Authors: Eileen Charbonneau

Waltzing In Ragtime (33 page)

BOOK: Waltzing In Ragtime

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“Matthew?”

“Hmmmm?”

“How old are you now?”

“Twenty-eight, I think. Wait. Almost twenty-nine.”

“And I’m the third Mrs. Hart?”

He winced. “Well, yes. Only second, consumated.”

“Second? Do you mean to tell me you didn’t — with Lottie?”

“Not after we got married. She was too sick by then. Just before.”

“I see.”

“Do I scare you, ’Lana?”

“No, Matthew.”

“That’s good. I’m scared enough for the both of us.”

“Too frightened to consummate this marriage?”

“Well, no.”

“Good.”

He took her hand and they returned home. They did not drift off to sleep in each others’ arms until the sunlight rose over the eastern horizon.

Winifred Whittaker was lighting another cobalt blue glassed votive candle in the Transcendental Hall when she heard the scurrying above her. That was the room where Olana slept when she visited. Was it a sign? She listened carefully, but the sound had no set rhythm. It spelled only gibberish in Morse Code. Miss Whittaker decided to try for contact.

She took Olana’s nightgown from it’s red velvet cover, then its original wrap of butcher paper, the wrap it had hastily been tied in when delivered by that woman in Olana’s clothes. A tall, strong woman. Olana was lucky to have such friends. She didn’t need to bring this assurance that her niece had escaped her dreadful marriage all on her own. But Winifred was glad to have it. Glad to help her niece keep another secret.

“Dear child. Send me some news, to comfort your family. Your father is ill, your mother having her nervous spasms. That man you married pokes his finger in my face and calls me a meddlesome old woman. Well, I am a meddlesome old woman. One who loves you, and can keep a secret. Don’t come back until the time is right, only tell me if you’re well and happy?”

Miss Whittaker sat back in the teakwood chair, the one that once belonged to a high priestess of Bali. She put the ceremonial sword in her lap. She took up the nightgown and held its fine weave to her face. She waited. She caught the scent of burning sage. Burning sage and contentment.

“Extraordinary,” she marveled. “Good girl. Happy. In his arms. Tell him I haven’t forgotten. I’ll keep looking for the train.”

From the upstairs room came a crash. One of the cats, that’s all, Winifred thought, annoyed at the interruption.

When she reached the room, she found it ransacked. A cold chill, then someone ripping Olana’s nightgown from her hands. Someone who had already caused harm, great harm. “Mr. Trap!” she screamed before swinging the ceremonial sword. “Help me!”

thirty-four

Matthew’s grandmother threw Olana’s cloak at him. “Get out. A walk will do you both good!”

“What’s gotten into her today?” he groused, climbing above the first rise.

“Slow down,” Olana called. But he was lost in his annoyance. “Matthew, please,” she tried, louder.

He stopped, turned. She slipped down to her knees. She felt his hands cup her elbows. What right had he to move so fast? “’Lana —”

“Get away from me!”

There. The power of her voice could still stop him. When the circling pain was over she touched his face. “Matthew. I think it’s started.”

They didn’t have to say anything to the women. Even Possum, peering out from Vita’s skirts, knew. Annie flashed a triumphant smile at her daughter.

“Told you. Before midnight we’ll have ourselves a guest. One who won’t use the front door.”

“A bet,” Matthew fumed. “A damned bet. Is that what’s had us walking the county around, and put you in a snit?”

Olana leaned on his arm. “You think so, Annie? Tonight?”

“If you keep moving.”

Olana raised her shining eyes to Matthew’s. He kissed her full on the mouth, in front of his daughter, mother, and grandmother.

“Some of that won’t hurt progress neither,” Annie Smithers observed.

Matthew left her once, when she insisted he take his afternoon swim with Possum. While he was gone, she held onto the women’s arms and breathed against the folds in Vita’s apron.

“What was Possum’s birth like?” she asked them in between her pains.

Annie smiled gently. “There’s no one left who knows, child. Possum was born out on the island. Seal Woman drugged Matthew senseless so he wouldn’t worry at her cries. Broke his heart.”

“I can’t be like that, Annie. I need him.”

“’Course you do. And he needs to help. Don’t put yourself in her shadow.”

Olana screamed as the pain hit a sudden peak. She felt the cool cloth against her forehead. “Down,” Vita urged, “send the cry down.”

