They rode west, past the Taggert estate, toward the tail of the Rocky Mountains that ran along one side of Chandler. They travelled across flat land covered with fierce little chamisa plants and on until they reached the hills.
Kane led the way up the piñon-dotted hills, up higher until they reached pines and rock formations. He weaved his horse through the spruce and fir to halt before a breathtaking view of Chandler far below them.
“How did you find this place?” she whispered.
“When you play, you ride bicycles and drink tea with other people. I come up here.” As he dismounted, he nodded his head toward a steep rise above them. “I gotta cabin up there, but it’s pretty rough goin’, not for ladies.”
He began unloading food from his saddlebags as Houston dismounted by herself.
As they ate, they sat on the ground and talked.
“How did you make your money?” she asked.
“When Fenton kicked me out, I went to California. Pam had given me $500 and I used it to buy a played-out gold mine. I was able to hack out a couple thousand dollars’ worth of the gold, and I used the money to buy land in San Francisco. Two days after I bought the land I sold it for half again what I paid for it. I bought more land, sold it, bought a nail factory, sold it, bought a little railroad line . . . You get the idea.”
“Did you know that Pamela Fenton is a widow now?” Houston asked as if she weren’t interested in his answer.
“Since when?”
“I believe her husband died a few months ago.”
Kane stared at Houston for several long minutes, as if seeing her for the first time. “It’s funny how things work out, ain’t it?”
“How do you mean?”
“If I hadn’t asked you to my house, your sister wouldn’t have gone out with Westfield and you’d be marryin’ him now.”
She drew in her breath. “And if you’d known Pamela was free, you’d not have asked me to your house. Mr. Taggert, you’re free to break our engagement at any time. If you’d rather have—.”
“You ain’t gonna start that again, are you?” he said, rising. “Why don’t you try sayin’ somethin’ different sometime?”
Relief flooded Houston as she stood. “I just thought perhaps—.”
Kane turned and grabbed her against him. “Damned woman, please shut up,” he said as he kissed her.
Houston obeyed.
* * *
Early on Tuesday, Willie informed Houston that Miss Lavinia LaRue would meet her by the bandstand in Fenton Park at nine that morning.
Houston was met by a garishly dressed woman, short, dark, with an enormous bosom. Wonder how much is paddin’, Houston thought.
“Good morning, Miss LaRue. It was good of you to meet me so early.”
“It’s late for me. I ain’t been to bed yet. So you’re the one Kane’s marryin’. I told ’im he could buy hisself a lady if he wanted one.”
Houston gave her an icy look.
“Oh, all right,” Lavinia said. “You didn’t expect me to hug you, did you? After all, you are takin’ away a source of income to me.”
“Is that an Mr. Taggert is to you?”
“He’s a good lover, if that’s what you mean but, truth to tell, he scares me. I never know what he wants from me. Acts like he can’t bear me one minute, the next he can’t get enough.”
Houston knew she’d felt the same way but said nothing.
“What’d you wanta see me about?”
“I thought perhaps you could tell me something about him. I’ve really known him a very short time.”
“You mean what he likes in bed?”
“No! Certainly not.” She didn’t like to think of Kane and another woman. “As a man. What can you tell me about the man?”
Lavinia stepped away, her back to Houston. “You know, one time I did think of somethin’, but I know it was silly.”
“And what was that?”
“Most of the time he acts like he don’t care, but one time he saw that friend of his, Edan, out the window walkin’ with a woman, and Kane asked if I liked him. If I liked him, Kane, I mean. He didn’t wait for me to answer ’fore he left, but I thought then, he’s a man no one’s ever loved. ’Course that couldn’t be true, a man with all his money must have lots of women in love with him.”
“Do you love him? Not his money, but him. If he had no money—.”
“If he had no money, I’d not get near ’im. I told you, he scares me.”
Out of her pocketbook, Houston pulled a check. “The bank president has instructions to cash this only if he sees that you’ve purchased a train ticket to another state.”
