Page 2 of The Daring Times of Fern Adair
She’d done it to herself. She should have tossed those novels onto the rubbish heap and filled her shelves with philosophy and science and historical texts. But those sorts of books were cold companions compared to the fictional ones that could warm her.
Voices drifted toward her from the Gold Room, a space that was just as predictable as the White Room—drenched in gilt and gold lamé, shades of bronze and burnished sunlight. Taking a deep breath, Fern held her chin level and stepped through the rolled-open pocket doors.
The steady hum of conversation dipped perceptively. It wasn’t until she’d taken a flute of champagne from a passing server and put it to her lips that the chatter regained its previous strength. Fern gravitated toward her mother. Mrs. Adair’s chastely cut, midnight-blue dress hugged her shoulders and flared at her waist. She never wore the same dress twice, as reflected by her accounts at Marshall Field’s and Macy’s.
Fern counted off the ten selected guests. Five men and five women, as always.Wewouldn’t wantto have uneven numbers, dear, her mother had reminded her on more than one occasion.
Her father and brother had installed themselves among their male counterparts, and her mother, among the ladies.
Mrs. Adair greeted her with a wide smile. “Fern, darling.”
“Good evening, Mother.”
The smile faltered. No doubt, she hadn’t sounded happy enough to her mother’s ears.
“Fern, you remember Mrs. Hampstead and her daughter, Mrs. Jane Farrington,” she went on, indicating the two women standing to her right.
At twenty-two, Jane was two years younger than Fern, and newly married to some Western Electric bigwig, who would surely be found within the throng of men across the room.
“Of course. How do you do.” She caught Jane’s eyes briefly. Jane’s mother’s, even more briefly. Mother and daughter wore matching simpers, and Fern had already had the misfortune of being on their receiving end once before, at another dinner.
“Why Fern, that gown simply makes you shimmer,” Jane trilled.
Receiving compliments—and measuring the integrity behind them—was never easy. However, coming from Jane Farrington, the intention could not be anything other than malicious.
“Thank you.” A dutiful reply, if not a stimulating one.
“It’s positively distracting,” Jane added, lifting her glass of champagne to her lips. She peered over the rim,arched a thinly penciled eyebrow, and watched for Fern’s reaction. She wondered if any of the other women had registered the vague cut.
Mrs. Adair cleared her throat. It seemed she had, at least. Not that she would swoop to her daughter’s rescue.
“Don’t be rude, Fern. Say hello to your aunt and cousins,” her mother said quickly, changing the subject while also making her feel like a child.
Fern turned to greet Aunt Cecelia and her cousins, Shirley and Patrice, but the shock of Patrice’s new hair style swept away all thoughts of Jane and her insult.
“You bobbed your hair,” Fern blurted out. A rush of crimson flooded her cousin’s cheeks, and Patrice fingered the short bob self-consciously. Her formerly thick auburn tresses had been lopped at the nape of her neck and were now styled into rippling, marcelled waves.
“I adore it,” Fern added. Patrice smiled, and her eyes flashed toward her mother. Aunt Cecelia’s lips formed a flat grimace.
She didn’t know her cousins well. They were younger by a few years and far too pretty and outgoing to have had anything to do with a recluse like Fern while growing up. In fact, she was surprised her mother had invited them—she usually only invited married ladies.
Before this evening, Fern would have pegged Shirley as most likely to be a flapper, not Patrice. However, Shirley appeared as uncomfortable as their mother did at her sister’s foray into rebellion.
“It really is all the rage,” Patrice said, hardly daring to speak above a whisper.
Jane sighed. “It’s a pity how much gorgeous hair is landing on salon floors every day all over this city.”
Fern fought a roll of her eyes at Jane’s pandering comment, but Aunt Cecelia looked at Jane with marked respect. “Too true, Mrs. Farrington. I don’t understand why any young woman would desire to walk about with a man’s haircut.”
Patrice’s blush extended to the tips of her ears, and Fern quickly thought to derail the conversation.
“Is Uncle Jep here?” she asked her aunt.
“Entertaining your father, dear,” she answered with a nod toward the group of men.
She followed her aunt’s glance and met the gaze of another guest. He stood with her uncle and father, and Jane’s husband. There was no question that this stranger was one of her mother’s selected suitors.
He dressed much the same as one of Uncle Jep’s young law associates, in a dark suit of merino wool, a matching vest, and salmon-pink shirtsleeves. He had that clean-shaven, bright-eyed appearance of determination that her uncle had too. With a barely perceptible nod in Fern’s direction, he returned to the conversation. The other suitor, standing next to Mr. Farrington, wasn’t nearly as striking.