Easy for them to order her about. She yanked in an angry breath. “How?” she demanded, holding on to the “ow,” until it ground between her toes.

“That’s it!” Vita laughed. “That’s it exactly!”

Olana smiled faintly and closed her eyes. When the next pain drove her lids open, Matthew was rubbing her back whispering, “Yes … wonderful,” against her ear. She smiled to see his gleaming wet daughter come out from under his arm.

“Would you teach my baby to swim, Possum?” she asked.

The girl’s smaller fingers followed Matthew’s path. “Sure,” she said.

Time became fluid, the house hushed. The small fingers massaging Olana’s back disappeared.

“Where’s Possum?” she asked.

“Mama brought her to bed an hour ago. Said she was just resting in between them, like you.”

“I didn’t scare her, did I?”

“No.” He smiled. “You’re being splendid.”

“Am I?”

“You dazzle me, Miss Whittaker,” he told her.

The resting time in between her pains lessened from minutes to what seemed like seconds. The intensity grew so that she did not have time to catch her breath, even to scream. Another. So soon?

“I can’t do this anymore!”

“All right. Give it to me.”

She laughed. Where did she find the breath to laugh? She breathed. Deep, deeper. The pain lessened, was gone. “How did you do that?” she demanded.

“What?”

Olana felt a surge of energy. “I want to walk.”

Matthew lifted his head. “Gran?” he asked.

“Let the lady do what she wants,” Annie Smithers gave out one of her rare, full smiles. “Go on, we’ll get the room cozy.”

When they reached the shoreline, Olana tried to memorize the sky, the position of the quarter moon. She hung onto Matthew’s shoulders as the pains came. They climbed the dunes, watched a single lit window at the mission.

“Do you think the friars pray for us, Matthew, though we’re sinners in the eyes of the world?”

“Let’s not give a damn for the eyes of the world tonight, shall we?” She loved his voice, even when it rumbled low in his displeasure. The moon’s light couldn’t hide the weariness in her lover’s eyes. “Would you kiss me?”

She urged him on even as her belly hardened between them, even as the pressure, the pain mounted along with their passion. At the peak of both, something broke. Olana felt a great gush between her legs. Her knees buckled. She called, but he’d already caught her, laid her gently on her side in the sand.

“That’s so much better,” she murmured, feeling him gently place his coat over her shoulders.

“Your water’s broke, Olana.”

“Oh? Good.”

“This is what the women have been waiting for. You got to get up, darlin’.”

“Why?”

“To have the baby.”

“Baby? Not now, Matthew. I’m so tired. I’ll have it tomorrow.”

He knelt back in the sand and rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hands, like a weary little boy. Then he took her arms.

“No,” she protested. “I have to get down.”

“Down?”

“Down, yes. You know, dowwwn …” She heard sounds coming from inside her. Deep, guttural sounds that felt almost as good as the pushing she couldn’t control.

“Oh, my,” she said as it finished. “That felt fine. Almost as fine as when you’re deep inside me and —”

“Olana. We got to get home,” Matthew said against her ear.

She smiled. Her hand tugged at his suspenders. “You’ve got too many clothes on,” she said. “So do I.”

“Behave yourself,” he groused, taking her full weight up gently in his arms. “The baby’s coming, ’Lana.”

“Really?”

“Don’t want the women to miss this, do you?”

She circled his neck and breathed in his piney cedar scent, heightened by salty sweat. “No,” she admitted, licking his ear. He stumbled.

“Jesus, ’Lana!”

“Don’t you dare blaspheme at me, Matthew Hart!” She giggled as he brought her through the last gate. She saw the lights of home and the women pacing the length of the porch.

The borning room was clean and warm and waiting, like the night the Amadeo children were born. How many others were born here, Olana wondered. The thought seemed to fill the room
with cries of pain and new life. Olana added hers — deep, guttural, driven by a force she’d surrendered to.

“Matthew?”

“I’m here, love.”

“Will it be soon?”

“Very soon.”

He wiped her brow. She rested her face against his. Olana felt secure in his arms, and under the watchful gazes of the women at the foot of the bed. She’d never heard Annie Smithers’ voice so soft.

“I’m pouring on the oil, Olana. You remember that part?”

