Chapter 28
Lula
Beneath wavering torchlight, past low log buildings, canvas tents, and wagon ruts gone black with mud and woodsmoke, I promenade alongside the man who’d once ordered me killed.
Not me, per se. But he is a company man, and we were a company problem that needed solving.
But before he offered his manicured hand, before Mother smiled like a poisoner with a vial tucked up her sleeve, there was the matter of introduction.
“Mr. Everett, I’d like you to meet my daughter, Mae Eld.”
We stood beside the faro table on the main floor, cards snapping beneath the dealer’s hands while cigar smoke hung thick as fog beneath the lamps.
Mother’s satin gown pinched where it oughtn’t and sagged where it should fit proper.
My breasts were pressed high against the whalebone stays, near enough I feared they might spill over the bodice. I dipped into a slight curtsey.
“Evening, sir.”
He looked near thunderstruck, smiling with a warmth too bright for the moment.
Dew shone across his smooth cheeks in the lamplight, lending him a boyishness at odds with the silver threading his dark hair.
Hooded brown eyes studied me beneath trimmed brows, made mysterious under the shadow of his bowler hat.
I might have mistaken them for kind if I did not know better.
His mustache was neatly waxed and styled just so.
A dark frock coat cut close through his narrow waist, the brocade beneath stretched tidy across his taut middle.
“Had you not said it plain, ma’am, I’d have taken you for sisters.”
“Oh, you do lay it on thick.” Mother laughed softly behind her fan. “Still, I’d hoped to make the introduction. Mae’s come to stay on and help me run the Gemini. I wondered if perhaps you might show her round camp proper, help her get acquainted.”
“You honor me.”
Mother leaned nearer, lowering her voice as though confiding a scandal. “Well now, she’s a widow woman, and you are a wealthy unmarried gentleman.” Her smile curled slow behind the edge of her fan. “I assure you, my intentions are entirely selfish.”
“Mother,” I scolded, just as she instructed me upstairs before plotting this very conversation.
Mr. Everett let out a low laugh, the tips of his ears reddening beneath the silver at his temples. His gaze settled on me again, lingering a moment too long before he offered his arm.
“If Miss Eld’s willing, I’d be pleased to show her the camp.”
Mother patted my wrist lightly. “Go on, Mae. A young woman can’t spend all her hours cooped up with her mother.”
I slid my hand into the crook of his arm before I could think better of it.
Now, outside, Fort Gibson glitters beneath torchlight and frost. Men move between saloons and cook fires in heavy coats and muddy boots, their laughter rolling through the cold night air. Somewhere farther down the hill a piano clangs out an awful tune.
Mr. Everett guides me careful over the wagon ruts, polished boots avoiding the worst of the mud.
“And what do you make of our humble little camp so far, Ms. Eld?”
“Mae,” I correct automatically.
His mouth curves.
“Mae, then.”
The way he says it feels practiced. Like he knows exactly how his voice lands on women.
“I’ve not yet decided whether your camp is civilized or merely pretending very hard to be.”
That earns a laugh from him. Warm. Easy. Entirely at odds with the kind of man who hires armed riders beneath false lumber contracts.
“Oh, we abandoned civilization months ago,” he says. “It proved expensive and unpopular.”
We pass a row of tents where men hunch around dice games beneath lantern glow. One calls something crude after me before falling abruptly silent when Everett glances his way.
Interesting.
Fear follows him faster than respect.
“Mother seems fond of you,” I say carefully.
“Your mother is fond of profitable people.”
Honest enough to surprise me, accurate enough to earn a smile. “And are you profitable, Mr. Everett?”
“Wildly.”
Ugh. I’ve known men of his ilk. All their puffery rooted in gold, and yet this man, with his baby cheeks and soft manicured hands, looks as if he’d collapse like a house of cards if breathed upon too forcefully.
“And what must a gentleman do to become so wildly profitable?”
He smirks, as though I’ve flattered him. “Own what other men require.”
“Land?”
“Yes, and resources upon land.”
