Wanton Angel

by Linda Lael Miller

  So that was it. Inwardly Bonnie sighed. “I’m sorry, Katie—I didn’t mean to exclude you from the ceremony. It’s just that everything happened so fast—”

  At last Tuttle spoke. “Get back in your regular clothes, Katherine,” he ordered, no less forcefully for the adolescent catch in his voice. “You look like a hussy in that getup!”

  Katie flushed and made her way down the warped stairs, moving very slowly. “Do you know how much money I can earn in two years, Tuttle O’Banyon? Why, enough to buy a house—”

  Bonnie turned to face Forbes squarely, leaving Katie and Tuttle to work out their argument on their own.

  “I have a proposition for you,” she said.

  Forbes assumed a look of blissful mockery. “Angel, Angel—how I’ve yearned to hear those words tripping from your lips.”

  “Don’t push your luck, Forbes,” Bonnie hissed in an undertone. “I’m offering to come back here and dance the hurdy-gurdy in Katie’s place.”

  Forbes’s eyebrows almost disappeared beneath the rakish lock of caramel hair that had fallen across his forehead. “You must think I’m touched in the head, Angel. I don’t need that kind of trouble.”

  Bonnie batted her eyelashes and looked up at Forbes with an innocent smile. “Why, what kind of trouble is that, Mr. Durrant?” she asked sweetly.

  Forbes gave her an ironic look and turned on one heel, striding purposefully into the saloon. Bonnie followed, watched with carefully hidden triumph as he rounded the fancy new bar and helped himself to a glass and a bottle of prime scotch. “Damn it, Bonnie,” he snapped, his reflection glaring at her from the long, ornately framed mirror behind the bar, “do you think I was born yesterday? I know what you’re up to, so spare me the simpering histrionics!”

  Bonnie bit back a smile. Years before, in the Patch Town days, she’d been able to charm Forbes out of everything from pencils to penny sweets in just this way—it was amazing that such silly tactics could still work. She leaned against the bar, bracing herself with her forearms. “Are you afraid of what Eli will do? Is that it?”

  “You bet your sweet bustle I’m afraid of what Eli will do!” Forbes hissed, slamming down the bottle of scotch and the glass in a furious motion of both hands. He uncorked the bottle, sloshed a healthy dose of whisky into the glass and tossed it back. He made a choking sound before going on. “I don’t know what the hell’s going on between you two—maybe Eli is availing himself of Earline Kalb’s singular talents and maybe he isn’t—but I can guarantee you this, Angel: I’m not going to help you avenge yourself!”

  “Think of the money you could make, Forbes, if I were dancing again.”

  Forbes scowled and poured himself another double shot of scotch. “I’m making more by managing the smelter works, and I don’t plan to get myself sent packing again just so you can make a point, sugarplum.”

  “Eli would never dismiss you for that, Forbes,” Bonnie persisted softly. “He doesn’t think in those terms. You should know by now that my husband keeps his personal life separate from his business life.”

  “See this?” Forbes pointed to a small scar beneath his right eye. “This is a remnant of the last time I got on the wrong side of Eli McKutchen!”

  “I think it adds to your roguish charm,” Bonnie said, and somehow she managed to keep a straight face. She even reached out and touched the tiny scar with the tip of one index finger. “I want to dance again, Forbes. Please?”

  Forbes was sipping his second drink thoughtfully. “I’ll grant you that I’ve lost a lot of customers since you left, but you’re kidding yourself if you think McKutchen will look the other way and let his wife dance with every man jack who can ante up a silver dollar. He’ll go through the ceiling.”

  “Maybe.”

  Forbes was leaning against the opposite side of the bar now, and his tone was comically plaintive. “Why do you want to do this, Bonnie? Are you tired of living, or what?”

  Bonnie sighed. “You were right when you said I wanted to avenge myself. That’s it, pure and simple, and there’s no use denying it.”

  Forbes looked pleased. He did enjoy being right about things. “All right, Angel, we’ll do this your way. But be advised of this: When McKutchen comes busting through those doors out there, I’m not going to lift a finger to protect you. Furthermore, I’ll send you the bill for any damages.”

  “What about Katie? She’s too young to work here, Forbes.”

