Gray sat up straighter. “Done with what?” he asked, fixing a steady blue gaze on his friend.
They’d remained in Leadville for the past week, but each had followed his own bent during the days: Gray going out to inspect mines, renew old acquaintances, and talk with investors; and Royal riding out to see horses and look at stock. In the evenings. Gray had gone out to dinner with men he knew, or to their homes to meet their daughters, or else he’d gone to the theater. But never to the one where Kyle Harper’s troupe was playing. It was hard for him, but he kept reminding himself that deals in business or love were best played with a cool headand hand, and that he was waiting for absence to make a certain heart grow much, much fonder. Lord knows, he thought ruefully, it had worked in his case. He could hardly wait to see her tonight. He was so eager, it was embarrassing, so he told himself it was more than that: his loneliness was increased by the fact that he’d seen his friend Royal only briefly, in passing, at their hotel.
But when he’d talked with Royal at all, they’d talked about everything but Peggy, and knowing his friend. Gray had let the matter rest until he was ready. Now, it seemed he was.
“I guess I’m giving notice,” Royal said, as he toyed with his knife and avoided Gray’s eyes. “But way in advance,” he assured him, as he dragged his gaze from the tablecloth to meet Gray’s stare. “Well, I got to get my stuff in order, my place and all.”
The continued silence and Gray’s unblinking stare made Royal’s neck, above its high, starched collar, grow ruddy, and he added with difficulty, “Well, you know I was thinking of buying the Pritchard place. You even said it was a good deal. Well, I’m gonna do it. But it’s got nothing on it ‘cept a few head and a few old boys to watch over things. Now I got to get it stocked, but that ain’t nothing,” he said. His voice grew lower and his face redder as he went on, “I got to get the place mucked out and get some furniture in it and all. And a ring. It ain’t no place for a woman the way it stands now.”
Gray’s mouth twitched, but he dabbed it with his napkin and said, “Didn’t know you’d need a ring to fix a place up.”
“Damn it,” Royal exclaimed. Then he lowered his voice and said gruffly, “You know damn well what I mean, you’re just being scaly ‘cause I’m leaving. And you know why. I got what I come for.”
“She said yes?” Gray asked, with an odd feeling of loss with betrayal to color it, because though he’d known Royal’s mind, he was surprisingly hurt that his friend hadn’t shared his moment of success with him.
“God, no!” Royal exclaimed. “I ain’t asked. Well,” he said in answer to Gray’s raised eyebrow, “a man can’t ask till he gets everything in line. When a girl says yes, she wants a ring, don’t she? And a place to call home. Not just a lot of sweet talk and promises. See,” Royal said eagerly, dragging his chair closer, “I got it all planned out. They’re going to Aspen for the hoorah for the opening of the Jerome.Peggy says they’re all up ‘cause they’re finally going to play at a good house there: the Wheeler.”
He paused, and Gray had a moment to reflect on the novelty of hearing show business cant slipping so easily from the lips of Royal Atkins, before Royal went on, “Then they head on home to New York. So I figured that would be the time to make my move. I mean, slip it in with the hoopla and champagne and all, so as to make it stay with her more, you see.”
“I’d think anytime a girl got a proposal, it would stay with her,” Gray said.
“Yeah. Well. But a girl like Peggy deserves more,” Royal said. After taking a gulp of water so large Gray could hear him swallow, he added low, “More romantic and all, girls’ set store by such, you see. I want her to say yes real bad. Don’t believe I could take it if she didn’t, though I’d understand, I guess. So I’m sort of stacking the deck. I’m going to have to leave town now to do it right. Then I’ll meet up with her in Aspen when I got it done. Going to get a big ring. And fine furniture, and the best cattle,” he added with a trace of worry.
“It’s the cattie that will do it,” Gray agreed. Then he laughed and said with absolute sincerity, “If she turns you down, she’s a damn fool. And you don’t want to be married to one of those anyway, so it would be all for the best. But she won’t. Damned if I won’t miss you, friend.”
As Royal assured him that the new place wouldn’t be far, only a day’s ride—at the most an overnight where there’d always be room for him—Gray began to wonder how he’d replace him. Oh, either Lucky or Mack Moran could do the job, and be fine foremen. But Royal was his best friend, too, and those, he knew, were irreplaceable. Once Royal had a wife and family, they’d be his priority. As Gray pondered it. Royal watched him, and added the worry that he’d hurt Gray’s feelings to his biggest one: That Peggy might refuse him.
And so, when Hannah and Peggy entered the dining room of Leadville’s finest restaurant, they saw two beautifully dressed, perfectly silent, glum gentlemen awaiting them.
“Are we that late?” Hannah said gaily, as the men stood. “Oh!” she said a breath later, stopping and staring at Gray, “You look different, but very well.”
“?‘Well?’ Is that all? It’s elegant he looks,” Peggy exclaimed, as Gray ran a finger over the naked upper lip where his mustache had been.
“Thank you, that’s more than I’d hoped for,” Gray said humbly. “I didn’t do it for praise, but because I was told that only a villain wears a mustache.”
That simple statement caused a remarkable color change in his audience: Peggy was still blushing for her forwardness, while Royal’s face grew brick red as he realized that he’d been so distracted with his own thoughts that he’d never noticed the change, and Hannah’s cheeks grew pink as she recalled the circumstances following her jest about his mustache. Her face grew even warmer as the amused look in his eyes showed he remembered that moment very well. Though thick and silky, the mustache had been so light as to be almost unnoticeable in certain lights, but without it, he looked more classically handsome, younger, and so somehow, more vulnerable. Hannah’s smile slipped as her gaze did, when she realized what a dangerously nonsensical notion that was.
“Now, if I’d have known what a tumult it would cause,” Gray whispered as he held out Hannah’s chair for her, “I’d have shaved it off an hour after I met you.”
She didn’t answer that, but immediately launched into a story about the performance that had just ended.
“Yeah,” Royal put in, anxious to make amends and show he usually knew what was going on with his friend, “they get better every night. Gray. Now that they don’t doThe Drunkardno more, they got that Miss Flora singing one of your favorites: ‘Father’s a Drunkard, and Mother is Dead’. It’s a treat. You should hear it.”
“If I’d know that. I’d have come,” Gray said sincerely. When Hannah stared at him, he explained, “No, it’s true. I love a little honest sentiment.”
“But that’s dishonest sentiment,” Hannah said, amazed.
“Maybe for you, but not for some of us,” he chided her. “I suspect you sophisticated theater folks think that kind of thing is only for us rubes. But I’d always thought an actor or a singer that didn’t really feel what he was doing, even if only for the moment he was doing it, would do it badly. So if it’s being done right, then somebody onstage must feel the way we do in the audience, right?”
When he saw her bite her full, dusky lower lip as she considered that, he found he had to move his gaze to her lowered lashes in order to keep his mind on his words as he went on, “What’s wrong with sentiment? Sometimes it’s pure pleasure to wallow in pain, and that’s what it’s all about. Now, I’m not claiming it’sShakespeare, though even he liked a good weeper every now and then, but it sure gets me every time, and that’s the sad truth.”
He smiled, and started singing very softly in a sweet, easy tenor:
“We were so happy till Father drank rum,
Then all our sorrow and trouble begun:
Mother grew paler and wept every day,
