Fool's Gold (27 page)

She was tired, but it was not the tiredness she had once suffered from, exhaustion compounded of a worn out body and a depressed and desolate spirit, rather the pleasant tiredness of a job well done.

She and Pearl and Mrs Chang had finished turning a succession of dusty, cobwebby rooms, separated from the
sala
and each other by the previous occupants but never used by them, into a civilised upper storey with a couple of guest bedrooms and a few other spacious and airy chambers awaiting the rancher’s decision on future use. While the hands carried upstairs the bedsteads and feather beds brought upstream on the Tresco, Alicia decided to take the opportunity to bathe in the shaded and sheltered pool upstream. Nothing would persuade Mrs Chang to join in such shocking behaviour, but Pearl agreed to come along and stand watch for Alicia, who wasn’t prepared to risk a repetition of the embarrassing scene at the
agua caliente
.

The pool was deserted. While Tamsin splashed about in the shallows, Alicia slid gratefully into the cool, silky water and began to wash the dust from her face and hair. At last she lay back with a sigh of pleasure to let the water run through her long tresses. When she was quite satisfied she had removed all the dust and sweat, she walked out a little further and swam lazily up and down the river. She saw Pearl covertly watching her, her face dust-streaked and sweaty as Alicia’s had been.

‘Come on in, Pearl,’ she coaxed. ‘It’s so cool and refreshing.’

‘You come in, Pearl!’ cried Tamsin from her spot in the shallows where she sat splashing happily. ‘It’s fun!’

In the end, Pearl was unable to resist the cool lure of the splashing water and she slipped shyly behind a tree and emerged a few minutes later to slide unseen into the water. Respecting her modesty, Alicia turned and swam a little downstream. Tamsin, however, had no such reservations and began splashing and playing and shrieking to Pearl until at last the two of them were playing like young puppies in the shallows.

They emerged at last, rested and refreshed. The water had invigorated Alicia, filling her with the exuberance she’d felt when her father had taught her to swim in the icy mountain streams.

Walking back along the bank towards the house, Tamsin chatting merrily between them, Pearl began to open up a little and chat about the progress down in the village and her mother’s health.

Alicia looked about her in satisfaction, revelling in the splendour of the scenery, its majesty only slightly muted in the early evening sun. The sky was a paler blue than in the heat of the day, the sun a warmer gold and here, higher up than the scorching bottom of the valley, there was a playful light breeze. Her eyes fell on the solid outline of the old Mission house, its white walls shining, its red roof-tiles glowing warmly in the sun, with here and there a white dove, gently cooing. It looked so warm and welcoming, a haven offering security and peace; it was hard to remember that it was so short a time since she had been brought here, so grudgingly, by its owner.

‘Chen Kai!’ screamed Tamsin in glee, running and hurling herself at her friend, who had just come up from the village. ‘Oh, Chen Kai! Where’ve you been? I hasn’t seen you all
day
!’

He grinned and swung the child up into his arms, his eyes meeting Alicia’s laughingly over the child’s golden curls. ‘Did you miss me?’ he teased. ‘Or was it only Beatrice?’

‘We’ve just had a swim in the river, and d’you know, Chen Kai, Pearl didn’t want to come in, but she did … and d’you know, Chen Kai, she can’t swim?’

‘Come on, chatterbox, race you back to the house,’ said Chen Kai. He swung her down and they raced ahead to the house, hand in hand. Alicia turned to say something to Pearl, but a shuttered look had come down on her face.

‘I — I am sorry, lady,’ she answered bleakly. ‘I did not quite hear …’

‘My name’s Alicia!’ She looked sideways at the girl, puzzled by the change. ‘I said Chen Kai looks as if he’s had a good day too.’

‘Excuse me,’ muttered Pearl almost inaudibly. ‘My father — I must see how my mother is …’ A brief bow and she was gone, leaving Alicia with the impression that she had been on the verge of tears.