  Forbes stared off into space for a few moments, probably calculating possible profits. “She’s a beautiful girl, Bonnie. She might even bring in as many customers as you did.”

  Bonnie played her trump card. “What do you think Lizbeth will say, Forbes, when I tell her the whole sordid story of how you’re willing to sacrifice a young girl’s innocence for profit?”

  Forbes went pale as death.

  “On the other hand,” Bonnie went cheerfully on, “one act of good conscience might sway Miss Simmons to overlook a few other—failings.”

  “Nothing short of my putting a torch to this place and building a honeymoon cottage over the ruins will sway that woman,” Forbes muttered with enlightening gravity.

  There was no ulterior motive behind Bonnie’s response. “You really love Lizbeth, don’t you, Forbes?”

  For a moment it looked as though Forbes might turn away or even walk out, but in the end he gave a heavy sigh and answered, “Yes. It came as something of a surprise, given my lifelong habit of loving you.”

  Bonnie ignored the reference to Forbes’s enduring ardor. “What are you going to do?”

  Forbes looked so miserable that Bonnie actually felt sorry for him. “I’m hoping it will pass,” he said.

  “Maybe it won’t,” Bonnie felt honor-bound to point out.

  The time for intimate confidences had clearly passed. Forbes gave Bonnie a mocking grin and lifted his glass in a toast. “Here’s to you, Angel. May you live to tell your grandchildren the stirring story of your return to the Brass Eagle Ballroom.”

  Bonnie tossed her head slightly, in lieu of an answering toast. “May you live to have grandchildren,” she retorted, and then she turned to go.

  “Wait a minute, Bonnie.”

  She stopped, but did not turn around. “Yes?”

  “Your gowns were ruined in the flood. You’d better go upstairs and see if the dressmaker can alter something Katie would have worn.”

  Bonnie nodded. “Shall I tell Katie that you want to see her?”

  “Hell, no,” Forbes replied, and once again Bonnie heard the clink of the bottle’s rim against the glass. “Tell her to go home and embroider tea towels for her hope chest.”

  Smiling, Bonnie looked back over one shoulder at her longtime friend-enemy. “Thanks, Forbes.”

  Forbes drained his glass before answering sardonically, “Any time, Angel. Any time.”

  Eli sat astraddle one of the cabin roofs, shirtless in the sun, nailing shingles into place with a force well in excess of that required by the task. He smashed his left thumb and cursed.

  Just then Seth’s head popped into view over the edge of the roof, his red muttonchop whiskers wriggling with suppressed amusement. The lawyer’s expression immediately turned serious when the ladder beneath his feet threatened to topple.

  Eli spoke around the side of his injured thumb, which ached fiercely. “I suppose I owe the pleasure of this visit to your continuing fascination with my stupidity?”

  Seth grappled worriedly with the ladder for a moment and then scrambled up onto the roof. He was clearly sweltering in his woolen suit, and he tugged at his starched collar with one finger. “Your stupidity does seem fathomless, I must agree,” he said, gaining his footing with some difficulty and then gripping his lapels in a sporting fashion.

  Seth looked like a mountain climber who had just conquered a peak, and Eli would have laughed if his thumb hadn’t been throbbing with pain.

  “Did you climb all the way up here, risking life and limb, I might add, to discuss my regre
ttable lack of intelligence?”

  Seth seemed to be enjoying his manly pose. He pushed back the sides of his suitcoat and thrust his thumbs into his vest pockets. If his red hair hadn’t been so wiry, the wind would no doubt have ruffled it in a dashing manner. “I’ve made my opinions on that quite clear, I daresay,” he finally got around to answering. “My purpose in making this death-defying ascent was simply to tell you that the union people are demanding another meeting with you. Immediately. Please take your thumb out of your mouth—I find that mannerism most distracting.”

  Eli stopped pandering to his injured digit and frowned. “Another meeting?” he muttered, with a complete lack of enthusiasm. “You’d think those goons would have gone on to greener pastures by now.”

  “They will remain in Northridge, I think, until they have gotten what they want,” Seth replied. “They’re a tenacious lot, I’ll say that for them.”

