Wanton Angel

by Linda Lael Miller

  “I keep tellin’ that woman to stay home and mind her knittin’, but she don’t listen.”

  “Indeed,” Bonnie agreed, absentmindedly, her eyes sweeping the room over Jim Sneeder’s shoulder.

  At last the music stopped and Bonnie turned gratefully away, only to come face to shirtfront with Eli McKutchen. Her gaze slipped from the tasteful diamond stud on his tie to his squared, almost imperceptibly cleft chin, to his golden eyes.

  Taking one of her hands firmly in his own, he turned it palm up, then dropped so many tokens into the hollow that the small brass chips overflowed, falling to the floor in a tinkling cascade.

  Bonnie looked up into Eli’s impassive face and was possessed of the unnerving realization that she was in even more trouble than she had admitted to Forbes earlier, on the way back from the newspaper office. She was still in love, and with a man who could easily destroy her.

  The music began to play and Bonnie, heedless of the tokens scattered over the ballroom floor, allowed herself to be taken into Eli’s arms. As they danced, she watched his face for any expression that might indicate his mood, but his features were unreadable, neither stony nor tender.

  For the rest of the evening, Bonnie’s every dance was Eli’s, and no one dared to complain.

  At midnight the music stopped and the magic ended. Eli draped Bonnie’s wrap over her shoulders—a light blue cape left over from more prosperous days in New York—and ushered her most forcefully down the front steps of the Brass Eagle Saloon and Ballroom and into a carriage waiting in the road.

  “You,” he said, as the elegant vehicle lurched away into the night, “have some explaining to do.”

  CHAPTER 6

  BONNIE MCKUTCHEN WASN’T about to explain anything. She sat stiffly in a corner of the lushly upholstered carriage seat, her wrap drawn close against the chill of an April evening. Whatever spell Eli had woven earlier, inside the Ballroom, had evaporated.

  With a raspy sigh of irritation, Eli sat back in his own seat, facing Bonnie’s, and folded his arms across his chest. His face, turned toward the window, was draped in shadow, but Bonnie could make out the tense line of his jaw. “My daughter,” he said, after several moments had passed. “Rose Marie is my daughter.”

  Bonnie remembered her humiliation in the street that day, her ignoble bath in Forbes’s suite, her sodden flight to Webb Hutcheson’s newspaper office. And beneath these remembrances were others, those of the hurt she’d suffered in New York when Eli had blamed her for Kiley’s death. He had betrayed her, scorned her, in fact, and ultimately deserted her. “If you say so, darling,” she said sweetly.

  She felt Eli’s glare, rather than saw it, and a dangerous silence fell between them. The carriage groped and slid over a road made muddy by yesterday’s rain.

  Bonnie broke the impasse by tartly demanding, “Where are we going?”

  Eli took his time in answering; it was his nature to be downright cussed when he chose. Finally, after stretching vastly and making a startling sound similar to a yawn to accompany the motion, he replied, “Why, to your store, of course. It is true, is it not, that you and my daughter live in the apartment upstairs?”

  Bonnie was simmering at the emphasis he’d put on the phrase “my daughter”—of course Rose Marie was Eli’s child as much as her own! How galling that he had so obviously expected circumstances to be otherwise. “Rose and I do indeed live above the store,” she said with quiet dignity. “Do you plan to try and steal it again?”

  “From what information I’ve been able to gather, the place isn’t worth stealing,” came the immediate response, carrying a soft and wounding bite.

  Bonnie felt the attack sorely, though she did her best not to give any outer indication of that. Had the mercantile flourished as she had hoped, what a sweet triumph it would have been, but in truth the enterprise was a dismal failure, just as Forbes and even Genoa had predicted it would be. Only sheer stubbornness made Bonnie open the doors for business each morning, and it was with the deepest regret that she closed them each afternoon in order to spend the evening dancing at the Brass Eagle Ballroom. Too proud to accept help from Genoa or demand it from Eli, Bonnie needed the money she earned by dancing to survive. “I had no idea,” she countered coldly, “that thieves were so choosy.”

