“You shouldn’t be out here without a coat,” he said, coming forward, draping the coat around her shoulders, pulling it in and buttoning the top button.
Shaking her head, Petra, her voice thick with unshed tears, begged him, “Don’t touch me. Don’t be kind. I must be the stupidest woman on earth.”
She held up her hand to stop him from giving protest.
“I know, I know I have no right to feel insulted. Mr. Cummings naturally assumed me a kept woman—your woman.”
She drew herself up and stepped out of his embrace.
Empty, Buck felt cold, abandoned and left to suffer, with no hope of retrieving the warmth he had so briefly enjoyed.
“Do, do the ladies come out here to bathe with their, their…what would you call them, Mr. Hoyt—consorts?”
Her lips curled in disgust, she tilted her head slightly to glare at him.
“It sounds a bit refined for what I’m picturing in my mind.” Waving her hand, encompassing the shelter she asked, “You built this…crude, Roman bath house with your patrons in mind, I assume.”
The nasty sneer on her lips had him squirming a little, but Buck was proud of the bathing house. He’d damned up the spring, which wasn’t an easy job, and hauled load after load after load of slate and shale from the canyon to line the pond. He’d made sure the water flowed into the pool and out of the pool at just the right rate to keep the water fresh and clear. After three years, he’d finally completed the project last spring. Now he surveyed his handiwork with a good deal of satisfaction.
“Yeah, I built this, as you call it, Roman bath. Actually, I got the idea from the encyclopedia. I saw a picture in the encyclopedia of a hot spring enclosure in Switzerland, and after some research, I decided to try to duplicate it. My guests enjoy it…I enjoy it.”
She laughed, albeit derisively, then nodded with indifference and shrugged her shoulders, holding herself back, body ridged, telling him she no longer gave a damn.
Staying very still, he waited. When she spoke, he heard the sadness, the hurt, in her voice and thought his heart would break.
“It is beautiful out here. It doesn’t smell so bad in here, I’m surprised. You put cedar on the walls—that might explain it.”
The silence stretched between them, creating a barrier, a barrier he feared would separate them forever. When she turned her head away from the pool and the wintery scene beyond the shelter, her gaze boring a hole into his head, Buck knew his hour of reckoning had come.
“What I have to ask—what I have to know… and only you have the answer, Mr. Hoyt—am I now one of your whores?”
With her blue eyes swimming in tears, she stood there, shoulders back, chin out, head held high, regal and proud. He wanted to beg her to forgive him. If only she would, then he’d take her in his arms and hold her until she melted against him.
But he couldn’t touch her now—his touch wouldn’t be tolerated. She wanted answers, not kisses.
Sounding reasonable, rational, detached, she said, “Perhaps I should rephrase. My question is broader than I had thought. What I’m really asking is, is every woman who gives herself, gives her heart and body to a man, gives freely, expecting no monetary return, is she a whore in every man’s eyes, or is she just a stupid fool?”
She paused, her gaze locking with his.
When he didn’t immediately answer her first question, she expanded on her theme to goad him into making up a stupid excuse. Buck recognized it for the female tactic women used to confuse the male. In his experience, no answer a man could give had any hope in hell of being accepted by the female mind, hence his delay in responding.
It was exactly as he’d feared, a setup, one of those trick questions women liked to ask, and no matter what a man said, he’d find himself dead in the water. He couldn’t see the abyss, the gaping maw opening up like a black pit between them, but it was there, and he knew he had to tread very carefully.
Taking a deep breath, he gathered up his wits and his courage. “I don’t care for the word whore. My mother was a madam, the ladies who worked with my mother were her girls. She ran a house up on the hill above the wharf in San Francisco. She catered to all the swells and gents, and made a fine living for herself, and for me.
“Prostitutes, for the main part, are businesswomen. What they do is hard. To do it right requires skill and a lot of tolerance and intestinal fortitude—in short, its dirty work, a job—the same as mucking out stalls or digging ditches. I wouldn’t call what we’ve been doin’ work. What we’ve been doin’ is enjoying ourselves, pleasuring each other. It wasn’t a chore for me, and I hope it wasn’t a chore for you.”