Lavinia took the check. “I’m takin’ this because I wanta leave this two-bit town. But no money could buy me if I didn’t wanta leave.”
“Of course not. Again, Miss LaRue, thank you.”
* * *
On Tuesday afternoon, just when Houston was getting tired of yet more wedding plans, Leora Vaughn and her fiancé, Jim Michaelson, stopped by the Chandler house on a tandem bicycle. They asked if Houston could possibly persuade Kane to rent another double bike and ride in the park with them.
After Houston had changed, borrowing Blair’s Turkish pants, she rode on the handlebars up the hill to Kane’s house.
“Goddamn Gould!” They could hear Kane’s shouts through the open window.
“I’ll ask him,” Houston said.
“Do you think he’d mind if we waited inside?” Leora asked, her eyes greedily roaming over the front of Kane’s house.
“I think he’d be pleased.”
Houston never knew how Kane was going to greet her, but this time he seemed glad of the diversion. He was a little hesitant about the bicycle, since he’d never ridden one before, but he mastered it in minutes—then began challenging the other men in the park to races.
By late afternoon, when they returned the rented bicycles, Kane was saying he was going to buy a bicycle manufacturing plant. “Maybe I’ll not make any money off it,” he said, “but sometimes I like to gamble. Like recently I bought stock in a company that makes a drink called Coca-Cola. I’ll probably lose ever’thing.” He shrugged. “You can’t always win.”
In the evening they went to a taffy pull at Sarah Oakley’s house.
Kane was the oldest person in the group, but all the games and diversions were new to him, and he seemed to have the most fun. He always seemed a little shocked that these young society people accepted him.
And it wasn’t because he was easy to accept. He was outspoken, intolerant of any ideas he didn’t agree with, and always aggressive. He told Jim Michaelson he was a fool to be content to run his father’s store, that he should expand, get some business down from Denver if he insisted on staying in Chandler. He told Sarah Oakley she ought to get Houston to help her buy dresses because the ones she wore weren’t as pretty as they should be. He got taffy on Mrs. Oakley’s draperies and the next day had delivered to her fifty yards of silk velvet from Denver. He bent a wheel of a rented bicycle, then yelled for twenty minutes at the owner for having inferior merchandise. He told Cordelia Farrell she could get a better man than John Silverman, and that all John wanted was somebody to take care of his three motherless children.
Houston prayed for the floor to open up and swallow her when Kane invited everyone to his house for dinner on Wednesday night. “I ain’t got any furniture downstairs,” he said, “so we’ll do it like Houston done for me one night—a rug, pillows to lay down on, candles, everything.”
When three women dissolved into giggles at the look of pain and disbelief on Houston’s red face, Kane said, “Did I miss somethin’?”
And Houston soon learned that everything connected with Kane involved an argument. He called it “discussin’” but it was more a verbal wrestle. On Tuesday evening, she asked him to sign some blank cards, beside her signature, which would be included in the little boxes of cake to be given away at the wedding.
“Like hell I will!” he said.
“I ain’t puttin’ my name on somethin’ blank. Somebody could write whatever they like above it.”
“It’s tradition,” Houston said, “everyone puts autographed cards in the boxes of cake that people take home.”
“They can eat cake at the weddin’. They don’t need little boxes of it. It’ll melt anyway.”
“It’s to dream on, to make wishes on, to—.”
“You want me to sign blank cards for a dumb idea like that?”
Houston lost that bout, but she won about hiring men to help the ladies from their carriages and women to turn Kane’s small drawing room into a cloakroom.
“How many people you plannin’ on havin’, anyway?”
She looked at her list. “At last count, 520. Most of Leander’s, relatives are travelling in from the East. Is there someone special you wanted to invite besides your uncles and cousins, the Taggerts?”
“My what?”