  The carriage was moving up the steep incline leading to the main part of town. “I didn’t steal your store, Bonnie.”

  Bonnie felt color rise into her cheeks. “Perhaps not personally,” she said and, though she spoke quietly, there was a challenge in her words.

  “Not personally, not impersonally. In fact, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about!”

  “I’ll tell you what I’m talking about, Mr. McKutchen. When I returned to Northridge two years ago, I found my father’s mercantile in a disgusting state. Furthermore, there was a sign over the door that read “Company Store, McKutchen Enterprises!’”

  Light from a street lantern spilled muted gold over Eli’s face. He stiffened in his seat, in order to keep from being thrust, by gravity, into Bonnie’s. “You sound as though your dear and much revered father had built that store himself. If you will remember, it was a gift to him from my grandfather —a sort of reverse dowry, if you will.”

  “McKutchen Enterprises giveth and McKutchen Enterprises taketh away—is that what you’re saying?”

  Just then the carriage reached level ground and swung into a right turn, heading toward Bonnie’s store, where Katie would be waiting with Rose Marie.

  “Good God, woman, you are impossible to talk to!” Eli thundered. “That isn’t what I am saying at all! I’m merely trying to understand your attachment to the place—”

  “You could never understand,” whispered Bonnie with proud despair.

  The carriage drawing to a halt, Genoa’s driver and general handyman got down from the box and opened the door. Bonnie stepped out with his help, comforted by the width and substance of her store, standing so sturdily in the kindness of night, and by the bright light beaming from the upstairs windows.

  She would look in on a sleeping Rose Marie, exchange a few words with Katie, have a cup of tea. This dreadful day, for all its shocks and upsets and humiliations, was blessedly over.

  Except that Eli was looming in the opening of the carriage door, his voice quiet. “Bonnie—”

  She turned with great effort to face him, glad that the darkness would hide the pain in her bearing, just as it hid the imperfections of her mercantile. “Please go,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

  Eli hesitated, then withdrew to the shadowy interior of his sister’s elegant carriage and departed.

  Bonnie rounded the side of the plain frame building and climbed the outside stairs, letting herself into the kitchen. Katie, poring over a thick book, looked up at the sight of her employer and smiled. “You look all done in, ma’am. I’ve set tea on to brew, but I think maybe you should just go straight to bed.”

  Bonnie hung her wrap rather carelessly over a peg beside the door, thinking of the first time she’d seen Katie Ryan. It had been aboard a train that long-ago day; Katie had been traveling with her family of vaudevillians to perform at the Pompeii Playhouse. When her parents were ready to move on, Katie refused to go with them and somehow prevailed against their authority, turning up at Genoa’s door to ask for a position.

  Genoa hired the girl as a companion, taking an instant liking to her just as Bonnie had, and at Rose Marie’s birth Katie became the child’s nurse. Half her salary was still paid by Genoa, a circumstance that nettled Bonnie’s pride but could not, for the time being, be avoided.

  Bonnie poured herself a cup of tea and ignored Katie’s concern. “How is Rose? Did she eat her supper?”

  Katie looked a bit guilty, it seemed to Bonnie. “She’s fine, ma’am, and she did eat.”

  “And?”

  Katie lowered her beautiful green eyes for a moment. “It was her papa that fed her, ma’am,” she admitted in a rush. “Rose took to him rig
ht away, and I didn’t see how I could say anything—”

  Bonnie sat down at the kitchen table, curving her hands around the teacup for warmth. “It’s all right, Katie,” she said gently. “I suppose it was inevitable that Eli would see Rose and—and recognize her.”

  “He didn’t know about her at all, did he?” Katie asked, her eyes looking off into the distance, her mouth quirking at one corner in just the merest smile.

  Bonnie knew that the sight of Eli feeding a year-old child must have been a humorous one, given his size and inexperience, but she felt a twinge of envy, rather than amusement. “He knew,” she said in reply, not adding that Eli had assumed Rose to be another man’s child.

  Katie was back in the here and now, and slightly flushed. Despite her stage experience, she was not an outgoing or daring person, and she probably regretted mentioning Eli at all. She closed her book and stood up. “I’ll be off to bed now,” she said. “Miss Rose will be up early, I’m sure.”

