Chapter 34
Maggie listened, a smile frozen on her face, as, after a startled pause, Theo replied smoothly that Miss Winter, his fiancée, was well indeed, and joining him in Chicago from New York next month.
“She won’t be here for the opening of the Exposition?” Bertha Palmer asked, fluttering her fan. “What a pity.”
“She is preparing for our wedding, back in New York, in September,” Theo replied, keeping his genial tone without any seeming effort, a fact which hurt as much as the knowledge he had a fiancée—something that did not surprise Maggie nearly as much as perhaps it should have.
“But she will visit it, certainly, when she arrives.”
“And will you settle in Chicago,” Bertha Palmer asked, “or New York?”
“That remains to be seen,” Theo replied. “I am hoping Daphne will fall in love with Chicago as I have.”
They chatted a little more, while Maggie stood there woodenly, her mind whirling.
So Theo was to be married, and soon. She thought of the last few months, the evenings they’d spent together tucked up in her little apartment, his head in her lap, the fire burning merrily, and inwardly she writhed with shame.
It was just as Brendan had said, what many people probably thought, and she’d somehow convinced herself that it wasn’t.
That she’d been behaving respectably, even when she—and certainly Theo—hadn’t been.
Now, in the bright light of the ballroom, Maggie could see it clearly for what it had always been—a bachelor’s last fling before he committed himself to matrimony, and all that it entailed.
She hadn’t truly fooled herself it had been more serious than that, and yet it hurt now, to see it so very starkly.
Finally, Mrs. Palmer released them, and as they moved off, Theo turned to her, his smile as bright as ever.
“More champagne?”
“When were you going to tell me?” Maggie asked in a low voice, and he had the temerity to look confused.
“Tell you what?”
“That you are to be married,” Maggie hissed, and something like irritation passed over his face before he smiled again.
“Maggie, really…” He sighed. “Let’s not discuss that here.”
“I’m amazed you want to discuss it at all!
” she snapped, before she took a steadying breath.
She knew she absolutely could not cause a scene.
Theo was here as her investor, nothing more, and nothing more could ever be known, even if it might already be suspected.
She was not a member of Chicago society, she was not even close, and if she put a foot wrong, Maggie thought, all the women who sashayed into her shop would be just as glad to sashay right back out of it.
Then there would be no more commissions, no hat of hers in the Women’s Building, nothing left of the career she’d worked so hard to build.
She knew how capricious people of society could be, especially toward one they did not see as their own, and she was furious with herself for risking it all—and for what?
A few kisses and caresses, a bit of careless flattery?
But if she hadn’t accepted Theo’s advances, even if only to a limit, would he have continued to invest?
With a jolt of ashamed understanding, Maggie realized that some secret part of her had always known that the success of her business relied, at least in part, on Theo’s interest in her, and her acceptance and even welcoming of that interest.
She had not, she realized, been independent at all. She’d once railed at Brendan for how matrimony would entrap her, and then had gone and trapped herself anyway, and without any of the respectability or stability of a marriage. How could she have been so foolish, so blind?
“We’ll talk about it when we’re alone,” Theo stated, his tone final, and somehow Maggie endured the next few hours, standing by his side as she made desultory chitchat, mentioning her millinery, exclaiming about the Exposition, and trying to ignore people’s sideways, speculative glances.
All the while, her mind was whirling, whirling, as she realized afresh just how deluded she’d been… about everything.
She hadn’t thought Theo would marry her, of course.
She hadn’t even believed he loved her. She told herself that, and yet as she stood by his side and kept a smile on her face she realized she had done both, at least to some degree, all without realizing.
She’d let herself believe in vague dreams instead of the true, stark realities right in front of her face.
She’d convinced herself, just as she had with her hats and those ladies who had all found it so amusing, that she had some sort of innate appeal, some special charm.
That she was different, when she so clearly wasn’t.
She was just a shopgirl from Field’s, a source of amusement not just for the women who had first commissioned her hats, but the man who had showered her with attention, as well… until he chose not to.
