After she got over the shock of hearing what had seemed to be a vile seducer’s voice in her own bedroom, Peggy giggled, only stopping to breathlessly exclaim, “Ah, Hannah, if you’d only take to the boards, you’d make Miss Lottie look like yesterday’s porridge, you would, I swear it, you would.”
“I offer the girl a sip of champagne, and she offers me a life of sin upon the stage,” Hannah said mournfully. Then added, in Peggy’s exact accents, “Och! What’s this world comin’ to, I ask you?”
It was several minutes before Peggy could speak again, but after her yelps of glee subsided to chuckles, she was silent for a moment, and then said, in a very different grave little voice, “Hannah, my dear friend, ‘tis about sin I wish to speak to you.”
It took a moment for Hannah to realize no jest was forthcoming, and that gave Peggy time to phrase the question she finally dared to ask.
“I need your advice,” Peggy said seriously. “?‘Tis about a gentleman.”
Hannah swallowed hard. It would be a pity if Peggy had fallen for the blandishments of John, the reedy tenor that had been in the habit of intercepting her in the backstage shadows, worse if it was their womanizing leading man, for though a charming fellow, he was far less serious about the women he used than he was about the makeup he put on and off each night. But whoever it was, Hannah thought sadly, he would end this lovely friendship she’d found. For she knew that when a girl found a fellow, the last thing she needed was the company of another girl, until, that was, the fellow either married her or shabbed her off; and in this world the latter was the rule, and the former, not much better. But Peggy deserved some luck, Hannah thought, and hoped for the best as she waited for her to go on.
“Y’ see,” Peggy said carefully, “this gentleman’s been asking me out of late, and though at first I said no, as well I knew I should, he keeps after asking, and asking, and well, with all the way he’s gone about it, polite and kind…He don’t ask for me to come with him at night—well, surely not after the piece of mind I gave him the first time he asked that!” Peggy declared with satisfaction, before her voice gentled and she went on, “He asked for me to come walking, or riding with him in the broad daylight, on Sundays and such. Just to talk. And I believe him.
“I know that sounds pure folly,” Peggy said defensively, though Hannah hadn’t said a word, “for I’m well aware that I’m just a poor dab of a seamstress, in an acting company, far from home and hope of fair play from any rogue or devil, or so they think! But I’m no fool, and he’s a gentleman to his fingertips, and only asking after my company. And I only want to say yes—just for a day that I can remember for always after. Because I am just a poor seamstress, and I know it, and know such an invitation will not come my way again. What do you think, Hannah dear?”
“Why, I think that would depend entirely upon who he is,” Hannah said carefully. Then she prompted, “Who is he?”
“Well, but you don’t know him,” Peggy said, “for he’s not in the company. No. He lives here. Not justhere,” she said in pretty confusion, “he’s from Wyoming Territory, he says. And he’s no miner or common cowboy, that I’ll swear. But he’s no Johnny Backstage, neither!” she cried. “That I’ll take me vows on, too. He came backstage back in Denver, and here I thought he was lost and looking for some girl in the dressing room, because that’s where I’d seen him the night before, with Miss Lottie and all, when I was with you. But no, he says he was looking for me. Because he’d seen me and couldn’t forget me. Me! Aye, imagine that!
“Well, I couldn’t. And so after he tells me what for, no, I says, of course. What sort of girl did he take me for? To step out with a backstage admirer like a tart!” she scoffed. “But he was back the next night, and the next. He’s even here now. He followed us…me. Imagine that,” Peggy breathed wonderingly. “And always so polite and soft-spoke’, and well dressed, and marvelous handsome, too. And for all I keep saying no, all he keeps saying he wants is my company for a few hours in the daylight. Imagine!”
It was curious, Hannah thought, how one forgot exactly what pain felt like until it came again. Hunger, pleasure, and other emotions could be remembered with fairly good accuracy, but the precise dimension of pain was always a surprise when it returned. Which was the only reason why, her mother always said, women continued to have children after they’d had a first one. Only not her mother, of course, she was too wise for that. And not herself, of course, because she wasn’t a real woman, actually. But she’d not felt such pain in her throat and her breast in avery long while. At least she’d the bitter comfort of knowing she’d been right— she’d never met a man like Gray Dylan before. And she hoped to never again.
“I think” she finally managed to say, because Peggy was awaiting her answer, and she’d a fair, if not an easy one to give, “that you might go, if you wish, in the daylight as you say. But that you’d better be very, very careful of where you go, and be sure you can get back from there alone if you have to.”