  Bonnie put her teacup in the deep iron sink and went to the windows overlooking the street to turn down the wick in one of the two lamps that burned. A half dozen rough-looking men were passing below; even in the darkness, Bonnie could see that they were reeling drunkenly. Their words were muffled, of course, but they held a petulant note.

  A chill unrelated to her own problems trembled its way up and down Bonnie’s spine. The men were smelter workers, she knew, and she could guess at their conversation: they were unhappy about their wages, their working conditions and their hours. Only weeks after Bonnie’s return to Northridge, there had been talk of a strike and scattered incidents of violence, but Forbes, in his capacity as manager of the McKutchen Smelter Works, had been able to appease the workmen temporarily. Now, rumor had it that there were union organizers in Northridge again, conducting secret meetings.

  Perhaps, given the state of his grandfather’s company, Eli couldn’t have chosen a better time to return to Northridge.

  Bonnie took up the unextinguished lamp and made her way to the rear bedroom she shared with Rose Marie, considering the terrors that a full-fledged conflict between the different factions could incite, and realizing that, on the contrary, Eli could not have chosen a worse time to come back.

  Holding the flickering kerosene lamp with care, Bonnie paused to admire her sleeping daughter. Curled up in her crib, Rose Marie was a cherub with wheat-gold hair and pink cheeks, and just the sight of her somehow made every annoyance unimportant. She set the lamp down on her bedside table, bending to kiss Rose Marie’s forehead and tuck her blankets securely into place.

  Bonnie turned from the crib with reluctance, went to the bureau to pour water into the basin and wash the paint from her face. That night she couldn’t bring herself to meet her own gaze in the small mirror affixed to the wall above the bureau until she’d taken the fancy clips from her hair and brushed away the flamboyant coiffure.

  Her gown was cut low against her bosom and Bonnie drew in her breath at the sight of herself. She had always been able to justify dancing the hurdy-gurdy, but that night her doubts were more difficult to settle. She cast another look back at the slumbering Rose Marie and for the first time it occurred to her that, knowing the child was his, Eli might well lay claim to her. He might try to take Rose away.

  Of all the dangers that confronted Bonnie, this newest was by far the most frightening. Trembling, she struggled out of her dancing gown and put on a long flannel nightdress. She kissed Rose again and got into bed. As she lay there thinking of all the things Eli could offer their child that she could not, Bonnie’s fear deepened until it was nearly unbearable, and the heavy quilt that covered her could not keep her warm.

  Eli had not slept well, for there were too many apparitions haunting Genoa’s house, and not all of them were specters of the departed. He heard and saw his parents everywhere, remembered the pain of losing them. He was thirty-three years old and still bewildered that his mother and father had left their children and gone off to Africa, seeking souls to save.

  But the ghost Eli found most difficult to confront was Bonnie’s. She was everywhere in the house, that younger, laughing, less confident Bonnie, the girl who had been his bride.

  Needing space, needing air, Eli left the house as soon as he’d washed and dressed. He stood beside the pond, flinging small stones into the water. It was as though his grandfather stood with him, so he had not really escaped, but Josiah’s presence was one he could deal with.

  His mind slid back to the day his parents had announced their intention to leave “the things of this world” behind. He’d stood just here that day, ten years old and stricken to the core of his soul, and Josiah had joined him.

  “It’s a sad day for the McKutchens, boy,” Josiah had said. “You go ahead and cry if that’s what you feel like doing. I know I feel like it.”

  The young Eli had held himself in iron control. “These rocks won’t skip,” he’d said. “They just sink to the bottom.”

  Josiah had bent and searched until he found a flat stone; when he’d offered that, the sobs Eli had been holding back had broken free and the boy had flung himself into his grandfather’s arms.

  Eli wrenched himself back to the present, missing the old man no less for the effort. He was almost relieved to see Genoa standing a few feet away, watching him with mingled love and caution in her eyes.

  For a time, brother and sister stood in silence, bound in spite of longstanding differences by their affection for one another.