She was not allowed much leisure to contemplate the problem, for she arrived in the bustling kitchen to be informed by Angelina that their two guests were staying not only to dinner, but overnight.

‘What will we give them?’ she asked anxiously, for she knew that Revel would be far less inclined to rough it than Brenchley.

But Angelina had stocked up before the installation of the new range, and the marble shelves of the pantry were full of pies and pastries, puddings and jugs of cool drinks.

‘Colonel Jack, he is expecting you in the
sala
,’ she informed Alicia. ‘Soon as you join them, I start rest of dinner. Pearl will see to the little one.’

Reluctant to keep him waiting again, Alicia hurried off to change.

‘Hmmm,’ said the cook, looking her over with a critical eye as she passed through the kitchen. ‘So you still wearing those drab colours to scare the men off? Never worked in Sonora, won’t work here.’

‘Mrs Owens!’ Brenchley had been looking out for her and now came forward to offer her his arm and lead her across to one of the comfortable armchairs. ‘I’ve been congratulating the Colonel on the changes he has made, ma’am,’ he murmured politely. ‘But it seems the credit should all go to you. Truly, you have wrought wonders to transform this outpost into a civilised home.’

‘Colonel Cornish bought the furniture, sir,’ she replied in some amusement. ‘I merely arranged it. But I am delighted that our more civilised veneer has prevailed on you both to give us the pleasure of your company.’

‘There’s your flattery back for you, Brenchley!’ laughed Revel.

‘Thought we’d ride into Sacramento with them tomorrow,’ suggested Jack Cornish. ‘If it suits you. We need some more supplies and we — or rather you — could buy the rest of the furnishings.’

‘As you wish.’

‘Why not wait and go down to San Francisco?’ suggested Revel. ‘It’s safe to venture there again.’

‘Really?’

‘We had news in yesterday that the worst is over. Hopkins, miraculously, has survived, so they won’t hang Terry. If the Vigilantes have any sense, they’ll just quietly let him go and then disband.’

‘So demonstrating that if you’re a Supreme Court Justice you can stab a man without fear of punishment?’ protested Alicia bitterly.

Brenchley shrugged. ‘I echo the Colonel’s words,’ he replied. ‘California is no longer a jumble of frontier towns. Justice must be seen to come from the law and the Government, not from the mob.’

‘Surely, Mrs Owens, you’ll be glad when the Vigilantes have disbanded?’ queried Revel with interest.

‘Yes, I shall,’ she replied; it was a struggle to keep her voice light and conversational. ‘The Vigilantes are only human: what they call justice could as easily turn to mob rule and an awful lot of old grudges can be settled under that cloak!’

‘May I offer you a drink, Mrs Owens?’ asked Jack Cornish. His hand hovered over the whiskey, a twinkle in his eye as if he was daring her to ask for what she really wanted. Her eyes locked with his and held a moment longer.

‘A sarsaparilla would be very pleasant, thank you, Colonel Cornish,’ she said at last. She didn’t want to shock Revel.

‘We’ll stay on for Letitia’s soirée,’ suggested the Colonel casually. ‘She’ll be happy to hear our good news.’

‘Lamarr might be there,’ warned Revel.

‘All the better. I’d like to see his reactions.’

And his wife’s too, I’ll wager, thought Alicia cynically.

Chapter Twenty

The dinner was excellent and they lingered in the comfort of the new dining room drinking, Alicia thought, far too much of the rich red wine. At first she protested when Cornish refilled her glass but after a while she permitted herself to relax, to enjoy the fact that for once someone else had prepared the meal and would clear it away afterwards. Above all she revelled in the illusion that she was at home here, secure, safe and contented. Reality would intrude with the dawn’s light, but for now she no longer cared.

‘Marvellous to relax at last!’ exulted Jack Cornish, as if he had picked up on her thoughts. ‘We’ve all worked at full pelt for so long we’ve almost forgotten how to enjoy our leisure!’

