Twin of Ice (11 page)

All day Saturday, while Blair slept, she hoped Kane would visit her, but he didn’t.

On Sunday morning, she dressed in a skirt of gray serge, a dark green blouse of plissé surah and a gray Figaro jacket, and went downstairs to join her family for church services.

When everyone was seated in the church and hymnals were open, a quiet settled on the people.

“Move over,” Kane said to Houston.

Startled, she moved down so he could sit beside her. Throughout the service, he sat still, looking up at the Reverend Thomas with a bored expression. The instant the service was over, he caught Houston’s arm. “I wanta talk to you.”

He half pulled her from the church, oblivious to people’s attempts to socialize with them, and lifted her to the seat of his old wagon. Once seated himself, he flicked the reins to the four horses and set off so quickly Houston had to hold her hat on.

“All right,” he said when he’d stopped abruptly on the south edge of town under some cottonwood trees near the waterworks plant, “what were you doin’ with Marc Fenton?”

No matter how Houston remembered Kane, he was, in life, more than she imagined.

“I have known Marc all my life,” she said coolly, “and I may see any friend I care to. Besides, my mother was with me.”

“You think I don’t know that? At least your mother’s a sensible woman.”

“I have no idea what you mean.” She began to toy with her parasol.

“What were you doin’ with Marc Fenton?” He leaned toward her in a threatening way.

Houston decided to tell him the truth. “My stepfather has made me promise to ask as many people as possible about you. Mr. Gates arranged for me to meet Marc so I could ask him about you. I would have talked to Mr. Fenton, but he refused the request.” She glared at him. “And I will probably speak to a Miss Lavinia LaRue.”

“Viney?” he asked, then grinned. “Gates gave you this advice? Not bad. I wonder how come he never made any money? Wait a minute, what if you ask somebody and he—or she—says I’m no good?”

“Then I’ll have to reconsider our marriage,” she said Primly.

She wasn’t prepared for his explosion of anger.

“We’re supposed to be married one week from tomorrow, yet you just might call it off at any minute!? Because somebody says he don’t like the cut of my shirt? I’ll tell you somethin’,
Miss
Chandler, you can ask ever’ man I ever dealt with and ever’ woman I ever slept with about me and, if they’re honest, you’re gonna find I ain’t cheated a man in my life.”

He got out of the wagon and walked under a tree, looking at the distant horizon.

“Damnation, but Edan told me a lady’d cause me nothin’ but trouble. He said, ‘Kane, marry some farm girl, move to the country and raise horses.’ He told me not to get mixed up with no lady.”

Houston managed to climb down from the tall wagon by herself. “I didn’t mean to upset you so badly,” she said quietly.

“Upset me!” he bellowed into her face. “I ain’t had any peace since I met you. I’m rich, I ain’t bad to look at, I offer you marriage and you turn me down flat. I don’t hear nothin’ from you, then I find out your sister’s gonna marry the man
you’re
so crazy in love with. But, still, you won’t marry me. Then maybe you will. Then maybe you won’t.

“For days you’re at my house bossin’ ever’body around, includin’ me, and then you act like we got a bad case of measles and you don’t come near the place. One mornin’ I wake up and you’re lookin’ at me like you’re starvin’ and when I touch you, you break a water pitcher over my head and yell at me that I gotta respect you. But the next time I touch you, you pull me down on the floor and nearly tear my clothes off. But I respect you and I leave you a damn virgin, just like you wanted. But what do I get? Next thing I know, you’re wonderin’ if I want my ring back, an’ it’s back to maybe you ain’t gonna marry me.

“This mornin’ your mother come to me, told me the right suit to wear to church,” he gave her a look of reproach, “and invited me to Sunday dinner.”

He stopped and glared at her. “So here I am, all dressed up, with you tellin’ me maybe you’ll marry me, maybe you won’t, and it all depends on what people say about me. Houston, I’ve had all this I’m gonna take. Right now you’re gonna give me a yes or no and you’re gonna stick to it. If you say yes now and no the day of the weddin’, so help me, Houston, I’ll drag you down the aisle by your hair. Now, what you got to say?”

