Love and Adventure Collection - Part 2

by Jennifer Blake

  She flung back the covers, preparing to slide out of bed. His fingers sank into her leg, holding her. “Serena, no. It wouldn’t be like that.”

  “How would it be?” she cried, snatching his hand from her, throwing it off, leaping from the bed. “Are you going to leave me alone again while you look for your fortune? Money, gold, gold mines. I’m sick of hearing about them! I’m tired of being pulled this way and that. All I want is to be left alone!”

  “I don’t have to go looking for gold. I’ve already found it in a mining claim that I won in a poker pot.”

  “Don’t tell me,” she snapped, gathering her clothes, snatching them on. “I don’t want to hear. What good is a mining claim without the capital to work it? What good is the few thousand you might get from selling it, if it doesn’t get you away from here?” She made a fierce gesture around her with the shirtwaist in her hand. “You sneer at the people who want to make a better life for themselves, but what’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with wanting something more for themselves and their children? To mingle in society and hobnob with royalty may not be what I want; still, it’s better than resigning myself to Myers Avenue as an alternative!”

  Ward opened his mouth, then closed it again. A grim look in his green eyes, he threw himself back flat on the bed, his hands clasped behind his head. He did not speak again, nor did he give any sign that he was aware of her struggling into her clothing beside the bed.

  Serena, moving to the bureau to bring some order to her hair, sent him a quick look in the mirror that topped it. She was right, she knew she was. Why then did his black look of contained rage affect her so?

  She picked up her hat and set it on her hair, pushing the hatpin through it without a glance at the way it looked. “I had better go now,” she said. “It will be snowing soon.”

  He did not answer. Serena scooped up her fur coat, brought this time because of the low-hanging snow clouds, and her purse. She hesitated a moment, then, swinging around, left the room, closing the door quietly behind her.

  In her phaeton, she whirled through the streets. It was later than she had thought; already the dance halls and opera houses were brightly lighted. She would be lucky if she made it home before dark. She should have asked the stablehand to light the sidelamps. It wasn’t that she was frightened or nervous of being on the road alone. There had been no further incidents to cause her alarm. But she was perfectly willing to admit that having her way lighted would be comforting once she got beyond the town.

  She thought of Ward back at the Eldorado, then pushed the image from her mind. What consideration did she owe him? She reasoned with herself furiously. He had taken advantage of the fact that she was alone in the world, forced himself upon her against her will, kept her a prisoner for his pleasure, got her with child and left her. Then when he came back, he had demanded her compliance as the price for allowing her to retain her freedom. He was everything that was base. That he had given her shelter and protection, that he had been gentle and considerate, even tender at times, made no difference. She owed him nothing. Nothing.

  Today was the only time he had mentioned his child since the first day she had gone to him. What did it mean? Did he regret the circumstances that had given Sean another man’s name? Was he seeking to redress that wrong with his request for her to come back to him with their child?

  What a tangled mess everything had become. Serena, staring at the gaily lighted facade of the Gold Nugget Saloon, could see no way that she could win free of it, no way she could ever be happy again.

  Ahead of her was a small crowd gathered around a speaker using a wooden TNT case for a platform. Serena had to slow to allow a loaded dray to pass the men spilling into the street before she could go around them. The voice of the lecturer, harsh, loud, etched with the acid of fanaticism, was both repellent and familiar. She flashed the man a quick look, knowing even as she did so she could not be mistaken.

  The elder’s hair hung in tatters about his shoulders. His beard was long and unkempt, blowing in the wind. The flesh had melted from his frame, giving him the sharp features and desiccated look of a desert ascetic. In one hand he clutched a Bible, while with the other he made vicious, stabbing gestures that caused his faded clothes to flap around him like the rags of a scarecrow. For all his wasted appearance, his eyes were still vigorously alive. They burned silver-white with zeal above the fevered, wind-burned flesh of his cheekbones, terrible eyes that looked beyond his listeners with menacing fury and contempt.

  “Whore of Babylon!” he shouted, his voice cracking as he shook a fist at Serena’s phaeton. “Evil woman as thou art to set up your house of iniquity among the innocent, instead of staying with your own kind, to offer succor to the wicked females of the town instead of leaving them to their just punishment, the disease and pain that are the wages of sin! You are known for what you are, Serena Walsh Benedict, corrupter of the good in men. You drag men down to their doom, forcing them to consort with the devil, he who first penetrated you with his double-pronged pole, before they can come to you! You are known, with the blackness of your sin! Adulteress! Fornicator! Come now from your lover to go to your husband! Your day of reckoning is not long in coming. You will be dragged down to the dogs like Jezebel of old! Your punishment shall be meted out! You will be stripped and the white skin of your body scourged with scorpions, flayed with asps! Your end shall be as bitter as wormwood!”

  White to the lips, Serena gave no sign she heard the diatribe directed at her. The impulse to whip up the grays and get quickly away was strong, but she controlled it. She skirted the men who had turned to stare at her in good form, then sent her horses along the street once more at an even trot. Behind her, the elder still shouted, his hoarse denunciation calling down wrath upon her head in such terms that it was to be wondered that he was not embarrassed to trumpet them aloud. There was nothing to be disturbed about; he could rant and scream his obscenities after her, but he could not hurt her.

