Suzanne Robinson (2 page)

He wasn’t surprised that Fulke returned while he was still dressing. Holding still while his valet straightened his cravat, Alexis glanced at Fulke as the older man stood
before Alexis’s desk, foot tapping as he flipped through the pages of a book, each sheet crackling as it was turned.

At last Alexis took pity on his cousin and decided to dismiss Meredith. After all, one owed one’s ex-guardian respect. Indeed, he owed Fulke Sinclair a debt it would take ten lifetimes to repay. Sixteen years ago Fulke had given up a successful political career to take care of a brain-fevered widow, her distraught son, and the de Granville estates.

On that nightmare day when his father and sister were killed, Fulke had rescued him from terror. As always, Alexis’s thoughts veered away from those memories. He considered Fulke again, and his sacrifice. Fulke had been the conservative comer, one of the Queen’s rising Tory favorites. Yet Fulke’s affection for his first cousin, Alexis’s father, had compelled him to take up the guardianship of his cousin’s son once it was clear that Juliana’s nerves had been permanently damaged. Now Fulke was within two years of fifty, and discontented. Alexis couldn’t blame him.

Yes, he owed Fulke gratitude, and there was fondness—no—love between them. When Fulke wasn’t on one of his religious tirades, that is. Lately they’d been growing worse, plunging Alexis from gratitude to guilt, from fondness to frenzied irritation, from admiration to cynicism. There was no middle ground with Fulke now, any more than there was with his mother.

Alexis heard the snap of a roughly turned page. Annoyance surfaced, and he tried to rid himself of it. The effort proved useless, so he settled for trying to hide it. He nodded at Meredith, who departed with a look of relief.

The moment the door shut behind the valet, Fulke slammed the book he’d been abusing down on the table. “By God, you cost me much, sir.”

Alexis grabbed a handful of letters from a silver tray. Collapsing on the window seat, he began going through them. A hand slashed down and sent the envelopes flying
out of his grasp. Alexis watched the papers drop to the rug, then raised his eyes to Fulke’s.

Fulke glared at him, but Alexis’s stare possessed all the detachment of a field surgeon’s in battle. Fulke drew back, his mouth compressed to a thin ribbon, and lifted a hand.

“Forgive me,” he said, “but I thought joining the regiment would rid you of this madness.”

Alexis twisted and sprang up. He gathered the letters to the accompaniment of verse.

“ ‘My life has crept so long upon a broken wing/Thro’ cells of madness, haunts of horror and fear,/That I come to be grateful at last for a little thing.’ ”

Kneeling at Fulke’s feet to pick up the last envelope, Alexis looked up and smiled. “Ophelia Maitland’s ball is tonight. I vow I’m the fox run to ground by the mighty huntress.”

He waited for Fulke to decide which was worse, his death rides or Ophelia Maitland.

“You haven’t run from that Maitland harpy at all,” Fulke said at last.

“You’re the one who keeps telling me I should stay home and get an heir.”

“As Marquess of Richfield it’s your duty to care for the estates and to breed.”

“How do you know I haven’t bred already?”

Fulke darted at Alexis before the younger man could say more. He shoved Alexis back into the window seat. Alexis stayed where he landed, for Fulke placed a knee in his chest.

“Since you were a stripling that face has made you prey to women. I tried to protect you. God loves chastity and purity, not beauty, Alexis.”

Moving so quickly that Fulke lost his balance, Alexis wriggled free and stood up.

“I tried your way,” he said. “But my sins are such that to play the monk would make the angels laugh. I’m hungry.
Let’s go down to breakfast where we can fence over tea and the china. Please, Fulke. You know I hate quarreling with you.”

Fulke managed a smile, and they fell in step together. Outside his chambers they met Val, who was escorted by Alexis’s dog, Iago. Alexis watched the two men exchange glances as would two exasperated physicians. Fulke took leave of them, and Alexis held up a hand as Val opened his mouth.

“Be still,” Alexis said. “I’m between mistresses and the boredom affects me.”

“Ass.” Valentine made fists of both hands and turned on Alexis. “You enjoy setting me off. Is that why you used your influence to get me a place in Cardigan’s regiment? So you would have someone near to devil? Someone beholden to you who couldn’t escape? Lord St. Maur’s bastard—under your thumb.”

