Fool's Gold (20 page)

‘What about you, Brenchley,’ said Señor Leon jovially. ‘Will you sing for your supper or have you some other talents?’

The lawyer in reply took up his seat on the piano stool that had just been vacated by Alicia and ran his fingers tentatively over the keys.

‘It is some time since I have had the leisure to play, Señor!’ he replied deprecatingly. ‘I fear the fingers have stiffened somewhat!’

He entertained them with a rondo and a minuet by Beethoven, played competently if not brilliantly. The final short piece he played he seemed to pour his heart into. When the last stirring chord had died away, there was a momentary silence before applause broke out. When they had finished clapping, he pushed the stool back from the piano.

‘What was the last piece, Augustus?’ demanded Mrs Revel. ‘I do not believe I have heard it before.’

Brenchley looked past his friend’s mother and locked Hester’s eyes with his. ‘“An die feme Geliebte”,’ he said deliberately. ‘“To the Distant Beloved”.’

Hester looked for a moment as though she were going to burst into tears, but then her mother was at her elbow, drawing her away from the piano under the pretext of finding another duet to sing. Miss Cooper decided that the moment was ripe for supper and everyone broke up into small groups to exchange news and gossip. Alicia sympathised with Hester but at the same time she could not but be relieved that all eyes were now on her and Brenchley.

‘We were sorry not to see you at the last soirée, Colonel Cornish,’ chided Mrs Revel. ‘Everyone was quite sure that you had gone to San Francisco to join the Vigilantes.’ Alicia, standing at a table laden with mouthwatering refreshments, suddenly found that her appetite had deserted her. What she would not have done for some of Chen Kai’s herbs of oblivion! Blindly she allowed Henry Bryant to help her to a selection of delicacies, while straining to hear Cornish’s answer.

‘Because I was with them in ’51? Oh no. It’s quite a different kettle of fish this time.’

‘How so?’ queried Captain Sharples.

‘We’re no longer a frontier town, Captain. I’d rather fight for uncorrupted law officers. That’s what the Vigilantes should be doing — and the Government should be working alongside them to achieve it.’

‘And Gwin and Weller too,’ agreed Mrs Revel. ‘If they spent less time in Washington and more in the state that elected them …’

‘And what of Terry?’ asked Mrs Pikeman eagerly. ‘Will they hang him, d’you think, Colonel?’

‘I think they dare not,’ he answered frankly. The navy’s under orders from the Governor to shell the city and declare martial law rather than let the Vigilantes hang a Supreme Court Justice.’

‘And Hopkins?’

‘His life hangs on a thread still. And I fear the future of law and order in California hangs there with it,’ he said sombrely. ‘Those of you who pray, better pray for Hopkins’s survival.’

Brenchley was at Alicia’s side with a glass of wine, taking her away from young Henry with practised ease and drawing her out on to the verandah, where they found a swing seat unoccupied.

‘I understand from my friend Revel that you’ve had rather an uncomfortable time since we last met, ma’am,’ he said with a sympathetic smile that sat well on his handsome features.

‘I fear so.’

‘And how is young Tamsin now?’

‘Much improved, I thank you, sir. The air at Tresco …’

‘Why the deuce did you go out there, Mrs Owens?’ he demanded in exasperation. ‘You must have known how folk would gossip!’

She put her glass down with a snap. ‘I don’t give a damn what they say about me! And I’d be sorry, though not surprised, if you should join in their pettiness!’ She took a deep breath. ‘But — I owe you Tamsin’s life, after all. The fact is, Mr Brenchley, Tamsin fell ill the day after you hauled her out of the Slough and they were threatening to put her in the Asylum. I never found starvation to be a cure for sickness.’

‘I can’t blame you for that. But the Colonel should have known better than to expose you to such gossip!’

‘Perhaps he — like me — prefers not to run his life by what other people think!’ she snapped. ‘He needed someone to put Tresco to rights, a housekeeper if you like, and I needed the work. Employment is more important to me than social approval!’

He looked over his shoulder to be sure that no one else was within hearing distance. ‘Don’t fear, my friend Revel has told me why Cornish had need of your services. That’s in my capacity as a lawyer, and I’m always discreet. I shall be calling on the Colonel to offer him my services in the forthcoming affair. It promises to be something of a test case.’

