Mercury's Rise (Silver Rush 04)

by Ann Parker

  With a chill, Inez realized that, of all the people who had a stake in the Mountain Springs House’s reputation and its miracle medical wonders, most of them were in the room and had heard Harmony’s every defiant word.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Inez unstuck herself from the wall and tried to maneuver through the crowded room, anxious to reach her sister’s side and stop her from saying anything further.

  But Lewis moved faster. Vibrating with managerial concern, he interposed himself between Harmony and Nurse Crowson. “Of course, Mrs. DuChamps. Of course. If you do not wish to take whatever draught Dr. Prochazka has prepared for you, I’m certain that no harm will occur from missing a dose.”

  Squeezing past a cluster of women barring her trajectory to the loveseat where Harmony sat, Inez thought it uncanny—not to add annoying—that Lewis’ calm attitude and slightly patronizing tone so exactly matched Nurse Crowson’s. It was like hearing the same note played again, only an octave lower.

  Lewis continued, “I am pleased that you had such a splendid, invigorating day today. Up Williams’ Canyon, wasn’t it?”

  Inez finally reached the loveseat. She fluttered her fan to draw Lewis’ attention and said, “Mrs. DuChamp and I had the most marvelous time. Goodness gracious, I’m so impressed with her endurance. Why, I have lived in Colorado for years, and she outpaced me the entire distance!”

  The deflection worked. Lewis’ gaze switched to Inez. She could swear he was viewing her with suspicion, as if the rapidly fluttering fan didn’t stop him from seeing straight through her machinations. He said with a surprising authority, “When vitality returns, it’s easy to take on too much too soon, which can be dangerous to a delicate constitution.” He broke off and glanced around the room, as if realizing there were many avid ears listening to what he said.

  Looking around as well, Inez noticed that Crowson had stepped away, and the scorned restorative had vanished back into the basket. She continued her rounds, unobtrusively handing out other doses to various women.

  Whatever he saw in the room seemed to bring Lewis back to his role as hotelier. “It’s easy,” he began again, retreating to a smooth, obsequious tone, “to let the beauty of the mountains and the landscape in Manitou carry us away, make us forget our limitations. Why, I myself have had the humbling experience of attempting Pike’s Peak, only to be done in by the exertion and forced to spend the night on its rocky slopes. I was woefully ill-prepared for that particular adventure.” He laughed a little, shaking his head at his own folly.

  A woman in a sky-blue gown that, to Inez’s eye, would be better placed in a New York drawing room than in a Western hopeful with scrub oak for forests, said coyly, “That is why you have the little burros to do the walking for us, is it not, Mr. Lewis?”

  Some of the other women tittered behind their fans, and the tension in the room eased.

  Lewis smiled and bowed slightly. “Exactly, Mrs. Wentworth. That way we can allow you lovely ladies to enjoy your excursions in the mountains with no danger of being overcome by the experience or the altitude.”

  Inez sensed the unspoken words hovering in the air: overcome like the impetuous Mrs. DuChamps, who took on more than she should have.

  Harmony must have sensed it as well, for she stiffened as if preparing a retort. Inez placed a warning hand on her sister’s shoulder, squeezing slightly. She willed Harmony not to say anything more, surrounded as they were by people with a penchant for gossip and conjecture.

  Harmony twisted around, anger tight across her wan features. “We should go up now, don’t you think, dear sister?” Inez said to Harmony, adding to Lewis, “We have another lovely excursion planned tomorrow. Off to the Garden of the Gods, for a bit of a picnic. I’ve never seen it and am looking forward to the trip.”

  Lewis nodded approvingly. “You’ll find it most agreeable I’m sure, Mrs. Stannert. A pleasant drive and a pleasant destination. ”

  A woman on the nearby settee, whose fan was slowly wafting back and forth, almost as if it were too heavy to hold, volunteered, “The Garden of the Gods is aptly named, and Williams’ Canyon is quite scenic. Why, I walked all the way up to The Narrows yesterday. I credit the good doctor’s prescriptive directions.” She smiled up at Nurse Crowson.

  Nurse Crowson nodded approvingly, as if to acknowledge a student who had completed her recitation satisfactorily.

