Mara shook her head in disgust, thinking it must be true if they were as helpless as Brendan. She could not imagine her brother fixing himself a meal, much less washing out his own clothes.
“I misjudged you, Miss O’Flynn,” Jenny confessed, “and I wish you’d forgive me. I can tell you’re a good person by the way you treat the boy. You love him a lot, and I reckon a person has to make a living the best way they can. So I hope you and I can be friends?”
“I’d like that, Jenny,” Mara responded, “but don’t expect too much of me, or paint me something I’m not. I’m not always a nice person, and I’ve made a lot of mistakes,” Mara told her abruptly.
“All of us have things we’d like to forget,” Jenny spoke softly, a look of remembered pain in her eyes.
“My brother Brendan’s favorite saying is, ‘I’ve got the divil ridin’ on me shoulder, so don’t be blamin’ me.’ And besides that,” Mara laughed, “we’re Irish.”
“I’m afraid I don’t have that excuse, although you would’ve thought as much the way I raised hell with John, my husband, when he told me about coming out here to California,” Jenny confided with a rueful laugh. “I couldn’t believe it when he told me he’d gone and sold the farm. We had a real nice one back in Ohio, and his folks lived nearby. We were doing pretty good, or so I thought. But I guess John just got kind of restless, wanted more out of life than he could ever get on the farm. It was just a small one and we’d never have gotten rich on it. But we were happy and making a decent living off it.”
“You’re a widow aren’t you?” Mara asked gently.
Jenny nodded, sending numerous unruly curls cascading over her brow. “Yes, been one now for little over a year I guess. Funny how you lose track of time when you’ve got nothing to look forward to. You just live each day as it comes,” she reflected sadly. Then, taking a sip of coffee, she continued on a lighter note, “I guess, you being from Ireland, you came around the Horn? A lot of people say that’s one of the worst ways of doing it, but don’t ever let someone talk you into coming across country. That’s the way John and me did it. We joined up with a wagon train heading west from Council Bluffs on the Missouri River. We had a wagon and a team of oxen and what supplies we thought we’d need for the journey.” Jenny laughed with a grimace of remembrance. “We had all our possessions packed in the wagon as well, including furniture. I even had my grandmother’s fine cherry chest-of-drawers, but it went for firewood about two months out. In fact, most of the furniture ended up in the fire ’cause the wagon needed to be lightened. We left Iowa in May and started out across the plains knowing we’d have to make at least sixteen miles a day if we were to make it across the mountains before the snows came. Nobody wanted to get trapped up there like the Donner party did in ’forty-six. We were up at daybreak getting breakfast, burning buffalo chips when we couldn’t find enough kindling, packing, and hitching up the wagons to move on a little bit more each day. There was always a river to be crossed or a water hole to be reached before we could stop and get some of the dust out of our eyes. Of course, there was always the threat of Indians attacking us, but I think it was the sudden storms and the sickness that scared me the most. I thought for sure the heavens were going to fall in one day when it rained so hard and the thunder was deafening, but it wasn’t until the next day when we had to cross the rain-swollen river that I realized how awful it’d really been when one of the wagons got swept downstream by the current. I guess we were lucky that we even got as far as that; a lot of people died when the cholera hit the train and took twenty people in one night, and it seemed as though there was always a grave to be dug for someone who’d caught something or hurt himself in some accident. Since we didn’t have a doctor along, there wasn’t much that we could do.”
She shook her head. “I remember how happy we were to cross the Rockies, little realizing we still had deserts to cross and another mountain range to climb before we even got to California. That’s when we started losing more of the wagons and the animals began to lag behind, finally dropping dead beside the trail, just too tired to go on. But we had to keep going on. We couldn’t turn back. There was no place to go. I didn’t think we’d ever get through that desert. I stared out on miles and miles of sand stretching away into the distance, and seeing the skeletons of wagon trains that hadn’t made it—the bleached bones of their animals, all the graves—well, it still haunts me. But finally we got across, and John and me and the three little ones actually made it to California.”
