Fool's Gold (19 page)

‘Daguerrotypes give more detail,’ objected Revel.

‘I’m told that’s balanced out by the superior portability of the calotype,’ replied the Colonel with a wry grin. ‘Anyway, don’t ask me, I’m just the errand boy. Now, the important thing is, can you buy it for me?’

‘I can, of course …’

‘Will you? I can’t go myself. Apart from the fact that I don’t know what I’m talking about, I can’t risk it getting to Lamarr’s ears before we’ve completed the work.’

‘That’s as may be,’ said Revel cynically, ‘But I swear there’s a hell of a lot more to this than meets the eye.’

‘Very likely. But will you do it?’

‘Call by later this afternoon, on your way back to Tresco, and there’ll be a couple of anonymous-looking boxes for you to load up,’ said Revel with a long-suffering sigh. ‘And I don’t think I want to know anything more about it until you get confirmation of title from the Land Commission.’

‘On that day, I’ll stand you the best dinner Sacramento can provide!’ promised the Colonel, picking up his hat and preparing to depart. ‘Anything else happening in town?’

‘As you’d know if you came to Letitia’s more regularly, the town is positively humming with gossip on two points.’

Cornish raised his eyebrows enquiringly.

‘One: Hester Bryant has broken off the engagement to Augustus Brenchley — no, I don’t think you ever met him. He’s a friend of mine from back east — I introduced them — and he’s only been out here a week or two. Neither of them will say why, so the gossips are having a prime time. Two: more seriously, there’s a positive hue and cry out after Mrs Owens — you met her once at the Cooper’s. A delightful young lady. Disappeared from the face of the earth.’

‘But people are coming and going all the time. You know what it’s like out here — nobody asks any questions,’ replied the Colonel uneasily.

‘Different this time. I was to escort her to Letitia’s last Sunday and she just upped and off from Carsons’ with no reason given. There was a small child too. Brenchley’s very upset about it. Like a dog with a bone, won’t let it rest until he finds cut what’s happened to them.’

‘Thought he’d come out here to marry Hester,’ growled the rancher ungraciously. ‘What’s it to him?’

Revel told him about the accident out on Sutter’s Slough. ‘Very taken with her — and the child. And he won’t let it drop. Wants me to put in a request for information in the
Tribune
. Says the West will never be civilised while it takes such a cavalier attitude to the safety of the weaker sex.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ exclaimed the Colonel in disgust. ‘Why can’t these namby-pamby Easterners see that things are different out here?’ He chewed his lip angrily while he thought whether to say anything or not. ‘Look here, Clive,’ he said at last. ‘You tell him from me, in confidence, that any hue and cry would be doing Mrs Owens a great disservice.’

‘You can’t expect me just to accept that!’ objected Revel, looking at the Colonel in lively astonishment.

‘If I give you my word that she’s safe and well and wouldn’t want anyone to concern themselves over her?’

‘No,’ said Revel flatly. ‘Not that I doubt your word, but I think you ask too much. Besides, Brenchley doesn’t know you …’

‘Damn him and his outmoded chivalry!’ exclaimed the Colonel. ‘Very well,’ he sighed. ‘In confidence, Clive, she’s out at Tresco. She’s doing the map for me — and the photography.’

Revel gave a low whistle. ‘A remarkable woman!’ he exclaimed. He mulled it over in his mind for a moment, then looked up at the Colonel. ‘But if you don’t want Lamarr to know, we can hardly tell them that. It’d be all over town in a day. And if you can’t tell them you’re employing her, then you’ll have to say she’s a guest of yours. Who’s chaperoning her?’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, Clive! You know very well I haven’t anyone out at Tresco but the hands and the foreman. Who the hell
could
be chaperoning her?’

‘That’ll go down well in Sacramento.’

‘That’s Sacramento’s problem!’ he snapped back. ‘Damnation! Why couldn’t you just have taken my word for it?’

‘It won’t do, Jack, really it won’t,’ said Revel with a shake of his head. ‘People will talk. There’s the note she sent to Letitia, begging her for help …’

‘The child was sick,’ he muttered curtly. ‘Of course, that’s really the only reason she agreed to come, so Chen Kai — that’s the Chinese cook — could look after the sick child.’

‘What has the Chinese cook to do with it all?’

‘I wish I knew the answer to that one, Clive,’ Cornish confessed. ‘But I do know that she’s frightened of something or running from someone, so you see, Brenchley’s hue and cry could be running her right into trouble.’