‘You’re not returning to New York?’

‘No.’ He bit his lip. ‘Although my original purpose in travelling to California can no longer be served, yet I feel that the air here suits me well. I may even decide to hang out my shingle in Sacramento.’

The verandah was beginning to fill up now as more of the guests came out to savour the light evening breeze which wafted over the gardens, carrying the sweet scents of the native plants with which Miss Cooper had filled her garden.

‘Have you seen the new production of
Camille
at the Forest, Mrs Owens?’

‘It’s not one that’s come my way,’ she replied.

‘I — er — I have some tickets for a performance a week Saturday,’ he began hesitantly. ‘I wonder whether you would care to accompany me — with Miss Cooper, of course,’ he added hastily. ‘And perhaps the Reverend. It is Miss Hayne, you know,’ he urged as she hesitated. ‘Direct from performing the role in New York.’

‘Hadn’t you better consult the Colonel first?’ came Mrs Bryant’s sneering voice from directly behind them.

Alicia coloured angrily at the insinuation. Unfortunately for Mrs Bryant, Cornish himself had just come out on to the verandah.

‘My dear lady,’ he said in deceptively silky tones, ‘Mrs Owens has no need to seek her employer’s permission for anything she chooses to do in her spare time. What can you be thinking of?’ His raised eyebrow made it quite clear that he knew
exactly
what she had been thinking of and was daring her to come out in the open and say it.

‘My dear Colonel, how you do take one up!’ she trilled. ‘I assure you you quite mistake me, quite.’

‘I believe Miss Pikeman is going to delight us with a sonata,’ Cornish went on imperturbably, as though nothing had happened. ‘Shall we go in?’

He held out his arm and Mrs Bryant, puffing and muttering, her face a faint shade of purple, was left with no choice but to take it.

‘Can we not press you to play for us this evening, Jack?’ demanded Miss Cooper later that evening. ‘We’ve enough ladies for a country dance or a foursome reel. I know you did not bring your instrument, but there is always Octavius’s violin …’

‘I fear no one would dance to my tune this evening, Letitia,’ he replied ruefully. ‘I could play you a fine lament and have all the ladies in floods …?’

‘No, no,’ interposed the Reverend hastily. ‘We’re endeavouring to banish melancholy, not encourage it! But if you won’t play, then you’ll have to sing for your supper! You know Letitia’s rules!’

By the time Señor Leon had finished, none too expertly and rather more
basso
than
profundo
with ‘Rocked in the Deep’, Miss Cooper had found the music she wanted.

‘“The song of the Cornishmen”,’ she announced with pleasure. ‘“And shall Trelawney die?” Such stirring words, don’t you think, Colonel Cornish?’

‘Very moving!’ he agreed gravely and Alicia wondered whether she was the only one to notice the curl of the lip as he spoke. Obviously not one of his favourite songs. ‘What else have you there? Ah yes, Tom Moore’s Irish Melodies.’

‘“The Last Rose of Summer”,’ she said with a romantic sigh. ‘Such beautiful sentiments so nobly expressed. Mrs Owens will sing with you — I shall accompany.’

Alicia felt the colour creeping up her throat to suffuse her face as she stood next to her employer, looking over the music, aware that all eyes were once more upon them. Damnation! she thought savagely. Why couldn’t she have picked someone else?

Even as they sang the first notes, she knew that she was in the presence of a far superior singer. Cornish’s voice was rich and splendid, soaring effortlessly over a wide range and encouraging her to an excellence she had not thought herself capable of. As the last liquid notes died away, there was a moment of appreciative silence before the listeners broke into enthusiastic applause.

Soon afterwards, the gathering broke up, the guests departing in their carriages or on foot, some to their homes in Sacramento and the nearby settlements, others who had driven in from farther afield to the various hotels where they would stay overnight.

‘I wish you would stay,’ grumbled Miss Cooper as the Colonel handed Alicia up into the gig. ‘I don’t like to think of you driving all that way back.’

‘It’s a fine moonlit night, Letitia,’ he replied easily. ‘And the road I know like the back of my hand. Besides, I can’t afford to lose any more time if we’re to finish the job before the Commission closes its doors.’

