Great-Aunt Sophia's Lessons for Bombshells (38 page)

“W
as this altered to fit me?” Grace asked in puzzlement the next day as Darlene zipped her into Sophia’s green velvet gown. It closed perfectly over the vintage merry widow undergarment, the cut of the dress conforming to every curve Grace had reinstalled on her body with her consumption of bacon.

“It’s the original, unaltered gown,” Darlene said. “Sophia was heavier when she was younger; it’s only age that has made her so thin.”

“Son of a bitch,” Grace muttered. “She was telling the truth all along.”

“Hm?”

Grace shook her head, not wanting to explain how Sophia had insisted it wasn’t the weight that made the difference in sexiness, it was the attitude.

She went to look at herself in the mirror. Her hair was parted on the side and curled in the waves that were Sophia’s signature style. Thick black swoops of eyeliner turned her eyes sultry, while her newly arched brows had been darkened with pencil. Bright red lipstick contrasted with the green of her eyes.

She looked almost exactly like the Sophia in the portrait.
There were subtle differences, but to all except close associates, she was Sophia’s youth brought back to life.

How ironic that she should finally reach the pinnacle of all that Sophia had wanted her to achieve while Sophia lay in a hospital bed at death’s door.

Grace bit the inside of her lip, using the pain to force back the threat of tears. Sophia would want her to put on a happy face. For these few hours, she would be the bombshell Sophia had claimed she could be. She could fall apart afterward, when the gala was over and she was alone with the empty spaces in her heart that had until so recently been filled by Declan, Andrew, and Sophia herself. They were disappearing from her life even as she slipped her feet into Sophia’s black satin, rhinestone-studded shoes.

“Five after seven,” Darlene reminded her. “Come down and I’ll take you to your place in the tableau.”

Grace nodded and searched Darlene’s face for some show of emotion. “Any word about Sophia?”

A muscle twitched in Darlene’s cheek and then, awkwardly, she patted Grace’s bare shoulder. “Try not to worry. She’s a tough old bird.”

There was a knock on the door. Grace’s heart turned over, absurdly hoping it might be Declan. Darlene opened the door to an unexpected face: Professor Joansdatter.

“Mind if I come in?” The professor asked. She was wearing a red fringed flapper dress and a feathered headband that looked like it came from the same costume shop Grace knew her mother had used for a gown for tonight.

“Not at all,” Grace said.

Darlene slipped out, leaving the two of them alone.

Professor Joansdatter looked Grace over, then whistled low and long. “Holy cow. I would never have thought it.”

Grace shifted, feeling a flicker of uncertainty.

“You look exactly like that portrait of your great-aunt. Er, great-grandmother. You’re the spitting image of her.”

“I know. I’m doing this for her.”

“And for yourself, too, I hope.”

Grace sat down, perching lightly on the edge of a chair seat. The dress and undergarments didn’t allow a slouch.

Joansdatter took a seat on the edge of Grace’s bed. “I wanted to see how you’re doing. There’s been a lot going on around here, and an awful lot of it seems to center on you. How are you faring?”

Grace felt a quiver of threatening tears, and bit down again on her lip. “I’ll make it through, one way or another.”

Joansdatter nodded, her eyes locked with Grace’s. “Your research notes make a lot more sense to me after meeting the players involved. This has been a transformative experience for you, hasn’t it?”

Grace laughed and gestured toward her body. “You could say that.”

“I meant more than skin deep.”

Grace’s smile faded. “I feel as if the person I used to be has been broken apart. I’m not sure I can put all the pieces back together again.”

“Good.”

Grace blinked. “Good?”

“It looks to me like you’ve found some new pieces of yourself. Maybe, before you came down here, you were in danger of becoming too crystallized in one way of being. Sometimes we need shattering. It’s the only way to build anew, on a firmer, wider foundation.”

“It doesn’t feel like a good thing.”

“I imagine not. But from where I sit, Grace, I see a woman who is going to have a much more interesting life than I would have predicted three months ago.” Joansdatter smiled and left.

