CLARA
Marcus was getting married—to somebody else.
Clara’s only plan to stop him had more than a few flaws.
And she was sandwiched between “Benji” and Parker.
Could this wedding possibly get any worse?
“Just look at that jailbird standing up there with good, decent society like Marcus,” a woman’s voice whispered. “I’m surprised she’s not on the arm of that Negro boyfriend of hers.”
Yes. It could. The old women sitting behind her were gossiping.
“Let’s hope she doesn’t cause some kind of ruckus,” another lady scoffed. “She’s already tarnished the Carmody name enough. She doesn’t need to bring the Eastmans down with her.”
Clara studied Gloria, who was standing next to Marcus and looking beautiful in a black-and-white number with buttons down the front. She was whispering something in his ear. What was she saying?
“We’re lucky she didn’t try to smuggle a gun in here! I heard she had a whole room of them in that Harlem hole she was living in.”
“I hear she does have a gun,” Lorraine whispered just loud enough for the row behind them to hear. “And that gossipy old ladies will be the first to go.”
That shut them up in a hurry.
Lorraine caught Clara’s eye, and Clara couldn’t help but smile. Then her gaze drifted to Melvin and the smile faded into a frown. A nervous frown.
His eyes were squinted into slits—the boy was nearly blind without his glasses. He looked ridiculous with his obviously drawn-on black mustache and his clashing red hair peeking out from under a hat that looked like a car had run over it. Clara had to hope Deirdre was as vision-impaired as Melvin, or they would most certainly be in trouble.
Clara turned her attention back to the processional and ran through each unsavory fact she’d learned about Deirdre Van Doren in her mind. She could only hope it would all be enough to rip Marcus away from the quiff for good.
The old biddies in the row behind them started up again. “Marcus looks so dapper—though not as happy as a groom should, eh?”
“Young men always get cold feet. And this was a short engagement. I hear Bea Carmody and her bridge ladies didn’t even have enough time to change the dates of their annual retreat so they could attend. Thank goodness—avoiding that ruined woman at parties has become such a chore. Marcus got engaged right after he broke things off with … oh, what was her name? The Carmodys’ cousin who had that affair with Harris Brown and abandoned her baby?”
“Clara Knowles. Or was it Cara? Don’t recall. Anyway, she lost the baby. The scandals in that family … Marcus dodged a bullet, getting away from that one.”
The ladies’ voices drifted away as Clara focused on Marcus. He stood in the center of the platform beneath the canopy with Gloria and his groomsmen gathered behind him. His crystal-blue eyes were narrowed, and a bead of sweat rolled down the side of his sculpted face. He smoothed a hand over his already perfectly slicked golden hair and tugged a little at his white bow tie. Marcus’s dimples were nowhere to be seen—he didn’t look happy, he looked scared.
Suddenly Marcus’s eyes fixed on hers. It was hard to be sure at this distance—she was seated in the middle of a crowd of hundreds—but Clara swore she could feel the warmth of Marcus’s gaze on her. Why had she told him she didn’t love him anymore? Raine had been right. That night, in his dorm room, she should have told him the truth: that she was still head-over-heels, madly, truly, deeply in love with him.
Friends? No thanks. She wanted to be his girlfriend.
But now some other woman was going to be his wife.
Marcus continued to look in her direction. Was he just surprised to see her? His eyes held a lot more than surprise, though—Clara could see hurt, confusion … and yet his mouth turned up the slightest bit at the corners. His eyes were bright in a way Clara hadn’t seen since he had come to pick her up at Grand Central at the beginning of the summer. When the first words out of his mouth had been “I love you.”
Could he still love her?
She tore her eyes from Marcus’s and glanced back at Lorraine and Melvin. Melvin whispered something in Lorraine’s ear and she laughed. The old Lorraine wouldn’t have looked twice at a boy like Melvin, especially when he was wearing that silly disguise. Seemed like Clara wasn’t the only one who’d learned a thing or two about love since she’d arrived in New York.
Beyond them sat Solomon and Lieutenant Skinner, both looking bored by the festivities. Sol was heinously underdressed in his tweed suit, but it was probably the finest outfit he owned. Clara just hoped he would be able to make it through the ceremony without sneaking out for a smoke.
On Clara’s left, Parker sat beside the Manhattanite’s top photographer, his pencil poised over the notepad in his lap. Some people could be happy being married to their careers.
Clara just wasn’t one of them.
The crowd turned as one to watch Deirdre, or Anastasia, walk down the aisle. She wasn’t wearing the same dress she’d worn that day at the bridal shop—Lorraine might have ruined that one beyond repair. But really she’d done the con woman a favor.
