“Oh, that’s not what I meant,” Hannah said in consternation. “It’s not the money I envied, we weren’t rich—but I never went without, I assure you. But I never had a brother or sister, and I would’ve liked one. Father claimed it was on purpose, because he believed a tree grows straightest where there’s no shade. He said trees must twist and turn to reach the sun if they’re all crowded in together, and children grow up just as twisted if they have to compete for a place in the sunlight. All he wanted, he always said, was one perfect one. Poor man,” she said on a too bright laugh, “all he got was me.”
“Didn’t want you to go into the theater, eh?” Gray asked sympathetically, thinking of how he’d feel if his daughter took to a life on the stage, and then wondered if he’d lost his mind. It was bizarre to be thinking about the shame of daughters at the same time he was wondering just when he could take advantage of the fact that this lovely, curving lady was in just such a deliciously disreputable profession.
“Oh, no,” she answered, laughing outright. “He would’ve wanted me to go further into it, if anything. My father is Blayne Darling,” she said softly.
That shocked him. He dropped the leaf he’d been playing with and straightened.
“Blayne Darling?” he said, remembering the times he’d paid top dollar for a ticket to see the man tear up the stage in a fine passion. He stared at her and shook his head at how blindly he’d been staring at her since he’d met her. There was the inky hair, the fine, sculpted features, the remarkable eyes that had such fire, depth, and feeling. Only the sulky, pouting mouth was hers alone. That, and the lavishly curved body, of course.
“Then, what in h…What are you doing here? Alone. In a troupe like Harper’s?” he asked incredulously. And then was instantly sorry he had, wondering what dark low sins she must have committed to make even such a sophisticated man of the theater as Blayne Darling decide to cast her off.
She lifted her chin at the tone of his voice, and then somewhat higher at the look in his eyes.
“Silver spoons are capable of choking people of both genders,” she said coldly. “I can grow just as tired of hearing, ‘You’rehisdaughter?’ I suppose, as you do of hearing, ‘You’rehisbrother?’?”
But while he was thinking about that, she added in an altogether more subdued tone, “And then, too, I’m not a very good actress, you see, and so I couldn’t just keep living with him and envying him for the rest of my life.”
That recalled him to her, and there was a new expression in his bright eyes when he gazed at her—a different sort of admiration than the one she was used to seeing there, and possibly an even more dangerous one. Because there was fellow feeling in it.
“Oh, that I do understand,” he said. “Darn near broke my neck when I was young, trying to prove I was as good as he was. Let me tell you, it’s not necessary. A father can provide as much shade as a big brother, I guess, but the point is that your daddy was wrong. The straightest trees make the best lumber, sure. But timber isn’t everything. Artists go for the more interestingly shaped trees, and a bird doesn’t care what shape its home is in. Now you’ve got me doing it!” hecomplained, grinning at his foolishness. “The point is that a man’s not a tree,” he said seriously, “and you can’t live by what other people think.”
“In fact,” he went on, “my fine eastern college took four years trying to teach me that a man’s only as good as he thinks he is. But I’d already learned that, or should have. And faster, too. See this charming scar?” he said, touching the long, wavering line that creased his cheek and called attention to its leanness. “It took a horse too big for a boy stepping on my hard head to sink that fact into it. He was so high, I had to climb up on top of the corral fence to get on him,” he reminisced, “and he stayed still as death, watching me out of eyes that were pure burning coals as I did. He had more teeth, all bared, than I had, because I’d just lost a few to Mother Nature and was waiting for them to grow back. He was wild as the wind. But m’ brother had stayed on his back for a full minute, and I’d be darned if I wouldn’t.”
“But you could have been killed, weren’t you at all afraid?” she asked, so carried away by his words and his expression, she could almost see that vanished boy and the wild horse.
