Wanton Angel

by Linda Lael Miller

  As Susan Farley arched on her bed, in the throes of labor and despair, Bonnie went to the doorway of the shanty and addressed the onlookers in a clear and forceful voice. “We need wood to keep the stove going. Please go and gather whatever you can find.”

  Several of the women hurried away toward the riverbank, hoping that the Columbia might spare them some of the broken tree limbs, scraps of bark and bits of driftwood she sometimes carried over her swirling currents. Since it was spring, the water would be high from the snows melting in the Canadian Cascades, and small trees torn from their rooting places along the way would be plentiful.

  “Genoa,” Bonnie asked softly, when she’d found a basin and a cloth and begun to wash Susan’s pale face with cool water, “what are you doing here?”

  “I might ask the same thing of you, Bonnie McKutchen.” Genoa smiled a brief, rueful smile. “Or should I address you as ‘your ladyship, the mayor’?”

  “So you overheard that woman out there, did you?” Bonnie asked. “And you didn’t even come to my defense!”

  “I knew you could take care of yourself. Besides, when I arrived those women out there called me a skinny spinster! And worse! I do hope they’re not pawing and poking at my brand-new carriage.”

  Bonnie couldn’t help a slight chuckle, despite the grimness of the situation. She hadn’t noticed Genoa’s elegant rig outside, but she wasn’t really surprised to find her sister-in law in a Patch Town shanty. Miss McKutchen visited often, though some of the families proudly refused her “charity.”

  Susan began to toss wildly on the cot, crying out for her lost husband, and it took both Genoa and Bonnie to settle her. The young widow’s travail went on for several hours until, at sunset, Susan Farley’s baby was born, a boy surely too small to survive. Genoa was not prepared to admit defeat.

  “Bonnie, do you remember my telling you about Mama —how she was so tiny when she was born? The midwife put her in a shoebox and kept her warm in a slow oven.”

  Bonnie nodded thoughtfully. She and Genoa had washed the baby and wrapped him in the warmest covering available, Genoa’s bright plaid capelet, but the child was blue with cold. “It’s worth a try, isn’t it, little one?” she said, remembering what Gran had told her so long ago about her own birth, the words drifting through her mind. Even after all this time, and all that had happened, the story still inspired her whenever she thought of it. He took you into His strong, carpenter’s hands, He did…

  She knew, of course, that Gran had been speaking figuratively, in order to make the point that every life was precious to God and should therefore be valued. Bonnie held the little fellow wrapped in Genoa’s cape very close for a moment, her eyes burning, and clearly imagined the Galilean raising him up for the Father to admire, face shining with proud delight.

  Genoa, a most perceptive woman, patted Bonnie’s shoulder. “We’ll take the poor child to my house and do our best to save him,” she said gently, but her eyes took in the shadowy little hut, the bereft, half-conscious woman lying motionless on the narrow bed. “I do wonder if it’s a kindness, though. His life won’t be an easy one.”

  Bonnie drew a deep breath and sniffled. “No life is easy, is it, Genoa?”

  Genoa sighed. “You’re right, of course,” she said, and before she could add anything, there was a stir outside and a tall man with spiky white hair and dirty clothes came into the shanty, followed by a somber Eli.

  “This is John Farley,” he said quietly. “The man killed today was his son.”

  Farley edged closer to the bed where Susan lay, his face wan with concern and the hopelessness of grief. “The babe?” he asked brokenly.

  Bonnie gave Mr. Farley a view of his grandson, careful to cover the child again quickly. It wouldn’t do for the poor little creature to catch a draft.

  “Awful small,” Farley said.

  Genoa was standing very straight, her fine dress soiled, her hair a fright, and yet there was an innate dignity about her that no one could ignore. “Mr. Farley, there is a chance that your grandson might survive, if he has the proper care. Susan, too, will need warmth and good food to recover. I would like to take them both to my house, where they can be properly looked after.”

  “Your house, ma’am?” Mr. Farley echoed, disbelieving. “Why would you want to do that?”

  Genoa flung just the briefest look of challenge in Eli’s direction before answering resolutely, “I am a McKutchen and therefore must bear some responsibility for the results of your tragedy.”

