Chapter Seven #3
It was a good place to stop, at least, Hannah couldn’t imagine a better.
They were high on a mountain, but there was a natural slope leading to level ground where they hitched the horses, so they didn’t feel like mountain goats when they stepped on the grass when they left the surrey.
They were beside a grove of towering aspen whose leaves shivered in the slightest breeze, and so sliced and scattered the light beneath them into dancing, sparkling bits.
A walk to the edge of the grass showed a vista of frowning mountains above and gentle valleys below.
They were not up high enough to panic, or low enough to keep constantly looking up; It was a perfect place for a picnic.
But no one was thinking about picnicking.
“Seemed like a good place to stop,” Royal said uncertainly as he looked at Gray where they stood near the surrey, apart from the women.
“Or start,” Gray said in a harsh whisper. “I don’t expect you to do a song and dance, but where’s your tongue? You didn’t say be damned to that girl. Made me do all the yapping. I felt like Scheherazade back there.”
“Miz Roberts didn’t mind,” Royal said.
“Damned if I know if she did,” Gray said impatiently. “She’s got the manners of a debutante and the manner of an actress, so how should I know? But why didn’t you open your mouth?”
“I didn’t know what to say,” Royal said abruptly, turning his back on his friend and reaching into the boot of the surrey to take out a basket.
Then he turned and met Gray’s steady gaze, and his lashes concealed his own hazel eyes as he said, with as much confusion as despair, “Damn, I didn’t know it would be this hard, neither. ”
“What’s so hard?” Gray asked, genuinely puzzled.
“Talking to her,” Royal whispered.
“Why? She’s pretty and young and appears to be scared half out of her wits by you. She seems like a nice girl. Just talk to her.”
“Don’t know how,” Royal said, rationing his words as he became more upset. “Well, damn it Gray,” he said in a burst of loquaciousness. “That’s just it. She’s a good girl.”
Gray frowned in incomprehension. Royal sighed and then beckoned Gray over to the side of the surrey where he pretended to be searching for something so the women wouldn’t hear them, and said in a hoarse, pained whisper, “I never talked to a good girl more than ‘how do’ and ‘nice afternoon, ain’t it?’ Well, where’d I find one?
Sure, I’ve had lots of women, but they was just whores, and all they said was how much and ‘honey you was real fine.’ She’s a good girl. ”
“Didn’t you have a sister?” Gray asked, astonished, because for all the years he’d known Royal, they’d never discussed this aspect of women.
“Nope,” Royal said, his tanned face showing ruddier as he did.
“Well, then, your mother,” Gray said.
“Died young, m’ aunt raised me, and she was a holy terror.
Yeah, really,” Royal said with the vestige of a smile.
“She talked to God and the preacher, and never did more than pray over me. That’s why I lit out when I was old enough to go it on my own.
I want to talk to her. Gray,” he said with difficulty, “but what in hell do I say? I know how to lay a woman down, but nothing else. I never had one for a friend,” he shook his head and smiled at the inanity of that thought before his smile slipped.
Then he said softly, “I’d sure like to have her as a friend, even if I know there couldn’t be nothing else. She’s sure special, ain’t she?”
Gray glanced over the little woman Royal was staring at.
All he saw was a round-faced, freckled girl with an unremarkable figure and a mass of sandy hair.
She’d a friendly face, he decided, a not unpleasant one, but only that.
But he knew how much it meant to Royal to agree as he nodded and said, “Surely a fine-looking woman.”
His eyes were on Hannah before he’d done speaking.
She looked as lovely in the forest setting as he imagined she’d look on a stage; her dark good looks were more than attractive, they were dramatic.
In fact, everything about her—her way of dressing, of speaking—was just exaggerated enough to make everything she said and did seem larger than life.
She might swear she was no actress until her last breath, but there was an aura of excitement about her that transcended even the fascinating one of suppressed sexuality that lured him, and spoke louder than she did; there was no mistaking she was of the theater.
But what else was she? For the first time.
Gray wondered if he’d ever know. Even more surprising, for all his success with women, for the first time he wondered if he’d ever known much more of them than Royal did.
