A Race to Splendor (29 page)

“Why, thank you,” she murmured.

He regarded her for a long moment. “Strange how things sometimes evolve in this life, isn’t it, Amelia?”

She could only stare at him across the pristine linen, wondering what Grandfather Hunter would have thought about the bizarre sequence of events following his death.

Time seemed to freeze between them. The memory of J.D. kissing her after her driving lesson rose up and she tried, unsuccessfully, to push the thought from her mind.

“Yes, life can be very strange indeed,” she answered finally. “I appreciate your kind words about my work. Building this won’t be easy. There is such a dearth of qualified craftsmen, but I have an idea to go directly to Little Italy and recruit there, if you think that makes sense, Mr. Thayer.”

“Amelia, if we’re going to do this project together day in, day out, we might as well be on a first-name basis.”

There was no way she could keep from smiling. “I admit that I’ve done my best to maintain decorum, but perhaps you’ve noticed we’ve been on a first-name basis—on and off—for quite awhile now.”

She wondered if he ever thought of their driving lesson at the Presidio parade grounds, or their kissing in front of the restaurant? Most likely, a man like Thayer considered it merely an advantageous moment to…

J.D. flashed her a crooked grin. “Well, since we’ll be working together in close quarters, I just thought it was a sensible idea to make this first name business official.”

“Fine,” she replied. “‘J.D.’ it is then.”

Now all she had to do was build the building—and keep her door locked.

Chapter 23

Once again, Loy Chen had provided the manpower—working nights only—to clear scorched rubble from the front of the property. As sections were freed of debris, Amelia had the day workers laying the foundations for the new hotel and soon the first batch of concrete was poured into the molds. Rows of square-shaped, spiral twisted steel bars, fourteen feet high, stood ready to be clad in still more concrete as the walls for the first floor rose swiftly along the same perimeter as the previous two hotels that had occupied the site.

Each workday, Amelia donned one of several pairs of her father’s old trousers, worn beneath her blue serge skirt that Aunt Margaret had sent back with her from Oakland. To these she added a plain shirtwaist, warm jacket, and sturdy boots, arriving at Taylor and Jackson streets by five-thirty in the morning. Typically, the bay was socked in with fog until the late autumn sun burned it off around noon.

From Amelia’s very first day on-site, her spirits began to rise. She felt back in her element, working in the out-of-doors, dealing with the crews of cement pourers, masons, carpenters, and suppliers. She and J.D. had recruited workers from Little Italy along Columbus Street who offered their skills and were willing to guarantee that from the plans she’d drawn, a beautiful, well-built structure would rise.

“This is marvelous,” J.D. exclaimed when he and Angus McClure climbed out of the Winton one morning in early December on a mission to inspect the latest phase of construction. Large tubs of sand, limestone, water, and gravel were being mixed to make huge batches of concrete to construct the second and third floors.

Angus reached out and ran his palm over the rough surfaces, a wry smile on his face. “The walls are certainly going up fast, but I must say, Amelia, it looks a bit forbidding. Like a medieval fortress, wouldn’t you say?”

Amelia dusted off the sand from her hands and laughed, relieved that Angus was behaving like his old self after that evening at Tadich’s a few months before when—to her total astonishment—he’d hinted that he was considering another formal offering for her hand, and she’d gently refused him.

Since that night, Angus had not broached the topic again, which seemed to indicate that he’d also concluded that their relationship was better left as simple friendship.

Amelia pointed to a slab of concrete to their right. “Don’t either of you judge anything about this building until we put on the terra-cotta cladding and apply the molded ornamentation,” she cautioned good-naturedly, referring to pre-poured sections that resembled chiseled stonework and were virtually glued to the rougher concrete that formed the interior walls. “By the time I’m through, you’ll think you’ve got yourself a Parisian villa.”

“Terra-cotta cladding? What’s it made of?” Angus asked.

“Gladding McBean, near Sacramento, has been making the stuff for years. They mix up huge sheets of clay, threaded with steel mesh for stability. Then they bake it in a gigantic kiln, like bread. They cool it, apply a glaze, and bake it again.”

“Like making chinaware,” J.D. mused.

“Exactly!” Amelia exclaimed, relieved J.D. grasped the process.

“Isn’t it breakable?” asked Angus, brow furrowed.

