The Beloved Woman (28 page)

He set her off his lap and stood up. She looked at him and found an almost cruel gleam to his eyes. “You don’t have to think any further than New York,” he told her. “We’re leavin’ for there in the morning.”

He walked out of the room without looking back and slammed the door behind him.

J
USTIS HELPED
K
ATHERINE
across the inn’s snowy yard to a private coach he’d hired for the long trip east. She wore her new dress, a lovely blue wool with draping sleeves and a voluminous skirt, and a matching cape lined with satin. The dress and all her underthings were almost comically baggy, but she was so proud to have decent clothes again that she didn’t care.

“I’ll be ridin’ right behind,” Justis told her as he closed the door to the compartment. “If you need me, just tell the driver to stop.”

“We’ve got weeks of travel ahead of us. Surely you’re not going to ride Watchman the whole way?”

“We’ll see,” he said, and walked off.

She distractedly pulled a lap robe over her knees. What had she done to anger him? He’d been cool since that strange scene in the room the day before, when the subject of babes arose. He’d stayed downstairs playing cards most of the night, and when he had come to bed
he’d kept to his side. During all their preparations to leave he had been polite but not friendly.

You and me won’t be together forever
. She felt as if she’d been struck whenever he said something such as that, something to remind her that friendship and loyalty were hardly the same as eternal love.

Katherine stared out the coach window at the long road winding through barren winter fields in the distance. The bittersweet emptiness inside her was a good thing, she decided. She would fill it with the excitement of living in New York. She would fill it with helping Justis turn Blue Song gold into a fortune. She would be the perfect partner, companion, and teacher for him.

But she would build herself a separate life as much as possible, so that when their partnership ended, she could walk away with at least a façade of dignity.

T
HEY COVERED 150
miles in the first week, with five or six times that much to come, and a March thaw turned the roads into slush. As they reached yet another stagecoach inn, Justis climbed stiffly down from Watchman’s back while the driver pulled valises from the carriage. Twilight was broken only by a yellow stream of light coming from the door of the inn.

Exhausted, Justis slogged through mud and snow to the coach door. From the darkness within, Katherine glanced at him as she wearily tucked books and a piece of needlework into the small valise by her feet. Justis knew Mrs. Martin had given her the needlework materials as a good-bye gift. The fact that Katherine liked doing stitchery had surprised him. It was a side of her that he’d never seen before, a nice, ordinary, domestic talent that ought to show how easily she’d fit the role of wife and mother. If only, he thought grimly.

“Yes?” she inquired in a voice drained of energy. Riding in a cold, lurching coach all day was hardly an easy
way to travel. She was much stronger, but she still looked gaunt. He would have given anything to pamper her at night, to rub her sore muscles and brush her hair for her, but he was determined not to let devotion make a fool of him any longer.

“I’m gettin’ us separate rooms from now on,” he said, “so you don’t have to pretend to be Mrs. Gallatin anymore. ’Least not until we get to New York.”

“All we do is fall into bed after supper and sleep like logs. It would be wasteful to pay for two rooms.”

“I’ve got money to waste. What difference does it make to you?”

“None,” she retorted. “But would you explain what this change of attitude means, sir?”

He hated being called sir. It was her best way of reminding him that she preferred to keep their relationship formal. “Means I’m tired of spendin’ all night beside a woman who’s still too frail to service me.”

She straightened regally. “My disability has never stopped you from servicing yourself whenever you thought I was asleep.”

“But now I’ll have the privacy to grunt and kick the bedcovers. Really enjoy it.”

That bit of crude banter stunned her into silence, and he rebuked himself for talking to her that way. She brushed his hand aside when he tried to help her from the coach. “I shall take dinner alone in my room,” she informed him. “Good night, sir.”

He stood by the coach and stared bitterly after her as she swept through the inn’s door. When they got to New York he’d break her of this arrogance once and for all. Love him or not, she’d learn what it felt like to need someone so much that it hurt.

CHAPTER 13

K
ATHERINE
stood in the midst of the opulent hotel room, trying to look as if she were accustomed to such grandeur. Each time Justis glanced at her she nodded reassuringly. After all, he was counting on her to guide him through this elegant New York world. She couldn’t tell him that it took her breath away. She’d never seen anything like it in Philadelphia.

From the outside, their hotel looked like a palace. It was five stories tall, its windows decorated with ornate cornices, its entrance flanked by marble columns. Inside on the ground level were dining halls, parlors, all sorts of shops, and a magnificent lobby with a vaulted ceiling. On each floor upstairs were mazes of hallways lit by lamps that burned some type of gas. She’d heard of such innovative lamps but had never seen them before.

The room Justis had ordered was actually a small suite. One entered the enormous sleeping chamber through a parlor furnished with richly upholstered chairs, marble tables, and Oriental rugs. Off the sleeping
chamber was a dressing room outfitted with hot water faucets and a bathtub. That room was the stuff of fiction and fantasy.

“Sure’n you’ll be wanting to use our grand hot water system,” the head porter said proudly, his Irish brogue so thick that Katherine could barely understand him. “Steam-pumped, it is. Just turn a knob and there it comes. Glory, there’s not another hotel on Broadway that has such a luvly thing. If you got any questions about it, ring downstairs for your faithful servant, meself.”