Because he, too, had had no sister, and though he’d adored his gentle, doting mama, she’d died before he’d come to manhood.
And now he saw that though he’d had more liaisons than he could count, and many of them for longer than a night, most of them, he had to admit, had been, however nicely done, about little more really than how much and honey you was fine.
He was glib and liked women, never had any trouble talking to them, and had had some of the best times in his life with them.
Still, now he stood and considered the matter, and realized he’d never had a woman as a friend, or at least not as he thought of as a man as such.
Or even ever thought of having one as such before.
He looked at Royal with new respect. He was a canny trader, and knew truth, in whatever guise, was always a valuable commodity to acquire.
But he didn’t have time to refine on it now.
His friend needed advice. His immediate problem, at least, was easy enough to solve.
He could teach Royal how to talk to a woman, the incomprehensible rest would be up to him.
“You know how you talk to me?” Gray asked.
“Well, talk to her just like that. No, I mean it,” he said to Royal’s incredulous stare.
“If you’re not hellbent on getting under her skirt, then you don’t have to flatter and coax and lie.
Just talk. Talk about things like you’d talk about them to any man.
Just avoid cuss words, and the subject of sex and cigars.
Well, aside from the obvious, their brains work like ours do, don’t they?
Talk about things you’d like her to talk about with you. What would that be?”
“I want to know more about her,” Royal said simply, turning his head to stare at Peggy again.
“Well, there you go,” Gray said cheerfully. “Ask her. Just up and ask her. That’s all. There ain’t nobody,” he said, slapping Royal on the shoulder, “man, woman, or not-quite-sure, who don’t love talking about themselves.”
And so when they went to join the ladies, after they’d spread out the blanket and taken out the wicker basket full of food, and Royal was sitting up alongside Peggy on one side of it—the two of them like tent posts and just as comfortable looking, as Gray whispered to Hannah from where he reclined on the blanket next to her on the other side—it was Gray who then turned his head as it rested on his hand and looked up at her.
And the very next thing he said, was: “Now then, enough of them. Tell me all about yourself, Miz Hannah Roberts.”
They drove back to Central City in silence as the sun slid further into the west. They’d eaten every scrap of food the hotel had packed into the basket, and even if the men had the lion’s share because the ladies were too tightly laced to take on more, they were all, as Royal observed, “full as ticks.” And so, full and sleepy in the last of the golden sunlight, lulled by the pace of the horses, and stilled by the intoxicating draughts of thin air they’d breathed all day, they rode back as they’d gone out, in silence. Only this time it was a contented one.
The men saw the ladies to their hotel, and left them as the sun set.
Which was, Hannah and Peggy realized as they hastened up to their room, the time when they were most needed.
Hannah threw off her air of lassitude along with her shawl, and scrubbed her face with water to wake up and prepare for her working night.
Because it was, as she said as she groped for a towel, now the time of day when both bats and actors came out.
“And other dread cray-tures of the night,” she said on a grin when she saw Peggy smiling.
“So we’d best get busy. As she struggled into a less expensive dress for work, she remembered her duties.
“You my dear,” she said over her shoulder, “have got to let out some seams in Polly’s doublet.
She popped a few last night. I think the air agrees with her.
If she gains more weight, we’ll have a bigger little lord than we need, but I haven’t the heart to tell her to eat less.
You’re only young once, and before she knows it, she’ll be stuffed into a corset with the rest of us. ”
“What a crowded corset that would be, to be sure,” Peggy said on a grin.
Hannah’s laugh was as much surprise as genuine amusement, for though Peggy had the merriest of temperaments, she seldom made jokes.
But now she saw that though Peggy’s pleasant face was wreathed in familiar smiles, there was a new dimension to it, too.
Her hazel eyes sparkled, her very skin seemed more translucent.
Happiness? Hannah wondered, or love, or just fresh mountain air?
Whatever it was, it transformed her from just a pretty girl to a very pretty one.
Hannah was glad for it, and sorry, too, because if it depended on the smile of a man, it was ephemeral as innocence and just as fragile.