Decorum (42 page)

C
HAPTER
51

Francesca wrapped her stole around her shoulders and looked out over the landscape. The Bow Valley was filling with the last of the summer light like a great trough of gold that gilded tree and mountain as no Baroque artist could have bedecked a cathedral. In moments the gold would fade into twilight. A waning crescent moon had risen like a bowl filled with faint stars. An enormous calm settled upon her, a sense of well-being she could not remember feeling for many years. As she stood on the terrace, silent and still, watching the valley’s colors change, birds headed homeward and insects tuned up for an evening rhapsody more tranquil than any music that echoed deep within the hotel.

Dinner was over. The large party of accumulated friends old and new had tested the hotel’s culinary artistry. Francesca, transformed in a deep orchid silk gown of sweeping lines and void of ornament, floated above the conviviality with a light spirit. No matter where she went or with whom she might converse, she felt a pleasant connection to Connor, who always met her eye with a knowing smile that warmed her cheeks from an intimacy shared.

“What can this hotel be about?” complained Connor’s elderly billiard partner to Francesca. “Here I am, dressing for dinner as per usual, when all of a sudden water starts leaking through the ceiling. Burst pipe or some damn thing.”

“Problem, sir?” inquired Connor, who had caught the last few words.

“Just telling Miss Lund here that my man barely saved my wardrobe from ruin. Water all over. I can’t think what the hotel can be doing. Had to move me to a different room till they could find the trouble.” Connor was all sympathy and shot Francesca an amused look over the gentleman’s head.

In the weeks since coming to Banff, New York had nipped at her heels like a mad dog. The telegram and Jerry’s subsequent letter, even Vinnie’s revelation about the Lawrences and her escape from the Jeromes, had upset the equilibrium she had hoped to regain in coming here. Then her interview with Ida brought her up short. She began to realize that although she might run away from a point on the map, she could not hide from herself. Ida and Vinnie and Blanche each had held up a mirror from which she could avert her gaze only at her peril. Each mirror showed her an ignorant, biased part of herself that mortified her. She wondered what possessed Connor to want someone as blind and willful as she and had stewed about it since Blanche’s departure. A confession was nearly on her lips when she went to Connor’s room, only to have her pious resolve evaporate into laughter. In spite of the restorative nature of confession, laughter had been the better tonic. She knew now what it felt like not to fret, that at least one person in the world existed to whom she had neither to explain nor prove. All that was left was to know whether he still wanted her.

A trickle of people began to populate the terrace. A familiar voice spoke in her ear.

“I came out to see if you might like a nightcap,” said Connor, drawing up next to her and looking out over the Bow Valley.

“I don’t believe so, thank you.”

“You said you wanted to see me.”

“Did I?”

“Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten already,” he said, clearing his throat. “I didn’t startle you into forgetting, did I?”

“Oh, that,” she said, smiling. “No, it was rather memorable.” She reflected a moment and then added, “I suppose it doesn’t really matter now.”

“What doesn’t matter?”

“I came to apologize for my appalling lack of tact in coming to see you when I got Jerry’s telegram. No, that doesn’t sound right. Not tact. I was so thoughtless. . . .”

“It’s not like you to be thoughtless,” he answered. His voice comforted her.

“I hope not,” said Francesca. “I don’t mean to be.”

“I know that, Frankie.”

“That’s just it,” she said in earnest. “You do know. I think I was counting on that from you.”

“I did think it was a bit brazen of you to come to me and wondered what it meant—”

“But I
didn’t mean
anything . . .” said Francesca, trying not to plead, for she knew she didn’t need to.

“I know, I know. When you talked it out and I knew there wasn’t anything behind it—anything—”

“To hurt you, you mean?”

“Yes,” he said. “Well, then I was glad that you felt you could come to me—like a barrier between us might have come down somehow. Was I right to think that, Frankie?”

The name soothed her as it came off his lips, rolling over her in his mellow baritone.

“Yes,” said Francesca. “I believe so.”