‘Never heard there was much leisure in ranching!’ observed Revel dryly.

‘Oh, I grant you, at sowing and harvest and the cattle round-up we work all the hours God sends, but a well-organised ranch can run smoothly and allow time for leisure. With good deputies like Kerhouan and Chen Kai, the ranch can be left to run itself.’

They rose at last from the table, replete with Angelina’s excellent fare and adjourned to the
sala
. They would not hear of Alicia withdrawing and leaving them to their whiskey.

‘Perhaps you would delight us with some music, Mrs Owens?’ suggested Brenchley, gesturing to the piano in pride of place.

‘My fingers are a little stiff.’

‘A poor excuse,’ mocked Cornish. ‘The piano is at your disposal any time you wish to play. But perhaps you have had a little too much wine …’

‘Men have been challenged to fight for such slurs, Colonel,’ she riposted icily.

‘And you, of course, are a dead-eye shot?’ he enquired with a mocking lift of the eyebrow.

He instantly regretted his teasing, for she seemed almost to crumple before his eyes. ‘Forgive my strange sense of humour,’ he apologised, drawing her swiftly across to the piano, away from the interested and speculative gaze of their guests. ‘My sister always warned me that it would get me into trouble.’

Her attention was momentarily diverted. ‘You have a sister?’ she asked in surprise.

‘Yes. I even had a mother and father. Why? Did you think I was a changeling?’

Clive Revel came up before she could answer and together they turned to select some music from the box which had come at auction with the piano.

She played for them for about half an hour and then pleaded tiredness of fingers long unaccustomed to playing.

‘Perhaps Mr Brenchley would take my place?’ she suggested.

Cornish rose from his comfortable armchair and set his glass down on a nearby table.

‘You’ll excuse me, Brenchley. I must give my orders for tomorrow.’

‘Go ahead, Colonel,’ replied Brenchley easily, running his fingers idly over the keys while Alicia leafed through the music. Revel followed Cornish out, to smoke a cigar on the
portal
, she guessed.

She hummed gently to the popular tune that Brenchley was playing. Looking down at his bent head, she thought to herself what a very handsome man he was. Golden curls, like Robert’s … What a fool Hester was! For it was obvious that the lawyer’s good looks were more than skin deep and, unlike Robert, he was as pleasant in nature as in looks.

He glanced up from the keys and saw her looking at him, but seeing, he guessed, someone or something else. He reached up a gentle hand to touch her face.

‘Come back to the present, Alicia,’ he said softly.

‘Of course.’ She laughed shakily. ‘And what does the present hold for you, Mr Brenchley? Will you go back east?’

‘I guess I’m fixed here for good now. I may buy some land — nothing on this scale, of course! Perhaps a partnership.’

‘There must be more work back east.’

‘Surely,’ he responded, strumming gently on the piano as he spoke. ‘Too much, sometimes. I like it better here. I’d been thinking for some time of coming west, but I was too lazy to pull up my roots and do it. I’d probably never have got over the state border if Clive hadn’t introduced me to Hester, but now I’m here, I intend to stay.’

‘But if the reason for coming here has gone …’

‘I never give up hope, Mrs Owens,’ he assured her quietly, his hands still.

‘Why did you and Hester break off the engagement?’ she asked curiously. ‘Oh, it’s none of my business, I know, and I shouldn’t have said anything, but it does seem so sad.’

He hesitated for a moment, then rose and crossed the room to refill his glass. ‘Between ourselves, it was Mrs Bryant,’ he stated wearily. ‘You know, you must have seen, how completely Hester is under her thumb?’

‘But she thought you were such a
catch
! Mrs Bryant, I mean, of course. It wouldn’t enter Hester’s mind. But her mother couldn’t talk of anything else!’

‘My son-in-law, the New York lawyer?’ he laughed jeeringly. ‘My son-in-law the future Supreme Court Judge? Ever heard of a Supreme Court Judge from California?’

