A Reckless Love, page 18
She smiled as if this were a normal reaction to her place of employment. “I know. It’s real pretty, isn’t it?”
He shrugged. The place was beyond words. And his chances of winning the hand of Aurora Daughtry had dropped to zero. Following Miriam through a doorway to the left, he found himself in a large double parlor stuffed with graceful upholstered furniture, polished tables, and a fine old carpet. Under the front window sat a grand piano, and he remembered somebody saying that Riggins played. He hadn’t heard real music in a long, long time.
“Zane! Welcome!”
He wheeled from the piano to find Aurora flying toward him. Squelching the urge to catch her in his arms, he instead took her hand and carried it briefly to his lips. “Miss Daughtry, it’s good to see you.”
Jerking to a stop, she bobbed a curtsey, then looked up at him, eyes bright with secret joy. “Would you like something to drink? Lemonade?”
Still crushed with the awareness of the difference in their social stations, he shook his head. Then changed his mind. He needed something to do with his hands. “Lemonade would be nice.”
Following her toward a buffet where crystal glasses and a sweating icy pitcher sat on an elegant tray, he watched her pour the drink. She was always beautiful, but tonight she wore a deep jade evening dress that picked up green flecks in her eyes. Her curly copper hair had been tamed into an upswept twist of braids, with soft tendrils left to brush her cheeks. He noticed delicate pearl drops in her small ears and a cameo at her throat, with a matching ring on her right hand.
He was suddenly aware that his suit was several years old, and he didn’t have proper evening shoes—just the boots that he wore every day. But it was too late to do anything about it, so he accepted the glass of lemonade and drank it in one long draft.
Without a word of censure, Aurora took his arm and tugged him toward a group gathered in the center of the room. Everyone looked at him, so he tried to smile. He knew the Oxford contingent, plus Riggins, Beaumont, and the doctor. He’d also met Mrs. McGowan and Miss ThomasAnne. The remaining two ladies bore a family resemblance to Aurora, so he knew they must be her sisters.
“Most of you know Deputy Marshal Sager,” Aurora said. “Zane, the tall one is Joelle, Schuyler’s fiancée, and this is Levi’s wife, Selah.”
He managed to bow without falling over, then shook hands with each man. “Thank you for inviting me,” he said to Mrs. McGowan, assuming she was the hostess.
“Of course you’re welcome,” she said with a vinegary smile, “but you should know Aurora would have come to get you herself if you hadn’t arrived.”
“Grandmama!” Aurora said on a gasp.
Everyone else laughed, including Zane, breaking the slight constraint. Forcing himself to relax, he stood quietly and listened to the general predinner conversation, which Selah and Aurora managed in deft tandem. Beaumont also demonstrated a knack for asking questions that made Zane feel included without putting him on the spot.
Before he knew it, an elegant black-clad Negro woman—Horatia, the head cook and housekeeper, Aurora murmured to him—came to announce that dinner was served in the dining room. Because Aurora happened to be standing next to him, manners dictated that he offer her his elbow. Smiling up at him, she tucked her fingers between his arm and rib cage, and off they went. Half of him hoped he’d be seated next to her at the table, the other half wildly prayed he wouldn’t.
It seemed God was listening. Aurora put him between Riggins and Joelle—the tall, blue-eyed sister, whose staggering beauty made him all but forget his name, until he realized how painfully shy she was. His efforts to set her at ease made him forget about his own discomfort, and gradually he realized what a droll sense of humor she possessed. He really liked her, and after she’d casually asked him how he’d injured his eye, she seemed not to notice his deformity at all.
He suspected that Aurora, seated across the table from him between Pierce and her cousin ThomasAnne, had designed the seating arrangement so that he could easily meet her laughing gaze whenever Joelle’s vocabulary sailed outside his reach—a frequent occurrence.
Finally, as the entrée was being cleared, Joelle turned to speak to her grandmother, and Aurora leaned in to whisper across the table, “You’re doing fine. Nobody else understands her either, except maybe Schuyler, and even he has taken to carrying around a dictionary in his pocket.”
