Tomorrow's Dreams (36 page)

He shrugged his uninjured shoulder. “Maybe I'll just sit and watch you.” His most beguiling smile appeared. “Have I ever told you how much I love to watch you dance?”

She emitted a snort of exasperation.

“No? Well, I do. There's nothing I like more than to see your cheeks flushed pink and your eyes gleaming with pleasure as you float across the dance floor. I've never seen anyone who enjoys dancing as much as you.”

Penelope's eyes widened with sudden understanding. “Are you worried that I'll be disappointed at having to miss the dance? Is that what all this nonsense is about?” She advanced toward him, shaking her head. “For God's sake, Seth. Staying here and making sure that you're all right is far more important to me than some silly dance.” As she came to a stop before him, she added, “In fact, I want to take care of you.”

“And there's nothing I want more than to lie in bed and let you fawn over me. But I can't. And not just because I'm worried about disappointing you. I know you well enough to know that you'd never put your own enjoyment ahead of my well-being.”

“Then, why?” she wailed, growing more bewildered by the second. “What's so important about this dance?”

“My mother.”

Though he'd whispered the words, Penelope was as taken aback as if he shouted them. “Your … mother?”

Seth's gaze touched hers then, his eyes dark with turbulent emotion. “I lied when I said I'd come to Denver out of a fascination for the West. My sole reason for coming was to find my mother. The Pinkerton Agency traced her here. I happen to know that she'll be at the dance tonight, and I want to see her.”

“You've been here all this time and haven't approached her?”

He looked away, but not before she saw the crushing ache in his eyes. “I didn't know what to say.”

Penelope's heart bled at the raw pain in his voice, prompting her to wrap her arms around his waist and pull him into her embrace. Tilting her head back in an attempt to glimpse his downcast face, she said, “An introduction is a good start.”

Seth shook his head, his expression lost in the shadows of his hair. “It would be easier for me to meet her anonymously at first, preferably in a social setting. After I've studied her awhile, I'll be better able to determine how to approach her.”

“And the dance tonight is your first opportunity to do that.” The utterance was a statement, not a question.

He nodded. “I don't know when or if I'll ever get another chance quite as perfect as this one.”

Convinced more by the quiet desperation in his voice than by his words, she declared, “Well, then I guess we'd better get busy. It's going to take me a while to tame that mane of yours.”

Seth raised his head, smiling his thanks. The tender gratitude of that smile went straight to Penelope's heart, warming her from the top of her well-coiffed head to the tips of her satin-clad toes. Basking in the satisfying glow, she led him to the dressing table, where she bid him to sit. After fetching a basin of fresh water and several clean towels, she began the painstaking task of setting his hair in order.

In preoccupied silence she worked, section by snarled section, sponging and combing his hair. When she came to the area around the wound, she paused to glance doubtfully at his reflection in the mirror. He seemed perfectly relaxed, sitting with his eyes closed and a faint smile curving his lips.

“Seth?”

“Hmm?” He slit open one eye.

“I need to tend the area around the wound now.”

He opened both eyes then, meeting her anxious gaze in the mirror. “After all the years I've spent tugging tangles from this overgrown rat's nest, my scalp isn't overly tender. Do what needs to be done. I'll be fine.”

As Penelope separated the blood-caked strands, carefully scrubbing at the dark streaks with a wet, soapy towel, she muttered, “It's no wonder you've developed such a tough scalp. I've never seen anyone with so much hair.”

He looked at her with inquiry. “Think I should cut it into a proper, gentlemanly style?” Damn if he didn't look serious.

“Don't you dare!” she exclaimed, laying a possessive hand over the tawny length. “I love your hair! It's beautiful and unique, like you. Besides, I doubt I'd recognize you without it.”

“After twenty years of living beneath it, I doubt I'd recognize myself,” he countered, smiling.

“Twenty years? Goodness! Has it been long that many years?”

“As ancient as it makes me feel to admit it, yes.” He fingered a damp lock thoughtfully. “When I was a child, I worked at a mill where they'd line us boys up every month and crop our hair to the scalp. After ten years of having it clipped, I vowed never to wear it short again.”

