I had no intention of marrying Ward, but I wanted Ian to think I did. I posted the letter to the hotel in Bismark, where he and Billings (and Marian, of course) were staying. Then I set about making plans to leave as soon as I could. Haste at this point was necessary for more than one reason. Once the first snows fell, the Northern Pacific ceased to run. The steamboats plying the upper Missouri would also hold operations in abeyance until spring thawed the frozen river. The only way out of Bismark in the winter months was by stage, an uncertain, uncomfortable, and sometimes dangerous mode of transport.
However, I did not want to go without first speaking to Ward. It would be a shabby way to treat him, and I wasn’t about to emulate Ian’s cowardice by vanishing without a word. Ward had finally written from St. Paul, saying he expected to return around the fifteenth of the month. In the meantime I had his orderly take me out to see the Lowerys.
Ellie and the two youngest children were alone in the house. The others were scavenging for firewood, although where they would find any in this all but treeless country was a mystery. Ellie was genuinely glad to see me and was shocked to hear the real reason for my hasty departure. When I presented the gifts I had brought, shoes for the children and a bolt of warm woolen cloth, she wept. Watching her I again felt the contrast between her life and mine. The monotonous drudgery of Ellie’s existence where a bolt of cloth could make her shed tears of happiness should have made Ian’s deception and my subsequent devastation seem trivial. But as I had learned earlier, someone else’s misery, no matter how I might sympathize seemed to have no bearing on my own. I had been wounded and the pain still throbbed.
Ward arrived in the late afternoon of a gray, wintry day. I was at the upstairs bedroom window when I saw him in the compound riding away from General Custer’s quarters. Mrs. Sprockett, who must have been watching for him, opened the door.
I met him at the head of the stairs.
“Hello, Deirdre.” He leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. He would have gathered me into his arms had I not taken a small step back.
“Did you have a pleasant trip, Ward?’’
“Not very. I always forget how cold the wind can get in November. I understand we had a wounded guest.’’
“Yes. Mr. Ian Ramsey Montgomery. He saved me from a pair of outlaws who tried to steal my horse.’’
“So I heard.’’
“I’m sure you did. That little episode gave people here something to talk about besides the treacherous Sioux.’’
“Is that the same Mr. Montgomery who was once your lover?’’
“Yes. But that’s in the past. I found I had no feeling for him except gratitude for his act of courage. I thought the least I could do was tend him while he recovered. Mrs. Sprockett was here,’’ I added, “so it wasn’t as if we were alone. And Dr. MacKenzie came every day.’’
He went into the bedroom and I followed him. His eyes rested briefly on my trunk, standing next to the wardrobe.
“And so this Englishman no longer holds your affections?’’ He removed his hat; he looked tired, older.
“That’s right.’’
“And what about mine?’’ He unbuttoned his tunic, a familiar yet suddenly oddly intimate gesture. We had stood naked before one another, slept bare skin to bare skin for countless nights, and yet I now felt embarrassed. It was as though we had become strangers.
“I can’t marry you, Ward.”
“Because of him?”
“I’ve already told you how I feel about Ian. I don’t want to marry anyone.”
“What will you do, then?”
“Go back to Wildoak.”
“I don’t believe that’s what you really want, Deirdre.” He drew me closer. I didn’t resist. To do so might have provoked him, made him amorous. The last thing I wanted was to be made love to.
“You’re still upset because I lied to you. Give it more time.”
“I’ve given it as much thought as I ever will. I’d like to catch tomorrow’s train. Ward.”
He studied me for a few silent moments, his eyes going over my face as if searching for a sign of weakness. But I knew there was none. His arms tightened about my waist and he began to kiss me hungrily, warm passionate kisses that covered my face, my eyes, finally seeking and exploring the recesses of my mouth, willing me to respond. But he might as well have been kissing a statue. I felt nothing.
He let me go. “I can’t keep you against your will, Deirdre. Although I should like to. If I thought. . .” His eyes narrowed, then widened the way they did when he was forcing himself to control his anger. “If I thought you were going to Montgomery, I would kill you both.”
