Unrivaled (11 page)

“Are you all right, Lucy?” Sam had seen me walk back into the ballroom. Unfortunately, so had my mother.

I looked back over my shoulder, hoping to catch a glimpse of that man I’d been talking to. As I watched, he stepped through the door and acknowledged me with a touch of his hand to his forehead. And then he flashed me that dimpled smile.

I smiled in return before I could remember not to. Being up there alone with him in the balcony probably hadn’t been wise.

“Lucy?” My mother reached my side and took hold of my arm. “You have responsibilities to uphold tonight as queen. Everybody knows you’ve only just got back from Europe. You need to show them that you’re more refined, not less.”

“I am.” Of course I was. I looked back once more as my mother steered me through the crowds, but the man had gone.

Mother and I rode home later through gaslit streets as automobiles buzzed up to and then swung out around the carriage to pass us. I dug into the tufting of the bench with my finger.
Neither of us spoke. At the house, the coachman handed us down from the carriage. As we went up the walk, Mother gestured to Father’s room. The light was on. “He hasn’t been sleeping well. At least, not at night. Why don’t you go tell him about the evening.”

He might have predicted the outcome himself. No good could come from a girl meddling in business.

Mother pushed me toward the stairs with a firm, though gentle, hand. “Go on.”

I knocked on the door, softly enough not to startle him if he were sleeping, but loudly enough for him to hear, should he be awake.

He answered and so I entered.

A smile lit his face. “Sugar Plum! My Queen of Love and Beauty.” The smile was the only sign of vitality. Everything else about him—his hair, his eyes, his face—was gray. “How was it?”

Terrible. Wretched. Humiliating. “It was fine.” At least my mother hadn’t known of my candy’s debut.

“I wish I could have been there. I wish I could have seen it when they announced you as the queen. I’m sure you were a complete success.”

I was an abysmal failure.

But still the man’s words echoed in my thoughts.
“Does it really matter if no one else liked it?”

It did . . . and it didn’t. If I hadn’t created the candy in order to save the company, then I would have exulted in the fact that I’d made a chew even better than the one from Europe. But it was poor solace, given the fact that nobody else wanted to eat it. What good was a candymaker if she couldn’t create anything anyone liked?

“What is it, Sugar Plum? You look as if someone’s stolen all your candy.”

I had a sudden, wild urge to laugh. Someone had stolen it. They’d taken it and thrown it all away.

“Tell me about it.”

I bent and kissed him on the cheek. “There’s nothing to tell. I’d been holding on to a dream for a while, and tonight I realized that it will never come true.”

He sighed. “I’m sorry. Can’t save spun sugar once it starts to melt, but you can turn it into something else.”

Something else. I didn’t want anything else. I patted his hand, then turned off the lamp.

Mother was right. She’d always been right. A lady didn’t belong in the kitchen . . . and Father was right too. She didn’t belong in business either. I hadn’t had to go to Europe at all in order to learn those lessons. I’d learned them right here. I’d have to tell my mother that I’d failed. There was no point in trying to delay the sale of the company any longer.

Only I didn’t know how to tell her.

Admitting to myself that I’d failed was hard enough. I couldn’t yet bring myself to admit it to anyone else. Except Sam. He already knew, though he was hardly sympathetic.

He paused in sweeping the back porch the next morning. “You have to admit it’s hard to top Royal Taffy. And your father’s been trying for ten years now.”

“I don’t have to admit anything. And I’d have thought you’d be just a little more understanding.” He
had
changed while I’d been gone. And it hadn’t been for the better. It really was just me against everyone else. I felt a tear slide down my cheek and for one mad moment wished for the comforting arms of that
man from the ball. What an odd thought! And why hadn’t I asked for his name? “I just . . . don’t you have a handkerchief?”

He looked up from the broom at me, startled. “I, uh, sure. Of course I do.”

“Can I have it?”

“I was saving it.”

“Sam!”

He looked chastised and stuck a hand into his pocket. But when he brought it out, a red wrapper fluttered from it and drifted to the ground.

“Is that a—”

He snatched it up and shoved it back into his trousers.

“Is that a—a—” I stepped forward so I could whisper. “Is that a
Royal Taffy
wrapper?”

“Uh . . .” His gaze darted about the room. “It’s not mine.”

“Not—! Then why is it in your pocket?”

“It’s . . . because . . . I’d rather not say.”

“A Royal Taffy? Sam!” There could no worse form of betrayal.

“I have to . . . uh . . . be going. Now. See you later.” He shoved the broom into the corner and headed out toward the stable.