  “Keep to the plan he set forth for you, and you shall make it all the way to the Cave of the Winds before you leave,” said Nurse Crowson. She fished through the basket and handed the woman a small brown bottle.

  The woman brightened. “Thank you, Mrs. Crowson. I’m looking forward to that day.” She took the bottle and tucked it away into the small satin purse dangling from her wrist.

  The sound level in the room returned to normal. Aunt Agnes stood. “Well, I think we have all had enough excitement for one night.”

  Despite her annoyance with Agnes’ presumption, Inez found that she had to agree. The room was stuffy, the crowding nearly impossible, and, it would be best to get Harmony out of the room and away from measured gazes. Let her words be forgotten by whatever flow of conversation continued.

  Inez’s gaze wandered over to Mrs. Pace’s chair. A different woman, dressed in pink satin, sat there now. She would have to find another time to talk with the widow.

  Harmony rose, and did not object when Inez took one of her arms and Aunt Agnes the other. But Inez could tell from her compressed lips that she was not happy. Even so, Inez could feel her lean on their support as they headed toward the door.

  No sooner had they reached the stairs to the upper floor than Jonathan DuChamps hurried from the direction of the men’s smoking room, wrapped in an anxious expression and the scent of cigar smoke. Epperley followed, at a more leisurely pace.

  So, the wife acts out and the husband is called?

  “Harmony!” He said her name with intensity, as if he were afraid that if he didn’t stay tightly controlled, he might shout it out. “Mr. Epperley told me that you are not feeling well.”

  “You were misinformed,” Harmony said with dignity, then Inez felt her suddenly sag, her full weight dragging down.

  Jonathan leapt forward to add support to his fainting wife. Inez gasped once, holding her up. Jonathan’s gaze met hers, and for the first time, Inez realized that he was frightened. Frightened for her sister.

  Harmony recovered almost immediately. “It’s nothing, Jonathan. I must have stood up too quickly. Truly, it was a good day, the best in a long time. I had plenty of fresh air, ate well, enjoyed the music and the company. Don’t spoil it by fussing at me.”

  “Well,” said Aunt Agnes. “He may not fuss at you, but I shall. I shall take you straight up and no argument. If you won’t take your tonic, then I insist you have a restorative brandy.”

  Jonathan said, “The doctor has said that alcoholic stimulants have no therapeutic value whatsoever, that they do nothing to sustain the vital forces. That, indeed they can be dangerous to recovery.”

  Agnes rounded on him. “Mr. DuChamps. I am not advocating your wife guzzle it by the pints. She has had a faint, and a small glass of brandy will restore her flagging energies. Please arrange for the brandy and some hot compresses.”

  Jonathan took a step back, obviously not about to cross Agnes, who now held Harmony up with one protective arm about her waist.

  Inez, who felt as if she could use a little restorative brandy herself, didn’t blame Jonathan one whit for retreating. She had seen Aunt Agnes take on bankers, magnates, railroad barons, and titans of industry, including: Inez and Harmony’s father. None stood against her. Or if they tried, they did not do so for long.

  Her protective ferocity seemed to breathe some life back into Harmony, who said, “Aunt, I can walk. You do not need to drag me up the stairs.”

  Inez stepped forward, intending to help them, but Agnes snapped, “Good night, Inez.” It was as if going up Williams’ Canyon and Harmony’s subsequent collapse wer
e all Inez’s fault.

  Stung, Inez fell back to stand by Jonathan, watching as Agnes clucked and fussed over Harmony all the way up the stairs, across the landing, and out of sight down the hallway.

  Jonathan removed his glasses with a sigh, pulled a handkerchief from his breast pocket, and polished them.

  “What is ailing Harmony?” Inez asked.

  “Ailing is a little strongly said, Mrs. Stannert.” He put his glasses back on, along with some of his composure. “Most likely Mrs. Underwood, your aunt, is right. Mrs. DuChamps is probably just overtired, and a stimulant, a little brandy, might invigorate her, if she will take it. Although so late in the evening, I believe I would prefer she were given a sedative to help her sleep.” He glanced around. Epperley, who was leaning on the nearby reception desk, straightened. “I shall happily prepare a brandy for the lady. A hot toddy, perhaps? I’ll arrange for one of the maids to prepare the compresses.”