This dress was a sleeveless ivory satin gown with a cluster of handmade cloth flowers at one hip. It had a V-neck, and the skirt was made of tiers of elegant lace. Deirdre’s light gray feathered headdress covered most of her bob. A veil lined with even more lace flowed from the headdress and draped onto the floor. She walked on the arm of Marcus’s father—she’d probably fed Marcus some sob story to account for her absent parents. Ugh, that girl made Clara sick.
The crowd filled with appreciative whispers as Deirdre walked down the aisle, everyone remarking how gorgeous the bride looked. Deirdre smiled widely at Marcus when she reached the platform. Come on, Marcus; just back out on your own so I don’t have to do this to you.…
“Dearly beloved,” the minister said in a deep, booming voice, “we are gathered here today to join Marcus Edward Eastman and Anastasia Juliet Rjin in holy matrimony, which is commended to be honorable among all people, and therefore, is not to be entered into lightly, but solemnly and only after serious thought.”
“Amen,” Lorraine murmured.
“Into this holy partnership these two now come to be joined,” the minister continued. “If any person objects to this union, let them speak now or forever hold their peace.”
Clara fiddled with her wedding program, twisting it until it tore. She took a few deep breaths but couldn’t help grimacing at what she was about to do. She just had to hope that Marcus would understand. She waited, her heart rattling in her chest, for Melvin to make his move.
After a moment of silence, Clara nudged Melvin hard in the side.
“Oof!” Melvin sprang out of his chair, pointed at Deirdre, and bellowed, “Tarnation!” in the most absurd Southern accent Clara had ever heard.
Guests all around them looked at Melvin in surprise and began whispering to each other, filling the room with noise. “How’d he get in here?” a mustached man whispered to his date.
“He looks like he escaped from the carnival,” the brunette replied.
Melvin looked at Clara with desperation in his eyes. This was as far as his part was supposed to go.
Clara stood beside Melvin and cleared her throat. “Excuse me, I have something to say.” She patted Melvin’s arm. “Hold your horses for a moment.”
The whispers around them doubled in volume. At least half the people here knew who she was. Getting tangled up in scandals in New York and Chicago didn’t exactly make for anonymity.
But the only person whose reaction Clara cared about was Marcus. His blue eyes were enormous; his mouth gaped open.
The boy was dumbfounded.
“I object,” Clara said, causing more than one wedding guest to gasp. A woman whipped out a feathered fan and began flapping it in front of her face as though she might faint. “Marcus, I don’t believe you can love that woman—Anastasia or Deirdre or whatever her name is.”
Clara nudged through the row so she could stand in the aisle. She’d been sitting in the eighth row of guests. Not a bad seat if all you wanted to do was watch a wedding—but Clara couldn’t have this kind of conversation with Marcus from a distance.
She rushed closer to the platform, careful not to trip over her dress. She couldn’t get the courage to climb up onto the platform. Plus she was a little scared of what Marcus’s fiancée might try to do to her if she did. So she stopped just in front of the platform. Clara ignored the stunned gazes of the wedding party, Deirdre’s affronted scowl, Gloria mouthing What are you doing?, and the weight of the hundreds of eyes on her back. Clara couldn’t look at or think of anyone but Marcus, not if she was really going to go through with this.
“If I let you marry that viper beside you,” Clara said to him, “not only will you be making the biggest mistake of your life, but so will I.”
“Why, you—” Deirdre began, her dainty hands clenching into fists.
Marcus held up a finger to shush Deirdre. “The minister said it himself: This is the part where people are allowed to speak. So what exactly are you saying, Clara?” he asked. Marcus’s eyes were bright again, and he looked like he was fighting a smile.
That gave Clara the courage to keep going. “I have made some big mistakes in my life. But my biggest mistake was letting you go. But it stops here: Marcus, I love you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you, if you’ll have me.”
“ ’Ow dare you!” Deirdre screeched at Clara. She turned back to Marcus and grasped his wrists with her tiny hands. The minister took a step or two away from them and stroked his gray beard nervously. “You should ’ave zat woman arrested. She’s ze one ’oo attacked me at ze bridal shop!”
“Oh, shut your trap, sister!” Lorraine yelled before Marcus could react. She barreled through the row, stepping on feet left and right. “You get your hands off me—I’m not sitting in your lap on purpose!” she yelled at a leering, bearded man sitting by the aisle after she tripped and nearly fell.
Lorraine pulled up her dress enough to expose part of her lacy white slip and ran down the aisle. She stopped beside Clara and heaved a few deep breaths.
“Lorraine?” Gloria asked, holding her hand to her chest. Gloria looked between her old friend, Marcus, and Clara. “Will someone please tell me what’s going on?”
“All in good time! Love your dress, by the way. You’re like some kind of classy penguin,” Lorraine said.
“Thank you?” Gloria said, blinking.