At 7:05, Grace took a deep breath to settle her nerves and went to meet her duties. From her balcony she had seen the guests arriving for the past half hour, their voices rising from the gardens below, mixed with the strains of a string quartet deeper in the gardens. The sky was still light, but beneath the trees it was just dim enough to make the fairy lights glow, as if the forest were indeed enchanted by will-o’-the-wisps, luring guests down intriguing paths.

As she opened her bedroom door she was hit by the louder thrum of voices as people passed through the foyer below. She went to the other end of the hall, where a smaller carpeted staircase led to the back of the house. Darlene was waiting for her by a side door that led out into the garden, near the terrace.

“You have the welcome speech?” Darlene asked.

Grace nodded and flashed the note card hidden in the palm of her hand.

“This way. Mind your step.”

Darlene led her out to a narrow wooden walkway hidden by a curtain from the view of the crowd. A short flight of temporary wood stairs led up to a small stage around which had been built a huge gold frame. The stage held a recamier with a faux leopard skin draped over it, and red velvet drapes in the background.

Only for you, Sophia
, Grace said silently. With Darlene’s help she arranged herself on the sofa in the exact attitude of the portrait. She could see the dark shape of the real portrait in front of her, silhouetted on the stage curtain by the spotlights aimed upon it.

“Okay?” Darlene asked.

Grace nodded.

Darlene squeezed her shoulder. “Sophia will be so pleased.”

“I wish she could see it.”

Darlene flashed a rare smile, and disappeared down the small staircase.

Grace closed her eyes, breathing deeply.
For Sophia. I can do this for Sophia
.

The string music from in the gardens stopped, and the big band thrummed to life. Trumpets blew and then a drumroll started. The hubbub quieted, and as the lights on the curtain threw the portrait into even higher relief, Grace knew that her moment was here.

The portrait lifted straight up and away, raised by cables. The curtains followed, and Grace held perfectly still, playing her role as a portrait as the spotlights and hundreds of eyes turned upon her.

One one-thousand, two one-thousand
, she counted silently as the drumroll grew louder and louder. At ten, the roll stopped with a crash of cymbals and Grace stood and spread out her arms. The crowd cheered and applauded.

Shaking in her heels, Grace waited a moment while a microphone was lowered toward her, and then spoke the welcome she had practiced for hours.

“The Altruism Society welcomes you to a Long Ago Night in an Enchanted Forest. We hope the magic of this night will inspire you to create a little magic of your own at Children’s Hospital. Until the witching hour comes to spirit you away to a more mundane world, we invite you to partake of hidden feasts and pleasures in our gardens of wonder and delight. We, and Children’s Hospital, thank you for your generosity and kindness, which is always where the true magic lies.”

She bowed her head and the crowd applauded again, and the band struck up Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Some Enchanted Evening.” Grace stepped to the edge of the stage, where she’d
been told her dance instructor would be waiting to help her down the stairs and onto the dance floor.

A masked man in white tie and tails was waiting for her, but the moment her eyes met his through the mask, she knew it was Declan.

“‘Some enchanted evening,’” the bandleader sang, “‘you may see a stranger, you may see a stranger, across a crowded room . . .’”

She put her hand in Declan’s white-glove-clad one, his strength sustaining her as she stepped down to the dance floor. With masterful confidence, he put his hand on her waist and swept her into the dance.

“‘And somehow you know,’” Declan sang in his baritone along with the bandleader, “‘you know even then . . .’”

“What are you doing here?” Grace asked, her heart in her throat.

“I thought it would be obvious.”

She shook her head, tears starting in her eyes. It was all too much. This, on top of everything else. “It’s not.”

“I’m dancing with the woman I love.”

Grace tripped, but he caught her and swept her across the floor, his movements so smooth that she doubted anyone had seen. “Don’t tease me,” she said.

“I’ve never been more serious. Grace Cavanaugh, I love you. I love you with every fiber of my being, and going through life without you would be dying a new death every day that I wake without you beside me. I love you,” he said, sweeping her in a dizzying spin. “I
love
you, Grace. I love you.”

Disbelieving joy started to rise inside her. “Truly?”

