Just North of Bliss (33 page)

Win’s back was to her; she could see it,
broad and powerful, in the mirror as she brushed. He’d finished
with his trousers and was searching for his shirt. She saw it,
fallen into a wrinkled coverlet to his camera, but she didn’t tell
him so. Rather, she watched, brushed, and fumed.

He was such an irritating man. And she was
so devilishly attracted to him. Well, she thought with an inner
snort of contempt for herself, obviously she was attracted to him.
She’d just given him, free of charge and with no strings attached,
a woman’s most precious treasure.

Belle frowned into the mirror as that
thought smote her. While she continued to brush and watch Win
search for his shirt, she considered her last thought. What, she
mused, was so dad-gummed precious about a maidenhead? Granted, it
proclaimed a woman’s status as virgin, but proper people didn’t go
around talking about such things. Who’d ever know, unless a girl
was so unwise as to become pregnant.

Her hand stopped wielding the brush and she
gaped into the mirror, stunned. Could she be? Oh, my land. She’d
better count up days fast. After a quick calculation in her head,
Belle deduced that she probably couldn’t be pregnant. Thank God.
Thank God. There was more to this virginity business than she’d
heretofore guessed. However, that wasn’t the point of this
cogitation.

Why was virginity a quality so prized by the
world’s bridegrooms? Most men didn’t give a hang about remaining
pure for their wives. Why should women remain pure for their
husbands? Belle thought she knew. A woman’s purity was prized
because men didn’t want to think of women as people on their own.
They wanted to consider them objects; as property; as prizes won or
lost in mating rituals. And they wanted fresh goods. No leftovers
for most men. No, sirree.

She snorted aloud. Men. Thought they owned
the world. She frowned at her reflection. The idiots
did
own the world, blast them. And if any of them knew
what she’d done with Win Asher this evening, none of them would
ever pay her the so-called compliment of asking her to become his
slave. She meant wife.

“Same thing,” she growled.

Well, so what? Thanks to her partnership
with Win, and as long as her looks lasted, she wouldn’t need to be
the slave of any blasted man.

“Bah,” she muttered as she twisted her long
hair into a simple knot. Realizing she hadn’t considered her pins,
she turned to scan the booth, holding her hair to the top of her
head.

At that moment, Win looked up from fastening
his belt. He appeared somewhat bemused by her expression of ill
nature. “What’s the matter, Belle?” he asked mildly.”

“I need my hairpins.”

“Um, there ought to be some in that drawer
in the dressing table. I’ll look for yours, and you can use those
for the time being.”

She hadn’t anticipated his conciliatory
tone. All at once, Belle felt like crying, which was absurd.
Steeling her nerves and stiffening her spine, she said, “Thank
you,” and turned to open the drawer.

The only sounds in the room then were the
scrape of wood on wood and the soft rattle of hairpins as Belle
drew some of them out and dropped them onto the dressing table. As
she stabbed pins into her knotted hair, she made the mistake of
looking for Win in the mirror. She caught his eye and swallowed. He
looked like a little lost boy watching his very most precious toy
drift away on a riptide. What did this mean?

He lifted his hands and extended his arms to
her. “I’m sorry, Belle. I didn’t mean to start an argument.”

It took Belle approximately two and a half
seconds to drop her pins, her hair, and her fury. Then she turned
around and flew into Win’s arms.

Chapter Seventeen

He’d have to marry her. Walking home from
the Congress Hotel, where he’d left Belle at the door to her
room—she wouldn’t let him kiss her because she was embarrassed to
do so in public, although there wasn’t another soul around—Win
pondered the probability of a marriage between himself and Belle
Monroe.

The notion of marriage hadn’t really
occurred to him before he met Belle. But now, after what they’d
done together . . . Well, he’d have to marry her, or he’d never be
able to look himself in the eye again.

Not that he could look himself in the eye
now unless he used a mirror, but . . . “Aw, hell.”

Win kicked a crumpled paper lying on the
sidewalk and contemplated the nature of fate. Was there such a
thing, or was life and everything in the universe governed by pure
chance? Had fate sent him his annoying and marvelous southern
Belle? The thought of marriage had always before made his blood run
cold. The thought of letting Belle get away from him made it run
even colder.