They were off again, and again Houston won. Kane said he’d never met his relatives and had no desire to meet them. Houston, who couldn’t tell him she knew Jean, or he’d no doubt ask how, said she was inviting them whether he knew them or not. For some reason, Kane didn’t want them there and, after several minutes of arguing, he said they’d show up in coal miner’s clothes.
Houston called him a snob. She thought she might die rather than tell him she’d already arranged for clothes to be made for his relatives—at his expense.
Before Kane could reply, Opal walked into the room, bade them good evening and sat dawn with her embroidery.
Kane appealed to Opal, who said, “Well then, you shall have to buy them new clothes, won’t you?”
By the time Kane left, Houston felt as if she’d survived a storm at sea, but Kane seemed unperturbed. He kissed her in the hallway and said he’d see her tomorrow.
“Will everything always be an argument?” she whispered, sitting down heavily beside her mother.
“I should think it will be,” Opal said cheerfully. “Why don’t you take a long, hot bath?”
“I need a three-day-long one,” Houston muttered, rising.
* * *
Kane stood before the tall windows in his office, a cigar clamped between his teeth.
“Are you planning to work or daydream?” Edan asked from behind him.
Kane didn’t turn around. “They’re all just kids,” he said.
“Who are?”
“Houston and all her friends. They’ve never had to grow up, to worry about where their next meal’s comin’ from. Houston thinks food comes out of the kitchen, clothes from her dressmaker’s and money from the bank.”
“I’m not sure you’re right. Houston seems pretty sensible to me, and I think her being jilted by Westfield made her grow up some. Those things mean a lot to a woman.”
Kane turned back to face his friend. “She’s consoled herself well enough,” he said, his gesture encompassing the house.
“I’m not so sure she’s after just your money,” Edan said thoughtfully.
Kane snorted. “No doubt it’s the delicate way I handle a teacup. I want you to watch her.”
“You mean spy on her?”
“She’s engaged to a man with money. I’d hate to have her kidnapped.”
Edan raised an eyebrow. “Is that it, or are you worried she might be seeing Fenton again?”
“She spends most of every Wednesday inside that church of hers, and I want to know what she’s doin’.”
“So it’s the handsome Reverend Thomas you’re worried about.”
“I’m damn well not worried about anybody!” Kane shouted. “Just do what I say and watch her.”
With a look of disgust, Edan stood. “I wonder if Houston has any idea what she’s getting herself into.”
Kane turned back to the window. “A woman’ll do a lot to get her hands on millions.”
Edan didn’t respond before he left the room.
* * *
Houston, dressed in the hot, padded suit of Sadie, handled her team of horses with ease as she made her way to the Little Pamela mine. She’d discussed it with Reverend Thomas and decided it was all right to talk to Jean about the forthcoming wedding. Houston still liked to think Jean was safe in her ignorance of Sadie’s identity, but Reverend Thomas had, in a patronizing way, again told Houston the secrecy was long gone.
Now, as Houston travelled to the mine, she began to feel an almost overwhelming urge to talk to Jean. Jean always seemed so quiet and sensible, and even though she’d never met Kane, she was his cousin.
Houston got through the guarded gate with no trouble or challenge and went straight to the Taggart house.
Jean was waiting for her. “No problems?” she asked, then stopped and stared at Houston. “I’m glad you finally know,” she said softly.
“Let’s get the food distributed and we can talk,” Houston said.
Hours later they were back at Jean’s little house. Houston pulled a packet of tea from her pocket. “For you.”
They were silent as Jean prepared the tea, then when they were both seated, Jean spoke. “So, we’re to be related by marriage.”
Houston held the chipped mug in her hands. “In five days. You will be there, won’t you?”
“Of course. I’ll pull my Cinderella gown from the closet and come in my glass coach.”
“You needn’t worry about any of that. I made all the necessary arrangements. Jacob Fenton has given permission for any Taggert to be allowed to come and go. My dressmaker is waiting and Mr. Bagly, the tailor, has been given instructions. All you have to do is bring your father, Rafe and Ian.”
