Elusive Lovers

by Elizabeth Chadwick

  "I wonder, Kristin, if you could help us out?"

  "What could I do?” asked Kristin.

  "Well, there's a house for sale, more or less on the outskirts of town and too big for your purposes, but I think I can claim it in lieu of a court settlement that was never paid me. I'll even turn the deed over to you if you'll take Ingrid with you and look after her until she's well enough to function on her own. Maybe you can talk her out of the belief that she's married to Sean."

  Kristin stared at Kat with astonishment. “I don't know how to deal with people who have taken to the bottle."

  "You just keep her from drinking, and I'll call by to see how you're doing."

  "Does that mean I won't be running the sausage factory?” asked Kristin. She'd take care of five drunken women and get them all off demon rum if she didn't have to make sausages.

  "Well, of course, you'll have the factory. That's to be your means of support once Ingrid's left, and you'll also have a house of your own. Doesn't that sound fine?"

  Nothing about sausages sounded fine to Kristin, but she dared not object lest all the offers be withdrawn.

  "In fact, maybe you can get Ingrid to help you with the sausages. Hard work and the prospect of making money ought to keep a person away from the bottle."

  Kristin had never heard that. Still, turning Ingrid into a sausage maker wasn't a bad idea. Better than Kristin having to do it herself. With the help of the Blessed Virgin, she'd keep Ingrid from falling into bed senseless and waking up sick. Kristin wanted an efficient sausage maker, not a drunken one. “I'll do it."

  "Oh bless you, child. This is a heavy burden to put on one so young, but I'm at my wit's end, what with Sean staring at Ingrid as if he still loved her, Augustina sobbing in her room with the door locked, and all the children trying to find out what's happening. It's almost worse than having drunken men staggering in and out of saloons, shooting at innocent passersby."

  "My goodness,” exclaimed Kristin, “does that happen?"

  "Yes, indeed. I had a guest break a tooth once at a dinner party because he bit into a bullet in a potato I served him. ‘Twas a drunk who shot the potato."

  Kristin's eyes grew wide. She hadn't heard any gunfire since she came to Breckenridge and was glad of it. No matter what her brother's books about the exciting western frontier said, gunfire didn't sound exciting to her, just dangerous, although the idea of someone shooting a potato tickled her fancy. She imagined herself painting a picture of an outlaw riddling a potato with bullets. I'm becoming giddy, she thought. No one would want to hang such a picture above their sofa.

  "And you'll have a good start on furniture. I'll send that red velvet stuff straight over."

  "And the piano?” asked Kristin.

  "Well, Phoebe's taking piano lessons."

  "Of course,” said Kristin quickly. “It probably wasn't really Ingrid's piano."

  Kat sighed. “It is Ingrid's piano, so it'll have to go too. Sean's not going to be pleased to know he has to buy another. Oh, this is going to cause no end of trouble, and just when I hoped to devote more time to women's suffrage."

  "It seems to me that I'm the one who'll have more demands on my time,” said Kristin, wanting to remind Kat that she, their inept housemaid, was the solution to the problem and therefore deserving of help and consideration. She'd never get either from Maeve, who hated Germans, blondes, and people who looked like Ingrid. “We don't really look alike, you know,” said Kristin defensively. “It's just the hair color."

  Kristin stood high on Nickel Hill, savoring the irony of the fact that Kat had just given her a mansion in which to establish a sausage factory. The ramshackle house before her had once been grand until deserted by a man named Medford Fleming, who had been attacked with a gold nugget by Kat in retaliation for something shocking he said to her. The mansion was neoclassic, rectangular, with columns across the front supporting a porch roof, above which was a balcony and classic ornamentation rather than elaborate scrollwork. Backed by beautiful mountains and forest, it could be quite handsome if fixed up.

  "You're my little sister, aren't you?” said Ingrid, badly hungover and obviously confused by the day's events.

  "No, I am not your little sister. You and I are about to become sausage associates. Do you know how to make sausages, Ingrid?” Kristin spoke very loudly on the theory that the more noise she made, the more likely she was to get through the alcoholic haze that fogged Ingrid's brain.

  "You look like my little sister. I had one."

