Elusive Lovers

by Elizabeth Chadwick

  "In that case, why not?” said Marcie. “I'll hang it in the parlor. That might snag you a few male customers."

  Kristin wasn't sure she wanted that sort of male customer, but then maybe all men visited sporting houses. She wouldn't be surprised to hear it. Perhaps her father and brothers had, and Aunt Frieda's husband. She tried to imagine Aunt Frieda and Uncle Adolph engaging in “the act,” but she couldn't even imagine Uncle Adolph getting up the nerve to ask. And obviously women didn't suggest “the act,” so probably Aunt Frieda and Uncle Adolph—

  "Changed your mind?” Marcie was asking.

  "Oh, no,” Kristin stammered and immediately drew a sketch pad from her reticule. “I'll start right now."

  "We're here on a reform mission, Kristin,” said Kat.

  "You sound just like Genevieve,” murmured Kristin, sketching, glancing up at her subject, forgetting all about sin and sex. She had a portrait commission! Finally. One that didn't come from her husband. “Genevieve took my sketch book away from me once at the railroad station when we were rescuing young women,” Kristin explained. “Is this what we were rescuing them from? From becoming harl—” Kristin clapped her free hand over her mouth.

  Marcella laughed heartily. “Soiled doves will do, or fallen angels, or ladies of the night. There are all sorts of semi-polite terms for women in our profession.” Kristin was mesmerized by the woman's laughter. It had that full-throated enjoyment of life, that same sense of fun and good humor that Kristin loved in Jack's laughter. Jack who had compared her to a harlot—for which she would never forgive him. How could she even think of love in the same sentence with Jack. Love was solemn and holy. It had nothing to do with bodies and laughter. She had to keep that in mind.

  The backyard dormitory, completed in record time, now housed the sausage makers and household servants, two of the original girls, and the rest replacements for those who had married out of the Sunday courting parlor. Kristin held the ceremonies there and let the suitors pay for the refreshments at the wedding receptions. Sometimes there were double weddings. Sausage making had been transferred to the first floor of the dormitory building.

  Jack kept things changing so fast around her that Kristin didn't recognize her household from one week to the next. He had furnished all the upstairs bedrooms for out-of-town guests while she was starting Marcie's portrait, and now those rooms were filled with people from Chicago and Denver—investors. The new dining room table had three leaves in it and seemed to stretch on forever, set with the china that had replaced what fell into the cellar during their last memorable dinner party.

  Kristin looked down the sparkling table, lined with well-dressed people eating and drinking, laughing and talking business. She couldn't remember all of their names. The man to her right, for instance. He had said something to her about Mrs. Potter Palmer, so he must be from Chicago. After a few dutiful remarks to his hostess, he turned his attention to Ingrid, who was wearing an outrageously low-cut gown and flirting gaily. Personally, Kristin thought the man was waiting for Ingrid to bend forward once too many times with the result that both breasts would spring out of the bodice into her soup.

  "It's hard to believe, Mrs. Cameron, that you could have caused such a furor,” said Mr. Wyand on her left.

  "What furor?” What had she done now? Did this stranger know she had a commission from a sporting house madam? The portrait was coming along very well, a wonderful exercise in hair depiction.

  "Well, no one's ever preached a sermon about me,” said the man jovially.

  A Chicago wife, sitting midway down the table, tricked out in diamonds and puce satin, squeaked, “Oh, do tell us, Mrs. Cameron. Who has preached a sermon about you and on what subject? Are your good works so numerous that the church has acknowledged them?"

  Jack was listening and laughing, Kristin at a loss.

  "Oh, Mrs. Cameron is quite the modern woman,” said Mrs. Boling Wyand with discernible disapproval. Her husband owned ranches and mines on the Western Slope. Mrs. Wyand stayed in Breckenridge only during the summer and then liked to indulge her passion for gossip. “In my day,” she said loftily, “women stayed home to supervise their households and to see to their husbands and children, but we did go abroad on errands of mercy and such. However, there are modern women, I believe, who devote themselves to making money and haven't time for the traditional female pursuits. Perhaps the sermon in question was on sausage-making, Mrs. Cameron's forte. Her sausages are quite famous.” Mrs. Wyand fanned herself with a mother-of-pearl and lace fan. “I don't know what the world's coming to. If Mr. Cameron weren't such a talented banker"—She beamed at Jack, whose investment talents had made possible the rubies on her bony chest—"his wife might be outstripping him in earnings."

