Waltzing In Ragtime (13 page)

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Authors: Eileen Charbonneau

BOOK: Waltzing In Ragtime
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Matthew Hart smiled slowly. “Why, Sidney, you trying to corrupt this country boy?”
 
 
Sidney Lunt looked down at him from the top step. “Matt, stop being ridiculous,” he called quietly. “I always use this door!”
“But you ain’t the hired hand.”
“And you’re hardly —”
The door in question opened and the sharp-eyed valet turned footman stared down at them, flanked by James and Dora Whittaker.
“Good evening, Sidney!” James Whittaker called. “Is that Matt?”
“Yes, sir. We chanced upon each other. Had ourselves a tour.”
“Well, that’s grand. Come inside and have a nightcap, will you?”
Dora Whittaker spoke before he could answer. “Mr. Hart. You did not join us for supper. Or inform us of this intention.”
“No, ma’am. I apologize.”
Her husband frowned. “Just so. This evening made me realize that you haven’t had much time to yourself since you came. We ought to discuss a regular day off. Say, Thursdays?” Sidney’s hand thumped Matthew’s back. “Come into the study,” James Whittaker invited them. “Tell me what you think of our city, Matt.”
“I’d best check on Olana, sir.” He nodded toward her mother. “If that’s all right with you, ma’am.”
“Has anyone paid you to consider my thoughts, Mr. Hart?” she demanded, before walking off.
“One of her headaches tonight,” her husband said softly.
 
 
“You do try,” Olana whispered. “With Mother, I mean.”
Matthew was startled by her voice, her position huddled on the stairs. She looked very young. He squatted beside her.
“Hey. You waiting up for me?”
“Mrs. Cole said not to worry. That heaven would protect you.”
He smiled. “Is that right?”
“I had a brother, Matthew.”
“I know, darlin’.”
“My parents do think about him. They do say his name.”
“You say it.”
“Leland. He would carry me sometimes. I used to hold onto him. Here.” She reached through his open vest, found his suspenders, held them just below his collarbone. He lowered his head, kissed the knuckles of her right hand. “We could have had great fun, the three of us,” she said softly.
“Remember your brother’s train?”
“Train?”
“I’ll show you where it was.”
He seemed baffled once he’d peered down the long passage that led to his third-floor rooms. Olana took his hand.
“Matthew, what’s the matter?”
He braved a look at her. “I usually go up the back stairs.”
“And —”
“And … I’m lost.”
She giggled.
“Second time today.” He growled. “How is it anybody needs this much room?”
She giggled again.
“Ain’t funny!”
“Sure it is,” she mimicked his accent, saying “sure” like “shore.” A smile made its way across his face. “There, that’s better,” she pronounced. “I thought I was the humorless one.”
“This is the right hallway?” he asked.
“Not hallway. This is a home Matthew, not a —” She caught herself before she said brothel. “Yes. This is the one.” She led him to the third door past the curve, then placed his hand under the smooth brass of the knob.
“Feel the circle scratched in?”
“Yes.”
“Our nurse carved it there. I used to have the same problem when this was our nursery — don’t tell!”
“If you won’t on me.”
“My lips are —” He never interrupted, not when he wasn’t angry. So it surprised her when his mouth descended, quickly, sweetly, over hers, spiced with a sprig of mint. “ … kissed,” she finished with the breath she had left.
He took her hand, pulling her into the room, then knelt down on the carpet. “Here, see the imprint?”
“Yes. A circle, no — an oval?”
“Exactly! Train tracks. Your brother Leland’s train.”
“I don’t remember.”
“Sure you do,” he insisted. “Touch where the tracks ran.
Clear to Istambul and back.” He put her fingers to the carpet. “Quiet, well oiled. A silver bell on the locomotive. Hear it? And passenger cars, a fancy one, just for you, and you’re inside, in a peacock blue coat, a hat that’s your little girl dream of a —”
“Matthew, stop!”
“I — I’m not doing this right. I don’t know where the train is. How can I find you?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your brother left you a gift. I have to find it. I promised.”
“Promised who?”
“It wasn’t the fever!”
“Are you ill?”
“Damnation, ’Lana, I thought you’d understand!”
“Don’t shout at me!”
“Mr. Hart, what is the meaning of this?”
Her mother stood in the doorway. Olana got to her feet. “Matthew asked me about the carpet, how it’s worn in an oval. I didn’t remember why. Do you remember, Mother?”
“You will kindly address Mr. Hart properly, and leave him the privacy of his rooms!”
“They’re my rooms, mine and Leland’s!” She did not take her eyes from her mother’s face. “There,” she said softly. “I said my brother’s name. I will not forget him, Mother, not even for you.”
Her father joined his wife in the doorway. Olana stepped toward him. “Where is the train now? I want it, Papa.”
Dora Whittaker’s face took on a gray look before she turned and left. James entered the nursery, his feet tracing the track’s remains. “So, there are still echoes of the Orient Express. Winnie’s got the train, darling,” he told his daughter. “She was his godmother, remember? Perhaps we should take a drive out to her.”
“Oh, Papa, could we? Aunt Winnie is such fun! And she lives on the ocean. Matthew, do you like the ocean?”
“What about your mother?”
“Oh, she never goes with us to Aunt Winnie’s.”
The ranger frowned. “’Lana. Your mother’s hurting.”
“Oh, she’ll write a letter to her African missionary. Or start a new committee. That will comfort her, won’t it, Papa?”
“I’m afraid we’re rather heartless in Matt’s eyes, Olana.”
 
