Wanton Angel (36 page)

Before Bonnie could answer, Genoa leaped into the conversation. “And of course we can’t continue teaching the adult reading classes here,” she said with happy resignation. “We’ll need to send away for building supplies for the new schoolhouse. Mr. Callahan has very kindly provided the lumber, but we will require chalkboards and wiring and such. I have a list made up. Could you order the needed items right away, Bonnie?”

“I’ll send for them on Monday,” Bonnie replied. The light of good fortune was warm, and she allowed herself a moment to bask in it. She thought of Forbes’s raid on her bank account and would have smiled, if it hadn’t been for the fact that his name reminded her of Lizbeth’s private heartbreak. “Thank you, Genoa,” she said. And then, to make conversation, she added, “Where has Seth gotten off to? I haven’t seen him since we arrived.”

Incredibly Lizbeth let out a loud wail at those innocent words and fled the room in tears.

“Good heavens,” said Bonnie, setting her teacup aside and standing up to follow after her friend.

“Do let her be, Bonnie,” Genoa instructed gently. “There is nothing anyone can say to cheer her.”

Reluctantly Bonnie sat down again. The sound of Lizbeth’s grief was laced through with a mingling of father-and-daughter laughter floating in from the lawn.

“To answer your question,” Genoa went on, as though nothing had happened, “Mr. Callahan is in the rear parlor, working.” She paused. “By the way, Bonnie—the Club has appointed Seth director and manager of the Pompeii Playhouse, and he feels that the place has gone downhill—I agree that it needs a certain amount of restoration. Of course, he would want to buy the paint and the fixtures and such from you.”

Bonnie could not hide her delight in that prospect. “You and Seth have done so much for me,” she said. “I don’t know how to thank you.”

Genoa looked very serious all of a sudden, and she leaned forward in her chair, lowering her voice. Evidently she’d had enough talk of business. “What are your feelings toward Webb Hutcheson, dear?”

Bonnie flushed. “Why, Genoa McKutchen, shame on you! I thought you were above listening to petty gossip!”

“Well, I’m not. Things are in a dreadful tangle, you know. People are saying that you and Webb are—involved. And I don’t suppose I need to tell you about the rumors concerning Eli’s friendship with Earline Kalb.”

A sudden and very distinct picture of Eli standing behind Earline, the day of Genoa’s lawn party, loomed in Bonnie’s mind. She saw his arms encircling Earline’s womanly figure as he demonstrated the proper way to swing a croquet mallet. “I’ve heard the rumors,” she said, seething behind the smile she offered Genoa.

Genoa was obviously not misled. “Bonnie, who is it that you love, truly? Eli or Webb?”

Bonnie darted a quick glance toward the French doors that were open to the pleasant scents of the garden and the
expanse of newly mowed lawn beyond. She didn’t want to be overheard. “I might as well confess, Genoa,” she said, keeping her voice low. “I’m still as much in love with Eli as I ever was.”

Genoa startled her by shooting out of her chair and proceeding to pace the room in an agitated manner. Bonnie was a little hurt, for she had expected her former sister-in-law and dearest friend to be pleased.

“Don’t you want me to care for Eli?” Bonnie asked in a small voice.

Genoa stopped pacing and collapsed into her chair again. “Of course I do, Bonnie, but the man has tremendous pride and you’re not helping matters by keeping Webb Hutcheson as a boarder.”

“Webb was badly injured,” Bonnie pointed out quietly. “I felt—obligated.”

“The poor wretch expects you to marry him, doesn’t he?” Genoa demanded, with what was for her uncommon stringency. “Oh, Bonnie, what can you be thinking of to lead a decent man like Webb on in such a way?”

“I’m not leading him on!” Bonnie hissed.

Genoa sneezed and a new flurry of dust swelled up around her. “Aren’t you?” she sniffled, taking a handkerchief from her sleeve and dabbing at her nose. “You haven’t told Webb the straight of things, have you?”

“I couldn’t, Genoa. He’s built that lovely house, and his ribs are broken—”

Genoa interrupted tersely. “Excuses. Think of Webb’s pride, Bonnie. And Eli’s.”

Bonnie was insulted, and she drew herself up accordingly. “What about my pride, Genoa? Do you think I enjoy lying awake every night and wondering whether Earline and Eli are together?”

“Which do you prize more, Bonnie?” Genoa countered intrepidly. “Your pride or your happiness?”

Bonnie opened her mouth and closed it again.

