Chapter Twenty-One
They threw rice and petals and words of advice and congratulations at the newlyweds as they raced down the stairs of the Dylan mansion to their coach, and then off into the new decade’s first night.
For once the wedding party lost none of its zest when the bridal pair departed, because New Year’s Eve was a time for both farewells and greetings, and there was still a new year to warm and welcome, even after all the goodbyes.
The bride flung herself into the groom’s arms and dissolved in merriment as soon as the coach door closed behind them.
“Your face,” she chortled, “when he asked if I do!”
“Lord!” Gray laughed. “I was sure you’d say, ‘I did!’ like you threatened to.”
“I was going to,” Hannah lied blithely, “Except then I remembered that I’d have to say, ‘I did, I did, I did,’ if I was going to be honest.”
“Add another ‘I did’ ” he whispered before he kissed her. “Unless you’re forgetting the morning.” She never got to agree, because he kissed the breath and the question away from her.
“It’s very good,” he said, when she lay her head on his shoulder, as he stroked her hair and idly began to arrange the stray rose petals caught fast as stars in the dark cloud of it. “But darling, please believe its only part of why I’m so out of my mind happy now.”
It was simply said, and yet for all the dramas she’d seen enacted, and all the ready answers a woman of the theater should have for any protestation of love, Hannah could only say, “Oh, Gray!” as tears filled her eyes.
“Of course,” he added, “it’s a mighty big part of it.”
The sound of laughter poured from the closed coach as it rumbled off, mingling with the tolling of church bells that were still heard sporadically everywhere in the city.
Hannah and Gray had taken their vows in the old year and had them consecrated in the new, as they’d felt was fitting for them, and now 1890 was well underway.
Pans and pots were being banged by late revelers, and now and again firecrackers were still being set off to usher in the new decade.
Yet their unbridled laughter rang out joyously, high and clear above the din, as though to also cheer the infant year.
Josh Dylan watched the coach go down the street, and was smiling widely as he came back into his house.
His baby brother had never looked happier than when he’d kissed his new bride—except.
Josh though as he kept his arm about his own wife’s promising waist, for perhaps the moment just before the ceremony when he’d looked into his big brother’s gravely serious eyes and murmured, “No need for worrying anymore. Everything’s just fine.
Everything’s all right. Doc had words of advice, and turns out they’re no longer needed.
Yeah,” he said, nodding at the dawning expression on his best man’s face, “I’ll be an uncle again before the summer, but there’s no reason why, with any luck at all, you couldn’t be one yourself, by next year. ”
He wouldn’t say more, and he couldn’t have said less, because he was as much a gentleman as he was about to be a husband.
But neither would his brother violate either code of honor.
Nor did he have to. Josh had understood right enough.
Grinning from ear to ear, he swatted his brother on the shoulder hard enough to have sent him reeling halfway down the aisle if he hadn’t been holding onto his other hand, shaking it. And he’d only said, “That’s just fine!”
But it had been there in her eyes. All brides were beautiful, but Hannah was spectacularly so.
And for those that looked for it, her triumph as well as her joy and satisfaction were there to see in the secret smile on her lush lips, and the dazed, slumberous look awakened in her great dark eyes.
Newly lost innocence and newly kindled desire paired with love and made for a rare new beauty in an already beautiful woman.
She dazzled so, in her cream-lace gown, with her black hair done up high on her proudly held head, that the guests hadn’t an eye for her father or any of the other rich or famous that were there.
And there were many of both in attendance, because the wedding list kept growing, until it became—as those members of the press that sneaked or were invited in were to write—possibly one of the most glittering affairs of the decade, even though it was held on its very first night.
“Everything will be fine with them,” Josh whispered to his wife, but she only smiled, because she’d spoken a word to the bride before she’d left, and already knew it.
“Goodness! Look at Delia’s face,” she said instead, looking at her eldest girl, where she stood, petulant, in the hallway, staring after the disappeared wedding coach, stupefied with sleepiness but too stubborn to show it. “I’ll just go and get her to bed,” Lucy murmured.
“You go sit down,” Josh commanded as he unceremoniously hoisted his surly looking daughter over his shoulder, to the ruination of her frilly frock and her dignity.
“She doesn’t know whether to be angry at Gray for finding another girl, or amazed that she’s got such a beautiful aunt now—an aunt who said she’d be more than willing to teach her acting someday,” he added pointedly, and felt his burden cease wriggling.
“But in the morning,” he said as he began to climb the long circular stair to the children’s quarters, “when she finds she can hold it over her sister and brother’s heads because she was the only one awake enough to see the wedding, I think she’ll get over it—even if she wasn’t really awake enough to see it herself,” he added, and howled convincingly when his cargo grabbed a handful of his golden hair to tug.
Josh came down the stairs again soon after, absently grinning at the way Delia had been asleep as soon as she’d gotten the “G’nite” out after she’d kissed him.
As he descended, he could hear the sounds of the wedding-New Year’s party in the ballroom still going at full swing, even without its guests of honor.
The strains of “Oh, Promise Me” and “Love’s Old Sweet Song” that had been played for them; “Down in the Valley” “Clementine” and “Whoopee-Ti-Yi-Yo” that had been requested especially for the groom and his brother, and selections from “H. M. S. Pinafore” that had been rendered in honor of the hostess, had given way to newer, more popular tunes for other guests.
Josh heard the lively finish to “Where Did You Get That Hat?” just before the raucous introduction to “Ta Ra Ra Boom Der Ay” was struck up again.
He grinned, remembering that he had it on the highest authority—the bridegroom’s—that the song was actually not new at all, but from a famous brothel in St. Louis.