Suppressing a grin, Zane shook his head. Even a rube like him knew not to carry on cross-table conversation.
Instead, he occupied himself with studying the oil painting of the three sisters and their mother hung over the fireplace. Mrs. Daughtry had been one uncommonly beautiful woman, and it was interesting to trace which of her features her daughters had inherited. Aurora got the heart-shaped face, winged eyebrows, and small cleft chin; Joelle the tall, willowy shape; and Selah the dark brown eyes. He knew little about art, but he had to admire the painter’s ability to portray the variations on the mother’s flaming Irish red hair in that of the three girls—Selah’s dark mahogany with reddish glints, Joelle’s in the strawberry-blonde family, and Aurora’s closer to copper.
The only minor kerfuffle of the evening occurred when Bedelia O’Malley brought in dessert. He’d all but forgotten the existence of the two saloon girls Aurora had rescued—at least in her mind.
Bedelia clearly remembered him. She let out a joyous shriek and nearly dropped a tray full of pudding dishes as she elbowed the small Asian girl who had accompanied her into the dining room. “Rosamund! It’s Deputy Marshal Sager!” Bedelia righted the careening tray. “What are you doing here?” She was dressed, he noticed, in the modest black attire of a serving woman, covered by a starched bib apron. But nothing could quite eradicate the flirtatious tilt of her full red lips and fluttering eyelashes.
Except possibly the eagle eye of Horatia, who stood in the dining room doorway, fists on her hips. “Here now, what’s all this ruckus? The dinner guests didn’t come to talk to you, honey, so serve the puddin’ and get on back to the kitchen, you hear?”
Bedelia pouted, but obediently flounced around the table with the dessert, while Rosamund refilled drinks. When Bedelia leaned over his shoulder with his pudding, Zane smiled and said quietly, “Nice to see you doing well, Bedelia. Would you be able to get free to talk to me later? I want to ask a favor.”
“You can ask me anything you want, handsome, I’m all yours,” she said, shooting a triumphant look across the table at Aurora. “I’ll be in the kitchen washing up the pots.”
Of course she had completely the wrong idea about what he wanted to ask, but at least he had her full attention. He could straighten her out later. “Thank you,” he said and hid his burning face behind his napkin.
She winked and moved to serve Riggins.
“How do you know Bedelia?” Joelle asked. She looked more curious than shocked.
He cleared his throat. “I arrested her. I just want to ask her what she knows about local Ku Klux Klan participation over the last year or so. I’m guessing most of the planning of their activities happens in the bars and saloons. She’s bound to have heard something.”
“I imagine she has,” Joelle said. She gave Zane a thoughtful look. “I’d thought you might want to talk to me too—though of course Schuyler knows more than I do, since he actually joined them.”
“I do want to talk to you. I just didn’t want to ruin your sister’s party.”
“That’s thoughtful of you, but Pete’s well aware of the nature of this gathering. In fact, I’m sure that’s what she had in mind when she planned it.” Joelle directed her gaze at her younger sister, who was listening to the marshal tell a story. Pierce was laughing, clearly charmed by Aurora’s dimples and bright golden eyes. “I know she’s young, but she is a wonderful hostess, just like our mama was, and she’s very smart. She could be a brilliant political matron, if she met the right man.” Apparently realizing what she’d just said, Joelle fixed widened blue eyes on Zane’s face. “I mean—I didn’t mean—”
Zane laughed ruefully. “I know exactly what you mean. I’ve been telling myself the same thing since I met her.”
“Oh, please don’t pay any attention to me!” Poor Joelle looked miserable. “I’m rotten at making conversation, because I say exactly what I’m thinking, and it always comes out at the most awkward moment.”
“Miss Joelle, I wish we had more truth-tellers in this world. In fact, I hear you’re the writer behind the articles that stirred up some of the controversy hereabouts. I wish you’d tell me about your school and how it’s proceeding since the schoolroom burned. Have you begun to rebuild?”