Alexis sighed and stroked Iago’s head. “Yes, I needed another pet. Oh, shut up, Val. After all, you’re in the Light Brigade and I’m in the Heavy. Plenty of opportunity for you to escape me. You should be worrying about the Tsar and his appetite for the Crimea instead. If there’s war, we’ll be in it. Then you can use all that ire to fight Russians.”

“You tried to kill yourself.”

“What imagination,” Alexis drawled. “‘
La mort ne surprend point le sage; il est toujours prêt à partir.
’ ”

Valentine stared at him for a moment, then translated. “Death never takes the wise man by surprise; he is always ready to go.”

“Well done. You were always clever in school, but you needn’t scowl at me. I’m done riding for the day.”

They started toward the stairs, Iago taking up his position at Alexis’s left.

“Do cheer up,” Alexis said, clapping Val on the shoulder.
“It’s not dying that I’m concerned with, but the lovely Ophelia Maitland.”

“Be careful with that one. Her merchant ancestor is only three generations back, and Lady Juliana won’t approve of a daughter-in-law so tainted any more than she approves of my illegitimate self.”

Alexis laughed and led the way to the passage that would take them to the small dining chamber. “That’s why I’m thinking of going to Maitland House and making an offer after breakfast.” He looked at his friend’s open mouth and laughed again. They were at the dining table before Val regained enough of his composure to close it.

At Maitland House, Kate Grey perched on a chair in her sitting room. Her gaze was pinned to the pages of
Othello
in case anyone should come in, but she was fuming like an overstoked boiler. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t be a Lady like Mama wanted. What was she doing here, an American used to frontier towns and clapboard houses? It wasn’t her fault Mama wanted to relive the past by making her daughter into a fussy, simpering Lady. She was plain old Kate Grey, with a papa who was a gold miner and a mama who never should have given up Society for him.

Besides, Ladies couldn’t do anything interesting. They sat around making doilies and reading Improving Works. She didn’t have time to be a Lady. There was real work to be done now that they were rich, but Mama had insisted that Kate go to her relatives in England to be Ladyfied. Mama had wheedled and taken all over faint until Papa finally surrendered. So here Kate was, planted in Maitland House, surrounded by her widowed aunt, cousin Ophelia, and Great-aunt Emeline, surrounded and pinned down without hope of escape from that dreaded entity Mama was always talking about—Society.

Trouble, that’s what she was in all right, and it was all
because Papa had found gold almost two years ago. Kate remembered that day well, for she’d been working just before Papa came home with the news. Working at a chore no Lady would undertake. She’d been washing clothes.

Five washtubs sat in the yard behind Grey’s Boarding-house in San Francisco, attended by Kate and four Chinese women. Kate had been rubbing cloth up and down the washboard until her fingers and palms tingled. Suds splashed into her face. Water sloshed onto her chest. She neither looked at the other women nor at the setting sun. She had to get her wash finished before the evening chill set in.

A shirt slipped from fingers numb from constant rubbing. She bent down over the washboard to search for it.

“Please, Lord,” she prayed to the soapy water, “don’t let Mama see me.”

A skein of her hair fell forward over her face. Strands of bright copper and darker cinnamon ran through it. She tossed the lock back over her shoulder. Before she could straighten up, something wrapped around her waist and she flew backward. A beard stuck itself in her left ear, and two arms squeezed her ribs.

“Jesus,” a male voice said. “Jesus.”

Kate found herself tossed in the air. When she came back down, the man caught her to him, chest to chest, cupped her buttocks, and ground his hips into her. Too furious to yell, Kate pulled her arm back and rammed her palm into the man’s nose. He dropped her.

“Jesus!”

Backing up to the washtub, Kate snatched her revolver from the stool beside it. She turned around as the man took a step toward her, and cocked the gun.

“Stay back.”

The man blinked at her. Judging by his appearance, he was another prospector just in from his digs. Tired, dirty,
and peeled clean of manners by months of isolation. His beard was long, and he smelled of horse, mule, and week-old sweat. He eyed the gun, then grinned at her.

“Now little girl, I ain’t hurt you. Put that old gun down.” As he talked, the man eased closer. In another three steps, he’d be within reach.

“Hellfire,” Kate said. “I hate it when men talk to me like I’m a two-year-old.”

