“Elizabeth is acceptable.”
Zachary grinned. He liked the hint of pink that washed over her cheeks as she waved an airy hand over the wash of buildings.
“Peter Minuit found this land some two hundred and fifty years ago, when he weaseled Manhattan from the Canarsie Indians. It’s hard to believe there were steep hills and rushing streams and heavily wooded glades and glens, and bobcats be found prowling the cliffs from the East River. Did I tell you how refreshing it is to get out of the ballroom? I abhor those men, and all their false platitudes. With you, I can have a real conversation.”
“I can imagine the tediousness of being pursued by so many,” he teased.
She wrinkled her pert nose like there was a bad smell. “Are you kidding?”
“Can’t believe you lost your Havemeyer admirer?”
She snorted. “My allergy to orchids? Genius. Poor fellow wet his pants, running out the door. Oh, and you should have heard the dreadful excuses he made for waking up beneath the flowerpots in our conservatory.”
“I gather your conversations with your other admirers were stimulating?”
She took a step from him and then whirled, her frown beholding an endearing and formidable concentration. “The steel magnate’s heir’s brain operates on a level we mortals cannot comprehend.”
“And the duke?”
She shook her head sadly. “Is a member of a huge and formidable tribe of idiots whose authority,” she dropped the tone of her voice to mimic a British condescending aristocrat, “in human matters is dominant and controlling. His occupation is not restrained to any singular topic or action but encompasses the whole. It’s his duty to have the final word on everything, regulating fashion and opinion of taste, ordaining limitations on speech and regulating conduct.”
She looked up at him ruefully and then smiled. “He's a confident idiot, written a book onHow to be a Complete Moronbecause he’s mastered the art.”
Her mere presence brought him happiness. She was the antidote to his isolation, his underlying anger to keep the world away. “Far be it from me to go up against your wit.”
“Since we are revealing confidences, I have a secret to share. When I was a child, I discovered a hidden door that led to a long hallway, leading to a back stairway exit from our home. I played there all the time with my dolls, hiding from my mother. Through the walls, I sometimes heard many scorching tales from maids as they were cleaning the rooms on the other side.
“An eavesdropper.”
“It wasn’t intentional, and I couldn’t reveal my hiding space. Often, I placed my hands over my ears or moved farther down the corridor. I needed distance, if you understand what I mean.”
“Far be it from me to target a moral and virtuous woman,” he teased.
“Given that you are my captive audience, tell me more about the Indians. Is what they say true?”
Zachary looked out over the landscape of New York and imagined what it must have been like two hundred years before with the same plight expected for the Indians in the west. “The Indians have had much of their homeland taken from them; their way of life threatened into nonexistence. I have respect forthe Indians. Anytime a man comes along and says ‘savages’ were all bad is wrong. I ate, hunted, and shared what I had with the best of them. They are honest, hospitable, and faithful. What I admire most is they do what they want without subterfuge.”
Elizabeth followed her well-manicured finger as she drew it along the window rail. “That is different from what the papers allow.”
Zachary waved a hand. “In life, I’ve found each man is a person to himself, and you’ll find good, bad, and indifferent wherever you go.”
“What is their life like?”
“The women oversee the home, cooking, cleaning, and building her family’s house, dragging heavy posts whenever the tribe moves. Men are hunters and warriors, responsible for feeding and defending their families.”
He paused in thought. “For the promising young men there is a painful tribal initiation. No man can be a warrior until he goes through O-kee-pa, or Medicine Lodge ceremony. They hang him from a pole with splints and skewers running through his flesh. Blood trickling down his white and yellow clay-clad body in a four-day ritual.”
“Is it true the tortures to white settlers?”
“Do you want the sanitized version or the real account?”
“Go ahead.”
Zachary was beginning to understand that Elizabeth had the hungering curiosity of an omnibus. “They disfigured female captives, took turns despoiling them. Noses burned off to the bone. Children skinned, sliced, mutilated, and burned alive.”
“My God. Is the west all horror?”
He shrugged. “For the most part, it’s beautiful. Rambling wild geese across a western sky, rivers churning and thrashing a thousand feet below, a cathedral of stars caressed by a sicklemoon to sleep beneath and a bed of soft mosses to rest my spine. Could there be anything more luxurious?”
