Chapter 11 #2
“Even if I had to dig up the whole damned mountain, I was not going to let them die. One by one, we rescued the Chinese from the bowels of the earth, including Chen. Then we found O’Reilly, spitting, and cursing but happy to be alive. Ever since then, the two men have been my constant companions.”
Mrs. Merriweather clapped her hands together, and Elizabeth beamed. Why did their approval affect him?
“At the Spencer dinner party, you were going to relate your experiences with the Indians. I’m fascinated.” Mrs. Merriweather sat ready to hang on every word.
“The Indians wanted my scalp, but I was fierce to keep it.”
“There must be more,” the older woman prodded.
“Ah, the skirmishes?” He scratched his throat where his collar ringed too tight.
“Behind schedule, we had two miles of track to lay by the end of the week. A bunch of Irishman were to be working on an outlying trajectory. Instead, they drank, including the guards. The Cheyenne used the opportunity to attack and take them prisoners.”
“Chen and I set off to get them back. Their trail was easy to track. We found two men had fallen beneath Comanche torture and mutilated. The nineteen-year-old was a favorite of mine. He had wanted a girl to hold in his arms not for a passing hour but for an eternity. To speak to her in the moonlight, a girl eager for the bright beauty of new love with ears to listen. The men had made fun of his dreams where he superimposed himself as a knight in dazzling armor who journeyed to find his golden-haired princess. Maybe he was a fool, a starry-eyed optimist, yet he was a brave young man with an honest dream.”
Louise dropped the binoculars to her lap. “What absurd tales you weave. I don’t believe a word of them.”
“Go on,” Elizabeth prodded him, eager to find out what happened.
“In the light of the hollow moon, we trailed the sound of the Comanches singing their death songs. We crawled across rough escarpment hidden by tall grasses. The Comanches were busy with their dancing and drinking. We untied our men. As I freed the last man, one of the Indians shouted an alarm.”
Zachary turned, inclined his head in acknowledgement of Mrs. Merriweather whose eyebrows shot up to her hairline. “What happened?”
Zachary skated his hands through the air, mimicking a gateway to that violent part of the world. “The liberated men had secured the Indians’ horses and were able to get away. Chen was caught. I couldn’t leave him behind. I fought to free him, and then was captured.”
Elizabeth’s eyes grew wide. “And?”
“The Comanches, or ‘Lords of the Plains’ they call themselves, are handy with their knives.”
“You were tortured,” Elizabeth said.
His eyes locked with hers. Was she mocking him? A knot grew in his belly. No. He saw admiration.
Louise rolled her eyes upward with the practiced ease of a stage heroine in a matinee performance. “Ridiculous. All of this is made up from a dime novel.”
Mrs. Merriweather masked her mouth behind her program. “The fact that earthworms have survived for billions of years without brains is evidenced in Louise.”
“He is being polite, Louise, and sparing our feminine ears,” Elizabeth said to her sister, and then faced him, placing her hand on her heart. “It seems you are in the habit of saving people at risk to your own life. You are not afraid of anything, are you, Mr. Rourke?”
It was a double entendre and they both knew it. He’d thrown himself into a raging, icy river to save her, and then delivered her child.
“No Ma’am. I did what any other self-respecting man would do.”
“I must say you are not the men of my acquaintance.”
“You have my pity.”
The opera began and Zachary had to admit, he was enthralled with the spectacle.
Near the end of the performance, Elizabeth swayed, her shoulder brushed his. “I have the highest respect for you.”
He turned to her, caught her earnestness.
And in that moment a new connection grew between them, linking an indefinable, palpable, rare bond like threads, thousands of tiny, tiny threads sewn together.
A radiant glow filled her face with awe, her violet eyes bright and glossy, and his throat thickened, captured in the moving sea between the shores of two souls.
Mrs. Merriweather proved to be an illustrious matchmaker. She refused Louise and her husband and insisted on Zachary and Elizabeth to escort her home in her carriage. The sly woman begged to be let off first, ordering her driver to take the long way to their respective homes.
Zachary watched Elizabeth. The play of flickering gaslights rode across her face as the coach traversed through town. Elizabeth took a deep breath and tucked her lace handkerchief in her reticule.
In the deafening silence, Elizabeth cleared her throat. “You must say the opera was lovely. How was it for your first experience?”
Zachary swallowed. His first experience? He remembered how a group of Indian women initiated him. They had forced him on soft furs and through gentle laughter stroked him, until one with long, smooth legs slid down on him. He loosened his four-in-hand knotted necktie.
He stalled, lowering the side window, and leaned out for a better view. The buildings of the great city were spread in front of him like a swathe of inky black against the brilliant moonswept landscape. The skyline of Manhattan was a solid phalanx of thrusting iron and stone, and so was he.
“You must have felt something,” she prodded.
He closed the window and turned to her.
Though her voice was even, there was something of a glow swimming in her eyes, and a soft fluttery wistfulness to her mouth, that sweet and curving mouth.
“I can afford you the scientific view. ‘The opera was an operation to revive love, to try and to reach the fatally coldblooded and breathe unsullied air within.’” A weightless feeling had come on him. He felt carried by winds, blown before a rising storm.
Her lips parted. “Did the opera reach your heart?”
He attempted nonchalance. His artificial shrug rustled the formal collar of his shirt.
He watched the hollow of her throat flex.
An errant curl escaped her coiffure. He brushed it with his finger at the base of her neck.
It felt warm, her skin cool. He looked up into her eyes to catch her gazing at him.
He meant to take his hand away. Her diamond necklace sparkled on her breast. She and the stones were like light, with darkness all around. He was darkness…and plummeting…
He should not have touched her. To succumb to weakness. To allow it to consume him.
The intermittent illumination from the streets found deep highlights in the lock of hair.
She lifted her hand to tuck the errant curl into place, but he resisted, gazing down at his hand, fanning the curl between his fingers, resting his fist against the slope of her bare shoulder.
He felt every texture, every pale strand of hair, every light breath she took.
He slid his knuckles in a feathery brush up her throat, past the necklace, to a place beneath her ear that was soft with a sensation.
He raised his other hand to her neck, sat silent, touching her. Stop me. Don’t let me. He could not take away his hand; could not speak. No sound escaped his mouth or stirred his lips.
Her eyes grew wide with dusky violet. She had been loyal to him. Secured his financing. Her vulnerability seemed enormous, her stillness beneath his hand an act of infinite trust.
With his fingers, he could flay open bark on the trunks of trees…and he could feel her heart in the fragile pulse at her throat, so light and quick. He lifted his other hand and cradled her face.
Delicate. Like the life of a tiny bird within his palms. Lust flooded him. What he wanted…God, what he wanted.
He thought of his engine, his factory, his dream. He thought of Martha, his former fiancée and her foul husband who stole his invention. All were in another universe. Pipe dreams and illusive fingers of mist, and he’d never been alive before this moment.
He spread his hands, his thumbs brushing the skin beneath her earlobe, his fingertips resting on her temples, just grazing her cheeks. She only stared at him. Such fine eyes she had, the subtle violet of a deep river stream, the lashes so long that he felt the sweep of them against his fingers.
He sat there touching her, imagined her hair all around in waves, her body: the voluptuous scent, the sounds.
His throat tightened with a suppressed moan.
He wanted to hold her, to gather her up and cradle her against him and he wanted to overpower her.
There emerged a terrible violence inside him. If anyone dared to hurt her.
He craved her, despised himself for it.
Women were trouble shouted an angry echo.
The coach stopped with a jerk and jolted him to reality. With Herculean effort, Zachary pulled back. Keep your hands off her. She deserves better.