Nicholas went right on as though she had not spoken. “—she is well educated and well versed in the classics. She would make an excellent headmistress in my boarding school for the Indian children. By having a wife like her—”
“A wife! Oh, Nick!”
“—I shall be better prepared to become the head of the best school in the district.”
She said hotly, “Is that what she tells you?”
“I have thought for years about building a school here.”
“No. This is all because of that—that hussy!”
Nicholas reddened. Placing a hand on her shoulder, he said firmly, “Be fair, Mother. I will not hear her slandered, even by you. Not after what she has been put through.”
The Widow parted her lips to launch another missile, but when she looked into his eyes, she saw they were at an impasse. What more was there to say?
“There is a full moon tonight. I will go out to see it…yes, with her,” Nicholas said, relieved to be honest with her for once. He got a cold shrug and no supper as a response.
Why should personal ambition be the measure by which he was judged? This was his thought on his ride to the Hat. The vistas he looked upon were a landscape of endless possibility, a place to apply his talents and attach his heart. If not here, where?
As usual, he was the first to arrive at their rendezvous location. Over the past weeks he had become fascinated by Cassandra's skill in setting up complex sets of signal arrangements by which they would secretly meet. She was a natural born plotter and planner. Imagine what she could do with weekly lesson books!
Was it the drama of clandestine meetings she so enjoyed? Sometimes he teased her with this question, and she would laugh without answering him. What wonderful, free-wheeling walks and talks they had! And how beautiful she was! He would touch her face, and she would smile at him. In his eyes, she was an alabaster goddess.
As for Cassandra, she found their human friendship appealing and exquisitely tantalizing. Her eyes encouraged him to go beyond touching her face, but so far Nicholas had abstained, though he seemed tempted to do more, from time to time.
Indeed, since returning home, Brighton's vigilance against women had mysteriously lapsed. One glimpse into the siren's eyes, and he would follow her up hill and down dale. But it was not entirely her powers that were luring him. He was enamored of her intelligent, lively attention. The sound of his own ideas as they were reiterated in her dulcet voice was what kept him spellbound.
As a native, Nicholas knew fordable mountain streams and nearby caverns where a couple might make themselves cozy in a big pile of Indian blankets, talk endlessly, and make an entire afternoon fly by. Here, where the deer and the antelope played, his gazelle allowed him to endlessly pet her and preach at her while she gazed up into his eyes.
Cassandra was struggling to keep her vow not to use her siren's tricks on Nicholas. She abstained from pressing on her breastbone while staring into his eyes. She was proud of her self-control. The rise in her self-esteem almost made up for the loss of sexual ecstasy in her life. Also, she was learning to savor another, very human emotion—the bittersweet joy of yearning for something that may or may not be there.
“I have saved Curly's life,” she told herself when she lay sleepless and sexually frustrated in the dead of night. “Surely I deserve a reward for defeating the Widow Brown's curse. My reward will be a triumphant exit from Alta on the arm of their golden boy. And I will have got him without tricks!”
I was late in arriving at our rendezvous one afternoon, but Nicholas (unlike Curly) was always a model of patience. In a moment I was in his arms, the wind blowing about us. The scene was highly charged with romance, yet his cock failed to harden against the burning mound I thrust against it.
Perhaps if I gazed longer into his eyes and pressed on my birthmark? My finger twitched, but my self-control was strong enough to conquer the impulse to proceed unfairly.
“My Cassandra!” Nicholas murmured.
“Nick, darling! Has it seemed long since you last saw me?”
“No, not long,” he said frankly. He always spoke honestly, and I truly adored him for that trait. “But very frustrating. Mother and I have had words. She simply doesn't understand me.”
“At least you have your books and your ideas to entertain you. I have nothing except waiting for our meetings. I feel as though I am treading in stagnant water.”
“I would gladly endure boredom rather than my mother’s contempt.”
“Of course, dear. I am sorry.” He stroked my hair and put a tendril back inside the hood of my cloak.
I found his gentle touch so appealing that my juices were overflowing my undergarments, running down my leg and into my high-buttoned shoes. What was I doing wrong? Why did he not respond?
“My cross to bear, not yours, my darling. Let’s just enjoy being together.”
I was sensing his growing mood of thoughtfulness. “Perhaps you have been thinking I am too much trouble.”
“No, Cassandra. I do love you, in my own way.”
“Men can quit loving; women cannot.”
“You are wrong. I love you and always will. I, who have never felt more than a passing fancy for any woman, simply adore you. I declare it. Let me touch my finger to that sweet mouth again—there, there, and there! Your eyes seem heavy, Cassandra. What’s the matter, sweetheart? Surely you are not feeling sorry for yourself?”
“Only for my nature.”
“I do not understand.”
“Of course not. But what if our love evaporates like a puddle in the wind? I fear the future.”
“No need.”
“Ah, but you do not know what I mean. It is true you have lived a city life I have only dreamed of. But I am much older at love than you are, Nick. I have loved other men, and now I love you.”
“For mercy’s sake, do not talk that way, Cassandra!”