  Or could he? If he knew of her meetings with Ward, who else might not know? How long after Nathan’s return before he was told, if not by Pearlie, then by somebody else?

  Coming from her lover, going to her husband; those had been the elder’s words. Was it possible that Nathan had already returned, was even now at Bristlecone, that he already knew?

  The snowflakes began to fall as she passed under the stone archway over the drive. By the time she had driven her team under the portico and handed the rig over to the waiting stableboy, the cold white powder had dusted her hat and the shoulders of her fur, and settled onto her lashes.

  Mrs. Anson opened the door to her and helped her out of her coat. Serena, by no means certain of the shape her hair was in, made no effort to remove her hat.

  “Has Mr. Benedict returned?” she inquired, her voice as offhand as she could manage.

  “Yes, madam. He has been waiting for you in his study this past half hour.”

  There was cold disapproval in the woman’s tone. Serena ignored it. “Tell him I will join him shortly,” she said in a pleasant aside, “as soon as I have made myself presentable. You may serve tea when I come down.”

  “Mr. Benedict has already had his tea.”

  “But I haven’t.” Serena smiled and swung away, forgetting the housekeeper the instant her back was turned in her determination to walk slowly up the stairs instead of running. Her greatest fear was that Nathan might have heard her voice, and would emerge from his study to greet her before she had time to collect herself.

  A quarter of an hour later, she had bathed her face and hands, brushed her hair and pinned it into a fresh knot at the nape of her neck, and exchanged her lavender merino for a dinner gown of teal-blue silk-lined crépon with a seamless corsage. Regaining her confidence with her look of severe elegance, she descended the stairs once more. She paused at the door of the study to take a deep breath, then turned the handle and swept into the room.

  “Nathan, I didn’t know you were back until Mrs. Anson told me. I
wish you had telegraphed; I would have met you at the station, or at least been here to greet you.”

  He rose from his chair before the fireplace and, coming toward her, caught her shoulders and brushed a kiss across her forehead. “As lovely as ever,” he said as he stepped back.

  “Thank you, sir,” she replied, smiling.

  “I would have sent word of my arrival time, but I wasn’t sure myself when I would reach Cripple.”

  “In all events, it’s good to have you back.” The words were easily spoken. It was so friendly, so cordial, and so false; still, the pretense must be kept up. Serena gently disengaged herself and moved to take the chair opposite Nathan’s, indicating that she wished him to resume his seat and be comfortable.

  “You’ve gained weight, filled out again,” he commented.

  “Yes, thankfully. Did you have a good trip?”

  Nathan nodded. “It was smooth enough. I was glad to get back here before the snow started again.”

  “We had one blowing storm while you were gone, nothing major. You seem very chipper. Am I to assume you were able to get what you went after?”

  Before he could answer, Dorcas came into the room bearing a tray holding a fresh pot of tea. Their conversation was delayed until she had gone out again, and Serena had filled her cup and refilled Nathan’s.

  Her husband took a sip of the hot brew and leaned back in his chair. “In answer to your question, I did indeed get what I went after. They tried to put me off, saying the display everybody was making such a fuss about was only a prototype, that I would have to put in my order and wait until they went into full production before I could take delivery of the hoist. I wasn’t having that. Well, the upshot of the matter was, I put down my money and brought their display home with me — that is, in a manner of speaking. It will come by freight in a few days. That’s what took so long, though, getting the thing dismantled, then crating it up and making it ready to ship.”

  As he went on, talking of the superiority of the new hoist and the mechanism for raising and lowering it, Serena could feel the tension inside her subside. He didn’t know. He couldn’t go on in such a relaxed manner if he had any idea where she had been and what she had been doing. The realization gave her a strange feeling. Human beings were capable of infinite deceit. Here she sat, smiling, nodding in an imitation of guileless interest, all the while thinking of her lover, and there he sat, knowing he had tricked her into marrying him, more than likely thinking of the interludes aboard his private railroad car with his mistress.

  Consuelo had been with him, all right. Serena had taken the time one day to drive by the house Nathan had bought for the Spanish girl. The man who drove the water wagon that supplied fresh drinking water daily had stopped on seeing Serena coming from the door and called out to ask if it was time to start delivery again. Realizing his mistake, that she was not Consuelo, he had taken a hearty laugh before volunteering the information that the lady of the house had canceled her water until she got back, that she thought it would be a while since she was going to Denver and then some city in the East.

  “Tell me what you’ve been doing while I’ve been gone,” Nathan said. “I see you went into town by yourself again, despite my orders to take someone with you.”

  She was caught off guard, but she rallied quickly. “I know, and I’m sorry,” she said, taking his last comment first with a pretty show of contrition. “I hate to ask either the boy from the stables or Jack Coachman to come to the home with me. I never know what I’ll find there, or how long I’ll be. They don’t like to wait inside where there’s only women, and it was too cold today for them to wait outside for any length of time.”

  She had not precisely said she was at the home this evening. If he assumed that was where she was it would be unnecessary to lie.

