Lake of Fire

by Linda Jacobs

  Laura felt as though she’d been struck. She noted, however, that Constance did not show surprise.

  Giving up, at least for the time being, Laura wet her spoon in the consommé and gave it the barest taste. A few minutes later, the dish was removed and replaced by the tomato aspic. Though Hank dug in with relish, she stuck her fork into the quivering red mass and set the implement aside.

  Cord and Constance both dipped into a cream of chicken soup. Aunt Fanny and her father conversed over hearts of lettuce dressed in creamy mayonnaise for him and French onion soup for her. Hank refilled Laura’s wineglass and she drank deeply.

  The wait staff—Cord had thought her a member—took away the plates of their second course. Hank’s thigh grazed Laura’s for the third time.

  She moved away, grateful for the arrival of their entrée.

  The waiter placed a gold-rimmed platter before her. The pink meat of the cutthroat trout glistened in a lake of butter sauce. She broke off a piece of the firm flesh and conveyed it to her mouth.

  She dared a look across the table and found Cord also raising a forkful of trout to his lips. Their eyes met, and the succulent meat turned tasteless.

  Hank wanted to tell Forrest he’d been a fool for doubting him.

  He found Laura exquisite, seated beside him at table while the last light off Yellowstone Lake reflected onto her face. Her green eyes were boldly inquisitive one moment and demurely downcast the next. Striped satin accentuated her waist, her small breasts swelling the material of her dress.

  Hank found his palms sweating. He wiped his hands on the snowy napkin across his long thighs. Raising his wineglass, he toasted his banker partner.

  Forrest broke off conversing with his sister, Fanny, to lift his glass; he waved an expansive hand at the roomful of chattering diners. “Let’s drink to the day when Hank will be the owner of the Lake Hotel.”

  Hank recalled his elation when he’d first heard the Northern Pacific was selling, but in the midst of his triumph, he suddenly felt as though he’d been dashed with cold water … Cord Sutton was giving Laura Fielding a heated, speculative gaze. The hell of it was that she appeared to be responding with a look that made Hank’s mouth go dry.

  He raised his toast. “To our mutual success, Forrest.”

  Sutton turned away from Laura. His blue eyes hard as flint, he placed his palm over the top of his glass. “I’m afraid, sir, that I cannot drink to that.”

  The assembled company went silent.

  Hank met Cord’s stare. “Then shall we toast this?” He looked around the table. “That the best man wins.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  JUNE 25

  By dawn, Laura felt as though her world was upside down. Cord, not a simple cowhand, but a rancher who also ran an elegant hotel … She’d been right to think he was too well spoken to be who he pretended to be.

  And pretense it had clearly been. With the horizon graying, her head felt muzzy from the strong spirits and the wine Hank had pressed upon her.

  No, she had lifted her own glass and drunk every drop.

  But she could accuse Cord, or William Cordon Sutton.

  She threw back the covers and got out of bed. She wished she could wear her trousers, but they were in the hotel laundry, in defiance of Aunt Fanny and her father’s edict that the pants and Cord’s shirt be relegated to the rubbish bin.

  Laura pulled on a camisole, step-ins, and a thin petticoat—Constance would have worn layers of crinolines—and studied the dresses Fanny had transformed with her needle yesterday. Finally, she selected a pink creation trimmed in white lace, conscious that it was in her cousin’s more delicate taste. She studied her face and hair in the bureau glass, ran a borrowed tortoiseshell comb through her sun-ripened locks, and called it good.

  Hoping her father and Aunt Fanny were still asleep, she tiptoed to the hall door and went downstairs.

  The night clerk looked younger than Laura, probably another student. When she paused in front of the desk, he kept his dark head bent over a dime novel. The slender magazine bore a cover picture of a bronco trying to buck off a cowboy in fringed chaps.

  She could not blame the clerk for enlivening the lonely graveyard shift.

  Laura cleared her throat.

  The clerk started. “Excuse me, miss.”

  “I’m looking for a guest.” She tried to sound matter-of fact. “His name is William Cordon Sutton.”

