Chapter 32
Lula
Pearl hooks me into the plum dress like she’s rigging a saddle on a mare. The bodice cinches tight, exactly as Mother intended. The color is deep and expensive, almost demure until the black lace at the cuffs and collar catches the light.
Boone sits on the edge of the bed, turning his hat in his hands with a distant stare.
Waiting in a silent cage has never suited him.
Okee stands near the window, curtain parted the width of two fingers.
He has looked through that gap at least twenty times in as many minutes.
If danger were a thing that could be bored into leaving, he would have saved us all by now.
“You’re both making me nervous,” I say.
Boone’s head comes up. “Ain’t doing nothing.”
“That is the trouble. You’re doing nothing so loudly. Say something to distract me.”
I barely have time to make a sound before his hand closes around my waist and he pulls me down into his lap as if I weigh no more than a blanket.
Heat climbs my throat, which is ridiculous.
I am wearing a dress I hate to go walking with a man I distrust so we might expose a murder plot before it swallows us whole.
Blushing should be the least available option, and yet Pearl's dreamy gaze leaves the outlaws and lands back on me as if I’m the luckiest girl in the world.
Lord, I truly must get a handle on myself. We knew this would come to an end. If we are meant to see the other side of this challenge, then there will be lives to resume. Life goes on. It went on after mother left. It went on after Eli died. That’s all there is to it.
How foolishly obsessed I had been with suitors and courtships at Pearl’s age. I wanted Wuthering Heights—some wild, consuming love that would sweep in like weather, ruin my good sense, and make the rest of the world feel small by comparison.
But that was girlhood. That was before I understood how life actually worked. Love did not sweep in like weather. It did not arrive grand and howling at the door, prepared to rearrange the world for the sake of one foolish woman’s heart.
Mother left. Eli died. I survived. There was the next morning, and the one after that, and myself still standing because there was nothing else to do.
So I learned to want sensible things. A shop. A sign over the door. Shelves of tinctures and dried herbs. Coin enough to keep myself fed. A room of my own where no one could leave me unless I first let them in.
And then Boone and Okee had come tearing through my life like weather after all.
The least subtle of all storms has carried me here beside them.
Worse, they look at me as if they might stay.
Everett arrives shortly after sunset. We stand in Mother’s downstairs receiving room.
Boone and Okee are above us with the Aces Suite door locked, curtains drawn, and instructions laid over them to stay in the room, stay away from the windows, and do not open the door unless the house burns, and even then wait to be certain.
The Gemini is a house built by women who understood men’s appetites and mistrusted them for it.
From the outside, lamps and red glass, but inside is a warren of useful secrets: back stairs for girls who do not wish to cross the floor, a dumbwaiter shaft too narrow for anything but bottles and linens, service corridors, linen closets, locked rooms, and odd rooflines where the building had grown whenever Mother had enough money to make it larger.
A place like this can at the very least hide two outlaws if everyone in it remembers their part.
Mother steps aside to let Everett’s gaze land properly on me. I stand where she placed me, half in lamplight, plum silk catching at the waist, black lace neat at my throat.
Mr. Everett takes off his hat, his neatly combed hair a sophisticated blend of black and silver. His wool bowler is pressed to his chest. “Miss Eld, I had not thought it possible for you to look even more striking than when we first met.”
Mother offers a smile reserved for guests and special occasions. “You flatter my daughter too extravagantly, Mr. Everett. She’ll become impossible.”
“I suspect if she’s anything like you, she came that way.”
My mother’s eyes flick to me with the faintest gleam of amusement. I would like to kick them both.
“You are prompt,” Mother says.
“It would be foolhardy to keep the most beautiful women in Three Forks waiting.” As he says it, he bows forward, collecting my gloved hand with his.
Piercing eyes see through me as he presses a kiss to my knuckles, the heat of his mouth through the silk sending a rush of heat to my belly.
My body truly has no survival instincts, reacting to a cretin like him this way.
Everett offers his arm. “Shall we?”
I take it before Mother can give me another instruction or Pearl can make another moon-eyed face over my shoulder.
Everett’s coat smells of cold air and wool brushed clean.
He is not a large man compared with Boone or Okee, but he carries himself like a man accustomed to claiming space without having to shove for it.
He leads me from the receiving room into the side hall.
The music from the gambling floor leaks through the walls, piano notes muddied by men laughing and chairs scraping and the constant click of chips.
For one foolish second, I imagine Boone above us hearing it all and gnawing through the floorboards like a bored hound.
No. I put him away. Okee too.
If they cannot survive an hour in a private room without my worrying over them, then we have all misjudged the scale of our troubles.
The side door opens, and cold air rolls over me.
The sky has gone bruised purple over the rooftops, the last bit of daylight thinning behind black lines of bare trees. Smoke hangs low from cookfires and chimneys, too damp to rise proper. Horses shift along the hitching rails, tails flicking.
Everett settles his hat back on his head. “Cold?”
“Yes.”
“We can stay near the lamps.”
“Is that concern?”
“Courtesy.” He looks down at me, amused. “I gather you dislike being tended to.”
“No, of course not. I only dislike being managed.”
“Noted.”