  “It seems what you need is a maid, somebody who can help you into and out of these new clothes, keep them done up for you, run your bath, and whatnot, and still be available when you need someone up beside you when you go out.”

  “Mrs. Anson cares for my clothes and does a beautiful job, and Dorcas is learning to perform simple tasks for me. I don’t need anyone else. As for driving out with me, what earthly use would a maid be? I would just have to take care of her too, while she sat there screeching her head off, like as not.”

  “Nevertheless, I’m going to look around for a suitable girl.”

  “If you want to please me,” Serena said carefully, “you’ll do no such thing. I told you, I don’t need any more help than Mrs. Anson and Dorcas, and Mary of course, already provide. That is, unless you think I am in need of a chaperon.”

  He leaned to place his cup on the tea table drawn up before them. “You know I meant nothing of the kind.”

  “No,” Serena said, forcing a smile. “I’m sure you didn’t. Let’s consider the idea as dropped, shall we?”

  “As you wish,” he agreed, though his nod was stiff.

  “I am not ungrateful for all you have given me, and all you have done for me, Nathan,” she said, her voice strained, and her lashes shielding her blue-gray eyes, “but in this I would appreciate it if you will let me have my way.”

  “My dear Serena, when you put it that way, how can I refuse? I’ve given you little enough, not half what I would like; I think you know that — or you should, since I’ve told you often enough.”

  “Yes, I know,” she answered, and went still, waiting for him to go on as he had before, to suggest that she become his wife in more than name.

  At that moment the door opened behind them. “Dinner is served,” Mrs. Anson said in her most formal manner, her expression bland as her eyes met Serena’s over the back of the chair. “Set forward as you requested, Mr. Benedict.”

  20

  The evening meal that was set before them had not been touched by the chef. That gentleman had traveled with Nathan to prepare the meals on board the railroad car while en route. In New York Nathan had hired a hotel suite, and on one occasion the talented French Creole had been called on to prepare a special dinner for a group of people, a coal magnate and his wife, a man who had made a fortune in pork, and a railroad heiress and her foreign husband. After the meal, the heiress had gone back to the kitchen to congratulate the chef. The results had been that Nathan’s cook had succumbed to flattery, money, and the prospect of prestige, and departed in the middle of the night for the lady’s chateau in Normandy. The story of the loss, and Nathan’s unsuccessful efforts to recapture his prized chef, served to get them through until dessert.

  A fire had been lighted in the dining room, but there had not been sufficient time to thoroughly warm the room. It was decided to take after-dinner coffee in the comfort of the study.

  The fire had been replenished. Its crackling heat was welcome, especially since they could pull their chairs close and hold their chilled fingers out to the flames. The coffee sat ready in its silver pot, though neither really wanted it. After a moment, Serena poured it out anyway, and passed the steaming, pale-green demitasse to Nathan. He thanked her absently, placing the small cup on the table before him while he pulled out his leather tobacco pouch and meerschaum pipe.

  “Do you mind?” he inquired.

  “Not at all.” Serena sent him a smile, then leaned back with her own filled cup, crossing her ankles on the small petit-point footstool in front of her chair.

  Nathan got his pipe going. Exhaling a puff of blue smoke, he made an encompassing gesture with the stem. “This is pleasant, sitting here together, you and I. It’s good to be home again.”

  There seemed nothing to do but agree, though Serena felt the flutter of apprehension along her nerves. It would be expecting too much for the subject broached earlier between them not to be renewed.

  “I trust we will have many years like this, many happy years.”

  Would they? Serena allowed herself to think of Ward’s request that she come back to him. At least Nathan, for all the high-handed methods he had used to make her his wife, had bee
n willing to commit himself to a permanent union. He was thoughtful and kind, and if there was a streak of hardness in his character nearly as steely as that in Ward, there was nothing wrong in that. It was a practical necessity for a man who had made himself a millionaire.

  “I love you, Serena.”

  The words were simple, softly spoken. That was something else she had never heard from Ward’s lips. “Nathan, I—”

  “Oh, I don’t expect a declaration from you in return. I just wanted there to be no misunderstanding about what I feel. I had time to do some thinking while I was back East. When I left I was upset, both with you and with myself. I pressed you too quickly, and made a bad mistake, reminding you of what I think we both would prefer was forgotten.”

  “You have been very patient and considerate,” she objected.

  “I’ve tried, but having you here at Bristlecone, so near and yet so distant, was more of a strain than I anticipated. That was one of the reasons I decided to carry through with my trip, even after you refused to come with me.”

  “I see.” It was inadequate as a comment, but Serena could think of nothing else. In contrast to what he made sound a staid and contemplative journey was her knowledge that he had not been alone.

  “As I said, I had time for thought in these last weeks. I came to the conclusion that our best hope for happiness is to have everything out in the open between us. If you realize my feelings, both about your past and present, then you must see that nothing I may say inadvertently is meant to hurt you. If I admit to my own sins, it will be in the hope that you will recognize I have no wish, no need, and no right to judge you. As human beings, we are what we are, and for you and me, Serena, there need be no apologies.”

  “Your attitude is — more generous than I deserve,” Serena said with difficulty. “There is no need to go into particulars.”