Jenny placed her empty coffee cup on the table. Noticing Mara’s empty cup, she refilled it and offered her a piece of cake.
“What happened to your husband?”
“Don’t seem right somehow for a man to come through all that alive and then get killed here in San Francisco by a runaway freight wagon as he stepped outside for a breath of fresh air. Such a senseless sort of thing to happen.”
“I’m sorry, Jenny,” Mara said and reached out to touch Jenny’s hand. It was the first gesture of comfort Mara had ever made to a stranger.
“Well, it’s over now, and I’ve got to make do with what I have.”
“Did you never think of going back home?”
Jenny shook her head. “I suppose I thought about it, but what’s back there for me now? My folks have been dead for years, and John’s folks are too old and poor to support me and the kids. I guess here’s as good a place as any to raise a family.”
Jenny stood up as she heard the front door open and the sound of voices. Mara gathered up her cloak and bonnet as she recognized Jamie’s shrill brogue.
“I’d better go see what Paddy’s up to. Thank you for the coffee. I enjoyed our talk.”
“I’m real glad we had it, Mara,” Jenny said, deciding suddenly to forego convention. “Have you heard from your brother yet?”
“No, and I’m not likely to either,” Mara responded. “Brendan will show up in his own good time.”
As Mara walked to the door, two redheaded little boys rushed in, nearly knocking her over. “Sorry, ma’am,” the tallest of the two said as he dodged past her and ran up to Jenny. “Gordie and me got new boots too, Mama! Same kind as Paddy!”
Paddy was only a step behind his friend, but Mara was quicker and managed to grab hold of him as he careened into her. “There is such a thing as walking like a gentleman into a room, Padraic,” Mara spoke in exasperation.
“I’m sorry, Mara,” Paddy apologized quickly, then grinned up at her with Brendan’s dimple showing in the softness of his cheek as he added proudly, “Did you see my new boots!”
Mara looked down, putting on a show of carefully inspecting their color and shape. “Very nice, Paddy,” Mara approved. She had to admit they were more practical than shoes in these muddy streets. He seemed so grown up in them. Indeed, he had grown a lot in the past year, besides turning seven years old.
Jamie entered and now stood behind the three boys as they lined up proudly before Jenny, showing off their brand new, knee-high boots. Both Jenny and Mara wondered how Jamie had managed to pay for all three pairs.
Jenny looked between Mara and Jamie, then back at her two boys, a look of regret on her face as she shook her head. “I don’t see how we can pay for these. I’m sorry, boys, but you’ll have to give them back,” she told them.
“Now, now,” Jamie interrupted the cries of protest from Paul and Gordie. “There’s no need for that. I got them all on sale from a man who’d bought a whole wagon load of them, only to find most of them too small for his customers. He was sellin’ them real cheap, ma’am,” Jamie explained, “and to be sure, all the boys needed new boots. Thought ’twas too good a chance to be passin’ up. Ye can be payin’ Miss Mara back sometime later. There’s no hurry.”
Jenny stared down at her boys’ pleading faces and nodded in agreement. “Very well, but I’ll want an exact billing for it, Jamie, and thank you,” she added with a grateful smile as the three boys started jumping around the room, Gordie and Paul copying the Irish jig
Paddy was dancing.
“Got them real cheap indeed,” Mara whispered to Jamie as they left the room. “If those are the ones I saw in the window of the general store around the corner, they cost more like forty dollars a pair.”
“Closer to twenty-five,” Jamie admitted, “but they were marked down, bein’ so small, and her boys needed them real bad.”
“I suppose so,” Mara agreed, not seeing the surprised look on Jamie’s face as she failed to make an issue out of the expense. The little woman followed Mara upstairs, shaking her grizzled head in disbelief.
“I’ll just have to smile more seductively at my customers tonight and look a bit longer into their leering, bloodshot eyes if I’m to make up the difference in tips. You’d be surprised how much they pay for you to just sit and have a drink with them.”
“Wish ye weren’t workin’ in that place,” Jamie said, not for the first time. “And I’m not likin’ that gambler ye be workin’ for either.”