Penelope did some quick calculations in her head. “Why, that means you started working when you were only—”

“Six,” Seth supplied casually.

“Six! Dear God, Seth! I knew children worked at those places, but I never realized that some of them were so young.”

“Most aren't. But I was tall and smart for my age, so no one at the orphanage bothered to point out my tender age.”

“But you were just a baby! How could anyone be so inhuman?” she wailed, her heart weeping for the ill-used child he'd been.

“The orphanage was overcrowded, and they were glad to get rid of what children they could.”

“How terrible that must have been for you!”

Seth shrugged. “No worse than the orphanage. My first job was that of bobbin doffer. Since I didn't have to watch the machine constantly, I was allowed to play with the other doffers during those idle periods. The hard work came later.”

“It's a wonder you're so strong and healthy,” Penelope declared, dropping her hands from his now clean and smoothed hair. “I've read the most dreadful things about those mills, accounts of children being beaten by heartless overseers and of workers dying in terrible accidents or of lung rot.”

“Most children learned early on to avoid the whipping room,” Seth replied. “One trip was certainly enough to break me of any thoughts of mischief. As for accidents, well, those happened, and a few of the workers did develop bad lungs.” He shrugged. “But enough of this gloomy talk. We have a dance to attend.”

She nodded and moved to the desk to retrieve her reticule. Pausing a moment to rummage through it, she produced a crumpled length of pink ribbon. “Here. I want you to carry this with you tonight … to bring you luck with your mother.”

Seth grinned. “Is that your infamous lucky ribbon? The one you're always threatening to wager?”

“One and the same.”

“And what makes it so lucky?”

“It was tied around the volume of poetry you gave me the first time you told me you loved me,” she replied with a saucy grin. “In my book, that was the luckiest day of my life.”

Chapter 21

It was just after eleven when Seth reined the buggy horse to a stop in front of the Vanderlyn house. By the sights and sounds that greeted him, it was apparent the dance was in full swing.

Laughter, drifting on strains of gay music, spilled from the imposing brick structure, flooding the dark street with a warmth rivaled only by that of the hundred blazing lights. Men, smoking and speaking of things not fit for feminine ears, congregated in tight clusters on the spacious front yard, while women in wildflower-hued gowns relaxed on the sweeping veranda, passing gossip behind their fans.

To most people the scene would be pleasant, even welcoming. But to Seth it was like a spoiled apple: deceptively tempting on the outside, repulsively corrupt on the inside; the rotten core of which was Louisa Vanderlyn and all her false goodness.

After paying a youth to watch the hired horse and buggy, he led Penelope up the long brick walkway, conscious of the admiring looks they drew from the onlookers. He smiled wryly when he caught a feminine whisper describing him as a dazzling dream of a man. What man wouldn't look dazzling with a beauty like Penelope on his arm? Still smiling, he handed his dance tickets to the maid at the door, then stepped into the well-appointed foyer.

By the looks of the entry hall, with its richly paneled walls and gracefully curving staircase, it was obvious that Louisa had done well for herself. Not that Seth needed to see all this elegance to know that. He knew the Vanderlyns' every profit and, of late, every loss, right down to the penny.

Perhaps when they were forced to sell this house, and that time was almost upon them, he'd buy it and burn it to the ground. A bonfire to his broken hopes and dreams—an inferno of hate.

Yet for all his knowledge that vengeance would soon be his, Seth felt no sense of pleasure or vindication. He felt oddly lost, afraid. And as he paused at the ballroom door to hand his top hat and evening cape to a starchily uniformed maid, that fright sharpened into a piercing shard of pure panic.

Stop being a shrinking coward
, he commanded himself, disgusted by his own spineless quailing. Wasn't this the moment he'd dreamed of? The one he'd plotted so cunningly to bring about? He should feel exhilarated, vitalized by the heady thrill of at last realizing that dream. Yet here he was paralyzed by fear, terrified to face the woman who was his mother.

“Do you see her?” Penelope asked.