‘Yes — but I don’t like it, don’t like it at all,’ she complained peevishly. ‘Taking on a man like Lamarr — it’s just asking for trouble!’

‘You wouldn’t want me to let him walk in and take Tresco from me without a fight, would you?’ He took her thin hand in his and kissed it gallantly. ‘Trust me, Letitia,’ he added seriously. ‘And I’ll take your advice on — the other matter.’

‘I should hope so!’ she replied grimly. ‘And I’ll do what I can at this end, never fear!’

A wave of the hand and they were away, heading down to the Embarcadero.

Chapter Fifteen

The steamboats were still plying across the wide, muddy river, fetching the gamblers back across the Sacramento from the brothels and hell holes of Washington town.

‘You have a magnificent voice,’ Alicia said softly. ‘And you play the violin. Surprising talents — for a country boy.’

He negotiated the steep curve that took them on to the road to Tresco. ‘Music has played a large part in my life,’ he concluded.

‘And yet you wouldn’t sing that Cornish song for Miss Cooper,’ she commented curiously.

‘Ah! You noticed that.’ He looked slightly sheepish.

‘I’m not as easily diverted as Miss Letitia,’ she observed drily.

‘Pity.’ He heaved a sigh of resignation. ‘It’s just that — I differ from the rest of the world in seeing a pack of bishops as potential heroes.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s an unedifying story. I was a scholarship boy at a cathedral school — chosen for my voice, not my brains. I received my musical training there, and a good education, as long as it lasted. When the piping treble voice broke, they threw me out. Overnight. Out on the road to walk back to Cornwall. And when I got back, there was nothing for me but the mines.’

‘And Trelawney?’

‘A seventeenth-century Cornish bishop, imprisoned for his principles and threatened by the English with hanging. No doubt very heroic. But when they threw me out of the Cathedral School, I could happily have imprisoned thirty Cornish bishops and seen the English hang the lot.’

They breasted the ridge. The ranch-house stood on the far side of the valley, bathed in silvery moonlight, magical and quite different from its daytime self. She drew in her breath sharply, realising with an ache in her heart how quickly she had come to regard Tresco as a refuge.

‘Don’t drive on yet,’ she whispered. Her face glowed in the moonlight, quite stripped of its normal guarded expression. He let the reins fall slack on the horse’s neck and leaned back on his seat, his arm casually along the back, turned slightly sideways to observe her.

‘You knew what was going to happen this evening, didn’t you?’ she demanded abruptly.

‘Yes.’

‘Could you not have warned me?’ Her voice was plaintive, like a child’s.

‘You might not have come if you had known what was waiting for you. And that would have caused even more gossip.’

‘To Hell with them!’ she exclaimed inelegantly. ‘You hired me to do a job, and I’m doing it. I don’t propose to take any notice of their small-mindedness.’

‘Unfortunately, it’s not that simple,’ said Cornish gravely. ‘Especially since we can’t tell them just
why
I employed you.’

‘But —’

‘It’s all fine and dandy for you to say “to Hell with them”, Mrs Owens, and normally I’d join you, because I know there’s no basis for their gossip, but I have to go on living here,’ he said with a scowl. ‘And it isn’t just a case of offending Society: that society consists of lawyers, senators, men of standing like Cooper, newspapermen like Revel, all the people I’ll need on my side to fight Lamarr, all the people whose support Letitia and Octavius and I depend on for our schools campaign. I can’t afford to alienate them all just for the sake of a gesture.’

He saw her shoulders sag wearily.

‘There is a solution.’ She turned her face to him, ghostly in the moonlight. ‘Letitia suggested it.’

‘What?’

‘You could marry me.’

He had expected a strong reaction to his words and he was not disappointed. ‘Have you gone mad?’ she whispered.

‘It’s not such a bad idea,’ he said calmly, with the air of a man considering a business proposition.