 
Dora Whittaker was on her couch with her feet up, a cold compress across her eyes. Matthew carried the tray he’d intercepted from her maid. It gave him purpose, made it easier to enter the dark room.
“There,” she said tonelessly, pointing to the small table beside her couch. Matthew approached. “Let me help you,” he offered.
She hardly blanched. Nerves of her daughter, the ranger thought.
“Mr. Hart. I have not hired your services.”
“It’s your head, isn’t it?”
“How did you find my rooms?”
“Don’t punish anyone else for my transgression, ma’am.”
“Why not? You are immune from any punishment.”
“The tightness here,” he pointed to the line beside her mouth, then hovered a circling finger at her cheekbone. “And here? It’s muscular. You don’t need nightly laudanum, Mrs. Whittaker.”
“You surprise me,” she said, a heavy weariness in her tone. “Why don’t you have the opinion of the others, all except Mr. Moore — that it’s all the product of my nervous mind?”
“Try loosening your hairpins.”
“What?”
He smiled. “You sound like … I mean, Olana sounds like you. Just a few,” he coaxed. “Go on.”
She did, as if her hands were acting on their own.
“Good,” he said. “Now, if you’d kindly allow me access?”
“Access?”
“To your neck, ma’am.”
Her eyes never blinked, so close was her scrutiny, even through her pain. But she made no protest, so Matthew worked free the tiny buttons of her high black lace collar, then gently touched his fingertips to the back of her neck. He’d never felt
such knotting. But it didn’t keep her tongue still as he started to massage.
“Are you a phrenologist now as well, Mr. Hart?”
As well as what, he wanted to ask her, but exhaled instead. “No, Ma’am. It’s not your head, it’s your muscle I’m looking to ease. Here, packed up against your spine. I don’t know the words that will make it sound important, but I know where I am. I know what I’m doing. You’re safe with me, Mrs. Whittaker. Breathe easy, that’s the way.”
When she closed her eyes, he added his other hand’s fingers. “Better?” he asked softly.
“Yes,” she admitted.
“You can do it yourself. “Here, try.” He led her hand over where he’d massaged.
He felt suddenly awkward and useless here in her black and rose-colored room, where the pillars of white marble intersected wallpaper swirled with flowers, gilt. He backed into her desk, and a stack of correspondence scattered to the floor, catching her attention. Her hands left her massage.
“I’ve been working three days on those letters!”
“I’m sorry.”
“Leave them. Get out.”
He turned, faced three doors, forgot which one he’d entered by, and panicked into inertia. He finally forced himself to try one, then heard her voice, softened by amusement as he took the handle.
“Not that one.”
He tried another. It led to a closet.
“However did you get in here?”
He raked his hand through his hair. He wanted to tell her about a little boy with eyes as fierce as her own who’d made him come. But he only shrugged, cocking his head to one side, showing her, like a wolf challenged by a stronger one, how harmless he was.
He heard a gasp, then a stark, stricken whisper. “You are nothing like him,” she said.
He took the handle of the last door, turned and stared, amazed by how her room and its extravagances almost swallowed her completely.
“Ain’t hungering to be anybody else. And I got family of my own. Be going home to them soon,” he promised.
The long teakwood bench was in the center of a spiral of rocks of Eastern design. The sun had made a rare appearance. The children sat there. Even from her place in the tower, Winifred could tell Olana was complaining. About what? Her feet. The boy leaned over them, concerned. Why had she brought him here? Because her mother would not follow. Because her father liked the boy who’d hauled her in out of the snow so much he encouraged their intimacy.
But he should know more about women’s wiles, this one. He unlaced the shoes carefully, removed them. Olana leaned back as he began his massage. Through her thin cotton stockings he stroked, his palms against her heels, his fingers exploring her instep, toes, until even Winifred, at her age, felt a flush at her cheeks. Silly woman. Finally, he teased one long finger along the pad and, yes, Olana giggled softly. She shifted, nesting one foot into the deeper hollow of the other. Winnie saw the imprint of Olana’s toes, lined up in prim, aristocratic size order. Her niece sighed, kicked a little deeper into the, my, yes, increasing warmth of his thighs, before she drifted off to sleep. Poor boy. She’d left him in quite a state.
“Shit, ’Lana, I ain’t made of iron,” exploded from him softly,
before he drew up the train of her apricot silk dress, swaddled those feet in it, shoved them toward his knees. He leaned back, stretched an arm over the length of the bench’s back. There. Good boy, calm yourself. Now. If you will allow my dear Mr. Trap inside you? My. It was easy, with this one. Winifred suspected he was touched himself. She saw images of other women’s feet. Strong, purposeful, as expressive as hands. Roaming a shoreline bare, free. Beautiful women, she could tell from their feet. His thoughts of them were not contenting him. He was lost here and his heart held a raw ache. It was overwhelming even Mr. Trap.
