CHAPTER
TWO

A balcony door opened and music floated out to where Jamie Russell leaned against the brick wall around the Grand Hotel’s prized rose garden. The hotel’s brochures spoke glowingly of the beauty and peace it afforded all their guests.

Jamie felt none of that peace. He shouldn’t be here. He had told himself not to come. Better to stay in Danville where his mother had found refuge on her brother’s estate.

Uncle Wyatt was a physician. While well respected in his town, he was not rich. He claimed any doctor worth his salt could never get rich. Too many needed his services without the coin to pay. Especially now. But he was thrifty and had preserved his inheritance from his much more ambitious father. Part of that inheritance was the family house and acreage in Danville. Jamie’s mother had inherited a like amount of money, along with a second house in Louisville.

All was lost when Jamie’s father’s loans were called in after the crash. He had so wanted to be rich. None of them knew how deeply he went into debt to buy stocks. It seemed a failsafe prospect, with how the market kept booming. For a while it had worked. Profits mushroomed. His father bragged about doubling his money. He repaid the loans but turned around and borrowed more. The gains were there to be grabbed by those brave enough to play the market or foolhardy enough to think stocks would continue rising instead of the bottom dropping out. The crash took it all.

Not only from his father. Others ended up in the same sorrowful position after the ticking of the stock market tape on Black Tuesday.

Jamie had never cared much for numbers. He liked words. Hated the hours he spent in the family business, figuring supply and demand. Supply had overwhelmed demand and now nothing was worth anything. Certainly not Jamie himself, if money were the measure of worth.

Money did seem to be the measure at events like the one playing out in the ballroom above him. He could go in. He was appropriately dressed. The creditors hadn’t taken their clothes. Only their self-respect. And his father.

Financial ruin had been more than his father’s heart could stand. A stronger man might have fought through. Come back from nothing. Jamie’s older brother was that kind of man. Simon was working to revive the family fortune by finding investors to finance a new manufacturing venture. He claimed the economy had to improve and people would again want to spend money.

Perhaps they would, but now all commerce moved at a snail’s pace. Still, a new president seemed ready to bring the country out of the depression. President Roosevelt’s fireside chat had come through the radio to bolster the courage of men like Simon. So much so that Simon was thinking of changing from manufacturing washing machines to making radios. Even during this downturn in fortunes, people still wanted their radios. That was the future. Simon was every bit as ambitious as their father had been but with a more conservative bent. No loans to gamble on the market. Only on his business future.

Jamie, at twenty-two, was five years younger than Simon and five years older than their baby sister, Marianne, who would never have an elaborate debut party like the one going on in the hotel. That worried their mother, who feared their loss of fortune would keep Marianne and Jamie from finding a good match. Simon was already married with two children. Fortunately, he had made a good match, a lovely lady. An inheritance from her grandmother kept them from losing their house.

Simon and Estelle could have been on the guest list for Piper’s party. If so, Piper’s parents probably hoped Jamie wouldn’t ride Simon’s coattails through the door and mess up their plans to match Piper with a more likely husband candidate.

Not that Jamie and Piper had ever mentioned marriage back when they were forever together. Before the crash changed everything. Jamie had been able to continue his education. Uncle Wyatt made sure of that. Jamie had just graduated from Centre College in Danville. A fine college that had tried to prepare him for the future, if he only knew what that future was.

Simon said he could work for him as soon as he got the new business up and going, but Jamie hated the thought of being stuck behind a desk, adding up figures. Uncle Wyatt said he could consider medicine, but the sight of blood made Jamie queasy. Teaching was a possibility, although the idea didn’t excite him. Nor would it excite a debutante’s parents.

He looked toward the balcony and wished Piper would step outside. He hadn’t seen her for months, but at one time they could almost converse without words. Guessing each other’s thoughts had been a game they played. She was better at it than him, always knowing when he was thinking blue instead of red or yellow. At church, sitting on opposite sides of the aisle, if he looked toward her, she was always turning to look at him at the same time.

He wondered now why he had never told her he loved her. Why he hadn’t made her promise to marry him when they came of age. She would have kept her promise whether her parents thought she should or not.

Perhaps he should climb up the trellis to the balcony. Be a Romeo to his Juliet. But then that story hadn’t ended so well for Romeo or Juliet.

That didn’t mean he couldn’t still ask. Step up to her and ask for a dance. Any dance she wanted to do. A waltz. A Charleston. A dance for life.

Piper, I am here. In the rose garden. He pushed the thought toward her and stepped out of the shadows. He felt foolish, but he couldn’t tamp down the hope, making his heart beat faster. If she came outside, that would mean their special connection hadn’t been broken by his change in fortune.

The music stopped. The balcony doors opened, and Piper stepped out. Jamie’s smile faded when a man followed her. They were obviously together. He recognized the man. Braxton Crandall. The son of the man Simon hoped would invest in his radio factory. The Crandalls’ railroad money hadn’t disappeared in the crash.

Jamie moved back into the shadows. Money did matter. In so many ways. Perhaps not for love but for all those practical things a person needed. Love wasn’t practical.

What if the two had slipped out on the balcony for a kiss? Jamie could not bear watching that. Better to leave without anyone knowing he was there. He pulled in a quick breath when he brushed against a bush. If they heard the rattle of leaves, he hoped they would think it was the wind.

He resisted the urge to look back toward the balcony as he went out the gate. Nor did he think goodbye. Instead he thought the words he should have said when he was sixteen or nineteen or twenty. I love you, Piper Danson.

