Chapter Four
FOR A MOMENT, Grace heard nothing but the tunneling of night, her heartbeat in her ears.
And then Frannie started screaming.
“You don’t understand!” Frannie cried hysterically. “Earnest was in it. Earnest!”
The Windshare was falling from the sky in a golden blaze of sparks. It looked like a giant, burning coal.
“There’s a parachute,” Lillie breathed, her eyes trained toward a small, falling figure. She took off running.
Grace followed, panic spilling through her as they ran through the night in their gowns toward the place where the Windshare had fallen.
A huge fireball went up when it made contact with the ground and forced them back.
Frannie tripped and Grace stopped to help her to her feet.
For the first time, she felt a stab of deep sympathy.
This poor girl who had already lost her parents and maybe now her brother.
“Help!” someone screamed ahead of them. “He’s alive! The pilot is alive!”
Oliver reached the scene first. There was a crowd gathering around a lump on the ground, the parachute spread out beside it like the tattered train of a gown. “The ropes!” Oliver yelled. “Cut him free! Get him away from the blaze.”
Grace’s lungs were heaving as Lillie pushed through the crowd and knelt beside Oliver. She had more medical training than most after shadowing the female doctors at the Evening Dispensary for two years.
“Earnest?” she asked, examining him. His face was dirt-streaked, sweating, and pale. “Earnest, it’s Lillie.”
“Lillie,” he groaned. He met her eyes, and then he passed out.
Frannie ran toward Earnest, but Theodore grabbed her and held her tightly. She started to thrash against him. “It’s going to be all right, Frances,” he said as she broke down and sobbed. “Listen to me. He’s alive.”
Time was a kaleidoscope for Grace and came back into focus as the horse-drawn ambulance arrived and paramedics leapt out.
Thirty yards away, firefighters fought to put out the blaze of the flying machine’s wreckage.
An enormous, frightened crowd had gathered along the periphery and police officers were attempting to cordon them away.
Lillie talked the paramedics into letting her accompany them in the ambulance, displaying enough medical knowledge that they stopped arguing. She jumped inside.
“Frannie and I will follow in the carriage,” Oliver said. He took off his coat and threw it around Harriet, who had tears in her eyes and was shivering.
“Theo, could you see them home?” he asked.
Theo nodded. He stripped off his own coat and wordlessly offered it to Grace.
The shock was translating into shivers that wracked her body. And yet still she hesitated.
“Don’t be stubborn, Covington,” he ordered.
She nodded, and he gently put it around her shoulders. She sunk into the warmth of the wool. The scent of him cut through the smell of acrid smoke. She tried to hide the way that she burrowed in deeper, breathing it in, so comforting. It almost felt as though he had taken her into his arms.
The ambulance trundled away over the uneven dirt and the crowd began to disperse. Grace didn’t much feel like returning to the party at the Chinese pavilion or like going home, especially to her aunt and uncle.
Harriet felt the same way.
“My nerves need a drink,” Harriet said. “I know of a place. Are you game?”
For a moment Grace thought Theodore was going to decline. But the muscle in his jaw rippled with his curt nod.
Harriet brought them to Luchow-Faust’s, the Tyrolean Alps restaurant on the Pike.
They moved down the long stretch of Pike, more raucous in the night than it had been that morning.
Theodore’s hold on Grace’s arm tightened near the dizzying entrance to the House of Mirth with its funhouse mirrors and the bars that spilled out with drunk patrons.
Barkers were yelling into megaphones and from somewhere in the distance, Grace heard cannonfire.
Eventually, upon entering the German portion of the fairgrounds, they passed through an alpine village complete with castles, a ridge of snow-capped, manmade mountains, and a group singing “Das Wandern.”
By the time they arrived inside the restaurant, Grace’s head was spinning.
“A table for three,” Theo said to the host. “Somewhere private, please.”
It was warm inside, and when Grace took off Theo’s coat, she felt his gaze fall ever so briefly along her clavicle, the curve of her shoulder.
She relished a little of the power of it, that though he apparently thought her station in life far beneath him, he could still find her attractive.
“Did you follow me out here just to ruin my suit?”
The derision in his voice that night in Chicago flashed across her mind, razor-sharp and unbidden. It almost took her breath away. To be judged by someone and found wanting—it had made her feel so hollow, like a melon that had been scraped raw and clean.
She abruptly turned away.
The inside of the restaurant was an architectural marvel, with soaring ceilings and seating for 2,500 unobstructed by any posts.