His stricken look gave me pause. Was it possible he had never felt sexual jealousy before? How odd. I returned to what was on my mind.
“I fear our love will die, that your mother will find out about us and in the end will turn you against me.”
“She knows of our meetings.”
“Be honest. Does she not speak vehemently against me?”
He failed to look reassuring.
“It is foolish of us to meet in secret. One kiss more, and then please leave my life forever. Otherwise I shall be the ruin of you.”
“Don't be so dramatic, Cassandra.”
“Run. I freely give you your chance.”
“You are full of fantasies today, darling. You entirely misunderstand me. But I do agree with you on one point. I see now our present mode cannot last forever.”
“Of course. Your mother will forbid it.”
“Never mind about her, darling. Believe me when I say I cannot afford to lose you. You must always be with me, for many reasons. There is only one cure for our mutual anxiety, dearest. You must become my wife, and soon.”
I was not expecting so sudden a declaration. My victory made me feel giddy, but also a bit desperate. Drake had been easier to put off, month after month. How to buy time and dissuade this human, who was so unlike me, from a useless act of marriage?
“I will be a lot of trouble. I have few wifely qualities.”
There, I thought; a siren can speak the truth as well for a human. This line of thought will deflect him, and I will have time to decide what my course will be.
He laughed mildly. “No worries. The qualities I am looking for in a wife are not the conventional ones.”
“Really? What do you mean?”
I was thinking: Will you promise me San Francisco? Or Paris? Are there beautiful places on earth where our ideal love can flourish? If so, bring on a human future!
He surprised me by asking, “Will you be mine alone?”
I thought he must be play-acting, as I would be if I asked such a question.
“I will be nobody else’s. Will that satisfy yo
u?”
“For the present.”
“Now, tell me a story about your life in San Francisco, Nick, as you promised you would. Or else I will not have you. You know that you will go back one day.”
I spoke with a bantering air, but I could not have been more serious. I needed to hear what our life would be like if I made this risky move. Marriage with this man was not what I had intended; only a temporary relationship, sexual or otherwise, that would fuel an escape from Alta in his company. I had seen enough approaching darkness in my dreams that I dared not attempt it alone.
“I must find you very attractive,” said Nicholas, “because I loathe talking about San Francisco. Bad enough that I dream of it so often.”
I smiled, for he had proved my point to my own satisfaction.
If he dreamed of San Francisco, then he would surely one day gravitate there again, no matter how often he might deny its pull on him.
Unlike Cassandra's dreams, the images in Nicholas's dreams were not a cipher and a vision of the future. Instead they arose from his recent and troubling past. His dreams all featured a golden-haired young man and a friendship that had started off very warmly, but then came to a deplorable confusion. What had begun as a casual conversation with a comely gold prospector, a man like himself who was more refined than others in the depraved town, had ended in a sordid physical affair, which in his conscious brain he refused to think of. In the end, he ran from his life there, ran home to his stern, devoted mother and the pure mountains he loved more than any single person.
And so, on the same afternoon when Nicholas would propose marriage to Cassandra, the charming story he contrived for her pleasure about San Francisco contained no mention of a friendship with a golden-haired young man:
“I remember one morning when I first arrived in San Francisco, and the fleet was in. The city was full to bursting with ships and salty maritime men and their sweethearts. There were sailors on the Embarcadero, sailors on Telegraph Hill, sailors on the streetcars and sailors on the ferries going across the Bay. Each one had a girl on his arm; truthfully, some had girls on both arms.
“The fogbank had just rolled in. In the summer, after two days of heat, the marine layer gets pulled in and it turns chilly as a winter day in Wyoming. You couldn’t see your hand in front of your face, and with the sailors careening about, it was mayhem, but a jolly kind of mayhem.
“The city fathers had scheduled a parade down Market Street to welcome them. There was an elephant and a band of Chinese mummers that got lost in the fog. It took a day to find them.”
Cassandra clapped her hands and giggled like a schoolgirl.
“What fun! Nick, you will go back again? You will take me?”
He sidestepped the question, his eyes swerving away from her glowing face.
“By George, speaking of mummers, you would make an awfully cute China doll.”
Despite the seriousness with which Cassandra viewed the topic of San Francisco, she had to laugh at his comment. He pinched her cheek playfully, and she responded with a swat at his elegant backside.
Thus, a moment had passed when the pair might have realized they were on mutually exclusive paths. Afterward, each believed the other had been won to his or her way of thinking, as to where and what their future lives would be.
“Shall I walk you toward Mill's Creek?” Nicholas said when the sun had gone down.
Again he caressed her face, and again Cassandra was puzzled why he stopped there. Was there something that she was doing wrong, as a human, so that this citified, sophisticated man failed to get her signals to proceed?
“Yes,” she said with a sigh, taking his arm. “Go home and sleep well, Nick. I will go home and not sleep at all. Do you ever dream of me?”
“Not clearly,” he answered honestly.
