Wilde West (5 page)

Tabor scurried to the serving table and splashed three or four ounces of amber liquid from a crystal decanter into each of two large balloon glasses.

Oscar glanced around the library. One more wingback chair remained, sitting expectantly upright beside a small Hepplewhite table that separated it from Tabor's. This chair, doubtless, was Baby's. (How on earth could anyone live with an adult person named Baby? How could any adult person named Baby live with herself?) The four walls were lined with leather books that had been carefully arranged by the color of their bindings: there were blocks of blue, blocks of red, blocks of green. The chromatic approach to literature. The brown block was the largest, filling whole shelves, and here the books had been arranged by size, from tallest to shortest. He wondered whether anyone had ever actually read any of them. Or, for that matter, opened them.

Tabor returned and handed a glass to Oscar, another to Vail. He sat down opposite them, lifted his own glass from the table to his right. Leaning forward eagerly, elbows on his thighs, the balloon glass in both hands between his knees, and still grinning (amazing, that), he said, “So tell me, Mr. Wilde. What do you think of Denver?”

“Most impressive.” He sipped his cognac. It was indeed French, and quite good. Perhaps there was hope for Tabor after all. If only he'd stop baring his teeth.

Tabor nodded as though he had expected nothing less. “Population now is over sixty thousand. We've got over a hundred hotels, more than a hundred restaurants, six newspapers, and at least ten railroads, last I counted.”

“The mind boggles.” Curious how Americans were so fascinated by these statistics, the dull arithmetic of progress.

Tabor's grin became rueful, almost embarrassed. “Course, it's not London yet, or even New York.” The grin grew hearty again. “But if things keep up like they're going, who knows? Why not? Anything can happen.” He took a sip of brandy and was able—quite a trick—to maintain his grin without spilling a drop.

“I had thought,” said Oscar, “that the American ideal was a kind of pastoral existence, a sort of enormous garden spot, a demi-Eden, inhabited by honest, independent yeomen.”

Grinning, Tabor shook his head. “Those days are gone. Progress is the thing today. Industry. The railroad, the cotton gin, the steam tractor.”

“The road to Hell,” Oscar said, “is paved with good inventions.”

Tabor's grin began momentarily to falter; Vail said quickly, “So everything's arranged for Wednesday, Governor? The train and all?”

“Yep,” said Tabor, and his grin returned. “You bet you. I've got a first-class compartment for six, and a second-class seat for the valet.” He turned to Oscar and the grin became knowing again. “Say, you mind if I call you Oscar?”

Very much, Oscar thought, but smiled graciously. “Not at all. Tell me something, Mr. Tabor.”

“Horace.”

“Yes. There won't be any trouble, will there, about my valet? He's a black man, and we had some difficulties with the train authorities in—where was it, Vail? West Carolina? East Virginia?”

“South Carolina.”

“Wherever. They refused to let him eat in the dining car.”

“No problem at all,” grinned Tabor. “Long as he can afford to pay. Say, they tell me you're traveling with a countess?”

Oscar nodded. “Countess Mathilde de la Môle, of Plaisir.” He smiled. “That's not terribly far from Paris, France.”

Tabor winked again. “A real looker, they tell me.”

With some difficulty, Oscar ignored the implication, and the lickerish gleam, behind Tabor's wink. “A most attractive woman, yes. She's traveling with her escort, a Colonel von Hesse.”

“Von Hesse? A Dutchman, huh?”

“He's a German.”

“Like I said. How come—” Tabor, glancing over Oscar's shoulder, suddenly cut himself short, set down his glass, and bounced to his feet. “
Baby!
” he said, and his grin was abruptly wider than before, which should have been physiologically impossible.

Both Oscar and Vail stood up, both turned toward the library door.

“What's this I hear about a countess?” she said. She stood smiling at the entrance in a gown of scarlet and gold that was as bright and festive, and as undeserved, as a Christmas gift. The shimmering silk clung to haughty breasts and arched rib cage and flat stomach, and then, below the voluptuous flare of hip, belled out and fell in flounced tiers, billowy with hidden petticoats, to the floor. Without actually being tall, she gave the impression of regal height: she held her slim imperious body gracefully erect, her head proudly poised atop the long slender Nefertiti neck. Her hair was red—no, russet—no, auburn—a lovely, deep mahogany shade that gleamed and glistened in the yellow lamplight. And there was a mass of it, there were piles of it, rich and shiny, there were glittering titian curls of it cascading down to outline the strong feline curve of her cheeks and spill out across her firm square shoulders.