The barrel of the gun dipped. It spat, and a bullet tore open the ground less than an inch from the man’s boot. For a big man, he hopped quickly. He danced back, repeating his blandishments all the while. Suddenly, he lunged at her, and she fired a second time. The prospector yowled and clutched his upper arm. He yowled again, turned, and galloped out of the yard like a spooked mule.

The back door to the boardinghouse slammed open. Kate looked over her shoulder to see her brothers. Robbie came charging down the steps with a rifle in his hand, Zachary behind him, and last came Mama.

Sighing, Kate wiped the perspiration from her forehead. She winced at her mother’s shriek.

“Oh dear! Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.”

Robbie slid to a halt with his rifle aimed at the retreating prospector. Zachary pointed at the man’s churning legs and laughed. Kate tried not to grin herself. It was hard because her mother was babbling and fluttering helplessly even as she maneuvered her eight petticoats and bombazine skirt through a door never meant to accommodate them. Kate’s admiration increased when Sophia squeezed through the opening and down the steps without revealing so much as an ankle.

Kate sighed again as her mother floated toward them. Zachary trotted around to stand beside her and cast up a glance of sympathy. Robbie hadn’t moved, and Kate knew he wouldn’t until he was sure his family was no longer in danger.

Sophia glided to a stop between her daughter and the washtub, in the only spot not covered in mud. After pressing trembling fingers to her lips, she threw her hands out toward Kate.

“You’re at the washtubs again. The disgrace. After all my care in teaching you proper conduct, miss. We’re not in the goldfields any longer. I won’t have you grubbing about.”

“Mama, one of the Chinese ladies was sick.”

“And your dress.” Sophia curled her lip and shuddered. “To go out without the proper dress.”

“You mean not wearing twenty petticoats and a corset?” Kate paused while her mother gasped and put her hands to red cheeks. “How can I wash clothes if I can’t bend over to reach the tub? I have too much chest as it is without pushing it up with lacing.”

“Ohhhhhh. Be quiet, miss. You’re eighteen years old, a young woman. If you’d been dressed as a Lady, that—that gentleman would never have—have …”

Kate handed her revolver to Zachary and put her hands on her hips. “Don’t worry. I’d have shot him between the eyes first.”

“Ohhhhhhh.” Sophia put the back of her hand to her forehead.

Hunching her shoulders, Kate struggled not to cover her ears. Mama could shrill like a train whistle when she was distressed. Calling to her sons, she swirled away in a cloud of petticoats and disappeared into the house.

One of the laundresses silently took over Kate’s washtub. Kate smiled her thanks and trudged toward the building that housed the kitchen. She had eighteen miners to feed, and one of the cook’s helpers had burned her hand. Rolling up her sleeves, she stepped into the kitchen. Soon her hands were buried in sourdough and flour covered her damp gown from chest to thighs.

It had been almost four years. Four years since Papa
had dragged Mama from his family’s plantation in Virginia to seek a fortune in the goldfields of California. Ever since they’d come west, Kate knew she’d been a disappointment to Mama. But there hadn’t been time to be a Lady. Not on the wagon trip over desert and mountains where endurance saved your life, not delicacy. Not in San Francisco where earning a living mattered more than the fact that Ladies weren’t supposed to know there was such a thing as men’s underwear, much less touch it.

Kate lifted her sourdough into a pan and looked around for a towel to wipe her hands. It had been her idea to run a boardinghouse when it became obvious that Papa wasn’t going to strike gold before their savings and Mama’s inheritance ran out.

Kate found a towel and carried it to the washbowl. She dipped her hands in the bowl, and the water turned white. Sometimes she wanted to scream at her mother.

When faced with their financial crisis, Mama had only fluttered her hands. An English gentlewoman wasn’t supposed to know about money or business, and it was Timothy Grey’s fault that the subject had to be mentioned at all. If he hadn’t sought independence from his wealthy Virginia family, Sophia and her children would be safe and comfortable instead of grubbing in a frontier town.

Kate had been wiping dough from the front of her dress and trying to think of a way to assuage Mama’s ire, when Papa had burst in with the news of his gold strike. The whole boardinghouse had erupted in jubilation, and Kate’s world had changed.

“Hellfire.”

Kate snapped her book closed and tried to shake free of the irritating memories. Sometimes Ladies had to do things that were lacking in gentility, and washing gold-prospectors’ laundry was one of them. Mama had wanted her to be a Lady, but Mama had also wanted food on the
table. Kate had learned years ago that sometimes you couldn’t have both.