“I should have the rest of your clothes done by this time next week,” Vera told her. “Then I’d like to do some fittings for a few day dresses and maybe a fancy dress or two.”
Eddy wasn’t sure about the fancy dresses, but Vera would plow ahead with the project whether she approved or not, so she kept her doubts to herself.
Walking over to the cold box, she took out the second bowl of marmalade and spooned some into a teacup. After covering it with a small doily, she secured it with an elastic band and placed it in a basket. “Sylvia, I’m going to take this over to Rhine.”
Seeing Vera’s confusion, Eddy explained, “I promised him some of the marmalade to thank him for saving me in the desert.”
Sylvia groused mockingly, “Why do I have to share mine when he has his own cook? I’m sure Jim Dade is perfectly able to make Rhine his own marmalade.”
Vera waded in around a bite of a marmalade-laden biscuit, “I agree.”
“Now, now ladies. Let’s not be greedy and uncharitable. I’ll make you more. Promise.”
Sylvia folded her arms and huffed like a small child. “Okay. I’m holding you to that, Eddy.”
Eddy truly enjoyed Sylvia and her antics. “I’ll be back shortly. I’ll stop by Lady Ruby’s and get eggs while I’m out, too. And don’t eat all the marmalade while I’m gone.”
No promises were made.
Walking down the crowded street, it was her hope that Rhine Fontaine would accept his boon, say thanks, and let her go on her way, but she doubted the encounter would play out that way. Regardless of the shoots that remained hopeful, she planned to continue keeping him at arm’s length, even as she wondered what it might be like to take him up on his offer for dinner. Candlelight, he said. Eddy had never dined with any man other than her father, but knew there was no comparison. Fontaine would be charmingly bold while she would be all thumbs and nervous as a ewe with a wolf. No, dinner with him wouldn’t be a good idea even though they did need to have another adult-to-adult talk. Yes, there was an attraction to him that was real as the sun in the sky but she didn’t love him and he didn’t love her and that would have to be in the equation if they were actually to become a couple. She didn’t want to be tossed aside as soon as he found a Natalie with more depth. As Sylvia so rightly pointed out, men like Rhine might offer a dalliance but they rarely offered marriage to women like herself.
Knowing that no respectable lady entered a saloon alone or by the front door, she went around to the back door that led to the kitchen and knocked. Jim Dade answered and greeted her with a smile, “Good morning, Miss Eddy. What can I do for you?”
“I have Rhine’s marmalade. Is he here?”
“No. He’s out collecting rent from his tenants.”
Eddy was relieved, or at least that’s what she told herself. “Will you make sure he gets this, please?” She took the teacup out of the basket and handed it to him.
He opened the top, grazed a finger over the sweet contents and tasted it. “This is excellent. Whether there’ll be anything in the cup when he returns is another story. Can you show me how this I made?”
“I can, if only to keep Sylvia from sulking over having to share.”
He chuckled. “We can’t have Miss Sylvie sulking, now can we. Let me know when you have some time.”
“I will. Thanks, Jim.”
“You’re welcome lovely lady. I owe you an angel food cake recipe. Haven’t forgotten.”
“Good.”
“How’s the auction going?”
“Going well. I hope you’ll take me up on donating the cake.” The event was less than a week away.
“I think I will.”
“I’ll be bidding.”
He nodded, and Eddy set out for Lady Ruby’s Silver Palace to buy eggs.
It wasn’t very far away. According to Sylvia, the place started life as a mansion built by one of the mine owners back the in sixties. When his stock sank and left him broke, he moved his family to San Francisco and abandoned the home. How Ruby came to be in possession, Eddy didn’t know.
The interior was quiet. A few of the girls looked bleary-eyed as they ate breakfast and nodded a greeting. Every time she entered she thought about her sister Corinne and her nieces. Eddy had written her a few weeks ago to let her know where she was staying, even though Corinne probably didn’t care.
On the far side of the room, a man with sandy-colored hair was seated with his face down on one of the tables. She assumed he was sleeping off last night’s revelry.
Lady Ruby was behind the long wooden bar. Her shoulder length red wig was slightly askew and she was wearing a voluminous silver wrapper on her tall large-boned frame. She was also sporting enough silver jewelry on her wrists and fingers to be officially declared a mine.
“Good morning, Eddy,” she said in her lilting West Indian accent.
“Good morning, Lady Ruby.”
“You are entirely too gorgeous for this early in the morning. You here for eggs?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I’ve been thinking about the auction. Are you sure I can’t offer a night with one of my girls.”
Eddy smiled. “Very sure.” They’d had this conversation on one of Eddy’s earlier visits. “I don’t think it’s appropriate.”
“Well okay. I’ll see if me and the girls can come with something else.”
“That would fine.” But Eddy had no idea what that would be.
Behind Eddy a male voice said, “Well, well. Look who’s here. You made it, I see.”
Eddy swung around to the sound of the slurred but familiar voice and looked into the red eyes of the man she knew as Father Nash. Furious, she turned back to Ruby. She had absolutely nothing to say to him.
“You know him, Eddy?” Lady Ruby asked with surprise.