It occurred to him that perhaps Belle didn’t
want marriage. That notion cheered him momentarily until he
realized how ridiculous it was. Belle? Refuse a proposal of
marriage now? After they’d consummated the marriage act before the
fact? Win grinned in spite of himself.

His darling Belle was probably the most
stuffy, proper, well-bred, civilized, genteel lady—and he used the
word on purpose in this context—he’d ever met. Even the society
debutantes he’d been forced to dance with during his adolescence
and whom he only had to photograph these days were less ladylike
and refined than his Belle.

Until tonight. His heart floated around in
his chest like a hot-air balloon and his sex stiffened when he
thought about tonight. She hadn’t been a lady tonight, by damn.
She’d been—she’d been—she’d been . . . Aw, hell, he couldn’t even
find words for how magnificent their joining had been.

He should, however, have anticipated her
passionate underpinnings. After all, she’d not only tried to fend
him off that first day in order to protect the Richmond children,
but she’d beaned Kate Finney’s father to within an inch of his life
in order to save Kate from strangulation. He grinned, remembering.
If that wasn’t spunky, he didn’t know spunk.

Ah, Belle. She was an unexpected treasure,
his Belle. If he had to marry, and he did have to, because no
matter what Belle thought of him or how many roguish airs he liked
to claim for himself, he remained a gentleman because he couldn’t
help it, he guessed Belle was the best choice. She was at least the
best choice of the females he’d met until now.

The idea of ever meeting another woman for
whom he could feel the same combination of emotions and
frustrations as he did for Belle entered his mind only to be
rejected. It wasn’t possible. Belle was unique.

Besides all that, he had no choice. He’d
bedded her. Now he had to marry her. It was the gentleman’s code.
It was probably the lady’s code, too, although Win doubted there
was a woman alive who’d admit it.

Oddly enough, the notion that he had no
choice in the matter made him feel a good deal more cheerful. Took
the strain out of having to make a decision, and all that. He was
whistling by the time he got to his flat on 59
^th
Street.

# # #

Belle’s own emotions were not sanguine as
she let herself into her hotel room. She prayed that Gladys hadn’t
waited up for her to return. Belle wasn’t sure she could conceal
from her perceptive and good-hearted employer the tumble of
emotions rioting through her.

The new Belle, the adventuress who had led
her to abandon caution and tumble into bed with Win, seemed to have
hidden herself in a closet. The old Belle, the Belle who’d had
propriety drummed into her from Day One, was having a serious
attack of panic. What if Win refused to marry her now? What if he
didn’t even ask her to marry him?

“The cad,” she whispered, her agitated heart
twisting like a wrung-out rag in her chest. “The beast. The
villain. The—the—” The most vile epithet in her vocabulary came to
her rescue. “—the damned Yankee.”

Marriage was
de rigueur
once a woman
had succumbed to the lures of a male. Belle knew it. She’d known it
before she could talk. In her childhood, she’d strained to hear the
scandalized whispers of her elders, longing to know what was so
ghastly that it couldn’t be spoken of aloud. Always, when such
whispered conversations had taken place among her mother, aunts,
and other female relatives and acquaintances, the topic of
conversation had been some young lady’s ruin. Although, as Belle
mulled over the matter now, she couldn’t recall ever perceiving any
sign of ruin on the young ladies involved. And she’d inspected them
closely, too. The signs of ruin had ever eluded her. They did now,
too.

She tossed her hat onto a chair, a breach of
conduct she perpetrated on purpose because she was mad at the
world, and muttered, “Ruined. Pshaw.”

Who made up those rules, anyhow? Had God
come to earth, shaken his finger at Belle’s Georgia kin, and said,
“Thou shalt not consummate an act of love until Preacher Gideon
Hawkins says you may”?

Oh, very well, there was a commandment
against committing adultery, but what she and Win had done tonight
wasn’t adultery. It was fornication.

Fiddlesticks. That was such an ugly word.
Still, Belle couldn’t recall a specific commandment against
fornication. Unless—

Belle slammed a hand over her heart and
stared, wild-eyed, at the door to her room. “Good God.”

