Chapter One #3
It was more than what he had on, his face was too tanned and scarred to be that of a gentleman.
Although, she admitted on a stifled sigh, the white scar on his chin only called attention to its perfect shape, just as a longer, darker one on his cheek spoiled its symmetry but emphasized his high cheekbones.
His nose was long and narrow, his lips, full and shapely, if he’d had a beard and burnside whiskers instead of only a mustache as flaxen as his thick overlong hair, she supposed his scars would have been concealed, but then the clear, clean shape of his face wouldn’t be as visible either.
And then, there were those sky-blue eyes.
There was too much character in that face for him to be a villain, even if there was too much experience in it for the young hero.
He wasn’t quite an Adonis, although he looked quite a man: too hard-bitten for Hamlet, she mused, staring at him from the concealment of the door, fascinated, too young and attractive for Rip Van Winkle, but maybe an Enoch Arden, she decided, and certainly a swell Mr. Rochester for Jane Eyre, and a peach of a boyfriend for The Bride Forlorn.
But then she stopped casting him in her private play. Because Miss Joy Fenwick, their newest ingenue, stepped out of her dressing room and took the cowboy’s arm.
The chorus girl gasped, causing her bosom friend, Miss Daisy Denton, who was preparing to accompany her tonight with her own admirer—at least so far as dinner—to look at her curiously.
“Miss Joy’s taking a vacation, do you think?” she asked her friend, to cover over the way she’d been caught goggling at the fellow. “It isn’t like her to give up profit for a pair of blue eyes.”
Miss Denton squinted into the faint light of the corridor to watch the departing couple, and saw the slight hitch in the man’s gait as he dipped his fair head to hear something the woman said.
“Some vacation!” she said, as much in chagrin as admiration.
“I’ll bet it’ll just feel like a week in the country, too!
Trust her to know how to combine work and play.
Only two years in the chorus, and her singing’s no better than her acting, if you can call it that—and she’s got her own dressing room.
Now this. She was born lucky. And smart! Don’t be a dopey. That’s Gray Dylan.”
“Who?” her friend asked.
“He owns everything hereabouts,” Miss Denton said enviously.
“A dopey, am I?” her friend asked on a sniff. “Well, how should you know. Miss double-dopey, when we’ve only been here for a day. This is not New York, you know.”
“He owns everything there, too,” Miss Denton sighed.
“Oh,” her friend said sadly, though still not quite convinced, since in her experience, and it was considerable, a gentleman with money looked like one— which was to say, not very much like a gentleman, and not at all like a leading man of any sort, and so not in the least like Gray Dylan.
She hadn’t wanted him to leave, which was flattering.
But the sight of the number of bills he’d left on her dresser had soon consoled her, which was decidedly less so.
Still, Gray thought much later that night as he lowered himself to his own blessedly big, empty bed at Folger’s Hotel at last, it was money well spent.
Miss Joy Fenwick had been as pretty as a man could want, even more obliging than pretty, and as appreciative of his talents—or talented enough to seem to be—than any man had a right to expect. When the time came.
But that time had been a long time coming, he thought on a sigh.
Because it only came after a long dinner, longer strings of compliments, and other intricate wordplay meant to convince him she didn’t usually do the kind of thing she usually did, and to convince her that he didn’t doubt it for a minute.
That was tedious, but it was also a form of theater, and necessary for both of them.
Without it, she’d be purely a woman who sold herself for money, and not what she was: an actress, who could almost beguile him and herself into believing that was all she was.
That, after all, was what he valued most about her, and all her kind.
Pheasant, steak, wine, conversation, and compliments—it was a long way around to get to what he could have for less money, and a short walk up a gilded staircase in any one of a number of elegant houses not a block from his hotel.
But then there’d be no way to escape knowing he’d only rented a body for however many hours it took him to ease his own.
There wasn’t much choice in such matters.
A good woman didn’t lay herself down without getting a man’s legal promise that he’d keep her doing it until death did they part.
If a bad woman didn’t charge for her services, she’d either have an angry husband or some other problem a careful man wanted no part of.
And any kind of woman at all was a rarity in this part of the country, Gray thought, and he was a bachelor and this was, after all, a short business trip that a man might lighten with pleasure…
He looked at his watch and frowned at how his unusual disquiet was keeping him awake, even after his hard day and his evening’s exercise.
