The Davenports(23)

Mr. Lawrence followed her fingers. “Your father and his brother?”

She nodded. The stricken look on her father’s face when he’d spotted them was one of the few times Olivia had seen her father cry. Her mother, who was born free, if poor, in a loving family, had embraced him from behind, her face pressed to his back, where he would not see her tears. The painting had hung in the entryway ever since.

“Mr. Lawrence,” Mrs. Davenport said, fitting her hat to her head. She beamed at the pair, her gaze lingering briefly on the painted scene behind them. Olivia saw the fleeting glimpse of sadness that passed over her mother’s features. “How are you this afternoon?”

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Davenport,” he said, his voice smooth as butter, his accent clipping his words pleasingly, bespeaking his London upbringing. “I am well and hope you don’t mind, I took this rather hefty basket from your cook.”

“Yes, Jessie does love to spoil us,” Mrs. Davenport said. She cast a sidelong glance at her daughter.

Olivia cleared her throat. “I’ve selected the dishes myself. A mixture of English delicacies and American sweets—and some French favorites for fun. I hope you’ll enjoy them.”

Mr. Lawrence shifted the weight of the basket to his left hand and offered her his arm. Olivia tilted her head higher as she looped her lace-gloved hand into the crook of his elbow. He leaned in to whisper, almost conspiratorially, “I am sure to like anything you have chosen.” Olivia fought the urge to hide her smile behind her hand.

At the bottom of the front steps, one of her family’s grander carriages waited. An open-air design, it allowed the riders an unobstructed view of their surroundings—and the public an unobstructed view of its riders. Olivia glanced back at her mother, sure this was her doing, as Jacob Lawrence helped both women in. Mrs. Davenport’s eyes sparkled, her obvious enthusiasm reminding Olivia of everything that was at stake.

Once inside, Olivia found herself tongue-tied. But her mother and Mr. Lawrence kept up a steady conversation about the weather and Chicago’s many offerings. Mr. Lawrence stole glances at Olivia. She felt a heat rise under her skin each time he looked at her. She had the distinct impression he had looked at women this way before—intentional, and in plain view of their parents as they calculated their good fortune. Olivia discovered herself relieved to not have committed some faux pas that would drive him away. He was smart, cultured, and well traveled. Everything she and her parents had hoped for.

After the short carriage ride, Mr. Lawrence, ever the gentleman, helped the ladies down and carried the large basket.

Olivia loved this park, and the grand, gray-blue sweep of Lake Michigan beyond.

She was aware of the eyes on them as they made their way to a shaded knoll overlooking the lake’s expanse. Some of the park’s mostly white patrons frequented the same tearooms—she recognized a few familiar faces enjoying picnics of their own. The gentlemen were sons of the various white business owners her father worked with. Those who recognized her offered a nod or polite smile or some discreet gesture of acknowledgment. Brown faces were few and far between, obvious among the scattered patrons.

Mrs. Davenport opened her fan and waved to Mrs. Johnson and Mrs. Tremaine near the gazebos, a tea service laid out beside them. “I’ll leave you young people to yourselves,” she said, patting Olivia’s wrist.

Olivia tried her best not to show her true feelings as her mother’s smile widened. She suspected her mother had planned for her friends to be here under pretense of running into them. She would be only a short distance away, and Olivia and Mr. Lawrence were in a public park. Still, she got the strange feeling that today was to be some sort of turning point in their relationship.

Relationship. It seemed too weighty a word for what she and Mr. Lawrence had. There was so much she didn’t know about him.

He placed the basket at the foot of a tree on a bed of pale pink petals fallen from the branches above. The blanket opened with a crack at the flick of his wrists. His eyes bore that same confidence that drew her in the very first day in the sitting room.

“After you,” he said. She took his hand and lowered herself to the ground, careful to tuck her skirts under her. Her corset dug into her hips and she felt each of its bones against hers. Jacob Lawrence sat silently across from her, watching her in a way that made her skin hot and cold at the same time. She chewed her bottom lip and then instantly released it, remembering that her mother was close, analyzing their every gesture with a hawk’s keen eye.

“The crêpes are my favorite,” she said, hoping a neutral topic would get the conversation going. Olivia pulled Jessie’s creations from the basket and arranged them on the blanket.

“It was hard not to take a peek inside, with it smelling as sweet as it does.” Mr. Lawrence’s words were playful, his eyes more interested in her than the food. She offered him the pastry, his fingers gently grazing hers.

“Well?” she asked.

“I think I may need another one,” he said, mouth slightly full. “I’m not quite sure how I feel yet.”

Olivia laughed. It was a good sign that they agreed on this, right? She added crêpes to the list of things she and Mr. Lawrence had in common and took a bite of her own.

“What do you suppose those two are talking about?” Mr. Lawrence nodded to a white couple Olivia recognized—older than them but younger than her parents. The gentleman looked off into the distance, a pained expression on his face. His wife clutched his arm, her lips moving too quickly to be the sweet nothings of two lovers on a stroll.