  It was Eli who broke the stillness. “If you’re going to tell me again that I should have been here, Genoa—”

  As his words fell away in midsentence, Genoa approached and took her brother’s hand. “You’re home now, that’s what’s important.” She drew a deep breath and sighed. “What are you going to do, Eli? About the problems at the smelter, I mean?”

  Eli was tired. He’d traveled cross-country on a train, after all, and then spent half the night dancing with Bonnie and the other half mourning the loss of her. Before he could make any intelligent decisions regarding the smelter works, he would have to talk to the workmen, to Seth, and to Forbes Durrant. In addition, he would need to have a firsthand look at the plant itself and to examine the books. “Seth warned me about Durrant,” Eli muttered, in place of answering Genoa’s question.

  “I never understood Grandfather’s confidence in that man,” Genoa said quietly, her gaze, like Eli’s, fixed on the sparkling waters of the pond. “He said Forbes was a ‘scrapper.’”

  Remembering Bonnie’s accusation the night before concerning her father’s store, Eli felt a cold rage toward Forbes Durrant. The appropriation of that insignificant store, a place unaccountably precious to Bonnie, had surely been his doing, since Eli had had no knowledge of the matter. “Grandfather told me often enough that Forbes would bear watching. I just didn’t listen. I was too busy with other things.”

  “You mean Grandfather didn’t trust Forbes?” Genoa’s eyes rounded.

  Despite everything, Eli had to grin. “He told me that a mind as quick as Durrant’s was as likely to be devious as loyal. I imagine a good look at the company books will show Forbes to be a most inventive man.”

  “I should have done something,” Genoa fretted. “I knew Forbes was living beyond his means—why, no one on a salary could afford to build an edifice the likes of the Brass Eagle Saloon!”

  Eli sobered again, reminded of the ballroom and the woman who danced there every evening, in exchange for dollar tokens. He was going to have to do something about that: The thought of Bonnie being held so intimately by any bastard with a buck to spend was unbearable. He’d bought up all her dances the night before, but that had been a short-term solution, to say the least. “It does seem that Grandfather’s fair-haired boy has been skimming the profits, but if he’s as smart as the old man thought, it’s going to take some digging to prove anything.”

  “Surely you’re going to ask him to resign!”

  Eli tossed another stone into the p
ond. “At some point, I’ll probably have to fire Durrant. Right now, I’d rather he went on believing that I’m too distracted by the situation with Bonnie to be concerned with the smelter.”

  Genoa’s shock had not subsided. “Eli, you can’t be serious! The man has probably been stealing from us for years, and there are rumors that he’s been hiring toughs to drive out the union people and the workers that support them!”

  Eli hurled the last stone into the pond. “The responsibility for this godawful mess is mine, Genoa, and I’ll straighten it out. But it’s going to take time, and it’ll be done my way.”

  “I just hope it isn’t too late,” Genoa replied and, in a swish of cambric skirts, started back toward the house.

  Menelda Sneeder entered the mercantile with understandable reluctance and, despite her street encounter with the woman the day before, Bonnie felt her sympathies rise. According to Forbes, it was those very leanings toward forgiveness that caused her business to teeter on the brink of bankruptcy.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Sneeder.” Wearing her hair in a soft, billowing topknot, clad in a modest, sprigged-calico dress instead of a low-cut silk, her face unpainted, Bonnie might not have been the same person who danced the hurdy-gurdy at the Brass Eagle and, for Menelda’s sake as well as her own, she pretended this to be so.

  “Good morning, Mrs. McKutchen,” Menelda replied miserably, her eyes catching on Rose Marie, who was sitting in a highchair near the counter, busily chewing on her favorite rag doll. In that moment, Mrs. Sneeder’s unhappy expression faded to a certain guarded wistfulness.

  “Is there something I can help you with?” Bonnie asked, with a brisk kindness meant to preserve Menelda’s pride.

  “It’s about my account,” Menelda said after a long pause, and she cast anxious eyes in one direction and then the other, to make sure that no members of the Friday Afternoon Community Improvement Club were about. “I can’t pay anything this week, but my little one needs some of that cough medicine—”