“Then I’ve saved you from murder,” I said.
I knew that I sounded unfeeling, insensitive, and that Ward, though he did not show it, was hurt. But he had brought it on himself. If he had asked me to marry him on that long-ago night in Chicago, I would have done so, and perhaps none of this would be happening now. Still, it would have been churlish of me to forget that he had given me some happy moments in the past. He had been generous, faithful, had treated me with courtesy and respect, and had tried to please, not the least by playing stepfather to Page.
“I would always like to be your friend, Ward.”
His eyes rested on me for a brief moment, their yellow depths betraying a flicker of scorn. “I don’t believe a man can form a friendship with a woman. Not one who has shared his bed.”
“I’m sorry. ...” I was at a loss for words. “I do thank you—”
“Please.” He waved my thanks aside. “I would rather do without your guilty gratitude or tepid words of sympathy.”
I asked Lucile to make it known that my hurried departure was due to a death in my family in Virginia. She, of course, knew the truth. But I thought it would be kinder to have her spread this plausible lie than to have Ward subjected to the kind of gossip that would otherwise run rampant.
Our leave-taking was as chilly as the temperature, which hovered somewhere in the twenties, and the ice floes already forming on the river. I thought Ward would make some last-minute plea, even feared at one point that he would resort to the sort of violence of which he was capable, but he seemed to sense that whatever he did would make no difference. For me it was over.
The train ride was uneventful until we reached Fargo. There we were delayed by a report that the tracks had been destroyed some ten miles ahead, by marauding Indians. The Northern Pacific put us up at the Headquarters Hotel in Fargo, a newly constructed three-story edifice combining both hotel and depot.
After an excellent dinner of saddle venison and currant jelly, I retired to my room. I had been there only a few minutes when someone knocked at the door. Before I could ask, “Who is it?” the door opened and a man entered.
It was Ian.
Too stunned to speak, I could only gape at him.
“Well,” he said nonchalantly, shoving the door to with his boot, “you’ve led me a merry chase, Deirdre Falconer.”
A great dark-blue cape swung from his shoulders; his wounded arm still rested in a sling.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded hoarsely. “I thought I made it plain I never wanted to see you again.”
“You didn’t think you could get rid of me that easily did you?”
“Please leave. If you do not, I will see that someone ejects you.”
He grinned. Oh, that captivating, funny flashing white grin. How I hated it, hated him, hated myself, because it still had the power to move me.
“Where is your wife?” I said bitterly. “The wife who divorced you.”
“I have no wife. I believe I told you I haven’t had one for the past two years.”
“A lie. And you have the gall to repeat it. Mrs. Sprockett said she came to fetch you.”
“Mrs. Sprockett,” he said with disdain.
“She was young and pretty,” I went on coldly. “You called her Marian.”
“Mary Ann," he said loudly, clearly, as one speaks
to a stubborn child. “Mary Ann Billings! That horrible Sprockett woman’s deaf—she misunderstood. I explained it all in the note I left.”
“I never got a note.”
“I know that now. You didn’t get my letters either, because the same nosy, mingy-minded cook tore them up.”
“But why should she do that?”
“Perhaps you can answer that better than I. But I can make a good guess. She doesn’t like you. I gathered as much when I finally managed to breach Gamble’s front door and confront her. But at the same time she guessed your attachment to me, and she didn’t want you to leave her precious Ward, because it might make him unhappy.”
Could I believe him? Was he using his charm again to gull me?
He was watching me, all trace of levity gone. “Mary Ann came to fetch me because Billings couldn’t. He had gone to Fort Pierre to see a man about some mining equipment. A company director from England had arrived unexpectedly at the hotel in Bismark where we’d been staying. He was rather upset—something to do with delays in our reports and not finding either of us readily available. When he became more truculent Mary Ann offered to cross the river and get me. I explained that in the note Mrs. Sprockett filched and destroyed.”
It sounded logical, but then Ian had always sounded logical.
“You should have trusted me, Deirdre.”