She seemed relieved at the change of subject, and he found that he even understood most of what she told him about her correspondence with senators, congressmen, and educators, both on the state and national level, regarding the education of freedmen. It was a complex and fascinating subject that involved not just the legislation of making education available to all, but the knotty problem of funding it.
“I’m afraid I never had much opportunity to go to school myself,” Zane confessed. “I finished the sixth grade, then had to go to work in the gunpowder mill.”
“Really? Where did you grow up?”
“Mainly Indiana, though I was born in Delaware. My pa took us west when I was about fourteen, though, and we never stayed put much after that.”
“Pete said you rode for the Pony Express. I loved reading stories about it when I was younger.”
He sighed. “I did. It was a hard life, and fortunately didn’t last very long. Bill Cody and some of those fellows make it sound more romantic than it really was.”
She gave him a perceptive look that made him shift in discomfort. “You are not at all what I would have supposed Aurora would fall in love with.”
His mouth fell open. Literally, he couldn’t think what to say. “Ma’am? I mean, what do you—”
“I mean that in a good way. I’m glad I’m wrong. But don’t tell her I said so.”
“I’m not telling her anything at all! Miss Daughtry, I mean Miss Aurora, is by no means in l—” He gulped, unable to say the word. “You are very much mistaken, is what I mean.”
“Oh, no, I’m not. She can’t take her eyes off you. And I thought she was going to hurl her plate at Bedelia. So I should probably warn you that if you’re not serious about her, you’d better get out of town on the first train. Pete is very determined when she makes up her mind.”
He could attest to that. Managing menace and definitely mule-headed.
“But back to the subject of education,” Joelle said, overlooking the fact that she had just upended Zane’s life, “I’ve been talking with the Fryes about it, and—”
“Wait.” He grabbed Joelle’s arm. “The Fryes? You mean Georgia and Lemuel Frye? Are they here?”
“Well, yes.” She glanced uneasily at Riggins, who apparently didn’t hear her. “Was I not supposed to mention that?”
“Aurora implied something to that effect.” She hadn’t said that at all, but Joelle didn’t need to know that.
“Oh. Well, good, then. I thought you must know, since you’re here, and . . .” She shrugged. “The talk was bound to get around to the case we’re trying to prosecute. They’re important witnesses.”
“Yes, they are. I’d really like to talk to them. Tonight, if possible.”
Joelle’s perfect brows drew together as she glanced at Riggins again. “You should probably ask Levi first.”
Oh, he would. He definitely would, and he would not take no for an answer. Aurora wasn’t the only bulldog when it came to pursuing a goal.
eighteen
AURORA SQUIRMED ALL THE WAY through the after-dinner entertainment. Not because she didn’t like music. Not because she didn’t admire her handsome brother-in-law, who could do anything from rappelling off a railroad bridge to memorizing a piano concerto.
She pretended to be enthralled with Levi’s solo piano performance of one of his favorite composers—Mussorgsky or Liszt or Chopin or one of those other eastern European crackpots—while glancing over her shoulder to observe Zane’s somewhat prickly reaction to his surroundings. He clearly was not used to being waited upon, and she found his astonished gratitude at the offer of a drink refill or a seat closer to the piano both heartbreaking and charming. She couldn’t help feeling protective of his dignity, but she also knew better than to jump to his aid when he seemed confused or uncomfortable. He was a grown man, after all, and he would figure it out.
She just wished she had the right to sit beside him on the settee against the wall while he did so. But he was not her beau. He was not “her” anything. He was merely one of the invited guests, on a par with Mr. Spencer, Marshal Pierce, and Mr. Wells—guests she was responsible for treating with equal hospitality.
As it was, she and Grandmama shared the big sofa with Selah, who watched her husband lose himself in his art, a winsome expression of pride and pleasure upon her glowing face. Joelle and Schuyler sat close together on chairs brought in from the dining room, and even Doc and ThomasAnne proclaimed themselves a couple in the way their eyes met often in enjoyment of the music.
Levi was three or four minutes into his second piece, a dance he called a “mazurka,” when Grandmama reached over to pinch the back of Aurora’s hand. “Stop sulking,” Grandmama hissed under her breath. “You’re making a spectacle of yourself.”
