And if things work out, even better for me, Kyle thought, as he disclaimed modestly, “Nonsense. I consider myself in the role of father to all of you. Which is why I wished to speak with you—and you, too, Peggy,” he added, raising his voice as he gazed to where she fidgeted in her corner. “So come here, and stop fishing about in that basket before you get a pin in those busy fingers.
“Children,” he said in low, loving, caressing tones, which alarmed Hannah as much as it solaced her, for she knew he was at his most dangerous when he was at his sweetest, “I’ve heard, through my many sources—” he paused, as Hannah realized that must have been their adjoining wall, “that you’ve been walking out with those local fellows, and plan to see them yet again. Folly, folly,” he said in his deep voice, like the tolling of a bell, “sheer folly.
“Graham Dylan,” he intoned sadly, as if he were a man reading a name in an obituary, “and Royal Atkins, his foreman. The first a practiced Don Juan, for all his western airs. The man’s a chameleon: on Broadway, he’s the epitome of a swell and a sport, believe me. I’ve seen him there. Out here—he plays the lonesome cowboy. And as for the other, what sort of innocent, honest, and hardworking ranch worker, which I’m sure he claims to be…takes his orders from a fellow like Dylan?
“My dear children,” Kyle began, and for all that Hannah knew he was of an age with the two men he was deriding, there was so much worldly sorrow in his deep voice, she’d an uncanny impulse to climb into his lap and throw her armsaround his neck so he could console her for any loss she’d ever had, “it’s always folly to mix with civilians. What can they offer you but excitement? And what is excitement but ruin to girls who are on their own, far from home?”
Since both Hannah and Peggy had entertained that thought often enough in the privacy of their own minds, they grew gravely silent.
Kyle touched long slender fingers to Hannah’s cheek. “My dear,” he sighed, “beware. You know more of the world than Peggy here, perhaps you feel that as a widowed woman you cannot be led astray,” he said, and paused. But there was that in the deep black eyes that stared into hers, as well as in his dark and midnight voice that hinted—only that—that it might just be that a widowed woman welcomed such straying, and she lowered her eyes at the shame of that insinuation. He nodded, secretly pleased but apparently saddened, as he went on, “You are yet so young, you may have forgotten that there are some kinds of ruin that can come even to those who are experienced. But what sort of guidance is that for our poor Peggy?”
But he’d overplayed his hand. He’d forgotten she was subtle enough to have felt enough shame at mere inference; now she felt only rage at his impudence. He knew it for a misstep the moment after he said it, for he felt the smooth skin beneath his fingertips grow hot. She jerked her head away and gave him stare for stare.
“Mr. Dylan and Mr. Atkins have taken us for a buggy ride in the clear light of day, and nothing we’ve done could not be shown on a stage in front of an audience of nuns and orphans. It is not excitement but diversion, and pleasant conversation and…and…respect,” she said after a struggle to find the exact word, and failing that, a powerful one, “that we sought. And will seek. As often as we wish. Unless, of course, by doing so we jeopardize our livelihoods,” she added, looking so heated and wild in her rage, he felt a thrill of pure lust for her for the first time, and longed to take those incredibly swollen lips under his own to silence them and appease this sudden, unusual, unforeseen hunger of his.
But an actor worth his pay never forgets he is onstage, and knows when the scene is played out, and never takes an encore when the audience is hissing. And too, he remembered a lovely quote to solace him as he immediately stepped away from her and the situation.
Methinks the lady doth protest too much, he thought, and said, contritely, “I beg your pardon, I never sought to give offense. Everything I’ve said was for your benefit,” he said. “Your place with me was never in jeopardy, I only worried for your heart,” he went on, and saw indecision replacing her fury as he added, “I shall be still, I only ask your forgiveness, and that you understand my position.”
“Well, yes, fine, I see, let’s do forget it,” Hannah said, and turned to Peggy, who muttered much the same.
But by their silence and their faces as they left him, Kyle knew his words, like those of his favorite playwright, would linger long after the sound of them had died away. And for that, at least, he was content. Rome couldn’t be built in a day. But at least, he thought with pleasure, he’d ensured that Dylan and his friend couldn’t steal them away in that short a time, either. The only displeasure he felt as he sat and considered the matter, was that he was no longer so sure it was only his diminishing troupe that he so badly needed to keep.
There were several things on Hannah’s mind as she stepped into the carriage the gentleman had hired for their outing today. But she didn’t mind that in the least. Because disturbing as they were, they were almost more disturbing than the blue eyes that stared down into hers, and so kept her from being beguiled by them. And were enough to distract her from the amused voice that spoke when she hastily glanced away from those same eyes.
She hadn’t needed Kyle’s warning to remind her that she knew nothing about Gray Dylan, that he knew nothing about her, and that such attentions as he paid were suspect in a man who was, as he claimed, merely along for the ride to play propriety for his friend Royal. But at the thought of those exact attentions, she was pulled up short. Because as Peggy and Royal began chatting in the front seat of the carriage, she realized that things looked very different here and now, in Gray’s company, than they did in her own mind in the dark hours of the night. It was true that he’d asked her out many times, but he’d never asked for more. And since their first picnic, he’d been content to wait for his friend to ask Peggy out again. So whatever it had been to begin with, now it might all be exactly as he said: he was simply engaging in a light flirtation to pass the time while his friend courted hers. She sat still, stunned that after all her worrying, that might be the entireanswer. A tempest in a teapot, much ado about nothing, she thought, curiously cast down by this revelation. Until he spoke.