  Kristin decided that she didn't like Mrs. Wyand, no matter how much money her husband had invested in Jack's mining ventures. “Women need to have their own sources of income,” said Kristin, looking down her nose at Mrs. Wyand.

  "Here! Here!” said Kat, who had been glaring at a rather tipsy investor from Chicago, who patted her hand at every opportunity. “Women in business is the coming thing."

  "In case they need to support themselves,” Kristin agreed. “Look what happened to me.” She gave her husband a challenging look. “My parents made me leave home because of Jack, although Jack says we weren't guilty of anything. I'm sure I don't know, since he plied me with brandy."

  Mr. Parker raised his glance abruptly from Ingrid's cleavage to study Kristin with astonished interest.

  "We weren't guilty of anything,” said Jack. “She just has a bad-tempered family."

  "And they deprived me of my dowry. I'd probably have starved to death if friends hadn't sent me out here where Kat set me up in the sausage-making business."

  Now all the Chicagoans were gaping, and Kristin had the satisfaction of knowing that they could hardly wait to get home and spread the story around. She hoped her family was horribly embarrassed. No one but Aunt Frieda had written since she'd left home. Now all the Breckenridge people would stop whispering about her. They'd heard the whole story, so what else would there be to say?

  "But if nothing happened, dear, how did you and Jack happen to marry?” asked the lady draped in diamonds.

  "We had to."

  Everyone gasped.

  "Gossip, not guilt,” said Jack, leaning back in his chair as Maude removed his soup bowl. “Weren't we lucky? We might never have got together if it weren't for Connor and Kat's loose-tongued maid."

  Kristin glared at him. Lucky? If he'd been through what she'd gone through, he wouldn't be talking about luck. “You didn't go hungry on the train to Denver,” she said.

  "No, but I'm trying to make it up to you with the best French cook in the West."

  "In the country,” came a stentorian voice from the pantry.

  "My apologies, Abigail,” Jack called. “You're absolutely right."

  "If that's your cook, old boy,” said the Chicagoan beside Kristin, “she doesn't sound French to me."

  "I don't understand,” said Mrs. Wyand, whose husband obviously hadn't told her the story about Kristin and the sermon. “If the priest wasn't speaking of sin or good works, what in the world—"

  "Contaminating associations,” said Jack and winked at Kristin through the candlelight. “And it was a Methodist, Florida Passmore, not a priest."

  "What?” gasped Kristin. She hadn't heard that Reverend Passmore had been preaching about her. “He probably means you, Jack. You're certainly a contaminating association.” She nodded to Maude to begin serving the next course—mountain trout in aspic.

  "What's this stuff?” asked Ingrid. She stared at her plate suspiciously, then turned to Mr. Parker, at whom she had been casting sultry glances and who was quite surprised to find himself the object of her attentions. “I wouldn't eat that, honey,” she advised. “Looks to me like the fish were sick."

  "Reverend Passmore didn't mean me,” said Jack. “Although he did say husbands should protect their
wives from these contaminating associations. He was talking about your commission from Marcie Webber."

  "He should mind his own business,” snapped Kristin.

  "Who is Marcie Webber?” asked Mr. Wyand. “It's hard to believe that anyone who can afford to commission a portrait would be socially unacceptable."

  "As it happens, my wife is doing a portrait of one of the town's most infamous madams."

  "My dear Mr. Cameron,” said Mrs. Parker, who had agreed to come back to dinner at the Camerons’ because her husband told her that socially prominent people from Denver and Chicago would be there, “Reverend Passmore is quite right. You should keep your wife from such associations. It is a husband's duty to dictate and a wife's to obey.” She then glared at Ingrid, who was still tantalizing Mr. Parker with smiles and arm-brushing, cleavage displays, and whispered remarks that evidently shocked and titillated the poor man.

