Wanton Angel

by Linda Lael Miller

  Stubbornly, for he was nothing if not mule-obstinant, Eli stared back, his plate in one hand, his fork in the other. His jawline was tight and there was a snapping flash in the depths of his golden-amber eyes, but it was clear that he would not be the first to speak.

  “Good morning,” Bonnie said sweetly. “Enjoying your breakfast?”

  Eli looked down at his corned beef hash and swallowed visibly, even though he hadn’t taken a bite since he’d caught sight of Bonnie.

  With a delicate and decorous motion, Bonnie lifted her right hand and tucked the rolled fifty-dollar bill neatly into Eli’s food. “You may eat this, Mr. McKutchen, along with your meal.”

  Eli’s mouth dropped open for a moment, but he forcefully closed it. For once in his illustrious life, he was at a loss for words.

  Bonnie smiled at Eli, smiled at the corned beef hash with the fifty-dollar bill sticking out of it like a candle on a birthday cake, and sweetly shoved the plate against Eli’s chest. Then, all dignity, she turned and marched down the steps, back up the drive. The plate clattered belatedly to the floor of the veranda.

  Just when she thought she would get away unmolested, Eli caught up to her and stopped her queenly flight by grasping her arm in one hand and whirling her about. Bits of fried potato and corned beef were sticking to his elegant linen shirt.

  “Unhand me this instant, you rogue,” Bonnie breathed, through clenched teeth. In another moment, she would not be responsible for her actions.

  Eli’s fingers tightened, then went lax and fell away. The merest hint of shame moved in his features and was quickly overcome. “Did I underpay you, Angel?” he asked, and his voice was stone cold. “I meant to be generous.”

  Blood rushed into Bonnie’s face at such speed that she swayed slightly on her feet. Eli caught her wrist in a grip that left her fingers numb and forestalled the blow. “How cruel you are,” she breathed, after long seconds of glaring up into his eyes. “How utterly, miserably cruel. It’s no wonder that the workers hate you, that Patch Town is what it is. You have no heart, Eli McKutchen, and I pity you.”

  Those words seemed to wound Eli as no blow of hand or foot could have done, and he released Bonnie’s wrist with a slow movement of his fingers. When she turned to walk away, he called Bonnie’s name, but she did not stop or even look back.

  Eli had just created the worst kind of enemy: one who has loved and then been shamed for that loving.

  Part Two

  ANGEL OF VENGEANCE

  CHAPTER 9

  BONNIE WAS HALFWAY back to her store when she realized what it was that had eluded her before. The dry-crusher at the smelter yard, a source of constant din, had fallen silent, and the muffled, whooshing roar of the blast furnaces had been stilled.

  She stopped alongside the road and turned her full attention toward the brick smokestack towering against the blue spring sky. There were no traces of the gray burgeoning puffs that usually rose from its rim.

  So it had happened, then. The union organizers, strangers to Northridge and its people, had gotten their way. The smelter had been closed.

  Bonnie bit her lower lip and walked on, so deep in thought that she was hardly aware of the world around her. Her feelings about the strike were mixed, for while the workers had legitimate complaints against McKutchen Enterprises, few of them had the means to live without their wages. There would be hunger and discontent, and conditions in Patch Town would go from wretched to intolerable, in short order.

  By rote, skirts in her hands, Bonnie crossed the street and made her way toward the mercantile. A crowd of men and women had gathered in front of the Pompeii Playhouse and, though Bonnie knew most of them, there were strangers present, too.

  One of these, a heavyset man with a pockmarked face and dark pouches beneath his mournful eyes, stood facing the gathering from the theatre porch. He was not a prepossessing fellow, but his voice carried well enough that Bonnie could hear him clearly, even from the other side of the street.

  “Such travesties as what occurred yesterday can no longer be overlooked,” the speaker called out dolefully. “A man is dead, ladies and gentleman. Mike Farley is dead!”

  Seeing Webb Hutcheson among the onlookers, pencil and paper in hand, Bonnie went to stand beside him.

  “There is a strike, then?” she asked.

  Webb was writing rapidly. “Of sorts,” he answered. “Half the men still want to work.”

