Page 18 of Calling on the Matchmaker
A welt on her neck? Finola peered into the vanity table mirror at her reflection. Would a welt make a terrible first impression on tonight’s caller?
The neckline of the light blue silk evening gown dropped off her shoulders and dipped in the center, allowing for plenty of room to show a blemish. The straight panel of lace bertha hanging from the neckline would only highlight the disfigurement. Aye, marring her skin with a flaming red welt might work.
But as Mam pulled the hair curler out and left behind a perfect ringlet, Finola could only cringe at the prospect of putting herself through such pain in order to alienate the matchmaker’s first match.
“There, so it is.” Mam stood back and examined Finola through narrowed eyes.
Finola hadn’t wanted all the fuss over her appearance tonight. But Mam had insisted on Finola looking her best. “Younever get a second chance to make a good first impression,” Mam had said.
Now with but minutes until the suitor’s arrival, Finola looked the picture of a perfect lady with her hair parted down the center and smoothed back into an elegant chignon with long ringlets hanging on either side of her face.
“This one is too loose.” Enya stood on the other side of the cushioned bench. She, too, was studying Finola, her green eyes luminous and her red hair exquisitely styled as always. She wore a peach silk that brought out the warm tones of her skin, so different from Finola’s. Having just turned twenty, Enya was most certainly old enough to get married.
“Maybe Da should make this match for Enya. She never has any trouble turning a man’s head.”
“You never have any trouble catching a man’s attention either.” Enya held out the bothersome strand while Mam wrapped it around the prongs that were now growing cold and would need to be reheated over a flame. “The trouble you have is in keeping his attention.”
Finola only sniffed. She wouldn’t be keeping tonight’s man’s attention either. At least not for long.
Da and Mam had refused to tell her the name of Bellamy McKenna’s prospect. Did they think she’d undermine the meeting if she knew who it was? Or perhaps skip it?
They weren’t entirely wrong. She’d always been able to come up with excuses in the past to avoid suitors—headaches, stomachaches, dizziness. She was quite adept at forcing sickness when she needed it. That way she didn’t have to lie. Maybe she still had time to do so for tonight.
The problem was, such tactics only delayed the inevitable meeting. Aye, she’d learned that the only way to truly eliminate a suitor was to make the fellow so dissatisfied with her that he called things off.
What if Da and Mam weren’t telling her because he was twiceher age and wouldn’t be put off by anything she might do to make herself distasteful?
A shudder worked its way up her spine, but she cut it off just as quickly as it started. Bellamy McKenna would start with the young and rich and handsome among St. Louis’s upper class. There were, after all, still a few men left that she hadn’t scared off.
The gilded oval mirror in front of her reflected her as demure, beautiful, and elegant, the low-pointed waist and bell skirt highlighting her womanly figure. But that wasn’t the real her.
Her gaze shifted to the reflection of the opposite wall of her bedroom to the faded rose-colored wallpaper and the three empty squares that were a brighter pink. Even though she’d taken down the framed doily artwork she’d painstakingly crocheted, she hadn’t been able to erase their memory. And even though she’d boxed up the doilies from underneath the rose-patterned bedside lanterns, she could still picture the delicate white fluted edges she’d crocheted to look like rose petals.
Not only had she boxed all evidence of her crocheting away, but she hadn’t allowed herself to crochet a single stitch since the day of the accident seven years ago....
Enya pulled the strand of hair tightly. “You wouldn’t be in this situation if you hadn’t pushed away all the handsome men who have already shown interest in you.”
“I didn’t push them away.”
Mam and Enya both pursed their lips and shook their heads in a similar curt fashion.
“I can’t help it if they didn’t like me once they got to know me.” Finola tried for an innocent look, but after so many failed courtships, it was only natural for everyone to suspect she was at fault.
Enya released Finola’s wayward curl and scrunched it next to the others. “I plan to pick my own husband, someone handsome and dashing.”
Mam scoffed. “Mind you, smart and sensible make for a better husband than handsome and dashing.”
“Maybe for you.” Enya’s eyes flashed with her easily ignited temper. “But not for me.”
“Truth is truth, and how you feel isn’t changing that, so it isn’t.”
Enya stepped back and fisted her hands on her slender hips made even more slender by the tightness of her corset that pushed her bust up so that it peeked out of her neckline. She already had the curvy figure of an ancient Celtic goddess, and the corset only made her all the more irresistible. “I like Bryan, and I wish you would accept him.”
Mam placed the hair iron down on the marble top of the vanity, then started across the bedchamber to the door. “We’ll not be accepting him for you, Enya.”
“Whyever not?”
Mam didn’t pause until she had her hand on the door handle. “We’ve been over this already, that we have, and there’s nothing more to be saying.”
