Wanton Angel (40 page)

Eli sat astraddle one of the cabin roofs, shirtless in the sun, nailing shingles into place with a force well in excess of that required by the task. He smashed his left thumb and cursed.

Just then Seth’s head popped into view over the edge of the roof, his red muttonchop whiskers wriggling with suppressed amusement. The lawyer’s expression immediately turned serious when the ladder beneath his feet threatened to topple.

Eli spoke around the side of his injured thumb, which ached fiercely. “I suppose I owe the pleasure of this visit to your continuing fascination with my stupidity?”

Seth grappled worriedly with the ladder for a moment and then scrambled up onto the roof. He was clearly sweltering in his woolen suit, and he tugged at his starched collar with one finger. “Your stupidity does seem fathomless, I must agree,” he said, gaining his footing with some difficulty and then gripping his lapels in a sporting fashion.

Seth looked like a mountain climber who had just conquered a peak, and Eli would have laughed if his thumb hadn’t been throbbing with pain.

“Did you climb all the way up here, risking life and limb, I might add, to discuss my regrettable lack of intelligence?”

Seth seemed to be enjoying his manly pose. He pushed back the sides of his suitcoat and thrust his thumbs into his vest pockets. If his red hair hadn’t been so wiry, the wind would no doubt have ruffled it in a dashing manner. “I’ve made my opinions on that quite clear, I daresay,” he finally got around to answering. “My purpose in making this death-defying ascent was simply to tell you that the union people are demanding another meeting with you. Immediately. Please take your thumb out of your mouth—I find that mannerism most distracting.”

Eli stopped pandering to his injured digit and frowned. “Another meeting?” he muttered, with a complete lack of enthusiasm. “You’d think those goons would have gone on to greener pastures by now.”

“They will remain in Northridge, I think, until they have gotten what they want,” Seth replied. “They’re a tenacious lot, I’ll say that for them.”

Eli took another batch of nails from the carpenter’s apron he wore, holding them in his lips the way a tailor would hold pins. He thought of the beating Webb Hutcheson had taken for his stand against the Brotherhood of American Workers and scowled. God knew he had no special fondness for Hutcheson, but an injustice was an injustice, and the bastards behind the attack had gotten off scot free—so far. Eli spoke around the nails jutting out of his mouth. “I don’t understand why they want to meet with me again. I’ve stated my terms and, if they have any business, it has to be with the men themselves.”

Seth cleared his throat in a way that Eli had come to regard as ominous. “I’ve told them that repeatedly. Still they persist.” The lawyer paused and his color heightened. “Eli, the Brotherhood has implied that there might be more violence if you don’t agree to meet with them. Frankly, I’m afraid for your family.”

Eli let the nails fall from his lips and they rolled down the
half-shingled roof, forgotten. “They made an actual threat?”

Seth slipped a little and then righted himself. He was no longer making any effort to appear debonair. “Not directly. But reference was made to—well, Mr. Denning inquired after Bonnie and Rose Marie, and my own Genoa as well—in a manner I didn’t quite like.”

“What kind of manner?” Eli demanded in a low voice.

Seth sighed. “It was all very solicitous and polite. Nonetheless, it was my impression—and I confess that it is a subjective impression—that we were being warned. Reminded, perhaps, that the delegation from the Brotherhood is lodging at the Union Hotel and that the proximity of that establishment to Mrs. McKutchen’s mercantile allows them to monitor her activities with some degree of accuracy.”

Eli reached behind him for his shirt and struggled into it. He saw red as he made his way swiftly down the ladder, and he paced as he waited for Seth to follow, his fingers fumbling over the buttons of his shirt as he moved.

“Calm down,” Seth admonished, when he too had reached the ground. “I may have misunderstood, you know. Mr. Denning might not have meant to threaten anyone.”

Eli ran a hand through his sweat-dampened hair and let out a long breath. “So help me, if those pockmarked sons of bitches so much as approach my family—”

Seth was annoyed and he didn’t bother to hide the fact. “Your concern is somewhat belated, isn’t it? You married Bonnie last night, after all, and then you ignited a virtual holocaust of gossip by spending the night—”

“Are we back on that?!” Eli shouted, striding past gaping workers and their wives toward the buggy Seth had brought to the building site. He sprang into the seat, and the rig was already moving when the lawyer managed to climb inside.

“Yes!” Seth bellowed back, taking out his handkerchief and mopping his brow. “You saw fit to force Bonnie into marriage and then you subjected her to a public humiliation that was, in my view, most uncalled for!”

