Chapter Six #2
Five of them were immediately deputized to accompany him to the telegraph office—the number the company decided was too many to bribe without someone eventually spilling it.
And those five returned with the happy news that Kyle had actually sent the telegram.
And then they showed the one he’d got in return.
They’d confirmed rooms at the new Jerome for it’s grand opening.
Shared rooms, to be sure. They’d have to be doubled and tripled up to fit in.
But they’d be there. All of them, even Hildy and her impulsive boyfriend.
All of them except for a character actor named Willy Kidd, who had packed his bags and left, saying that telegram or not, the day he’d trust anything Kyle Harper had to do with again, even if it was written in blood and not ink, was the day they’d have to commit him.
And speaking of blood, he muttered as he snapped his traveling case closed before he marched off to the railroad station, he’d sooner bargain with the devil than Kyle Harper, because all the devil would be after was his soul.
But after a moment’s unease, everyone accepted the defection, because Kyle reminded them there was now to be one less room that had to be triple occupancy on that great day when they finally got to Aspen, and their deserved reward.
Royal stood half-dressed and hip shot, one sunbaked brown arm on the lintel of the door, staring into his closet.
“Packing to leave?” Gray asked, and was sorry for it if he was, since he’d miss him. But he himself couldn’t leave as yet. He’d unfinished business in Denver.
“No,” Royal said thoughtfully, running a hand across his bare chest, the contrast between his lightly tanned chest and his dark hand a startling one. “Just wondering if I got a clean shirt.”
“Have one of mine,” Gray offered more cheerfully, as he took up his towel and finished toweling dry his freshly washed hair.
“Might have to,” Royal commented, as he gazed into the closet and without turning, said, ‘I want to look as good as I can. Which ain’t much, I’ll grant. But I want to do the best I can. I’m thinking of going back to the opera house tonight— to that Harper’s Review again.”
“Oh. As it happens, so am I,” Gray answered, and then added too casually, “you must have really liked Miss Bliss last night.”
“Nope,” Royal said. “Couldn’t stand her. Seen someone else there though.”
“Interesting,” Gray said, and waited.
“You surely must have enjoyed Miss Lottie’s company, if you’re going back again, too,” Royal commented instead.
“No. Actually not at all. I got to bed early and alone last night, if you remember,” Gray answered tightly, draping his towel around his neck and staring at Royal’s broad bare back, as though willing him to say more.
“Like me,” Royal said, turning at last to see that Gray’s flat voice was matched by the look in his eyes. “And so I guess you’re going fishing again tonight-like me.…Ah, but…” he added, with the first hint of a smile, “I ain’t angling for no dark, ah—’plump-lipped’ lady, myself.”
“Oh well, then,” Gray said, grinning widely, “you can have two shirts.”
“For a minute there I thought you were going to hand me a fistful of knuckles, not a shirt,” Royal commented as he ambled along in Gray’s wake, following him to his room, “but I can’t figure why. You got the looks that drive the ladies wild. I’m just an old cowhand.”
“There are things you’ve got to learn about ladies.
So take a lesson from someone who, if not older or wiser, is at least more experienced with the breed,” Gray said with as much mischievousness in his eyes as there was pomposity in his voice.
“For a start,” he said as he rooted in his wardrobe for a shirt, “…with all their airs and graces, there’s not much difference between what you’d call a lady and what you know as a woman—not if she’s worth getting to know at all.
That being the case, there’s really not so much difference between them and us.
After all, a gentleman’s just a man who knows when he has to hide the fact that he’s just a man. Same thing with ladies.
“Now, Number One,” he said, raising one finger, “there’s no accounting for what kind of man drives women wild, just like there’s no telling what makes a man hanker after any one woman.
Remember Jake Jeffreys? The man never washed, never talked, and never earned a penny in all his days, but when he died, three widows showed up—all of them bawling for him at once.
“Two,” he went on as Royal laughed, remembering, “there’s something you have to learn about yourself; you can fit into my boots as well as my shirts, and if you didn’t spend most of your time with cattle, you’d see the ladies like you just fine.