“Yes, but they pack the sheets in padded crates and ship them to us by train, now that the rail system is working again. Once the masons plaster the sheets onto the concrete walls, you’ll think they’re blocks of stone. The ornamentation around the windows and doors is made of the same material and poured into molds to make the various entablature look like stone arches, acanthus leaves, or rosettes. Whatever you like.”

“I think rosettes are a bit much, don’t you, Angus?” J.D. observed dryly. “Leaves or simple arches will be just fine, thank you.”

“My, you
have
studied those catalogues I gave you,” Amelia teased.

***

Amelia barely noticed when Christmas came and went. She found herself working daily at the Bay View and still sleeping each night once again in the basement of the Fairmont Hotel. The rains had set in and slowed their work on the top floor.

Despite their proximity, Amelia rarely ran into Julia Morgan, who was allowing Ira to attend to the daily oversight of the ongoing restoration of the larger hotel while the head of the Morgan firm forged ahead on the many other projects offered her in the post-quake building frenzy.

Amelia pitied poor J.D, still camping out on his property in an Army tent in dreadfully foul weather, but she knew he would soon have a roof over his head. Meanwhile, he preferred to save his funds for the tons of cement she had on order.

“Amelia, dear,” Aunt Margaret complained when she heard that her niece was soon to be housed at the same location as her male client, “I’m not at all happy with this arrangement of you working every day with nothing but men, let alone sleeping without a chaperon where your employer resides. I just hope that old busybody ferryman doesn’t hear about this. You know what a gossip that Harold Jasper can be.”

“Shou Shou can serve as my chaperon,” Amelia replied.

“A former Chinese—” Margaret halted mid-sentence, and then added worriedly, “That certainly won’t silence a man like Mr. Jasper.”

“Well, everybody in San Francisco knows by this time that a natural disaster tends to create strange bedfellows,” Amelia replied, thinking that, in her case, that was certainly true. And then corrected herself silently.

Housemates, Amelia… not bedfellows, surely!

***

Loy Chen’s men continued their stealthy routine of coming to work after sunset to dig a larger, deeper cistern behind the hotel where the house of the wealthy old woman who’d shot at Amelia had once stood. Soon the two cisterns would be joined, guaranteeing the Bay View had more than ample supply of water for its guests—and to fight fires.

By the end of January in the struggling metropolis, the basement levels and first floor of the new,
new
Bay View had their interior walls and ceilings plastered and were fit for marginal habitation. J.D. folded his tent and took up residence in the basement headquarters. He soon had set up his own temporary sleeping quarters and office now that the plaster had been applied and finally, thoroughly dried. Soon, Loy, Shou Shou, and little Foo followed suit, moving into various empty rooms and cooking for the owner, as well as providing clean laundry.

Amelia figured she’d make her move once the locks on the downstairs doors were installed. Given her own untrustworthy feelings when it came to her employer, such prudence seemed the only sensible plan.

***

As for J.D., though he often found himself musing about the admirable Miss Bradshaw more often than was prudent, he dared not postpone paying a call on Matilda Kemp another day or risk antagonizing her father even more.

Thus, one surprisingly warm winter afternoon, he found himself at Ezra Kemp’s front door in Mill Valley. Fortunately, he was greeted in the foyer by the exuberant Miss Emma Stivers. Her unpleasant host was apparently attending to business at the lumberyard.

“Would you like to see Matilda’s studio at the bottom of the garden, Mr. Thayer?” asked Emma. “She’s just finished a lovely piece of sculpture.”

J.D. was relieved that this visit to Matilda’s private domain would at least provide a diversion from the stuffy parlor in which they presently sipped tea and tried to ignore the long silences.

“Oh
no
, Emma.” Matilda flushed with embarrassment and turned her head toward the fireplace. “Mr. Thayer cannot have any interest—”

“Oh, but your friend Miss Stivers is quite correct,” J.D. interrupted. “I would enjoy seeing your work. Very much. And hers as well.”

Anything to make the time pass faster.

“I merely dabble in watercolors to avoid feeling useless when Matilda attacks her clay,” Emma protested good-naturedly. “Or I read a book. Life in Mill Valley is sublimely uneventful, it seems.”

Emma Stivers’s laughing glance put J.D. at his ease. Except for her charming banter, the weekly chore of “paying court” to Matilda Kemp had increasingly become a burden—but his efforts had, indeed, paid a decent dividend: Kemp and his cronies had kept their distance from the accelerated building project at Taylor and Jackson.