“Oh my. Gold?” I feign ignorance, though Mother had already provided all of the important details. Only, of course, once we’d tired of arguing.
After Pearl, Okee, and Boone left Mother and me alone to recount our past grievances, she admonished me for feeling anything other than gratitude.
“What more’s there to say on it? You were a married woman grown, no longer needing me to wipe your nose, and I saw an opportunity to do something better.”
She swept an arm wide round the Gemini like a queen showing off her kingdom.
“You reckon I oughta stayed flat on my back in that flea-bitten old hellhole we used to call the Gemini? Look at this place. Crystal lamps. Velvet curtains. Men lining up nightly to throw their wages at my feet.”
Then her eyes landed on me, sharp as broken glass.
“And look at you. And look at me. Both alive. Both standing.” She jabbed a finger toward my chest. “So what exactly is all this fretting meant to fix?”
I opened my mouth, and she cut me clean off.
“Nothing! And if I had the likes of Hollister Timber after me, I’d set my attention on setting that straight and not carry on about old wounds that no longer mean a thing.”
I started to speak again, but then—–
“The stars have given you a gift,” she said. “To bring you here and set your problem so squarely in my bailiwick to solve.”
Of course. It must be true. As true as her claim that she could spot a lie by looking into my eyes, or that if I held a foolish face too long, it would freeze that way forever. But there was no profit in arguing about something as silly as the stars.
“Gold?” he repeats, amused. “No, Miss Eld. Gold is for dreamers and fools. Timber’s far more reliable.”
“How fascinating,” I say. “You wouldn’t happen to be associated with Hollister Timber, would you?”
We walk farther down the rise where camp thins toward the river. Frost glitters silver across the muddy ground, and somewhere in the darkness a mule brays loud enough to startle me.
“Indeed I am.”
“Goodness me. Mother warned about the dangers of the Territory. I’m told there was a terrible attack on Hollister land.”
His arm remains steady beneath my hand.
“A dreadful business,” he says. “Two outlaws slaughtered the entire party, leaving no survivors. Quite tragic. The killers were former soldiers, I’m told.”
My fingers tighten against his sleeve before I can stop them. I loosen them at once and let my mouth part, foolish and troubled. “I’ve read about them. Some foolish name. The Clovers, was it?”
“Aces.”
I laugh as though there’s hardly a difference. “Have they been caught?”
“Not yet. But we have promised a rich bounty. I’m confident they’ll be found soon enough.”
I nod agreeably. “And surely the marshals are hunting them as well.”
His gaze slides to me, still pleasant.
“You have a curious mind, Miss Eld.”
“I’ve been told it’s my worst quality.”
“On the contrary.” His thumb brushes once across my gloved knuckles where they rest against his sleeve, and a chill rises up my back. “Curiosity is charming in a woman.”
Patronizing bastard.
“The frontier is not tidy,” he continues. A gust of wind cuts through camp, carrying the stink of mud, horses, woodsmoke, and river rot, as if to prove his point. Mr. Everett draws me a little nearer beneath his arm with the smooth instinct of a practiced gentleman.
The Gemini comes back into view at the top of the rise, golden lamplight spilling into the dark. Men crowd the porch, smoking cigars beneath the awnings while cheers from the gambling floor roll out through the batwing doors.
Mr. Everett slows as we reach the steps.
“I didn’t know Goldie had a daughter,” he says.
His gaze moves over me once, measured and appreciative enough to raise heat beneath my stays.
His mouth curves faintly. “You favor her strongly.”
“I heard that quite often as a child.”
“I imagine you shall continue hearing it. Considering how much business your mother and I have done together, I cannot imagine how she kept you hidden.”
“What kind of business?” I ask. It’s the first question I’ve asked that I haven't already planned.
“Ah, well, that is a discussion for another stroll. Would it be too forward to ask if I may call upon you once more tomorrow evening?”
He says it lightly, but there is calculation beneath it. I’m beginning to understand a man like Everett does not ask for anything he does not already expect to receive.