“That is just as well. They say romantic love never lasts. I have said so myself. I remember, once, there was a military officer riding down the street in Saratoga. He was a total stranger and never spoke to me, but I loved him so intensely I thought I should really die of love. But then, of course, I put him out of my mind entirely.”
Nicholas was not listening to her words. He was lulled by her dulcet tones into thinking about their future together as schoolmaster and schoolmistress.
They stood still and prepared to bid each other farewell. Everything before them was a perfect scene for romance—the stone house at a distance, the wild grasses beneath their feet, and their beautiful young bodies, standing so closely together on the precipice of an unknown future.
As he turned to leave her, she had a sudden presentiment of losing him.
“I fear the future,” confessed Cassandra, breathlessly speaking the truth. “I will lose you in the end.”
“No fear of that, darling. I will not allow it.”
“I wish I was sure of not losing you!” she cried.
His story had charmed her. She felt sure he was only teasing her about San Francisco, and that he would one day take her there. Afterward, they might part company or remain close friends.
Nicholas stood silent a moment. His feelings were high, the moment seemed propitious, and the fair maiden was in distress. She stared into his eyes, and he held her gaze. The current of human attraction surged between them. And then, in one swift moment of decision, Nicholas severed the umbilical cord.
“You shall be sure of me, darling,” he said, folding her in his arms.”No more dread about the future. We will be married at once.”
“Oh Nick!” She buried her face in his shoulder, so he could not see the consternation in her face. Why did he keep harping on marriage?
“You agree to it?”
“If—if we can.”
“Certainly we can. We are both of age. Who is to stop us?”
He laughed a bit wildly. At that moment, her white knight had never before looked to Cassandra so rakishly handsome.
On an impulse, she nodded once, and he immediately kissed her. There, it was done. She marveled at the simplicity with which humans profoundly change their lives.
“I have savings left from my shameful occupation of gold assaying. If you will agree to live in a tiny cottage until I can buy a house and open my school, we can manage it.”
“How long will we have to live in the tiny cottage, Nick?”
“Not long. Do you think your grandfather will object?”
“Oh, grandfather. He will go along with it, I suppose—on the understanding it is to be a short time.”
“Yes, barring misfortune.”
“Barring misfortune,” she repeated slowly.
“Which is hardly likely. Now it is decided, I cannot wait. Name the exact day.”
They consulted further on that question, and the wedding day was fixed in two weeks time, at the church in Corinthus, with a small reception to follow at Mill’s Creek.
They parted, and as the distance increased between himself and his goddess, Nicholas grew taller in his own estimation. He felt like a real man. What uplifted him the most was the realization that now the die was cast, his dreams seemed more obtainable. He would leave his mother's house at once; yes, that seemed entirely the right course of action. At first, he would stay in the shed most recently inhabited by Caleb Scattergood. He would do so tonight. Then, he would find a respectable place and a temporary means of income.
He might seek to lease a cabin in Bulette, as Caleb had done.
His mind continued to linger on Caleb. The ice man’s business was growing fast. He was a success by anyone's standards. And reportedly he was looking for help in doing the difficult and tedious work of finding ice sources high up in the mountains, where small ponds stayed frozen throughout the summer. Nicholas liked him very much, knowing Caleb to be a serious man who kept to himself, much as he himself did. Indeed, if Caleb were not always out of town, Nicholas might have confided in him instead of Cassandra. But fate had dictated otherwise.
It didn't occur to Nicholas his future wife might be displeased about his tag
ging along after the ice man up and down the mountain to earn money. He himself was pleased with the idea and resolved to put it into action.
As for Cassandra, that evening she felt dazed and out of her element.
On the one hand, she had scored a victory over a powerful native woman and entrapped a man without leaning on her siren powers.
On the other hand, she had just agreed to a human marriage.
Never yet had she seen a marriage that was a successful model, a union that was a joy to its components. What had she done? Had she fallen into her own trap?
Chapter Nineteen
Lady Luck
June 7, 1901
Alta, Wyoming
“You are looking well today,” said Widow Brighton to Clare, with a rare smile for her married niece, who was big with child. “How is your husband?”
“He is well.” Clare lowered herself carefully onto a kitchen stool.
Her aunt looked at her narrowly. “Treating you well?”
“Pretty fairly.”
“Pretty fairly,” she repeated. “He has not been rough with you, has he?”
Clare blushed. “Oh no. He just—well, I don’t know if I should complain to you, but I want some money, you know, aunt, to buy a few little things for myself and the baby. But he don’t give me any, and I don’t want to ask him. Should I?”
“You mean you never have?”
“I had money of my own until lately, and I hated to ask. I said something in passing last week. But he seems not—not to remember. What should I do?”
“Make him remember,” said the Widow grimly.
“But I do not want him thinking I accuse him of failing in his duty to me.”
The Widow considered for a while. Finally she said, “Clare, I have a box under my bed with two sacks of minted silver coins in it from the Colorado Silver Exchange. Your uncle never told me how he came by them, and I never asked. A week before he died so suddenly, he showed them to me and said, 'This farmer's legacy can easily be turned into dollars.' Perhaps the time has come for you to have your portion, Clare.”
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