The boy forced his breathing to lengthen. Good. Control. Where had he learned that? Winifred caught the scent of ceremonial tobacco. Indians. Around him. His brass buttoned army shirt bloodied with their taunting efforts to break him. Changing now, turning toward respect. Wait. He was sensing Mr. Trap’s presence. Impossible. Yes. He blocked it, turned toward her. Impudent boy. Strange? How dare he think her house strange! But there were his thoughts, as clear as a bell’s peal.
All beginnings, half-done middles, and not an end in sight. So strange. Details — beautiful, intricate details, but no larger picture, no structure. Why? Gables everywhere. Even here, on the outside, can’t count them all. Away. Shoreline. Face the shoreline, take comfort in its simplicity.
And he was doing exactly that, that was the worst of Winifred’s humiliation.
The two of them, there on the bench. Lovers. Male, female. Olana’s peaceful sleep, the boy’s mind lost in the essence of the sand and waves lent the garden a symmetry, a wholeness. Complete. No. Not complete. Complete meant over, and over meant death.
Winifred raced down the spiral steps of the tower, holding the scream of panic inside. She approached them. He sensed her presence, being a tracker. Another gift. From another woman. Poor Olana. This man was full of women.
“You’re thinking my neice has a mad streak in her family, Mr. Hart?”
Matthew turned. The woman was pugnacious in stance, like her brother, but with hair as white as gossamer, where James Whittaker’s was steely gray. Small but hearty, vibrant, smelling of the salt-sea air, like Matthew’s grandmother. And trying to pick a fight like her, too.
“No, ma’am.”
“No? But my house makes you dizzy.”
“It does that,” he admitted.
“I will die when the house is complete. A clairvoyant told me.”
He faced the structure again. “Appears to me you’ll outlive us all then.”
Her chin jutted forward, even as her eyes avoided his. He’d offended her. “I like the window with the roses,” he tried.
“In the front hall? A French artist created that — he knew the ancient methods, he knew how to get a blue close to that in the cathedral at
Chartres
!”
Matthew glanced at the clear sky, adjusted Olana’s umbrella so it would continue to protect her face from the slanting afternoon sun. When he looked up at her aunt, the small woman’s eyelids were flickering strangely, though her voice remained calm.
“Mr. Trap is getting an image. Gunfire. Much gunfire. But death later. From a single wound, a few drops of blood — here.” She touched his chest lightly. But he felt the touch through his clothes, skin, muscles, ribs. To his heart.
“Mr. Trap’s got me mixed up with my grandfather, ma’am, the one who died before my mother was born.”
“Oh? I beg your pardon. That sometimes happens in visions. With close relatives.”
“That’s all right. I’m used to it.”
“It … it was a very peaceful death. Perhaps you should tell your grandmother that.”
“I expect she knows, ma’am. She was there.”
“I see.”
He grinned, delighting in the fact that he’d amazed her, for once.
“How is he connected to you, this grandfather?”
Matthew shrugged. “I favor him, so I’m always in his shadow.”
“The shadow of death. Yes. Were you afraid — did you see death when the bear had you?”
“He never had me, Miss Whittaker. If he had, I wouldn’t be here talking with you, but chatting with that grandfather.”
Persistent woman. Was it true, that feeling he’d had that she was invading his thoughts? She wasn’t going to stop until she got what she wanted. What did she want?
“What were you thinking of, child?”
He blinked. “Thinking, ma’am? When?”
“When you faced the bear!”
He was about to say he didn’t remember when it came back, whole, almost as if he were living the moment again. “I was thinking about ’Lan … Olana, laughing at me. On account of I was always holding my wilderness up — as perfect, you know? And here I was about to be devoured by my own perfection. The notion of that was funny … but I wouldn’t be able to laugh with her, if he killed me. That seemed a shame.”
“No fear?”
“Oh, there was plenty of that too.”
She approached. Her hands trembled as she patted his shoulder. “Do you love my niece, Mr. Hart?”
Matthew thought of the boy Leland and his questions. Ran in this family, questions. He looked toward the sea. Were there any seals out there? “It doesn’t matter.”
“Nothing will come of it?” The woman spoke his own thought. Then laughed. “Do you really think nothing further is destined after all you two have been up to already?”
Her words were like nettles in his skin. He was grateful when Olana stirred, opened her eyes.
“Yes, do wake up, you silly girl,” her aunt commanded. “Keep a firm hold on this one. He lavishes more affection on your feet than most men do on any three mistresses! Now. To work. Leland’s train. It started out in Olana’s guest room. But her mother found it there once and was in bed three days over it. I moved it to the attic, where it was damaged in the spring
rains of ‘91. So I sought to restore it under the healing power of the pyramid turret … before it was replaced by the octagon tower. Oh, bother, that still only takes us to ’96.”
 