“Yes,” she said softly, and the amount of joy inside her was amazing.

“And what if somebody tells you I’m worthless? Or that I’ve killed people?” he asked with some hostility.

“I Will still marry you.”

He turned away. “You dreadin’it so much? I mean, I know you wanted to marry Westfield, and I ain’t exactly been a gentleman all the time in our courtin’, but so far you’ve done your part of the bargain. In public, you’ve always acted like you didn’t mind marryin’ me.”

Houston’s relief that he hadn’t been repulsed by her was so great she began trembling. She wasn’t going to spend her life crocheting but was going to live with this man who was unlike anyone else.

She moved to stand in front of him. “After Sunday dinner, most young couples go to Fenton Park to walk and talk and just spend time together. Perhaps you’d like to go with me.”

“I need to…,” he began. “If you still want to be seen with me after dinner with your family, I’m willin’.”

She slipped her arm through his. “Just watch me, don’t talk with your mouth full, don’t shout at anyone, and above all, don’t curse.”

“You don’t ask much, do you?” he said grimly.

“Pretend that the purchase of Mr. Vanderbilt’s apartment building depends on this dinner. Maybe that will help you remember your manners.”

Kane looked startled. “That reminds me. I need to—.” He glanced down at her. “You know, I think I’d rather spend the afternoon sittin’ in the park. It’s been a long time since I took a whole day off.”

Kane seemed to enjoy himself immensely at Sunday dinner. Opal fawned over him, and Duncan asked his advice. Houston watched them. They’d expected a monster and found a pleasant man.

Blair had been silent through the meal, and Houston was glad she was meeting Kane at last and could see what a generous man he was. Kane even offered to allow Mr. Gates to buy some land with him, at what Houston suspected was a bargain price.

As they were leaving, Kane said, “Your sister ain’t like you at all.”

Houston asked him what he meant but he wouldn’t explain.

At the park, she introduced Kane to other engaged couples. For once, Kane relaxed rather than worrying about the amount of work he was missing. When a woman referred to Kane’s previous mishap of dumping the food in Houston’s lap, Kane stiffened, but then, when she sighed at his romantic gesture of carrying Houston, Kane ostentatiously denied that he’d done anything extraordinary.

An ice-cream parlor across from the park was open for a few hours on Sunday and Kane treated everyone to sodas and Hire’s root beer.

At the end of the day, Houston returned home with stars in her eyes. She’d had no idea he could be so charming.

“I never had time to do this kind of thing before. I always thought it was a waste of time, but it’s nice. You think I did all right with your friends? I didn’t act too much like a stableboy?”

“Not in the least.”

“Can you ride a horse?”

“Yes,” she said, hope in her voice.

“I’ll pick you up in the mornin’ and we’ll ride. Like that?”

“Very much.”

Without another word, Kane put his hands in his pockets and went down the walk of the Chandler house whistling.

Kane showed up on Monday morning at five o’clock, before anyone was out of bed. As soon as Houston heard the movement downstairs, she knew it could be only one person. No one ever dressed faster in a riding habit in her life.

“You took long enough,” Kane said, as he led the way to two horses loaded with heavy saddlebags.

“Food,” was all Kane said before mounting.

It was a good thing she’d been telling the truth when she said she could ride, she thought, hours later, as she followed Kane’s horse up the side of a mountain.

They rode west, past the Taggert estate, toward the tail of the Rocky Mountains that ran along one side of Chandler. They travelled across flat land covered with fierce little chamisa plants and on until they reached the hills.

Kane led the way up the piñon-dotted hills, up higher until they reached pines and rock formations. He weaved his horse through the spruce and fir to halt before a breathtaking view of Chandler far below them.

“How did you find this place?” she whispered.

