The Gamble (I) (49 page)

Magnolias. Tulip trees. Spanish moss. The very words accelerated her heartbeat. But what accelerated it even more was the realization that with each passing mile she was being borne closer and closer to Scott. Would he be there at the station? What would he be wearing? Would Willy be with him? Whatever would she say to him? What did a woman say to a man to whom she’d confessed her love but from whom she’d received no similar response?

The conductor weaved his way along the aisle, announcing, “Next stop, White Springs. White Springs, Florida.” He paused a moment, touched the bill of his cap and said to Agatha, “Enjoy those tulip trees, ma’am.”

“Yes, I... I will,” she replied breathily, surprised to find that she could speak at all. As the train began slowing she was deluged with a mixture of silly concerns:
Is my hat on straight?
(But there was no hat; she’d come bareheaded in deference to his wishes.)
Is my dress wrinkled?
(Of course it was wrinkled; she’d been riding in it since she’d left home.)
Should I have worn the blue one?
(The blue one! The blue one was a dairy maid’s dress compared to the one she’d made for the governor’s tea.)
If he kisses me hello, where shall I put my hands?
(If he kissed her hello, she’d be doing well to remember she even had hands!)
Should I ask him immediately why he’s brought me here?
(Oh, Agatha, you’re such a priss! Why don’t you try to be more like Violet?)

After all her concerns, she stepped from the train to discover Scott wasn’t there to meet her. Disappointment turned to relief and relief back to disappointment. But there were hack and baggage lines to transfer passengers and their luggage from the depot to the hotels. So many hacks! So many hotels! So many people!

She signaled to a Negro driver who pulled up and tipped his wide straw hat.

“Aftuhnoon.”

“Good afternoon.”

He got down with a great lack of haste and stowed her trunk and bandbox in the boot, then shambled back to the side of the rig. He wore maroon felt carpet slippers on misshapen feet. His legs were bowed, and his lips swollen.

“Where to?”

“The Telford Hotel.”

“De Telfund. Sho’ ‘nuff.”

She sat behind him on a cracked black leather seat, while a clip-clopping white mare moved over the sandy streets with no more hurry than his driver. Agatha’s head swung left and right, trying to take it all in. An offensive odor pervaded the air but she seemed to be the only one aware of it. Well-dressed ladies and gentlemen strolled everywhere, crossing streets and hotel verandas, along shaded paths all seeming to lead in one direction. A bunch of mounted men with guns on their shoulders and quail hanging from their
saddles followed a pack of hounds down the street. The carriage passed a sign that read,
HUNT CLUB—HOUNDS FOR HIRE.
A woman in a cane-backed wheelchair crossed the street behind them, pushed by a portly man in a beaver top hat. A band of laughing men with fishing equipment strode toward them with creels strapped over their shoulders. Everybody seemed to be playing.

“Sir?” she called her driver.

“Ma’am?” He half turned as if he could crane no farther around. His neck was crosshatched with furrows deep enough to plant seeds in, had it been made of earth instead of skin.

“I’ve... I’ve never been here before. What is this place?”

“Minnul springs, ma’am,” he replied, the words so abbreviated her brow furrowed.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Minnul springs. Healin’ watuh.”

“Oh... mineral springs.” So that was what smelled like rotten eggs.

“’S’right, ma’am. Rich folk come, play some, res’ some, soak in d’ watuh some. Go ‘way feelin’ fine as a frog hair.” He chuckled and returned to his driving. Within three minutes they drew up before an impressive three-story white edifice with a deep front veranda where ladies and gentlemen sat on wicker chairs and sipped from tall glasses.

“Telford, ma’am,” the old man announced as he backed down from the driver’s seat with arthritic slowness. With equal slowness he fetched her trunk and bandbox from the boot and delivered them inside the busy lobby.

“Be twen’-fi’e cen’, ma’am,” he said, returning, shifting his hat brim left and right, as if scratching his temples with it.

“I beg your pardon.”

“Be twen’-fi’e cen’,” he repeated.

“I... I’m sorry.”

A familiar deep voice drawled near her ear. “I believe the fare is twenty-five cents, ma’am.” She had never before experienced such a stirring reaction at the sound of a human
voice. She snapped around and there he was, smiling down at her with familiar brown eyes, a pair of familiar dimples, a wonderfully familiar mouth... and a totally strange moustache.