 
“Aunt Winnie likes you, Matthew,” Olana told him as they walked through the garden in the swirling twilight mist.
He shrugged.
“Don’t make light of it, she’s —”
He stopped, took her elbow. “I want you to listen to me, now. I’m a ranger, at the park.”
“I know that, Matthew.”
“What I mean is, it’s the only thing I’ve ever been any good at. I’m descended from the poorest people of the Georgia hill country. I never even held on to much of the gold I dug out of our claim in the Klondike. Never went to school, except at my mother’s knee. I’m not ashamed of any of this, but your aunt’s got me mixed up with my mother’s daddy, your parents are battling over me taking Leland’s place. ’Lana, I’m not your brother come back, you understand?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“And I don’t have any place here. You’re well now. Better than well. Vibrant. Thriving —”
What was he saying? Her breasts rose in response. It was so easy to imagine them in his hands, nipples responding to the pull of his tongue. He turned away. “’Lana,” he summoned quietly. “My place is with the trees. They need me. They need my protection.”
“Yes,” she agreed again. “And you’re not angry with Aunt Winnie, or Papa, or even Mother because you didn’t say ‘ain’t’ once. But you are working for your trees here, Matthew, when you suffer Papa’s cigar smoke and friends, and tell them about the park, about the land it needs added to stay in balance.”
“Have you been listening at the keyholes?”
“And at the dinners, and parties. And in the solarium, with Sidney. Who will never call you a Cossack again.”
“I’m that tiresome?”
“Purposeful. Let me straighten your collar. They’ll be calling us in to supper soon.”
Matthew suffered her hands on him again. If only he could have his trees, his family, and this suffering, all. He looked down into her dark, intelligent eyes, smiled, wishing he could work up some anger to replace his longing to feel the luminous skin that shone through the web of soft ivory lace placket of her bodice.
She patted his collarbone. “Done, Mr. Hart,” she pronounced.
“Thank you.”
“Oh, Matthew, be patient,” she said, a little of her aunt’s annoyance in her tone. “No one will hold you after Christmas.”
He faced the sea again. She was right. He was being a damned nuisance about a job he’d agreed to. He was being paid double his year’s wages at the park besides — enough to fix up the place by the sea come spring, maybe even buy a doll for Possum.
Again. That feeling that his thoughts were being invaded. Shit. Get out of my head. “’Lana? Who is this Mr. Trap?”
“Mr. Trap? Aunt Winnie didn’t introduce you to Mr. Trap already, did she? Matthew, you are in her good graces! He’s imaginary. Something like Aunt Winnie’s male half.”
“Her —”
“He does all the things she can’t — reads minds, travels through time and place — down the Nile and up Mount Kilimanjaro. Oh Matthew, don’t look so grim … he’s a harmless diversion for the dear old thing. Mr. Trap will tell her where Leland’s train is, wait and see!”
Matthew stared up at the conflicting lines of the slate and tile roof, of the slow moving workmen packing up the tools of their never-ending labor for the day.

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