Chloe (22 page)
Chloe heard a child crying somewhere above them. Her nerves tightened at this cue.
“Our infants and toddlers are on the second floor,” Miss Jones explained, nodding toward the staircase.
Chloe felt the same panic she experienced when dealing with her daughter. But they weren’t going to the second floor. Miss Jones had said so.
“I’d like you to give Mrs. Black a quick once-over tour today if you would,” Mrs. Hughes said. “She’s new to our work and needs a quick education on your orphan’s home.”
“Of course.” The orphan director changed directions. And Chloe found herself being led up to the second floor. She wanted to decline, but she couldn’t; in this social situation, she had to follow the ladies. She’d just have to keep her distance from the children. They’d already been orphaned. They didn’t need her upsetting them.
At the top of the stairs, the other two ladies preceded her into a communal nursery. Little ones lay in cribs and bassinets in the crowded room. Toddlers staggered around the unadorned wooden floor, grabbing hold of crib legs as they tried to walk. Two older matrons dressed in drab gray uniforms rocked babies while keeping an eye on the unsteady toddlers. The little ones of both sexes all wore the same clothing—shapeless, unironed and stained cotton dresses.
Chloe hung back near the entrance. The dingy room excited her sympathy but she was terrified of the children’s reaction toward her.
“Come in, Mrs. Black,” Mrs. Hughes encouraged.
Chloe took a few hesitant steps into the room. Three toddlers headed toward her in their jerky, uneven gaits. She took a step backward. But one, a little boy with black hair, ran faster and caught her around the knees. He squealed with triumph. Chloe couldn’t describe what she felt.
He came straight to me.
Within seconds, the other two, both little girls, had joined him, clinging to her skirt. Chloe felt them swaying, their balance uncertain. One of the matrons hurried forward. “I’m so sorry. Are they wrinkling your dress?”
Chloe looked down at the three happy little faces beaming up at her and shook her head. As if in a dream, she stroked the silken, baby-fine hair of each one in turn. “No, they’re all right.”
More than all right.
“What is this little boy’s name?”
“Jamie. Our little Jamie.”
The toddler looked up and squealed with obvious pleasure at hearing his name.
“Hi, Jamie,” Chloe murmured.
The child tightened his hold on her. Didn’t he know she wasn’t good with children?
Or maybe only my daughter hates me.
Unable to contain herself, she burst into embarrassing tears.
Within moments, Mrs. Jones had settled Chloe with Jamie on her lap into one of the commodious wooden rockers. Chloe had babbled some incoherent explanation the orphanage director seemingly ignored. She and Mrs. Hughes had then left to follow the planned program. But Chloe had stayed behind, rocking Jamie, letting him cuddle close to her, fingering his black hair and whispering soft words to him. Finally, the little one had fallen asleep in her arms and Chloe had reluctantly relinquished him to one of the matrons.
Now Chloe walked down the stairs to the main floor. Mrs. Jones was waiting for her at the bottom. “Thank you, Mrs. Black. That was a lovely thing you did. I know you’re a busy lady, but we can always make use of someone who likes to rock and mother our little waifs.”
Chloe didn’t know what to say.
“Would you like to visit us? We always need volunteers.”
Before she could stop herself she replied. “Yes.”
Yes!
Her failure with her own child would always sting. But the satisfaction she’d felt holding Jamie had poured over her heart like warm oil over irritated skin, soothing and easing her loss.
“Late afternoons are best,” Miss Jones continued. “Our staff welcome breaks then.”
“I’ll come back.” Chloe blinked away tears. Why couldn’t holding Bette be easy, like holding Jamie?
“How about Monday?” Mrs. Jones invited.
“Yes.” Chloe looked around. “Where’s Mrs. Hughes?”
“She had to leave with regret, but I believe . . .” Mrs. Jones motioned toward the entrance.
Drake Lovelady stood outside in the late afternoon sun.
Shaking her head in surprise, Chloe walked out to greet him. “Drake, how did you know?”
He swept off his hat. “Your estimable maid told me where you were and I just happened to be going this way and thought you might be glad to see me.”
She took a deep breath. “I am.”
He answered with a slow grin. “May I squire you home, then?”
“Please.”