“That’s all, is it?” Jean asked, smiling. “My father will be no problem, but Rafe is another matter. And unfortunately, Ian is just like his uncle.”
With a sigh, Houston looked down at her mug. “Let me guess. First of all, you have no way of knowing whether Rafe will like the idea of attending the wedding or not because he is completely unpredictable. He could laugh and be happy to go, or he could possibly shout and refuse to attend.”
For a moment, Jean gaped. “Don’t tell me Kane is a real Taggert.”
Houston stood and walked to gaze sightlessly out the single window, not speaking for several long minutes.
“Why are you marrying him?” Jean asked.
“I really don’t know,” she answered, pausing again. “Leander and I were the perfect couple,” she said softly, almost as if in a dream. “In all the years we were engaged, in essence, since we were both children, I don’t think we ever once disagreed. We had some . . . problems as we grew up,” she thought of Lee’s anger when she’d refused to let him make love to her, “but nearly always we agreed. If I wanted green curtains, Leander wanted green curtains. There was almost always perfect harmony between us.”
She looked at Jean. “And then I met Mr. Taggert. I don’t think he and I’ve yet had a harmonious conversation. I find myself yelling at him as if I were a fishwife. The day after I agreed to marry him I broke a water pitcher over his head. One minute I’ll be furious with him, and the next I want to put my arms around him and protect him, then the next minute I find I want to lose myself in his strength.”
She sat down, her face in her hands. “I am so confused. I don’t know what anything means anymore. I loved Leander for so long, was so sure of my love for him, but right now I know that if I were offered a choice, I’d keep Kane.”
She looked up. “But why? Why would I want to live with a man who makes me furious, who makes me feel like a street woman, who runs after me like a satyr, then pushes me away and says ‘there’ll be more of that later, honey’ as if I’d been the forward one? Some of the time he ignores me, some of the time he leers at me. Sometimes he charms me. He has no respect for me; he treats me as if I were a backward child one minute, and the next he hands me unspeakable amounts of money and tells me to accomplish the work of ten people.”
Houston stood quickly. “I think I must be insane. No woman in her right mind would go into
a marriage like this. Not with her eyes open. I could see being so in love with a man that you’d not see his faults. But I see Kane Taggert as he really is: a man of towering vanity, a man of no vanity. Whatever you can say about him, there is a contradiction.”
She sat down again, heavily. “I am insane. Completely, thoroughly insane.”
“Are you sure?” Jean asked quietly.
“Oh, yes, I’m sure,” Houston answered. “No other woman would—.”
“No, I mean about being so in love with him you’d not be able to see his faults. I’ve always thought—or hoped—that if someone loved me they’d know all my bad points and still love me. I wouldn’t want a man who thought I was a goddess, because when he found out that I have an awful temper, I’d be afraid he wouldn’t love me anymore.”
With a puzzled look, Houston gaped at Jean. “But loving someone means . . . ”
“Yes? What is being in love with someone?”
Houston stood, looked out the window absently. “Wanting to be with a person. Wanting to stay with him through sickness and health, wanting to have his children, loving him even when he does something you don’t like. Thinking he’s the grandest, most noble prince in the world, laughing when he’s said something that hurts you for the fifth time in one hour. Worrying whether he’ll like what you’re wearing, if he’ll be proud of you, and feeling your insides melt when he does approve of you.”
She stopped and was silent for several long moments.
“When I’m with him, I’m alive,” she whispered. “I don’t think I was ever alive until I met Kane. I was just existing, moving, eating, obeying. Kane makes me feel powerful, as if I could do anything. Kane . . . ”
“Yes?” Jean asked softly. “What is Kane?”
“Kane Taggert is the man I love.”
Jean burst out laughing. “Is it really such a catastrophe, being in love with one of us Taggerts?”
“The loving will be easy, but the living with might be somewhat difficult.”
“You’ll never be able to imagine half of it,” Jean said, still laughing. “More tea?”
“Is all of your family like Kane?”
Twin of Ice Page 12