Christmas in the City - Jill Barnett Page 0,63

the man rushed over. "Can I help you find something, sir?"

"Yes. There was a doll in the window earlier today, with light hair and a blue coat and bonnet."

"Yes, yes. The doll sold a little while ago."

Ed mentally cursed. He should have stopped.

"But we have this whole corner of dolls. I'm sure your little girl can find one she likes." He smiled down at Penelope, who was staring bleakly at the doll display. "So many dolls to look at, the man said kindly. I have two blonde haired dolls here, as you can see." The shopkeeper showed her another doll in a pink gown with a sweet face who looked nothing like Josie.

Penelope shook her head and stepped back, hiding behind Ed's leg, her fists gripping his trousers.

"I'm looking for same as the one you sold."

"Oh, dear. The Josephine doll is rare, sir. I don't have another."

"Josephine?" Ed repeated numbly.

"Yes. That's the name of the doll from the window. We purchase all our dolls from a distributor here in New York who represents all the dollmakers. This particular doll can only be ordered in the spring and the dolls are made to fill orders for the holidays. It took months to get the one I sold. Perhaps one of these others will suit your daughter. They are certainly as well made and quite pretty, too." The man was looking at his niece.

Ed didn't try to explain that she was his niece not his daughter or why that doll was important. "Thank you," he said and the man hurried off to help the other customers lined up near the sales counter. Ed set his hand on her head and he squatted down. "I'm so sorry, sweetheart. They sold the doll. Do you see another doll here you like?"

Penelope looked at the dolls and began to cry, the same heart-wrenching sobs she cried in the middle of the night. He picked her up and tried to soothe her but she began crying even harder, and louder.

Soon everyone in the shop was looking at them, some with sympathy, some with annoyance or scorn, as if he had done something to her.

What the hell was he supposed to do? They'd sold the damned doll.

A woman dressed in dark blue with a huge brimmed hat and the face of a stern grandmother marched up to him and looked him in the eye. "Pray what, sir, did you do to that poor child?"

"Nothing," he said defensively. "They sold the doll she wanted."

Then Penelope let out a wail that rang through his teeth and drowned out the bell above the door. The sound was ear-piercing. Startled, the woman stepped back quickly and without another word.

"We'll look for the doll somewhere else," he said. He patted her back while she was hicupping pitifully into his shoulder. A couple of women gave him a look of understanding as he hurried out of the store. His driver opened the carriage door and, over the sounds of Penelope's pitiful crying, Ed said, "Find another toy shop, Will." He climbed inside the carriage and settled his niece in the crook of his arm, but not before some people on the sidewalks look at him as if he were some kind of ogre.

"We'll find her," he said firmly.

By the time they had left the third shop empty-handed, Penelope was asleep before the carriage had traveled a block. She had cried at every shop, but he gave her his word over and over he would find a Josephine doll.

He looked down at her asleep on his lap, her small face flushed and streaked from tears. He placed his hand on her back and sagged back against the seat, closing his eyes. He would find that doll somewhere...somehow. He wasn't one for coincidences, for omens or signs. But Josephine? The doll was named Josephine.

Chapter 4

Idalie Everdeane removed her hatpin and hung up her hat and woolen coat in her employee locker. The ladies locker room in the basement of Steward & Company's famed Marble Palace department store was abuzz with chatter. The store wouldn't open its doors for another half an hour. Idalie smoothed the skirt of her uniform--a dark bombazine skirt with its crisp white shirtwaist, French cuffs, and shell buttons--worn by the sales women who worked in the fashion custom design area that dominated the third floor of the City's premier emporium.

Ten minutes later she was in the design room, checking the list of deliveries scheduled for the day. The door the back