‘We hardly know each other, let alone …’

‘Let alone love one another?’ he completed for her. ‘Of course, there’s no pretence of
that
,’ he said scornfully. ‘But calm down and you might see the sense in the idea. We’re already as well acquainted — if not more so — than many couples who supposedly marry for love. We can rub along together in a fairly superficial manner, which is all I require. And what does the future hold for you otherwise? What future for you or Chen Kai or Tamsin in tramping about the state looking for work? Well enough when you had your camera, and no doubt you were very good at your work, but as the country grows more settled, the prospects of that kind of enterprise become less and less. Don’t forget the state you were in when you first arrived at Tresco … is that what you want for Tamsin?’

‘You don’t want a wife,’ she protested.

‘Not particularly,’ he admitted. ‘But I want to see Tresco flourishing. And you could put it in order. There’s a great deal in what Letitia says.’

She twisted the ends of the shawl in taut fingers as she struggled to find the words. The prospect of staying on at Tresco, of a stable way of life after the misery of the last year, warred with the prospect of marrying again, of being at the mercy of a man, as much a man as Robert, or —

The unbidden memory hovered on the edge of her mind, eating away at the invisible defences she had thrown up and she knew with a dull certainty that she could not do it.

‘I will do whatever work you have,’ she said, in a voice so low that he had to crane forward to make out the words, ‘but I am no hypocrite. I will not marry you.’

He ground his teeth audibly in annoyance. ‘You saw tonight what the consequence of that attitude will be!’ he snapped. He took a deep breath to calm himself. ‘Look, we’re both tired,’ he said. ‘We’ll talk about it again in the morning.’

She shook her head. ‘There’s no point,’ she murmured. ‘The answer would be the same.’

He picked up the reins and urged the horses forward, driving down into the valley, over the bridge and up the slope to the ranch far too fast for safety, for all that the moon shone so brightly.

When he drew up in the stableyard, she gathered her skirts up to climb down from the gig, but he was before her and she had no choice but to accept his help in descending.

As she reached the ground, she tried to hurry away, but he held tightly to her wrist, gazing down at her in baffled silence. She met that angry green gaze for a brief moment, then looked pointedly down at his strong fingers curled painfully around her wrist.

‘Damn your obstinacy!’ he muttered, and as he relaxed his grip she slipped away, gliding soundlessly in the moonlight to her door where, like a wraith, she disappeared from view, leaving behind her only a faint perfume, like the breeze passing over a field of wild flowers on a spring morning.

There were only a few hours left of the night, but, despite her exhaustion, she could not sleep. She lay wakeful, alert to every little sound or sigh from Tamsin in the inner chamber. She would have given a great deal for a draught of Kai’s herbs, but on her return from Pedro’s, he had refused to give her any more.

‘You have been dependent on them too long,’ he had said firmly.

‘But —’

‘It’s time to face up to life, Alicia.’

‘I can’t.’

‘If you can’t do it here, where can you do it?’

‘Somewhere where there’s no one to remind me …’

‘Alicia, there are men everywhere in California. Unless you plan to join the Sisters of Mercy, you’ll have to learn to face up to what happened and move on.’ His heart ached for her, but he wouldn’t let it show. ‘After Robert, you managed to cope with the men in the
cantina
. Coping with the men in Sacramento society cannot be worse than that. You’ll manage.’

As the first rosy fingers of dawn painted a glowing pattern on her window, she gave up the struggle and rose to don a light shawl. She stepped into the other room to gaze down on the sleeping child, envious of her deep and serene slumber.

She remembered when Tamsin had tossed and turned night after endless night, often screaming out in her nightmares, times when Alicia would have given the world to see the little girl at peace with herself again. And now Alicia was planning to take her away from ‘the pretty green place’ and set them all back on the tramp again, to join that miserable band of failures who had proved incapable of making a living in the prosperous new state. It was madness, she knew, but she could do no other.

*

She was not the only one to have had a disturbed night. Cornish, scowling over a cup of coffee, barely acknowledged her greeting. Even Tamsin’s sunny face did not bring the usual smile and pat on the head, but she had learnt at an early age to adapt herself to the behaviour of the adults around her, so she sat quietly on her chair and ate her bread.

Kai placed a plate in front of Alicia and she helped herself, with a slight grimace, from the leathery bread in the centre of the table, wondering whether there would be leisure in the day to come to do a decent baking.

