The Pursuit of Lucy Banning,A Novel (Avenue of Dreams) Read online

  And now she had grown up, she was engaged to Daniel Jules, and everyone was eager that the two families be linked forever by their union. Flora and Irene were ecstatic at the thought of sharing grandchildren.

  When she turned nineteen, Lucy knew her parents believed she was ready for betrothal. They had allowed her a couple of years after leaving school to accept frequent social engagements where she conversed and danced with other young men. For a few months, she was frequently on the arm of George Glessner—but always assuring Daniel that it meant nothing. She also honed her skills at the piano with private study that gave her the confidence to gladly respond to requests to play at parties. However, this was merely training ground for being an accomplished wife to a bank executive. Though she knew she would marry Daniel eventually, Lucy endeavored to buy more time.

  “Once I’m married and have a household of my own to run, I will have to focus on that,” she had told her mother as they sat in the parlor with needlework one afternoon. Lucy was embroidering a tablecloth for her own trousseau. “I do want to marry Daniel, but first I want to try to do something that really matters.”

  “You speak of marriage as if it doesn’t matter.” Flora lifted her eyes from the detailed stitching along the edge of a handkerchief and looked at her daughter over her glasses.

  “It’s the orphanage, Mother. I think I can really do some good there, but I have to be free to spend time every week. I can help organize the office, or teach, or perhaps even find permanent homes for some of the children. Is that not worthwhile? So few people are willing to commit themselves.”

  “How long?” Flora asked.

  Lucy rapidly gauged her mother’s mood. “Three years.”

  “One.”

  “Two, then.”

  Daniel had been patient enough considering the circumstances. He himself was still absorbed in establishing independent finances. As long as he could see Lucy as freely as he liked, he was content to wait.

  However, now that she was twenty-one, her parents expected Lucy to direct her attention to her future. Daniel was already interviewing architects to design the home they would live in. He had his eye on an empty lot not too far away from Prairie Avenue. It would be their first home, Daniel reminded Lucy, until he was able to build her the mansion she deserved.

  Will Edwards waved through Lucy’s mind as she involuntarily wondered whether Daniel would consider using his architectural firm. It would certainly bode well for Will’s future if he could attract a client such as Daniel Jules.

  The engagement had become official last July 4. Both families celebrated Independence Day at the lake, and in the middle of the festivities, Daniel produced a stunning sapphire ring. Lucy recognized the stone as one that belonged to Daniel’s mother. He’d had a new setting designed for it with diamond accents on sterling silver. Her parents were right. It was time for her to plan for her future.

  A series of three horse-drawn carriages seemed in no hurry to clear the intersection, confirming in Lucy’s mind the efficiency of the streetcar. When they finally did, Lucy lifted her skirts slightly and proceeded to cross the street.

  Inside the teahouse, Daniel sat at a table against the wall, facing the door. It was his favorite table. From that vantage point he could see who was coming and going and lift those glimmering brown eyes or dip his head in acknowledgment of anyone he knew—and it seemed to Lucy that Daniel knew everyone in Chicago. He stood as she entered and pulled out a chair for her. She settled into it, set her satchel at her feet, removed her gloves, and smiled at him as he took in her gray clothing.

  “I was scheduled to go to the orphanage,” Lucy said, before Daniel could object to her plain appearance. It was only a half-lie. As far as her family was concerned, she was scheduled to go to the orphanage. In the past, before the term started at the university, she would in fact have been at the orphanage on a Thursday afternoon.

  Daniel glanced down at the satchel that held her art history textbook and lecture notes. “Are you now bringing work home from the orphanage?”

  Lucy waved a hand. “Oh, it’s just some odds and ends of supplies. I’m never sure what will come up. It just seems easier to carry a satchel and be prepared.”

  “It makes you look a bit like a schoolgirl.”

  Lucy leaned toward him and gave a wry smile. “As I recall, you didn’t mind walking a schoolgirl home on a fine afternoon when you were home from college.”