  Eli turned abruptly and went outside, and Bonnie followed on instinct, the Farley baby still held securely in her arms. She had to hurry to catch up, for Eli’s strides were long, carrying him swiftly across the mushy grassland that curved upward from the banks of the river.

  “Eli!” she finally called breathlessly, and though he stopped, his broad shoulders stiff in the twilight, he did not turn to face her.

  The wet of the boggy grass and sod was soaking through Bonnie’s shoes, chilling her feet, but for the moment she paid that no mind. “Eli, what happened today was terrible, but it wasn’t your fault.”

  The great shoulders relaxed a bit, but Eli still kept his back to Bonnie. “The river’s rising,” he said, after a long and pulsing silence.

  Bonnie couldn’t bear the pain she sensed in him. “Eli McKutchen, you turn around and look at me!” she ordered.

  Slowly, and with an effort that conveyed the true depths of what he felt, Eli turned. In the gathering darkness, Bonnie could see that his golden eyes were suspiciously bright. “Oh, God, Bonnie,” he breathed, running one hand through his already rumpled hair, “how could I have ignored this? How could my grandfather?”

  Bonnie knew that he was speaking of the conditions at the smelter and in Patch Town, where so many of the workers had to live. “The past can’t be changed, Eli,” she said gently, “so there’s no use in suffering over it.”

  “Bonnie!” Genoa’s voice rang through the deepening twilight. “We’d best get that baby out of the night air!”

  Biting her lower lip, Bonnie turned to go, her wet shoes making a squishing sound as she walked.

  Reaching the carriage where Genoa stood waiting, Susan and Mr. Farley already inside, Bonnie surrendered the baby to her sister-in-law. “It’s kind of you to look after Susan, Genoa,” she said.

  Genoa took in the whole of Patch Town in a sweeping gaze of despair. “I wish I could help them all,” she answered, and then she got into the carriage and the vehicle rolled away.

  Bonnie was very much aware of Eli’s presence; indeed, without looking she knew that he was standing just behind her and slightly to her right. “You’ll have to walk home,” she said, because the silence was unbearable.

  “I’ll survive that,” Eli responded, his voice low and still somewhat stricken. “Shouldn’t you be at the Brass Eagle, painting your face?”

  Lamps flickered behind the oiled-paper windows of the shanties all around. Usually, even here, there would have been the nightfall laughter of small children playing outside before supper, but that evening the place was glumly still, the only sounds being the occasional chime of a cooking pot against an iron stove top and the rush of the nearby river. Possessed of a lonely, empty feeling, Bonnie sighed and started walking. She had no spirit to spar with Eli.

  He fell easily into step beside her. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  Bonnie glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. She couldn’t rightly remember Eli ever having apologized to her before, for anything—not his coldness after Kiley’s death, not the women, not the impulsive journey to Cuba—and she was strangely moved. To hide that, she changed the subject.

  “What was Cuba like, Eli? Were you a Rough Rider?” she asked, belatedly remembering that her skirts were trailing in the mud and filth on the ground and lifting them with a delicacy acquired in New York.

  Eli laughed, though there was no real humor in the sound, only a hollow weariness and a raspy catch that made Bonnie’s heart ache.
“The term ‘Rough Rider’ is something of a misnomer. We charged San Juan Hill on foot since the War Department had neglected to provide horses. The Spaniards shot at us for a while and then dropped their guns and ran; I’ve since thought that they were undone by our stupidity rather than our valor.”

  “I suppose it was all Mr. Roosevelt’s idea,” Bonnie sniffed. She had not forgiven that man for persuading Eli to fight in Cuba and she wasn’t sure she ever would.

  There was a richness to Eli’s chuckle that meant he was recovering from the shocks of the day. “T.R. was in his element,” he said, with respect and a certain affection. “God, you should have seen him—heard him!”

  “If I never see Mr. Theodore Roosevelt again,” Bonnie said shortly, “it will be entirely too soon.”

  Patch Town was behind them now. As they were passing the Brass Eagle Saloon and Ballroom, Eli suddenly reached out and caught Bonnie by the arm, swinging her around to face him and at the same time drawing her into the privacy of the tentlike shadows sloping from the wall of Forbes’s saloon to the wooden sidewalk. Caught off guard, she collided with Eli’s rock-hard chest and bounced backward against the wall. Before Bonnie could catch her breath, Eli bent his head and claimed her mouth with his own, his tongue playing skillfully around her lips until they opened for him.