“Just what I thought myself!” Peggy said on an exhaled sigh. “And so what I said to himself, exactly, too! So he says I might take a friend as a chaperon, for if it made me easier, he’d prefer it. He wants to take a carriage and drive out of town to show me the mountains in autumn, for he says there’s no lovelier sight in the land, and what have I seen of his home but cities and theaters and hotels? And he’s right! So who shall I take. I’m thinking? Who else? Ah, will you come, Hannah dear? Please. It’s just for an hour or two together. Oh, I know it’s a onetime thing, for what’s a gent like that to do with a girl like me? Especially when he finds I’ve been telling the truth about myself. But I think it’s a thing I’ll never forget. And safe as houses if you’re there, too, for though he’s big and strong as an ox, I should think from the look of him for all his fine clothes, what can he do with the two of us?”
No more than he’s already done to one of us: which is to kill hope, Hannah thought. Then she was instantly shamed by it. For she was old and wise enough not to have been fooled by the softest words or the bluest eyes, wasn’t she? And then she was bitterly glad that at least he’d done it early on. Because she knew very well that no man ever seduced a woman as well as her own fantasies did. And that was, after all, the only place she could be fully seduced.
So why not go? Why not be Peggy’s chaperon? Since she could never be much to a man, at least she could be of use to another woman. Her thoughts raced as her heart did: How could she tell Peggy that her handsome gentleman had repeatedly asked her out, too, without it sounding like spite or cruelty?—which she supposed it would be if she divulged it now, when she was aching so badly. But at least she should try to save poor Peggy from him. For herself there’d be more than virtue as its own reward, there’d be the extra prize of that most exquisitely perverse of pleasures: the wrench of regret and rejection to be lived through once again. It would give her the fuel for the silent battle of wits she’d need to wage in order toshow Peggy with her own eyes what a deceitful, faithless fraud Gray Dylan was. And most of all, what else could she say now, after all?
“Well, yes. Why not? I will,” Hannah said.
She was instantly rewarded for it by the sound of Peggy’s contented sigh, and then by a pang of pain that sliced through her temples and her heart.
“You’re a true friend. Thank you,” Peggy said in a choked little voice.
“Yes, well, and why not?” Hannah repeated to herself and Peggy, for there really wasn’t anything else to do or say yet. Because there was no sense in tears, even if there’d been luxury of solitude for them, and no point in them really, she told herself, even if there’d been a realistic reason for them.
She was on the brink of sleep when she heard Peggy’s voice again.
“Do you want to know what I wished for?” Peggy asked sleepily.
“I thought you weren’t supposed to say, or it won’t come true,” Hannah said, thinking of the cold and beautiful moon, and how insignificant her impossible wish had been in the face of it.
Polly giggled. “Ah, but I can tell now. For it’s come true already…thanks to you, Hannah dear,” she said on another comfortable little sigh.
Peggy was long lost to sleep as Hannah lay awake, envying her. Not for the wish come true, but for what she herself had lost so long ago: simple problems with simple solutions. She discovered wishing to have been a painful luxury, too. Because wishing itself holds hope, she realized wearily, and all she was left with now was the knowledge of her one omnipresent, simple, and simply impossible wish.
Chapter Seven
Hannah was completely prepared for the outing. She had a firm, cool smile in place, and carried a book, a shawl, and a purse full of odd bits of things to sort through so as to look occupied if the scenery and the book paled. She was also wearing her best day dress, a fetching one made of heavy brown and lilac satin, crossed high at the neck and trimmed with intricate pale lavender silk fringe. She only wore it, she assured herself as she adjusted her charmingly tilted lilac and feather-strewn hat, because it also had only the merest hint of bustle, and so would be the most comfortable to sit in for hours. She’d have bodily comfort, at least, she thought as she took one last glance in the glass, congratulating herself on the expression of polite disinterest she’d perfected the night before.
That expression was so at variance with her exclamations of delight and words of praise when she turned from the mirror to see how Peggy had dressed, that for a moment Peggy was worried that she looked a fright. Her own gown of yellow and cream satin was in charming taste and good style—if Peggy had other doubts about herself, she was at least sure of her fashion sense and her ability to wield a needle to copy any of the masters of fashion. Otherwise, why would Kyle have hired her in the first place? Or so she reassured herself as she kept her suddenly worried eyes on Hannah’s uncharacteristically unsmiling mouth. Because for all that now Hannah was saying lovely things about the way she’d swept up her sandy hair and crowned it with an impudent matching hat, her face was set still and hard as she said them.
“Thank you, but I’m worrying because…och, you look so…grim, Hannah dearest,” Peggy faltered.
“A touch of a headache, nothing more,” Hannah replied.
