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Walks in Beauty.”
    â€œAnd your blush is becoming, too,” Jeremy Warwick said with a little bow and the trace of a devilish grin. Was he making fun of her? Jessica ignored the compliment and said to Lettie, “I can’t tell you how delighted I am to be chosen your bridesmaid.”
    â€œI can’t tell you how delighted I am that you accepted. Shall we go shopping for your dress fabric next week in Charleston?”
    â€œI’d love to, but I’m hopeless when it comes to such things. Tippy has the best eye for material and color. She has marvelous taste. She’s responsible for the design and fabric of my gown. I always take her along to help me select my wardrobe. May she come, too?”
    â€œTippy?” Silas interposed. “That’s twice I’ve heard her name. I don’t believe I’ve met her.”
    â€œUh…Tippy is Jessica’s maid,” Lettie explained, her look slightly uncomfortable.
    â€œA Negro maid has better taste than her mistress?” Silas said, addressing Jessica incredulously.
    Jessica’s chin went up. “Mine does.”
    She felt her elbow taken in a firm, masculine grip. Was its pressure a warning? “I believe that’s the supper bell,” Jeremy said, placing Jessica’s arm through his. “I’m to have the pleasure of your company on my left at table, Miss Jessica. How did I get to be so lucky to sit next to the birthday girl?”
    â€œIt was by my father’s design, Mr. Warwick,” Jessica said, suddenly feeling suffocated. She cast decorum to the wind, or rather to the oppressive waft of perfumes permeating the room. “If at all possible, I’m to entrance and beguile you with the hope you will not find me unweddable.”
    Her audience stared at her with mouths agape. Jeremy’s chuckle broke the stunned silence. “By Jove,” he said, “I believe I’m already entranced.”
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    Jessica was combing out her curls from their party do when her father’s short, staccato knock came at the door. Jessica saved herself the bother of responding, for it opened immediately, and he entered wearing a smoking jacket and smelling like cigar.
    â€œWell, my girl, did you enjoy your party?”
    â€œYes, Papa, very much.” It had been a stultifying evening, the conversation boring and predictable except for hearing Silas and Jeremy discuss their plans under way to lead a wagon train to Texas in the spring. It was to be half a mile long, and they hoped to make at least two miles an hour, enabling the emigrants to make ten miles a day, depending on the weather and sundry other obstacles. The journey sounded dangerous, fraught with the unknown, and she wondered how Lettie would fare from the rigors they would surely face. The only other interesting subject discussed had been the safe arrival that afternoon of Sarah Conklin from Massachusetts, who would be taking Lettie’s teaching position at the local school. The Sedgewicks had picked her up at the dock in Charleston and taken her to her new home in Willow Grove.
    â€œIs she pretty?” Michael had wanted to know.
    â€œVery,” the Reverend Sedgewick had pronounced, coloring slightly.
    Jessica had offered no information of her acquaintance with the new schoolmarm, though she suspected that Lettie had been surprised her friend had used her influence to secure the job for an outsider and a northerner to boot.
    Her father sat on the settee, the height of the seat too low to stretch out his legs comfortably, but its position providing a vantage point by which he could observe his daughter’s face in the mirror. “I hope you’re not simply telling me what I want to hear and that you did enjoy yourself,” he said. “It was hard to tell. What did you think of Jeremy Warwick?”
    Jessica teased a strand of waxed hair from its curl with the hairbrush. “I found him pleasant.”
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