Oscar realized, all at once, that he was gaping. She was quite simply the most beautiful and the most utterly sensuous woman he had ever seen.

“My dear, my dear,” said Tabor, bustling across the room, his grin gleaming at her. (The presence of this remarkable woman here in this house—for that matter, the fact of her existence anywhere in the world—went a long way toward explaining that perpetual grin.) He held out his arm at a stiff officious angle and she placed her slender hand upon it. He put his own atop hers, protectively, and led her into the room, his entire body, scalp to toes, clearly turgid with pride.

“Gentlemen,” Tabor announced, his eyes beaming, “allow me to introduce Elizabeth McCourt Doe. My fiancée.”

Her large radiant eyes were the color of violets, and dancing behind them was an unmistakable intelligence that recognized exactly the effect she produced, and found it—what? Entertaining? Amusing? The gown left bare her throat and her long slender arms, and her skin was as smooth as Parian marble, and as white and poreless (and as peerless, Oscar appended later, when all his faculties had returned). Her nose was straight and strong, with finely sculpted, slightly flaring nostrils. Her mouth was just a whisper too wide to be considered perfect by classical standards; but, canted softly in its faint Gioconda smile, it was a lush red remarkable mouth that, all by itself, dramatically and conclusively proved that classical standards, perhaps all of them, were wrong.

“My dear,” said Tabor, “this is Mr. Oscar Wilde.”

She removed her hand from Tabor's arm and held it out to Oscar. He took it—and felt an erotic shock, swift and startling, dart through his loins. He blinked in surprise and alarm. (Surely everyone in the room had sensed that jolt leap through him? Surely she had?) Quickly he bent over the hand, which was warm and dry against his own clammy, traitorous palm.

“Madam,” he said. His voice was unusually thick, a stranger's. He forced himself, an act of conscious will, to look up into those extraordinary violet eyes—much the way, in Germany, in the Harz Mountains, he had once forced himself to peer over the edge of a ragged windswept abyss. He felt now precisely what he had felt then, a sudden wild urge to jump, to leap, to plunge headlong and heedless, wailing with terror and exaltation, down into the giddy depths.

Those eyes narrowed and she smiled her small ironic smile. “I've read your volume of poetry, Mr. Wilde.”

“Ah,” he said, straightening his back, standing up to his full height, which was all at once too tall. “Have you.” He was speech-less if not speechless, and this for the second time in a single night. That grim killer, that Holliday, he too had possessed extraordinary eyes. But those were empty, hollow, ghastly. These were—what
were
they? Worry that out later.

Her hand still lay in his. She said, still smiling, “I think you must be a very wicked man.”

He said, “One can only hope so, madam.”

He said it without thinking—he had said it, or something like it, many times before—but she laughed easily, tossing her lovely head lightly back as the muscles of her throat played beneath the surface of that smooth incomparable skin. Her white even teeth were small and slightly pointed. Lamplight glinted, gold and copper, along her hair. And Oscar realized that he would be quite ridiculously happy for the remainder of his life if he could spend it making this woman laugh.

“You tease me, Mr. Wilde,” she said, her eyes sparkling at him, that amused light dancing behind them. “But may I call you Oscar?”

He inclined his head. “So long, madam, as you call me often.” If she wanted laughter, he would provide it.

And, gratifyingly, she laughed again; and then finally, yet still too soon, she slipped her hand from his.

“And this,” Tabor told her, “is Mr. Jack Vail. The business manager.”

Oscar looked at grinning Tabor with mild surprise; for a few moments he had totally forgotten that the man was there.

Good Lord. She
lived
with him.

Bit of a snag there.

Almost physically, he felt something leave him, flutter like a bird from his breast: a possibility, a hope. A dream.

So much for a lifetime of laughter.

An abrupt and altogether absurd sadness settled over him. (Or was this simply petulance, masking itself as something less trivial?)

