, pick up the reins during her husband’s decline. Yes, you will be kind to Foster Worth. It’s time to let him win.” She squeezed her hand. “There’s your father.”
Esme glanced at her, but Phoebe had already risen, taken August Price’s hand. In public, they appeared the adoring couple.
He placed a kiss on her mother’s cheek. What it cost him, he didn’t betray. He nodded to Phoebe, and then Phoebe glanced at Esme, a smile tugging at her mouth.
August pressed his wife’s hand to his arm as the music began for the Mazurka. Debutantes took the floor on the arm of their partners, began the triple-meter polka dance to a Chopin piece.
Heat rose to Esme’s neck. Especially when her mother caught her eye from the dance floor, her words raking up to fill her mind. I believe it may be a special one, for many reasons.
Oh, Mother, you didn’t… Her stomach roiled, now coating her throat.
She pressed herself to her feet, wove through the crowd, and exited the ballroom. Already the air seemed lighter, and she crossed the corridor toward the front doors.
No, she shouldn’t be unchaperoned, but perhaps a few moments of brisk air would settle her stomach, keep her from pitching to the parquet floor during the waltz.
She could simply refuse the marriage request, right? She didn’t have to marry…
She wasn’t really a debutante. No.
The footman at the door must have read her mind, for he opened the massive gilded bronze-and-glass doors. “Miss, may I get your cloak?”
She shook her head, not slowing her pace until she reached the front step.
The brisk January air swept her breath from her lungs, prickled her bare arms, shoulders. But she closed her eyes, losing herself to the cool lick of fresh air. Along Fifth Avenue, the chateaus lit up the street, turning the soft-falling snow ablaze, puddling light into snowdrifts along the cobbled, almost magical street. Landaus and motorcars lined up to retrieve the guests at their leisure, yet across the street, a man bundled in rags chipped ice from the sidewalk with a spade. She wrapped her hands around her upper arms as a chill stole through her.
“Esme?” Her name emerged on whispered sibilants and she glanced up.
Oliver. He must have seen her exit the house. He stood away from her, tall, broad-shouldered in the glow of the house lights, the snow like diamonds on his coal black hair, catching in his long, almost mesmerizing eyelashes. His shaven whiskers had begun to scuff his chin. He shucked off his tailcoat. “What are you doing out here?”
She glanced at the footmen nearby, some of them smoking, others stamping their feet to keep warm. Others had sought refuge inside the carriage room, to the back, where most of the livery waited. Still, no one should see her talking so freely to her former footman, the butler’s son.
Even if they had grown up together.
Even if he now worked for Joseph Byron, society photographer.
Even if her father had arranged for his job.
Especially because Oliver was her partner in crime.
“I don’t feel well. My head hurts, and my stomach is woozy.”
“Let me take you home.” He draped his jacket around her shoulders. His smell—husky, yet bearing an exotic sweetness, probably from the chemicals he used for his plate development—lifted, and she pulled the warmth around her.
“I—I can’t. Mother would be furious.”
He tightened his mouth, as if biting back something more.
“Actually, I—I think my mother is trying to betroth me to someone.”
Oliver stared at her, his face stony. For some reason she searched his eyes, not sure what she might be hoping. He looked away, blew out a long breath. “I see.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I should have expected that. Congratulations.”
“You know that turning him down would mean scandal for my family.”
“When has scandal stopped you?”
Her mouth opened.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. But…” He stared at her, hard. “Do you love him?”
“I don’t even know him, really. We were childhood acquaintances.”
“We were childhood acquaintances, and you’re not marrying me.”
She sucked in a breath. “That’s different.”
“Is it, Esme?”
He looked away, and she knew him well enough to see hurt on his face. Why… “What are you getting at, Oliver?”
A muscle tensed in his jaw. “You can’t have both worlds, Esme. Choose one.”
She flinched. “Maybe the air out here isn’t as fresh as I thought.”
“You stay, I’ll go.”
“No.” But she winced at the need in her tone as she said it. “I—I don’t want to stand alone.”
He considered her a moment. “I’m sorry, Esme. But I never thought this was a game to you. Perhaps that was my mistake.”
She looked down, at the snow soft upon her gown. “Do you ever dream of leaving New York? Of going out west or traveling the world?”
He let her words dissolve in the frosty air before he answered. “I used to. I wondered what it might be like to travel back to Ireland, the home of my mother. And yes, I read the dime novels you smuggled me. I would like to see Oklahoma, become a cowboy, maybe.”
She pulled his jacket around her tighter. “I want to go to Montana.”
“You would make a fabulous Annie Oakley.”
She glanced at him, trying to hide her smile. “Did you deliver this week’s article?”
He didn’t look at her, matched her lowered volume. “Yes. Yesterday, to the op-ed desk when I turned in my photos.”
“Maybe it’ll go into tomorrow’s paper.”
He sighed. “Have you considered what might happen if you get caught?” He hazarded her a look, and the concern in it tugged at her.