Win wasn’t married, was he? Had he ever
mentioned his marital status or lack thereof? Had he led her
astray, as so many married men had done to their unsuspecting prey?
“My land.” Sheer horror made her collapse in a heap on her bed.

But wait. He’d mentioned being a bachelor,
hadn’t he? He’d said he’d been embarrassed to purchase that pretty
wrapper because he was a single man.

Relief propelled Belle up from the bed. She
made her way to the bathroom attached to her hotel room, thanking
her stars that the Richmonds were so wealthy that they could even
afford built-in bathrooms in hotel rooms rented for their hired
help.

Guilt tapped her on the shoulder. The
Richmonds. Oh, dear. She couldn’t just leave them high and dry,
even though she was now going to be making scads of money and
probably—almost certainly—married. She wasn’t that sort of person.
She may have had to bend a principle or two in order to pose for
Win in the first place, but she wasn’t so lost to decency that
she’d quit on the Richmonds without giving notice.

She shuddered to contemplate how many
principles she’d downright shattered tonight when she and Win had
made love. Remembered sensations rippled through her, and she
hugged herself.

What they’d done might have been wrong, but
hadn’t felt wrong. It had felt perfect.

As water filled the claw-footed bathtub in
the bathroom, Belle disrobed, scanning her clothes for betraying
wrinkles and stains. After an initial period of confusion, borne of
Belle’s anxiety and Win’s befuddlement, Win had courteously handed
her a damp cloth and then turned his back so that Belle could wash
away the most betraying signs of her debauch before he’d walked her
home. It had been embarrassing, but she was glad now that she’d
taken the time, because her clothes remained unstained.

As she sank into the water, which felt
soothing to her body and soul, both, she decided not to make any
firm decisions right this minute. She was too confused even to
attempt a rational goal for the remainder of her life. Besides
that, she was only nineteen years old; the notion of directing her
future was rather absurd when contemplated in that light.

She’d wait to give the Richmonds notice
until she and Win had formalized their partnership and marriage
plans, and she had a better idea of how much of an income she could
expect. And when. For all she knew, it took years for royalty money
to catch up with publication of photographs.

“I’m too tired to think any longer,” she
murmured as her eyes drifted shut and her head relaxed against the
porcelain tub. She fell asleep a moment later, and it was only when
the water got cold that she forced herself to finish her bath, get
out of the tub, dry off, and fall into bed. She slept like the
dead.

# # #

The dining room of the Congress Hotel
gleamed with crystal and white linen, even in the glare of another
sultry Chicago summer morning. Belle had donned a light-weight
frock of cambric, had considered her corset, and had consigned it
to the pit. She was already a fallen woman, whatever that meant.
The same as ruined, she imagined. That being the case, what further
good could a corset do her?

Fearing she was late, she scanned the dining
room in some agitation. A flood of relief filled her when she saw
Gladys, Amalie, and Garrett just being seated by a dignified
waiter. She hurried over to them, smiling for all she was worth.
She didn’t want to smile. She wanted to go back to sleep. However
had she turned into such a liar in such a short period of time?

She didn’t know how it had happened so fast,
but she was glad it had as the three Richmonds smiled happily at
her approach. “Good morning!” she said brightly.

“Good morning, Belle.” Gladys gave her a
searching glance, making Belle want to squirm. She didn’t. Rather,
she sat, still smiling, picked up her napkin, and laid it in her
lap. Directing the question at no one in particular, she asked,
“What do we have on the agenda today?” She longed to see Win,
primarily because she was feeling dreadfully insecure this morning.
She’d never say so.

“Mama said we can go on the Ferris wheel
again today, Miss Monroe!”

Stifling a yawn, Belle kept smiling at the
little girl. “That’s wonderful, darling.” She hadn’t looked at a
clock last night, but she must have gotten to bed late because she
felt as though somebody had thrown sand in her eyes.

“George and I will be visiting the
Agricultural Exhibit today, Belle. I fear we’ll have to leave the
children in your care for most of the day.”