Wanton Angel (35 page)

“There is a lot of talk about you and Hutcheson, Bonnie, and I’m not sure I like it.”

I’ll bet you don’t,
Bonnie thought, but she managed to keep a straight face as she met his eyes. “That’s nothing new, Eli,” she said guilelessly. “People have been yammering about Webb and me from the first.”

Eli did not look appeased. “Is he still in your room?”

Bonnie wondered how Eli could have known about that and then remembered that he’d been with the men who brought Webb here the day he was beaten. “Of course,” she said sweetly. “Where else would he be? The only other bed in the place is Katie’s, and he’s much too big and muscular to lie on my rickety little settee.”

The subtle, breathy emphasis Bonnie had put on the words “big and muscular” had not escaped Eli. His face went ruddy and she half expected puffs of steam to rise out
of his collar. For all this, he did manage to speak in moderate tones. “I believe I’ll just look in on Hutcheson, see how he’s feeling. If you don’t mind, that is.”

Just then a timid little woman floated out of the shadows, like a specter, an onion in one hand and a potato in the other. Bonnie rang up the sale, her voice chiming just as musically as the bell on the cash register. “Mind? Why, Eli, of course I don’t mind. An injured man needs all the cheering up he can get.”

Bonnie felt Eli’s scalding glance, rather than saw it, and she smiled as his boot heels hammered up the inside stairs to the rooms above.

Tuttle entered the store, passing the onion-and-potato woman in the doorway, a cheerful grin on his face. Since the newspaper office had been destroyed, he’d been working full time helping to finish the new workers’ cabins, and the job seemed to agree with him. He was tanned and he’d filled out some, looking more the man and less the awkward boy.

“Afternoon, ma’am,” he said with a polite nod. “I’ve come for my reading lesson.”

Bonnie had returned to mourning her five thousand dollars, and her smile was gone. “Katie’s upstairs,” she answered sharply.

Tuttle looked hurt. Night after night, for weeks now, he’d sat at her kitchen table with Katie, laboring over lessons in penmanship, grammar and reading, and the image of him working so determinedly gave Bonnie a feeling of chagrin. She made herself smile, and Tuttle immediately brightened.

When Eli came back down the stairs, he was carrying both Rose Marie and her fancy life-size doll. “This place is a circus,” he said.

Bonnie did not care, at the moment, what his opinions might be. “Where do you think you’re going with my daughter?”

“Rose Marie is also
my
daughter,” Eli pointed out reasonably. “With your permission, I’d like to spend the evening with her.”

A sudden and horrible thought possessed Bonnie and made her round the counter in a hurry. It had just come back to her that Eli lived at Earline’s. “You are not taking my—our—child into that—that woman’s house!”

“I had no idea you disapproved of Genoa,” Eli said, pretending to puzzled injury.

Bonnie subsided. “You know very well that I wasn’t talking about Genoa. I was speaking of your—paramour.”

“My
what?”
The words came out of Eli’s mouth as a delighted hoot.

“I do not intend to elaborate,” Bonnie replied with cool disdain, “in the presence of an innocent child.”

Eli’s eyes lifted eloquently to the ceiling. “You don’t seem to mind doing other things in the presence of an innocent child. Why not elaborate?”

His jealousy did not seem quite so amusing now. It would be just like him, Bonnie reflected, to decide that she was not providing a fit environment for Rose Marie and take steps to gain legal guardianship. “I sleep on the settee,” she said lamely, her cheeks flaring. “I was only trying to nettle you before, because of what people are saying about you and Earline.”

“What are people saying about Earline and me?” Eli quizzed, and there was a mischievous note in his voice that might have earned him a sound slap across the face if he hadn’t been holding Bonnie’s child.

When Bonnie didn’t answer—sheer stubbornness kept her from it—he laughed. “I’ll bring Rose back after supper,” he said, and then he just walked out of the store, bold as you please, leaving Bonnie to stand staring after him in furious despair.

In a moment Eli came back. “Would you like to come along?” he asked distractedly, as though the thought had just descended upon him from on high. Perhaps it had.

Bonnie wasn’t about to quibble. She was tired and she’d had to give Forbes Durrant virtually all her money and she didn’t think she could bear another evening in that madhouse upstairs. Quick as a wink, she fetched her shawl, shouted to Katie that she was going out and locked up the store.