Seth stared at her blankly.

“Your mother. Is she here?” She nodded at the milling throng before them. While he'd been busy mollycoddling his cowardice, they'd somehow made their way into the overcrowded ballroom and now stood on the far side.

“Well?”

At her third query, he reluctantly swept his gaze over the colorful assembly, systematically examining and eliminating every fair-haired woman present. At last he shook his head, oddly more anxious than relieved by his temporary reprieve.

“Are you absolutely certain she's going to be here?”

“I'd stake my life on it.”

She considered the matter for a moment. “Perhaps she's in the ladies' retiring room. If you tell me who she is, I'll check for you.” Her beautiful eyes, made all the more striking by the tenderness glowing in their emerald depths, begged him to take her into his confidence. To prove that he truly trusted her.

Aching with regret, Seth shook his head. “I can't. Not until after I've spoken with her. Alone.”

She turned away, but not before he saw her look of pained disappointment. Feeling like the world's biggest bastard, not an unusual sensation for him of late, he sought to assuage her hurt.

“It's not that I don't trust you, sweetheart. I do, wholeheartedly. And if it were only me involved in this, I'd tell you in a second. However, since there is someone else's feelings and reputation to consider, it's only fair that I consult her in private before making any possibly damaging disclosures.”

Not that he cared a whit for Louisa Vanderlyn's feelings, or for her reputation for that matter. By the time he was finished with her, the former would be thoroughly shattered and the latter nonexistent. It was just that he didn't want Penelope present for what was sure to be an ugly showdown between Louisa and himself.

Apparently she wasn't buying his excuse any more than he was, for her shoulders remained rigid, her head turned away.

“Miss Leroux?” A rather homely young man with slicked-back hair and a spanking new set of clothes stood before them, a nervous tick working in his cheek as he stared longingly at Penelope. “I was wunderin' if you might be persuaded to take a turn on the dance floor with me?” He shot a flustered glance in Seth's direction. “Uh, with yer permission, of course, sir.”

Seth gave Penelope's would-be suitor an impatient frown. “Later. Miss Leroux and I are having a discussion right now.”

The man ducked his head in abashed assent and turned to leave, only to be stopped by Penelope in the next instant.

“Wait!”

When he looked back, she smiled sweetly and extended her hand. “I believe I would like to dance, sir. Thank you.”

The man hesitated, glancing uncertainly at Seth. Grudgingly he nodded his consent.

Seth stood there for a long while, watching Penelope and her partner romp through the Virginia reel, stalling his search for Louisa by convincing himself that he needed to make things right with Penelope before he progressed. But when the reel lines broke and she was immediately swept up by a new partner in a schottische, he knew he could procrastinate no longer. By the covetous looks being cast at Penelope by the scores of unattached men—all race losers who'd paid ten dollars to attend the dance—he'd be waiting all night for a word with her.

With a fresh rise of dread gripping at his belly and an ache gathering in his head, he skirted the chattering mob and slipped into the hall. It was cooler out here, with the crisp night breeze reaching from the open front door to caress his hot cheeks. As he paused to decide his best course of action, he reached up and massaged his throbbing head. Perhaps there was some truth to those hidden-injuries-turned-fatal stories after all.

Pushing the morbid thought from his mind, he steered back toward the front door. Like a proper hostess, Louisa might be out on the porch circulating among her guests.

But she wasn't there, nor was she on the front lawn or in the garden out back. With his frustration exceeded only by his growing tension, Seth returned to the house. As he stood at the foot of the staircase in the now deserted foyer, contemplating searching the hall on the side of the house opposite the ballroom, he was startled from his thoughts by a strong but distinctly young female voice behind him.

“Are you looking for the necessary room, sir?”

Seth swung around so fast that his head spun, and he had to grab onto the carved pineapple newel post finial to keep from toppling over. Within a span of seconds, a vision-blurring pain exploded behind his eyes, accompanied by an almost incapacitating swell of nausea. Mercifully the pain receded as quickly as it came on, and his eyes focused on the owner of the voice.