“Scott,” she could only think to say because her breath was short, her head light, and she felt curiously weak.

He looked tropical, in a nankeen suit as pale as bleached bone, a matching straw hat with a wide curved brim, and a black band that matched his collar-length hair, eyebrows, and the new moustache. His waistcoat was tight, molding his ribs above the twinkling gold watch chain that spanned its two pockets. At his throat he wore an ascot of striped silk—white on wheat, pierced by a single pearl stud.

“Hello, Gussie.” He took both her gloved hands in his bare ones and squeezed hard while they smiled at each other with wide, bold gladness.

He realized in a flashing moment how much he’d missed her. And that she’d worn no hat, and that her hair was as beautiful as always, and her face as becoming, her smile as rare. And that her breasts appeared ripe, her breath hard-driving within the boned, high-necked dress she’d made for the governor’s tea. And that his heart was thudding to beat hell.

“Sorry I missed the train, but I wasn’t sure which one you’d be on.”

“It’s all right. I’ve caught a hack.”

Reminded that the driver waited, he released her hands to reach in his pocket. “Ah, the fare. Twenty-five cents, is it?”

“Yessuh.”

He paid double that amount and the driver nodded twice while thanking him. Then Scott turned back to Agatha and retrieved both her hands. “Let me look at you.” When he had, for so long her cheeks turned pink, he said, “No hat. Thank you.”

She bobbed her head and laughed self-consciously, then lifted it to find his grin as delectable as ever and the scent of tobacco still marking him as the one she’d remember out of thousands.

“Thank heavens nothin’s changed,” he said.

She assessed him in return. “I can’t say the same for you.”

“What? Oh, this?” He touched the moustache briefly, then took her hand again. “Got lazy and left off shavin’ awhile.”

It was an obvious lie. The remainder of his face was shiny from a fresh blading, and the precise black moustache was trimmed as if to military specifications. She loved it immediately.

“Very raffish,” she approved.

“I was aimin’ for refined.” But he was pleased that she liked it.

“Possibly raffishly refined,” she concluded, and they laughed lightheartedly, then stared at each other again, ignoring the hotel bustle that continued around them while their joined hands hung between them.

He squeezed her fingers, hard. “You look wonderful,” he said.

“So do you.”

They stared some more. Then Gandy laughed, as if his cup of joy had just run over.

She laughed, too—there was no controlling it when a heart was this happy. Then she found it impossible to look into his eyes any longer. “Is Willy here?” She glanced around.

“No, just us.” Again their gazes locked. They stood among bellboys and hack drivers, women and men with children in tow, and a trio of the quail hunters making their way toward the kitchen with their unplucked supper in hand. Yet it seemed as if Scott had spoken the truth: just them. The flurry around them receded and they basked in their reunion. He changed the position of their hands, lifting hers until their palms matched, then meshing his fingers between hers and squeezing. Their absorption in each other continued inordinately until finally Scott seemed to realize it, freed her, and cleared his throat.

“Well... uh... I take it you haven’t checked in yet.”

“No.”

“Let’s do that.”

Let’s?
His ambiguity left her with a feeling of palpitating uncertainty as he escorted her to the desk, watched her sign in, then took the key. But the room she was given was private, not even on the same floor as his.

“I arrived yesterday,” he explained. “Mine is on the third, yours is on the second, so you only have t’ climb one flight.”

But what a flight—triple-wide steps with heavy oak railings; a landing with an enormous oval window bearing a leaded spider web design; a sprawling fern on a pedestal table, then more stairs with their rich scarlet runner overhung by double-bracketed gaslights.

“It’s breathtaking, Scott. The most beautiful place I’ve ever been in.”

“Wait till you see Waverley,” he replied.

She seemed to float up the remainder of the stairs. But she didn’t ask when. Not yet. The anticipation was too heady.

“You’re still living there?”

“Yes.” He leaned to put the key to the lock.

“And the others—Jube and all the rest?”

The door swung back. “They’re there, too. We’re turnin’ Waverley into a resort hotel. Your room, ma’am.” He ushered her inside with a light touch on her elbow. The moment her toes touched the thick Aubusson rug she forgot everything else.

“Ohhh, Scott!” She turned in a circle, looking up, then down. “Oh, my.”

“You like it?”

“Like it? Why, it’s magnificent!”