Walking along that way, with Eli carrying their daughter on one of his shoulders, gave Bonnie a good feeling. It was almost as though the three of them made up a family in the truest sense of the word.

But of course they weren’t really a family. There had been
a divorce, after all, and Kiley’s tragic death still stood between Bonnie and Eli, like a barrier. She was saddened, thinking of the little boy who should have been there with them.

“What’s the matter, Bonnie?” Eli asked quietly, as they started down the hill toward Genoa’s spacious house. “You look as though you’re about to cry.”

The whistle blew in the smelter yard, and somehow the sound added to Bonnie’s lonely mood. She could not answer Eli’s question honestly, though, because that would open wounds that weren’t fully mended. “I’m just tired, I guess,” she said. That was true enough.

Eli’s next words were completely unexpected ones, and they were spoken with a shyness Bonnie would never have suspected of him. “I’d like to show you the cabins one day soon. They’re almost finished now.”

Bonnie’s eyes slipped to Eli’s face and saw a rare expression of vulnerability there. Her seeing those cabins truly mattered to him, and she found that surprising, given the attention he’d allegedly been paying Earline Kalb of late. “I’d like that, Eli,” she said.

They went through Genoa’s open gate and up the cobbled driveway. Rose, spotting her beloved aunt in the doorway, demanded to be set on her feet, and Eli lifted her from his shoulder with a gruff chuckle. She went barreling toward Genoa, who was laughing, her arms outstretched.

“The union men are back in town,” Eli confided, as he watched his daughter and his sister embracing each other on the porch.

Bonnie stopped. Mr. Denning and his men had left after the flood and she had put them out of her mind. “I hadn’t heard,” she answered. “Do you think there will be more trouble?”

“There can always be more trouble, Bonnie.”

“It galls me that those hooligans got away with beating poor Webb nearly to death! The marshal has gone over and over what happened, but Webb can’t remember what his attackers looked like—”

Gently Eli’s hands gripped Bonnie’s arms. “Could we not talk about Hutcheson, please? Just this once?”

Bonnie smiled. Eli’s touch felt as good as walking beside him had earlier. “I’m sorry.”

To Bonnie’s complete and utter surprise, Eli bent his head and kissed her, just softly. “For what it’s worth, Bonnie,” he said, when the kiss was over and his lips were lingering a fraction of an inch from hers, “the rumors aren’t true.”

Bonnie knew that he was referring to the gossip concerning himself and Earline Kalb. “That’s good,” she said. “That’s very good.”

Eli took her hand in his and they walked toward Genoa’s house. For those few very precious moments, it was as if nothing had ever gone wrong between them.

T
HE PONY STOOD
nibbling at the trimmed grasses of Genoa’s lawn, a creature of splendor in its decorous saddle and bridle. As Rose approached it, in cautious wonder, her hand in Eli’s, the animal lifted its cocoa-brown head and neighed companionably.

Eli bent and lifted his daughter into his arms, then carried her closer to the pony. Tentatively, Rose reached out to touch the cream-colored mane, and the tiny mare nickered a greeting and tossed its head, bridle jingling.

Rose crowed with glee and clapped her hands. “Mine!” she cried.

Gently Eli set the little girl in the saddle. She looked both delighted and afraid as she gripped the pommel.

Eli took the reins in one hand and began leading the pony around and around, in an ever-widening circle. He looked every bit as enchanted as Rose did.

Bonnie stood watching with Genoa and an oddly subdued Lizbeth, and her feelings were mixed. Rose obviously loved the cocoa-brown pony, but there were other considerations—horses sometimes kicked people, or ran away with them, or threw them off into rocks or brambles. Bonnie’s own fear of the beasts made her start forward, a protest forming on her lips.

But Genoa stopped her by extending one arm. “Rose Marie is perfectly safe, Bonnie.”

Bonnie sighed. It was true. Eli was holding the reins while the pony followed docilely wherever he led. What could happen to Rose, with her father so near? “I believe I’d like a cup of tea now,” Bonnie said, on a long breath.

Genoa smiled at her. They were all replete, having just eaten a marvelous supper, but one didn’t have to be hungry to drink tea. “Isn’t Cocoa a lovely surprise?” the spinster trilled, referring, of course, to the pony, as she led the way back through the garden and the French doors.

The parlor was pleasantly cool. Genoa immediately went to the kitchen to ask Martha to prepare tea, while Bonnie and Lizbeth settled themselves in chairs.