He grinned wider, remembering all the mock sorrow in Gray’s voice as he tried to pretend regret for all he’d be missing now that he’d be walking the straight and narrow aisle of a groom—while all the time he could hardly keep his face straight for all the gladness in it.
But Josh’s smile faded, and he paused when he came to the hallway. Kyle Harper was there, being assisted into his evening cape.
“Leaving so soon?” Josh asked with determined brightness, for he’d seen a fleeting expression on Kyle’s face once at the beginning of the ceremony, and thought of it often throughout the rest of it.
“Indeed,” Kyle said, taking his hat from the butler. “As you see. The party is over.”
“The wedding’s over, the party’s not,” Josh said. “Why, Blayne’s just getting warmed up.”
“Actors may carouse to all hours, alas, directors cannot,” Kyle said, adjusting his top hat as adroitly as he avoided his host’s eye. “Thank you for your hospitality, but I must go now.”
“She’ll be happy with him,” Josh said.
“Indeed,” Kyle said, “I never doubted it.”
He had doubted it, of course. Until he’d seen her eyes this evening. He was a man who had learned to read every nuance in the human face and form. Whatever problem Hannah had thought she had. Gray Dylan had dispelled it beyond doubt. The emotions Kyle felt now were never in doubt.
He allowed Josh one long, steady look into his own dark, solemn eyes, and then nodded.
“It is perhaps,” he said softly, “that I am weary of being bested by you gentlemen. It will however, as all things must, pass. Good night.”
Josh stood very still as Kyle adjusted his cape.
“I’d heard, in the street,” Josh said as his butler opened the door for the departing guest, “that you’ve been looking for backers for a scheme to do with certain theaters in Philadelphia and Connecticut, as well as some out west. Albee and Keith have shown some concern over it.
After all, it makes sense that a man who owned the theaters his troupe was to appear in would be in a mighty snug position. Is it true?”
Kyle hesitated. “It might be,” he said.
Josh motioned to the butler, who immediately found other work to occupy himself with far across the wide marble hall.
“I also hear you’ve been making some inquiries about Mr. Eastman’s new celluloid film process,” Josh said.
“Now, my brother and I are in a consortium that helps finance some of Mr. Edison’s efforts, even though most of the men we know say we should stick to railroads, cattle, and mines.
Still, we’ve not done badly with Mr. Edison.
I’m curious. Edison says the possibilities of film are endless. You agree?”
Kyle swung around. His dark eyes glowed.
“Mr. Dylan,” he said in his low, rich voice.
“We enter a new decade and hurtle toward the millennium. We’re richer and fatter than we’ve ever been as a nation, and we grow more so daily.
We’ve earned the time and leisure to be entertained, at last. What the rich and fat need more than food or drink is entertainment.
That’s the industry of the future. Had I the capital, it would not end with theaters and touring companies.
All of it—the recorded cylinders, the new films, the cameras and shortwave devices—anything that might entertain: those would be my gold mines and railroads. ”
“I see,” Josh said thoughtfully, as though he’d never discussed it at length with his brother before this.
“Now a man who owned hotels, as well as theaters, for his traveling troupes, and one who was on the spot to move in on other likely developments in the field, he’d be a man who was worth a lot.
What would you say if you found someone willing to back you in these endeavors? ”
Kyle drew himself up, and a small smile appeared on his dark features.
“I would be most surprised, Mr. Dylan, in that I’d not been looking for any more backers,” he said sweetly.
“Ah, but what if one found you?” Josh asked.
“Not only asked, but volunteered himself? We’ve known each other a long time, Kyle, and it was just the luck of the draw that you seemed to always discover what it was we wanted before we knew we wanted it.
But now that my brother and I have both got that, we wondered if the same thing might apply to more monetary, speculative endeavors.
To put it bluntly, we’re in the business of making big money.
You interest us because you seem on the verge of it.
We’d like to be with you, rather than opposed to you, this time.
And with you in a big way, because we’re faithful as we are possessive.
You might not need any of the other partners you’ve already found.
Whether you like us or not, that would mean a bigger share for you, too. ”
“I see,” Kyle said. He hesitated, and then turned an oddly sweet smile on Josh, its power was such that Josh blinked for a moment.
“Ah—you don’t happen to have any other brothers, do you?” Kyle asked.
“Not that we know of, and no sisters either,” Josh said, grinning, “but we’ve got a passel of kids.”
“I believe I can handle little Dylans,” Kyle said.
“I wouldn’t bet on it,” Josh laughed.
“I believe I will,” Kyle said, offering his gloved hand. “If you want in, Josh Dylan, here’s my hand on it.”
“Very good,” Josh said with enthusiasm as he took the thin, but surprisingly strong hand in his clasp. “We’ll discuss it further now if you want, or leave it until business hours in the new year.”
“I’d rather leave it for now,” Kyle said smoothly, “although tonight is New Year’s and auspicious for new starts, this one is a wedding night, too, and so for celebrants of things that have happened—not for those that might,” he explained on a sad smile that robbed the words of any rancor.
“I’ll see you next week, then. A very Happy New Year,” he said, tipping his hat as he opened the door.
“To you too—partner,” Josh said on a chuckle, before he returned to his company.
And so he never saw Kyle Harper as he stood poised alone on his doorstep, at the brink of a new year.
Nor saw the way that Kyle finally smiled, too, as he glanced up at the waxing moon before he began to step out.
Before—seeing his shadow outlined in the silvery moonlight, and superstitious as only a man of the theater could be, he remembered.
And so did a quick reverse step in place—so fast it was as if he did a tiny two-step—so that he could step out on his right foot as he went into the new year.
Alone, of course. But still, as though he was dancing.
The End