  “William Cordon Sutton?” he repeated, reaching for the metal box that held the registration cards.

  She’d thought it would be hard, but it was simple, really, standing there with her palms pressed on the high mahogany desk, while the young man said politely, “He’s in 109.”

  She wasn’t going to his room. Not at an hour when he might reasonably still be abed.

  If she did, what would she say? He had met her cousin first, had chosen her to be his bride. It was Laura’s tough luck to have encountered him under impossible circumstances.

  She headed toward the first-floor hall. With hands knotted before her, she placed one foot in front of the other down the carpeted corridor. And stood outside the portal labeled “109.”

  Her hand rose. She watched her knuckles rap the panel; any second Cord would open the door and glower at her. “What are you doing here?” he would snarl. “I was well shed of you when I thought you were headed for the servants’ quarters.”

  She waited on rubbery legs but with her chin lifted to face him. Seconds passed, and she knocked again.

  The sound echoed in the hall, followed by silence within and without.

  Either Cord was not in his room or he had decided not to answer.

  Or … what if Constance had slipped away from the family suite and was with her betrothed? A man with the virile appetites Cord had shown on the trail would surely claim a woman before they marched to the altar.

  Her face hot, Laura turned away. Though she wanted to retreat in a dignified manner, she moved faster and faster down the corridor and out into the rising morning light.

  She shouldn’t be surprised. Things were as they had been from the time she and Constance were girls.

  The far shore of Lake Michigan had always been beyond the horizon, even when Laura peered through a spyglass from the widow’s walk atop Fielding House on Lakeshore Drive. Seven miles north of Chicago’s State Street and the growing downtown, the mansion and grounds formed a placid island, well back from the busy road.

  Constance, twelve to Laura’s fourteen, already had the figure of a young woman, though her hair was still caught up in pigtails. She gave the spyglass a bored spin, rotating the brass and mahogany instrument on its tripod. Gripping the rococo wrought-iron railing, she called, “I spy.”

  Laura looked around the slate roof with bronze lightning rods topped in colorful ceramic balls. They’d already spied the sailor on the weather vane today, and though Constance sometimes picked the same thing twice, she didn’t have the secret air of smugness that usually went with it.

  Laura peered over the rail, down at the long green lawn that sloped to the lake. Scattered islands of roses and camellias decorated the way to a white-latticed gazebo near the shore.

  “Venus,” she guessed, pointing at the statue of a life-sized woman in a clamshell atop the terrace wall. She dreamed that someday her slender-as-a-reed body would resemble that sculpture.

  “Try again.” Constance chuckled.

  “It must be Apollo.” Laura gestured toward the bronze god, naked in the garden save for his fig leaf.

  “No.” Constance’s giggles lifted above high C, and she pressed a plump hand to her Cupid’s-bow mouth.

  “That ship,” Laura crowed, when Constance cast her blue eyes briefly toward an ore boat. The vessel plowed its way across Lake Michigan with a load of copper or iron from the North Country.

  “What about the ship?” Constance teased.

  In their version of the game, once Laura had guessed, she was required to make up a story about the vessel.
<
br />   She took a deep imagining breath that barely swelled her tiny breasts beneath her pink peppermint-striped blouse. “They come from the iron mines,” she said. “Almost everyone onboard is a poor, hard-working sailor, but on the captain’s deck there’s a special passenger.”

  Laura closed her eyes against the summer sun and tried to describe the perfect man. “He’s tall, with eyes as blue as Lake Michigan, and black hair.” She smoothed her own hair, which she thought of as plain brown, and imagined the dark-haired man combing it with his fingers.

  “His beard is glossy,” she embroidered. “It makes his lips look full and red and ready to kiss someone. His body …” Laura smiled wickedly, “is like the statue of Apollo.”

  “And he’s mine!” Constance claimed.

  Why should Laura be taken aback that life was turning out the way the signs had portended?

  Though Laura had to endure arch suggestions that she was becoming an old maid, along with the suspicion that Joseph Kane had been the one to throw her over, Constance seemed immune. Though she was twenty-four, everyone acted as though her single status were the result of her impossibly high standards.