Petra adjusted Gabriel in her arms and shifted her weight to her other hip and put up her chin.
“All right, but Mr. Cummings asked me if I was one of your hens. What did he mean? Why would he ask me such a question?”
Although he found it hard, Buck made himself look her in the eye. He shivered and moved closer to her, thinking to get near enough to her to stop her in case she should try to run.
“I should’ve told you what kind of business I ran, but when you say it out loud, it doesn’t sound very good, so I kept my mouth shut.
“Petra, I love you. I never thought I could love anyone, but I love you, and I never wanted to hurt you. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you right off, but I was afraid you’d run off and leave me.”
“I keep some girls here from spring to fall. The girls are free to come and go as they please. I don’t force anyone to do anything they don’t want to do. The girls who come out here pay me the same as they do for a hotel room, except I supply meals and transportation.
“And yeah, they bring the boys out here for a bit of fun in the pool sometimes. For the most part, I get a pretty good-natured bunch when I’m open for business. I close down for the winter. I like having the place to myself. I have time to read and write my stories.”
Finding himself on the defensive didn’t sit well. Buck had never given a damn what anyone thought of him or his business. He had nothing on his conscience—he wouldn’t apologize.
“Your mother was a—she was a madam?”
Frustrated, he huffed. She hadn’t kept pace with the entire conversation. She’d fallen a little behind, landing on the one detail he’d as soon she dismiss. Buck tried to smile. She was a delight, his Petra.
“Yeah.”
For a few tense seconds, Petra, her lips parted, eyes wide, stared at him. Buck started to wonder if he’d sprouted antlers, then she burst out laughing so hard it startled Gabriel, and he let out a wail that echoed around the shed. She laughed so hard the coat came unbuttoned and slipped off her shoulders.
Buck caught it before it hit the water. Between fits of the giggles, snorts and chortles Petra half-heartedly tried to soothe her son’s shattered peace.
Insulted he said, “There isn’t anything funny about it. My mother, a good mother, took good care of me. All the girls took good care of me.”
Putting the baby up to her shoulder and patting him on the back, Petra struggled to sober herself, having to stifle her giggles. Buck put the coat back around her shoulders and kept his arm there to keep it in place.
Petra jostled Gabriel and he quieted.
“Oh, Mr. Hoyt, Mathias…Matt…VanDeveer” cough, snort, and more giggles. “I’m sure she was a very—very good mother. Why did she give you so many names? I don’t understand.”
Gabriel refused to be mollified. Buck took him and placed him in the crook of his arm as Petra put her arms in the sleeves of the coat. She held open the sling, and they both adjusted the baby back into his favorite position against her bosom.
Buck closed his eyes and breathed in the scent of her, the warmth of her, and dared to pull her closer to his side.
“Mr. Hoyt, please.”
Coldly, she shrugged her shoulders to the side in a half-hearted attempt to get him to take his hands off her. Buck got her meaning, but hesitated to give ground.
“Mr. Hoy
t,” she said again, this time she served him a cold, ice-blue glare of warning.
He allowed her to step out of his embrace.
“Fine, I’ll keep my distance.” He took a step back and answered her, “Mother didn’t know which one of her regulars had sired me, so she named me after the most likely suspects and gave me her family name…Buxton. There, now, I’ve answered your question, now it’s your turn to explain to me what’s so funny.”
She pressed her lips together, her eyes dancing with light. “You told me you had six mothers—teachers. I thought perhaps you’d been raised by nuns. It seemed a logical explanation as to why you love to read, why you’re so self-sufficient in the kitchen and comfortable and capable nursing invalids.”
All brain function came to a standstill—she’d chucked a big old cog right in the spokes of his brain. When the wheels started churning again, he burst out laughing—which set Gabriel off to howling again.
When he could focus, Petra had stopped laughing. As a matter of fact, she appeared to be, once again, disgusted.
