Page 40

“I need to go to town and buy cloth for my wedding dress, and Mother says you have to come with me.”
A wedding dress seems like something of a leap to make from the one letter that Mr. Pierce sent her after the failed dinner. More likely she’s looking for an excuse to buy a dress to flatter her quickly changing body.
I look at the organized chaos of my book piles, at the cozy fire licking and snapping in the hearth. “I’m busy.”
I’ve been relishing the prospect of reliving my favorite stories as I sorted my books, trying to see them as if through Mr. Barrett’s eyes for the first time. But apparently even after everything that’s happened I’m still the responsible one, and Mother thinks that I’m somehow capable of keeping Catherine in check.
“Please? Your books will be here when you get back.” Catherine’s tone is wheedling, artificially high, the kind of voice she used to use when she wanted a bigger allowance from Father. When she sees that I’m still unmoved, she adds, “You look like you just stumbled out of a crypt. Getting some fresh air will put some color into your cheeks for when you see Mr. Barrett.”
I try not to care, but she’s touched upon my little spark of vanity that ignites whenever I hear Mr. Barrett’s name. So not even an hour after I’d resolved to spend the day with my books and memories of Emeline’s visit, I’m in a fresh dress with my hair pinned up off my neck and trundling toward town with Catherine.
18
THE WEEK’S RAINhas left everything clean and fresh, lacquering the world with bright, glistening autumn colors. As we pass along the edge of the woods and over the bridge into town, I realize just how much I’ve missed the world outside the walls of Willow Hall. Not the people and their dramas, but the steady, faithful rhythms of nature and all her secrets. High above us the lonely cry of a hawk rings out as if echoing my sentiment. How small we must look to him down here.
Much to Catherine’s annoyance I open the carriage window and lean out, closing my eyes against the cool breeze. I’ve never seen a season transition with such fierce determination, and I’m inwardly grateful for the return of chilly nights, for a world tipped on the precipice of a great change. Summer felt like it would never end, stretching from the sticky days in Boston before we had to flee, to Emeline’s passing, and then to the swampy heat the night I sank into the water to follow her. I take a moment, letting the cool, damp air fill my lungs and course through my body with the promise of better things to come.
“For heaven’s sake.” Catherine pulls me back in. “You’ve been shut up for days complaining of a cold, do you want to catch another?”
I let her close the window, but as we approach town we begin to encounter other carriages, pedestrians, men on horseback, and I can’t help but catch my breath and look to see if one of them might be Mr. Barrett, half hoping that it is, half hoping that it isn’t.
“I already told you that Mr. Barrett is at the Clarke farm signing papers with Father today, so I don’t know what makes you think we might run into him here.”
I flush, more annoyed at myself that I’m so transparent than at Catherine’s keen perception. I give a little shrug. Her words don’t even merit a response, and I lean back and pretend to be absorbed in the book I brought along with me.
When we arrive, Catherine waltzes into the little shop as if she were Marie Antoinette. “I’m looking for a satin or a silk. Something special, something that no one else has,” she says, breezing over the shopkeeper’s greetings and peeling off her gloves, making herself right at home.
The man’s eyes glint in appreciation. We haven’t been back here since our first day in town when he tried to scare Emeline with stories of hauntings and ghosts. He had probably thought he’d lost our business forever. “Yes, of course, madam. Would you be so kind as to follow me? I have just the thing.”
I roll my eyes and leave Catherine to her shopping and the shopkeeper to his bowing and groveling. As I wander around the small shop, I play a game of pretending what I would buy if it were me shopping for my wedding gown. I run my fingers over a soft bolt of mossy green satin, then put it back and let my gaze wander down the stacks of bolts. It’s not a bad selection, but I’m surprised that Catherine didn’t want to go somewhere with a bigger and finer stock.
The shopkeeper is draping a length of silk over his arm, eagerly trying to gauge Catherine’s reaction. It’s an indecisive shade of yellow—almost green—and Catherine is oohing and ahhing over it like it’s the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen.
I’ve found the cloth that I would buy, and I can’t help but wonder if it was made in Mr. Barrett’s mill. Of course he wouldn’t have woven it himself, but he might have felt it just the way I am now, checking the quality, making sure it met his standards before sending it off to be sold.
As the shopkeeper brings out more and more fabric bolts, instead of becoming more excited, Catherine grows distracted, glancing out the window every few seconds.
“What about this one?” I lift the corner of my chosen cloth, a pink silk so pale and soft that it’s almost white.
The shopkeeper sets aside what he was showing Catherine and nods his vigorous agreement. “It’s been reported that Mrs. Griegson of Boston was seen wearing this very shade of pink at the opera last month,” he says in reverent tones. “Very hard to find, but I got my hands on this bolt straight from Waltham and you won’t find it anywhere else.”
So it didn’t come from Mr. Barrett’s mill then. The pink suddenly looks drab and ordinary, and I remember that it’s cotton that he produces, not silk.
“Yes,” Catherine says without looking at it. “Very pretty.”
He ignores her distant tone, running a solicitous hand over a bolt of striped satin that even I recognize as being several years out of style.
“The sleeves are to be fuller this season. Just imagine this puffed up at both shoulders, a dipped neckline, the colors setting off your lovely hair to its full advantage. Why,” he says, wetting his bottom lip with his tongue, “you won’t have a fellow in town who will be able to keep his hands off you.”
Normally Catherine would give him a sharp word for his boldness and threaten to withhold her patronage, but she only murmurs distractedly, “Yes, I heard as much about fuller sleeves.”
I ask the shopkeeper to excuse us for a minute and take Catherine by the arm to the corner of the store among the large barrels of sugar and salt.
“You were the one who begged me to come with you, and you’re hardly even looking at anything,” I chide.
She jerks her arm back, rubbing it as if I hurt her. “Oh, I don’t know,” she says irritably. She throws a glance over my shoulder at the counter covered in a rainbow of silks and satins. “The lavender one I guess.”
I’m about to tell her that she is perfectly capable of asking for the lavender to be cut herself, when she takes a sharp breath, her eyes fixing on something beyond the window. I follow her gaze, but it takes me a moment to place the swaggering gait of the man she’s watching across the town green.