Wanton Angel (28 page)

On Friday Eli came into the store and ordered more supplies for the building of the cabins. He was dressed in work clothes, and he was filthy, for though he no longer worked at the smelter, he was helping to put up the new cabins.

For the first time Bonnie was financially solvent in her own right. She closed the store early that day and hurried down the street to the dressmaker’s shop, where she persuaded the proprietress to alter the one gown that remained of her extensive New York wardrobe, a pretty frock of flowered lawn, perfect for the party Genoa would be giving the next day, weather permitting.

On her way out of the little shop, she nearly collided with Tuttle O’Banyon, who looked hale and hearty, even though he was smudged with printer’s ink from head to foot.

As proudly as if he’d published the whole paper by himself, he handed Bonnie a copy of the
Northridge News.
“Mr. Hutcheson told me to give you this,” he said, as Bonnie unfolded the thin paper to look at the front page. “Nobody else has seen it yet.”

Bonnie suffered a twinge of dread, despite the sunny weather and the lawn party Genoa planned for the following day, as she read the articles Webb had wanted her to see.

Webb had written another scathing piece about the union, congratulating the workers of Northridge on their return to work and condemning Mr. Denning and his men as “money-grubbing outsiders.” Next to this was an article defending Bonnie as the town’s true and only mayor.

After thanking Tuttle, Bonnie started back toward home, reading and rereading the piece touting her as a brave local political figure. “Merciful heavens,” she muttered to herself, “he makes it sound as though I’ve had greatness thrust upon me.”

Back at the store, Katie excitedly announced that they’d
all been invited to supper with Miss McKutchen. It seemed that Genoa had some sort of announcement to make, one that couldn’t wait until the lawn party scheduled for the next day.

Intrigued, Bonnie wondered if Genoa’s proclamation had anything to do with the way she’d been looking at Seth Callahan during the community meeting Sunday afternoon. Could it be that Miss McKutchen’s days as a spinster were limited?

Bonnie smiled at the thought as she dressed herself and Rose for a pleasant evening. Genoa thoughtfully sent her carriage for the three of them, and when they arrived, she was waiting on the veranda, her face glowing.

Bonnie, carrying a squirming and impatient Rose Marie up the walk, was all but bursting with curiosity.

Genoa took Rose Marie from Bonnie and at the same time trilled, “Oh, Bonnie, I’ve bought a telephone and Mr. Callahan is installing it at this very moment!”

A little disappointed, Bonnie frowned. Was this the much anticipated announcement? “A telephone? But, Genoa, there is no wiring for—”

“Fiddle-faddle,” Genoa chimed, flushed with something more than the delight of owning Northridge’s first telephone. “When the lines are put up, I’ll be ready!”

They crossed the porch and entered the grand house, Genoa leading the way, her eyes bright and her mouth forming what appeared to be a permanent smile. “Genoa McKutchen, what are you up to?” Bonnie demanded, determined to get to the bottom of things.

Genoa said nothing, but only beamed upon poor Seth, who was kneeling on the entryway floor, surrounded by tools, printed instructions and coils of wire, muttering to himself. He did have the look of a man in love.

Bonnie gave her sister-in-law an impatient and admittedly unladylike nudge. “You are being deliberately mysterious,” she accused. “Admit it!”

“No wires within a hundred miles!” blustered Seth, perspiration glistening on his flushed face.

Genoa laughed gleefully, but she refused to say anything beyond “I admit it.” They came to a stop in the parlor, where Susan Farley and Lizbeth were chatting over cups of
tea. Susan, recovered from the birth of her son but still in mourning for her husband, smiled wanly at Bonnie.

“I mean to come and settle my account with you as soon as I’m able,” the young widow said.

Bonnie removed her cloak and sat down next to Susan on the long sofa. “Don’t fret about that. You just concentrate on getting your strength back.”

“Susan is going to find a housekeeping job when she’s a bit better,” Lizbeth said, giving the statement as much importance as if the woman had been planning to run for the Senate or become the captain of an oceangoing vessel.

Susan was still quite thin and pale, though it might have been her black dress that emphasized her pallor. “I wish I’d gone to business school when I was a girl. My sister did, and now she’s a typewriter.”

Bonnie always wanted to giggle when she heard someone referred to as a typewriter. It sounded so odd. “You don’t want to work as a housekeeper?” she asked, just to make conversation. Besides Genoa, there wasn’t one other person in Northridge who employed servants, and Genoa was loyal to her efficient Martha, so the prospects of employment in domestic service weren’t particularly promising.