  Just as Epperley disappeared down the hall, Lewis hurried up. He held out a small brown tonic bottle and said, “Perhaps you might persuade Mrs. DuChamps to take this.”

  Inez wanted to snatch the bottle from him and dash it to the floor.

  Jonathan took it and tucked it into his pocket.

  Lewis continued, “I would even suggest tipping the dose into the brandy. I assure you, she’ll probably not even taste it.”

  Outraged, Inez burst out, “She was very clear in the parlor room that she didn’t want it.”

  Lewis closed his eyes for a moment, pained, then opened them and addressed Jonathan. “Who is to decide what is best for Mrs. DuChamps? True, she refused her evening dose. Certainly humoring the request seemed trivial at the time, but that was before her collapse. I think…” he stopped, then qualified with, “I am no physician, of course, but I think it would be wise to follow Dr. Prochazka’s prescriptions for Mrs. DuChamps, given the circumstances. But, you are her husband, so of course, the decision is yours.”

  What of her decision?

  Inez didn’t have to ask. She knew, to her own detriment, the way the game was played.

  Men decided, and women deferred.

  Jonathan nodded without comment, then glanced at Inez. “We will see you at breakfast, I assume? Good evening, Mrs. Stannert, until the morrow.” He turned and climbed the stairs to the second floor.

  Inez tried to regain her composure. This was nothing new, she told herself. The world had always been thus. It was simply that, over the past year, she had become accustomed to reigning in her own realm, the Silver Queen, in Mark’s absence. With his return and her submersion into the resort world of Manitou, she was receiving reminder after painful reminder that life outside her little kingdom ran by a very different set of rules, with other people in charge.

  But if I cannot best them in direct combat, I shall use subterfuge. I mustn’t show how much this galls me. I must appear to give way, for now. And I must find a time to meet with Kirsten Pace tomorrow.

  She heaved a theatrical sigh, for Lewis’ benefit. “Apologies for my outburst. It is just so upsetting to see my sister so frail. I will concede that my overprotective feelings got the better of me.”

  “Quite naturally so, Mrs. Stannert,” the hotelier assured her. “No offense taken.”

  “Have you paper and pen?” she asked. “I must write a note to one of the guests.”

  “But of course.”

  They went to the reception desk, and Mr. Lewis handed her a creamy sheet with the The Mountain Springs House printed along the top, and a pen and ink bottle. Inez crafted a short note:

  I must speak with you at some time convenient to you. May I pay you a call in your room tomorrow? You may leave me a note with whatever time is best for you. Signing it with her name and room number, Inez fanned the paper to dry the ink, and folded it twice. “Could you tell me which room Mrs. Pace is staying in?”

  “Oh, we would be happy to hold the note and deliver it to her tomorrow,” said Lewis.

  “No trouble,” Inez hastened. Even in an envelope, the note, she feared, would not escape from determined prying eyes. “It’s a note of…a sensitive female nature.” Let him imagine what he may. “I shall simply slide it under her door so as not to disturb her at this hour.”

  Lewis looked doubtful, then said, “Of course. If you prefer.”

  He hefted the registration book, and turned back a page. “Mrs. Pace is in room 211.”

  Just down the hall from Harmony and William. “Thank you, Mr. Lewis.”

  Once upstairs, Inez looked both ways. The hallway was quiet, deserted. Down the long arm of the hall, just before the the women’s staircase to dining room, a single gas lamp guttered in a sconce. She hastened in that direction, past Aunt Agnes’ lair, Harmony and Jonathan’s rooms, William and Lily’s dark door, and two more rooms, finally halting before Room 211. Inez paused, put her ear to the door, thinking that if she heard anyone stirring, she’d venture to knock.

  Nothing.

  Feeling somewhat foolish and oddly vulnerable in the light of the hissing lamp, Inez knelt and slid the folded paper under the door. Straightening up, she looked around. No shadows or shapes indicated that someone was watching. Then, somewhere off in the dark, she heard a soft click.

  A door shutting?

  It was impossible to know.

  Moving out of the pool of light, Inez hurried back to her own room, unlocked the door, hastened inside, and locked it behind her with a sigh.