They stood together in silence. Conversation now could hardly be private with so many there enjoying the evening, but Francesca knew not how to introduce the subject of more privacy. He seemed to read her thoughts.

“It’s gettin’ a bit crowded,” Connor said. “Shall we take a little stroll?”

“You’ll want a coat. It’s getting chilly.”

“Not for just a short turn round the hotel.”

He offered her his arm. The living being who clasped her arm under his, the smell of pomatum and soap, the crunch of gravel under their earthbound feet comforted her.

“While we’re apologizing,” he said, “will you forgive me for anything hurtful or insulting I may have said to you? You’re right that I bully people when it suits me, but I should know better than to bully someone I care for—” He stopped abruptly, as if catching himself before he made an exhibition of his feelings. “It’s a stupid thing to do,” he said in some confusion.

“To ask for forgiveness?”

“No, to treat people I care about as anything other than precious, that’s all,” he said. “I’m a fool that way. I am sorry, Frankie.”

They had moved well away from other guests before he spoke again.

“Frankie, ought I to ask your forgiveness for Blanche?”

The question had never occurred to her before he uttered it. The fact of its total absence from her mental list of reservations about Connor O’Casey—the realization that she had never held anything against either of them—bestowed a sudden liberty upon Francesca that jolted her like a thunderclap.

“Heavens no,” she said, dismissing the notion. “What right have I to forgive you for something begun before we ever knew each other? When I think of where we all were a year ago—even six months ago—how could any of us have foreseen anything that has happened? We’d have to be conjurors or prophets, and we’re nothing like that, thank God. Being human is difficult enough without the burden of perfection that none of us can achieve anyway.”

Ida West’s words again rang in her ears. Francesca was not ready to grasp them then, but she believed them now.

“If you really feel that way, Frankie, that’s more than I ever expec—”

“Of course, you realize I’ll have to marry you now,” Francesca broke in. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to say. She did not need to see his face to feel him register surprise. They were both quiet as she waited for his thoughts to catch up with hers.

“
You’ll
have to marry
me?
”

She turned her head toward him and looked into his face.

“Yes. I’ve seen you in your bath,” she declared. “How else am I to preserve your honor unless I make an honest man of you?”

In the waning light, she could sense the amused look on his face. He fastened his dark eyes on hers and held her there.

“I must admit, I hadn’t quite thought of it in that way.”

“Perhaps I shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions,” she said, a little embarrassed. “You do still want to marry me, don’t you? Because if you don’t I’ve just made a foolish—”

“Yes, Frankie, I do want to marry you—and strangely enough for the very reason you just said. I do want you to make me an honest man—at least a better man than I am.”

“You know I can’t do that for you. I can’t be God for you.”

What a thing for him to want of her. For a fragment of a second she thought of Edmund—a man who wanted everything around him to change for the better so that he could remain the same. Perhaps he had wanted to regain a man he had lost and mistook that journey for a treasure hunt. How different was he from Connor—a man who realized somewhere in his depths that if anything is to truly change for the better, it must first be he himself. Francesca hoped that this was so, that she was not deluding herself again. Yet was she not the one who asked him for honesty? If this request meant anything at all, was he not handing her his best intention as a basis for their life together?

“I’m not asking you to
be
God, Frankie,” he chuckled. “Though I must say, your intimate acquaintance with the Almighty did give me pause. To be truthful, I’m not even sure that God is what I need. I am sure of one thing, though, and that is that in marrying you I’m sure to get closer to the both of you.”

“The fact that you should even want to be a better man at all—”

“Now, let’s not run away with the idea,” he teased.

He turned her to face him and took her hand between both of his, as if sensing that a moment more of hesitation would undo her. Night was closing in—as much as night can ever do in Banff in late July.

“Francesca Lund—do you have a second name, by the way?”

“No, as a matter of fact.”