“I wouldn’t mind,” Susan admitted, and her eyes shifted to the doorway of the parlor, lighting up. “Especially if I could work for a fine gentleman.”

Bonnie followed Susan’s gaze and blushed when she saw Eli standing just inside the spacious room, looking clean and handsome in his fresh clothes.
Over my dead body, Susan Farley,
she thought to herself, and she made a mental note to introduce the pretty widow to Webb at tomorrow’s party. Webb and any other marriageable man she could catch by the scruff of the neck.

Eli’s attention was all for Rose Marie, who hurled herself at him in a flurry of glee and was promptly swept up into his arms. Love for the little girl shone in his face, and Bonnie was both touched and disturbed. After all, if Eli became too close to his daughter, he might start thinking about taking her away again.

When he carried Rose Marie out of the house, through the French doors leading into Genoa’s flower garden, Bonnie waited as long as she could bear and then followed after,
telling herself that she was only protecting her interests as a mother.

Eli and Rose had progressed as far as the pond’s edge, where they were admiring the pretty swan-shaped boats anchored to the long dock. Bonnie knew the boats had once been extravagant playthings, given to Genoa and Eli as gifts by their grandfather.

“Ride! Ride!” Rose Marie was crowing, pointing one fat little hand toward the boats.

Bonnie hung back, her heart in her throat.

Eli laughed. Unaware of Bonnie, he carried Rose along the dock. “No ride,” he said. “Your aunt will be wanting you to eat your supper soon.” He drew an exaggerated breath and peered into one of the two boats. “What’s this?”

Rose peered, too, and immediately began to struggle in her excitement. “Doll!” she shrieked. “Doll!”

Eli bent and lifted a doll nearly as big as Rose Marie herself from inside the boat. It had golden sausage curls, Bonnie could see, and huge blue eyes that would close when it lay flat. Its dress was pink and ruffly, trimmed with sparkling silver threads.

Rose was almost feverish with delight as Eli carried her back to the grassy bank sloping toward the pond and surrendered the beautiful doll to the child before he noticed Bonnie.

“You’ll spoil her,” Bonnie said, unable to voice her true fear.

“It’s little enough to do for my own daughter,” Eli replied, and there was no challenge in his tone, only a flat statement of fact.

Bonnie was near tears, feeling that strange sensation of bereftness that nearly always came over her whenever she saw Eli and Rose Marie together, but she spoke with a smile. “She’s wild for dolls. Where did you find such a pretty one?”

“I bought it in Spokane,” Eli replied, his eyes caressing Bonnie, reminding her of the special time they’d shared in that city. “I had an extra day on my hands, as it happened.”

Bonnie’s heart was thick in her throat. “How do you like living at Earline’s?” she asked, and then she could have
kicked herself for inviting pain by bringing up a subject in which it was inherent.

“It’s all right,” Eli answered. “The food is good and, so far, Hutcheson and I have managed to get along.”

“There’s no reason why you shouldn’t,” Bonnie said, her eyes sliding from Eli’s face to watch Rose Marie fussing over her new doll. “Webb’s a nice man, and he does support your position regarding the union.”

Eli was silent and, when Bonnie made herself look at him, she saw her own sadness mirrored in his face.

“P
RAY IT DOESN’T
rain,” Genoa said to Bonnie, as she handed up another Chinese lantern to be hung from one of the many wires crisscrossing her side yard.

Bonnie affixed the bright orange lantern in its proper place and smiled wryly as she got down from her stepstool and moved it ahead a few feet. Genoa had put all her guests to work; Susan and Lizbeth were placing wire hoops in the grass for croquet, while Eli and Seth carried lawn chairs and tables of various lengths into the yard. “I wouldn’t worry, Genoa,” Bonnie said, climbing back onto her stool, taking another paper lantern from her friend’s outstretched hands and attaching it to the wire. “You know what they say. ‘Red sky at night, sailor’s delight.’”

Genoa assessed the crimson sunset raging in the western sky with caution. “We are not sailors,” she said. Pensively she added, “The river is high, Bonnie, even for this time of year.”

Everyone, Bonnie suspected, secretly worried about the rising waters of the Columbia. If the sunny spell was to continue, melting last winter’s heavy snows in the mountains of Canada, and then was followed by another hard rain …

The determined Bonnie shook off the now familiar sense
of foreboding that came over her whenever the state of the river was mentioned. “Let’s think happy thoughts,” she said. “You’re giving a party tomorrow, and it will be a grand one.”

