Lady X's Cowboy (15 page)

But Will had only grinned, supremely unconcerned.  “It doesn’t make a difference.  It’s all goin’ down my gullet, one way or the other.”  Later, he poked at some food on his plate.  “What are these?”

“Croquettes,” someone answered.

“They look like prairie oysters,” Will said, spearing one with his fork.

“What are those?”

Will gave the table a wink.  “That ain’t a topic for mixed company.”  Some tittering followed, but these small lapses only added to his intrigue. 

It wasn’t his manners that drew everyone in.  From the beginning of the dinner, somehow Will managed to dwarf every man in the room with his presence without even saying a word.  Yet he wasn’t silent for long.  No one could resist peppering the cowboy with questions.

“Is it true,” Paula Creed was asking, “that you’ve seen red savages?  And that they go about,” she giggled, “
naked
?”

“I’ve known plenty of Indians, ma’am,” Will answered.  “And some of ’em are what you might call savage, but a good number just want to be left in peace.  As for bein’ naked,” he continued with a smile, gesturing towards her low décolletage with his fork, “I believe you’re wearin’ less than most squaws.”

This sent Paula into another round of giggles, with Juliette and the other women joining in.  Olivia, however, wasn’t laughing.  She gazed down at her plate where her
canard à la rouennaise
lay largely untouched.  By keeping Will as far from her as possible, Charlotte was ensuring that there could be no speculation on Olivia and Will’s relationship.  Yet Olivia had the strangest sensation that, relegated as she was to the other end of the table, she was in exile somehow from his bright warmth.  In fact, her bare arms and deep neckline felt chilled despite the overheated room.

“Your Mr. Coffin is quite, ah, colorful,” Edward Baffin, the journalist, said beside her.  “I had no idea Americans could be so charming.”

She turned her attention to her dining companion and made herself smile brightly.  “Indeed, he is,” she agreed.  She told herself that her unease was on Will’s behalf, feeling anxiety for him. But she knew that wasn’t the truth.  She had been to hundreds of dinner parties just like this one.  They were part of a world she knew exceptionally well.

Tonight she tried to see things through Will’s eyes and found it all rather hollow: the endless ceremony, the silent footmen behind the guests’ chairs, a parade of dishes so numerous and extravagant that no one, not even twelve people, could possibly eat them all.  The things she used to enjoy seemed frivolous, an empty but calculated display that had no correspondence to reality.

Or maybe, she corrected herself, hearing Will’s deep laughter, it wasn’t his eyes she was seeing this dinner party through, but her own, for the first time.  Yet she was growing sullen and withdrawn at Charlotte’s table, which would never do.  She forced herself to make conversation with the woman opposite her.

“I am most curious about your views on women’s education, Mrs. Davis,” she said.

Lenore Davis, middle-aged but animated, said with conviction, “Universities like Girton are a step in the right direction, but its future is far from secure without proper funding.”

“Why do we need ladies’ colleges at all?” demanded the bishop.  “To teach them mathematics, science and Greek?  Women have no use for such knowledge.”

“They have as much need for knowledge as men,” Olivia countered.  “I myself had longed to go to university, but my parents had insisted I attend a school of accomplishment, and so I have been forced to teach myself anything of value.”

“Everything women need to know can be taught to them by their mothers and governesses,” the bishop insisted.  “The raising of children, the comfort of their husbands, household management.  Why fill their heads with facts that have no application?  Why make them wish for things they cannot, and should not, have?”

“Such as their own businesses?” she asked pointedly.

“Naturally,” the bishop answered, but then realized that Olivia owned a business herself and purpled slightly, stammering. 

Mrs. Davis and Olivia exchanged exasperated looks that communicated their opinion of the good bishop.  “Women have the same faculties as men, and yet they are left to languish in complete ignorance,” Mrs. Davis returned.  “They know as much, if not less, than their own children.”

“What do you think of the subject of women’s education, Mr. Coffin?” Frederick Gough asked.  Eleven pairs of eyes all turned to Will, who set down his wine glass and stared back warily. 

Oh dear
, thought Olivia.  Perhaps she could find a way to distract everyone so he wouldn’t have to answer.

He spoke before she could do anything.