‘Give it time,’ she protested laughingly. ‘We’ve only been in the Union a bare five years!’

‘
We
know that,’ he agreed wearily. ‘
We
can look to the future. But Mrs Bryant cannot see past the end of her nose and her whole life since she came out here so unwillingly with her late husband, has been devoted to finding a husband for Hester who will transport them all out of the savage wilderness and back to New York and civilisation.’

Just as her mother had done.

‘But Hester
likes
it here!’ Alicia objected.

‘Do you think Mrs Bryant cares what Hester thinks?’ he asked savagely.

‘Then what will you do?’

He shrugged hopelessly. ‘Pray that my sister can find an appointment for Hester’s brother so he can take his mother back east. Pray that perhaps one day Hester will have the courage to defy her mother … I don’t know,’ he sighed wearily.

‘She was very unhappy that evening in the theatre,’ ventured Alicia. ‘When you escorted Mrs Lamarr — and me.’

‘Good!’ He banged his glass down with quite unnecessary violence. ‘I’m glad!’ He paused a moment, then went on a little more calmly. ‘No, I’m not glad really. But it might help.’ Absent-mindedly he took her hands in his and smiled down at her. ‘I never set out to make her jealous, please believe that,’ he explained earnestly. ‘But I’m only human. It worries me, though, that I might have put you in an awkward position.’

‘Is the whole town gossiping about me?’ she sighed ruefully.

‘A goodly number of our leading citizens won’t hear a word spoken against you.’

‘Bless Letitia!’ she chuckled.

‘But against her, there’s Mrs Lamarr and Mrs Bryant. I no longer have the influence over her tongue that I once had. And spreading the rumour that I was coming to Tresco to see you hasn’t helped.’

‘What have I done to incur Belle Lamarr’s enmity?’

‘If I saw Lamarr leering at you in the theatre, you can be sure she did too. She may turn a blind eye to his cheap women, but for him to be making up to a woman, who despite all she may say to the contrary, is a lady and moves in her own level of society …? Besides, you’re here with Cornish, and she still has ambitions in that direction, I’m told.’

‘Yes. I’ve seen her at Letitia’s, making up to him. I don’t see how she can object when her husband does the same.’ He shrugged. ‘Her kind of woman wears her beauty as a boon to bestow on a chosen man. He isn’t expected to look elsewhere, even when she withdraws that favour. Both the Colonel and her husband have looked in your direction, and you’re generally popular as she is not, so it’s inevitable she’ll turn her tongue on you. Anyone with any sense will dismiss her jealous attacks for the spite they are.’

‘She’ll have no competition from me,’ riposted Alicia angrily. ‘Her husband is an unpleasant toad —’

‘And the Colonel?’ he teased.

‘He is my employer, that’s all!’

‘Then why Angelina?’

‘Because he needed a cook and she’s a damned good one!’ she snapped back at him. ‘And if you think —’

‘All right!’ he conceded. ‘I’ll say no more on that head. I am quite sure that you are mistaken about Cornish, but I don’t want to fall out with you over it.’

The angry light died out of her eyes. ‘It’s forgotten,’ she agreed with a smile. ‘Life’s too short to worry about what you can’t change.’

‘Still friends?’

‘Of course.’ Impulsively she took his hands.

‘A good friend,’ he murmured, putting his arm around her shoulders in friendly fashion and giving her a hug. She smiled up at him and he bent his head to drop a gentle kiss on her cheek.

There was a noise from the doorway and Alicia turned to see Jack Cornish standing there, a look of open disgust on his face.

‘I trust I don’t intrude!’ he ground out between clenched teeth.

‘Of course not,’ answered Alicia calmly, stepping easily out of the circle of Brenchley’s arms.

To her relief Angelina came bustling in with a jug of steaming coffee and the moment passed.