  There were mutterings in the crowd, but Bonnie kept her eyes on the sad-looking stranger standing on the porch of the Pompeii Playhouse.

  “Your brothers have decided that enough is enough,” he went on. “McKutchen Enterprises has filled its coffers on the fruits of your labor, gentlemen. Your blood and sweat have made its owners rich, and what do you have? You have shacks to live in! You are paupers!”

  “At least we have what to eat!” shouted a man Bonnie couldn’t see. “Or we did have, afore all this union foolishness got foisted off on us!”

  “I’ll be there for the start of my shift!” agreed another worker. “I got a family lookin’ to me to feed ’em!”

  Other men grumbled and shouted their support for this point of view, while still others dissented. The forlorn stranger lifted both hands in a call for peace. “There will be a strike. It has already begun. And if anyone tries to cross the lines, there will be violence. Bloodshed. We can avoid that by standing together!”

  Bonnie closed her eyes and swallowed. She had read about other strikes in other places, and she knew that men on both sides would die if some accord wasn’t reached.

  Terrified, reminding herself that she was mayor of Northridge and thus had a responsibility to keep the peace if she could, Bonnie left Webb’s side and made her way through the throng, up the steps of the Pompeii Playhouse, to stand beside the union man. He was perched on an upended soapbox and this certainly gave him the advantage of height, though in reality Bonnie guessed him to be much shorter than she.

  “If you’ll step down, please,” she suggested reasonably, as the women in the assemblage, Menelda Sneeder among them, began to whisper behind their hands.

  Looking baffled, the speaker stepped down from his soapbox and Bonnie ascended it gracefully, her chin high even though she was quaking inside.

  “I address you,” she said bravely, “as your mayor.”

  There was a hush, followed soon enough by mutterings from the women and stifled laughter from the men.

  “I grant you that my appointment to this office was unconventional—”

  “That it was, Angel,” one of Bonnie’s most devoted dancing partners called out good-naturedly. “The town council was drunk to a man that night, and they chose you to fill poor Mayor Hawley’s shoes as much to rile their wives as anything!”

  “I have no illusions as to why I was selected,” Bonnie answered, in a clear if slightly tremulous voice. “Nonetheless, I was selected and I was sworn into office. If you’ll just listen—”

  “Women don’t even vote in this state!” some querulous masculine soul bellowed out. “You ain’t really mayor, Bonnie, so you just get yourself back to the Brass Eagle Ballroom, where you belong!”

  “I am the mayor,” insisted Bonnie, shoulders back, chin high, eyes flashing. “And unless you call a special election, I will remain mayor until November. Now stop your prattling about the Brass Eagle and women not being able to vote in this backward state, and listen to me!”

  “You tell ’em, Angel!” called Jim Sneeder, who was promptly elbowed by Menelda for his trouble.

  Webb, his royal blue eyes shining with mingled amusement and admiration, gave a slow nod of encouragement.

  Bonnie drew a deep breath. “Your complaints against McKutchen Enterprises are valid ones, but you must be reasonable.” There was a stir at this, and the mayor of Northridge paused to let it pass. “A strike is dangerous. Men will be injured, maybe even killed. Women and children will go hungry and be without homes. Why don’t you approach Mr. McKutchen, since he’s here in to
wn, and try to reach some agreement with him? He has been neglectful, I grant you, but Eli is a rational, intelligent man—”

  “You ought to know what kind of man McKutchen is!” taunted a woman near the front. A glance told Bonnie that her heckler was Miss Willadeen Severs, the schoolmarm.

  Bonnie stopped herself from reminding Miss Severs publicly of her overdue account at the mercantile and finished her first and probably last speech as mayor. “Please don’t let a few troublemakers, outsiders, make your decisions for you! Meet with Mr. McKutchen and state your grievances as reasonable men! Why risk injury and hunger and even death if you don’t have to?”

  The applause began with Webb Hutcheson and spread through the crowd, though only scattered men took it up. The women, without exception, stood stony-faced, hating Bonnie for dancing with their husbands, for daring to call herself the mayor, and maybe for reminding them that they could not vote. Of course, in all of the country, only the ladies of Wyoming Territory were allowed a say in government, and everyone knew that the men there had conceded suffrage for a selfish reason: to lure unattached females into their towns, their kitchens and their beds.