“Jamie,” Mara said, trying to make her understand, “you know I can’t earn enough in the theater to live on, much less support you and Paddy. I can earn more in one night by just sitting at Jacques’s tables, drawing the customers to him, than I could half a year on the stage. He pays me well enough, Jamie. I’m not complaining.”
“Well, I still don’t like it. ’Tisn’t decent workin’ in a place like that, all of them men ogling ye and pawin’ ye,” she said even as she shook out Mara’s gown for the evening and set aside the accessories to be worn with it.
“And do you think I like it any better?” Mara asked as she looked out on the rain that was falling more heavily now. Soon the whole street would be under a river of muddy water. “It won’t be for too much longer. Brendan’ll be coming soon. He’ll come, Jamie, just you wait and see.”
***
“Come along, monsieur, place your bet, perhaps ce soir is your lucky night, and this your lucky numbaire,” Mara said, feigning a light French accent. The gentlemen seemed to find the Frenchwoman the most attractive and alluring, showing their preference in the size of their tips. Mara spun the roulette wheel around, her golden eyes watching in cynical amusement as the miners’ eyes watched hopefully for their lucky number to come up. The small ball sped past each number until finally rolling to a stop in one of the numbered compartments. “Sorry, monsieur. I guess tonight wasn’t your lucky night, after all.”
It seldom was, Mara thought as she collected each miner’s money and gold and gave the wheel another spin. She glanced around the large room crowded with green baize tables and every sort of individual imaginable, his race or dress unimportant as long as he had gold in his pockets. At one end of the room was a long bar lined with cut-glass decanters. A small band of musicians played on the edge of a stage nearby, and a troupe of dancers was performing a lively number, much to the pleasure of the front row of spectators. Mirrors and suggestive paintings hung on the wall-papered walls, while rich, crimson curtains draped the long window. Above the gamblers’ heads hung ornate glass chandeliers, their light filtering down through the smoke that floated up from the countless cigars and cigarettes. The thick, heavy air was filled with whiskey fumes, sweat from unwashed bodies, stale perfume, and the Chinese punk that smoldered for the convenience of smokers.
This saloon was no different from all of the others that lined Portsmouth Square. Whether it was the Eldorado, Bella Union, Parker House, or Verandah, they all offered the same attractions—all for the price of gold mined in the Sierra Nevada.
Mara was rudely startled from her thoughts as she felt someone kiss her bare shoulder. She turned around sharply, ready to deliver a scathing set-down, and found herself staring into the dark eyes of Jacques D’Arcy.
He smiled slightly as he noted the antagonism in Mara’s eyes. “Mara,” he softly scolded her, “you never smile for poor Jacques. Yet you smile so enticingly for these fools.”
“That is what I’m getting paid for, remember?” Mara said coldly, pulling her arm free of his possessively caressing hand.
“I could pay you, ma petite, for certain favors,” Jacques said very softly, his dark eyes glowing. They seemed to burn into Mara’s skin as they slowly traveled across the smooth swell of breast revealed by the décolletage of the red velvet dress she had worn for the first time tonight.
Mara silently cursed herself for being so stupid. She knew it had been a mistake to wear the dress. In fact, it had caused her nothing but trouble since she had first set eyes on it back in London. She had been speechless with surprised dismay when Jamie had unfolded it from her trunk. It must have still been in her room when Don Andres’s servants packed her things. Naturally they had assumed it was hers. Jamie’s gasp had been slightly louder, for she hadn’t seen the dress since returning it to its owner on that fateful day long ago. When she’d learned who Nicholas really was, she’d just sat down on the edge of the bed, shaking her head, saying nothing.
Mara supposed she had worn the dress because she had wanted something different to wear, something besides the same few dresses she had worn over and over again. And partly out of defiance. She had wanted to prove to herself that she could forget Nicholas, that the memories associated with the dress meant nothing to her any longer. But she had been wrong. Even the feel of the soft velvet against her skin made her think of Nicholas’s hands as they had caressed her in love—and of their hurting strength when he’d grabbed her while in a black rage upon discovering her true identity.