They argued the point round and round, getting nowhere. In the end, the Colonel, much to his chagrin, found himself committed to bringing Mrs Owens in the following week to Letitia’s soirée, time he felt they could ill afford with the rush to complete the maps and photographs.

‘It’s the only way to convince Letitia that you haven’t kidnapped her!’ insisted Revel.

What a pathetic creature they all seem to think her, thought Cornish. Beneath that pale, rather wan exterior there is a tough survivor, quite capable of chewing up effete Easterners and spitting them out in little pieces.

*

The camera Revel found for them was ideal and Cornish and Alicia spent the next few days going back over the ground they had already mapped. They went out alone, reluctant to take any of the hands lest word should filter through to Lamarr’s informants in a drunken moment in a bar in Washington Town or Sacramento after payday. The heavy equipment had been repacked by Chen Kai — as Cornish always made a point of calling him now — in old sacking washed clean of dust or flour, and fashioned to sling across the saddle of a packhorse.

Cornish chafed at his demotion to the humbler role and attempted to be helpful, but Alicia brushed his proffered assistance aside.

‘If I could have had Chen Kai, of course, it would have been a help,’ she conceded, ‘but he has his hands full with the house and Tamsin. And if I had to start teaching a new assistant from scratch — no, it would take up too much precious time.’

‘Can’t I just set up the developing tent for you? Set out all the chemicals?’

‘Sounds fine in principle, but as I haven’t the time to watch over you, it would be as dangerous as letting a child loose with Chen Kai’s medicine box!’ she said frankly. ‘Have you any notion just how dangerous all these bottles are? No, of course you haven’t!’ She began to range the bottles at the back of the tray on a tripod over which the tent would eventually be thrown to shut out the light. ‘Any of these chemicals could prove lethal in the hands of a novice,’ she said crisply. ‘This one, for instance, is an accelerator — fumes of chlorine. This is potassium cyanide, this one fumes of mercury. Many of these chemicals can poison or burn skin away. If we were using the wet-plate method, with collodion, we’d have to contend with gun-cotton too — that means nitric acid and ether. That makes your eyes water just to coat the glass — and it’s highly explosive too!’

‘Now collodion I do know about,’ he grinned. ‘When the mine caved in, my back was ripped open. After the camp quack had stitched me up, they plastered me with collodion to keep the infection out. And every miner who came in to see if I was still alive seemed to have the end of a “ceegar” in his mouth. I was always terrified it would go out and they’d strike a Vesta to rekindle it and blow me and them to Kingdom Come!’

She looked at him with new respect. It was a brave man who could speak so casually of such heavy injuries. In her years in the mining camps, she had seen many men, adventurous beyond their technical abilities, dragged broken and bleeding from their burrow holes in canyons and hillsides. Medical assistance was rare, often non-existent, and most of them had died from horrific injuries, flesh hanging in flaps or limbs torn off where the earth had taken its revenge for the abuse they had meted out to her. Cornish had spoken quite casually about being stitched up; it was usually done with the viciously curved needles used to sew animal skins into hats or capes, and whatever mucky cotton thread happened to be about.

‘I’ll show you how it works when we’ve finished the job,’ she said briskly.

‘Yes, miss,’ he said, touching his hat in mock deference. ‘I think you missed your vocation: you should have been a schoolteacher!’

‘I’ll take that as a compliment,’ she said with a short laugh. ‘Although I doubt it was intended as one!’

The weather stayed fine and at each site she took photographs of all the boundary markers from a variety of angles. Cornish was intrigued to see that the paper she removed from the camera and took into the developing tent was quite blank. She explained to him that this ‘blank’ paper already contained the full image. Processing it in a solution which added silver proportionate to the amount of exposure each area had received, developed that hidden image into a master negative. Once that had emerged, she could tell whether she had covered all the important aspects. The negative could then be used back at Tresco to print any number of prints, some to send to the Land Registry, others to be deposited where Lamarr could not get at them, an advantage which the one-shot daguerrotype could not offer.

She was delighted with the equipment — and congratulated him on the inspiration that had led him to Revel — but it came as a shock to her a few days later when he informed her that they were to make an appearance the following evening at Letitia’s.

She turned away from the window embrasure, where she had been gazing down the valley watching the sun dip towards the rim of the mountains. ‘But I thought we were going up to the Clearwater Lake to complete the mountain survey!’ she protested. ‘Surely socialising can wait!’

‘I thought you would enjoy an evening of more elegant entertainment than Tresco can offer,’ he suggested mildly.