Grace’s eyes scanned the room as they were led up to a large, more private room on the second floor.
There was a gorgeous mahogany bar, and a Black man was playing the piano on an elevated stage.
“A Budweiser, please,” Theo said after studying the extensive menu.
“I’ll have a Roman punch and… a chocolate éclair,” Harriet said. “My frazzled nerves want some chocolate. I’ll share with you, Grace.”
“Thank you. I’ll have the Faust Blend coffee with cream.”
“And some french fried potatoes for the table,” Theo said. As the waiter left Theo excused himself to speak to someone he recognized at the bar.
Harriet leaned toward Grace as though she were sharing a secret. “That’s Scott Joplin playing the piano over there,” she said.
“He’s good,” Grace said.
“He better be. He’s the King of Ragtime.”
“I’d pay to hear him again. Is he playing at Festival Hall this week?”
Harriet shook her head. “Festival Hall is reserved for ‘civilized’ music. No ragtime allowed, except on the Pike.”
“I thought the fair was supposed to be welcome to all,” Grace said.
Harriet chuffed. “Tell that to the African American man I saw being denied a cup of water this morning. This is hardly the same experience for everyone.”
“But—” Grace began. But wasn’t the fair supposed to be about progress? Wasn’t that the entire point of it?
Harriet took a strong sip of her drink. “You smell like Theodore, you know.”
For some reason, Grace’s face warmed.
“It’s that distinct note of… something,” Harriet said. “You know? Like cinnamon and smoke.”
Grace did know. It was different than he had smelled in Chicago, and now, to her, he smelled like Christmas.
Like when her father made spiced cider and they drank it in front of the fire.
“It was kind of him to lend me his coat,” she said, stirring cream into her coffee. She could feel Harriet’s eyes on her.
“Ever think about taking my fake suitor as your real one?” Harriet teased, nudging Grace.
Grace almost choked. “Having oodles of money and smelling nice hardly make up for having the personality of a dishrag.”
Harriet snorted, offering half of the éclair to Grace, who couldn’t tell if she felt squeamish or starving. She hoped the sweet richness of the cream filling would fill the emptiness and calm her stomach.
It was as if Harriet could read Grace’s mind. “What happened tonight was terrifying,” she said quietly. “Wasn’t it?” She hesitated, then put her hand gently over Grace’s. Grace blinked up at the chandeliers.
“Do you think he’ll be all right?” she asked.
She had worried that she might only like Earnest for what he could give her.
A way to stay in her cousins’ lives, to vindicate her mother, or the simple flattery of someone from his station paying attention to her.
But the horror of that night had made her realize that she really did like him.
She admired him. She liked his lack of pretense, his enthusiasm and joy, the way he threw himself headfirst into things. She liked—
“Harriet Forbes?” A man appeared at their table, making Grace startle. He was tall, with sharp cheekbones and wide-set eyes. There was a hungry look about him that immediately set Grace on edge.
“Sam Whitcomb.” He stuck out his hand to shake, and it took Grace half a moment to place why his name sounded familiar. In her mind’s eye she saw herself that morning, stooping to the ground. Smoothing out the crumpled paper.
The Fair’s Fare by Sam Whitcomb.
“You publish the gossip rag!” Grace said in surprise.
Sam Whitcomb turned to her with a slow smile that built like a wave. Something about it attracted and repelled her at the same time.
Theodore was lighting a cigar at the bar. He sauntered toward them, taking his time, but he had a distinct mood about him. Like the dark cloud Grace had glimpsed at that party in Chicago the previous winter.
“Sam Whitcomb,” the publisher greeted him, reaching out a hand.
“Theodore Parker,” he replied coolly.
“Oh, I know who you are,” Sam said, grinning.
Theo scowled, subtly touching the place on his chin where the port-wine stain stretched along his jawline. Almost as though he were self-conscious. The realization struck her with surprise.
“May I join you?” Sam asked, sitting down at their table without waiting for an answer. He signaled the waiter for a drink. “Everyone’s talking about that explosion of the balloon tonight.”
“It was a much more sophisticated piece of machinery than a mere balloon,” Theo said witheringly.
He might not have known Earnest for long, but it was apparent that Theodore Parker had a penchant for loyalty.
He took a drag of his cigar, meeting Grace’s eyes for a moment as if to say, I wish this insufferable imbecile would leave.
Surprised, Grace felt the ghost of a smile.
“It was your friend who was in it tonight, wasn’t it?” Sam leaned forward, picking through their fried potatoes.