Lorraine pointed at Deirdre. “And you, drop the fake French accent. The closest you’ve ever been to Paris was when you looked at a map … of Paris!”
The crowd gasped, and now guests didn’t even bother to whisper their suspicions.
“Could it be true?”
“But she’s so beautiful!”
“They did get engaged quickly.…”
“Never trust the French—that’s what I always say.”
“Our buddy, Benji,” Lorraine went on, beckoning to Melvin, “he knows what we’re talking about. You two used to date, isn’t that right?”
Clara could see a glimmer of fear in Deirdre’s copper-flecked eyes. “I do not know what you are talkeeng about.”
“Oh yes you do,” Clara said. “Just like you know you’re wanted in three states for armed robbery. You were nearly arrested outside a restaurant in New Orleans for destruction of property and, oh, right, attempting to stab the owner with a steak knife.”
“That was you?” a middle-aged woman with her black hair piled on top of her head asked from the second row. She rose from her chair. “My sister lives in New Orleans—she told me all about it. The town was scared half to death when they couldn’t catch that madwoman.”
The crowd gasped again, and the word madwoman echoed around the room. “Yes, thank you, ma’am!” Clara called to the woman. She looked back at Deirdre with more confidence. “Then you changed your game. You fell off the radar, went through about a dozen aliases, and focused on trying to get rich the old-fashioned way—by marrying the money rather than stealing it.”
Deirde turned to Marcus. “Sacre bleu! She eez lying!”
“One of your schemes almost worked, Deirdre,” Clara said. “Once you figured out that a boy fresh from a recent heartbreak would be less likely to question you. But the lies and deceit end now. So how about you drop the act and get away from the man I love, before Benji here starts telling some stories of his own.”
Marcus stared at Deirdre now, withdrawing his wrists from her grip. “Is this true? Do you know that man with the strange mustache?”
“Of course not!” Deirdre exclaimed. “Obviously your ex-girlfriend eez just jealous of me.” She pointed at Clara, scowling. “And she has mistaken me for zis Deirdre person! She must be very good-lookeeng. But I never—”
A look of dawning realization spread across Marcus’s face. He put up a hand to stop her. “You know what? It doesn’t matter.”
Deirdre stopped cold. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t care whether you’re this Deirdre person or Anastasia or the Yellow Kid,” Marcus replied. He glanced at Clara and gave her a smile that made her heart lighter than it had been in months. “What Clara’s saying is true: I don’t love you. I love her. And I’ve just been using you to get over my broken heart. For that I really am sorry.”
Clara had no time to relish the fact that Marcus still loved her: Deirdre let out a high-pitched shriek. She raised her skirt, jumped off the platform, and turned her fierce glare on Clara. “You can’t do this to me!” she exclaimed without a trace of a French accent. Her voice had also dropped about an octave. “I—I’ll sue!”
Lorraine burst into laughter. “Oh, please. You’ve duped so many men, I’m sure one or the other of them will press charges once they learn where you’ve ended up. Clara’s got more than a few names in that file of hers.”
Clara nodded. “You’re right, Raine, I do.”
Deirdre’s eyes widened in white-hot fury and she lunged at Clara, who moved out of the way, knocking into an elderly man with a monocle seated on the edge of the aisle. A few women in the row raced from their chairs and left the room, not wanting to get caught up in the commotion. Meanwhile, two little boys a few rows behind rose up on their knees in their chairs and shook their fists, chanting, “Fight, fight, fight!”
Gloria rushed from the platform to help Lorraine and Clara, while Marcus approached his parents in the front row. Mr. Eastman was standing in the front row with a sobbing Mrs. Eastman on his arm.
“Marcus, explain this!” Mr. Eastman yelled.
“Sorry, Dad, I really don’t think I can …,” Marcus replied.
The rest of the wedding party remained on the platform, rooted to their places with shock.
Gloria caught Lorraine’s arm just as she was about to punch Deirdre in the face. Deirdre moved to attack Lorraine and Gloria yanked her out of the way. Deirdre dove straight onto the linen cloth that covered the aisle, while Parker’s photographer called, “Smile!”
Clara laughed as Deirdre pulled herself to her feet. “Thanks for that, Deirdre,” Clara said. “You can look for that photo in next week’s issue of the Manhattanite.”
“I won’t be in this country by next week,” Deirdre growled.
She chucked the bouquet of calla lilies she’d been holding right at Clara’s head—Clara ducked, and Lorraine caught the bouquet easily. “I’ve always wanted to do that!” she exclaimed, holding the bouquet in the air as a trophy and yelling out into the crowd. “Guess all those years of softball at Laurelton Prep really paid off!”
Deirdre raised her skirt and went running straight down the aisle.