  Bonnie stepped down from the soapbox and made her way through the mob, across the street, and into her store, Webb Hutcheson close on her heels.

  Inside the mercantile Rose was playing happily on the floor with one of the many toys Genoa had bought for her, a doll with a compartment in its stomach to hold its now bunched and wadded wardrobe. Katie was behind the counter, pretending to read, while a scrub-faced, shoddily clad boy diligently swept the floor.

  Bonnie stared at the young man for a moment, baffled, then remembered him as the smelter urchin whom Eli had sent to “sort spuds and such.” She had never questioned her former husband about this odd arrangement, and she blushed to recall why the subject had not been raised. “Your name?”

  “Tuttle,” the boy responded brightly, his smile wide. Without all the dirt and soot, he was really quite handsome, if raw-boned and gangly. “Tuttle P. O’Banyon, ma’am.”

  Katie giggled behind her library book.

  “You have a most impressive name, Tuttle,” Bonnie said in his defense, for he was of a tender age and she knew what it was to be hoping for better things, having lived in Patch Town herself. “Did Mr. McKutchen happen to mention how you were to be paid? I’m afraid we’re not exactly thriving, as far as trade is concerned.”

  Tuttle had reddened at Katie’s giggle, but his dignity was innate. He squared shoulders that would one day be of impressive width and ran a hand through his shaggy redgold hair. “Mr. McKutchen said I’d still be working for the company, so I reckon he’ll see to my wages.”

  Bonnie wanted no truck with Eli McKutchen, even indirectly, but she hadn’t the heart to send Tuttle P. O’Banyon away. He obviously had high hopes for his position and, if he lost it, he would surely end up smack in the middle of the labor controversy. “Very well, then,” she said, “if you’ll just wash the front windows when you’ve finished the sweeping? And Katie, I’ll be wanting you to help me with the accounts.”

  Webb, whom Bonnie had entirely forgotten, cleared his throat at this point.

  Embarrassed, Bonnie turned to face him. “Webb! Was there something—”

  He smiled, an infinitely patient man. “I’ve got to spend today getting out this week’s issue of the Northridge News, but I wondered if you and Rose wouldn’t consent to a picnic tomorrow, over across the river.”

  Bonnie’s heart ached within her, although she kept her answering smile firmly in place. If she accepted Webb’s invitation, which she very much wanted to do, he might misinterpret her reasons. She knew that he wanted to show her the house he’d been building on his land across the river, that he hoped they would share it one day, as man and wife. That disturbing fact aside, Bonnie enjoyed picnics in the country and she needed the distraction of an outing. Perhaps this would be an opportunity to have a serious talk with Webb and make her position clear. “I would enjoy that,” she said gently.

  The look of quiet delight on Webb’s face depressed her. Why couldn’t she love this fine man, become his wife, bear his children? She would be happy with him, she knew, and the ladies of Northridge might even accept her, since Mr. Hutcheson was so well-respected in the community.

  Bonnie bit her lower lip and watched solemnly as Webb left the mercantile to return to his ramshackle press. Oh, to love that man, instead of one who despised her, as Eli did!

  By the end of the day, the grim results of tallying her accounts had given Bonnie a throbbing headache. She felt somewhat at loose ends, too, having nowhere to go now that Forbes had banned her from the Brass Eagle Ballroom.

  Worries pressed in around Bonnie even as she fed and bathed Rose Marie and put her daughter to bed for the night. Katie, as usual, sat at the kitchen table, poring over a book. Unlike most young girls, she did not read saucy French novels or poetry; instead, Katie consumed treatises on philosophy, science, politics and religion. She was determined, as she had repeatedly stated, to “amount to something.”

  Bonnie remembered the similar aspirations she’d cherished as a young girl and felt sadder still.

  “Why don’t you go and watch the entertainments over at the Pompeii tonight?” Katie suggested. “You’re a bit down in the mouth, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

  Bonnie had to smile. She did love to watch vaudevillians perform—in New York it had been almost an obsession, she’d been alone so much—but there was rarely time or money for such pursuits now. What with losing her job at the Brass Eagle and the state of her accounts, it was a time for economy, not self-indulgence. “I couldn’t. Things are going to be stretched very thin around here, Katie. If the trouble at the smelter yard lasts any length of time, we’ll have even fewer customers than we do now, and those who owe us won’t pay.”