“I don’t give a damn about your view!” Eli roared, as the buggy careened onto the road leading into Northridge proper.

“Mrs. McKutchen in no way deserved—”

Eli stood up in the buggy, like a Roman in a chariot, and promptly smacked his head against the metal framework supporting the rig’s bonnet. He sat down again, cursing, and tried to come to terms with the fact that the nag hitched to the buggy was no racer. “I don’t need you to tell me what I’ve done wrong, Seth,” he said in a somewhat calmer tone of voice. “Believe me, I had all night to think about it.”

“I wouldn’t blame Bonnie if she never spoke to you again!” Seth railed, his eyes fixed on the rutted road ahead. “Indiscretions in a city the size of New York are one thing—in a backwater burg such as this, they are quite another!”

Despite his anxiety to reach the Union Hotel and personally throttle one Mr. Denning, Eli drew back on the reins and brought the horse and buggy to an ominous halt. “My wife seems to have quite a champion in you, my friend,” he said evenly. “Is there some point in this sermon of yours or are you just enjoying the sound of your own voice?”

“Blast!” bellowed Seth. “Sometimes I think your skull must be made of iron ore!”

Eli was seething, though he gave the reins a conservative snap and drove at a much more sedate pace. “It’s none of your business, Seth,” he said, through teeth clenched so tightly that his jaws ached, “but I’ll tell you anyway. I didn’t marry one woman and then spend the night rolling around in the hay with another. Is that clear?”

Seth was struggling to regain his composure. He checked both cufflinks and tugged at his insufferably neat suitcoat. “No one would ever guess that from your behavior,” he said indignantly. “Least of all Mrs. McKutchen herself.”

Eli had a headache, a sudden pounding headache. He had been a fool and he’d spent the night suffering for it, but he would have towed Hem Fenwick’s ferry across the river by his teeth before admitting that to Seth. Inwardly he sighed. Only one person’s opinion mattered to him, and that was Bonnie’s. He would have to swallow his pride and apologize to her if he ever hoped to have any peace.

Right now there was no time to think up pretty words of contrition. He had the Brotherhood to deal with. By sheer
strength of will, Eli forced his headache into remission and drove all thoughts of Bonnie from his mind.

Upon reaching the Union Hotel, he left the horse and buggy to Seth and strode across the wooden porch and in through the open doorway. At the desk, he demanded Mr. Denning’s room number and was informed by a nervous clerk that the official was having a late breakfast in the dining room.

Eli turned and stormed into that spacious chamber, his eyes sweeping the room and finally coming to rest on the face he sought. Mr. Denning sat at a table near the front windows, surrounded by a half dozen of his compatriots.

With a smile, he dabbed his mouth with a linen table napkin and then stood up. “Mr. McKutchen. This is a pleasant surprise.”

Eli crossed the room in a few strides, his hands itching to grasp Denning by the lapels and shake the bastard until his teeth rattled. Luckily, Seth materialized at his side and injected a pleasant “Remember your temper, Eli.”

The trained apes sitting around the table looked eager for a fight, and Eli longed to oblige them, but he knew that he needed to keep his wits about him. If Seth’s instincts were right, and they usually were, Bonnie, Genoa and Rose Marie might be in very real danger.

“Sit down, sit down,” enjoined Denning, as though he and Eli were old and dear friends.

Eli suppressed an urge to hurl the offered chair through the bay windows and sat down in it instead. Seth appropriated a chair from a nearby table and took a seat beside his employer.

“You wanted a meeting, Denning,” Eli said. “Here I am.”

Denning smiled warmly, though the expression in his eyes was as cold as a polar bear’s ass. He took a fat cigar from the inside pocket of his suitcoat and bit off the tip. “Cuban,” he said, as if he thought Eli gave a damn.

Eli scowled, impatient.

“Like Consolata Torrez,” Denning added, almost as an afterthought.

Eli hadn’t thought of Consolata in months; it was Seth who saw that bank drafts were sent to her with discreet
regularity. The reminder of the girl who some years earlier had risked her life and probably saved his came as a stunning surprise.

“According to my research,” Denning went on pleasantly, “Miss Torrez is now enrolled in a convent school in Havana, having been disowned by her uncle. How old is she? Seventeen? Eighteen?”

Eli closed his eyes.