“Maybe—maybe I should tell him. Maybe he should know that his daughter is—”
“Anonymous Witness.”
“Just like him. A journalist.”
“Indeed.” His eyes twinkled, and for the first time this night she saw his dimple emerge. She loved that little indentation that so matched the sparkle, the way he looked at her.
A ripple of heat went through her.
“Miss Price, what are you doing out here in the cold?”
She stiffened, and she watched as Oliver turned away, becoming invisible as Foster Worth stepped out onto the stoop. Too many years as the Price’s footman, perhaps.
Foster peered down at her, void a smile, seemingly irritated. “I was looking for you for our waltz, but you had disappeared.”
“Did it begin?”
“I’m afraid it is over.” Foster reached out, slid Oliver’s coat from her shoulders. Without looking at him, Foster handed the coat back to Oliver. Like he might be a coat rack.
He slipped off his own jacket, draped it upon her. Into her settled the odor of his many dances, the cigar smoke from the after-dinner gathering with the men in the library. And a line of sweat from his collar.
“I’m sorry,” she managed without shivering, “I needed some fresh air.”
He stuck out his elbow, and she took it, glancing at Oliver. He didn’t meet her eyes.
Foster escorted her inside, the humidity of the hallway dense against her skin. “I need to talk to you.”
From the ballroom, the lively romp of Tchaikovsky suggested she’d also missed her polka with Colin Rutherford.
Oh, mother would be incensed. Perhaps Jinx had been correct—she should have been born first. Then Mother would have her debutante, her escort into high society. Jinx could speak French with a Belgian count, dance the quadrille or the Muzant with a German duke, and counsel an English butler on correct table-setting placement. She could probably even make Foster Worth crack a smile with her witty banter.
And Esme? She’d be free to write for her father. He’d always said that he expected great things from her.
Any forthcoming engagement was all her mother’s doing, Esme knew it in her bones. She’d simply explain—
“Let’s go in the drawing room.” Foster had her by the elbow, directing her toward Mrs. Astor’s white-paneled salon, with the gilded boiseries and mirrored doors. As they entered, she stifled the urge to hide amidst the clutter of bowers of roses and towering apple blossoms in gold-etched pots, the Victorian staging of busts of Shakespeare and Wagner, stuffed birds in glass domes, Louis XIV-style gilded divans and chairs. But how could she escape the eyes of the immense portrait of Mrs. Astor, the mistress of the manor, peering down on her?
Suddenly, she felt it, everything Jinx had been trying to tell her. The dictum of society and its import to their future. From the next room, the music ended, and a lancer began. Everyone turning in step, schooled for their role in society.
Foster escorted her to an ottoman. She sat, her heart lodged in her throat.
Oh. Wait…
He took her hand as her brain scurried to keep up.
He lowered himself onto one knee. She stared at her curved hand in his, unable to meet his eyes, tasting her heartbeat.
“Esme, your parents have agreed to allow me to ask for your hand in marriage. I believe we would make a winning match. I know we haven’t yet had the opportunity to deepen our friendship since our youth, but I am confident that in time we will come to care deeply for each other.”
She glanced up at him, caught his eye. He gave her a quick smile. “Will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”
Perhaps he could be labeled handsome. Brown, wavy hair, a stern brow, deep gray eyes, a confidence about him that said he would work hard, provide. Perhaps even remain faithful.
She hadn’t expected the rush of emotions, the heat in her chest, her eyes. Hadn’t expected the unfamiliar thrill that cascaded through her. Wife.
Someone’s wife.
She looked up at him, words netted in her chest.
She saw herself in a moment, hearing Foster’s proposal then turning him down to the din of Chopin.
Or not. What if she said yes? What if she became Mrs. Foster Worth, the world at her fingertips?
Couldn’t she change it that way also?
Over Foster’s shoulder, she spied Oliver, entering the room to gather his equipment. Invisible. Anonymous.
Oliver looked up, then, and for a blinding moment, met her eyes. You would make a fabulous Annie Oakley.
“Esme?” Foster said.
She drew a breath. No. She could say it. No. Simply explain to him that she wasn’t ready, that she wanted more out of life, that she wanted a man who loved her, who believed in—
“Yes.”
She looked over at the voice. Her father stepped into the room, regal in his coattails, cigarette smoke curling over his head, a smile on his face as if he’d just scooped Pulitzer. He settled his hand on her bare, cold shoulder, hot, heavy. “Of course, her answer is yes.”
Foster slipped a ring on her numb, gloved finger as Oliver shouldered his tripod and walked from the room.
Remember the Missions of Mercy Giveaway from May? Well – wow. What an amazing turn out. Thank you all so much for entering the contest!
I’m thrilled to announce that the winner of Missions of Mercy Flip Camera Prize Pack is….
JANET ESPINO FROM TEXAS
Congrats Janet! Please send your mailing address to amy@susanmaywarren.com.
Read what the reviewers had to say about this three book series {HERE}. And stay tuned. Details coming about the Miss Foolish Heart Giveaway soon.