“Just enough to know he’s a thief and a snake. I’ll tell you the story some other time.”
“You trying to ignore me, girl?” Nash snapped.
Eddy said to Ruby, “Let me get my eggs.”
Behind her, she heard the scrape of a chair.
“Look at me when I’m talking to you.” He was now crossing the room.
She still refused to turn around.
Lady Ruby said, “One of you girls go get Phillip. Hurry.” She then snapped, “Mister, go back over there and sit down!”
Phillip was the house bouncer. Eddy saw one of the girls run from the room just as Nash latched onto her upper arm and spun around her to face him. “Did you hear me?”
“Let go!” She tried to jerk free but his hold was tight as a vise.
A different male voice boomed angrily, “Release her now! Or I’ll kill you where you stand.”
Rhine Fontaine stood across the room with ice in his eyes and a Colt in his hand leveled at Nash.
Nash’s eyes bulged and he quickly backed away.
Rhine didn’t lower the gun. “Miss Carmichael, are you okay?”
A seething Eddy rubbed at her throbbing arm. “Yes.”
Nash raised his hands. “I’m sorry,” he said, chuckling as if the encounter had been a joke. “I didn’t know she was yours. Had her a few times when she and I crossed the desert. Was just trying to renew an old friendship. She as hot for you as she was for me?”
Eddy saw red. He’d robbed her, left her to die, and was now intimating that they’d been intimate? She was so furious she wanted to shoot him herself, but not having that option, she grabbed a long-necked bottle off the bar’s top and slammed it hard across his jaw. The bottle shattered. Had she been taller she’d have brought it down on his head.
Lady Ruby shouted, “Hey! Who’s going to pay for that!”
It wouldn’t be Nash because he was already out cold before he fell over the table and slumped slowly to the floor. Eddy reached into her pocket, withdrew some coins and sla
pped them on the bar. “For your whiskey.”
The old madam smiled. “I like your style, Eddy Carmichael.”
But the still furious Eddy was already on her way to the back door. As she passed the stunned Fontaine, she said, “Now, you may shoot him!”
Out back, Eddy went to the coops and gathered the eggs she needed. Placing them in the basket she was carrying, she turned to go home and there stood Rhine Fontaine.
“Thank you for intervening on my behalf. Again. Good day.”
“Whoa,” he said, taking her arm gently. “Hold on a minute, please.”
She cast a critical eye down at his restraining hand and then up at him.
Showing just a hint of a smile, he released her. “Who is he?”
“The snake responsible for me almost dying in the desert.”
“I didn’t expect you to bash him with that bottle.”
“Had I a gun I would’ve shot him for lying so scandalously.” Just thinking about it made her seethe all over again.
“Did you cut yourself?”
She looked down at her hands. “No.”
“How much did he take from you?”
When she told him, anger flare in his eyes.
She added, “He left me penniless.”
“How about I drive you back to Sylvia’s. My carriage is close by.”
“No thank you. I need to walk off this anger.” And come to grips with the fact that she might wind up being jailed if Nash decided to file charges.
“Let me drive you, Eddy.”
“I doubt the gossips will approve of me being seen in your carriage.”
“You were assaulted, Eddy. The gossips aren’t going to approve of that either.”
“No, I’ll walk.”
He looked so frustrated she almost felt sorry for him. Almost.
“I’ll come by Sylvia’s this evening and check on you.”
“Not necessary.”
“Plan on me doing it anyway.” There was concern in his vivid eyes. “You’re a hard nut to crack, Eddy Carmichael,” he said softly.
“I’m a woman of color, Mr. Fontaine. A hard shell is necessary.”
And with that, she turned from him and walked away.
Watching her go, Rhine sighed with frustration. He’d come to the Palace to pick up Ruby’s rent, only to walk in and find Eddy being manhandled. He’d almost put a bullet in Nash’s head there and then. What she made him feel was far more than proprietary. His attraction to her was growing with each passing moment, threatening to unravel him and possibly the life he’d so carefully planned for himself. Somewhere his mother and the Old African Queens were looking on knowingly.
Needing to vent some of what he was feeling, he went back inside. Nash was just coming to. Rhine grabbed him up and slammed him into a wall. “Don’t ever put your hands on a woman in my sight again.” He slammed him again. “Do you hear me!”
Nash cried out.
“Give me your money.”
“What!”
Rhine pulled his Colt and placed it against his temple. “Your money. She said you robbed her.”
Nash’s face widened with fear. “The bitch is lying!”
Rhine eased the hammer back. “I say she isn’t. Give me your money!”
He quickly surrendered. “Okay!”
Rhine stepped back. Nash fumbled through his pockets and with a shaking hand offered up fifty dollars in bills and coins.
“Where’s the rest?”
“A man’s gotta live.”
“By preying on women and leaving them to die in the desert!”
Nash wouldn’t meet his eyes.
“I want you out of town right now.”
“You can’t make me leave. Why’re you so worked up over a nigger woman anyway?”
The fist that exploded in Nash’s face put him back on the floor. “Be out of Virginia City by sundown,” Rhine said icily. “Or I’ll hunt you down like a rabid dog.”