He walked her to his shiny black Cadillac and drove her away. As he inquired about her day, she wondered if Drake Lovelady liked children, and then wondered why she should care. Unbidden, a song from Minnie’s musical played in her mind, “Love Will Find a Way.” But after all was said and done, it was just a song.
Wasn’t it?
Washington, D.C., March 1929
A
t the Washington Auditorium, the well-known orchestra played on and on. Chloe moved in time with a youngish tuxedo-clad senator from California. Nearby Drake danced with a well-padded matron, the wife of a Supreme Court judge. Chloe wore her signature color in evening wear—ebony. Her French gown was cut slim and beaded with black jet. For the occasion, Drake had given her long, art deco platinum-and-diamond earrings that dangled from her ears. Her father had scolded her for accepting such an expensive gift from a bachelor. But she’d only laughed at him. Drake had money to burn and she liked the earrings.
Chloe’s head felt fuzzy, although not with alcohol; nothing could be drier than the charity ball in honor of Herbert Hoover’s inauguration. Rather, her thoughts were focused on earlier that day. She’d spent the afternoon at the orphanage as she’d done twice a week for the past few years. If she could have chosen, she’d have preferred spending this evening rocking the toddlers and soothing them before they went to bed. She shut her mind to memories of small hands clasping hers and the feel of a child in her arms who wanted to be there. Ten-year-old Jamie was too old to be rocked now. But when at the orphanage, she always spent after-school time with him.
The waltz ended and the next dance—the Charleston—began. Drake claimed her and she accepted without demur. Overhead, the glittering chandeliers almost hypnotized her as she unconsciously went through the motions of the dance. Jamie’s face kept coming to mind, the way he always looked crestfallen when she had to leave. He’d never asked, but his expression always asked, “Please take me home.” What was she going to do about Jamie?
Finally, the dance ended and she took Drake’s arm, feeling suddenly desperate without knowing why or how to stop it. “I need air.”
“I need more than that,” Drake murmured into her ear, his breath fanning the hair over it. “Let’s get out of here.” She nodded. “Meet you a block away.” Drake didn’t wait for her answer, but was already heading toward the exit, shaking hands and smiling his way out of the room. At social functions, she and Drake rarely arrived or left together. She wondered if their ploy fooled anyone. She hoped so; she didn’t want any gossip about their having an affair. Because they weren’t having one.
What are we having?
Chloe shook away her thoughts. Thinking didn’t help. It only made a person sad. Better to keep busy and amused. Drake could be very amusing.
She claimed her fur wrap and sauntered into the chilly night. Strolling down the crowded street, she glimpsed Drake’s sleek Lincoln at the corner and approached it. He hopped out, swept her inside, and they were off.
“You should be flattered,” he murmured.
“By what?” She watched the city lights flicker by.
“By being invited to the Republican charity ball, of course.”
She laughed on cue. “You know you arranged it. The invitation to me was to please you.”
“A man has to protect himself from an evening without at least one good dance partner.” He flicked his fingers through the hair over her ear, teasing her.
She shook her head and laughed again, though she felt no real amusement. Drake had connections. Any man who gave as much as he did to the Republican Party would. She pushed politics away as she enjoyed the feeling of being swept away from duty in such a dashing car. She didn’t ask where they were going. She knew. Within minutes, Drake knocked at a discreet dark-green garden apartment door. A panel slid open.
“Hot mama,” Drake muttered the password.
“That’s Jake.” The panel shut and the door opened.
Chloe passed through first with Drake at her heels. Raucous laughter filled her ears. Tony’s speakeasy was the most popular in D.C. and catered to the Washington elite. Sauntering languidly, very aware of the way Drake and she looked together, Chloe nodded at someone at almost every table.
“Mostly Democrats here tonight,” Drake pointed out.
“The few of us that are left,” Chloe quipped. Harding-Coolidge prosperity had lured most Americans to the rival party. Hoover had won easily over Al Smith.
Drake seated her at the small table they’d been led to and signaled to the waiter. “A whiskey and soda for me and club soda with a twist of lime for the lady.” The formally attired waiter nodded and went off to the bar.
“When are you going to drop being Carry Nation’s daughter?” Drake shot his cuffs and leaned his elbows on the crisp, white-clothed table. Tony’s tried and succeeded in appearing to be a successful dinner club.
