The Wedding Dress(8)

“You’re racing? On Sunday? ” She arched her brow, grinning, mimicking his inflection.

“We’re not racing, we’re riding.”

“It’ll be a race the moment you start the engines.” She reached up to lace her fingers through his hair. “Want to come in?”

“You think you know me so well?” His quick kiss was playful as he stepped past her into the loft.

Did she? His competitive nature and passion for all things extreme weren’t hard to see. Tim carried those on the surface. But she didn’t have long to contemplate. Tim hooked her away from the door, letting it slam behind him, and drew her tight.

As he did, her heels crashed into something hard and she stumbled backward, falling out of his embrace.

Tim snatched her hand before she hit the floor. “Char, are you okay?”

“I’m fine . . . What’s this box?” Charlotte bent down to fold back the flaps and peer inside. “Oh—our wedding invitations.”

“What are they doing in the hall?” Tim carried the box to the polished tamburil wood slab coffee table. Charlotte had saved for a year to buy the piece—her first real furniture purchase.

“Dixie brought them home from the shop.”

Tim squinted at her. “Do we need to have a wedding meeting? Figure out where we are?”

Charlotte exhaled. “Yes. This week, Tim. It’s already the middle of April.” She worked her way past him to the dining table where she’d left her iPad.

“Monday night?” Tim tapped his phone’s screen. “No, I’ve got a city council meeting.” He peered at Charlotte. “Looks like Dave and I are going to get the downtown refurbishing job.”

“Tim, really? That’s great. Tuesday I have a consult with the mayor’s daughter.”

“Mayor’s daughter?” He arched his brow. “That’s my girl. I’m impressed.”

“She read about Tawny in the paper and figured if we could make Miss Alabama happy, maybe we could do the same for her.”

“By all means, let’s give the mayor’s daughter the Charlotte Malone treatment. How about Wednesday?” Tim walked around the sofa toward the dining table. “I’m free. Dinner, then wedding business?”

“Perfect.”

Tim tapped on his phone’s screen, then gathered Charlotte for a long, slow kiss. “I’d better go because I don’t want to go.”

“See you in the morning.” Charlotte exhaled, eyes closed, breathing in the scent of his skin. Then she watched him leave, bracing for the door to click closed behind him. That sound always stirred the phantom fear of being alone. All alone.

Ever since Mama died, Charlotte kept uneasy company with aloneness. She was one of one. Gert used to play an old record, something about one being the loneliest number. Charlotte hated the song and left the house when Gert put it on.

Charlotte Malone ended up being her own island, formed from the landscape of her family—by birth and by death.

Kicking off her shoes, she wandered into the kitchen for a water. Twisting off the cap, she paused by her window and gazed toward the distant orange glow of Birmingham, examining her thoughts and separating her emotions.

She jumped when someone pounded on the door. “Tim?”

“I have a delivery from the Ludlow Estate for Charlotte Malone. A trunk.”

Charlotte pressed her nose to the door and eyeballed the man on the other side of the peephole. “It’s kind of late,” she said. When she paid for the trunk to be delivered, she expected it to be next week. Not at a quarter ’til midnight.

“You’re telling me. Just need you to sign and I’m gone.”

Charlotte unlocked the door and a skinny man in dirty jeans sporting a Fu Manchu hoisted the trunk into the loft. “It don’t weigh nothin’. Hope you got your money’s worth.” He held out the clipboard. “Sign here.”

When he’d gone, Charlotte shoved the trunk to the center of the loft and knelt in front of the welded lock. “Well now, my new friend. Do you know what trouble you caused me today?”





Chapter Three



Emily





August 1912

Birmingham





She was late. Again. Emily took the corner toward Highland, cutting across Mrs. Schell’s yard, walking fast, reining in her desire to run, shoving her hair into place by securing the loose pins. She willed the hot August air to stir, to breathe. Perspiration trickled across her neck, beneath her high collar and down her back.

Mother would be irritated. Father, amused. But the suffrage meeting ran long. So many opinions and voices. It made her head ache.

Emily sprinted up the walk and around the house to the servants’ kitchen entrance, her skirt flapping against her ankles, her heels clip-clomping on the pavement.

Well, if Mother scolded her for being tardy, Emily could blame Phillip. He’d intercepted her as she was leaving the meeting. Just the very memory of his kisses in the back of his carriage made Emily’s temperature rise.

If only he’d intercepted her before the meeting. They’d have had more time and she could have escaped Mrs. Daily’s deplorable speech. Her voice rose up, then down, up, then down.

Mrs. Daily was certainly entertaining. Emily laughed softly, then just as she passed the large evergreen, a hand reached around, gripped her arm, and jerked her behind the tree.