“I can tell you from bitter experience,” Genoa went on, suddenly deflated, “that pride of that kind is a terrible trap. I might have had children now if it hadn’t been for my pride. I might have had Mr. Callahan.”

Bonnie’s affection for her friend was very real and very deep. She knelt in front of Genoa’s chair and clasped the thin, graceful hands in her own. “Pride? I thought your grandfather stopped the marriage.”

Two tears dropped from Genoa’s chin and landed on Bonnie’s hand. “Mr. Callahan wanted me to stand up to my grandfather, but I was afraid to—oh, Bonnie, that old man could shout to shake the rafters when he chose to, and I was never able to stand up to him the way Eli did. I went to Europe, just as Grandfather ordered me to do, but I never stopped thinking of my Seth. Not for a moment. I could have gone to him when my ship docked in New York, I could have apologized, but I was a McKutchen—too proud. I wanted Mr. Callahan to come to me, you see.”

Bonnie embraced Genoa. “But he’s here now, in Northridge,” she reminded her friend. “You and Seth are being offered a second chance.”

Genoa withdrew from the embrace and again produced her handkerchief. She was both laughing and crying as Bonnie went back to her chair. “What a silly bunch of females we are, you and Lizbeth and I! I’m trying to be young again, you’re torn between two men and poor Lizbeth doesn’t know up from down because she’s so crazy about Forbes.”

Bonnie started to protest that she wasn’t “torn between two men” at all, that she loved only Eli. Fortunately she saw him coming in from the garden out of the corner of her eye and stopped herself in time. She smiled at him, and at the exhausted little girl in his arms.

“It would seem that Rose has had enough excitement for one day,” she observed, and the remark sounded inane even in her own ears. “She and I had better go home.”

Genoa got up from her chair and vanished.

“I want you to stay,” Eli said bluntly and, though Bonnie strained to decipher it, the expression in his eyes was unreadable.

“That is ridiculous,” Bonnie replied, standing up and smoothing her skirts. “Furthermore, it is improper.”

She reached out to reclaim Rose, but Eli would not surrender her.

“Don’t you think we’ve played this game long enough, Bonnie?”

Bonnie swallowed, afraid and angry and yet composed. “What game?”

“You know very well ‘what game.’ We should be together, making a real home for our daughter and for each other.”

His words made Bonnie dizzy with hope and shock. She sank back into her chair, too overwhelmed to speak.

Eli laid Rose Marie on a window seat at the far side of the room and covered her with a colorful afghan. The child yawned and closed her eyes, and Bonnie was almost crushed by the tenderness she felt as she watched.

Finally Eli came back to sit in the chair Genoa had occupied until a few minutes before. He took Bonnie’s hands in his. “I need you,” he said.

Bonnie felt her face heating. “The way you needed me in Spokane,” she said woodenly. “The way you needed me after the flood—”

“Yes,” Eli answered, with stunning honesty.

Bonnie wanted so much more. She wanted him to love her. She wanted him to value her opinions and, for once, share his life with her. “You have Earline Kalb for that!” she spat, in her disappointment and her pain. She tried to turn away, but Eli caught her chin in one hand and made her look at him.

“I’m not involved with Earline. I’ve already told you that.”

Bonnie willed herself not to cry. “Why should I believe you? You betrayed me in New York, when you were still my husband. Why would you be faithful now?”

Eli lowered his head for a moment and, when he spoke, his voice was gruff. “I guess we’re going to have to talk about New York sooner or later, aren’t we?”

Bonnie pulled her hands free. She wasn’t sure she could bear to discuss Kiley’s death and Eli’s reactions to it. It would be like reliving the nightmare. “I’ll just get Rose and go home, if you don’t mind.”

“I do mind, Bonnie.” The golden eyes were looking into hers now, holding her prisoner in her chair. “You’re not going anywhere until we’ve talked things through.”

Bonnie braced herself against the inevitable pain. “If you’re going to tell me about your mistresses, Eli McKutchen, I don’t want to hear it.”

Eli sighed. “I don’t deny that there were other women, Bonnie.”

For the first time Bonnie realized how much she’d wanted him to do just that. She’d wanted him to deny everything. She closed her eyes and stiffened, doing her best not to cry. “Of course you don’t,” she said.

“Bonnie, look at me.”

She looked, but she remained stubbornly silent.

“Those women—I didn’t love them—”

“They didn’t mean anything to you,” Bonnie said, feeling and sounding like a marionette being worked by some unseen puppeteer. “Isn’t that what errant husbands always say, Eli?”