  He smiled at last and she saw the pleasure spring in his eyes. “True enough.” Pleasure evaporated as quickly as it flooded in. “But I do wonder about the amount of time you spend at the orphanage. Are you sure it’s necessary? I rather expected that as our wedding approached, your involvement there would taper off.”

  “Mr. Emmett needs my assistance,” Lucy assured him. “He has a young man in his care who deserves a university education. The Banning name may be helpful in attaining that.”

  “Emmett has hundreds of orphans. Surely he can’t expect you to give personalized attention to every one.”

  “Don’t they all deserve attention?” Lucy challenged.

  Daniel shrugged. “I’m not completely unsympathetic to their plight. As you know, my family contributes substantially to St. Andrew’s. But how realistic is it to fill this boy’s head with dreams of going to the university? He could go into service with a good family and start earning his own way. We could take him on ourselves once we’re married if you like.”

  Lucy bristled. “Perhaps he doesn’t want to go into service. Perhaps he wants to attend university.”

  “Some people have more limited choices than others. It’s the way of the world.”

  “Maybe it’s a bad way for the world to be.”

  Daniel leaned back and examined Lucy. “I’m not quite sure where this is coming from, my dear. It’s unlike you.”

  If only you knew. “Never mind. I suppose I’m just in a bit of a funk.”

  “A good pot of tea will help.” Daniel signaled the waiter and ordered tea and sandwiches. “I think I’ve settled on the sketches for our house. We do need to set a date for the wedding that allows enough time for building.”

  “Perhaps we should wait until the building is under way and we’re sure how long it will take,” Lucy suggested.

  Daniel shook his head. “The crew will work more efficiently if they know there’s a deadline.”

  “Yes, I suppose so. Leo has a friend who is an architect, you know.”

  “No, I didn’t know.” The steaming tea arrived. Daniel rearranged some dishes while Lucy poured.

  “I only just met him, but he seems quite nice. Perhaps he could have a look at your sketches.”

  “Where did you meet him?”

  When will I learn to be more careful? Lucy had set her own trap. She picked up her teacup to take a sip. “I was at the university on orphanage business and ran into them,” she finally said.

  “Oh, well, if he’s a friend of Leo’s, I suppose he could have a look, though I’m fairly certain of whom I’d like to hire. Back to the question at hand.”

  “The question at hand?” Lucy echoed.

  “The wedding date. How would you feel about midsummer?”

  “Midsummer?” That was nine months away, and she couldn’t possibly wait that long to tell him the truth. The last thing she wanted to do was hurt Daniel, though.

  “I suppose we should consult our mothers,” Daniel said. “It’s likely they already have a date picked out and just haven’t told us!”

  Lucy laughed nervously. “Yes, I suppose so.” She let the moment go. The time was not right.

  “Would a date in July give you enough time to plan the wedding?”

  Lucy chuckled again. “Another question for my mother. But I would imagine so.”

  “I’ll have a word with your mother,” Daniel offered.

  Lucy picked at a cucumber sandwich as her sapphire ring caught the afternoon light streaming through the window. This couldn’t go on much longer, but a lot of p
eople would be unhappy with the truth.

  4

  Thank you.” With a smile, Lucy pressed a coin into the hand of the cab driver as he helped her down. Daniel had put her in a carriage to carry her safely home after their tea.

  The neighborhood was quiet as the carriage pulled away and Lucy surveyed her surroundings. The Pullmans had houseguests, Lucy knew, so she was not surprised to see a couple of extra coachmen tending to carriages under the broad porch at the front door across Eighteenth Street. The brownstone-covered massive home seemed as impenetrable as the Pullman business empire. Lucy had last been inside the Pullman home the previous spring for a dinner party. She’d spent several hours in the opulent dining room and parlor that evening, and more than one dinner guest had referred to the two-hundred-seat theater and the two-lane private bowling alley of the home. Lucy had managed to swallow her wonderings whether the Pullmans were looking for a life in which they never had to leave their fortress. In comparison, the Bannings lived simply, and perhaps even were the “poor neighbors.”

