Read Waltzing In Ragtime Online

Authors: Eileen Charbonneau

Waltzing In Ragtime (11 page)

“But I do! Can you understand why I asked Papa to have you come home with us and oversee my recovery?”
“No. But maybe there’s a place for me here. For a little while.”
My God, James Whittaker thought from the shadows, she’s in love with this man he’d almost sent packing moments ago. So that’s what she needed to be admired for then, her courage?
Strange girl. Well, onward, he determined his course. A little while, hell, Matthew Hart. You’re going to father my grandchildren, Cossack or not.
 
 
Patsy was indeed pretty, doe-eyed, and waiting to lead Matthew down the impossible maze of curving back stairs and hallways to the kitchen. The kitchen was twice the size of his tree house.
Mrs. Cole looked up. “One moment, sir. I can’t leave this to get warm now.” He sat on a stool across from the marble slab where she was rolling out the floury dough.
“They ran you through the gauntlet, did they?”
“I won’t let them hurt her.”
“No, I daresay you won’t, if you’re already stabbing them with their own instruments!”
“But I didn’t —” Two kitchen maids giggled together at a corner sink.
“Alice! Beatrice! Put the kettle on and fetch the tea things!” Mrs. Cole bellowed as she fluted her meat pie. Then she lowered her voice. “There now, Mr. Hart, give them their stories, it’s a dreary life down here.”
She shoved the last of her pies into the oven and motioned him into the spacious, low-ceiling parlor. This was, Matthew Hart realized, another home, with another family. And Mrs. Cole was unquestionably its matriarch. She pointed him into a chair plumped with two down pillows. He leaned into their softness gratefully. She’d remembered his inflamed back. With the appearance of the serving girls in the doorway, he tried to stand, only to be halted by her raised finger.
“Give them leave, they’ll be putting on airs the day long, sir,” she admonished. “Forgive me, but it’s easy to see you’re no gentleman.”
“Is it?”
“Aye. You don’t know how to be ignoring your inferiors.”
“But no one’s my —”
“Not in your woods, maybe.”
Matthew sighed, steepling his fingers under his chin. He closed his eyes until all the sounds — the servants’ giggles, the tea being poured, set out before him, stilled.
“Who is the child?” he asked.
The cook pulled in a nervous breath. “The little tree, I don’t know how you found it. Every trace of him was taken from the nursery.”
The ranger opened his eyes. “His name, Mrs. Cole.”
“Leland. Miss Olana’s brother.”
He smiled slowly. “She never said she had a little brother.”
“She doesn’t sir. Leland was her elder by four years.”
“Was.”
“He died almost twenty years ago, sir.”
The ranger felt the cold thin frame against his chest again. “Sore throat,” he whispered.
“Yes, it started that way, then turned into diphtheria. Blessed Lord, Mr. Hart, what visited you last night?”
“A boy, with a train, telling me to look after his sister.”
“Miss Olana.”
“’Laney.”
The cook crossed herself. Then she put the cup of steaming tea into his hands. “Sip it slow, bound to revive you a touch,” she advised gently. Matthew swallowed around the stubborn lump of grief in his throat as the woman spoke.
“They were a spry little pair, Olana and her brother, barely a cross word between them, as different as their temperaments were. He understood her even then, I’m thinking. Didn’t he speak up when the parents tried to make a lacy little thing of her? How she searched for him, after, and how her calling cries pierced my heart. But soon she covered herself in that same cocoon the parents did. To this day they never speak of him, display no remembrances, not the smallest photograph. The rooms you’re in upstairs sir — they haven’t been opened in all these years. I don’t know what Mr. Whittaker was thinking of to be so insistent — it’s driven Miss Olana’s poor mother to her bed for the day at least.”
“But Olana, she needs her mother now.” Mrs. Cole’s eyes turned sad and weary.
“Where’s the train?” he asked, remembering his promise to the child.
“I don’t know. It was so long ago. Everything was moved out. You won’t find it in this house, I’m thinking.”
“But I have to find it.”
“Well, I know better than to discourage you after this day, Mr …what is your Christian name, Mr. Hart?”
“Matthew.”
She smiled with both sides of her face. “A good, holy, scripture writer’s name! There. Your color’s coming back. Eat now, the scones are good — akin to your biscuits at home, I would think.”
“How did you know —”
“That you’re used to biscuits? Only from your honey-coated speech, don’t fret — this house isn’t full of ghosts and mind readers both!”
He laughed with her, happy to be back in the realm of the parlor, its steamy tea, the taste of raisins and butter and orange peel.
“Can you make custard?” he asked.
“Why I wouldn’t have gone beyond kitchen maid if that were beneath my capabilities!”
“Would you teach me?”
“You, sir?”
“Olana craved it back in the woods; if I could learn, I’d be able to do something besides fight doctors and distress her family and make myself a troublesome pest to you.”
The cook laughed. “Ah, it’s going to be a Yuletide of some spice upstairs and below this year, I’ll wager!”