Scott draped an elbow on a high footpost of the brass bed, tossing the key, watching her scan the room a second time, enjoying her smile, her delight. She moved to one of the twin windows overlooking the street, touched the rose-colored overdraperies and the white Austrian drapes behind them, the silky wallpaper with its tiers of trellised rosebuds. Turning slowly, her gaze passed the lacy fern on its three-legged pedestal, the glass washbowl with its rose design in red on white, the matching water dispenser with its brass spigot, the drinking glass beside it, the bed with
its woven counterpane of shell-pink and neatly folded quilt over the footrail, just in front of Scott.

Her eyes—green as the leaves of the fern with the sun glowing through them—stopped when they reached his. She clasped her hands, thumb knuckles pressing her breastbone. Her smile dissolved into an expression that made him want to leave his post at the foot of the bed and take her by both arms and feel his mouth moving over hers. Instead, he stood as he was.

“I cannot possibly allow you to pay for all this.” She stood still and prim with her white gloves carefully placed.

“Why?”

“It wouldn’t be seemly.”

“Who will know?” Unspoken came the question:
Who will know anything we choose to do in this room?
For a moment it seduced them both.

Having completed her study of the room, she realized the most breathtaking thing in it was Scott Gandy in his tailored tropical suit with the vest that fit his chest much as her glove fit her trembling hand, and his intense dark eyes leveled upon her from beneath the brim of the finely woven planter’s hat. And the new moustache that drew her attention time and again to his mouth.

“I will. You will,” she replied, unsmiling.

Muscle by muscle, he drew himself away from the bedpost, unsmiling, too. “Sometimes you’re too rigid with yourself, Agatha.” He had taken a single step toward her when the bellboy spoke from the doorway.

“Trunks here.”

Disappointed, Gandy turned, forcing a lightness to his tone. “Ah, good. Bring ‘em in. Put ‘em here.” He tipped the bellboy, who left the door open as he went out. But the interruption had broken the spell. When Gandy turned back to Agatha she was strolling the perimeter of the room, carefully keeping her eyes on things other than him.

“The room’s already been paid for, Gussie.”

“I shall reimburse you, then.”

“But it was my invitation.”

“Why?” She stopped strolling, facing him from the diagonal corner of the bed. “I mean, why here? If Waverley is a
hotel, then why the Telford in White Springs, Florida?”

He expelled a breath and consciously brought his grin back into place. “Because I remembered that you said you’d never been swimmin’. What better place t’ learn than in a mineral spring of the first magnitude?”

“Swimming!” She pressed her chest. “You brought me all this distance so I could go swimming?”

“Don’t look so surprised, Agatha. It’s not just a pothole in a Kansas creek.
First magnitude
means the springs spout thirty-two thousand gallons of water an hour, and when you hit those bubbles you’ll feel like you’re floatin’ in champagne.”

As if she were doing so now, she laughed. “But I’ve never even seen champagne, much less floated in it.”

“Looks exactly like spring water, but tastes much worse. Oh, by the way.” He pointed to the spigoted dispenser and the drinking glass beside it. “Be sure you drink plenty of the water while you’re here. They see to it y’ have an ample supply in your room at all times. And they claim it does all kinds o’ miraculous things t’ your body. Cures gout, goiter, colic, constipation, cretinism, corns, catarrh, dandruff, and deafness.
And
makes the blind t’ see and the lame t’ walk.”

She was smiling as he began, but when he’d finished, the last three words lingered as if they’d been repeated aloud.

“Does it really?” she commented quietly, dropping her gaze.

He came around the bed to stand before her. “Yes, really.” He lifted her chin with the tip of the key and forced her to look at him. “I thought it would be good for you, Gussie. And I wanted a chance t’ talk t’ you... alone. There’s no privacy around Waverley. People underfoot everywhere.”

His dark eyes refused to waver from hers. The key was cold and sharp. Her heartbeat was unsteady. Gazing into his eyes, she felt the unwanted weight of propriety pressing hard upon her vitals and knew if he’d brought her here to seduce her, she would have to say no. Now that she was here, in this private bower where they answered to no one but themselves, she realized she couldn’t settle for an illicit liaison, no matter how strong her feelings for Gandy. When
he reached for her wrist, her heartbeats swelled to the point where they caused an actual pain in her chest. But he only placed the key within her gloved palm, then folded her fingers over it and stepped back, dropping her hand.