“There, you see how stupid, how naive I can be. Mr. Hoyt, how can I trust any of my perceptions—my feelings. I really don’t blame you for not telling me about your business. You were absolutely right—I probably would’ve run off and gotten myself, and Gabriel, killed.
“I am disappointed, though. You’ve been kind to me, but I wish you were in some other kind of business. I can’t stay, of course. I could never trust myself, or my position, in your house. I think I’d always fear another woman would come along and replace me as your favorite…concubine.”
Her words cut off his laughter. He didn’t care for her logic. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I would never be certain I wasn’t just another…hen… prostitute—you know…exchangeable.”
“Petra, God damn it. Get this through your head, you are not—and never will be, a prostitute. You’re going to be my wife, for God’s sake. And no wife of mine is going to take up prostitution. Do you understand me? I’m out of the business. I ended the business the second I brought you into the house.”
It flew out of his mouth before he knew it. Buck had no idea where his declaration had come from. Not once had he thought about taking a wife—marriage. He’d considered changing his life, changing the way he made his living…sure. And Petra was in there somewhere in his plans, sure.
Petra snorted. “Mr. Hoyt… Mathias, Matt, you should see the look on your face. I can see the panic in your eyes. You don’t believe one word of what you said.”
His throat clutched up on him. The sun had moved behind the shed; cold, he figured Petra must be freezing—she’d been out here longer than he had.
“Give me some time to get used to the idea. I admit the notion is new to me.”
He shifted from one foot to the other. “Look, its damn cold out here, we should get back to the house and Smiley. I think we could both use something to eat.”
He took her by the arm and started to lead her out of the shed. “We’re gonna go have a nice long talk, Petra.”
Chapter Fourteen
“Kurt’s dead.”
In disbelief, Petra repeated the news. “Kurt is dead. He’s dead and Beau’s in jail.”
Seated at the table, Buck held Gabriel, leaving Petra free to absorb the facts presented in the Herald.
Lowering the paper, she shook her head at him. “I’ll need to see the body to believe it.”
“The paper’s a couple of weeks old,” he said and tapped a finger on the date at the top of the paper.
Tilting her head to the side, Petra rubbed the back of her neck. She huffed, then vigorously rattled the paper, he thought she did it to get the creases out, or perhaps she thought to shake out the mystery that lay hidden between the lines of type.
Lips drawn back into a thin line, jaw tight she said, “I don’t believe a word. You can’t kill the devil. Nothing can kill the devil. The devil can worm his way out of any jail. If the devil goes to trial, it is his plan. No one lives to testify against the devil, ever. And if a mere mortal should live long enough to betray the devil, that person will surely meet with a horrible fate. In the end they will pray for death, which the devil will cheerfully arrange.”
Gabriel had gone to sleep in his arms, Buck slowly rose from his chair, carefully, quietly making his way over to the baby’s cradle and laid the baby down. In his bed, Gabriel grunted, scrunching up into a tight little ball, his knees coming up to his chest. Buck held his breath, waiting to see if he would wake up and start fussing, or go back to sleep. Gabriel’s lips started making sucking motions, then his little fist came up and he inserted his thumb in his mouth and started working it. Soon his lips stopped, his hand relaxed, and Buck felt confident the little fella would be out of commission for a couple of hours, at least.
Their patient, above stairs, had gone back to sleep after lunch, consuming two bowls of soup and three biscuits covered in butter and honey. Buck figured the old poop would live and be good enough to travel by tomorrow morning.
He came back to the table, sat down, and took the newspaper from her, folded it and set it out of reach to keep her from hitting him with it when she heard what he proposed they do.
“You have to go to Baker city, Petra. You have to tell the sheriff what you know. If you don’t, they might turn Beau loose. I don’t think you want that.”
She’d gone as pale as a wisp of vapor, her eyes a bottomless sapphire. Placing his hand on hers, he begged, “Tell me, tell me what happened, tell me why the bastards locked you up, put you in the cage? Tell me everything this time, don’t leave anything out.”
