Chapter Seventy-Seven
Thomas regarded his wife in frustration. “You are asking me to pick up a hat for you at the milliner’s? That ladies’ shop? What if I don’t know what it looks like?”
“The hat or the shop?”
“The hat. The shop is at the end of the first spoke street off Circle, isn’t it?”
“That’s the one. And it’s not a hat, dear. It’s a headband, and you don’t have to know what it looks like. Mrs. Chastain, the milliner, will know.
“Can’t you send a servant?”
“They are all busy helping me with the party. Thomas, please—I need that headpiece today so Regina can try it on before tomorrow and adjustments made if it doesn’t fit. It’s a surprise. I ordered it last month to complement her dress. It will be the perfect touch.”
“It’s for Regina? Why didn’t you say so?”
Priscilla sighed in frustration. “All I have to do is say it’s for Regina, and my will is done. I didn’t tell you because you can never keep secrets from the girl.”
“She worms them out of me.”
“Only because you hint that you know something she’d like to know.”
“Mrs. Chastain, you say? She’s the woman I’m to speak with?”
“She’s the owner of the shop. She’s expecting someone to pick up the band. She’ll have it ready, and you won’t have to linger.”
“What color is it? The band.”
“A light summer green over a rather goldish haze.”
“Sounds pretty. It will bring out Regina’s hazel eyes.”
Priscilla rose hastily from her desk in the morning room, a large, ornate replacement for Jessica’s slim Queen Anne secretary. “Darling, if you don’t mind, I need that headpiece as soon as possible. I’ve got a dozen things to do today to finish preparations for the party, and I’d like to check that item off when Regina returns from her piano lesson. Everybody on the guest list is coming. Nobody would miss it.”
“As long as everybody is coming to celebrate our daughter’s birthday and not out of curiosity about the house,” Thomas said.
Priscilla pressed a hand to her heart to express horror at the idea. “Of course everyone is coming to celebrate Regina’s birthday. I’ve done no more to redecorate the house than anyone else has on Houston Avenue,” she said. “No one is coming to be impressed.”
“Uh-huh,” Thomas said, uncrossing his legs and rising. “And all I have to do is simply walk in and pick up the piece?”
“It will be wrapped and ready to go.”
“I hope the woman doesn’t have undergarments on display.”
“It’s a hat shop, Thomas.”
It was a nice day for a canter into town, and Thomas was glad to get out of the house that no longer seemed like his boyhood home. With the exception of his mother’s suite, his wife had completely redecorated the place, upstairs, downstairs, even his study when he’d been on a business trip to Galveston. Nearly every feature of the sunny house of his childhood with its deep white moldings, Wedgwood blue walls, cream-colored sofas and chairs, and silk draperies in garden pastels had been replaced with the heavy colors of the Victorian period. Their very names—“blood burgundy,” “moss green,” “ash rose,” “shadow gray,” “autumn brown”—depressed Thomas. Massive, ornate furniture, dark woods, heavily stained glass, damask-covered walls, weighty fabrics embellished with tassels, cording, fringe, beads, and spangles had supplanted his mother’s slimmer, lighter, more graceful décor. “The place has been turned into a damned museum,” Thomas had complained to Armand when his decorator’s work was finished.
“It was what your wife wanted, my friend,” Armand said.
Still, it had been almost twenty-seven years since the house had been refurbished, and Thomas had not wanted to stir up a hornet’s nest by refusing Priscilla’s request to “redo a few things.” When he’d gone to ask his mother’s permission, she had said, “Let her have her way, Thomas, and do not think of me. You’ll be living here long after I’m gone.”
Her observation had induced a sadness he’d not been able to put aside. His mother was sixty-seven. Every day of his life, he missed his father. Jeremy and Henri, his father surrogates, were aging. How destitute he would feel when they were gone. He had his friends—Jeremy Jr. and Stephen and Armand, the best—and his children, of course, but his darling daughter would marry soon, and Vernon and David in time. They would leave his home, and then he would be left with Priscilla.
These thoughts were on his mind when he entered the small establishment to which he’d been dispatched, simply named the Millinery Shop. The place had not been in business long. What he knew of it came from Armand, who was now running the department store. The Millinery Shop was a competitor to his friend’s line of women’s hats, but Armand waved away the challenge as one would shoo a fly. “There’s enough business for all, and Mrs. Chastain features certain styles I don’t carry. The proprietor is a war widow. Her husband was killed at Manassas. No children. Quite a lovely woman, actually. I wish her well.”
A silver doorbell announced his presence. Thomas had only a few seconds to register the pleasant fragrance and utter femininity of the place before a woman emerged from a lace curtain drawn across an opening to the rear of the shop.
“Good afternoon, sir. May I help you?”
She spoke in a deep contralto, her voice the most beautiful he’d ever heard. To his complete astonishment, Thomas felt his skin tingle. “Uh, Mrs. Chastain?”
“Yes.”
“I’m…Thomas Toliver, and…I’ve been sent to pick up a package for my wife.”
The woman smiled. Thomas felt pressure mount beneath his rib cage.
“I know who you are, Mr. Toliver.” She reached under the counter and withdrew a small package. “I believe this is for you. It’s already paid for. I hope your daughter will be pleased.”
“Oh, I’m—I’m quite sure she’ll be very pleased.” He could not believe himself. He had conversed easily with the richest and most powerful, the venerable and erudite, the famous and notorious, and yet here he stood tongue-tied in the presence of a millinery shop owner of no more consequence to the world than a feather in the plumage of one of her hats.
“Would you like to see the item your wife purchased for your daughter? I understand it’s to be a surprise.”
“That’s what her mother says, and yes, I’d like very much to see it.”
“Let’s unwrap it, then.”
She set the package on the counter and with light, deft strokes, untied the ribbon. “What do you think?” she said, holding up the wired confection of satin rosettes in the green and gold color his wife had described.
Thomas took the exquisite design in his hands. “It’s the color of my daughter’s eyes.”
“Hazel, so I’m told.”
“Yes, hazel.”
“Not as pure green as yours, then.”
“No, no…They are her own.”
“I understand she has red hair.”
“Yes, like my mother.”
“This color should complement her red hair beautifully.”
He should give the piece back, allow her to rewrap it again, Thomas thought. “How does it…work?” he asked.
The woman took back the arched creation. “Like this,” she said, and gave a mock demonstration. “The piece is designed to hold the hair back and serve as a frame for the face. It should be lovely on your daughter. Shall I rewrap it?”
“Yes, please.”
Thomas watched her hands at work, the bone structure delicate as bone china. She still wore a gold band on her wedding ring finger. She handed the package to him. “There,” she said with a smile that turned his heart over. “I look forward to seeing a picture of your daughter wearing her surprise in the social section of the Sunday paper.”
“I have a better idea,” Thomas said. “Why don’t you come to my daughter’s party and see your handiwork for yourself? It’s tomorrow evening at seven. I’m sure my daughter would love to have you there to thank you in person.”
“That is very kind of you, but…what would Mrs. Toliver say?”
“My mother?”
“No. Your wife.”
“Oh. Why, she would be delighted as well.”
“May I…consider the invitation, Mr. Toliver?”
“Yes, of course.” Thomas picked up the rewrapped package. “And it’s, uh, Thomas, by the way.”
She held out her hand. “Jacqueline,” she said.
He pressed it gently. “Jacqueline. Perhaps you will give serious thought to the invitation?”
“Perhaps. Good-bye…Thomas.”
Thomas tipped his hat. “Until tomorrow evening, I hope.”