“Sam!”

His only reply was the slap of the screen door.

I used his handkerchief to wipe at my tears. When I went to refold it I saw that it had been embroidered. The initials
SHB
had been worked into the cambric with brown floss.

SHB?

Sam had a middle name? Of course he must have a middle name. But I had never known it. With his mother having died when he was a baby, and with the material being so crisp and shiny, it could not have been she who had done it. So who knew Sam’s middle name? And why had she embroidered a handkerchief for him?

I could think of several answers to my questions, and I didn’t like any of them.

I also didn’t like the fact that I had promised Winnie I’d come calling. Specifically because she had told her mother, and her mother had told my mother, and so the next afternoon I found myself sitting beside her on a yellow silk divan in her parlor. I’d been seated next to a green parakeet that harmonized with the color scheme. He swung from a squeaky trapeze when he wasn’t tossing seeds at me.

“Is he bothering you?”

Yes. “No.”

“I’ve always liked birds. Did you know parakeets can live nearly twenty years?”

Perish the thought.

Winnie smiled. Did she
ever
stop smiling?

She’d smiled when she’d greeted me. She’d smiled when we’d sat down. She’d smiled as we were served tea. And if it were possible, as she turned to look at me, she smiled even wider still. “I wonder, Lucy, did you hear? You must have. I’m sure you must have.”

I waited for her to continue, but she didn’t. Did I hear what? “I . . . don’t believe so.”

“Because it was such a surprise!”

“What was?”

“That there even
is
such a thing!”

Was anyone ever as maddening as Winnie Compton? “Such a thing as
what
!” I felt like I had missed an entire part of the conversation.

“As another Mr. Clarke, of course.”

“There’s a . . .
another
Mr. Clarke?” Mr. Clarke of Standard
Manufacturing? I contemplated that riddle for a moment, but then quickly conceded defeat. I set my teacup down on the table beside me. “Winnie, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Mr. Clarke’s son.”

“He has a
son
?”

“He was at the ball. Surely you must have met him.”

“No.” A spawn of the devil would have been highly memorable. I would not have forgotten someone like that.

“Charles was his name.”

Charles. That sounded dreadfully dull and stuffy.

“He was being introduced to practically everybody.” She sent a glance my way as her smile dimmed for a moment. “But I’m sure you weren’t meant to have been overlooked. There were so many people there that night. You have to admit that it would have been easy to forget one or two.”

Yes. Especially me with that enormous crown atop my head.

“I’m sure there was nothing meant by it. But such a shame you didn’t get to meet him. He was enormously handsome. Although no one seemed to know that Mr. Clarke even had a son. Don’t you think that’s odd?”

Everything about that man was odd. Worse than odd!

“I don’t understand how you could have a son and then forget you had him and then remember and . . .” She put a hand to her head as if she had suddenly come down with a headache. “It’s just all so confusing. But he was very nice.”

As Mr. Clarke had been. Before he’d stolen our candy from us. Like father, like son! “There was probably a scandalous divorce, and the son was raised in some slum somewhere in a rat-infested house and fell in with the wrong group and went to jail for some terrifically abominable crime from which he’s just been released.
That’s
why we haven’t heard about him.” I clapped my hand over my mouth. What had I just said? All
those novels I’d read on the voyages to and from Europe must have corrupted me.

Winnie’s eyes widened for a moment, and then she broke into that tinkling laugh she had. “Oh! You’re just teasing, Lucy. For a moment, I thought you were actually telling the truth!” She touched me on the hand as her laughter died. “I’m so glad you came to call. I didn’t used to like you at all, but now I can see that I was mistaken. You aren’t at all mean and bossy and selfish. Isn’t it funny how long I’ve been suffering under that impression?”

She didn’t used to like me? Winnie Compton hadn’t liked
me
? I climbed into the carriage.

I
hadn’t liked
her
.

How could she have the gall not to like
me
?

Mean and bossy and selfish. Was I truly like that?

Who could I ask? Sam?

No. He would probably agree with Winnie.

Mother laid a hand atop mine. I hadn’t even realized I’d been picking at the tufting again. “I was very pleased with the way things went this afternoon.”

I wasn’t.

“I think it’s nice that you’ll have a companion to see you through the season.”

I didn’t. Not if it that companion was Winnie Compton.

After an eternity of sitting in a parlor on such a fine, bright day, my fingers itched to do something. Make something. So once my mother disappeared into her sitting room, I wandered into the kitchen. Mrs. Hughes had just pulled a roast from the oven. It was sitting on the counter, steaming.