“I’m not sulking,” Aurora said through her teeth. “I’m listening hard.”
“You look like you ate something that disagreed with you.”
“It’s not polite to talk through a performance.”
“Neither one of you is listening anyway. Just take Mr. Sager out to the barn to look at the new litter of kittens.”
Aurora turned to make sure someone hadn’t brought in a different grandmother when she wasn’t looking. “And that wouldn’t cause a spectacle?”
“The barn, Aurora. And take food with you.”
“For the kittens?” Aurora was getting really worried about her grandmother’s grip on reality. And Joelle was giving them both annoyed looks over her shoulder, even though she and Grandmama were whispering.
“Two plates of roast with potatoes au gratin. And take dessert as well. Come, Aurora, Tee-Toc told me you found them. Mr. Sager will want to talk to them.”
The barn. Where Tee-Toc had dissuaded her from storing her naughty painting. Undoubtedly it was a measure of her demented lovesick state that she had forgotten all about Mr. and Mrs. Frye hiding in the hayloft. “Oh. Yes, he will. Very well.” Waiting until Levi finished the last crashing chords of the mazurka, she rose, applauding, and sidled to the back and side of the room. Zane looked up at her in surprise.
“Mr. Sager, I believe you had wished to speak to Bedelia before you left tonight. I’m sure she’s still in the kitchen washing up, if you’d like to come with me.”
“Really?” Brightening as if he’d been handed a stay of execution, he lurched to his feet. “I did want to talk to her. But maybe we shouldn’t leave right now—”
“Grandmama said it’s all right. In fact, she all but commanded me to rescue you.” Pursing her lips, she glanced at her grandmother, who was studiously ignoring her. “So follow me, if you please, and hang the consequences.” She could feel his quiet, powerful presence behind her, the noise of the party fading as they left the parlor and walked through the breezeway.
“Where is the kitchen?” he asked when they’d reached the back porch. “I thought it burned to the ground.” Zane took a lamp from the hook beside the door and lit it. The sky was overcast, putting the natural light of the moon and stars behind clouds.
“The roof and wooden storeroom did burn,” she said, taking his arm as they descended the porch steps. “We’re working on getting it back to functioning condition. Meanwhile, Horatia has gone back to working from the small kitchen in the manager’s cottage. That’s where Joelle and ThomasAnne and I live when we’re on the property. Selah and Levi have the old overseer’s cottage.”
He was quiet as they walked the brick path through Mose’s flower beds, the scent breathing about them. Finally he said, “This place is enormous. How many acres?”
“I don’t know. Forty thousand, I imagine. Maybe fifty?”
Zane whistled through his teeth. “Aurora, you realize I have literally nothing to my name? I live in a rooming house, but I’m hardly ever there. I don’t even own a horse right now.”
She thought about that. “Jesus didn’t own anything either. I think there’s probably a good bit of freedom in that. A shift in responsibility, maybe?”
“Don’t set me up on a pedestal, Aurora.”
“I’m not! And I would turn that right back on you. I’m not the spoiled princess you seem to think I am.”
“Yes. You are.” His voice was hard.
Snatching her hand away, she whirled to stand in his path. “That was mean!” She tried to discern his expression in the flickering lamplight. “And I’m not as smart as Joelle, but I know self-defense when I hear it. You’re just trying to push me away before you can get hurt.”
“What if I am? Do you blame me?” He set the lamp on the path, putting his face completely in the dark, and took her by the shoulders. “I don’t want to insult you, Aurora, but I’m working. I don’t have time for parties. I have to interview a couple of prostitutes in order to find a murderer, and every minute I stand here arguing with you is a minute I can’t spend putting Jones behind bars.”
The feel of his hands on her bare shoulders, coupled with the iron tone of his voice, all but sent her up in flames. She pushed at his chest. “All right then—let me go! Find your own way to the kitchen! And I’ll tell Georgia and Lem Frye you were too busy to talk to them tonight.”