“Marry me, Grace. Please marry me!”

She tilted her head back and laughed, her joy overflowing. “Yes! Yes, yes, yes!”

“My Grace,” he whispered, and she heard the crack of emotion in his voice. He stopped and wrapped her in his arms, bending her backward and kissing her thoroughly as the crowd erupted in cheers.

As Grace came up for air, a light caught her gaze. Up on the balcony of Sophia’s room, her great-grandmother stood beside Ernesto. “Look,” Grace said, nudging Declan.

He followed her gaze and laughed.

“What’s that in her hand?” Grace asked.

“She’s toasting us with Scotch.”

Grace laughed, and Declan spun her back into the dance. “Remind me to tell you about the fifty thousand dollars she owes me,” Grace said.

He looked at her in surprise. “I will.”

Other dancers joined them, and from the corner of her eye Grace caught sight of Cat . . . dancing with Cyndee, the personal trainer. Grace’s eyes widened, but Cat met her gaze and winked.

“‘Once you have found her, never let her go,’” the bandleader sang, the voices of Declan, Cat, and every man present joining in.

“‘Once you have found her, never . . . let . . . her . . . go!’”

EPILOGUE

The North American Journal of Womens Studies
, volume 3

The Belle of the Ball: It’s Her Party and She’ll Only Cry if She Wants To

Cavanaugh, G. S., University of Washington, Seattle, Washington

Abstract

Beauty is only skin deep, we have all been told. But for women who are perceived as beautiful, do the effects of this perception reach deeper into their lives than a reflection in the mirror? If so, is it for good or for ill? And whose perception is it, exactly, that declares a woman beautiful in the first place? After thirty-five interviews with attractive women of all ages and stations in life, as well as a three-month makeover experiment, it is proposed that being perceived as attractive can be a powerful tool in social interactions; that the effects of using such a tool can be good or ill depending upon the wisdom and motives of the woman in question; and that it is the perception and attitude of the woman herself that is most responsible for the beauty that others see in her outward face and form. Rather than being an arbitrary judgment placed upon her from outside sources, beauty is a tool within the reach of every woman—should she dare to develop and use it.

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THE EROTIC SECRETS OF A FRENCH MAID

Available from Pocket Books

One

S
EATTLE
, W
ASHINGTON

E
mma Mayson wrenched on the parking brake and hoped her incorrigible Honda Civic wouldn’t roll down the steep driveway, into the side of the multimillion-dollar lakefront house below. It would suck equally badly if her car hit the Jaguar parked in front of the garage. She yanked harder on the parking brake, making sure her souped-up little car wasn’t going anywhere. Then she popped the hatchback and got out to fetch her buckets of cleaning supplies, sponge mop, broom, and other housecleaning miscellanea.

The house below was an example of Northwest Modernism, probably built in the 1960s by Roland Terry or one of his emulators. Horizontal planes were punctuated with wide gables that reminded her of Northwest Indian lodges, and under those gables and planes were walls of plate glass. Emma felt a nudge of respect for the person who had bought this house rather than one of the new McMansions or pseudo Mediterranean villas squatting like false royalty around the lake.

Someday she, too, might design the type of building that becomes a landmark in the decades to follow, her name synonymous with a new architectural style. Someday, she might design houses and buildings as remarkable as this one—instead of cleaning them. They hadn’t mentioned in graduate school that the market was flooded with aspiring architects, and that more than a year could go by before finding an internship position with an architecture firm.

A year in which to go through what remained of a small inheritance from one’s grandmother, and to begin receiving repayment statements from one’s student loan services.

She sighed and propped her broom and mop against the bumper. As she hoisted her canister vacuum out of the back, the wind tossed her dark ponytail across her face and into her lip gloss, where it stuck. She tried to pull it out and, distracted, bumped into the broom, which clattered to the pavement, knocking over a bucket. The bucket started to roll down the driveway, careening drunkenly toward the Jaguar with a peculiar determination, as if its whole white plastic life of janitorial humiliation had been waiting for this chance to take a chip off an expensive car.