  A jolt of need went through Bonnie McKutchen, turning her sturdy knees to vapor. With any other man, including Webb Hutcheson, that kiss would have been an affront—but this was Eli. For two years she’d ached for his touch, his kiss, and the reality was far better than the memory. In fact, it brought on a surge of emotion so heated that Bonnie feared to melt away like a penny candle.

  The kiss ended, but Eli’s hard frame still imprisoned Bonnie against the cold limestone wall of Forbes’s building, and she felt like the moon, freezing on one side and sun-parched on the other. She struggled to catch her breath, strained to regain her composure.

  Eli braced himself against the wall, one hand on each side of Bonnie’s head, and gave an exasperated sigh. “I don’t know why I did that, Bonnie. I’m sorry.”

  Two apologies in the space of a few minutes! Bonnie was amazed—and just a bit insulted—and to make matters worse, all kinds of memories of the ferocious levels of passion this man had been able to carry her to during their marriage were springing to mind. They were also working mischief in less seemly places.

  “I don’t know why you did it, either!” Bonnie snapped, slipping beneath Eli’s right arm and striding furiously down the sidewalk.

  Eli did not pursue her, and that was at once a good thing and a bad one. Indignantly, undone by her own responses to that impossible, arrogant man, Bonnie stormed up the marble steps of the Brass Eagle Saloon and reached for the handle of one of the two doors. It was locked.

  It wasn’t like Forbes to close the Brass Eagle and, even though Bonnie was secretly hoping that she needn’t dance that night, she was puzzled, too.

  She tapped somewhat timidly at the door and, when there was no answer, she went to one of the windows to peer inside. The blind was partway down, and Bonnie had to bend to look beneath it. When she did so, she felt a firm pinch on her bottom and leaped in anger and surprise, giving a startled cry at the same time.

  Eli stood behind her, arms folded in innocence, lip twitching. “The temptation,” he confessed, “was my undoing.”

  It had been a difficult day and if there was one thing Bonnie would not endure from anyone, including Eli McKutchen, it was the indignity of being pinched. She raised her hand, intending to slap him soundly across the face, but he stepped back quickly, probably guessing that next she’d resort to a painful meeting of her shoe and his shin.

  “Go away, Eli!” Bonnie hissed, completely forgetting the kiss and her earlier feelings of sympathy. “I’ve got work to do.”

  “There won’t be any dancing tonight,” Eli responded. “Forbes is recuperating from the emotional strain of today’s tragedy.”

  Bonnie’s eyes widened as she remembered the boy who’d come to her store with news of the Farley accident. He’d said something about Mr. McKutchen “whomping” Mr. Durrant. “Eli, you didn’t—”

  “I’m afraid I did.”

  “You beast! When did violence ever solve anything?!” Bonnie stomped back to the door and pounded on it with both fists.

  Eli was grimly amused. “Ask the woman who has kicked me, struck me with a toilet brush and tried to slap me, all in the space of forty-eight hours.”

  “Dottie!” Bonnie yelled, pounding harder. “Open this door!”

  It was Laura, one of the new girls, who unlocked the door at last and peered cautiously out. Her eyes widened at the sight of Eli, and she moved to close the crack of space but not quickly enough. Bonnie pushed from the opposite side and prevailed.

  “Where is Forbes?” she demanded of poor Laura, who was gulping anxiously, smoothing her brown hair and watching Eli all at the same time.

  Laura managed to answer that Forbes was feeling “poorly.”

  Flinging a scathing look at Eli, Bonnie hurried up the stairs and down the hallway to the rooms she had been carried into so unceremoniously two days before. She knocked once and then entered without waiting for a call to come in.

  Forbes was lying on a settee near the windows of an elegantly decorated parlor, his right eye swollen completely shut. He was wearing trousers and a satin smoking jacket, and he grinned at Bonnie as a fluttering Dottie fluffed the pillows that had been propped behind his back.

  “Sweet Angel,” he said ruefully, looking Bonnie up and down with his one eye. “How I’m going to miss you.”

