“I believe these belong to you now,” Meg said. “That is, if they please you.”
“Oh!” Mrs. Palmer exclaimed. “Zachary, would you?”
At her gesture, the man who’d greeted Meg removed the linen sheet from around the canvases and held the portraits while Mrs. Palmer tilted her head to regard them.
“Perfect.” Mrs. Palmer smiled. “Even better than I remember them. Zachary, these are for my personal library in our private living suite. Would you take them there? I’ll be along later to tell you where to hang them. Thank you.” She waited until he walked away, then handed Meg a small purse. “Your payment, plus a little something extra for the trouble of bringing them here. I assume cash is all right?”
“Yes, of course. Thank you.” Meg tucked the fee into her reticule. Businessmen eddied around them, their conversation a low drone.
“Not at all.” Mrs. Palmer waved the matter aside with a flick of her elegant wrist. “Oh, what a madhouse this is! This was all supposed to be finished before the grand opening, of course. Mr. Palmer and I haven’t moved into our suite quite yet, as there’s too much to be done. It really is extraordinary, though. Two hundred twenty-five rooms, and each floor connected by an elevator, of course. It’s Mr. Palmer’s favorite ingenuity. I gravitate toward the imported luxuries: handwoven Axminster carpets, French chandeliers and candelabra, and genuine Carrara marble.”
“Carrara? As in, Michelangelo’s Carrara marble? The same marble from which he carved David and the Pietà?” Meg glanced at a grand marble fireplace in the lobby, longing to touch it, as if she could channel some of Michelangelo’s artistic genius into her hand.
Truthfully, however, the painter of the Sistine Chapel was far too intimidating to be her role model. That honor went to Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, Queen Marie Antoinette’s favorite portraitist. At a time when female artists faced nearly insurmountable odds, Le Brun not only survived the French Revolution but went on to add a long list of European royalty to her clientele.
Meg emulated Le Brun’s blend of old master techniques and subjects in natural and inviting poses, even smiling, but she had no illusions of copying the Frenchwoman’s success. She’d toyed with the idea of painting living subjects, but that would require spending large parts of her day too far from her father, who might need her. So Meg contented herself with painting from imagination.
“There is another matter I wish to discuss with you,” Mrs. Palmer was saying. “I’m enchanted by the literary portraits you’ve done, and I’ll want more. I would love paintings of Agnes Grey and Jane Eyre, but I saw neither of those in your shop yesterday. If I commissioned them, would you paint them for me? How much time do you need, do you suppose?”
Meg was already sketching the portraits in her mind. “I can get the first done inside of a week, since I have no other orders.”
“That will be fine.” Clearly distracted, Mrs. Palmer smiled at a lady gliding through the lobby.
“Then I best return to my studio straightaway,” Meg said. “Would you care to see sketches before I paint?”
“Splendid idea. Let’s make a luncheon of it. Say, next Monday, right here, at eleven o’clock? I’ll see that Chef puts his famous chocolate pie on the menu.” She walked Meg toward the door, leaning in to be heard above carpenters hammering finishing nails into the wainscoting. “Thanks again for delivering my Margaret and Helen to me. I shall cherish them always! I must write a note of thanks to that reporter for drawing my attention to your shop in the first place. By the way, I hope you aren’t upset about the letter in today’s issue. Pay it no mind. If the writer couldn’t even bring himself to attach his name to it, then it’s rubbish, pure and simple.”
A loud crash sounded, and Meg startled, turning to see a man in coveralls righting a fallen ladder. Sarcastic applause surrounded him.
“As I said, a madhouse, yes? Until next time, my dear. Let us hope all our ladders will be put away by then.” With that, Mrs. Palmer bid Meg farewell and sent her gently back onto State Street.
Looping her reticule over her wrist, Meg set her jaw and headed straight for the nearest newsie.
“Mr. Pierce!”
At the door to the Tribune building, Nate turned and blinked at the woman shouting for his attention from the other side of Dearborn Street. She marched across the road, the brim of her hat rippling in the wind. Blond ringlets fluttered over the shoulders of her fitted jacket. Upon reaching him, Meg Townsend held up a newspaper and rattled it.
He tipped his hat to her. “Miss Townsend. It’s good to see you. Something the matter?”
“Is there somewhere we can talk?” Her tone clipped, she cast a glance at the four-story marble Tribune building behind him. “Not here.”
“Shall I escort you home?”
“No, no, not there either.” She pulled her hat a little lower on her brow. She was agitated. And she had come to him. Why?
Curiosity beat out his impatience to get on with his work, so he took her to the Wild Onion Café around the corner, where they both ordered coffee. Smells of sage, sausage, bacon, eggs, and onions wafted through the café, but she asked for blackberry pie a la mode. Her father had fed such a pie to a stray dog last week, but instead of mentioning that, Nate ordered a slice for himself as well.
Flipping over their mugs, the waitress filled them both with steaming coffee before whisking off to the pie counter, where several varieties waited beneath glass domes.
Lips in a tight line, Miss Townsend tucked her chin, obviously gathering her thoughts. She stared at the scallop-edged paper placemat, then at the single flower in the milk bottle vase, then at two college-aged young men scuffing across the black-and-white tiled floor toward a booth. Anywhere but at Nate. Odd, and slightly irritating, since she was the one who had come to him.
Not very subtly, he checked his pocket watch. “Is it a secret, what’s on your mind?” He unrolled his silverware from the napkin.
Miss Townsend unpinned her hat from her hair and set it on the bench beside her. “I assumed you’d be able to guess.” Sunlight slipped through the crocheted curtains and stippled her profile.
The clink of silverware on plates grew louder as other diners were served. Nate stirred cream into his coffee, and the aroma curled around him. “You mistrusted me from the beginning. I can only suspect my article proved your misgiving correct.” Though for the life of him, he couldn’t imagine how.
She shook her head. “If you only knew what your article meant to us! To me, to my family, to our business. Bertha Palmer read it and has become my most enthusiastic patron overnight. Sylvie is sure to be insufferable now, since it was all her idea.” She poured cream, then sugar into her mug, turning her coffee the very caramel shade of her eyes.
“So the article brought your store business?” And from Bertha Palmer, no less. Someone might find a story in that—Millionaire’s Wife Prizes Hidden Gem in Local Artist. He smiled.
So did she. “It did, and we have you to thank for it.”
The waitress returned with two plates, then hurried away to take another table’s order. Creamy mounds of vanilla ice cream dripped down the sides of their pie.