“I think women need to know as much as men,” he answered after a moment.  “Back home, women have to know how to farm the land, treat sickness, shoot a gun and educate the children.  They need to be three times as smart as men ’cause they got twice as much to do.”

“How dreadful!” Paula Creed exclaimed, holding her napkin to her mouth.  “So much
work
.”

“It’s hard living, sure,” he answered, “but I’d rather have my woman working by my side than sittin’ at home, bein’ bored and tryin’ to think of some way to kill time.”

His woman
.  Olivia felt the warmth of that phrase suffuse her face.  Who would that woman ultimately be?  Olivia didn’t like her, whomever he settled on.

“Wouldn’t you pick bein’ useful to doin’ nothin’ all day?” Will asked Paula.

Which, of course, was exactly what Paula and all her friends did—fill their days with shopping, endless social calls and petty charities, all activities to distract them from the fact that they had accomplished nothing.  When David had been alive, Olivia had been one of their ranks.  She had paid calls, embroidered too many slippers and pillowcases, gone to breakfasts, teas, regattas, and hundreds of other social events where she said the same thing to the same people over and over again.  It was exactly the life she was supposed to lead, and her societal activity delighted David.  She was a perfect well-bred woman, a model wife, fashionable and futile.  And she had been quietly, oppressively miserable.  

Taking over the brewery had changed all that.  She was now more a stranger in Charlotte’s elegant dining room than she was in the Greywell’s racking room, where they stored kegs of beer.  Yet her position as a society widow was never quite forgotten at Greywell’s.  When would she feel completely at ease, whole?  Certainly not while George Pryce continued to make her life miserable.

“So you are in favor of women’s education,” Frederick concluded.

“Bein’ ignorant is plain dangerous, where I come from.  But that doesn’t stop most people from bein’ dangerous.”  

There were smiles and chuckles from the group.  Olivia felt herself relax slightly.  Will could make most any awkward situation enjoyable.

“What is your opinion about formal education?” Edward Baffin asked. 

Will’s brow creased as he thought.  “Nothin’ worth learnin’ can be taught,” he said finally.

“Didn’t Oscar Wilde say that?” Juliette asked, clearly astonished.

“Yes, ma’am, I believe he did.”

Olivia was just as shocked as the rest of the party, but unlike everyone else, tried to keep her surprise hidden.

“What does an American cattle driver know about Oscar Wilde?” one of Frederick’s business associates asked.

As questions went, that one was rather rude, but Will took no offense.  “I saw him speak last year, at the Tabor Grand Opera House in Leadville, Colorado.”

“Wilde gave a lecture tour in America,” Olivia recalled.

Will nodded.  “He went to Denver, and then to Leadville, which is a mighty wild mining town in the Rockies.”

“I can’t imagine what the great lover of beauty thought of such a place,” Paula exclaimed.

Grinning, Will said, “He had himself a grand time.  Went down into the Matchless Mine and drank all night with the miners.  Kept his liquor, too.  And he said that the Rockies were the most beautiful part of the West,” he added proudly.

Excited chatter filled the paneled dining room.  No one was certain what amazed them more—that the famous leader of the Aesthetes would enjoy drinking with grizzled miners, or that a cowboy might have any interest in pronouncements on the Gothic and beautiful.  Olivia found herself too astonished to stop staring at Will.  He continued to confound her, slipping away from easy definitions into something more complicated, more intricate.  And, oh, how he pleased her in his manifold forms.

He looked over to her with humor glimmering in his crystalline blue eyes.  An answering blush rose up from deep within her.  He had never seen her before in formal evening dress, and his gaze flickered over her exposed shoulders and chest, warmly approving, intimate.  Yet it was more than the revealing gown she wore that made her blush. 

He had taken up residence in her consciousness, a physical, palpable inhabitation that she found herself welcoming, though she knew she should push him away.

But she liked having him there.  The fatigue which burdened her—running Greywell’s and fighting Pryce, all the while maintaining her social position—lifted when he was nearby.  In Will, she had someone who could be both a friend and a partner, who needed no explanations and accepted her as she was.  Such an unusual man. 

As she moved her gaze away from him to her hands folded in her lap, she felt, for the first time in a long while, no longer alone.