“In my case, it happens to be true.”

“I don’t care anymore, Eli,” Bonnie lied in self-defense. “One way or the other, I don’t care!”

“You don’t want to care, I’ll give you that. But you do, Bonnie, and so do I.”

“No!” Bonnie whispered wildly. Painful wounds would be opened if they talked about those women and about Kiley, and she hadn’t the strength to endure it.

“Yes,” Eli insisted. “Bonnie, help me.”

Bonnie remembered holding a lifeless Kiley in her arms, remembered the funeral and the despair, remembered how her husband had failed her when she’d needed him the most. “I said that to you once,” she reminded Eli in an odd, hollow voice. “You turned away. You left me.”

“I’m trying to apologize for that, Bonnie.”

“Apologize!” Bonnie spat the word and bolted out of her chair, moving to stand behind it and make a barrier between herself and the only man in the world who had the power to hurt her. “Do you think your pitiful apologies make up for what you did, Eli? Do you think you can just say ‘I’m sorry’ and mollify me? I’m not Rose—you can’t win me with presents and pretty words!”

On the other side of the room, Rose began to whimper and call out, “Mama!”

Bonnie swept over to the window seat and gathered her fretful daughter up in her arms. “There, there, darling,” she fussed. “Mama’s right here. We’ll go home now, where we belong.”

Eli made a raspy sound of frustration and ran one hand through his hair. “I will repeat myself once and only once, Bonnie,” he said. “You’re not going anywhere until we’ve talked.”

“I defy you to stop me!”

“That would be very unwise. We both know that I can stop you, and I will if I have to, Bonnie. I swear I will.”

Moving like a sleepwalker, Bonnie went back to the window seat and laid Rose upon it, covering her as gently as Eli had. “Just close your eyes and sleep, sweetheart,” she said, bending to kiss the child’s forehead. “Mama will be right here. And there won’t be any more fighting, I promise.”

Rose yawned expansively and closed her eyes, and it was a long moment before Bonnie could bring herself to turn and face Eli again.

When she did, it was only to find that he was standing in front of the fireplace, his back to the room, his powerful hands braced against the mantelpiece and white at the knuckles. Someone had closed both French doors leading into the garden, as well as those that opened onto the main hallway.

The room was spacious and airy, and yet Bonnie felt as though she’d been closed up in a tomb. “You should have consulted me before buying a pony for Rose Marie,” she said, desperate to forestall the topics she knew Eli meant to work through.

Eli did not turn around, and because his head was lowered, Bonnie could see only the top of his head reflected in the mirror above the mantel. “Our son is dead,” he said, in a voice that, for all its softness, throbbed with grief.

Bonnie clasped the back of a chair for support, tears slipping unheeded down her face. “Eli, please—”

Suddenly he whirled around, his features taut with an anguish that had been part of him for far too long. “Kiley is dead,” he repeated, measuring the words, drawing them out, flinging them at Bonnie like stones.

She closed her eyes, but still the tears came. “Don’t make me go through this, Eli. Not again. I’ve done my grieving.”

“Well, I haven’t!” he retorted. For Rose’s sake, his words were spoken softly, but they had the impact of a scream of agony. “I haven’t!”

Bonnie swayed, still gripping the chair back, and her eyes flew open when Eli grasped her arm in one hand and dragged her toward the French doors. He opened one of them and fairly flung Bonnie through it into the garden, but he was a long time closing the door again and turning to face her.

When he did, his eyes were haunted. Eli didn’t seem to see Bonnie at all. “God in heaven,” he said hoarsely, his face ravaged, “nothing has ever hurt me as badly as feeling my son’s life slip away and not being able to help.”

Bonnie’s knees wouldn’t support her. She sank to one of the marble benches set about the garden, looking at the pink buds on Genoa’s favorite rose tree but not really seeing them. She was seeing herself in New York, hurrying in from the cold, full of the comedy revue she’d just seen at her favorite theatre.

The housekeeper, Mrs. Perkins, had met her in the middle of the staircase, and Bonnie had known instantly that something was dreadfully wrong. She’d run past Emma Perkins, past the room she shared with Eli, into the nursery.

And Eli had been there. He’d been sitting in the wicker rocking chair, holding the baby, rocking back and forth. Endlessly back and forth. When his eyes had lifted to Bonnie’s face, they’d been empty of any expression at all.