“Lord, the state I was in that day, I think I was more afraid I wouldn’t be,” he said on a chuckle. “But once I was on, he did his best. I stayed on because I was even more scared of letting go. But I was wrong, and it wasn’t just this scar and a few others that proved it to me. See, I’d been so careful about sneaking out to do it, nobody ever saw it but the horse, and he wasn’t talking,” he laughed. “All everyone else saw was me later, bleeding, flat out on the ground. It seemed all I’d been after was the glory, all right, because just knowing that I’d done it didn’t ease my pain at all. It should have. And would have, if that had been all I was after. But it wasn’t, and that proved it. No, there’s no sense in living up to someone else instead of for yourself. Let me spare you the pain of discovery, it’s true.”
“I know that,” she said quietly, “I do. But knowing it isn’t the same as feeling it. Can you understand that?” she asked. Then, after a pause, she asked more shyly, “Is that how you hurt your leg?”
Startled, he glanced down at his legs, wondering if he’d see some injury there, before he realized that she was talking about his limp. It was so much a part of him now that he usually forgot it, unless the wind was blowing cold and damp.
“That? Yeah,” he said dismissively. “And to get the record straight, this pretty one on my chin’s from years later, a different challenge on a different day. That was a mine shaft I had no business prying into. Care to see some others?” he asked on a wicked grin, to change the subject.
But she refused to be diverted. “Oh,” she said with a sad, sympathetic smile, “I see. So you understand very well what I meant about the difference between knowing a thing and feeling it.”
Too true, too close, and much too deep. Gray thought. It had gotten far too dark and deep. It was a beautiful day, they were alone, she was standing only a foot from him, meltingly lovely in a tightly fitted lace and cream concoction of a taffeta gown that looked as though it would be almost as good to touch as skin, and they were talking about the kind of personal things that would make a rock cry. It was all very well to desire the woman, and there were few rules in this ancient game he’d begun with her, but he’d no intention of getting in too deep—mentally, at least, he thought on an interior grin. If he didn’t keep it light, he’d be on one knee soon, like Royal. And looking at her, where she stood in the sunlight, he realized it was far more than his knee he wanted to be on right now. She had the most uncanny way of turning him around, but now it was definitely time for him to turn the subject and the mood, if he ever wanted more than philosophy from her. And God and the devil knew he did.
“Yeah. Speaking of feelings…” he said, abandoning his post by the tree and walking the few steps to her. He touched a billowing swell of the heavy dark hair she’d pinned up high on her head, and saw how she sprang back to life beneath his gaze, sparkling with indignation, and if he was not mistaken, desire. And then he lowered his head, and kissed her again. Lightly, at first, even when she started to struggle away from the hands that closed over her shoulders and drew her closer, and then more deeply, even as his hands lightened their grip and drifted lingeringly across her back when he no longer needed them to hold her close.
He didn’t want to break the kiss, but knew he must, if only because dimly, in the distance, he heard the sound of approaching footsteps on gravel and brush.
When he stepped away, her eyes opened, and he saw a helpless, hopeless look in them before they flared again.
“Now, hold on,” he cautioned her, smiling affectionately, adding, before she could speak, “because another thing that fine eastern college taught me was a rule of chemistry. You can’t really steal a kiss, you know—just the makings of one.”
It was that indisputable truth that caused Hannah’s silence as Peggy and Royal came back, hand in hand, looking as smug as they were dazzled. And the equally undeniable shame and fear of it that kept her quiet all the way back to Leadville.
“Now why do you suppose they asked us to meet them here, instead of at the theater?” Gray asked exactly one week later, as he twirled the silver pickle castor on the table around until it blurred.
“Wasn’t Peggy’s idea,” Royal said. “Peggy says Kyle’s giving Hannah a hard time about meeting us.”
“You mean meeting ‘me’,” Gray said with the tracery of a smile as he sat back, crossed his legs, and idly surveyed the other elegantly dressed guests in the dining room of Leadville’s finest hotel.
“No, both of us. Only Peggy don’t care what he says anymore,” Royal said with a note of pride.
“My, my,” Gray said with interest, “only the third meeting, and she don’t care?”
“Only the third time we’re going out somewhere together,” Royal corrected him. “I see her every night backstage for a while before she has to go to bed. She can’t stay up late when she gets up so early. Not everybody can afford to take vacations like we have. I’m done with it, Gray,” he said suddenly.