“Truly?” said Connor in some surprise. “Not two or three? Right then.” He drew her close so that her clasped hand rested on his chest and his face nearly touched hers. “Francesca Lund, will you do me the honor of becoming my wife? Can’t we escape tomorrow morning down to Banff town and haul the minister out of bed if we have to and have him marry us in that little church? Can’t we come back and demand that all your kit and caboodle be moved to my suite and spend the rest of our days here in honeymoon? Or would you rather that I take you off to another point on the edge of the earth where we can be together and say to hell with the rest of the world?”

“Are those your terms?” she asked, drawing her hands from his and walking from him a few steps. Her courage rose. “Because if they are your terms, I can’t possibly accept.”

“Not accept?” asked Connor, his voice full of bewilderment. “But you just said—”

“What a thing to ask of me,” she said, the passion rising in her voice, and in her heart. “Do you think I want to slink away as if I’m ashamed of you and wed you in some hidey hole? To deny myself the pure joy of standing up before the multitude and showing off the man I’m going to marry? No, Connor. After all this time, after everything that’s happened, after a lifetime of waiting for a man of whom I can be proud—and whom I hoped could be proud of me—elopement isn’t good enough. When you first made your offer, you held out the challenge of my becoming the Notorious Mrs. O’Casey. Very well then. If I’m to accept that challenge, then you must accept the challenge of facing New York with me, in church, in front of all of society—in front of the world. Let them swoon, Connor, just as you said. We’ll step over the bodies. Those are
my
terms.”

His face bore none of the cockiness and self-assurance that she was used to seeing, nor entitlement nor dominance nor even fear. He stood in front of her again and took her hand.

“Could you really be that proud, Frankie, of you and me, together?” he asked.

“I am already,” she said.

He closed his eyes and held her hand to his lips. Gratitude, respect, and regard seemed rolled into that one simple act. She felt he would take no further liberty until he had her answer.

“Then we’ll do it your way, Frankie, any way you want, any way at all. Francesca Lund, will you be my wife?”

A plain man had delivered a plain question. All that was left was to give him a plain answer.

“Yes, Connor. I’ll be Mrs. O’Casey—notorious or otherwise.”

 

“Good gracious,” exclaimed Esther in amazement. “How on earth did this happen?”

Francesca had joined Connor and gone off early with a walking party for morning exercise, leaving Vinnie and Ida West to join Esther for morning coffee. The latest cache of New York, Denver, Chicago, and San Francisco newspapers made their rounds through the ladies’ hands as everything that was worth knowing was reviewed and discussed. Esther sat holding the latest edition of the
World
folded in quarters in her lap, her pince-nez in her other hand poised before her eyes.

“What have you got there?” asked Ida as she turned over a new page of the
Denver Post
. Vinnie merely smiled.

“ ‘A union is planned between Miss Francesca Lund of New York, daughter of the late Mr. and Mrs. Jurgen Lund of New York, and Mr. Connor O’Casey, late of Denver, Colorado. The wedding is to be held in New York City in early 1892, followed by a European honeymoon.’ Francesca never said she had told the papers already.”

“Blanche sent in the story,” said Vinnie, looking self-satisfied.

“And how, pray, did she manage it from the top of a mountain?”

“She wrote the story before she left with instructions to her maid to send it in the moment it was confirmed.”

“Of all the cheek . . .”

“Nonsense,” said Ida with a smile.

“It is true, you know,” said Vinnie. “They are engaged.”

“Well, I know, dear, but such a hasty announcement. It’s not seemly.”

“Nonsense,” Ida repeated. She shot a look at Vinnie over the top of the newspaper.

“But who confirmed it to Blanche’s maid?” continued Esther. “I can’t imagine that Francesca would have done such a thing and with any luck Connor would have missed this small detail.”

“I told her,” said Vinnie.

“You didn’t,” said Esther.

“Certainly, I did,” retorted Vinnie. “Blanche told me at the reception for the expedition that she had written several stories ahead to be posted back to New York at intervals. This was one of them—pending confirmation, of course. Funny that Blanche should have the last word about it.”