  "I am not your little sister. Put that in the large room to the right,” she instructed a driver, who was lifting a chair down from the wagon on which it had come up hill.

  "My beautiful furniture,” said Ingrid and burst into tears.

  "Yes,” said Kristin, thinking the red velvet stuff tasteless enough to have been picked out by her own mother. It was going to look even worse with the green rugs that had been left in the drawing room—like a pauper's tawdry vision of Christmas. “About sausage, Ingrid—"

  "I made sausage when I was a girl on the farm."

  "Good,” said Kristin. “We'll establish our recipe with meat we buy from Mr. Chris Kaiser. Later we'll have our own pigs. I don't suppose you know how to slaughter a pig?"

  "No, but my father came after me with a butcher knife once. That's why I left home."

  Kristin's head swiveled. Ingrid didn't look as if she'd just said anything shocking. Kristin swallowed hard. “If Genevieve will agree to send the Chicago girls to us,” she resumed, “they can make the sausage, and you will be the sausage superintendent."

  "Is that like a mine superintendent?” Ingrid hung back while Kristin tried to tug her across the yard to their new home.

  "This place needs painting,” said Kristin. “I must think on what colors would go well with the mountain scenery. One wouldn't want one's personal foreground to clash with the natural background."

  A teamster who was walking by, carrying a red velvet settee on his shoulder, stopped to cast her a puzzled glance. “When it comes to paint, you takes what you can git, ma'am."

  "I don't,” said Kristin. “I'm an artist. Now, Ingrid"—They were entering the reception hall—"as I said—"

  "I had a friend who was a mine superintendent. He bought me a bottle of champagne."

  "I don't doubt it,” said Kristin, “but your champagne days are over. We'll have no drinking in this house."

  Ingrid began to cry again.

  "There's no use in that,” said Kristin. “We are turning our fortunes around. As I said, you will be the sausage superintendent, and I will be the president in charge of sales. I can travel around the countryside finding customers for our sausage and painting pictures."

  "You're expecting me to make all the sausages?"

  "The superintendent does not make the sausages. I have already written to a friend, asking that she send the Chicago girls to me instead of Maeve. They will make the sausages until such time as they are married. We can allow suitors in the drawing room on Sundays, but at no other time since we do not want our business affairs interrupted by men in search of wives."

  "I was married,” said Ingrid. “I still am."

  "I'm afraid you're not,” said Kristin sympathetically.

  "I need a drink."

  "No, you need to decide on equipment for the kitchen. ‘Twill serve Maeve Macleod right to lose her supply of maids. I do hope Genevieve agrees to my proposal."

  "I was proposed to once,” said Ingrid. “Actually I was proposed to a lot, but only once in a marriage way."

  "I know about Sean. Now will you look at the kitchen and try to remember your family sausage recipes? Write them down, please."

  "I can't write."

  "Oh. Well, you can dictate yours to me. The kitchen's that way.” Ingrid drifted off toward the kitchen, and Kristin went into the drawing room to supervise the placing of Ingrid's dreadful furniture. On looking at it again, Kristin decided that she simply could not spend the rest of her life with
tasteless furnishings. As soon as she became the sausage queen and famous spinster artist of the Western Slope, she would buy new furniture. Poor Ingrid had terrible taste, but then Kat expected Ingrid to sober up and leave town; maybe she'd take her furniture along. On the other hand, if she should want to stay, Kristin would never force her to leave, although she would insist on redecorating when she had money enough. At least sausage making was profitable. Her father had proved that.

  Kat had supplied them with beds, which had already been placed upstairs, and had promised sausage-making and other kitchen equipment, which would have to be purchased. Kristin sighed. Two women alone in this huge, decaying house, one of them a drunkard. Well, Ingrid couldn't continue as a drunkard if she couldn't get any alcohol, and Kristin would simply throw it away if it appeared.