True, you’ve got a three-colored hide, like most cowboys,” he added, turning his head to smile as he stared at the contrasting tones of his friend’s arms, torso, and the margin of skin that showed at his navel where his towel was tied, “but it’s clear the ladies like what they can see.
So you’ve got as good a chance as I do with any woman we meet, friend.
“And Number Three, and best of all for me: Miss Lottie said that my plump-lipped lady’s a man hater, and shrewd, mean as a rattler, and stuck-up, to boot.
Which means,” Gray said, grinning as he handed a shirt to his perplexed friend, “that I’m in luck.
Because if you understand the lingo of that particular breed, it means I can still pick them, even from across a crowded lobby.
See,” he explained gleefully, “getting a recommendation like that from a woman like Miss Lottie, means that the lady I was asking after must be something really special!”
“No,” Hannah said firmly, because she knew her own mind.
“Thank you,” she added, because she’d been brought up to be polite.
“I don’t walk out with strange gentlemen,” she explained to the blond man, because he seemed to be waiting for her to say something more, and although he really didn’t deserve to be given a reason for her refusal, she was feeling generous.
It was very flattering that he’d asked; he was, after all, extremely handsome and well dressed.
And though she was as ashamed as pleased about it, it was even more gratifying that Lottie had seen him do so—before she’d walked off with a sniff and a swirl of her skirts.
But what she had to say was as honest as it was sadly true. Because she just didn’t go off with strange men that came calling backstage, and wouldn’t, even if she didn’t know that her handicap would make such encounters as eventually senseless as they’d be immediately immoral.
“I’m only asking for the pleasure of your company at dinner,” Gray said quietly.
“In public, and in plain sight. I’m from Wyoming Territory, ma’am,” he added gently, looking as sincere and shy as a six-foot and some, fair-haired, tanned, tough, scarred, and superbly handsome male could.
“Wyoming—where they invented lonely. But now I’m in town for the week, and so are you. So where’s the harm in it?”
The harm was obviously shining clear in those half-mocking, half-earnest bright blue eyes, and in the insidious smile that quirked that well-shaped mouth, Hannah thought with a trace of delicious panic such as she hadn’t felt for years, and he knew it as well as she did.
She blushed, lowering her lashes over her eyes as she hadn’t done since she was very young, and even as a scornful interior voice taunted her by giving her an unfavorable review as an overage and inept ingenue, she answered in just that breathless sort of voice, “We haven’t met.
Not formally. Nor do we know each other.
Nor will a dinner in plain sight make up for that oversight, you know.
I’m so sorry, sir, but I’m not an actress, nor are all actresses available for such… arrangements, either.”
“I know that,” he said on a true smile. “M’ brother married an actress. Up in New York, where he lives now. And I swear there wasn’t a prissier lady between here and there than she was. Led him a fine dance, till she waltzed off to the preacher with him.”
“Ahh, that’s where I know the face from.
The dialogue was familiar, as was the presentation of the lonesome cowboy.
Very effective, by the by,” Kyle commented, from where he stood lounging in the shadows of the backstage hall, watching the pair.
“Although I do believe your brother did it better,” he added, sauntering toward them.
“But he’d a broken nose to add verisimilitude to the character.
You’ve a scar or two, but it doesn’t compare.
But then you were a college boy when we last met, weren’t you?
and I doubt you can completely cover over all that eastern polish you’ve gotten since.
Graham Dylan, is it not?” Kyle asked, drawling the “Graham” as “Gram,” English style, as had been originally intended, not “Grayham,” which accounted for his nickname, as Americans said it.
Kyle offered his hand as another man might offer a thrown gauntlet, “I don’t forget names once a face gives me a clue.
Yours, I’ll confess, escaped me at first. But it’s been a decade or more.
And you’ve changed in most things but your tastes.
When last we met, you were canvassing the backstages for dancers and bit actresses.
Now you’ve escalated to trying to induce my assistants to come play with you after the play.
Your taste has improved,” he said with a mocking smile.