“When you play, you ride bicycles and drink tea with other people. I come up here.” As he dismounted, he nodded his head toward a steep rise above them. “I gotta cabin up there, but it’s pretty rough goin’, not for ladies.”

He began unloading food from his saddlebags as Houston dismounted by herself.

As they ate, they sat on the ground and talked.

“How did you make your money?” she asked.

“When Fenton kicked me out, I went to California. Pam had given me $500 and I used it to buy a played-out gold mine. I was able to hack out a couple thousand dollars’ worth of the gold, and I used the money to buy land in San Francisco. Two days after I bought the land I sold it for half again what I paid for it. I bought more land, sold it, bought a nail factory, sold it, bought a little railroad line…You get the idea.”

“Did you know that Pamela Fenton is a widow now?” Houston asked as if she weren’t interested in his answer.

“Since when?”

“I believe her husband died a few months ago.”

Kane stared at Houston for several long minutes, as if seeing her for the first time. “It’s funny how things work out, ain’t it?”

“How do you mean?”

“If I hadn’t asked you to my house, your sister wouldn’t have gone out with Westfield and you’d be marryin’ him now.”

She drew in her breath. “And if you’d known Pamela was free, you’d not have asked me to your house. Mr. Taggert, you’re free to break our engagement at any time. If you’d rather have—.”

“You ain’t gonna start that again, are you?” he said, rising. “Why don’t you try sayin’ somethin’ different sometime?”

Relief flooded Houston as she stood. “I just thought perhaps—.”

Kane turned and grabbed her against him. “Damned woman, please shut up,” he said as he kissed her.

Houston obeyed.

Early on Tuesday, Willie informed Houston that Miss Lavinia LaRue would meet her by the bandstand in Fenton Park at nine that morning.

Houston was met by a garishly dressed woman, short, dark, with an enormous bosom. Wonder how much is paddin’, Houston thought.

“Good morning, Miss LaRue. It was good of you to meet me so early.”

“It’s late for me. I ain’t been to bed yet. So you’re the one Kane’s marryin’. I told ’im he could buy hisself a lady if he wanted one.”

Houston gave her an icy look.

“Oh, all right,” Lavinia said. “You didn’t expect me to hug you, did you? After all, you are takin’ away a source of income to me.”

“Is that an Mr. Taggert is to you?”

“He’s a good lover, if that’s what you mean but, truth to tell, he scares me. I never know what he wants from me. Acts like he can’t bear me one minute, the next he can’t get enough.”

Houston knew she’d felt the same way but said nothing.

“What’d you wanta see me about?”

“I thought perhaps you could tell me something about him. I’ve really known him a very short time.”

“You mean what he likes in bed?”

“No! Certainly not.” She didn’t like to think of Kane and another woman. “As a man. What can you tell me about the man?”

Lavinia stepped away, her back to Houston. “You know, one time I did think of somethin’, but I know it was silly.”

“And what was that?”

“Most of the time he acts like he don’t care, but one time he saw that friend of his, Edan, out the window walkin’ with a woman, and Kane asked if I liked him. If I liked him, Kane, I mean. He didn’t wait for me to answer ’fore he left, but I thought then, he’s a man no one’s ever loved. ’Course that couldn’t be true, a man with all his money must have lots of women in love with him.”

“Do you love him? Not his money, but him. If he had no money—.”

“If he had no money, I’d not get near ’im. I told you, he scares me.”

Out of her pocketbook, Houston pulled a check. “The bank president has instructions to cash this only if he sees that you’ve purchased a train ticket to another state.”

Lavinia took the check. “I’m takin’ this because I wanta leave this two-bit town. But no money could buy me if I didn’t wanta leave.”

“Of course not. Again, Miss LaRue, thank you.”

*  *  *

On Tuesday afternoon, just when Houston was getting tired of yet more wedding plans, Leora Vaughn and her fiancé, Jim Michaelson, stopped by the Chandler house on a tandem bicycle. They asked if Houston could possibly persuade Kane to rent another double bike and ride in the park with them.