  That plan turned out to be more difficult to implement than she anticipated. When she finished in the parlor and went to the kitchen, Ingrid was gone and didn't return until well after dark, drunk and garrulous. Kristin had to force six cups of coffee down her throat before she even made sense, and then Ingrid insisted on telling Kristin her pitiable life story—the flight from home in Illinois, drifting west from town to town as a prostitute until she married Sean Fitzpatrick, how happy she had been, the sweet children, the loving husband. Although the ladies of Breckenridge had never accepted her. But what did she need them for, Ingrid said, as long as she had Sean? Then he had fallen ill and written his sister for help. “He didn't trust me to see to things,” said Ingrid, tears streaming down her cheeks. “He thought I was careless with money."

  "Were you?” Kristin asked.

  "We had lots,” said Ingrid. “I didn't see why we should worry about such things. But then he went to Denver to the sanatorium. I thought he would get well and come back to me, and I planned to wait for him. I really meant to. But I was so unhappy. Because I knew that his sister thought I was a terrible person and a bad mother. I'd sleep in the daytime to get away from her. Then I couldn't sleep at night, so I wandered the town."

  "What must they have thought?” murmured Kristin.

  "Oh, I wasn't doing anything wrong. Just walking around. Feeling sorry for myself. Having a drink now and then with an old friend. I never, well, I didn't—take customers or anything, even though I hadn't a penny of my own because he left the money in Kat's hands.” Ingrid mopped her wet eyes with her sleeve.

  "It was terrible,” she continued. “I couldn't have a new dress without asking her. And I was expected to make ladylike conversation. Which I'd never learned to do. So I never had anything to say. And then Sean came home, and I thought, ‘He's well, and she'll go away,’ but it wasn't two days before he got sicker than ever. After that I knew he'd die, and there was no hope for me."

  "What did you do then?” Kristin asked.

  "Sean went back to Denver, and I met a gambler at one of the town balls. I made him think that I liked him so that he would take me to Aspen. But I—I just couldn't stand being with him—you know?"

  Kristin didn't.

  "He got mean after a couple of days and kicked me out. So I took a job as a laundress. It was the worst four years of my life. I meant to save my money and come back. I knew I'd made a mistake. That I should be home with my children. But I was so sad that I always drank the money up. It took me four years to save enough, and look what's happened."

  "Things aren't so very bad,” Kristin assured her. “We shall become respectable spinster sausage makers and live here together in this fine house."

  Ingrid looked around, puzzled. “What fine house?"

  "Well, it will be,” said Kristin defensively. How many people knew about Ingrid's background? she wondered. And if they did, would they buy sausages from a woman with such a history?

  Jack Cameron poked his head in the kitchen door. “Don't you ever answer a knock?"

  "What are you doing in town?” Kristin demanded. She'd never expected to see him again, yet there he was, looking sinfully handsome, while she was wearing one of Augustina's old wash dresses, a stupid pink thing with a loose neckline and waist. “Ingrid! Come here!” she shouted, panic-stricken, knowing full well that the chances of getting Ingrid out of bed after a long, drunken sleep were minimal. “You're supposed to have left town,” she said to Jack.

  "I went to Denver on business."

  "Well, go away.” Kristin was very upset to think that he might be staying longer in Breckenridge. Why would he? Surely he knew that Connor Macleod could take care of that mine they owned in common.

  "I've come to give you a commission."

  "I thought you hated pork.” Kristin was standing over a bowl of sausage meat, carefully measuring and dumping in spices. Ingrid had proved to be no help whatever. Kristin was having to make and test the recipes herself, although the very thought of sausage made her bilious. “I hate you,” she said to Jack. “Go away."

  Jack Cameron looked taken aback. “I want you to paint my portrait,” he explained.

  "You do?” The devil is tempting me, she thought.

  "Yes, a large portrait, and I'm willing to pay very well for it."

  "A hundred dollars,” said Kristin, thinking that if she set the price high enough, he would refuse and leave, thus removing from her path any occasion for sin. Unfortunately, every time she saw him, her heart gave a skip of excitement, and she felt warm and fluttery all over her body.

  "Done,” said Jack. “Shall we shake on it?"

  "No."

  "But you are going to paint my portrait?"

  She thought about the hundred dollars. Her first commission. She just couldn't turn it down. “All right."

  "When shall I come for my first sitting?"