‘Of course. But I thought time was of the essence?’

‘It is,’ he conceded. ‘But on this occasion I was left with no choice. Revel — and some easterner called Brenchley — were on the verge of launching a hue and cry following your disappearance.’ He glanced sideways at her to see how she was taking the news. ‘From the little Chen Kai told me, I knew that could cause trouble for you. The only way to stop them, it seemed, was for you to show yourself at Letitia’s, fit and well. Nothing less would do. So — to Letitia’s we must go!’

Later he wandered across to the arch that gave on to the verandah. She was sitting on the rim of the old fountain in the courtyard, listening to Tamsin’s merry chatter, smiling fondly down at her; the rays of the sinking sun dappled her hair with golden lights.

He passed a hand wearily across his eyes and cursed himself for a fool. He should have told her of Revel’s shock, prepared her in some measure for the censure that might be levelled against her — against them — but he had been too embarrassed, unable to find the right words.

He turned angrily away from the window, unbuckling his gun-belt and tossing his Adams revolver unusually carelessly to one side. To Hell with all small-minded hypocrites, he thought savagely.

Chapter Fourteen

The dining room of the Orleans Hotel resounded to the clatter of busy knives and forks, the gruff tones of businessmen agreeing deals, the tinkle of feminine voices exclaiming over the latest fashion or scandal or shrilly telling their children, restless in the unaccustomed collar or tight sash, to sit still and hold their tongues.

‘What the blazes is going on?’ Colonel Cornish caught the head waiter as he sped past the doorway with a tray full of elaborate desserts.

George rolled his eyes heavenwards. ‘Steamer in today,’ he said. ‘Brought a shipment of European furniture. Dunno how word got about, but I reckon half the population of Sacramento County — aye, and Solano and Yolo too! — was on the Embarcadero before dawn! Cleaned that ship out like a swarm of locusts — and now they’re cleaning us out too. Booked a table, had you?’

He hadn’t, of course, but he was a respected and regular customer and George swiftly found him a table by dint of sweeping two solitary diners on to a table with an elderly couple and promising them all a drink on the house for their trouble. He pocketed the coins Colonel Cornish slipped him with a knowing wink.

Alicia stood irresolutely in the doorway. Cornish reached her side just before George, relieved her of the parcels she was carrying and led her across to the corner table.

‘I — I hadn’t expected there to be so many people,’ she stammered, suddenly conscious that a number of the diners were looking covertly at them.

‘Nor I. There was a steamer in this afternoon. Furniture. Sure sign that the State is more settled when they start worrying about prettying up their homes. Myself, I’d always rather have a couple of good sound bulls or a sack of prime wheat seed than one of those rickety chairs the ladies rave over, that look as though they’ll scarce take your weight.’ He handed her the menu to peruse. ‘Will you have wine?’ he queried. ‘Or soda? Or sarsaparilla?’

She looked at the large glass of whiskey in front of him. ‘I’d like a whiskey,’ she said frankly. ‘But that’s not done, so I’ll settle for wine.’

‘I wouldn’t,’ he said. ‘Thin, sour stuff they serve here. Used to whiskey are you?’

She nodded, remembering the days with Angelina.

He raised a quizzical eyebrow. ‘Leave it to me,’ he drawled.

‘Soda for the lady — and another large whiskey for me,’ he ordered, much to George’s surprise, for the Colonel was normally an abstemious man and there was a full glass still in front of him.

When the order came — plates piled high with meat and vegetables in rich sauces in the fancy French style — he switched the fresh glass in front of her.

She took a drink and sat back with a grateful sigh. It was not going to be easy, coping with everyone at Letitia’s without Chen Kai’s herbs, and every little helped.

‘Dutch courage?’ he mocked.

She looked him straight in the eye and nodded.

‘Comforting to know you have some weaknesses,’ he observed drily, unobtrusively palming the glass back to his side of the table.

‘You’d be surprised how many,’ she said.

While George cleared away the plates and they ordered some of the desserts for which the Orleans was famed, he leaned back in his chair and observed her. She was wearing the simple grey silk dress, but whatever dress shop she had visited that afternoon had persuaded her to smarten it up a little. Delicate falls of lace had been stitched to the wrist bands and fell becomingly over her slim, work-reddened hands. The muslin fichu had been removed and an upstand of lace trimmed the edge of the decolletage, revealing a modest amount of cleavage and emphasising the gentle swell of her bosom. In spite of himself, he found himself remembering the day at the
agua caliente
when nothing but a much-mended chemise had stood between them.