‘I’m sending Chen out with you today, Mrs Owens,’ said the Colonel abruptly. ‘There’s a report of some broken stockading in one of the valleys where we keep cattle. Kerhouan and I will ride over and check it out.’

‘But what about the cooking?’ she asked.

‘Juan or Luis can do it!’ he snapped. ‘Whatever they do, it can’t be worse than we get now! The sooner Chen Kai is out of the kitchen, the better we’ll all be pleased!’

‘I let us in for that, didn’t I?’ murmured Alicia ruefully as they saddled up their horses.

‘Not a good evening?’

‘A fair number of unpleasant remarks and insinuations. Nothing I couldn’t cope with.’ It was only the proposed solution that worried her.

Kai did not refer to the matter again. On the way back, however, a chance remark about Tamsin, who had been left playing cheerfully with Josefa under Luis’s watchful eye while his father and brother cleared out one of the old outbuildings for expected stock, brought the painful thoughts of the dawn back to haunt her.

‘What is it, Alicia?’ he enquired.

‘She’s happy here, isn’t she?’

‘Of course.’

‘And you too, Kai, are you happy? Or would you rather be back on the road again, with the picture wagon?’

‘They were good days,’ he nodded with a broad smile of reminiscence. ‘But you can’t live in the past. Those days are gone. I suppose we would have had to settle down in the end, for Tamsin’s sake, and I can’t think of many places better than Tresco. So much to be achieved here — though preferably not in the kitchen.’ He reined in his horse and looked at her. ‘The Colonel wants us to stay on?’

She shook her head, cursing herself for raising his hopes. She was almost tempted to pour out her troubles to Kai, but that was the coward’s way.

That evening, when they returned to the Mission, they found Augustus Brenchley standing on the
portal
in animated discussion with Kerhouan and Cornish. He ran lightly down the steps and across the yard to help Alicia down out of the saddle.

‘Mrs Owens!’ he exclaimed. ‘How delightful to see you again!’

He held on to her hand, bowing over it and brushing it with his lips. Aware of the Colonel’s scrutiny, she found herself blushing.

‘I’ve asked Brenchley to take pot-luck with us,’ said Cornish stiffly. ‘We have a lot to discuss — you’ll join us for dinner?’

It was a command, not a request. She could hardly refuse.

‘You’ll want to change,’ the Colonel allowed, casting an eye over her dusty clothes and dust-streaked face. ‘Luis will bring water to — your apartment.’ This with a sidelong glance at Brenchley.

It was Kai, not Luis, who turned up with the cans of hot water.

‘Alicia! What on earth am I going to feed Brenchley?’ he pleaded.

She almost laughed at the panic on his face, but she took pity on him.

‘There are some lemons in the store,’ she replied soothingly. ‘Pick some herbs and make him a good cool drink. Then set Luis to build up the fire and prepare lots of vegetables. I’ll be with you in ten minutes.’

The water was silkily cool against her skin, but she did not linger over her bath, for she knew Kai would never cope.

She wondered as she drew on her grey silk how Mr Brenchley would take to dining in such surroundings, though he did not strike her as one to stand on his dignity.

In the kitchen, chaos reigned. The fire had been stoked up high and the heat hit her as she walked in the door.

Luis was distractedly trying to clear the table of the accumulation of papers and Xavier was looking with deep suspicion at the contents of the store cupboard. Kai was just looking very unhappy.

With a sigh she picked up the sacking apron lying on the kitchen chair, issued her orders and set to.

Within moments, the sweat was running off her brow and her clean dress was sticking to her as she arranged trivets and pans over the heat. She thought longingly of the efficient closed range which Angelina had bought from the first batch shipped around the Horn, which could take twice as many pots, as well as having two ovens, and which had never, in the hottest summer, produced the stifling heat this fire did. And to think that so many stoves had been shipped in and glutted the market, that they had used them to fill the holes in San Francisco’s main streets!

Despite the difficulties, she soon had everything under control. Before long she was able to leave Kai and his assistants to carry on, pausing only to set her apron aside and mop the sweat from her face. Her hair had slipped down from its knot, but she had no time to dress it again. She pinned it back with two high combs, took a deep breath to steady herself and marched in.