During these strange appointments, Kemp would return from his lumberyard in downtown Mill Valley to join in the tedious business of the dinner hour inside his stone-and-timber fortress. The host would then demand that J.D. stay the night in his guest quarters and J.D. would politely but firmly insist that he make his way back to San Francisco with a promise for a return visit the following week.

All this to keep Kemp from making my life miserable with the Committee of Fifty and his building supplier…

J.D. often found himself wondering during sham rendezvous like today’s what his architect would think if she knew the onerous lengths he’d gone to see the Bay View open its doors first among the city’s hotels.

Matilda was a nice enough woman, he mused, watching her big hands fidget nervously in her lap. The poor creature was mortally shy and terminally ungainly, and her apparent distress over her father’s callous treatment elicited J.D.’s sympathy. Kemp’s naked attempt to barter his daughter’s welfare to gain a toehold in San Francisco society seemed as despicable as that of any Chinese highbinder.

Emma’s voice interrupted his mental meandering. “Mr. Thayer? Shall we walk to the bottom of the garden now?”

“Ah, yes. The studio.” He rose from the tea table and extended each lady an arm. “I’d be delighted.”

Matilda’s retreat lay beyond the terraced garden that descended toward the fast-running creek parallel to the road leading from Mill Valley proper. Like the main house, the one-room stone cottage featured windows framed by thick redwood casements. When the sun shone, leaded glass cast a rainbow of light on the Persian carpet. The shingle roof was covered with the ubiquitous moss spawned by the luxuriant damp of the steep-sided canyon. Stands of redwoods towered overhead, throwing long shadows across the surrounding banks of flowers and ferns. J.D. found the serene coolness of the place soothing.

“For most of the year, the large window here captures whatever afternoon sunlight there might be,” said Emma, pointing to a wall made of floor-to-ceiling paned glass. A river rock fireplace in one corner glowed invitingly, alight with neatly cut wood.

In the center of the studio stood a potter’s wheel. On it was a clay sculpture of a woman’s head that J.D. recognized instantly as a likeness of Emma Stivers.

“Why, Matilda, this is a wonderfully true-to-life rendition.” He turned toward the gawky twenty-seven-year-old and smiled. “I believe you’re very talented.”

Matilda blushed, and in that instant, her awkwardness grew ten-fold.

“Y-You’re too kind,” she murmured.

“She is
quite
good, isn’t she, Mr. Thayer?” Emma said eagerly. She traced her forefinger along the bridge of the clay figure’s nose. “She’s caught my profile exactly.”

“I should say so.”

And a very comely profile it is too,
J.D. thought.

He regarded Emma Stivers more closely. Clearly, she was her school friend’s biggest booster and had remained in Mill Valley much longer than he would have imagined such a lively, outgoing woman would find amusing. She was an attractive young person, with a trim waist; high, rounded bosom; and slender, graceful neck. Her clothes were of current fashion and high quality. He wondered about the circumstances of her life and family before she’d come west. Her cheery, though rather detached, demeanor intrigued him. Emma was quick to engage in friendly conversation with him whenever he visited the Kemp household, but she was no flirt and there was something about her he didn’t quite fathom.

For no particular reason, J.D. again thought of Amelia Bradshaw and the spirited exchanges he’d had with her during the past few months. Emma and Amelia were rather alike in some ways—equally attractive and intelligent young women, yet Amelia was much more direct and
much
more to his taste and—

Now why am I making such absurd comparisons?

Both women, given the bizarre circumstances in his life currently, were definitely off limits to any random speculations about their individual charms.

Of course he hadn’t felt that way in the Winton when Amelia had navigated the motorcar successfully from her driving lesson at the Presidio to the entrance to Tadich’s. Kissing her that day
should
have been off limits, but he just couldn’t help himself… and apparently, neither could she.

Just then, his self-censored thoughts were abruptly interrupted when Ezra Kemp appeared at the door of the studio.

“Thayer!” He ignored his daughter and her friend. “I want to see you in my study before dinner is served.” He glanced at the two women and then at the piece of sculpture standing in the middle of the room. “I won’t have that put in the garden, Matilda, so you’d better find some other place for it. A closet perhaps.”

Matilda darted a mortified glance at her female guest and stammered, “B-But Clarence thought—”