He bowed, doffing a red velvet cap that matched both his hair and his livery. “Thomas.” He turned and shooed a crew of maidservants out the open door to the hallway. “They’ll come runnin’ at your every whim, or they’ll be tellin’ meself why not.”

“Thank you, Thomas,” Katherine said quickly, smiling as if she were entirely familiar with armies of servants and miracles such as pipes that produced hot water on command. She turned to Justis, who stood by a tall window studying the street below. Broadway, it was called.

“God damn,” he said in awe. “I’ve never seen so many buildings and people jam-packed so close together in my whole life.”

Katherine was glad to find him distracted. She needed distracting, too, not only from the amazing surroundings, but from the tall, plush bed that stood between large windows along one wall. The bed, a four-poster with a canopy, was indecently sensual. There must have been three feather mattresses stacked under its satin covers and enormous pillows. The long side drapes were made of embroidered silk and pulled back to the head posts with tasseled velvet ties. The bed whispered provocatively to her.

She was healthy now; during the weeks of travel she had gradually gained weight and strength. Her clothes almost fit. There was no longer any reason not to begin the intimate phase of her agreement with Justis. Tonight.
In this chamber. In that bed. These days he was not in a mood to be patient.

“My dear,” she called smoothly, though her heart thudded hard, “do you have some coins?”

He looked at her in bewilderment until she cut her eyes toward the expectant Thomas. “Ah! Hell, yes.” He grinned and threw several to the porter.

His first lesson in hotel etiquette, she thought with hidden amusement. She glanced at the bed. He would undoubtedly teach lessons of his own in return.

The man bowed low. “Thank you, sir! I’ll be taking me leave now.”

“Hold on. I’ll walk down with you,” Justis said abruptly. “Got to see about havin’ my horse stabled.”

“Yours truly can help with that, too, sir!”

Relieved and disappointed that Justis was leaving, Katherine tugged nervously at the fastenings on her cloak. The maids had built a fire in the sleeping chamber’s fireplace and set another going in the parlor’s, but the suite would need some time to grow warm. Early April in New York City was cold and blustery.

Justis followed the porter toward the door, but halted as he came by her. She met his eyes and found them both somber and challenging. “Get everything warm before I come back,” he ordered.

She gave him a deceptively nonchalant look. “I’ve grown accustomed to the cold.”

“Better get used to bein’ hot. I want it that way from now on.”

Thankfully he left the room before her face began to burn. Yes, a new phase of their relationship was about to begin.

Justis waited to speak until he and the porter were halfway to the stairs. “Thomas,” he said casually, “that lady isn’t my wife.”

If that news shocked the porter, the shock didn’t
show. “What would she be, sir? Some kind of Indian fancy woman?”

“Yes. Cherokee.” Justis pulled a heavy gold coin from his coat pocket. “And she thinks it’s beneath her to marry a white man.” He turned the coin over a few times, glancing at the porter’s face to see if he had caught his attention. He had. The man could barely keep from staring at the gold piece.

“Thomas, I want that lady to be my wife. I want a legal weddin’ with a real preacher and a fancy weddin’ certificate. I got an idea as to how I can accomplish that.”

“Yours truly is at your service, sir.”

He tossed the coin to him. “If I get married tonight, you’ll get another one of those in the mornin’. Savvy?”

“Yes, sir! You’re the devil’s own beloved, Mr. Gallatin, sir.” The man grinned. “I know an old-country name when I hear one. Just tell me what you have in mind, and the leprechauns will be makin’ all your wishes come true.”

Justis clapped him on the shoulder and said tautly, “Right now I’d just settle for a damned weddin’.”

K
ATHERINE DROPPED HER
book onto her lap and stared at Justis. She couldn’t read, she couldn’t think, and she could barely sit still. When they’d gone downstairs for supper she had struggled merely to sample the dozens of dishes that a regiment of waiters had paraded in front of her.

Now Justis sat in a plush chair across the parlor table from her, his long legs stretched out to one side and crossed at the ankles, a glass of cognac near his stack of cards. Lamplight played lovingly on his relaxed features. He seemed utterly content to sit there enjoying a game of solitaire.

Every time he shifted she almost jumped, expecting him to make some coy remark that would tell her what
he had in mind. The man looked ready to start for bed at any moment—his shirt was unbuttoned halfway down his hairy chest, his braces hung off his shoulders, he’d kicked his boots into a corner, and his eyelids had a heavy, sensual droop that was either fatigue, desire, or both.

“I suppose,” she said primly, raising her book again, “that after weeks of virtually ignoring each other, some rearrangement of our attitudes will be necessary. I suppose it will take a few days to resettle them.”

“I never ignored you,” he said. He studied his cards with calm, deliberate attention and didn’t look up at her. “I can tell you what your favorite victuals were, what books you read, how you did your hair, and how many times I caught you lookin’ at me like you wanted to be undressed.”

She started guiltily. “If I truly looked that way, you would have taken advantage of it. I’ve been nicely recovered from my ordeals for at least two weeks.”

“I didn’t want to bed an ornery woman worn out from travelin’ all day.”

“Ornery? Need I remind you that you haven’t encouraged the least bit of friendship between us since the day we left the Martins’ place in Illinois? What was I to make of that?”

“I let you simmer so you’d be good and ready for me.”