Seth had regained his equilibrium. “I fail to see what Miss Torrez has to do with your efforts to enlist our workers in your organization,” he said evenly.

Denning gave a long and highly dramatic sigh and then completely ignored what Seth had said. “She saw you through a bout of yellow fever—am I correct, Mr. McKutchen? At considerable risk to her own safety, in fact, she protected you from the Spanish forces until you could be taken to an American field hospital and then transported back to the United States. Of course, it goes without saying that a wealthy and influential man such as yourself, Mr. McKutchen, would be deeply—grateful.”

The goons seated around the table snickered into their coffee cups.

“I repeat my question, Mr. Denning,” Seth said forcefully. “What does Miss Torrez’s kindness have to do with the Brotherhood of American Workers?”

A waitress brought coffee for both Seth and Eli. Eli had no memory of ordering the stuff and simply stared at it, making no move to lift the cup to his mouth.

“Oh, I think Miss Torrez has everything to do with our cause, Mr.—Callahan, wasn’t it?” Denning was in fine form. At Seth’s irritated nod, he went on. “Mr. McKutchen was in fact so grateful to the young lady—”

“Enough,” Eli broke in, his voice a low rumble that grated in his throat. “You’ve made your point, Denning.”

“That’s good, Mr. McKutchen. I would certainly hate to see your second marriage to the lovely Bonnie go the way of the first. Since things are already somewhat shaky between you, if rumor is correct—”

Eli’s hold on his temper was tenuous, though his grasp on Denning’s lapels was anything but. Glaring into the mournful, moon-shaped face, ignoring angry mutterings among
the man’s cohorts, Eli issued his warning with deceptive softness. “Persuade my men to join your union if you can, Mr. Denning. Tell the world about what happened in Cuba. But mark my words, you smarmy bastard: If any harm comes to my wife, my daughter or my sister, I will find you, as God is my witness, and when I’m through with you, you won’t be fit for anything beyond singing soprano in a church choir.”

Denning paled, then went ruddy with stifled rage.

Eli smiled poisonously, released his hold on Denning’s coat, and stood up. Furious, the bruisers in bowler hats rose from their chairs, too, all six of them spoiling for battle.

Much to Eli’s disappointment, Denning ordered them to sit down again.

K
ATIE WATCHED RESENTFULLY
as the dressmaker took Bonnie’s measurements for a gown of scarlet silk. The fabric lay, resplendent and quite out of place, across the top of Forbes Durrant’s new desk.

“I don’t see what’s so wrong in my dancing the hurdy-gurdy,” the girl complained, her chin cupped in her hands. “If it’s proper for you, why is it improper for me?”

Bonnie sighed. “We’ve been all over that, haven’t we?”

The dressmaker finished her measuring and held a length of the scarlet fabric across Bonnie’s bodice, muttering and shaking her head. “Not your color, though some would say scarlet is fitting—”

Bonnie fixed the seamstress with a withering glare. “Indeed?” she challenged.

The plump woman averted her eyes. Apparently she did not wish to pursue the point. “I’ll do my best to have this done by tonight, but I can’t guarantee a proper fit.”

Bonnie, who had stripped to her underclothes for the measuring, hastened back into her own modest dress. She wished that she’d just dragged Katie out of the Brass Eagle by the hair, if it had come to that, and never agreed to take the girl’s place among the hurdy-gurdies. Repaying Eli for the humiliation of having the whole town know he’d spent
his wedding night with Earline Kalb didn’t seem quite so important now. In fact, it seemed downright pointless.

“You seem so sad, ma’am,” Katie commiserated with real concern, as she buttoned up the back of Bonnie’s dress. “A bride should be happy.”

The dressmaker wound the scarlet silk into a bulky bolt and left Forbes’s office, and the moment she’d closed the door behind her, Katie gave a gasp and turned white as milk. “A bride! Oh, ma’am, what’s Mr. McKutchen going to say about all this? Surely he’ll not want his own wife dancing—”

Bonnie didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The whole situation was a horrible muddle. “I’m not sure he’ll care one way or the other,” she confided quietly.

“Not care?” Katie echoed. “Mr. McKutchen? Why, his eyes just about burn holes in his face whenever he looks at you, ma’am. And he married you again, didn’t he?”

“It wasn’t a marriage in the true sense of the word, Katie,” Bonnie said with as much dignity as she could manage, and somewhere inside herself she found a spare smile. “None of this need concern you, in any case. You’ll like living at Genoa’s house on a permanent basis, won’t you?”