She smelled cloves mixed with the roses’ scent. “Yes. Annie? Vita? Another —”

“Yes, we see your pains coming now too, darling girl,” Vita assured her. “That’s it, good …”

Olana pulled herself up and groaned until she thought she was coming apart. Something finally passed through.

“The head!” Vita proclaimed.

“Help me,” Olana breathed out, closing her eyes, forgetting everything except that she was split apart and open, vulnerable, forever.

“Feel,” Annie Smithers urged, bringing her back. “Feel your baby’s head, Olana, it’s almost over. Matthew, help your lady!”

Vita brought Olana’s fingers, twined in Matthew’s, down to touch the slippery hardness between her legs.

“The baby,” she remembered. “Matthew, is that the baby?”

She heard his choked sob before the rushing urge took her over again. The women’s voices were chiming echoes of each other. “All right … easy now, Olana. Good, good. Perfect, little … girl!”

A squirming baby. Again. Alive. So alive. In her arms. Her own. And the pain darting out to the farthest corners of her memory, leaving only shudders of joy in its wake.

“Matthew!” she called out. His face was buried in her back.

The baby lifted her head from between Olana’s breasts, blinked back even the dim light of the borning room.

“Matthew,” Olana coaxed softly, “Lavinia’s here. She’s looking for you. She knows your voice, your hands. Come meet her.”

He raised his head until she felt his chin at her shoulder. “Olana,” he said in quiet awe, “she’s you all over again.”

Annie Smithers snorted. “Best find your spectacles, Matthew Hart. This child’s got hair as light as a wheatfield in August.”

James Whittaker stared across the table at his son-in-law. It was so difficult, keeping focused on this new calamity. Since Olana’s disappearance, he left more and more to Darius Moore. The business, the stolen payrolls, the unrest at the timber mills, the accusations. But not this. Winnie was his sister. His only family left. He had to concentrate. He had to help Winnie, just as he had to keep his wife well, had to find Olana. James Whittaker knew, finally, what was important, now that he was losing everything.

“The dead man was named McPeal, sir. A waterfront character.”

“Waterfront? Does he know anything of Olana? You remember how she had such an interest in the underside of the trade after Matt brought Selby home?”

Moore bristled. “There is no connection, sir.”

“But he was stealing Olana’s nightgown — Winnie keeps saying that!”

“Your sister says a lot of things, Mr. Whittaker. That she put herself in her Mr. Trap’s care, that he killed McPeal for her, kept the Carsons locked in until help came.”

“Mr. Trap. We thought him harmless within the family, you see?”

“Never did, sir, no. Neither will the investigating authorities.”

“Oh, this is very unfortunate.”

“More than unfortunate, Mr. Whittaker. Inadmissible, as evidence. What you have humored as her eccentricity, will now permit her assailants to go free.”

Darius Moore never missed an opportunity to turn the knife.
James thought that marriage to Olana might have warmed the man a little. Instead she returned from Japan almost as cold, as distant as he, except for her eyes. They were fevered, frightened, accusing. He could no longer remember her, even as a child, without those haunted eyes. Disappeared. Again. If only he could locate Matt. Matt would track her, didn’t that lively Irishman say he could track anything that had the breath of life? Was she alive — his life, his hope, his future? Or was that why everything else was falling apart — his wife’s always fragile health, his business, now Winnie?

Did Darius Moore mourn Olana’s loss, James wondered bitterly. Not the way Dora and he and Winnie did. But yes, with a determined intensity that made him a force, a force to lean on, now. Now that he was feeling so damned peculiar himself.

“A trial will call your sister to the stand. Will you have her humiliated?”

“What is my choice? These are dangerous men. The court might understand —”

“Perhaps. At the expense of any sanity your sister has left.”

“I resent that, sir!”

The fine, manicured fingers passed over his son-in-law’s face. If only he could change that face. If only Olana had married Matt. Why didn’t she? Why didn’t he ask her that before she went steaming off to Japan? None of this would be happening.

“I’ve overstepped my boundaries, sir,” the man before him said. “I apologize.”

James Whittaker exhaled. Warmth, yes. There in his eyes. His son-in-law loved Olana, as much as a man like him could love. “What are we going to do, Darius?”

“I have a proposal.”

“Yes?”

“I will talk with the attorneys privately. About an insanity plea.”

BOOK: Waltzing In Ragtime

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