by Moonwitch
"Is there anything you'd particularly care to talk about?" the man said then, keeping his voice low as he turned around and leaned forward, resting his forearms on the railing beside her hands. "I somehow doubt, however, that it will be about fashion and gossip. You hardly seem the type."
Amanda felt the heat from his jacket against her hands and moved them slightly. "Type?"
"On the other hand, you hardly seem the type who runs a ranch in Wyoming, either."
"You seem to know a lot about me, Mr. Eagleton."
Eagleton shrugged. "When a woman as beautiful as you are, Mrs. Munroe, hits this town, there is very little about her that goes unknown for very long." He looked up and grinned. "We are not the most civilized people in the world out here. I guess it comes from having to prove yourself all the time. In New York we're considered only slightly above the level of . . . " He stopped suddenly and coughed.
"The Indian?" she said, keeping her tone deliberately ambiguous.
Eagleton straightened, looked at his cigar with distaste, and ground it out beneath his heel. "I did not mean to offend you, madam."
"And you haven't, Mr. Eagleton," she said, a hand quickly to his arm to keep him from leaving. "It's a common usage, what you were saying. Had I thought you meant it, I would have probably cut your throat."
He blinked rapidly, unsure again if she were serious, and Amanda could not help but laugh as she took her turn in guiding and led him down the steps to the garden path. The sky was star filled, but not, she noted, as flooded as was the dark curtain over Four Aces; there was, even now, too much light for all to burn through.
"Indeed," he said at last as they circled a fountain from which water gurgled out of a dolphin's gaping mouth. "You are definitely not any type at all, Mrs. Munroe."
"I hope not," she said. "That would be the death of me ...
And so will this conversation, she thought abruptly; two of us talking as though we were in some New York drawing-room comedy. Madam. Sir. Shall not. Should not. Good God, Amanda, if this is what it means to be civilized, you're well out of it.
It was then, however, that she realized Eagleton was not as boring as he seemed to be. From the arm beneath her hand and the set of his lips she knew that he was nervous, nervous about her reaction to him. She closed her eyes briefly, avoiding a knowing grin that she would have to answer for, and lie about, and felt a pleasant shudder run along her spine.
"Are you cold?" he asked.
"No, not at all," she said, leaning closer to him. The soft cushion of his jacket was smooth against her skin, and the thought of that caressing material covering her made her flesh tighten across her chest and brought a swift, short-lived flush to her neck. Scowling at herself for such adolescent behavior, she cleared her throat and asked him what he did with himself when he was not attending parties on the Hill.
"I travel," he said. "I work for a shipping company that has offices on both coasts, and I find myself drifting back and forth as the whim, and my employers, take me."
"It must be ... exciting."
With his free hand he covered hers on his arm, a perfectly natural movement she did not even realize had taken place until she felt his fingers tighten slightly over hers. "Sometimes it is," he admitted. "Sometimes I wish I had taken up some other profession and could stay in one place for more than a few months at a time."
She examined his dress carefully and made sure that he saw her doing it. "It seems to do you well," she said.
"It keeps me in cigars," he laughed.
"Then ... then you're not originally from California?"
"Good Lord, no! I know it sounds as if I am, because I enjoy the place so much, but no. No, I am from a very small town in New York. The state, not the city-in fact far from the city. I was apprenticed to a law firm when I was younger than I care to remember, and fell into this job quite by accident, when I discovered that one of the companies with whom we did business was doing what the Irish call a little finagling of their own." He snapped his fingers at the air. "Instant wealth and position, I can tell you."
Amanda laughed at the way he set barbs against himself, felt suddenly more comfortable with him than she had since. . . since she did not know when. And when they reached the end of the path and had a choice of either returning to the house or setting off on a tangent across the grass, she was torn. The time, however, was not yet right, and she sensed more than heard a sigh issue from his chest when she directed him back along the way they had walked.
"And you? Are you from ... wherever?"
"Wherever," she said. "New York, like you. A small town, like you."
"Really!" His delight seemed genuine, and he stopped, forcing her to face him. "Really," he said again softly.
"It's not all that remarkable," she said.
"What? Two people from small towns in the same state meeting in a large city on the other side of the country, and you say it's not remarkable? I say it's a damned miracle."
She poked at his chest, and he captured her hand.
"Mrs. Munroe, once we get back to the house, I shall lose you to all those wolves slavering on the porch. " He pulled her closer, so close her breasts brushed against the frills of his shirt. "May I see you again?"
She did not hesitate. She nodded and did not pull away when his head suddenly dipped and his lips lightly brushed hers.
''Mr. Eagleton," she said, only because the situation demanded it.
"Mrs. Munroe," he said, pulling away, but his eyes didn't leave hers.
"Amanda."
"Trevor."
She nodded." I think I'm pleased to meet you,Trevor."