“How could I trust you?” I asked bitterly. “You didn’t seem to make any effort to see me after you left.”
“But I did. It was a day or two before I could get back to the fort. You were out. Mrs. Sprockett slammed the door in my face. Then I got your lovely letter saying you were going to marry Ward. You can imagine what a blow that was. But Deirdre ...” He took a step closer.
“Please . . .”I turned and moved to the window, pausing there, looking out at the bleak landscape. The sky was a dull lead color. Snow would fall before night. Behind me Ian was silent, but I could feel his eyes on my back. I didn’t know what to say, what to think. I hated my confusion.
“I’m returning to Wildoak,” I said. “It’s simpler that way.’’
“Is it?” And then with anger, “Damn you, Deirdre! Damn that touchy, prickly pride of yours. That’s all it is, that’s all it’s ever been from the day you left that barn in a huff without hearing me through. I would have thrown up everything for you then. But no, you had to grind my face in the dust because I hadn’t proposed properly. You never listen. You never wait to listen, but go off half-cocked. Deaf Mrs. Sprockett said ‘Marian,’ and you believed her before you believed me. And now you’re running away again.”
Was I? Was it true that my temper flared up too soon?
“I must admit,” he went on in a softer tone, “that it was your pride that first attracted me. But you carry it to folly. Sometimes I wonder if you haven’t taken pleasure in using it to wound me.”
I turned. “No! It isn’t true!”
He gave me a penetrating look, and then his gaze mellowed. He drew in a long breath before speaking again. “We’ve traveled many separate miles, you and I, done things perhaps of which we are not proud, changed in ways we could not have foreseen, but one thing remains the same.”
He paused, and my mind fled down the years to the young widow of twenty who had come to Richmond to look for a rich husband. Deirdre Falconer Morse, who had sent away in anger the one man who could give meaning to her life. A sudden lump formed in my throat. I could not meet Ian’s eyes, but stared at the floor between us.
He continued. “I think I knew it for certain that last time we were together. I am not speaking of our physical joining, but afterward when you lay next to me, your head on my good shoulder.” I looked up. His eyes held an unbearable intensity. “Do you know what I am talking about, Deirdre?”
“Oh, Ian ...”
“Don’t turn away from it, darling.”
“No,” I whispered, tears burning my eyes. “No.”
He held out his arm and I went to him. There with his lips resting on my cheek I knew that only love had the power to dissolve the past, that love was the rock upon which happiness—my happiness—was built, that fate had been kinder to me than I deserved in giving me Ian. I would never let pride separate us again.
We found a preacher the next day and were married in the hotel parlor. Mrs. Ian Ramsey Montgomery. How strange— and wonderful—it seemed. A week of snowstorms held us blissfully imprisoned (for all honeymooners I heartily recommend an isolated plains hotel with the wind howling beyond the windows and a warm fire and downy bed inside) before we were able to catch a stage to points south.
Billings and his wife went back to England. We, however, spent the winter at Wildoak, where we could safely ignore the shocked gossips in Richmond, who, having heard that Ian and I both had divorced our former spouses (it was easiest to explain Ward away in this manner), wondered out loud what the world was coming to. Page joined us for Christmas. He had grown so—and how handsome he was! He had none of the gangling, clumsy appearance associated with a boy going into adolescence. His hair had not darkened; he had remained the same towheaded blond, and his eyes, blue and unclouded, looked out from almost white brows in a suntanned face. He seemed to take agreeably to Ian, although he did remark, with a frankness he must have gotten from me, “I’ve had so many ‘Papa’s’ I’m quite used to it.”
In March 1876, British Metals sent Ian to a digging site called Dead Tree Gulch, in the Badlands, and then immediately after to the mining camp of Deadwood. Crude, rude, blustering, roaring, and packed with gold seekers, hardened prospectors, outlaws, gamblers, agents, and boomers, it was a place where tent saloons and shanty brothels flourished. Against this backdrop, men caroused—-drinking, gambling, and whoring. Fist fights, gun battles, and knifings were so common as to attract little notice. Outside the sprawling perimeters of Dead wood, along the streams, and in the hills the scramble for gold, the muddy day-to-day drudgery of the lone pickax wielder, and the more sophisticated efforts of various companies went on in feverish earnest. It seemed to bother no one that we were all squatters on Indian land.