  Before Kristin could explode in anger, Jack said to Mrs. Parker, “I'll do my best to live up to your standards, ma'am, but with a wife as lovely and talented as mine, I find that I can't really deny her anything she wants.” He sent Kristin a besotted smile that only increased her chagrin, for she knew he was teasing her. He often played this game in public. Well, two could play. She'd show him.

  "Really? Anything?” Kristin smiled back sweetly. “Do you know what I've always wanted, Jack?"

  "No, sweetheart, what?"

  "To paint a nude.” She sent him a saucy look. “Would you like to pose?"

  Mrs. Wyand choked on her trout, although Abigail later denied angrily that there had been one single bone left in that fish. Mrs. Parker fainted and had to be carried into the drawing room and stretched out on the same loveseat where Ingrid had flirted with Cal Bannister and diverted his attention from the Parker daughter. Even Ingrid looked shocked at Kristin's question. Mr. Wyand and all the gentlemen from Chicago roared with laughter, and one said to Jack, “You've got a feisty girl there, Cameron. You always did have all the luck."

  Kristin tossed for several hours, then threw back the covers and slipped from bed. Cold air immediately started her shivering. And no wonder. She was clad in a nightgown that Yvette had made and then finagled her into wearing by actually shedding tears when Kristin complained that it was unseemly—pretty, but unseemly. Its sheer white cotton fabric was gathered to a wide square lace neckline which just caught her shoulders and was cut so low that the lace came halfway down her breasts before the gathered cotton began. If it slipped, her nipples would show. Other than the neckline it was chaste enough—long full sleeves gathered to a wrist band with a ruffle below, ruffles at the bottom under which just the tips of her toes peeked out.

  Kristin knew that Yvette was trying to mend the Cameron marriage. She dropped hints about how Kristin could lure Jack to her bed, this gown being one of the hints. Yvette sighed each morning when she arrived with Kristin's coffee to discover only one person under the covers. Since the first disastrous attempt on the maid's part to bring a tray upstairs, Kristin had trained herself to awaken and move the furniture away from the door before Yvette arrived. Then she hopped back in bed and pretended to be asleep when Yvette came in. Obviously the lady's maid thought Jack wasn't interested. Much she knew. Jack would only lose interest when he managed to wake up in Kristin's bed, and if that happened, Kristin would have lost her immortal soul. She had to stay vigilant.

  As she hunted for her dressing gown and slippers, she fretted about Yvette, Jack, and the nightgown, of which Sister Mary Joseph would have had a thing or two to say, such as the admonition that unchaste nightclothes led to unchaste thoughts as well as actions, which was certainly true in Kristin's case. Even when she managed to sleep, she had disturbing dreams when wearing this gown.

  Where was her robe? She couldn't find it. And her slippers? Yvette kept putting things away so that she herself would be the one to produce them on demand. She didn't want Kristin to do anything for herself. Grumbling, Kristin snatched up the green-blue shawl that Jack had given her. Yvette had draped it over a boudoir chair—trust the woman not to hide anything Jack bought. Shivering, Kristin wrapped herself up in soft material. Fringe trailed almost to the floor as she edged the chest aside enough to slip through the door and tiptoe downstairs barefoot.

  However, she found she couldn't paint, so she sat brooding in her studio, one lamp lit. The dinner party was over, the table cleared, guests gone to bed upstairs or to their own houses, and she sat thinking that she and her husband had acted like feuding, ill-mannered children, each trying to outdo the other in embarrassing remarks. How could he have told strangers that she was painting the portrait of a madam? How could she have asked if he'd like to pose nude? She sighed and stared at the portrait of Marcie on her easel.

  "Here I am,” said Jack from the doorway. “A man of my word."

  "Why aren't you in bed?” she gasped, as usual taken by surprise. He'd been walking like an Indian again.