“Not to say, of course, that I felt you were hoping to manage me. I was merely answering your question.”
“We understand each other, Ms. Eld.”
We descend the steps and take the plank walk along the Gemini’s front.
The house glows behind us, red glass and golden windows.
Men on the porch glance over, then pretend not to.
By morning, I expect half the camp will have married me to Everett and the other half will have made me his mistress.
Mother will likely be pleased with both rumors provided they are useful.
We pass two freight men standing outside the livery, both smoking pipes and watching with the grave interest of men who have never once minded their own business. Everett gives them a pleasant nod. They answer it quickly.
Power does not always announce itself. Sometimes it nods and watches men step aside.
“Your husband was a soldier,” he says.
My hand rests lightly on his arm. “Yes.”
“Union?”
“Yes.”
“A difficult allegiance in parts of West Virginia.”
“It was.”
We walk past the mercantile, its windows fogged from the stove inside. A little boy sits on the step with a stick, dragging lines through the mud until a woman inside snaps his name and he scrambles up. The bell over the door gives a tired jangle when she pulls him in by the collar.
Everett follows my gaze. “Do you have children?”
“No.”
“Do you want them?”
Of all the questions, that one lands closest to bone.
I make myself breathe.
“Wanting is a dangerous thing. I prefer to find myself grateful for whatever gifts the good Lord sees fit to place in my path.”
“That is a wise answer. I’ve also heard you are a Midwife, yes?”
“Yes.”
“And herbalist.”
I slow my pace. Mother told him that I am a widow. The war felt like a natural assumption. The first question had swept right past me, but we’d never spoken of my occupation. I laugh as if he’s said something silly. “Where have you gotten your information?”
His mouth curves. “I make it my business to be well-informed.”
My pulse quickens. “I’d be careful what information you accept secondhand, sir.”
We turn toward the busier stretch near the saloons. The mud deepens where wagon wheels have cut the road into black ruts. Everett keeps me on the planks, his hand coming over mine whenever a man passes too close.
Everett says, “You are not an herbalist, then?”
My tongue is heavier, clumsy. “Well, I’ve no formal education on the subject, but I do find it rather uncanny the way the earth provides. Do you agree the earth provides, Mr. Everett?”
His gaze lingers on me a moment longer than what is comfortable. “Why yes, of course. You’re speaking to a lumber man, after all.”
I nod agreeably, a smile plastered on my face. “That’s right.”
“If you recall, last we spoke I revealed a bit about my station with Hollister Timber.”
“Of course I remember. It was just last night.”
“Might you be interested in accompanying me to my office?”
I let my smile linger while my thoughts scatter like mice beneath a broom.
His office.
No. Not under any circumstance.
Mother said a stroll. Through camp. Seen by others. Lamps, planks, mud, eyes.
“How kind,” I say, buying myself a breath. “But Mother would tan my hide if I vanished into a gentleman’s office before supper.”
“Goldie knows where to find me.”
“That is not as comforting as you seem to believe.”
His mouth curves. “You distrust me.” A little amusement returns to his face, but not enough. His gaze moves over me like a finger finding a seam. “Please. It is only a short walk, and I’m sure a woman of your intelligence would find it fascinating,” he says.
“A desk?”
That earns me a laugh. I look toward the Gemini’s lamps, as if merely conscious of time and not the fact I have nearly walked myself into a bear trap with my own mouth.
“Not just a desk, Miss Eld. I’ve quite a collection of photographs and maps of the region. They’re quite lovely,” he says, with a boyish sway. “I promise to return you before supper.”
I laugh as though charmed, but inside, my guts turn to acid as Everett turns my carefully laid plans to embers.
His office could be rife with evidence. Information enough, perhaps, to vindicate Okee and Boone.
But he knows things. Things he oughtn’t know.
The frightening truths flip over in my stomach.
But we have come this far. I mustn’t quit now.
“For a few minutes then. Before supper. Mother was quite firm.”
“I fear Goldie offers no other disposition.”
We saunter through the chaos of the camp, arm in arm. We stop in front of a building with an emblem over the door of a ridge of pines. Around it the words HOLLISTER AND CO. TIMBER form a circle. He retrieves a key from his pocket.
“Is the office closed?”
“Yes. I sent my men home before dark.”
Well.
That is exactly the sort of thing a woman does not want to hear from a man unlocking a door.
I glance back toward the camp. Men drift between saloons and tents, but fewer here.
Hollister’s office sits a little apart, sturdier and more stately.
The Gemini is still visible down the muddy street.
Not near enough. Not far enough. I can still make out the ridge of storefronts beside it.
There’s some comfort in the thought they might be watching somehow.
No matter how foolish or false, it eases the tension in my chest.
I let myself look toward the Gemini a breath too long. Imagining them there.
The house glows through the damp, its crooked roofline black against the bruised sky. For a moment I see nothing but smoke dragging low from the chimneys and the shine of wet tin.
Then Everett’s key turns in the lock, and the sound cuts clean through me.
“You’re looking a bit green, Miss Eld. Are you quite all right?”
“Yes.” I brush it off. “I’m still acclimating to the…camp…air.”
He nods slowly. “Right.” Then with a wave of his hand, he says, “After you.”