She passed in front of Oscar, offering her hand to Vail, and he caught the fragrance of her perfume, something dark and complex, herbs and flowers in a matrix of musk. Even in his preposterous melancholy (or petulance), he found it intoxicating. Preposterously.

Where women were concerned, Vail normally demonstrated the sensitivity of a turnip. But even he was obviously impressed, possibly even intimidated, by Elizabeth McCourt Doe. He had plucked the cigar from his mouth, and now, his brow furrowed, his glance shifting nervously as it looked everywhere but into her eyes, he took her hand and mumbled, “Pleased, I'm sure.”

“Come, my dear, come,” Tabor told her. “Sit.”

With lamplight rippling down the sleek red silk, she moved across the carpet, Tabor at her side. She turned and sat, her back upright, her ankles crossed.

Oscar and Vail returned to their seats, the two of them suddenly an audience.

“Brandy, my dear?” Tabor asked her.

Oscar discovered that he was leaning forward; he sat back.

“Yes, please, Horace,” she said. “Thank you.” As he busied himself with the brandy bottle, this unlikely fiance of hers (wasn't there already a Mrs. Tabor lurking somewhere in the wings?), she turned to Oscar. He could feel the weight of her glance along the skin of his face; those bright violet eyes transfixed him “Now,” she said, smiling. “Please. You must tell us about your countess.”

Lightness. Lightness is all. “There's very little to tell, madam,” he said. “All of us, of course, are in search of something. I, in my humble way, am searching for beauty. My good friend Mr. Vail, like Diogenes, and with as much luck, is searching for an honest man. Colonel von Hesse, the Countess's escort, is searching for God. The Countess, as it happens, is searching for real estate.” Specifically, a large productive piece of it firmly attached to a reasonably presentable (and himself unattached) rich man.

“She's traveled with you from New York?”

“From San Francisco.”

She smiled. “I imagine that countesses must be very beautiful. Like the princesses in fairy tales.” (Princesses: courtly. Yes.) She took the brandy snifter from Tabor, thanked him, turned back to Oscar. “Is she very beautiful, your countess?” she asked as Tabor sat down, grinning, beaming at her with naked and really rather embarrassing adoration.

“I had thought so,” Oscar said. “But that was before I met you, madam. Since then, of course, I have reappraised all my notions of beauty, and found them wanting.”

Courtly.

She laughed. A wonderful sound: relaxed and musical. Oscar's sadness—if such it had been—was beginning to lift, a mist blown away by the breeze of her laughter. Or by the silent storm of his effort.

“A flatterer, too,” she said. “You
are
a wicked man.”

“That may be,” he said. “But it would be abjectly wicked of me not to give beauty its due.”

From the corner of his eye, he had been watching Tabor, trying to gauge the silver baron's reaction to all this. Occasionally Tabor would shoot a quick look at Oscar and at Vail, as though to reassure himself that his guests were still there, still happy; but always he returned his gaze, puppylike, to the woman. The grin never left his face. The man was besotted. Understandably.

She sipped at her brandy. “Is that the only form of wickedness you recognize?”

“For me,” he said truthfully, “the only true wickedness is cruelty.”

She raised an eyebrow, at once amused and challenging. “And what, then, of Sin?”

“The only true sin,” he said, and, to punctuate the statement, sipped at his brandy again, “is boredom.”

“A dangerous philosophy.” She smiled, the smile hinting that she had a secret fondness for dangerous philosophies. She sipped from her snifter. “I fear you'll corrupt us all.”

Oscar returned her smile. It was wonderful, really, this move and countermove behind the brandy snifters. “Nothing would give me greater pleasure,” he said.

She laughed again. “I see that I mustn't expose myself to your influence too often.”

Off to the left, Vail was fidgeting: legs restlessly moving.

Oscar glanced at Tabor: still mooncalfing. “Then, madam,” he said, “by your cruelty to me, you should yourself be guilty of wickedness.”

Another laugh. She turned to Vail. “Tell me, Mr. Vail, does your poet always carry on like this?”

Vail shifted in his seat. Eyes dim, mouth tight, he no longer looked comfortable. “He's a great little kidder, ma'am,” he said, with a peculiar emptiness in his voice.