"I'm just trying to help her."
The Commodore hauled his bony form upright and grinned. "Think whatever you want. I know." He started to turn away, then glanced back and said, "If you need someone to intercede with Wing Ko for you, let me know. I might not be able to help, but I'd be glad to try."
Cole nodded. "Thank you. But I'm sure it's settled."
The Commodore stuck his Havana back in his mouth, shook his head, and walked away.
Cole sat back and frowned. His sojourn at the Olympia Club, intended to simply pass the time, had turned out to be rather disturbing. From the encounter with Garrett Ingersoll to the completely improper thoughts he had been having about Annabel to the Commodore's totally unwarranted conclusions concerning how he felt about her, it was all just too much.
Cole took his watch out and checked the time. Only an hour had passed. Well, perhaps he would leave the club anyway and spend the other hour walking the streets until he was supposed to return to Miss Mellisande's. Right now, he needed something to clear his head, and some fresh air might just do the trick.
He stood up, drained the last of his brandy, and left the salon.
Chapter 5
Annabel hadn't realized that fitting into this era was going to be quite so painful.
"Come on, darling, you can take a deeper breath than that," Mellisande Dupree said.
Annabel felt like telling the woman that she could take a deep enough breath to stay underwater for a good three minutes. However, Mellisande wasn't interested in lung capacity. At the moment, she was concentrating on waist measurement.
Hauling in the biggest breath of air she could, Annabel grunted as the Chinese seamstress tugged hard on the laces of the corset and then quickly fastened them. Mellisande, who was standing to one side observing, clapped her hands lightly in satisfaction. "Much better," she said. "Just look at yourself now, dear."
Annabel studied herself in the gilt-edged, full-length mirror standing nearby on a couple of clawed feet. After a moment, she came to the undeniable conclusion that she looked like a freak. The corset shrunk her waist to unnaturally tiny dimensions and made her boobs stick out like she was some sort of pouter pigeon. On top of that, she could barely breathe. Thinly, she said, "I don't care for the corset."
"Oh, but it's absolutely necessary if the gown is going to fit properly," Mellisande insisted. "At least try it on, dear. I promise you, young Mr. Brady will think you look stunning."
Mellisande claimed she had been a friend of Cole's mother, so Annabel didn't want to offend the woman. Breathing shallowly—the only way she could breathe with that blasted corset on—she bent awkwardly so that the seamstress could slip the gown over her head. The Chinese woman went around behind her to fasten the buttons that ran up the back of the garment.
The first thing Mellisande had done was to pile Annabel's hair on top of her head and pin it there in an elaborate arrangement of curls. That made her look even taller. So did the long, tight-waisted gown, Annabel saw as she glanced again at the mirror. Mellisande had called this a walking dress. It had a white, frilly, high-necked bodice, sleeves that were puffy from the shoulder to the elbow and tight from the elbow to the wrist, and a small bustle in the back. The skirt flared slightly as it fell from Annabel's hips to her ankles. The sleeves and skirt were a rich, dark gold color.
"Lovely," Mellisande declared. "Stay right there, dear. I have just the thing to complete the outfit."
She hurried into the front of the shop and came back carrying a large brown hat with a silk flower attached to it. She had to pull over a stool and stand on it in order to reach up and settle the hat on Annabel's now upswept hair.
"Perfect," Mellisande said as she stepped down from the stool. "Your beau won't even recognize you."
"He's not my beau," Annabel said. "Just . . . a friend." Even that was stretching things, she thought. Cole was nothing more than an acquaintance, and a very recent one at that.
But why, she asked herself, would an acquaintance go to all the trouble that Cole had gone to for her?
"Well, he's still going to be very impressed," Mellisande insisted. "You look every bit the height of fashion, my dear. And in your case, I do mean height."
There she went again, talking about how tall Annabel was. Annabel knew that people's average height had steadily gotten taller over the years, but even here in 1906, it wasn't like she was ready for the WNBA. Not that there was a Women's National Basketball Association yet . . .
"So everybody wears getups like this?"
"Those who want to be fashionable do," Mellisande said. "It's called the Gibson look."
Annabel vaguely remembered hearing references to Gibson Girls, and now she knew what they meant. She'd always been the jeans-and-sweatshirt type herself.