Genoa still seemed unsettled, though a glance in Seth’s direction spawned a tentative smile. Bonnie moved her stool ahead and Genoa handed her another lantern, this one bright blue, after inserting a candle in the little holder inside it. “I have the strangest feeling,” Eli’s sister insisted vaguely.

Bonnie was busy trying to keep her balance on the stool and hang the lantern at the same time. “What sort of feeling?”

Genoa sighed. “‘Eat, drink and be merry,’” she quoted, “‘for tomorrow, we die.’”

Bonnie stopped, her hands still stretched above her head, and stared down at her friend. “My goodness, Genoa, what a somber thing to say. Are you feeling all right?”

But Genoa merely handed up another lantern.

By nightfall, all the preparations had been made—the pretty lanterns were in place, as were the tables that would hold refreshments, and the croquet hoops arched in the grass.

Bonnie joined in the conversation that followed, when everyone gathered in the larger of Genoa’s two parlors to talk, but she had caught her sister-in-law’s melancholy mood, and she wasn’t able to concentrate. Finally she went upstairs to collect a sleeping Rose, ready to go home.

She had not noticed Eli leaving the parlor, but when Bonnie reached the room he was standing beside Rose’s bed, watching his daughter sleep.

“Don’t awaken her,” he said, when Bonnie would have gathered the little girl into her arms.

Both Rose Marie’s chubby arms were wrapped possessively around her new doll, and a sweet sadness was stirred in the depths of Bonnie’s spirit, something akin to the quiet apprehension Genoa was feeling. “It’s time for us to go home,” she answered in a whisper.

Eli turned to face Bonnie, a hollow, reflective look in his magnificent eyes. “Where is that, Bonnie? Where, exactly, is ‘home’?”

Bonnie moved to the windows before answering, pushing the lace curtain aside with one hand. She couldn’t see the river for the darkness, but she had an ominous sense of its presence and its rage. “Sometimes,” she sighed, “I don’t think we truly have homes in this life. We light here and there, like moths, but maybe we don’t really go home until we return to God.”

There were patches of light glowing in the night, lamps burning in the windows of Northridge houses. Houses, Bonnie knew from experience, were not necessarily homes.

“You seem to be in a philosophical mood tonight,” Eli observed quietly. “Is something wrong?”

Everything is wrong,
Bonnie wanted to say, but, of course, she didn’t. She turned away from the window and her thoughts of homes and rivers and managed a semblance of a smile. “Wasn’t this your room when you were a boy?”

Eli folded his arms and looked around him. “Yes. Don’t you remember, Bonnie? We spent our wedding night in this room.”

Bonnie did remember, and the memory was traitorously sweet. She had been a virgin, at once frightened and eager, and Eli had taught her to love so gently, so patiently that her fear had soon vanished. “You were kind,” she said softly.

“I was in love,” Eli replied, as though that explained everything. And Bonnie supposed that it did.

Bonnie permitted herself a smile. “I was so amazed,” she recalled in a faraway voice, “that you even noticed me, let alone loved me.”

It seemed natural when Eli came to her, taking her upper arms gently into his hands. There was a sad sort of humor in his eyes. “To see you was to love you, Bonnie. Both Hutcheson and Durrant would probably agree.”

In view of her weakness where this man was concerned, Bonnie felt a need to establish a certain emotional distance. It was all too easy, she knew, to fall under his spell. “Have you noticed the way Genoa looks at Seth? Is it just wishful thinking on my part, or is she fond of the man?”

Eli’s hands were light on her bare arms now—why had she worn a sleeveless dress?—caressing her. “Seth and Genoa were very close at one time,” he said. “They were engaged, in fact.”

It was cool in that room, Bonnie knew that for a fact, but she felt feverish. And the palms of Eli’s hands kept grazing the bare flesh of her upper arms. “Engaged? What happened?”

“My grandfather didn’t approve of the match. He sent Genoa away to Europe to give things time to cool down and, as usual, he got his way.”

Bonnie had known and liked Josiah McKutchen, seeing him as a benevolent benefactor, but now she felt a stirring of resentment. How different Genoa’s life might have been, if the old man hadn’t interfered so high-handedly! She sighed. “I had the distinct impression that Genoa was planning to make some kind of momentous announcement tonight.”