  Eli took another batch of nails from the carpenter’s apron he wore, holding them in his lips the way a tailor would hold pins. He thought of the beating Webb Hutcheson had taken for his stand against the Brotherhood of American Workers and scowled. God knew he had no special fondness for Hutcheson, but an injustice was an injustice, and the bastards behind the attack had gotten off scot free—so far. Eli spoke around the nails jutting out of his mouth. “I don’t understand why they want to meet with me again. I’ve stated my terms and, if they have any business, it has to be with the men themselves.”

  Seth cleared his throat in a way that Eli had come to regard as ominous. “I’ve told them that repeatedly. Still they persist.” The lawyer paused and his color heightened. “Eli, the Brotherhood has implied that there might be more violence if you don’t agree to meet with them. Frankly, I’m afraid for your family.”

  Eli let the nails fall from his lips and they rolled down the half-shingled roof, forgotten. “They made an actual threat?”

  Seth slipped a little and then righted himself. He was no longer making any effort to appear debonair. “Not directly. But reference was made to—well, Mr. Denning inquired after Bonnie and Rose Marie, and my own Genoa as well—in a manner I didn’t quite like.”

  “What kind of manner?” Eli demanded in a low voice.

  Seth sighed. “It was all very solicitous and polite. Nonetheless, it was my impression—and I confess that it is a subjective impression—that we were being warned. Reminded, perhaps, that the delegation from the Brotherhood is lodging at the Union Hotel and that the proximity of that establishment to Mrs. McKutchen’s mercantile allows them to monitor her activities with some degree of accuracy.”

  Eli reached behind him for his shirt and struggled into it. He saw red as he made his way swiftly down the ladder, and he paced as he waited for Seth to follow, his fingers fumbling over the buttons of his shirt as he moved.

  “Calm down,” Seth admonished, when he too had reached the ground. “I may have misunderstood, you know. Mr. Denning might not have meant to threaten anyone.”

  Eli ran a hand through his sweat-dampened hair and let out a long breath. “So help me, if those pockmarked sons of bitches so much as approach my family—”

  Seth was annoyed and he didn’t bother to hide the fact. “Your concern is somewhat belated, isn’t it? You married Bonnie last night, after all, and then you ignited a virtual holocaust of gossip by spending the night—”

  “Are we back on that?!” Eli shouted, striding past gaping workers and their wives toward the buggy Seth had brought to the building site. He sprang into the seat, and the rig was already moving when the lawyer managed to climb inside.

  “Yes!” Seth bellowed back, taking out his handkerchief and mopping his brow. “You saw fit to force Bonnie into marriage and then you subjected her to a public humiliation that was, in my view, most uncalled for!”

  “I don’t give a damn about your view!” Eli roared, as the buggy careened onto the road leading into Northridge proper.

  “Mrs. McKutchen in no way deserved—”

  Eli stood up in the buggy, like a Roman in a chariot, and promptly smacked his head against the metal framework supporting the rig’s bonnet. He sat down again, cursing, and tried to come to terms with the fact that the nag hitched to the buggy was no racer. “I don’t need you to tell me what I’ve done wrong, Seth,” he said in a somewhat calmer tone of voice. “Believe me, I had all night to think about it.”

  “I wouldn’t blame Bonnie if she never spoke to you again!” Seth railed, his eyes fixed on the rutted road ahead. “Indiscretions in a city the size of New York are one thing—in a backwater burg such as this, they are quite another!”

  Despite his anxiety to reach the Union Hotel and personally throttle one Mr. Denning, Eli drew back on the reins and brought the horse and buggy to an ominous halt. “My wife seems to have quite a champion in you, my friend,” he said evenly. “Is there some point in this sermon of yours or are you just enjoying the sound of your own voice?”

  “Blast!” bellowed Seth. “Sometimes I think your skull must be made of iron ore!”

  Eli was seething, though he gave the reins a conservative snap and drove at a much more sedate pace. “It’s none of your business, Seth,” he said, through teeth clenched so tightly that his jaws ached, “but I’ll tell you anyway. I didn’t marry one woman and then spend the night rolling around in the hay with another. Is that clear?”

  Seth was struggling to regain his composure. He checked both cufflinks and tugged at his insufferably neat suitcoat. “No one would ever guess that from your behavior,” he said indignantly. “Least of all Mrs. McKutchen herself.”