  She turned and looked at the window. She’d neglected to draw the sash before leaving for dinner, and the night air blew in softly through the half-drawn up window. The blind tick-ticked as it swung against the glass. She moved to the window, to pull the sash down and draw the shade. Instead, she leaned upon the sill and allowed her eyes to adjust.

  What had been a blank, unremitting blackness outside began to resolve—a night sky pricked with icy pinpoints. The gravel driveway in front of the hotel, joining with the dusty road called Manitou Avenue, and the silhouetted shapes of the rustic pavilions by the mineral springs. The dim path winding from the hotel cut across the road to a small bridge that led to the springs, and beyond.

  She closed her eyes, breathing in the sweet scent of night-blooming roses and under that, sharp mint and the gunmetal scent of water over stones. I hope these events that seem so impenetrable now will also become clear tomorrow.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Leadville

  The shots on State Street, ringing through the early morning air, didn’t wake her. Nor did the drunken shouts of a fancy man and his I’m-not-going-to-take-it-anymore whore, having it out at last, in the rutted hard-packed dirt of Stillborn Alley.

  The whistle of the night wind, bitter to a fault, screamed down from Mosquito Range and prowled through the red-light district. The merciless breeze snapped up refuse and tumbled it through the streets, and embraced the helpless men, women, and dogs, caught outdoors, all shivering to their bones. Through it all—shots, shouts, sighs of air—Inez slept soundly.

  It was the slight rattle of the doorknob, the hitch of locked latch, that brought her fully awake.

  The same sounds in the same order had disturbed her sleep each of the previous few nights, always around four in the morning.

  Just as she had done for every one of those nights, she reached over to the secondhand nightstand. Her hand curled around the comforting grip of her husband’s Navy Colt revolver, his prized possession from his days in the Civil War. She sat up in bed and steadied the gun with her other hand, using a two-handed grip that guaranteed accuracy. Or at least, accuracy enough to get the job done.

  Eyes no longer shrouded by sleep or dreams, Inez narrowed her gaze on the doorknob. In the pre-dawn light, leaking in through a windowpane bordered by heavy velvet and filmed with lace, the crystal facets of the knob winked at her with a subdued gleam. The knob turned one way, then the other, going only to the limit of its lock before forced to a halt.

  Inez’s world shrank to the knob and to the familiar
heft of the gun in her hand. The barrel pointed unwaveringly at a spot about one foot to the right of the keyhole. She wondered, just as she’d wondered the previous times, if tonight would be the night she’d have to pull the trigger.

  She didn’t speak.

  Words were no longer necessary.

  Inez cocked the gun. The metallic click was loud, louder in that small universe than the escalating argument of whore and pimp down the street. Louder than the steady thump, thump, thump of stamp mills echoing up California Gulch, deep into the heart of Leadville’s city limits, and up into the mining district. Louder than her own breathing or her own pulse thudding in her ears.

  Loud enough to be heard on the other side of the door.

  The knob stopped its tentative rotation.

  Inez knew that, just as her own exhalations and heart’s blood took up all the space in the room and in her head, so it probably was for the man on the other side of the door: her husband, Mark.

  The stillness stretched on for perhaps half a minute. Neither stirred on either side of the door—entrance and exit, barrier and breach. Finally, finally, she heard the squeak of footsteps as he turned and walked away. Inez counted the footsteps as they descended the stairs to the ground floor of the saloon, then lost them as they faded across the wide expanse of the silent, closed saloon. She heard the faint sound of the heavy Harrison Avenue door scrape open and shut. Inez would have sworn she could even hear the key turn in the lock, so attuned was she to this nighttime ritual of husband and wife.

  Even though she was tired, exhausted with a weariness that was only partly due to having closed the saloon less than a handful of hours previous, she completed the ritual, rising and peering through the break in the curtain. The unmistakable form of her husband on the boardwalk below. He would have been instantly recognizable to her, even if he walked among a hundred other similarly clad gentlemen through Leadville’s business district. With a slight limp, he crossed the wide Harrison Avenue boulevard—wide enough to turn a team of twenty mules hauling a full load of silver carbonate of lead ore. She watched until he entered the Clairmont Hotel, before breaking the silence in her room.