"Only 'think'?"
She began walking again, and he paused a few moments before hurrying to her side.
"What do you mean, think?"
She smiled, though she did not look at him. "I mean that I am not sure I'm not being taken in by the wiles of a wolf who doesn't travel with the pack."
"Amanda, I am crushed."
"Somehow, Trevor," she said with a laugh, .. I doubt that very much."
And it was as he had predicted: as soon as they reached the porch, several young men who had found courage in Eagleton's success surrounded the couple with polite but insistent demands that Amanda take each of them for the next dance, especially since there were so few left. Amanda felt Trevor slipping away from her, but she did not mind. It would do her good to get away from his heady influence for a while, to regain her sense of balance while she spent some time with these comparatively clumsy young ones who would have, she was sure, taken each other apart had she wished it.
And the thought, once it sunk in, frightened her more than a little.
There were those who attributed her apparent control over men to her natural, sensual beauty, one that spoke frankly of those things that were not mentioned even obliquely in polite company. She knew that. She knew that these young men were measuring the size of her breasts, their softness, their firmness; they were taking stock of her waist, and imagining the flat, muscled stomach that enabled her to forego any of the undergarments that afflicted most other women; and they were wondering what her legs looked like under all those silken folds-were they smooth, caressable, proportioned to an artist's degree? Or were they hard, angular, something more befitting a woman who spent much of her time astride a horse?
There was no conceit in that assessment. Amanda understood quite well the effect she had on men, and on women, and she was confident enough of herself that she did not mind using it when it was to her advantage.
There was, then, that power. But in recognizing it, she could not help but wonder if some of it was not due to another sort of power, one that was also attributed to her, though it had nothing to do with her physical beauty.
When she was a riverboat pilot-both on the Hudson River and the Mississippi-they called her "riverwitch."
Shortly after she had moved with Guy to Wyoming and discovered that her affinity with nature did not stop with water and the creatures that
lived within it, she was called "mountainwitch."
No one feared her; but no one dared ask her where she managed to unearth this or that bit of information. She simply knew.
And how she knew she did not know.
She felt herself sinking, then, into a depression that was all too familiar, one that forced her to admit that she was somehow different from other people, and not only by virtue of her sensuality and race. And when that happened, she sometimes was unable to face it strongly, was sometimes plunged into a despair that lasted for days, often weeks. In the past there had always been Guy, or her closest friend, Sam, to nudge her out of it. But Sam-a Sioux who had been rescued from slavery by her late husband and was now the one who watched more closely than a hawk the safety of her children-was back in Wyoming. And though she loved Harley and Olivia dearly, they were not nearly as close to her as they would like to be-because of that supposed power. They respected it, and they feared it.
She was alone, and she did not need to ruin her vacation simply because she could not handle herself, as she had been bragging she could.
So she threw herself into the arms of the nearest young man and let him whirl her around the dance floor, to another who was comically stately in the throes of a waltz, and to a third who had had far too much to drink and threatened to cripple her before the set ended. A fourth was too bold with his hand at the side of her chest, and she jammed her heel into his instep, apologizing profusely while she took him to the nearest chair, grinning at the same time at the curses that dared not escape his fast-reddening face.
And when the dancing was finally over, she slumped into a chair herself and accepted with gratitude a crystal glass of wine that, when she looked up, she saw was offered by Harley Peterson.
"It's late," he said simply. There was no disapproval in his eyes, nor any in the firm set of his mouth. He was stating a fact; whatever his opinions were, he kept them to himself.
"Olivia?" she asked.
He nodded toward the front doors. "Waitin' for the carriage. You goin' back to Wilcox's with us?"
She fanned herself with one hand and drained the wine in a gulp. Then she rose and leaned heavily on his ann. "Harl," she said as he took her toward his wife, "I don't think I'm as young as I used to be."
"Hell," he said, "a baby can say that. What you need is less gaddin' and more sittin'."
"Harley Peterson, are you accusing me of flirting with all these men?"
"No. Not with all of them."
They stood for a moment just inside the door, and Amanda took his jaw in her hand and turned his face around. "Harley, Mr. Eagleton, no matter what you may have heard before, is not as bad as you think. In fact, unless he loosens up a little, he's going to be one of the most boring people I ever met in my life, and you definitely won't have to worry then."
"Borin'?"
"Stiff as a board most of the time."
Harley nodded as though she had just confirmed an unspoken judgment. "Thought so. Them Easterners are all like that."
Amanda frowned. "And how did you know he was from the East?"
"I talk a lot, Amanda," he said as he ushered her out the door, "but I also listen a lot, too."
Then, without really knowing why, she said: "Well, you keep on listening, Harl. And if it isn't too dull, let me know what you hear."
"Meantime?"