‘Why didn’t you buy yourself a new dress?’ he demanded, more harshly than he had intended. ‘If you didn’t have enough money, you should have told me …’

She raised her eyebrows. ‘I have my wages, Colonel,’ she said stiffly. ‘I am entitled to no more than I have earned. And what I do with it is my concern, is it not?’

‘Don’t be so damned prickly!’ he exclaimed angrily. ‘I’ll wager you spent it all on Tamsin. She’s already a sight better dressed than you are. Silk petticoats while yours are calico … When I was helping you out of the saddle …’ he ended gruffly.

Instead of being angry or blushing in confusion, he was astounded to see that she was actually giggling.

‘So I stint myself to deck Tamsin out in finery?’ she chuckled. She shook her head. ‘Tamsin’s finery is a relic of better days. What could no longer be patched or turned was cut down for her; sadly it all had to be replaced by calico. I can assure you that I am as fond of silk chemises and petticoats and … whatever … as the next woman.’ She coloured. ‘And this is a most improper conversation and we had better leave it there. If I fail to come up to your standards …’

‘A little old-fashioned, perhaps, but it suits you well.’

She raised startled eyes to his.

‘Dammit!’ he growled. ‘That was supposed to be a compliment! I only meant — you’re not quite as richly dressed as …’ He waved his hand generally at the few respectable ladies in the dining-room, elaborately dressed in bright silks and satins, mostly over-ornate.

‘You forget, Colonel,’ she answered quietly. ‘I am a widow, and therefore expected to be more soberly dressed.’ Her lips curved in a delightful smile. ‘And now, since we have to go on working together, I think you had better leave the compliments and take me to the soirée.’

He could not remember ever being so clumsy with a woman before and he had known many. But not under such intimate circumstances: under the same roof, morning, noon — and night.

He handed her into the gig and settled himself next to her.

‘Here.’ He groped under the seat and thrust the little box at her. ‘Chen Kai asked me to give this to you.’

Wrapped in many layers of paper was a tiny flask of perfume. ‘Oh,’ she sighed. ‘What a lovely surprise. But how did you …?’

‘He told me what to buy,’ he said curtly. He preferred women as nature made them and would rather have the perfume of the herbs she rinsed her hair with than the heavy drifts of musk and chypre so many society women wore.

When they arrived at the Coopers’, Cornish leapt down easily, handed the reins to Lucius, the Coopers’ servant, and hurried round to hand her down from the gig. As she stepped down on to the raised sidewalk, she could not resist kicking up her skirts to reveal a rustle of silken petticoats. ‘The auctioneer threw them in with the dress,’ she murmured softly as she saw him glancing down. He grinned sheepishly.

‘Oh, Mrs Owens!’ Letitia Cooper darted forward from her brother’s side as they were ushered into the hall. ‘Alicia! Oh, how my heart bled for you and the poor child when I read your note! To be from home in your hour of need!’

‘I was desperate,’ admitted Alicia as she emerged from Letitia’s warm and friendly hug. ‘I could think of nowhere else to turn, but in the end, I believe it all turned out for the best.’

‘Oh, my dear girl! How can you say so?’ wailed Letitia.

‘But, ma’am, I assure you … Tamsin is fully recovered!’

‘All turned out for the best indeed!’ The older woman was near to tears, her face unbecomingly pink. ‘To go out alone to that place … oh, Alicia, how could you?’

‘I have Chen Kai …’

‘A servant!’

‘A friend.’

‘Everybody’s talking about it.’

‘Let them talk,’ shrugged Alicia indifferently. ‘What is it to me?’

‘Everything!’ hissed the Reverend’s sister vehemently. ‘Everything! Your position in society … You must leave Tresco, leave it immediately. You must both come here at once.’

‘But you don’t need any more servants!’ exclaimed Alicia, her brow creased.

‘Of course not!’ replied Letitia indignantly. ‘As my guests!’

‘I know you mean it for the best, ma’am, but it isn’t possible. I — I would rather not accept charity.’

‘Friendship,’ persisted Letitia obstinately.

‘Charity offered with loving friendship is still charity. Thank you for your offer, but I believe I must continue my employment at Tresco.’

‘Surveys! Men’s work!’ muttered Letitia darkly. ‘Quite unbefitting a lady!’

Alicia looked around nervously.