  Only Laura knew her cousin secretly longed to be married.

  It looked like she was getting her wish.

  Turning away from the Lake Hotel, Laura walked along the shore. Though she knew the family expected her to join them for breakfast, she kept moving, putting distance between her and what she didn’t want to face.

  She’d been a fool to think there was something between her and a man who had rescued her in the back of beyond. He had business to deal with here in Yellowstone and a woman waiting to marry him.

  When she approached the soldier station, smoke poured from the stone chimney above the log walls. A few uniformed men stood outside holding mugs of steaming coffee.

  “Good morning, miss.” The speaker had an earnest face and lively eyes magnified by thick spectacles. “You’re out early.”

  Something in his sincere appearance caused Laura to confide, “I slept so poorly it feels late rather than early.”

  The soldier smiled. “Some nights the demons keep me from sleep, and I wake with the same feeling.” He gestured with his cup. “Coffee?”

  “Perhaps.” She looked at his insignia without knowing how to read his rank. “Corporal?”

  “Sergeant Larry Nevers, at your service.” He clicked the polished heels of his boots together. “Cream, miss?”

  “Black. It’s Miss Fielding.”

  Sergeant Nevers gestured to another soldier, who moved briskly through the door into the station. He turned his attention back to Laura. “You’re staying at the hotel with your father?”

  “Yes.”

  “With all its luxury, you cannot find rest there?” The other soldier returned with a battered tin cup. “Miss Laura Fielding, this is Private Arden Groesbeck.”

  The red-haired young man with a freckled face pressed the cup into Laura’s hands. She hooked her fingers through the side handle to protect them from the heat and inhaled the rich aroma that reminded her of the coffee Cord had brewed on the shores of Jenny Lake.

  Though Private Groesbeck moved away, Sergeant Nevers waited in a listening pose. Laura lifted the cup, blew on the hot liquid, and sipped. Fortified, she gave him a level look. “I shall remember your kindness, Sergeant. Perhaps it shall help me find the rest I need.”

  He raised his drink in salute. “Please, call me Larry.”

  Laura smiled. “Very well … Larry.”

  The sun was full up when she decided to take her leave. As she started to walk away, Sergeant Nevers detained her.

  “The soldiers come to the hotel, nights when the orchestra plays.” He ducked his head, and she detected a blush on his cheeks. “We, that is, the military, are encouraged to dance with the ladies who have traveled far.”

  Laura decided she liked this stalwart young soldier. Extending her hand, she touched his callused palm briefly. “Then when we meet again, we shall dance.”

  As full sun brightened the park, Laura had no watch to tell the time. After returning the coffee cup to Sergeant Nevers, she walked for what must have been hours.

  Sergeant Nevers … Larry, had spoken of night demons. Hers were now of the day variety.

  The falling arc Angus Spiner’s body had defined when he toppled from the driver’s seat. A stranger’s hoarse whisper, “Where’s your gun, boy?” Sparks spiraling from a campfire. Witch Creek’s cauldrons boiling while the outlaw spied on her bath. Now that she had described him to Pinkerton’s man, there would be handbills posted, leaving no doubt that she had been the informant.

  She tried to ignore the clutch in her chest.

  It must have been ten o’clock when Laura decided she was hungry enough to turn back toward the hotel. Just as she did, she spied a ruined cabin, set inside the forest.

  Built of pine logs, the tired building bore a luxuriant growth of summer grass atop its flat roof. The windows were boarded, and Laura imagined the former owners taking care to put the place in good repair, but knowing they were leaving it forever to the national park.

  She went suddenly still. A man approached, cutting obliquely through the woods, from the general direction of the hotel. As he came closer, she recognized Hank Falls.

  He looked different this morning, wearing a suit of buckskin instead of the gray wool he’d affected at dinner last night. His blond hair was no longer Brilliantined, as though he had dressed in haste.

  She almost raised her arm to hail him, but stopped, curious to see what he was up to.