  Certainly the Fields were not the poor neighbors, nor the Kimballs, whose new home on the corner of Eighteenth and Prairie had been completed only in recent months. Lucy had watched it go up stage by stage, passing by it every day. The neighborhood rumor—no one knew for sure—was that the owner of the Kimball Piano and Organ Company had a Steinway in his parlor. A Kimball piano would have been a cheap insult to the Rembrandts that hung on the walls. Across the street from the Kimballs, the Glessners were the neighborhood rebels. They refused to erect a home that fit into the unspoken code of European design, opting instead for granite stone architecture that embraced a free American spirit. Inside, Mrs. Glessner flagrantly defied the rules for decorating and welcomed the friendly atmosphere of the Arts and Crafts movement with its warm tones and practicality even in exquisite craftsmanship. Flora Banning acquired select pieces from the Arts and Crafts movement, but Mrs. Glessner embraced it full on.

  Lucy turned to face the solid oak front door of the Banning mansion two doors down from the Kimballs. With lips together, she inhaled deeply, then opened her mouth and exhaled slowly. The weight in her shoulders eased. She should never have let slip to Daniel that she had met Will Edwards at the university. At least Daniel was not coming to dinner tonight, nor would he be calling for her later. A business dinner would consume his evening. The staff would undoubtedly set a place for him just in case. Over the years they had grown used to Daniel’s presence in the Banning house and seemed prepared for his needs regardless of when he turned up.

  You can’t stand on the sidewalk forever, she told herself. Her family may not have been the richest on the block, nor the most daring, nor the most creative, but they were her family. Dinner would be served promptly at eight o’clock, and Lucy could not appear in gray flannel. She picked up her skirts and climbed the handful of steps that led to the front door and entered the expansive foyer.

  Penard, his wrists crossed behind his back, paced in front of a stiff lineup of the household staff. The round dark mahogany pedestal table, anchor of the foyer, separated butler from staff. Taking in the startling scene before her, Lucy instinctively caught herself from letting the door slam.

  “As you know well,” Penard was saying, “my position as butler of this household makes me accountable for every item within its walls. Mr. Banning is seriously distressed that some items have gone missing from his private study. I have admonished each of you repeatedly not to enter that room without specific permission from me, and I have extended no such permission to any of you. You can understand my concern that some items of sentimental value to Mr. Banning have disappeared.”

  As if on ominous cue, the seven-foot grandfather clock bonged six times.

  Lucy skimmed the expressions of one stricken servant’s face after another. As much as she might like to, she could not get involved. Running the household was Penard’s purview. Her parents had trusted him for fifteen years. Mrs. Fletcher, the cook, had been with the family for years as well and was above reproach. The other staff tended to rotate every year or two. Lucy so far had found Archie Shepard, the footman and assistant coachman, to take his responsibilities seriously, and Elsie, the ladies’ maid she shared with her mother, to be delightfully personable. Bessie, the parlor maid, said no more than she had to but anticipated her tasks and the family’s needs with almost befuddling accuracy. The kitchen maid, Kate, had left abruptly a couple of weeks earlier, but Lucy assessed her to be simply high-strung, not the sort who had any point to prove by stealing knickknacks. She wondered whom Penard could suspect among this lot.

  Lucy’s eyes moved to the young woman at the end of the lineup. She must be the new kitchen maid, she thought, and Penard is going to scare her off before she even catches her breath. The woman, who was around Lucy’s age, stared at her feet during the entire dressing-down. Holding her satchel closely, Lucy inched away from the door and toward the marble stairs across the foyer.

  Penard pivoted and paced in the opposite direction. “I need not remind any of you that you serve in this house at my pleasure. The Bannings give me authority. If I do not recommend you, you do not work here. It’s that simple. For the moment, I will refrain from making specific allegations, but be warned that I will be watching carefully. I will know everything that happens in this house.”