“It occurred to me, Mrs. Roberts,” he said, as the carriage rolled down the long streets of Leadville and out past the mines into the untouched countryside, “that though we had ourselves a time and a half on our last outing, I know no more about you than you, I suspect, know about me. And so without wishing to be presumptuous, I have to ask, right now, before we go any further and I make a dam fool of myself, if your loss is so recent that there’s no hope for me at this time.”
It said volumes, he thought, that she didn’t seem to know what he was talking about, at first. Her head came up, and there was such an adorable look of confusion on her face, he was tempted to take her in his arms and kiss it away. If she’d looked dismayed or regretful, or even self-conscious, he’d have had to cut line and take his losses. But that look of sheer incomprehension was as good as an invitation to get on with it, and that slow dawning realization that sprung to her eyes now was much too little, and blessedly, much too late. The way her emotions shone and danced on her face made it an odd sort of face for someone in an acting company, he thought bemused, until he caught himself up sharply and wondered if it wasn’t, instead, a wonderful face for an actress. But that, he realized, relaxing as he looked his fill at her as she groped for an answer, was exactly what made all of this so entertaining.
He wanted her, certainly. Royal might go on for minutes—which were hours for him—about the apparent purity of his Peggy. It was not Mrs. Hannah Roberts’s apparent purity that interested Gray. But, curiously, neither was it her lack of it. If it weren’t for her facade of respectability, he’d not be having this sort of fun. It was this difficulty in getting what he was sure he’d eventually be able to, that made it more interesting. It gave him a chance to learn about her sense of humor and her education, which were far more than he’d needed or expected to find, as well as to discover a genuine liking for her company.
And there was this aura of delicious promise about her. When he got her in his bed, or a rented one, to be more accurate—and he’d little reason to doubt he would, she was a widow, after all, working in a theatrical company, and not as a mere seamstress, as Royal kept harping about his lady—he’d almost be a little sorry for it. Because however promising it looked now, it would end soon after it began,as such encounters usually did. He didn’t think he’d enjoy keeping a mistress, that was for married men. Paying a woman on a regular basis for what he always tried to fool himself into thinking was an impulsive act on both their parts, was actually distasteful to think about. But looking at her, right now, he couldn’t think of any but tasty things.
So if she’d happened to glance at him before she answered his question, she never would have. But his expression changed when he heard her first words. As always, her conversation temporarily diverted his physical longings.
“My…loss,” she said softly, looking down at the parasol handle she held in her gloved hands, “was a long while ago, a very long while ago.”
“How can that be? Unless you got married real young, like the mountain girls around here do—just as soon as they can dress, or more to the point, undress themselves,” he said, to distract her, even though he knew she might be angry with him for saying something so warm, because he hated to see her sorrowing so, especially for another man.
But she was too lost in her reflections to catch that, so he knew she must be entirely lost, as she added, “You see, he died only a few years past, but he left me after we’d been married only a few months. I married when I was seventeen,” she said more briskly, belatedly horrified at how easily she’d confided what she seldom did. “I am twenty-four now.”
“So old?” he asked, as though astonished. “If I’d known. I’d have brought a rocking chair!” And while she laughed with him, he laughed with relief because she was just the right age for what he’d in mind: too old for protestations of innocence of any sort, and too young to take any of it seriously.
“I don’t suppose I’ve any right to ask why he left,” he asked after a moment, because he found he wanted to know.
“I don’t suppose you do,” she answered, before she answered as she’d learned to so long ago, “but it was because we didn’t suit.”
Yes, as true and informative as saying the sky was high. Gray thought, and let it drop by saying innocently, “That’s what you get for marrying a blind and deaf man, ma’am, for all I’m sure it was a kindly thing to do.”
“Where are we going today?” Hannah asked, ignoring his flattery absolutely.
“To a place high up enough to catch the last of the autumn sun, and with brooks for cooling wine in, and flowers for taking home to press in memory books so you’ll not forget the day,” he answered.
Even before the carriage stopped, Hannah knew she’d never forget it. The mountains knew autumn for what it was, even in this unseasonably mild season. The world was in all the colors of Leadville’s lovely theater: blue and gold and white. The aspens fluttered gold leaves overhead, their slender trunks as white as the puffy clouds that occasionally wandered across an astonishingly blue sky. It only lacked cherubs, Hannah thought, and then hastily glanced away from the flaxen-haired man who helped her down from the carriage.
It was a wooded place, with a rushing thrum in the air that made Hannah turn her head to seek its source, until Gray told her it was the sound of a hidden stream rushing down the mountain. They spread the picnic blanket near to a more sedately flowing stream that widened near where they sat, so that it only made polite burbling fountain sounds as background music for their meal. They ate their lunch in relative quiet; Peggy and Royal seemed content to stay still, and Hannah found herself unaccountably shy of a newly quiet Gray. It was a curiously peaceful silence.