And then took a cue from his actress friend by pretending it had all been exactly what he’d wanted.
And by welcoming one illusion, he found it simpler to slide into less deliberate dreams, and so got down to the business of the night at last, and slept.
They leaned on the rail fence and watched the cattle, and pretended that was all they were considering.
The thick-bodied older man beside Gray was dressed no differently than he or any of the workingmen on his ranch, even though between the two of them they’d enough money to trade and buy diamonds and rubies instead of the heavy-necked cows they were studying.
“I see what you mean,” the older man said eventually. “Not enough in the hindquarters compared to your lot. But mine got them deep chests, and real power in them back legs.”
“Sure,” Gray said. “Their chests are as pretty as any chorus girl’s, John, but now, those legs…
steaks don’t need muscles.” He shook his head, and as the other man turned bemused eyes to his.
Gray added, “Now, you get a spur from the railroad nearer to here, John, and you can do without those powerful legs and let even more go to the chest and flank, where it counts.”
“And you might be able to arrange that?” the other man said.
“Might,” Gray agreed, nodding, turning back to look at the cattle again.
“If I send over a bull or two—so you can keep experimentin’ with your herd the way you do,” the other man said casually.
“Hell, no!” Gray said, turning around as if amazed, his sky-blue eyes lit with seemingly innocent wonder.
“That’d be fine with me, John, but what would Josh say?
My big brother’s a New Yorker now, the only bulls he’s got any interest in are on Wall Street!
Hell, no,” he repeated with much regret.
“Be more than fine with me, but my brother doesn’t concern himself with any cattle that can’t pull his fancy carriages down Fifth Avenue now—and you know how big brothers are. ” He sighed.
“Might be interested in mines, though, do you think?” the man he’d called John said after a long silence.
“Might just,” Gray agreed absently.
“Say—The Gypsy Queen up in Ashcroft?”
Gray said nothing for a moment, then shook his head.
“No, doubt he’d go for it,” he answered. “Word is that Ashcroft’s just about played out.”
“Ah,” the older man said, “not many people know that, keeps himself up on such things, does he?”
“You bet,” Gray said with animation. “No flies on Josh. But now, maybe…that new one up at Aspen, The Silver Girl, why that one might take his fancy.”
“ ‘The Girl?’ With all the silver it looks like she’s going to be spittin’ out? For just a word in a railroader’s ear about a spur?” the other man asked with incredulous laughter in his voice, before he spat on the ground.
“Well, seeing as he’s on the board of that particular railroad…
” Gray answered, before he added, “Plus say, some thousand—maybe, thirteen hundred shares in it. No more, of course, because Josh don’t own the damned thing, just some of it.
Doubt he’d offer more. You know him. But, of course,” he said with more vigor, “I’d throw in some of these gorgeous girls of mine that we’re looking at for you to add to your herd.
Say…aw, what the hell, all of them. I’m not such a hard businessman as my big brother. ”
“Hard man, all right, your brother,” the other man said after a while, and then stretched out a calloused hand. “Done, then.”
“Well, fine,” Gray said, shaking his hand.
“Of course,” he added slowly, still holding the older man’s hand, “if you wanted five hundred more shares, you could offer a half interest in that other mine up at Aspen—The Big Time. It hasn’t shown much, still Josh is a gambler, sometimes.”
“Didn’t know anybody knew about The Big Time.”
“Well, I was out at Aspen and had a look around. I like to gamble, too. Can’t afford to like my brother, of course, but I’d bet he’d offer you another five hundred shares for a straight partnership in it,” Gray said.
“It ain’t safe since that cave-in…you must been the damn fool they told me was having a crawl through there last week!” the older man said with a frown.
“Well, she needs some new timber, all right, and new blood to explore some more, but I’d guess my brother would think she might just do.”
The older man nodded and shook Gray’s hand once more, before they unclasped hands.
“Your brother’s a shrewd one, lucky for me you’re the one I had to do business with. Gray, ain’t it?” he said after they fell to studying the cattle again. “He’s sure clever—never would think you’re the one he sent to college back East.”
“Yeah,” Gray said sadly, “he kept me a schoolboy for years. Never will let me grow up.”