Page 2 of Masquerade Meow (Beyond the Aristocracy)
CHAPTER 2
AN ANNIVERSARY DAY
E arlier that morning
For a moment, Ella Mae secretly wished she hadn’t had to work at the store that day. Usually her father, Robert Montgomery, would be at the counter, but he and her mother were off on a trip to nearby Dubuque. “We’re celebrating our wedding anniversary,” her mother had explained before they had departed. “I find it hard to believe your father and I have been married nineteen years.”
Resisting the urge to roll her eyes, Ella Mae had been tempted to remind her mother she would be nineteen on her next birthday, even if it was nine months away. “Why not go out for a fancy dinner at the DeSoto House Hotel instead?” she had asked.
She was sure her mother blushed three shades of pink and red before she stammered something about eating a later dinner at the hotel would be as unnerving as leaving their children home alone after dark.
How many nights had they already done so in the past few years? Evenings when Ella Mae had been charged with seeing to her younger brother, Bobby, while Mrs. Jackson, their housekeeper and cook, saw to everything else?
“Especially given the… the hauntings ,” Emma said, arching a blonde brow to emphasize her point.
That comment had certainly caused a stir, especially because her father and Bobby had stepped into the house right in time to overhear it. They had been out in the carriage house seeing to hitching the horse to their curricle.
“Hauntings?” Bobby had repeated in alarm. Despite his age of only twelve, the boy had shot up in height during the past year so that he was nearly as tall as his mother.
“ Another report of a ghost?” Robert added, scoffing with humor.
Ella Mae hadn’t yet decided if she believed in ghosts or not, but the tales of sightings throughout the town of Galena had the townsfolk either entertained or on edge.
“The jail again, darling,” Emma replied, rushing to kiss her husband on the cheek. “I’m nearly ready. Do you suppose I’ll need a heavier coat?”
“Not on this day,” he replied. “It feels as if summer doesn’t want to give way to autumn out there. I need to change my shirt, and I’ll be right with you.” He hurried up the stairs of their three-story house in Prospect Street. Before he disappeared, he added, “Oh, and we’re going to drop off Bobby at Sumner’s place.”
“Oh?” Emma had asked, a look of worry crossing her face.
“Mr. Sumner said he has a job for me today,” Bobby claimed with excitement. “Said he’ll pay me fifty cents to help him unload the wagons.” That morning’s train from Freeport, part of the Illinois Central Railroad, had deposited a number of passengers, some intending to live and work in Galena while others were on their way West to claim the one-hundred and sixty acres of land afforded by the Homestead Act. In addition to people, the train carried a number of crates, boxes, and the U.S. mail, which required delivery to their final destinations. Most of the freight had been loaded onto wagons that were being pulled by draft horses to several destinations along Main Street.
“My shoes and wings,” Ella Mae had said with excitement. In September, she had mailed an order for the dance slippers to a shoemaker in Illinois’ largest city with the hope they would arrive in time for the ball. As part of her father’s regular order for the dry goods store, she had begged him to include a set of wings suitable for a costume.
“My glazes,” Emma had said at the same time. As a potter of both utilitarian pots and decorative pieces, Emma had moved from Stoke-on-Trent in England two decades prior and settled in Galena to practice her craft and consign her wares in local stores. Montgomery Dry Goods was the first to stock her red clay pottery, and not long after, she and Robert were married. “So he wouldn’t have to pay me for my pots any longer,” Emma had said when Ella Mae asked how they had come to be married.
His cats at the time, General and Admiral, had acted as matchmakers, their mischief responsible for not only breaking every pot already for sale in the store, but also in seeing to it Emma returned to Montgomery Dry Goods to act as a nurse. Robert had suffered a cut to his hand whilst cleaning up the pottery shards, and his wound required stitches.
Emma had seen to the stitches as well as some kisses and other measures to assist in the healing process.
Marriage wasn’t far behind.
The current generations of General and Admiral were curled up near the front door, their large orange bodies angled to absorb as much of the morning’s autumnal light as was streaming in through the side window.
“Thank you for covering the store today,” Emma commented.
Ella Mae shrugged. “I’m happy to do it.”
“We’ll try to be home before noon tomorrow, so do see to locking up the store and the house tonight,” her mother continued. “Mrs. Jackson will be here to make supper and breakfast for you and your brother,” she added. “If you should need anything, pay a call on Mrs. Sumner.” Beatrice Sumner had been her first pottery customer in Galena, buying the more decorative items Emma created on her pottery wheel.
“I have my gown to work on if it’s slow at the store,” Ella Mae had said, wondering at her mother’s growing nervousness.
“I’ve never been much of a seamstress, so I’m glad Mrs. Watkins took you under her wing and taught you so much about sewing,” Emma remarked, retrieving a valise from the bottom of the stairs. “She says she’ll have my gown finished in time for the ball.” Although Alice Watkins didn’t claim to be a modiste, she had been making gowns for Emma since her arrival in Galena twenty years prior.
“What about your mask?” Ella Mae asked.
Emma shrugged. “I expect a bit of lace will do the trick. It’s not as if I’m having my come-out.”
“Ah, but since you never had one, we can pretend it is,” Robert said in his slight Irish brogue as he descended the stairs. A whiff of his cologne, amber mixed with spice and a hint of citrus, wafted past Ella Mae’s nose. “Sweep you off your feet and into my equipage,” he continued, grabbing his wife’s hand as he headed for the front door.
General and Admiral both uncurled and stood as they passed, followed by Bobby and finally by Ella Mae, who resisted rolling her eyes as she closed and locked the door behind her. Only one of the cats returned to his nap, blissfully unaware of what was about to happen that day.
Or perhaps he knew full well.
As for the other, well, “mischief” might have been his other name.