At first Lizbeth’s reticence escaped Bonnie, for she was still thinking about the pony. Eli might have consulted her, she reflected angrily, before presenting their daughter with a potentially dangerous gift. And where would she keep a horse? Did he expect her to tether it to the privy behind the store? She sighed and determined to stop thinking about Eli and the creature, because there was nothing she could do about the actions of either.

It was then that she noticed that Lizbeth was sitting with her hands knotted together in her lap. Her normally pink and white complexion was pallorous and her pretty blond hair, though arranged as neatly as ever, seemed to droop in sympathy with her obviously flagging spirits.

“Why, Lizbeth,” Bonnie whispered, “what is troubling you? You look so sorrowful.”

When Lizbeth lifted her eyes to Bonnie’s face, they were filled with an odd mingling of challenge and despair. “It’s Forbes,” she said. “Did you know that he’s still obsessed with you, Bonnie?”

Bonnie had had quite enough of Forbes Durrant for one day, but she couldn’t very well abandon the subject of him when it was obviously of staggering importance to her friend. “That’s nonsense, Lizbeth,” she said firmly. “I am not your rival.”

“Oh, but you are,” Lizbeth insisted, though not in an unfriendly fashion. “I suppose it doesn’t really matter anyway. I could never marry a man like Forbes.”

“I shouldn’t think so,” agreed Bonnie, with a primness that was out of character for her. She wondered if the prevalent attitudes of the Friday Afternoon Community Improvement Club had somehow rubbed off on her, now that the members grudgingly patronized her mercantile.

Martha, Genoa’s longtime housekeeper, came in carrying a tea tray, temporarily interrupting the conversation. “Miss McKutchen has gone to the stables,” the plump woman informed Bonnie and Lizbeth, without ever looking at either of them. “She begs your indulgence.”

Bonnie smiled and shook her head, wondering what tangent had taken her sister-in-law as far as the stables, but her smile faded away as she took note of the misery in Lizbeth Simmons’s pretty face. “Dear me, you really care for Forbes, don’t you?”

Lizbeth made a fist and pounded the arm of her chair once, in a gesture of frustration. Agitated color glowed in her finely sculpted cheeks. “I do, but I could never countenance his manner of earning a living.” Accusing blue eyes sliced in Bonnie’s direction and pinioned her to the back of her chair. “Besides, he loves you.”

“He does not,” Bonnie insisted, because she didn’t know what else to say. Forbes had mentioned his feelings that day, during their confrontation over Jack Fitzpatrick’s debts, but he’d spoken in the past tense.

“Did you know he wept over your marriage to Eli McKutchen?” Lizbeth persisted.

Bonnie couldn’t imagine Forbes weeping over anything other than financial ruin. “I find that very hard to believe. However, if Forbes confided something like that to you—and he’s the only one who could possibly know—it would seem to demonstrate an amazing amount of trust on his part. Were Forbes to trust anyone with such an intimate confidence, he would certainly have to be in love with that person.”

Hope leaped in Lizbeth’s eyes but, before she could make any sort of reply, Genoa came bounding back into the parlor, her plain face alight. She was covered with cobwebs and dust, and her hair had bits of straw jutting out of it. If Bonnie hadn’t known better, she would have suspected her
sister-in-law of engaging in a romantic interlude while in the stables. She made a mental note to give Seth’s person a subtle inspection for straw and dust.

“I found it!” Genoa beamed.

“Found what?” Bonnie asked quizzically.

“The pony cart, of course. The one Grandfather bought for me when I was just a little older than Rose.” Genoa paused, happily shaking out her very proper black sateen skirts. “It was quite a task, pulling that cart all the way from the stables to the sideyard, but I accomplished it!”

Bonnie and Lizbeth exchanged amused looks, though Lizbeth still looked quite drawn and pale.

“You are quite as bad as your brother,” Bonnie said, “when it comes to indulging Rose Marie. She’ll be insufferable.”

Genoa pouted girlishly as she poured herself a cup of tea and sat down in a chair. A cloud of grit hovered around her. “Pooh,” she said.

Having no idea how to answer such a silly remark with dignity, Bonnie ignored it entirely and took another sip of her tea.

“I was just telling Bonnie that we’ll have to place an order for school supplies very soon,” Lizbeth lied brightly. “You can secure such things for us through your mercantile, can’t you, Bonnie?”