“I stopped carrying my hatchet, didn’t you notice? It clashed with my gown.” Chloe hadn’t picked up the cocktail habit that had risen with Prohibition. Somehow Bette and the Eighteenth Amendment had stopped her mother from drinking. But her mother’s former overindulgence with alcohol made Chloe wary. Then, too, just because this was a speakeasy that catered to a high-class clientele didn’t mean the liquor could be trusted one hundred percent. She knew of two men who’d gone blind from wood alcohol, colored to look like Scotch, at another exclusive D.C. speakeasy.
Their drinks arrived. Chloe was stirring her swizzle stick in the bubbling soda when a woman in a very short, very tight, fringed red dress with many strings of beads bouncing around her low neckline stumbled over to their table. “Drake, honey. You didn’t call me.” The woman slid onto Drake’s lap with a high giggle.
He smiled, but Chloe noted chagrin in his narrowed eyes. “I think you’ve had a few too many, Marvel.”
The woman gurgled. “Haven’t we all? Except for the chaste and dry Miss Chloe.”
Chloe couldn’t stop herself from speaking in frosty disdain. “Have we been introduced?”
Marvel shrilled with laughter. “No, but everyone knows you or about you! Your father’s Quentin Kimball and your mother’s a Carlyle of Maryland. You don’t drink. You don’t smoke. And you don’t—”
“That’s enough,” Drake snapped. He stood up, dragging Marvel up with him; her red fringe splaying across the white front of his shirt. “You’re becoming a dead bore.” He marched the woman back to the disgruntled-looking escort she’d abandoned.
Marvel tried to resist Drake, but couldn’t. Still, she glared back toward Chloe. “She’s a case of neurotic inhibition all right,” Marvel squealed. “Freud would have a heyday with her.” She laughed shrilly, drawing even more attention to them.
Drake’s face turned brick red and his mouth twisted downward. For a moment, Chloe feared he would slap the woman. “You’re making a scene, Marvel,” he said in a tight voice, “and I hate scenes. Now be a good girl and sit down.”
“Hey,” the other man objected, “Marvel can do better than hang around with you, and she’s got a right to say what she thinks. I ought to darken your headlights, bud.”
Tony, the small, olive-skinned proprietor, appeared at Drake’s elbow. “Is there a problem?” Tony’s ex-boxer bouncer, looking like an ape in his formal attire, lurked in the background.
“No, I think these two were just leaving.” Drake looked pointedly at Marvel’s date.
The stranger took the hint, but without grace. Grumbling, he grabbed Marvel’s arm and stomped out the door.
Drake returned to Chloe. “I apologize for that.” He sat down across from her again. “Marvel doesn’t carry her liquor well.”
Chloe felt embarrassed for and scornful of Marvel at the same time. The woman should have known Drake wouldn’t tolerate such a déclassé scene. But then Drake was still somewhat a mystery to her as well.
“Why do you stick with me, Drake?” Chloe couldn’t stop the question from slipping out. It had been going around in her mind for years now. Ever since they’d met at Henderson’s Castle in 1919, Drake had hovered at her side. The one time three years ago when he’d asked her to go away with him for a weekend, she’d declined. She’d expected him to drop her then, but he hadn’t. “Why, Drake? Please tell me.”
“Haven’t you guessed . . . yet?” He sipped his cocktail.
So he had an agenda for her. What? “Tell me.”
He stared at her and without his usual savoir faire. “I intend to marry you.”
Of all the replies he could have given, she’d never expected this one. Shock shimmered through her, but she replied without hesitation, “I’m never going to marry again.”
“Especially a Republican?” he asked with a rueful grin, obviously not taking her at her word. Drake’s suave mask had snapped back into place.
He couldn’t have spoken in earnest. His arch comment hurt her. “You’re not being serious.”
I never thought you’d make fun of me, Drake.
“Oh, but I am completely serious. I decided to marry you years ago.”
She knew from gossip that Drake usually acted the rake. So why did he always play the gentleman with her? She decided to take a chance, ask for the truth. “Did you decide that when I refused to go away with you to Martha’s Vineyard?”
“Before that. I didn’t expect you to accept my invitation.” He swirled the amber liquid in his short glass.
“Then why did you ask?”
“Just to make sure I was right,” he said lightly. But then he took her hand and his expression became serious. “I need a wife I can trust. A wife who will give me an heir that I can be sure is really mine. A wife who will make me the envy of other men.”