After Houston had changed, borrowing Blair’s Turkish pants, she rode on the handlebars up the hill to Kane’s house.

“Goddamn Gould!” They could hear Kane’s shouts through the open window.

“I’ll ask him,” Houston said.

“Do you think he’d mind if we waited inside?” Leora asked, her eyes greedily roaming over the front of Kane’s house.

“I think he’d be pleased.”

Houston never knew how Kane was going to greet her, but this time he seemed glad of the diversion. He was a little hesitant about the bicycle, since he’d never ridden one before, but he mastered it in minutes—then began challenging the other men in the park to races.

By late afternoon, when they returned the rented bicycles, Kane was saying he was going to buy a bicycle manufacturing plant. “Maybe I’ll not make any money off it,” he said, “but sometimes I like to gamble. Like recently I bought stock in a company that makes a drink called Coca-Cola. I’ll probably lose ever’thing.” He shrugged. “You can’t always win.”

In the evening they went to a taffy pull at Sarah Oakley’s house.

Kane was the oldest person in the group, but all the games and diversions were new to him, and he seemed to have the most fun. He always seemed a little shocked that these young society people accepted him.

And it wasn’t because he was easy to accept. He was outspoken, intolerant of any ideas he didn’t agree with, and always aggressive. He told Jim Michaelson he was a fool to be content to run his father’s store, that he should expand, get some business down from Denver if he insisted on staying in Chandler. He told Sarah Oakley she ought to get Houston to help her buy dresses because the ones she wore weren’t as pretty as they should be. He got taffy on Mrs. Oakley’s draperies and the next day had delivered to her fifty yards of silk velvet from Denver. He bent a wheel of a rented bicycle, then yelled for twenty minutes at the owner for having inferior merchandise. He told Cordelia Farrell she could get a better man than John Silverman, and that all John wanted was somebody to take care of his three motherless children.

Houston prayed for the floor to open up and swallow her when Kane invited everyone to his house for dinner on Wednesday night. “I ain’t got any furniture downstairs,” he said, “so we’ll do it like Houston done for me one night—a rug, pillows to lay down on, candles, everything.”

When three women dissolved into giggles at the look of pain and disbelief on Houston’s red face, Kane said, “Did I miss somethin’?”

And Houston soon learned that everything connected with Kane involved an argument. He called it “discussin’” but it was more a verbal wrestle. On Tuesday evening, she asked him to sign some blank cards, beside her signature, which would be included in the little boxes of cake to be given away at the wedding.

“Like hell I will!” he said. “I ain’t puttin’ my name on somethin’ blank. Somebody could write whatever they like above it.”

“It’s tradition,” Houston said, “everyone puts autographed cards in the boxes of cake that people take home.”

“They can eat cake at the weddin’. They don’t need little boxes of it. It’ll melt anyway.”

“It’s to dream on, to make wishes on, to—.”

“You want me to sign blank cards for a dumb idea like that?”

Houston lost that bout, but she won about hiring men to help the ladies from their carriages and women to turn Kane’s small drawing room into a cloakroom.

“How many people you plannin’ on havin’, anyway?”

She looked at her list. “At last count, 520. Most of Leander’s, relatives are travelling in from the East. Is there someone special you wanted to invite besides your uncles and cousins, the Taggerts?”

“My
what?
”

They were off again, and again Houston won. Kane said he’d never met his relatives and had no desire to meet them. Houston, who couldn’t tell him she knew Jean, or he’d no doubt ask how, said she was inviting them whether he knew them or not. For some reason, Kane didn’t want them there and, after several minutes of arguing, he said they’d show up in coal miner’s clothes.

Houston called him a snob. She thought she might die rather than tell him she’d already arranged for clothes to be made for his relatives—at his expense.

Before Kane could reply, Opal walked into the room, bade them good evening and sat dawn with her embroidery.