Will stood and watched as the women rose, rustling in their gowns, and began to leave the dining room.  Olivia had explained to him earlier that at the end of the meal service, the women of the party always left to sit in the drawing room and amuse themselves while the men would be allowed the freedom to smoke and talk of subjects perhaps not well suited to delicate ears.

He didn’t mind most of the ladies leaving—with the exception of Mrs. Davis, most of the women he met tonight were sheltered, silly, and interested in him as some kind of trick pony.  Considering what Lenore Davis said about the poor state of women’s education, it was no wonder they had so little to talk about besides clothes, parties, and the merits of their own children.  At least the women back home had a better sense of life beyond their own little pastures.  So the exodus towards the drawing room didn’t bother him too much.

But he did mind that Olivia had to leave with the other women.  He’d barely been able to talk with her all night because she’d been sitting four chairs down, and he’d found, over the course of the long meal, that he’d wanted to say so many things to her, trifling comments about the guests or the conversation that he knew would make her smile or laugh.  She hadn’t laughed at all tonight.  In fact, she’d looked downright blue.

And now she was leaving. 

“See you gentlemen soon,” Charlotte promised, linking her arm with Olivia’s.  He watched them go and couldn’t help but think that he’d rather have dined on Olivia tonight instead of the dozens of plates of food he couldn’t name.  The food was all right, but she was a sight more appetizing.  Her slim, creamy shoulders curved above the low dip of her rose-colored silk gown, and he wanted so badly to move his palm along that exposed skin it made his eyes sting.  He hated her bustle, though.  How could a man know a woman’s shape when fabric looped and billowed out behind her?  And, damn, he wanted to know her shape. 

Olivia cast a quick look over her shoulder at him before the door closed behind her and the rest of the females.  He straightened.  Could she hear what he was thinking?  He could have sworn that earlier in the evening, after he’d talked about Oscar Wilde, he and Olivia looked at each other down the table and had practically spoken to each other without uttering a syllable.  That hadn’t ever happened to him before, not with a woman, and not with anyone.

“Freedom, eh, boys?” Frederick Gough said with a chuckle.  All the other men in the room agreed loudly, so Will made himself laugh as though he were like-minded.  He didn’t feel very free, not in this stiff, itchy suit.  He could barely move his arms.  Clearly, gentlemen didn’t do a lot of cattle roping in their fancy clothes.

Taking their seats again, some men began reaching for, and lighting, the cigars and cigarettes offered by one of the servants.  Will only smoked cigarettes he rolled himself, but he picked a fine-looking cigar, and, after clipping and lighting it, drew its rich smoke into his mouth.  A bottle holding some variety of spirits began to make its way around the table.

“Don’t mistake me, gentlemen,” Gough said, drawing on his own cigar, “I love my wife and her company, but there are some things a man simply cannot say to a woman.”

“I never talk of business to my Elizabeth,” someone said.  “Nor of sport, nor politics.”

“What do you talk about with her?” Will asked.  He poured himself a glass of dark wine and took a drink.  It tasted sweet and heavy.

Elizabeth’s husband thoughtfully studied his glass.  With a wry smile, he said, “She asks me how my day went; I say, fine, she tells me the children are well, and then we go upstairs later and she lifts her nightgown.”

Everyone, even the church man, laughed at this, and again, Will made himself join in, though he didn’t feel at all jolly.  Had Olivia’s husband spoken about her like this?  Had he and she talked together at all?  It seemed like, outside of thoroughly coarse subjects, Will and Olivia could talk about most anything.  But she was different from just about every other woman he knew, and that stirred him.

“So tell us, Coffin,” the reporter asked, “what are women in the Wild West like?”

“There’re all kinds of women,” Will answered, circumspect.  “Wives, teachers, farmers.”

“But what about the
wild
ones?” one of Gough’s associates asked, leaning forward.  “The demimondaine?”

Will glanced around at the men’s eager faces.  Seemed like everyone in England wanted to know about the scarlet side of life out West.  “We got plenty of ’em,” he said.  “Every town, no matter the size, has a cathouse.  There ain’t too many women west of the Mississippi, so we have to make do with what we’ve got.”