Spring fancy

'Do I detect a supercilious note?'

Winnie was abashed to realize he had, so rushed to deny it. 'Not at all. I was just… well, making small talk. After all, she…' But suddenly Winnie had the surprising urge to tell the truth. She met Joseph Duggan's eyes directly, hoping she looked properly contrite. 'Yes, I confess. I was being supercilious. I get it from my mother, whose main goal in life has been to succeed. And success to her is career. I find myself at times mirroring her-shall we call it, her middle-class disdain for the careerless multitudes? And when I catch myself at it, I hate it. But underneath I don't really think I'm as bigoted as I sound when I make comments like that. I sometimes think I've been programmed by mother to say things, whether I mean them or not.'

It was one of the first times she'd seen Joseph Duggan's face neither smiling nor teasing. It reflected only deep thought, then a straightforward study of her own face, ending with a glance at her forehead and hair. His deep brown eyes returned to her sapphire blue ones with a look of approval.

'You're remarkable.'

'I'm…' She chuckled and shook her head, glancing at her lap self-consciously, for this time she thought his compliment sincere. 'I'm not remarkable at all. I'm very ordinary and filled with flaws. That's only one of them I just foolishly blurted out.'

'Foolishly? I wouldn't call it foolish. I'd call it honest, and a little humble. Not many people assess their motives with that kind of clearheadedness. Is your… Paul Hildebrandt as honest as you?'

She met his eyes again, surprised at how she suddenly hated to recall that there was a Paul Hildebrandt while in this man's very enjoyable company. Guilt immediately followed, making her sing Paul's praises perhaps a little too vehemently. 'Oh, yes! He's not only honest, he's hardworking, successful and bound to give me an absolutely secure life.'

Joseph Duggan studied the clear-eyed blond woman whose first appearance had captivated him thoroughly. Throughout the pleasant meal with her that first impression had only been magnified. She was a remarkable woman-pretty, shapely, intelligent, the tiniest bit shy and the tiniest bit bold, honorable to her man and honest about herself.

But dammit, she was spoken for!

Chapter 2

W innifred Gardner wasn't a morning person. She usually had to claw her way up from sleep like a person brushing thick spiderwebs aside while ducking through an abandoned building. The next morning, however, she came awake as if a light had been turned on directly above her face.

Joseph Duggan, she thought, staring straight at the ceiling. You're going to see him again today! You're going to walk down an aisle with him. You're going to be photographed beside him. You're going to share the head table seated side by side with him. You're going to dance with him. She smiled, recalling that he'd claimed to be no dancer. She found that hard to believe. He was one smooth mover was Joseph Duggan. In more ways than one, she suspected.

The thought brought her up sharply. Whatever was she doing, lying here at six in the morning, woolgathering about Joseph Duggan when she was engaged to marry Paul Hildebrandt in three months?

Paul. He'd promised to make it to the wedding today, and she was holding him to it! Why couldn't he get it through his flawlessly groomed head she didn't give a tinker's damn whether or not they had a furnished living room by the time they got married? Or even the house he'd insisted was a prerequisite. He was living in it already-so proud of the fact that he'd managed to provide it for her even before the big day. But the house wasn't enough for Paul. He'd taken on contract work to earn extra money for all the worldly goods he told her she deserved, and had installed a computer terminal in one of the three bedrooms, where he often worked Saturdays and evenings, rapping away at the keyboard that produced all the mysterious solutions to problems she could not grasp, in a language she could not understand and in methods that made her feel ignorant when he tried to explain them to her.

But he'd promised: today he'd be with her at the wedding and the dance.

With that reassuring thought she got up, concentrating on Paul and the pleasant surprise in store for him when he saw her in the ultimate dress. If he complimented her today-and he'd better-she promised herself she'd accept it at face value and not search for ulterior meanings.

The day was clear and sunny, but by ten in the morning the March winds had picked up again. The bridesmaids were all meeting at McLean 's Beauty Shop to have their hair done into Gibson Girl hairdos.

When Winnie studied the finished results in the mirror, she knew instinctively Paul would glow with admiration when he saw her. He was as old-fashioned as a man could be when it came to women and femininity, and though it was often a burr under her saddle, preferring as she did casual clothing for her active personality, today Winnie could face him in a hairdo, hat and dress that would please him tremendously.

But-oh-it was a flattering hairdo. The style was chosen by Sandy to accommodate wide-brimmed straw hats, thus Winnie's streaked blond hair closely contoured her skull, lifting in the semidroopy Evelyn Nesbit coil that circled her entire head just within the hairline. She touched the puffy doughnut-shaped roll. Inside, a resilient 'rat' added fullness. It felt foreign but not altogether alien. The dramatic change in her appearance made her smile at herself in the mirror and feel suddenly very, very impatient for two o'clock to arrive.

Shortly before noon Winnie stepped out of the bathtub, dried her freshly shaved legs, briskly toweled her belly, breasts and arms but stopped dead when she caught the reflection of her hair again in the mirror. She leaned closer, touched the loose tendril coiling upon her temple and decided to go the rest of the route and apply makeup in keeping with the same tradition as the hairdo.

But first she flapped a puffy mitt up one side of her body and down the other, liberally powdering her skin with the scent of Chanel No. 5, one of her few daily concessions to femininity. She was wild about the scent! She wondered what Joseph Duggan would think of it, but the sight of her naked puckered nipples made Winnie chide herself for caring what he thought. She had no business pondering the man's likes and dislikes, yet he'd been slipping into her mind, unbidden, all day.

Her new underwear-pure white-was again a nostalgic trip into the past, for the merry-widow bra cinched her waist and flared at the cutaway hips with boned stiffness that few modern-day women experience. But the confining strapless support garment was necessary, owing to the styling of the bridesmaids' dresses Sandy had chosen. Winnie wasn't certain, when she'd finished applying her makeup, whether she'd done the right thing. The plum eyeshadow and darker penciled undershadings duplicated the look of the women pictured on old tin Coca-Cola trays, as did the apple-cheeked look she'd created with bright blush. But it was the lips she studied critically. She'd used cherry red lipstick and an applicator brush, etching the upper lip with exaggerated peaks, then narrowing the corners of her mouth until it took on the Cupid's pucker of Miss Clara Bow. Maybe Paul was right-she ought to dress up more often. It felt marvelous!

She slipped on an everyday dress and then packed up her gown, dyed-to-match high heels, hat, makeup and hair spray, and glanced out the window to find the wind still bending the leafless treetops at a forty-five-degree angle. With a silk scarf wrapped around her precious hairdo she ran out to the taxi she had called.

Racing up the steps toward the church door ten minutes later, she felt a thrill of anticipation-Joseph Duggan was probably inside already. Would she run into him in the vestibule the moment she stepped inside? Well, if so, at least she didn't smell like gasoline this time! But dammit, she didn't want him to see her with this scarf clutched around her head like a babushka.

But the vestibule was empty except for the florist's delivery man and one of the ushers, still clad in blue jeans and sneakers, his tux in a bag over his arm.

The two dressing rooms were situated just off the vestibule, and when Winnie opened the door to the women's, everything was excitement. Sandy was there already, as well as one of the bridesmaids, Jeanne, and right behind Winnie entered the other, a cousin named Jacqueline. Lighted mirrors reflected long plastic bags, women in half-clothed states and a bride with a bad case of the jitters.

'Oh, Winnie, thank God you're here! I've been higher than a North Dakota kite, worrying that everyone wouldn't get here on time or that the flowers would be late, or the photographer would forget his camera or-'