“No thank you, Jacques,” Mara replied sweetly, “I’m not that desperate yet, and I’m not your petite.”
Jacques’s smile curved into a cruel sneer, “Someday you will want me, Mara, and then you will have to beg for my favors. But until then, ma petite,” he said purposefully, “you either do your job, or I fire you.”
“I do my job well, Jacques,” Mara replied tartly. “And besides, you wouldn’t want me working for another gambler, would you? Taking away your business? Because you know I would.”
Jacques stared into her defiantly upraised face and the contempt she didn’t bother to hide. She smiled that enticing half-smile of hers. “No one would want a woman with a scarred face to sit at their table and deal faro or drink with the customers…eh, ma petite?” Jacques spoke softly, running the tip of his finger across Mara’s smooth alabaster cheek. “And the lover who once, I think, must have called you his petite would no longer care to look upon you. Just remember that you work for me, and no one else,” Jacques warned. Then, shaking his head, he added, “I don’t know why you waste your time here at the tables when you could be asking five hundred dollars a customer upstairs. You are a foolish woman, ma petite, to be so selective about who shares your bed.”
“I’m not a courtesan, Jacques,” Mara told him coldly as she glared up into his sallow face. For the first time, she felt a deep fear of this Frenchman. She had managed so far to repulse his attentions, for he knew her value as an employee. But as time had passed and his pockets filled, he became bolder. Mara knew that soon she would not be able to laugh away his advances.
“Come, I want you at the faro table. There are some big players anxious to have you deal for them,” Jacques told her as he signaled for another woman to take over the roulette wheel.
Mara followed Jacques across the room, conscious of the eyes following her figure in the revealing red velvet dress. But even she wasn’t aware of the full impact of her startling beauty on the love-starved miners, many homesick for wives and sweethearts, others longing for the companionship of a beautiful woman. Yet there was something about Mara that stopped them from reaching out and grabbing greedily at the soft velvet skirts that rustled past their legs, or touching the pale, scented skin of her bare shoulders as she threaded her way through them. There was a ladylike quality about her, an air of breeding that made a man keep his distance.
Mara sat down at the green baize table, accepting the long-stemmed glass of champagne placed at her elbow as she smiled at the gentlemen sitting across from her. Sh
e placed a complete suit of spades in a thirteen card layout on the table and waited for the players to place their bets on the card of their choice. Then, the faro box in front of her, she played the banker and prepared to withdraw from the box in pairs the cards that decided whether a man won or lost. If he placed his gold by the eight of spades in the layout and the eight of hearts were turned over first, then he lost. If the eight didn’t show up in either card turned, his bet remained. But if it were the second card turned, he won his bet and the dealer had to pay.
Mara had acted as faro banker for more than two hours and was beginning to grow tired. The smoke and noise pressed in on her. Several of her customers had grown as tired of losing and were withdrawing their bets and moving on to other games of chance. Mara paused for a moment to take a sip of champagne while their places were quickly filled, and didn’t even bother to glance up into their expectant faces. After a while they all looked the same.
“If monsieur would care to place his bet,” Mara spoke in her mock French accent as she filled the faro box with cards, “this could be his lucky night, perhaps monsieur will even win a fortune, one nevaire knows in a game of chance.”
Mara glanced up, a smile softly curving her lips as she stared into the gaze of the player who’d just filled the vacant seat in front of her. The smile stiffened painfully as her eyes locked with the mocking green eyes she knew so well.
“Well, well, I didn’t realize you were French as well as Irish, English, and Spanish,” Nicholas Chantale said. “You do have a colorful past, Mara. Or are you going by another name? Perhaps Angelique, or Desiree?” Nicholas laughed in pleased amusement at the shock she could not hide. “You seem startled to see me. You didn’t suppose that vicious blow to the back of my head had killed me, did you?” Nicholas asked in a voice that only she could hear as the music and laughing voices swirled loudly around them.
“Come on, now. I’ve placed me bet. Let’s deal,” a man on Nicholas’s right called out impatiently.
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