  Eli had a headache, a sudden pounding headache. He had been a fool and he’d spent the night suffering for it, but he would have towed Hem Fenwick’s ferry across the river by his teeth before admitting that to Seth. Inwardly he sighed. Only one person’s opinion mattered to him, and that was Bonnie’s. He would have to swallow his pride and apologize to her if he ever hoped to have any peace.

  Right now there was no time to think up pretty words of contrition. He had the Brotherhood to deal with. By sheer strength of will, Eli forced his headache into remission and drove all thoughts of Bonnie from his mind.

  Upon reaching the Union Hotel, he left the horse and buggy to Seth and strode across the wooden porch and in through the open doorway. At the desk, he demanded Mr. Denning’s room number and was informed by a nervous clerk that the official was having a late breakfast in the dining room.

  Eli turned and stormed into that spacious chamber, his eyes sweeping the room and finally coming to rest on the face he sought. Mr. Denning sat at a table near the front windows, surrounded by a half dozen of his compatriots.

  With a smile, he dabbed his mouth with a linen table napkin and then stood up. “Mr. McKutchen. This is a pleasant surprise.”

  Eli crossed the room in a few strides, his hands itching to grasp Denning by the lapels and shake the bastard until his teeth rattled. Luckily, Seth materialized at his side and injected a pleasant “Remember your temper, Eli.”

  The trained apes sitting around the table looked eager for a fight, and Eli longed to oblige them, but he knew that he needed to keep his wits about him. If Seth’s instincts were right, and they usually were, Bonnie, Genoa and Rose Marie might be in very real danger.

  “Sit down, sit down,” enjoined Denning, as though he and Eli were old and dear friends.

  Eli suppressed an urge to hurl the offered chair through the bay windows and sat down in it instead. Seth appropriated a chair from a nearby table and took a seat beside his employer.

  “You wanted a meeting, Denning,” Eli said. “Here I am.”

  Denning smiled warmly, though the expression in his eyes was as cold as a polar bear’s ass. He took a fat cigar from the inside pocket of his suitcoat and bit off the tip. “Cuban,” he said, as if he thought Eli gave a damn.

  Eli scowled, impatient.

  “Like Consolata Torrez,” Denning added, almost as an afterthought.

  Eli h
adn’t thought of Consolata in months; it was Seth who saw that bank drafts were sent to her with discreet regularity. The reminder of the girl who some years earlier had risked her life and probably saved his came as a stunning surprise.

  “According to my research,” Denning went on pleasantly, “Miss Torrez is now enrolled in a convent school in Havana, having been disowned by her uncle. How old is she? Seventeen? Eighteen?”

  Eli closed his eyes.

  Seth had regained his equilibrium. “I fail to see what Miss Torrez has to do with your efforts to enlist our workers in your organization,” he said evenly.

  Denning gave a long and highly dramatic sigh and then completely ignored what Seth had said. “She saw you through a bout of yellow fever—am I correct, Mr. McKutchen? At considerable risk to her own safety, in fact, she protected you from the Spanish forces until you could be taken to an American field hospital and then transported back to the United States. Of course, it goes without saying that a wealthy and influential man such as yourself, Mr. McKutchen, would be deeply—grateful.”

  The goons seated around the table snickered into their coffee cups.

  “I repeat my question, Mr. Denning,” Seth said forcefully. “What does Miss Torrez’s kindness have to do with the Brotherhood of American Workers?”

  A waitress brought coffee for both Seth and Eli. Eli had no memory of ordering the stuff and simply stared at it, making no move to lift the cup to his mouth.

  “Oh, I think Miss Torrez has everything to do with our cause, Mr.—Callahan, wasn’t it?” Denning was in fine form. At Seth’s irritated nod, he went on. “Mr. McKutchen was in fact so grateful to the young lady—”

  “Enough,” Eli broke in, his voice a low rumble that grated in his throat. “You’ve made your point, Denning.”

  “That’s good, Mr. McKutchen. I would certainly hate to see your second marriage to the lovely Bonnie go the way of the first. Since things are already somewhat shaky between you, if rumor is correct—”