It was humiliating as well as shameful, to realize how deluded she’d let herself be, and she hated herself for it. Hated how weak she’d been without realizing, how foolish while thinking she was savvy and smart. When would she change, she wondered bitterly. When would she grow up?
It wasn’t until she and Theo were in a hansom cab, heading back to Washington Street, that they were able to speak honestly.
“I’m sorry you found out about my upcoming nuptials that way,” Theo told her, sounding contrite but also irritatingly nonchalant. “I should have spoken to you earlier, I know, but I thought you might have heard of it from someone.”
“From whom?” Maggie asked quietly, and he shrugged.
“A customer? I’m sure they engage in all manner of gossip while trying on your hats.” He wagged a finger at her. “Don’t tell me they don’t. I’m sure many a gentleman’s ears would burn if he heard what was talked about in that place!”
She shook her head slowly as she stared out the window at the dark streets speeding by, hating how unbothered he was about it all. It clearly hadn’t even occurred to him that she might be hurt. “No one said anything about that,” she said quietly.
“Well.” He sighed, shifting restlessly on the leather bench seat, seeming to find their conversation tedious rather than painful. “Maggie, I don’t mean to be cruel, you must know I don’t, but you didn’t… you didn’t think we might ever marry, did you?”
She drew a clogged breath, hating how much that simple statement, so incredulously given, hurt her. “No,” she admitted. “I didn’t think that.”
She hadn’t even wanted to marry him, or so she’d told herself.
She still believed what she’d told Brendan about marriage and motherhood, and if she were married, she would have to give up her career, and that was something she refused to do.
No, she’d never dreamed of a fairy-tale ending with Theo Stein, and yet…
she hadn’t expected the news of his marriage to make her feel so sullied. So cheap. And so self-deceived.
“Then why,” Theo asked, a note of irritation creeping into his voice, “do you seem upset?”
“I don’t know,” Maggie confessed. She kept staring blindly out the window as she tried to organize her thoughts.
“It just felt differently than I expected it to, to hear it out loud like that.” She clenched her hands together in her lap, the silk of her evening gloves slippery.
“Do all those people there think ill of me? I saw the way they were looking. I thought—I thought we were discreet, but do they assume—”
“No one thinks anything,” Theo said quickly. “I’m your investor. You know that.”
“Did you ever tell your mother about me?” Maggie blurted, and she turned to face him, seeing the frown that marred his face.
“You mean about my investment—”
“No,” she cut across him. “I meant about me.” As soon as she said the words, she realized how utterly foolish they were.
Of course he hadn’t told his mother about her.
He hadn’t told anyone! She knew that, and yet, she realized with a fresh wave of self-loathing, judging from the surprised look on his face, he hadn’t even told his mother that he’d invested in her shop.
“She doesn’t know, does she?” Maggie asked.
“That you’ve put all this money into my shop? ”
He shrugged impatiently. “What does it matter?”
“You said you’d tell her—”
“She doesn’t need to know,” he cut across her, and Maggie shook her head.
“How can she not know, if Mrs. Potter Palmer does?” she asked.
“Everyone in that room knows. Don’t they?
Isn’t that what you just said, that they saw you as my investor only?
” As suspicions crowded in her mind, jostling for space, her voice rose in something close to a shriek, and Theo’s breath hissed between his teeth.
“Don’t get hysterical,” he snapped, and Maggie drew back.
“Theo… what’s going on?” She felt almost wild with confusion, that there was far too much she didn’t understand, that he hadn’t said… to anyone. If he hadn’t explained about his investment the way he said he had, the way she’d asked him to… what had people believed?
“I haven’t said anything to anyone about it,” he said at last. “About investing, that is. I didn’t want it to get around; my father wouldn’t have been pleased.
He would have seen it as a bit of frippery.
But, Maggie, people make assumptions anyway, it’s not as if I could have done anything about that.
” He sounded earnest, before shrugging, already losing interest in convincing her of anything.
”But, really, that’s neither here nor there. ”