  "Tomorrow afternoon, and you have to pay then.” He nodded agreeably. Kristin anticipated that he would leave town before she finished the painting, but she could insist on keeping the money. In the meantime, she'd just have to be strong. Treat him with ladylike dignity and disdain. “And dress up,” she ordered. She'd paint him looking like the unprincipled rake he was. For a hundred dollars she'd give him a picture of his own soul.

  "Good,” said Jack. “One o'clock?"

  "One o'clock,” she agreed uneasily and turned back to her sausages.

  Chapter Nine

  "That foolish Patsy Monroe has spread the tale of Kristin Traube's dishonor all over town,” said Maeve. “If Cameron doesn't marry the girl, the scandal will fall on us as well."

  Kat sighed. “I thought he'd left town for good, but he's back. Worse, Mrs. Pringle said he's sitting for his portrait at Kristin's house. Surely the girl doesn't consider Ingrid an adequate chaperone."

  "We must get him over here,” Maeve decided. “Patsy!” The new maid appeared with suspicious rapidity. “Don't let me catch you rattling your tongue about our affairs again."

  Her thin blade of a nose twitching in her broad face, Patsy sniveled, “I didn't mean no harm."

  "Well, you've done it. Now you go into town and fetch Mr. John Powell Cameron and Mr. Connor Macleod. They both have offices on Main."

  "Yes, ma'am."

  "And you're not to open your mouth except to pass on the messages."

  "Yes, ma'am."

  "Or you'll find yourself sleeping with the horses tonight."

  "Yes, ma'am,” said the girl and fled.

  "Stupid busybody,” muttered Maeve. “Some people just can't keep their mouths shut, and that one's an eavesdropper as well. You'd best get her married off quickly."

  "I've already had an offer,” said Kat. “A fellow who wanted Kristin but is willing to take fifth best."

  "Why do you say fifth best?” sputtered Maeve. “At least Patsy's virtue is intact."

  "I'm sure,” Kat agreed. “As homely as she is, I was surprised to get any offer at all."

  "Marry her?” echoed Jack.

  "It's the least you can do,” said Maeve. “You've ruined her reputation, and now the scandal has spread."

  "I never said a word,” Jack protested. Evidently, they'd be
en looking for him all day, while he'd been in Montezuma saying no to silver-mine owners. Jack realized that he'd never convince these Macleod women that he'd done little more than kiss their former maid, but their chances of forcing this marriage were minimal. Given the way Kristin treated him during the portrait sittings, she'd never agree.

  "Of course, I wish to do the gentlemanly thing,” he said with every appearance of sincerity. Let Kristin refuse and incur their wrath. She was being extremely unpleasant over a little kiss. Instead of accepting his help and going home to her parents, she insisted on staying in Breckenridge to pursue her career as an artist.

  Well, he'd done the best he could for her by offering to pay an outrageous one hundred dollars for a portrait. And what the devil would he do with it? She had him posing in a gray frock coat with satin-faced lapels, a crimson silk handkerchief in the pocket, creased trousers, and a silly-looking homburg hat, his hand on the head of a walking stick like some minstrel singer. He hated homburgs, and nobody wore one for a portrait. The picture was bound to be dreadful. He gathered that she was accustomed to painting children's portraits, and she seemed to have some sort of hat fetish. Propped all over her studio were pictures of Macleod and Fitzpatrick children wearing strange headgear.

  While Jack was stewing over Kristin's unforgiving attitude, Maeve was ordering Patsy to the rectory to tell Father Boniface Wirtner that he'd be performing a marriage ceremony the next day at ten. “You, Mr. Cameron,” Maeve said, “will meet us here at nine tomorrow morning. From here we'll walk to Miss Traube's new establishment, which my free-spending daughter insisted on giving to your fiancée. If you've a decent bone in your body, you'll repay Kathleen."

  "Do you plan to give the bride any forewarning of her impending nuptials?” asked Jack dryly.

  "We'll tell her tomorrow,” said Maeve.

  "Mother, I think there may be some difficulty with Kristin,” said Kat Macleod.

  "Right,” Connor agreed. “The girl didn't want either secular or sacred marriage the last time we brought up the subject. I suggested a nunnery, but she wouldn't—"