‘I know. Secrets. But Lamarr’s not here tonight, nor expected. Though one never knows who may be on his payroll, obnoxious man. And that’s another reason why I don’t like it.’ Letitia frowned. ‘Lamarr is not a man to be trifled with. I told Colonel Cornish …’ She turned, as if expecting the Colonel and her brother still to be standing at her elbow. ‘Oh, drat the men, they’ve gone!’ she complained. ‘Now we’ll have to go in on our own.’

As they entered the drawing-room, a sudden hush fell on the assembled gathering. The Reverend Cooper was the first to step forward and greet Alicia, but even he seemed at a loss once the formal phrases had been uttered. Miss Letitia turned back into the room for a moment, casting an anguished look at her friends, gathered in little groups, but they all stood there as if frozen to the floor. The awkward pause seemed to Alicia to last a lifetime, although in truth it was barely a moment in duration. It was broken by Mr Revel, the newspaperman, who strode across the room to her side.

‘Mrs Owens!’ He bowed over her hand and kissed it with his cold lips. ‘My mother was just expressing that hope that you and I would sing a duet again this evening.’ He drew her across to his mother’s side, leaving the older woman no choice but to follow her son’s lead and greet Alicia.

Outside in the hallway there was the bustle of another arrival and the Leons, looking as ever like Beauty and the Beast, came in and began to greet their acquaintances. They professed themselves, without any hesitation, delighted to see Alicia once more. It broke the awkward moment and for that she was grateful, but she had been left in no doubt that her standing in this little society had subtly changed. There was a watchfulness in the eyes of the company that had not been there before. The initial inquisitiveness had been replaced by a slight, but palpable, condemnation — at least from the older ladies.

Across the room she could see Cornish chatting away quite calmly to Mr Revel Senior, as if nothing untoward had happened. If he could ignore the raised eyebrows, she could do the same. She stiffened her shoulders and lifted her head defiantly: she could be just as blasé as he.

Revel was at her elbow again, this time with another young lady on his arm.

‘I don’t think you have met Hester,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Hester — Mrs Owens, who delighted us with some decent singing at our last soirée. Mrs Owens — Hester Bryant, one of the few young ladies who does not put my teeth on edge when she sings.’

Hester smiled shyly and held out her hand. A rather delicate girl with a mass of fluffy fair hair and smoky blue eyes, she reminded Alicia of a little statuette, a Dresden shepherdess Mama had brought with her around the Horn and given pride of place on the mantelpiece in the little house in Yerba Buena.

‘Hester, child, I want you!’ called an authoritative voice from the other side of the room, where a stout, poker-backed figure was hovering anxiously.

‘A moment, Mrs Bryant,’ replied Revel cheerily, ignoring the look of panic in Hester’s eyes. Alicia, ever quick to sense another’s feelings, realised that the girl was very much under the domination of her mother and frightened of defying her.

‘Now Hester,’ Revel continued smoothly, as though there had been no interruption, ‘Hester sings a beautiful rich alto. Wouldn’t it be marvellous to hear the two of you singing together? We could get-Edith to accompany you … Letitia!’ He turned to draw the Reverend Cooper’s sister into the group. ‘Can you think of something that Miss Bryant and Mrs. Owens could sing for us? Your knowledge of music is so much wider than mine.’

It was a challenge that few of the music lovers among them could resist and in a few minutes, Hester and Alicia were pouring their sweet voices into the air. Astonishingly, Hester had a truly rich alto voice, just as Revel had said, quite at odds with the delicate and submissive air which led one to expect a thin, breathy soprano. The two of them went on to sing ‘Nymphs and Shepherds’ with Mrs Revel. Then Alicia consented to sit at the piano and accompany Hester and Revel in a duet from von Flotow’s popular opera
Martha
.

As the applause for the last duet died away, a deep voice behind Alicia murmured: ‘Beautifully rendered, Hester.’

Hester drew her breath in sharply and two high spots of colour appeared on her cheekbones. Slowly she turned away from the piano and it seemed to Alicia that the entire room held its breath as the fair-haired girl confronted Augustus Brenchley, her former fiancé.

But they were to be disappointed. Hester neither fainted nor burst into tears, nor did she turn on her heel and ignore him.

‘G-good evening, Mr Brenchley,’ she said, with a fair assumption of calm, looking more delicate than ever beside the tall, well-built newcomer.

They stood stock-still for a moment, eyes locked, until the Reverend Cooper broke the silence with the offer of a glass of punch. Groups split up and reformed as the gentlemen handed round the cool glasses.