The porch lamps cast amber light across his smooth cheeks and silvered temples.
I lower my eyes just enough to seem flustered. “I suppose that depends upon your intentions, Mr. Everett.”
He lifts his chin, peering down at me a moment. “At present?” he says. “To enjoy your company before some other fool in camp realizes he ought to compete for it.”
“And after that?”
“I find long-term intentions are best revealed slowly.”
Before I can answer, he lifts my hand from his sleeve and bows over my glove, his mustache brushing softly across my knuckles as he presses a kiss there.
I hold my face steady, resisting the deeply inconvenient realization that my mother’s company man was not an outwardly ugly creature.
His smile lifts as though he has seen me notice.
“Until tomorrow, Miss Eld.”
“Good evening, Mr. Everett.”
I turn before he can watch me watching him and step through the batwing doors into the Gemini’s heat and noise.
Inside, the room swells around me—poker chips clattering, glasses clinking, the melodic voices of the Gemini’s women earning their pay.
Pearl catches my eye from beside the bar and tilts her head toward the curtained hall.
Upstairs, then.
I slip past the tables and through the velvet curtain. Halfway down the hall, Mother’s voice carries from the blue parlor.
“I said six crates, and I meant six. If your boys miscounted, that is a problem for you. My end is my end.”
A man answers in a voice like gravel dragged over iron. “Ain’t my boys miscounted.”
I pause beside the door.
“It is a hard thing,” Mother says, “for a man to accuse me of lying in my own house.”
I edge closer and the floorboard groans beneath my boot.
Mother looks over, then raises her glass. “I wondered if Mr. Everett had swept you off entirely.”
The man turns, looking me over. He nods once. “Ma’am.”
“Good evening,” I say.
“Bill, this is my daughter. Mae.”
“Could be your twin,” he says.
My back teeth click together and I straighten. “So I have been told.” I address Mother. “I’ve returned. I’m sorry to interrupt your meeting.”
She holds my gaze, assessing me through cigar smoke before nodding her approval. “You can update me at breakfast.”
“At breakfast then,” I say, unable to dismiss myself fast enough. I leave Mother’s blue parlor with the taste of smoke sitting bitter at the back of my throat. The hallway feels warmer than before, close with perfume and the muffled roar of the gambling floor below. I ought to go to my room.
I turn down the hall, finding the Aces Suite, the door bearing its name in gold letters beneath the gas sconce. A room for high rollers to stay late into the morning hours making their wagers, no doubt. Voices drift through.
“You’re moving it.”
“Ain’t movin’ nothin’. That’s a haint.”
I push open the suite door without knocking.
Warm lamplight washes over velvet wallpaper and polished walnut furniture. Boone and Okee sit cross-legged atop one of the beds, wearing bathrobes cinched loose at the waist. Between them lies a sheet of paper covered in hurriedly scrawled letters and numbers.
A silver coin rests at its center beneath both their fingertips.
I stop dead in the doorway.
Boone glances up first and bursts immediately into laughter.
“Welp,” he says. “She caught us summonin’ demons.” His brow furrows deep. “Why you dressed all fancy? Goldie already put you on her payroll?”
“I ought to smack your mouth,” I snap, before turning to Okee. “You said this was divination.”
Okee doesn’t smile. His dark eyes remain fixed on the paper. “That was before we rode into a brothel with our mark hanging over its door,” Okee says. He gets up, snatches a gilded picture frame from atop a polished dresser and holds it up too close.
I step back, the photograph of the Gemini coming into focus.
The building looks brand new, freshly painted with its crisp sign on display.
It’s no different than the first time I saw it.
Two women turned away from one another, each posed beside a Greek column, a gold star centered between them.
He lowers his arm, taking the photo with it before yanking open the top of his robe to reveal his chest. His tattoo.
The mark is not exactly Mother’s painted sign downstairs. But it is near enough to make my mouth go dry. Behind Okee, Boone slowly sits up straighter in bed.
Okee’s brow furrows. “How do you explain this?”