“Stop her!” Mr. Eastman yelled. “Someone stop that woman! ”
Mrs. Eastman had stopped crying, and now her arm was around Marcus. She wiped the last of the tears from under her eyes. Her expression was pure venom. “No one hurts my Marcus and gets away with it!”
Clara reminded herself to step lightly around Marcus’s mother in the future.
“Don’t worry, ma’am, she won’t!” Solomon’s police companion called to the Eastmans. “Not if I have anything to say about it!”
Lieutenant Skinner rose from his seat and took off after the con woman. Clara didn’t doubt the copper would catch Deirdre and have her in cuffs before she reached the lobby.
The murmuring crowd had been shocked into complete silence. Clara breathed deeply in and out, her heart hammering. She jerked when she felt a hand on her arm. “Clara, why didn’t you tell me you were looking into Marcus’s fiancée?” Gloria asked. She moved her hand back and forth—maybe she’d hurt her wrist in the fight. “With … Lorraine?” Lorraine looked up hopefully at Gloria’s mention of her.
“You and Marcus are so close—I was afraid you’d tell me to stop,” Clara said. “Plus I know you’ve been busy.”
Her cousin pulled Clara into a hug. “No, I’m so glad. You two belong together. And I have been busy.” When she pulled away her face was distracted. “Actually, that reminds me, I need to go check on something.”
“Secret bureau stuff?” Clara asked.
“Exactly.”
Gloria turned and began to walk down the aisle to the exit.
“Gloria!” Lorraine called, and Gloria turned. “Thanks for saving me from that roundheel!”
Gloria smiled brightly at Lorraine. “Thanks for helping Clara save Marcus from her!”
Then she rushed away, leaving Lorraine glowing.
The members of the orchestra, as well as several guests, rose from their chairs and followed Gloria out. Clearly there wasn’t going to be a wedding now.
The rest of the guests were still quiet after the others left, watching Clara and her friends with amused disdain. The only sound Clara could hear was slow clapping, and that came from Marcus. He still stood with his parents with a band of stupefied groomsmen on the platform behind them. His mother still had her arm around Marcus, to comfort him, but he just grinned at her.
He walked down the aisle toward Clara and Lorraine. When he reached them, his eyes flicked toward Lorraine while she sniffed at the bouquet in her hands.
“Oh, Raine,” he said, “how I’ve missed you.”
Lorraine immediately got misty-eyed. “Really? Because I—”
He patted her hand. “I’ll find you at the reception, okay? We’ll catch up.”
Lorraine took the hint. She linked her arm with Melvin’s and led him back to their seats.
Which left Marcus and Clara alone. Or at least, as alone as they could be in front of a crowd of people. Clara looked out at the women clutching at their pearls, the men leaning forward to get a better view. She should’ve felt utterly embarrassed to have caused such a scene. But looking into Marcus’s beautiful blue eyes, she couldn’t feel anything but pure elation.
“I think you and I have some catching up to do,” he whispered to her.
Without paying any attention to the hundreds of eyes fixed on them, Marcus wound his arms around Clara’s waist and pulled her close. He leaned his forehead against hers. “No more lies, okay? I think I’ve had enough of those for one lifetime.”
Clara nodded and tentatively placed one hand on the lapel of his tuxedo. “Did you mean what you said to Deirdre? That you still … love me?”
Marcus gave her a sheepish grin. “I’ve always loved you, Clara. And I always will. Now and forever.”
Clara felt everything inside go warm. She hadn’t lost Marcus. Somehow, he’d come back to her—and she was very much aware that this was a second chance most people never got. She wasn’t about to screw it up.
“Then kiss me, you fool,” she whispered.
Marcus didn’t hesitate. He took her in his arms and pressed his lips to hers. Clara’s entire body sighed: Kissing Marcus felt like coming home again. Yet Clara felt she was also traveling somewhere new and wondrous. She hadn’t been sure Marcus would stay interested in her forever, once he got to know the real her. But now she realized he had always known the real Clara, far better than Clara herself did.
When Marcus pulled away, the crowd erupted into applause. Marcus’s parents, much to Clara’s relief, were clapping, too. Lorraine looked the most gleeful of all. Clara thought of the way Gloria had smiled at Lorraine before she left. Could there be hope for those two, after everything?
Marcus took Clara’s hand, sending pleasant shocks up her arm. “This will sound absurd,” he announced to everyone, “but since we have already paid for a party, I’d like for us to have a party. There is food and dancing in the Palm Court, and an incredible band. So please stay and enjoy the near death of my bachelorhood.”
The crowd laughed and a few of Marcus’s college pals stood, ready to kick off the party downstairs.
“It was a close call, friends. I almost married the wrong girl. But now I’ve got the right one back and I’m never letting go. And if that isn’t a reason to celebrate”—Marcus met Clara’s eyes and grinned—“I don’t know what is.”