Early in July we received shocking news. General Custer and an entire company of 250 officers and men, including Lieutenant Colonel Ward Gamble, had been ambushed and massacred by the Sioux while on reconnaissance at the Little Big Horn River. My first reaction of incredulity quickly gave way to a dismal sense of guilt. I remembered how coldly I had rejected Ward and felt a terrible remorse. I tried to hide my feelings. But Ian, who knew me better than I knew myself, sensed my depression and guessed the reason for it.
“The death of someone we’ve known and haven’t been particularly kind to makes us believe in some obscure way that we are to blame,’’ he said. “But it’s so illogical, darling. Ward Gamble was a soldier. The risks of war were part of his life. Even if you’d married him he would have continued on in his profession. Do you think by putting a ring on your finger he could have prevented Little Big Horn?’’
And of course he was right.
The mining operation Ian had set up for British Metals in the Black Hills proved to be most profitable. Because the company was so pleased, the board of directors voted Ian in as a junior partner. That meant he would receive a share of the profits, a not inconsiderable sum that would provide a continuing income.
“Are we rich?’’ I asked Ian.
He laughed. “Mercenary, aren’t you? Not rich, darling— but getting there.’’
In 1877, British Metals asked Ian to open a branch office in San Francisco. I had hoped that when we were through with the Dakotas we might return to Wildoak. But Ian’s commitment to his firm precluded even a short visit. In any case, I was glad to be leaving Deadwood. It had not improved during our time there, only grown larger and more disreputable, a mecca for such notorious characters of the West as Calamity Jane, Wild Bill Hickok, Potato Creek Johnny, and California Joe. Though we kept well clear of these renegades (our own social life was narrowed by the transient nature of even our “good citizens”), w
e felt their rowdy presence. I would not miss them, or the mosquito-ridden summers, bone-chilling winters, and mud-mired spring thaws that followed. I experienced a feeling of relief as I saw the last of the town through the stagecoach window. I was pregnant and I did not want a child of mine to be branded with the name of this devil’s cauldron as his or her birthplace.
Uncle Miles and Aunt Carmella, together with their oldest child, a lovely girl of eleven they had named Sabrina, met us in Oakland. I could see from Aunt Carmella’s smiling face, the warmth of her hugs and kisses, that all differences, all misunderstandings, had been forgotten or forgiven. Uncle Miles was very cordial, too, though I was never to get over the feeling that he disapproved of me.
On the ferry across the bay to San Francisco, Carmella and I talked incessantly, sometimes interrupting each other, laughing when we did, trying to catch up on all the years we had been apart. The Falconers had rented a house for us on Nob Hill—they hoped it was not too expensive. In addition to Christian, they had another boy, Arthur, and a new baby, a chubby little girl named Marguerite.
“And how is Page?” Carmella asked.
“He’s doing fine, according to his letters. But the first thing I’m going to do as soon as we get settled,” I said, smiling at Ian, “is send for him. He’s got to come. I won’t take no for an answer.”
But Page offered no resistance, and his arrival coincided with the birth of James, his new stepbrother.
PART II
Page
(1878)
Chapter 14
I was fifteen, a green, snobbish youth, when I first saw my cousin Sabrina, a meeting that changed the course of my life.
Before that momentous occasion my thoughts and aspirations had revolved exclusively around horses. I was mad about thoroughbreds, slim-legged and velvet of coat, the pedigreed aristos who had descended from Byerly’s Turk or the princely Arab. I would travel miles to see a famous racing stallion or hang around the stables of the rich, absorbing horse talk like a sponge. The words fetlocks, withers, stride, and endurance peppered my speech. I could recite sire and dam going back five generations on any number of promising yearlings. My single ambition was to take over Wildoak and make it into the best racehorse breeding farm in the country.
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