She shook her head, her lips so tightly pressed together they lost their rosy color.
“Petra, come on, you have to tell me.”
Eyes tightly shut, lips trembling, he watched Petra physically cave in, her shoulders hunching forward and her chin going to her chest.
“Kurt said he’d cut my tongue out, then slit my throat and let me bleed to death if I told anyone what I knew—what I’d seen.”
She brought up her head, and turned to look him in the eye. “You might think that an empty threat but then you weren’t there. He had me down, my tongue pinched between a pair of pliers and the blade of his knife to my throat. When I tried to scream, he laughed and pulled harder on my tongue.”
With her arms straight, hands clasped tight between her knees, she went on. “Beau wanted him to kill me and be done with it.
“Kurt promised him that as soon as I gave birth, he’d get rid of me.”
Buck squeezed her wrist, and she opened her eyes to search his face. Buck offered her gentle encouragement with a faint smile, but he didn’t think it would help, nothing could. She’d been through hell, and he couldn’t take away the memories.
“You have to put him away, Petra. What do you know? What couldn’t you tell? What were they afraid of?”
Taking a deep shuddering breath, she closed her eyes again and threw her head back.
“They were stealing gold nuggets and gold dust from two of the mines in Sumpter—I don’t know which ones.”
Bringing her head down, she stared at the table top.
“I don’t know how they were doing it, probably bribes or blackmail or both.”
Glancing in his direction, she tried to steady her breathing by straightening her spine.
“That’s why they needed my money. They needed cash to get enough gold so they could salt the Lucky Laski mine to lure investors. They needed a positive assay report to prove a positive strike.”
Bringing her hands to the table and folding them tightly together, she stared straight ahead.
“The mine wasn’t how they were going to strike it rich—they were counting on investors. I knew they were getting close to securing a really big investor’s capitol. They were getting nervous and they needed more of my cash to buy enough gold to keep up the appearance of the false bonanza at their mine.”
Her eyes open, vacant,
she stared at the far wall.
“I got caught in their vicious circle. I wanted out. I wanted to go home, but after I witnessed Beau kill the clerk from the assay office, and watched as Kurt poisoned three of the Chinese coolies they had forced to help them salt the mine, they couldn’t allow me to live, not for long. I knew it.”
Murder.
Buck hadn’t counted on that. He gave out a low whistle.
Blinking, coming out of her trance, Petra gazed into his eyes.
Buck had a lot of questions but had to go slow; pale and trembling, she could shatter into a thousand pieces, pieces he might not be able to retrieve or put back together. He couldn’t risk sending her over the edge.
“You have any proof they murdered the coolies and the clerk?”
She shook her head. “I don’t have proof, but I saw them do it. It would be my word against theirs—I wouldn’t stand a chance in hell.”
The hand he held felt ice cold—he brought it to his lips to warm her fingers.
His lunch churned, mixing in with burning acid in his stomach, but Buck had to know. “When? How?”
She shrugged her shoulders, her eyes glazing over, she retreated into a trance and began to speak, “I overheard them talking about salting the mine one night. Foolishly, I confronted them. Then they started locking me in my room and sent the house staff packing.
“They took away my clothes and my shoes thinking I couldn’t run. But I tried to escape, so they started to haul me back and forth to and from the mine. They tied me down, gagged me, and threw a tarp over me to hide me. They gave me some burlap bags to use for blankets to keep me warm in the cage. I made myself a skirt and some boots, and Kurt gave me one of his old shirts.
“The clerk was just a kid, maybe eighteen. I’d seen him a couple of times. He’d come to the house, usually with a box under his arm. One night, as Kurt and Beau were shutting down the mine for the day, the clerk showed up. They took him back into the mine. I heard them arguing. The kid said he couldn’t get any more nuggets or gold dust because his boss watched him like a hawk. He wanted his money so he could get out of town. Kurt handed him a wad of bills, the kid started toward me, heading out of the mine, then Beau shot him in the back.
Dance Hall Road Page 13