"Meantime," she said, -mimicking his solemnity, 'Tm going to make the most of these last few days in this damned insane city. "
THREE
The Wilcox home was far enough from the center of San Francisco not to be bothered by intrusive neighbors, yet was close enough so that William did not have to leave at dawn each morning to take his private landau to his office, a small but thriving brokerage firm that dealt primarily with shipments and commodities from the Far East. It was a small house, far smaller than Amanda would have imagined, just large enough, in fact, for the two adults and the two children who had long outgrown their family's ties and had left: one for Los Angeles, the other for St. Louis. As a result Amanda was given one of the now empty bedrooms, masculine in tone but with a view of the Pacific Ocean that was, at both dawn and dusk, more than breathtaking.
Despite frenzied explanations on the train ride west, Amanda was still not positive how Harley and William had come to be such close friends. They had met, apparently, on a cattle drive from Austin to Wichita when they were both several decades younger. Harley, however, had been taken by the scenic grandeur of Wyoming during a smaller trip north and had never left. William, on the other hand, had used the drive only as a means to get away from what seemed to be a drunken father and a harlot mother. Once freed, he'd taken the lure of the "golden West" to heart and had not looked back.
At least Amanda thought that was the story. Somehow, depending on Harley's mood, the details seemed to alter themselves with each telling. .
Not that it mattered. Both William and Sarah were extraordinarily gracious toward her, bubbling over her heritage without the slightest hint of condescension, exclaiming such admiration for her adventures that she was often embarrassed to the point of blushing. Nevertheless she came to enjoy their company immensely, looking forward to those oases of peace when she did not have a dinner to attend, a concert to be seen at, or a party--dinner or otherwise--that Sarah thought she would enjoy, just to meet the people.
And it was three days after she had first encountered Trevor Eagleton that she found herself able to sit back in a large, dark pine chair and stretch out her legs over the darkened hearth. The front room was not long, but wide, with windows at the side that overlooked the lawn that swept without interruption to the edge of a cliff. Beyond that was the gray swell of the Pacific. And above it a cloud of black-masked gulls cried their way toward the fishing boats making their way toward the docks in the city and those smaller towns along the jagged coastline.
"Marvelous, " she said, stretching her arms high over her head, feeling the welcome pull of the muscles. "Absolutely marvelous."
Sarah was in a similar chair opposite her, a pile of mending in her lap, wire-rimmed glasses perched precariously at the edge of her hawk-like nose. Amanda guessed that she had been somewhat of a beauty when she was younger, a beauty that had, despite the time since, evolved into a patrician handsomeness that somehow did not suit her effervescence when she grew excited.
Now, however, she was scowling over a crooked seam in one of her husband's shirts. "Damn," she muttered.
"Sarah!" Amanda scolded mockingly.
"Well, I can't help it, Amanda. Sometimes I think I'd be better off with someone to do these things for me. But Lord knows I've tried it. Three times. And every blessed time I end up doing all the work myself." She shook her head sadly. "What's the good of having so much money if you can't put it to good use, that's what I want to know. "
"A bigger house?" she suggested.
"Don't be silly. What would I do with more rooms to clean? The boys are gone, William is barely home these days . . .why, I'd probably get lost and die of starvation before he ever found me again. "
She prattled on for several more minutes, and Amanda leaned her head back and closed her eyes. She had felt, in the beginning, an urge to throttle the woman when she nattered as she was doing now, but the sound-with the distant grumbling of the surf and the cries of the gulls-had grown lulling, comfortable, and she knew she would miss it should Sarah suddenly change her spots and become as laconic as Harley. Curious, she thought, what you can get used to when you can't do anything else.
She shifted and heard the rattle of paper in her lap. She glanced down, hesitated, then picked up the wrinkled envelope and stared at it lovingly. It was a letter from Alexander, written and delivered less than a week ago. She traced a finger over the self-conscious elegance of the handwriting, smiled at the blot of ink in the lower comer where he hadn't lifted the pen in time. A man he may be, she thought then, but he'll never be too old for me to call him a boy.
There was, almost depressingly, noth
ing new at Four Aces. Word had naturally gotten around that she was selling most of her cattle and a fair acreage of grazing land that went with them. As a consequence the ranch was besieged with potential buyers who were, according to her son, trying all sorts of bribes with him and Carl to see to it they were given preference when she returned home. Meanwhile the work went on as before--efficiently, calmly, and even the small silver mine she had ordered reopened was producing a surprising profit. The mine. She did not like to think of it much-it had been the cause of most of her troubles over seven years earlier, and when it was assayed as not being worth the investment to work, she was more than happy to close it down. Another expert, however, had approached her last spring, filled to the brim with new techniques and a hundred suggestions, and she had yielded to a second try primarily to keep him from disrupting the rest of the ranch's operations. And it had worked.