  Bonnie frowned. “What do you mean, you’re going to miss me?”

  “You’re fired,” he replied.

  In a curious mixture of relief and high dudgeon, Bonnie whirled on one heel and marched out, racing down the hallway and the stairs, in search of the man who had ended her career as a hurdy-gurdy dancer. Kicks, slaps and toilet-brush blows were nothing compared to what she was going to do to Eli McKutchen now.

  CHAPTER 8

  THOUGH THE ROOMS above Bonnie’s store were empty, a lamp flickered in the center of the kitchen table, and a neatly penned note had been tucked beneath its base. Katie had gone to Genoa’s house for the evening and, of course, taken Rose Marie with her. No explanation was given, but then none was needed, since Bonnie knew well enough how Katie enjoyed Genoa’s vast collection of books. Added to that attraction were seemingly infinite supplies of cookies and cakes and, best of all, a concert roller organ; Katie loved that tabletop mechanism and would stand turning the handle for hours, if allowed, while interchangeable cylinders scratched out such favorites as “Lead, Kindly Light” and “You Look Awfully Good to Father.”

  Despite annoyance that Katie had left a lamp burning unattended, despite all the tragedy of that day and the losing of her job—she was sure the responsibility for that lay at Eli’s feet—Bonnie was glad of an opportunity for silent reflection.

  She ate a light supper of warmed-over stew and biscuits, then heated water for a bath. Her own quarters lacking the luxuries of a stationary tub and indoor plumbing, such as both Genoa and Forbes Durrant enjoyed, Bonnie dragged the oversized washtub reserved for purposes of personal hygiene from the pantry to the kitchen and sprinkled pink carnation bath crystals into it. While the water heated on the wood-burning stove, she went into her bedroom and took off her dress and underthings, donning a blue flannel wrapper in their stead, taking her hair down and brushing it. Once the sable-ebony tresses shone and crackled with electricity, Bonnie braided a single plait and returned to the kitchen.

  Three large kettles of water, laboriously pumped at the sink, were now steaming on the stove top. Bonnie carried them one by one to the tub, pouring their contents onto the rippled bottom of the tub. The pink crystals melted and released the luscious scent of carnations into the room.

  Bonnie added cool water to the bath, tested it with one expert toe and found it perfect. She shed her wrapper,
laying it over the back of a chair, and sank blissfully into the tub, closing her eyes and sighing as she settled back to enjoy the warmth and the fragrance.

  She did not think of the trials and tribulations of the day just past, or of the very real possibility that Katie and Rose Marie might be a bother to Genoa, who was no doubt busy with Susan Farley and her baby. She did not think of losing the job she badly needed and she did not think of Eli McKutchen.

  Not, that is, until he boldly walked into her kitchen, his golden eyes sweeping over Bonnie’s naked and heat-pinked flesh in one insolent foray. “You should lock your doors at night,” he observed.

  For a moment Bonnie just stared at him, unable to believe his audacity, but when good sense returned, she made a dive for her wrapper.

  Eli had anticipated this most natural move and pulled the chair that held the robe out of reach. In fact, he turned that chair backside-front and sat in it, his arms resting across its back and effectively pinning Bonnie’s wrapper beneath them.

  Bonnie sank back into the tub, her arms folded across her bare breasts and her thigh drawn up in such a way as to cover the nest of her femininity, which was beginning to ache in a most disturbing way. “Get out,” she managed to say, closing her eyes tightly in the ostrich hope that if she could not see Eli he would not be able to see her.

  “You beautiful dreamer,” Eli responded smoothly. “You can’t actually think that I’m going to leave?”

  “I do indeed think you are going to leave,” Bonnie said, eyes still closed, arms still clasped across her bosom. “This is highly improper. In fact, you are intruding!”

  “Ummm-hmmm.”

  Bonnie’s eyes flew open at his lazy drawl. The water was growing chill and so was her heart, although her blood raced hot beneath her skin. “Have you no decency, Mr. McKutchen? What kind of influence will this have on Katie and Rose Marie?”

  Eli smiled. “You know from experience that I have no decency, and influencing Rose Marie and Katie will be quite impossible, since they aren’t here. I just saw them at Genoa’s.”