  “They don’t pay anyway,” Katie responded cheerfully. “Go on and see the turns, Mrs. McKutchen. There’s a magician—we used to work on the same circuit with him, my family and I—and there’s a singer, too.”

  Bonnie thought with yearning of an evening in the Pompeii Playhouse. She could do with a little laughter, a little wonder, and perhaps a few tears that could not remotely be ascribed to the hurt Eli McKutchen had done her. “Well—”

  “Thunderation,” persisted Katie, “it only costs ten cents, now doesn’t it? Surely you can spare that? It’s not as though Miss Genoa would let us starve—”

  Bonnie gave the dish towel a brisk, snapping shake and hung it on its peg. “We aren’t Genoa’s responsibility, Katie. At least, Rose Marie and I are not.”

  “I’ve gone and hurt your pride, now, haven’t I?” Katie fretted sadly, cupping her chin in her hands. “I didn’t mean to, Mrs. McKutchen. I really didn’t.”

  “I know,” Bonnie said quietly. She could hear music coming from the Playhouse, rolling atop the summer breeze to float through the open windows of her apartment and call to her. “I would so like to see the entertainments.”

  Katie had returned to her book, and she was totally absorbed in it, although Bonnie knew that the girl would hear and respond to even the slightest fuss from Rose.

  Feeling very lonely and certain that she would not sleep if she retired early—how could she, in that room where Eli had made such tender love to her and then dismissed her as a whore—Bonnie went downstairs and helped herself to a dime from the till. She smoothed her dress and checked her face and hair in one of the shaving mirrors displayed with gentlemen’s grooming aids and then called up to Katie, “I’ll be across the street if you need me.”

  Katie’s voice was like a chiming bell. “Have a grand evening, ma’am,” she answered, “and mind you keep clear of rowdy sorts when you’re coming home afterward.”

  Bonnie grinned as she let herself out through the main door and carefully locked it behind her. For such a young girl—she was barely fourteen—Katie was a motherly sort.

  The program had already started by the time Bonnie boug
ht her ticket, found a seat near the back of the spacious Pompeii Playhouse and settled in to forget her troubles for all too brief a time.

  She saw the magician Katie had mentioned, along with an act consisting of six remarkably intelligent dogs and a somewhat slower trainer. She wept as an enormous woman sang “In the Shade of the Old Apple Tree,” laughed at the bawdy stories told by a homely young man named William Fields. All in all, the evening was most restorative, and Bonnie was in better spirits when she left the theatre, hurrying because Genoa’s familiar carriage was parked in front of the store.

  Her sister-in-law sat at the kitchen table, sipping tea. She had been chatting with Katie, who smiled uncertainly at Bonnie, closed her book with a thump and vanished into her room.

  “Have you ever seen a brighter child than Katie?” Bonnie asked, sensing that something was terribly wrong and wanting to put off knowing what it was.

  There was true affection in Genoa’s gaze, along with a certain reluctance. “I seem to recall one who was equally precocious,” she said.

  Bonnie sat down at the table and poured a cup of tea, inwardly bracing herself for bad news. Genoa looked wan and thinner than ever, and she was not in the habit of calling at such a late hour. “The Farley baby—”

  Tears sprang into Genoa’s pale blue eyes, glistening on her sparse lashes. “Bonnie, Susan and her baby are both fine. I’m here because—because of Eli.”

  Bonnie’s heart stopped beating, then began again, with a pounding lurch. “Something h-has happened to—to—”

  “No,” Genoa said quickly, reaching out to cover Bonnie’s trembling hand. “Eli is fine.” She paused a moment, then went on. “Bonnie, he means to take Rose away from you if he can. He said the most dreadful things and he’s having poor Mr. Callahan draw up papers to declare you a—a poor influence.”

  A poor influence. Bonnie suspected that Eli had used considerably stronger words, but she couldn’t take offense now because she was too frightened. “He really hates me,” she said softly, to herself as much as to Genoa. “Dear Lord, to take my child away!”