  Hank stalked toward the cabin, looked in all directions, and slipped inside. The leaning structure looked as if it could be no more than one room, the door hanging on its hinges.

  Laura waited, but he did not come out. She considered going up and knocking, but the thought of being with him alone after he had pressed his thigh against hers made her turn away.

  Hurrying toward her was another of the hotel guests, apparently out for a morning constitutional. As he drew nearer, she recognized the young man who’d been outside the barbershop with Cord last evening.

  He saw her and started, then seemed to recover and tipped his hat. “Good morning, miss.”

  With a murmured, “Good day to you, sir,” Laura passed him on the trail.

  She walked on, over a hundred feet. There, she paused and looked back to see if Hank had come out of the cabin. He had not, and the man she had seen with Cord was not in sight, either.

  This evening she’d ask Hank what a man who managed a fine hotel and owned a luxurious steamboat could want in a disintegrating hovel. She had encountered this same mystery in Cord, who seemed at home in both the forest and the drawing room.

  As she drew closer to the hotel, her pace slowed.

  When she returned, Aunt Fanny would no doubt scold about her running around with her hair hanging freely over her shoulders. Father would probably grouse about her wandering alone.

  Laura looked toward the stables. If Cord were a guest, then Dante must occupy a stall. Perhaps the horse, at least, would be happy to see her after the journey they had shared.

  Cord walked with Constance in the woods near the hotel. He’d asked her to accompany him after breakfast, thinking he needed to set her straight about their so-called betrothal.

  “I had no idea you and Uncle Forrest were both trying to buy the hotel.” She shivered as the wind in the tops of the pines dropped down. “That was terrible the way you and Hank acted last night.”

  “When I met you in St. Paul,” he replied in an even tone, “I thought I was the only bidder.”

  He felt as though a stone lay across his chest, while he studied the meadow stretching from the forest down to Yellowstone Lake.

  “I saw a postcard of your Excalibur in Salt Lake, with its white marble portico. The crystal chandelier looked as though it came from Versailles.” Constance placed her hand on his arm. “Will you take me there when your business is concluded?” Her bur
gundy satin skirts whipped against his legs.

  As he hesitated over an answer, she reached up to tend her hair. The wind ruffled the long grass and whipped up whitecaps on the lake.

  While he was wondering how to tell her things had changed since St. Paul, her hand slid down to his. “When are we going to set a date?” She extended her other hand, showing off the ring he’d given her. “Mother and I could probably find what we need for the wedding a lot faster than the traditional six months to a year.”

  She raised her face, as though hoping he would take the hint to kiss her. A bell sounded nearby.

  Cord turned toward the sound. Beneath the trees, a split-rail corral had been built to contain six black-and-white dairy cows, their generous udders full. The wind brought the smell of the animals and their droppings.

  Constance wrinkled her nose.

  “They’re for the tent camp,” Cord explained. “Wylie’s advertises that no tourist camper shall go without milk or cream.”

  “Wonderful,” she muttered.

  Looking toward the untidy cluster of small sleeping tents arrayed alongside the big striped dining tent, Cord thought of Laura, camping out with him beneath the stars. He tried to imagine Constance in the same circumstance.

  But Laura had deceived him about who she was, and last night she had shown every evidence of letting her father make a match for her with Hank Falls.

  Constance frowned and pointed toward a tipi at the edge of the Wylie Camp. “What’s that? Indians?” Something in her tone tipped him that she would not take kindly to knowing his grandmother Seeyakoon had been a full-blooded member of a tribe.

  Cord examined the construction of poles and skins that looked remarkably like the style used by the Nez Perce. “Who knows?” He shrugged.

  Constance’s hand pressed his arm; her cornflower eyes rose tremulously. “William …” Her voice was lower and sultrier than he’d heard it, and he couldn’t help but remember the quicksilver mystery of her laugh in springtime.

  If Laura were going to be with Hank Falls, he should pull Constance into his arms like he’d done the last night before he left St. Paul. See if he couldn’t forget her green-eyed cousin.