Piper was sorry she suggested stepping out on the balcony to Braxton. She should have sent him for a drink and then slipped out alone for a breath of fresh air. His hand was on the small of her back as though they were still dancing. A possessive touch. She eased away from him.

Her cheeks warmed as she realized Braxton might think she hoped for a kiss. That was often the purpose of a couple escaping a dance floor onto a balcony. She remembered a few such times with Jamie. Before the crash changed everything.

Yet, she had still expected him to be here. She almost felt as though he was there somewhere, thinking about her. She bit back a smile as she remembered how they used to see if they could guess each other’s thoughts. Perhaps she should have sent thought messages to ask him to come. She didn’t care that his family no longer had money. He was young. She was young. Opportunities would surface. But then, what if she was wrong about Jamie caring for her? He had never told her he loved her. They had never talked of marrying someday. She had assumed it, but she might have assumed too much. She stared up at the sky where a few stars were showing up. Jamie, why aren’t you here?

A rustle of brush in the rose garden grabbed her attention away from the stars. “Someone is in the garden.”

Braxton had his hand on her back again. “Perhaps a young man went out to steal a rose for his sweetheart.”

Piper looked up at him with an easier smile. “What a romantic thing to say.” She had no reason to hold him at arm’s length simply because she was pining after Jamie. She had promised her parents to at least get to know Braxton, whether any sparks ignited between them or not.

The polite lines on Braxton’s face melted away as he smiled back. Piper hadn’t considered that he might find their association tonight every bit as awkward as she did. Had he agreed to be her escort because he was attracted to her, or was it nothing more than a match of fortunes made on a bank floor?

“Roses are the language of love, are they not?” he said.

She would have preferred he had stayed with romance instead of bringing the word love out between them, but it was simply a word. She was being too sensitive. Neither of them was ready to think love. She didn’t expect to ever be ready. Not with Braxton Crandall, no matter how nice he turned out to be.

If only he’d quit touching her back, herding her this way or that. But that was how dancing was supposed to be. The man leading. The woman following. Her mother said that was the way a woman’s life was as well. A good wife following her husband’s lead.

Piper supposed her mother was right. Women needed to be wives and mothers to keep things in balance. To keep the world spinning on its axis. The Lord said to go forth and be fruitful. There was Adam and there was Eve. Abraham and Sarah. Isaac and Rebekah. Jacob and Rachel. Well, Leah in that story did complicate matters a bit.

Love could complicate matters. Or the lack of love.

Another rustle in the garden below drew her attention and she moved closer to the railing to look down. A man slipped through the gate to the street. Shadows hid his face, but something about him was so familiar she had to bite her lip to keep from calling out Jamie’s name.

She wanted to race back through the ballroom, down the stairs, and outside to run after the man. She hadn’t seen Jamie since his father’s funeral at the end of summer. Months ago. They had held hands under a tree near the family burial plot and promised to write. Both clinging to a past forever lost and avoiding the very real future that would never be the same.

Jamie moved with his mother to his uncle’s house. Piper went back east to school. The holidays when she’d come home, he was in Danville. Not an impossible drive to Louisville, but he hadn’t come to see her.

They exchanged a few letters. His oddly stiff and impersonal. How are you? I’m fine. But of course he wasn’t fine. It didn’t take much reading between the lines to know that. Perhaps he had found a girl closer to home. One who wasn’t hundreds of miles away at college. It seemed a reasonable assumption for the change in his correspondence. She may have been the only one thinking they were more than friends.

The person in the garden couldn’t have been Jamie. He wouldn’t have lurked there in the shadows. He would have come in. Thinking it might be him was merely a result of her wishing him there. Not there. Here. Beside her. His hand on her back guiding her to step nearer to him, to share a life with him.

He did love her. At least he had loved her once upon a time. But “once upon a times” were only in fairy tales. That echo of Jamie’s voice in her head telling her he loved her was no more than her own desire to hear the words.

She straightened up. Time to stop imagining things, finish out the night, and somehow endure the irritation of the gauzy dress and this man’s hand on her back. Better to dance away the hours until the party would finally be over.

As she turned to go back inside, Braxton stepped closer. But one of the things she had learned at college was how to avoid an unwanted kiss at the many dances with the men’s college across town. A slide to the side, a smile, and a quick word to dispel any romantic ideas.

“Oh, listen. The music has started up again.”

“Then the dance floor awaiteth.” Braxton smiled, obviously very aware of her escape tactics. After all, he wasn’t a kid. He’d no doubt stepped out on plenty of balconies where kisses were exchanged or refused. But now he offered her his arm, and she slid her hand around his elbow.

She gathered a debutante persona around her and chattered on about nothing that mattered as they went back inside. The band. Or the extravagant bouquet of pink roses he had sent that now graced one of the tables and practically demanded attention.

Just as Braxton Crandall had a way of demanding attention. Were this not Piper’s night, other debutantes would be pushing her out of the way in hopes of getting his attention. They would get their chance. After she and Braxton had this next dance together, then the two of them could dance with others. It wasn’t as if they were yoked in any way. At least not yet.

When they came back into the ballroom, Piper’s mother sent a radiant smile her way, as though Piper were following the proper debutante script. Perhaps she was. At least on the surface, while inside she wished the evening over. More debutante events would follow. Other girls, younger than her, would have their debut balls. Engagements would be announced. Volunteer activities for the betterment of the community would be required. And unavoidable evenings with Braxton Crandall, unless he decided on a more appealing debutante than Piper.

Truda also smiled Piper’s way with her eyebrows raised a bit. Piper smiled back at them both. Let the masquerade continue.