  "Because you aren't there with me, love. You said you wanted a naked man, not a naked lover.” As Kristin's eyes followed him uneasily, he went to the cold hearth and stooped to light a fire. Flames soon danced on the stone, revealing—what was that on the floor? She stood up, staring. The bear! Its skin was spread out before the fire, looking lush, thick, and silky. Then she gasped when Jack began to undo the belt of his dressing gown.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The belt loosened and slipped to the sides of the blue wool robe. Kristin could see the gleam of his eyes in the firelight. “Is this going to be one of those sensuous, sleepless paintings you've been doing the last week or so?” he asked.

  "You've been in here without my permission?” She had hidden those pictures, somehow embarrassed, feeling that her restless yearnings showed through the innocuous subjects. How could he be so sensitive to her mood as it showed on her canvases? No one else would have called an apple sensuous. Or a bouquet of wildflowers picked by children in a mountain meadow and carried home in hot, grubby young fists. Ingrid had put them in water and doctored them with refined sugar because she was so touched, because she wanted to keep them fresh as long as she could to remind her that her children loved her. “I'll bet they don't bring Augustina flowers,” Ingrid had said.

  "What are you thinking about?” he asked.

  He was holding the robe closed, just teasing her. He didn't really mean to disrobe. “About Ingrid's wildflowers. They weren't—” Kristin stopped.

  "—sensuous? I'm sure the real ones weren't. But yours were. You made me inhale to catch the scent. I expected a rich, sweet fragrance."

  "They had none,” she protested. “Wildflowers don't—"

  "Yours looked as if they did, love."

  Why did he always call her love? He didn't love her. His interest was simply piqued because she was unwilling.

  "So how are we going to do this?” He shrugged one shoulder out of the robe, so that one side of his body, quite naked, caught the firelight. Kristin could see the tiny hairs springing away from the highlighted muscles of his calf and forearm, the definition of shoulder and chest. “Back lit or front lit?” he asked.

  "What?” She was embarrassed, terrified that he would drop the garment and reveal himself fully. Yet she couldn't turn away.

  "Considering how alarmed you look, I guess we'd better go for back lit.” He knelt, then stretched out on the rug, carelessly propped on one elbow, dressing gown tossed aside in the movement. His arm rested on his side, hand loose, one knee bent, firelight shining through hair that haloed his head—thick hair, slightly curled, reddened by the glow of the flames. She stared at the light, fascinated. She could paint just the hair, each strand aglow. Then her eyes wandered. He didn't look naked—not quite. The front of him was shadowed, a powerful promise of nakedness. Only part of his face, his hair, the line of his arm and shoulder, hip, leg, and foot showed clearly. She swallowed, telling herself she should turn away.

  Even as she had the thought, she was reaching for her sketchbook, thinking that she couldn
't expect him to lie there all night while she painted. He'd freeze. The fire would die down and change the light. She had to catch the moment and Jack as he was now, a natural man—beautiful. Her fingers trembled as she began to sketch. Quickly. As if the devil were after her. He was.

  Still, she worked, wishing her pencil could give her those colors, the red flame with its blue heart, the glowing halo of firelight on skin and hair, gold washing tendons in his feet and all the way up the muscles whose edges she could see, whose power stretched into secret shadow.

  Her heart raced with her fingers. Her eyes devoured the lights and darks. She could never show this picture. Would never sell it. But she'd paint it. Keep it always. Not over the mantle in the drawing room. Laughter overtook her as she thought of Mrs. Parker. The woman would faint and probably never revive if she saw the portrait Kristin was going to paint of Jack. Portrait number two.

  "Minx,” Jack drawled. He hadn't moved an inch. “Here I've gratified your every wish, and you sit there giggling."

  Kristin swallowed another giggle as she sketched the joining of his thigh and knee.

  "What will the household think if they catch me this way? My reputation will be ruined.” Jack managed to sound plaintive.

  Was he teasing? Laughter rippled in his voice. But it would be just like him to get up and leave before she finished. At the thought, her pencil flew.

  "Reverend Passmore will preach about me next Sunday. He'll call you the contaminating association instead of the contaminee."

  Kristin finished the calf, the foot, shaded in the areas that were unlighted. She felt giddy with relief. Once she'd sketched a thing, it stayed in her memory. The picture was hers now.

  "Finished already?” he asked when her hand rested at last.

  She nodded, embarrassed at her own concentration.