  The new kitchen maid twitched, and her eyes rose momentarily to Penard.

  “Charlotte, do you have something you wish to say?” Penard glared at the maid.

  “No, sir.” The maid’s eyes went back to her feet.

  “If I discover that you are withholding anything from me, you have my assurance you will regret it.”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Penard.”

  Lucy flinched on the girl’s behalf. Clearly she was unnerved. Was it really necessary for Penard to speak to her this way on her first afternoon of employment?

  Still, Lucy knew she ought to go upstairs to choose a gown for dinner and let Penard sort out whatever was amiss. Her foot was on the first marble step when her father burst into the foyer.

  “Well, Penard, what have you discerned?” Samuel Banning boomed.

  Lucy cringed. She knew that intonation well: her father had given up even trying to be polite. Involuntarily, she turned to see how Penard would respond.

  “I have taken appropriate action, Mr. Banning,” Penard said. “I’m sure we have put an end to things.”

  Samuel Banning pointed at Charlotte, the new maid. “Who is this? I don’t recognize her.”

  “This is Miss Charlotte Farrow,” Penard responded evenly. “We have engaged her services as a kitchen maid. She has just arrived to take up her post.”

  “Was she here yesterday?” Samuel snapped.

  “Only briefly, sir, for an interview.”

  “Why didn’t I meet her?”

  “You had not yet come home from the Calumet Club, sir. After I interviewed her and recommended her, Mrs. Banning gave her approval.”

  “If she was here yesterday, she could have done it,” Samuel said. “I want to see her bags.”

  By now Charlotte was visibly quaking, and Lucy could no longer resist the urge to intervene. “Father, please. I’ve only just got home, so I’m not sure what is causing such a stir, but I’m certain we can sort it out calmly.”

  “You wouldn’t say that if it were your items going missing. My brass paperweight is gone.”

  “The one shaped like a gavel?”

  “Yes. It’s the only brass paperweight I have.”

  “It’s not the first time you thought something was missing, Father,” Lucy reminded him. “Remember last spring when you were sure Richard took a book from your library of first editions? You were quite distressed, as I recall. But it turned out you loaned it to Daniel’s father. You didn’t even recall you’d given it to him until he returned it a few weeks later.”

  “This is not the same at all,” Samuel said. But the wind had gone out of him.

  Lucy glanced at Charlotte, wh
o was so pale Lucy thought she might faint.

  “Father, let the staff go back to work.” She spoke quietly. “I’m sure if we put our minds to it, we can figure out what happened.”

  “That’s what your mother says.” Samuel raised rather than lowered his voice.“But if one of her precious pots went missing, she’d sing a different tune.”

  “I would sing exactly the same tune.” Flora Banning appeared in the broad arch that led from the parlor to the foyer. “Penard has a spotless record hiring staff, as you well know. No one he has brought into our employ has ever given you cause to think twice.”

  “Things change. This new girl—”

  “She’s only been here a few hours, Samuel.”

  “But yesterday—”

  “She was in the parlor for all of ten minutes and then left directly by the servants’ entrance. She was nowhere near your study.”

  Lucy glanced at the maid, who seemed visibly relieved.

  Flora turned to Penard. “You may dismiss the staff, Penard. I’m sure they all have better things to do.”

  Penard nodded his head almost imperceptibly, and the staff dispersed.

  “Samuel, for goodness’ sake,” Flora said, “it’s a paperweight. It’s nothing of value.”

  “That’s hardly the point, Flora.”

  “I’m sure you’ve just misplaced it. You’re not in court. There’s no need to put anyone on trial. Stop acting like a foolish old man.” Flora’s eyes brightened as she looked at her daughter. “Lucy, dear, you’re home.”

  Lucy stepped over to kiss her mother’s cheek, one hand behind her back with the satchel.