Rhine collected his payment from the shocked Lady Ruby and exited the Silver Palace without further word.
On the ride back to the Union, his encounter with Nash made him glad he’d stepped away from his race. As a man of color he would never have been able to champion Eddy the way he had; not without threat of arrest or a noose.
That evening, Eddy was in the kitchen making the dough for the dinner rolls she’d be offering with Sunday’s dinner. With the steadily increasing numbers of people showing up to eat, she hoped tripling the batch would allow each diner to have two rolls to accompany their meal of roast chicken and vegetables. She’d already cut up and seasoned the chicken pieces and they were resting in large roasters in the cold box. She still had a few cakes to ice, but overall her work was just about done for the day. Sylvia had gone over to Vera’s for their weekly Saturday night card game. August was spending his evening with Cherry. Miner Gabe Horne was working the midnight shift, and she had no idea where the always boastful Whitman Brown was, nor did she care. All that mattered was she had the house to herself for the evening. Once she was done in the kitchen, her plan was to draw a bath, soak away the day’s tension and the large bruise blooming on her forearm from Nash’s unwanted attentions, and generally relax ahead of what would be a busy Sunday.
With the dough done, she divided it up, placed each soft mound in a bowl, and covered the bowls with clean, flour-dusted towels so the dough could rise undisturbed overnight.
Taking out more butter and sugar so she could make the icing for the cakes, a knock on the back door made her look up. It was dark so she had trouble seeing who was there. Wiping her hands on a towel, she walked over and saw Rhine standing under the light. She’d spent the balance of the day trying to convince herself that he’d not make good on his promise to stop by and see about her. With it being Saturday night, she was certain he’d be far too busy with his saloon. She was wrong. She drew in a deep calming breath. “Rhine.”
“I came to check on you.”
“Thank you. I’m fine.”
“I just wanted to make sure.”
As the night echoed around them, they studied each other through the screen. Common sense dictated she send him on his way, but instead she heard herself ask, “Would you like to come in?”
“I would.”
By inviting him in, she was aware that she was opening herself up to whatever might come to pass, but she was determined to keep the walls she’d built around herself erect and intact. She stepped back so he could enter. His eyes brushed hers, and the air in the room seemed to warm and thicken. “Sit if you care to. I’m in the middle of icing cakes for tomorrow’s dinner and I need to finish.”
“Thank you. What kind?” he asked, taking a seat in one of the chairs.
She was determined to keep the atmosphere light. “Two gold. Two silver. We sell them by the slice.”
As conscious of his presence as she was of her own breathing, she whipped the sugar and butter and added the sweet milk a bit at a time until the icing reached the proper consistency.
“Why’d you invite me in?”
The quiet tone of his voice stroked her like a hand, but she chuckled softly, “Because you obviously don’t take no for an answer.”
“There is that.”
“Also, it’s dark. You were discreet enough to come to the back door. I’m also here alone. Both of which will hopefully save me from the gossips.” She began frosting the cakes, all the while telling herself she wasn’t nervous.
“You do that well.”
“Years of practice. As I may have told you before, my mother was a cook.” As she moved on to the second cake, she saw him reach into his coat and extract some money. She froze. “And that is for?”
“I convinced Nash to return the money he stole from you and he gave me all he had.”
She relaxed. “
Oh.”
“What’s wrong?”
She shook her head. “Nothing. Thank you.”
“Did you think I was trying to buy your services?”
She told the truth. “Yes.”
“You’re not a whore, Eddy.”
“I know that but I wasn’t sure you did.”
He sat back. “Damn woman.”
She shrugged. “Like you said: hard nut to crack. I’ve no experience with a man like you, Rhine, or truthfully, any man.” She looked away. She was a novice at this and he needed to know that.
“Will you at least give me a chance to prove myself?”
“To what end? A few days ago you were engaged to marry, and now you want me to believe you’re genuinely interested in me as something other than a dalliance.”
A smile played around his lips. “You don’t plan to make this easy, do you?”
“Why should I?”
“As long as you don’t take a bottle to my head, I think I can handle the challenge.”
It was her turn to smile. “My mother said I get my temper from my grandmother. She was sold twelve times during slavery because she never met a slave owner she could abide. She was whipped a lot because of that.” It suddenly occurred to Eddy that she was talking to a man who may or may not have been a slave owner. “Sorry. I probably shouldn’t be discussing such a subject with you.”
“No. It’s okay. Your grandmother sounds like quite a woman. What else do you know about her?”
Eddy smoothed more icing over the cake with her wide-bladed knife. “She was supposedly an African queen.”
He stiffened.
“You think that’s absurd, don’t you?”
“Not really,” he said, eyeing her keenly. “Anything is possible I suppose. Does that mean I should bow to you each time we meet.”
“Yes.”
They shared a smile.
On a more serious note, she asked, “Do you think I’ll be arrested if Nash presses charges?”
“No.”
“I hit a man not of my race over the head with a bottle. That’s grounds for jail.”
“You were defending yourself.”
“In many places that doesn’t matter.”
“I was a witness, Eddy, and so was Lady Ruby. He deserved it. You won’t be arrested. I promise.”
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