Kane appealed to Opal, who said, “Well then, you shall have to buy them new clothes, won’t you?”

By the time Kane left, Houston felt as if she’d survived a storm at sea, but Kane seemed unperturbed. He kissed her in the hallway and said he’d see her tomorrow.

“Will everything always be an argument?” she whispered, sitting down heavily beside her mother.

“I should think it will be,” Opal said cheerfully. “Why don’t you take a long, hot bath?”

“I need a three-day-long one,” Houston muttered, rising.

Kane stood before the tall windows in his office, a cigar clamped between his teeth.

“Are you planning to work or daydream?” Edan asked from behind him.

Kane didn’t turn around. “They’re all just kids,” he said.

“Who are?”

“Houston and all her friends. They’ve never had to grow up, to worry about where their next meal’s comin’ from. Houston thinks food comes out of the kitchen, clothes from her dressmaker’s and money from the bank.”

“I’m not sure you’re right. Houston seems pretty sensible to me, and I think her being jilted by Westfield made her grow up some. Those things mean a lot to a woman.”

Kane turned back to face his friend. “She’s consoled herself well enough,” he said, his gesture encompassing the house.

“I’m not so sure she’s after just your money,” Edan said thoughtfully.

Kane snorted. “No doubt it’s the delicate way I handle a teacup. I want you to watch her.”

“You mean spy on her?”

“She’s engaged to a man with money. I’d hate to have her kidnapped.”

Edan raised an eyebrow. “Is that it, or are you worried she might be seeing Fenton again?”

“She spends most of every Wednesday inside that church of hers, and I want to know what she’s doin’.”

“So it’s the handsome Reverend Thomas you’re worried about.”

“I’m damn well not worried about anybody!” Kane shouted. “Just do what I say and watch her.”

With a look of disgust, Edan stood. “I wonder if Houston has any idea what she’s getting herself into.”

Kane turned back to the window. “A woman’ll do a lot to get her hands on millions.”

Edan didn’t respond before he left the room.

Houston, dressed in the hot, padded suit of Sadie, handled her team of horses with ease as she made her way to the Little Pamela mine. She’d discussed it with Reverend Thomas and decided it was all right to talk to Jean about the forthcoming wedding. Houston still liked to think Jean was safe in her ignorance of Sadie’s identity, but Reverend Thomas had, in a patronizing way, again told Houston the secrecy was long gone.

Now, as Houston travelled to the mine, she began to feel an almost overwhelming urge to talk to Jean. Jean always seemed so quiet and sensible, and even though she’d never met Kane, she was his cousin.

Houston got through the guarded gate with no trouble or challenge and went straight to the Taggart house.

Jean was waiting for her. “No problems?” she asked, then stopped and stared at Houston. “I’m glad you finally know,” she said softly.

“Let’s get the food distributed and we can talk,” Houston said.

Hours later they were back at Jean’s little house. Houston pulled a packet of tea from her pocket. “For you.”

They were silent as Jean prepared the tea, then when they were both seated, Jean spoke. “So, we’re to be related by marriage.”

Houston held the chipped mug in her hands. “In five days. You will be there, won’t you?”

“Of course. I’ll pull my Cinderella gown from the closet and come in my glass coach.”

“You needn’t worry about any of that. I made all the necessary arrangements. Jacob Fenton has given permission for any Taggert to be allowed to come and go. My dressmaker is waiting and Mr. Bagly, the tailor, has been given instructions. All you have to do is bring your father, Rafe and Ian.”

“That’s all, is it?” Jean asked, smiling. “My father will be no problem, but Rafe is another matter. And unfortunately, Ian is just like his uncle.”

With a sigh, Houston looked down at her mug. “Let me guess. First of all, you have no way of knowing whether Rafe will like the idea of attending the wedding or not because he is completely unpredictable. He could laugh and be happy to go, or he could possibly shout and refuse to attend.”

For a moment, Jean gaped. “Don’t tell me Kane is a
real
Taggert.”