Revel’s suggestion that Jack should entertain them on the fiddle was curtly vetoed. ‘It’s time we all retired if we’re to come in with you tomorrow,’ growled Cornish. ‘Mrs Owens will show you to your rooms.’

*

Alicia did not linger upstairs. It was an uncomfortable situation, a young and unattached lady in the bedroom with bachelors — whatever would Letitia have said! — but she was, after all, the housekeeper.

Downstairs all the lamps had been extinguished except the one over by the fireplace. She crossed the room and reached out a hand to lift the chimney and almost dropped it as a shadow in the corner of the sofa moved.

Cornish had taken off his boots and lay stretched out at his ease. He swung his long legs off the sofa and padded lithely across the room to her, glass in hand.

‘Don’t go, Alicia,’ he said softly. ‘Have a nightcap with me. There’s whiskey here.’

She stood a moment irresolute. She could not estimate his mood and that disturbed her. As he pressed the glass into her hand, a remote part of her brain registered that he was swaying, so slightly as to be almost invisible, on his feet. She raised her glass and sipped at the whiskey, cautiously awaiting his next comment.

‘Did you see to
all
Brenchley’s requirements?’ he asked suggestively.

Her eyes widened with shock. ‘One more comment like that and the only use I’ll have for this is to throw it in your face!’ she flashed in a voice vibrant with fury.

‘So bellicose!’ he mocked. ‘You didn’t throw anything at Brenchley except yourself!’

‘I didn’t! It wasn’t like that! He’s just a good friend!’ None of the fear, none of the threat she felt now.

‘I thought you didn’t like men,’ he jeered.

‘It wasn’t that kind of kiss!’ she protested. ‘It’s true!’ she cried as he raised his eyebrows in mocking disbelief. ‘He’s a friend, like Chen Kai!’

‘Ah, but we only have your word for that relationship, haven’t we?’ he said deliberately.

That hurt her more than anything. ‘Why bring Angelina here if you’re so set on driving me away?’

‘I wouldn’t drive you away, m’dear,’ he replied frankly, holding her eyes with his. ‘As Brenchley says, you’ve well earned your place here.’ He moved closer to her. She wanted to turn and run from the room, but her feet would not move from the spot. ‘Don’t run away,’ he said softly, hypnotically, as though he had again read her mind. ‘If you can give Brenchley a friendly kiss, why not me?’

‘Why?’ Her voice was barely audible.

‘Any reason you care to name.’ There was the slightest slur in his voice and he articulated his words with care. ‘To celebrate saving Tresco, to thank me for keeping you on, just to be friendly — you choose.’

‘If that’s what it takes, you can keep your job!’ she answered contemptuously. ‘If you think —’

He pulled her into his arms before she could finish. She tried to draw away but he lowered his head and his mouth sought hers.

‘No!’ she gasped, tearing her face away from his and struggling ineffectually to push him away. ‘No!’ Her eyes widened in panic. ‘Leave me alone!’

Her reaction sobered him as effectively and abruptly as a bucket of icy water. ‘All right!’ he exclaimed, hastily dropping her wrists and stepping away from her. ‘I won’t touch you again, I swear it!’ But by now she was beyond reason, cowering against the wall like a trapped animal. As she had that day in the barn with Evans — but this time he could not help her.

‘Alicia, please!’ he pleaded.

‘Leave it, Jack!’ came Chen Kai’s voice from the doorway. ‘Get out of here! I deal with this.’ There was compassion on his normally impassive face and his speech lacked its usual precision.

‘I never meant to upset her … She was all right …’

‘Is nothing you can see,’ replied Chen Kai heavily. ‘But the sickness of the mind will destroy as swiftly as any plague.’ He drew Alicia unresisting to her feet and into his arms, making soothing noises as if to a child. ‘Come, Alicia,’ he murmured gently. ‘It’s late. You must sleep.’ She went with him meekly, eyes wide and blind. And when she began to weep quietly the sound cut him to the quick.