Sidney Lunt watched as Olana searched beyond the lace curtains, over the wrought-iron balcony, and down to where Matthew Hart walked through the solarium. She was smitten. Badly. Had they even been lovers in his tree house? Olana was not good at hiding her affections, the way so many other women of her class were. It was one of the things Sidney liked best about her. And why shouldn’t she prefer her rough-hewn ranger to the colorless royalty of England and the continent? Sidney was more than a little taken with Matthew Hart himself.
The sequoias and this man had changed her, too. Despite the lingering pain in her feet, he’d never seen her more uncomplaining, joyful, enthusiastic. And he’d known her, loved her, all his life. Love? Is that what it was? That devastation when he thought that, were she frozen under one of those Sierra drifts, his own life would be diminished into its own white pallor? Well, was that so impossible? She’d become his touchstone, as infuriating as she could be. He trusted her with everything. Almost everything.
He loved her. Why else had he trumped up three excuses to cross paths with her while she was abroad? His parents had given him a newspaper when he came of age. On the same occasion she had gotten the husband-hunting trip to the Continent and a reminder
from her mother that her eligible years were now numbered. Why was that the way of things?
“I can’t get anything but grunts from him,” he said aloud.
Olana turned, looking disdainfully at the stack of the Gold Coast Chronicles he’d brought. “Are you surprised?” she asked, “after calling him a Cossack?”
“When did I —”
“Your editorial, ‘Trees or Timber?’”
“Oh. ‘Czar Parker and his Cossack Rangers’?”
“Exactly.”
He thumped the stack of past editions with his palm. “It was a nice phrase, sport. And it got letters! Now that your Cossack’s out of his wilderness, get his story. He may make an appealing hero for your readers.”
Olana looked startled. “My readers?”
“We’ve featured your plight daily — the many complications, setbacks in our search. It’s made marvelous reading! Why, we concluded our running novel
Blood on the Orchids,
then did not replace it, without one letter of complaint! And we’re creeping up on the
Sentinel
circulation — I may get the rag out of red ink next year after all! You’ve inspired a devoted following. A true life adventure!”
“Sidney, I can’t.”
“Can’t?”
“I mean I could … I have pages of my thoughts, written while Matthew was out charting and patrolling and it was so quiet. But I promised him —”
“Promised what?”
“Not to write of him.”
“What? I thought you said that was how Thomas Parker convinced him to oversee your recovery in San Francisco. So that he might convince people of the worth of the park project?”
“Yes, but Matthew is a very private person. And I believe he thinks certain … things might jeopardize the government buying more land the park needs.”
“What things? Things that make the land of interest to private
investors? What did he find up there, Olana?”
“Sidney, stop that!”
“What are you hiding for him?”
“You’re insufferable with your questions!”
“That’s what’s going to help me succeed in the newspaper business, sport! Now, are you in my employ, or are you going to let Matthew Hart do all your thinking for you?”
“The both of you are such bullies!”
Olana looked over the railing again. The man she’d made her promise to was gone. “Couldn’t I write about something else?”
Sidney took her hand. “Olana, be reasonable! How would it be if I give you an unrelated assignment — ignore the fact that yours has been the most dramatic story of this year?”
Matthew Hart came through the doors then, coatless, his shirtsleeves rolled up, a basket of greens under his arm.
“’Lana, your father has a sassafras tree out there! And the most amazing selection of — oh, I’m sorry.”
She stopped his retreat with a hold of his sleeve. “Nonsense, Matthew, come in.”
His face sobered as he shook Sidney Lunt’s hand.
“Looks like California laurel to me,” Sidney observed. Casually he thought, though Matthew Hart’s presence did what it had done to him every time since the ranger pulled him through that hole in the snow, it accelerated his heart.
The ranger’s eyes lost a little of their suspicion. “Same family,” he explained. “But the sassafras is deciduous, where the laurel’s evergreen. Leaves are flatter too, see? I’m going to boil up both, see which makes the stronger tonic.”
Olana sighed. “Now who’s sick?”
“Patsy,” he told her. “Needs strengthening. Sassafras will do it. ‘Thickens the blood,’ my gran always —” Something closed inside him, Sidney could almost hear it. “Thickens the blood.”
Leave it be, Olana sent him the thought with her quick glance. Sidney pretended he’d missed the warning.
“May I ask if this remarkable woman is still alive?”
The ranger frowned. “No.”
“A pity.”
“Didn’t say she was dead, said you may not ask.”
“Well.” Sidney smiled tolerantly. “Well, you’ve done her proud — isn’t that how you people express it? For you’ve restored this lady in a remarkable —”
“No I haven’t. It’s her finally doing what she’s told.”
“Told by you.”
“By her own body.”
“Yes, of course.”
Jesus, the man had the power to render him speechless, Sidney thought. Even Olana looked like she felt sorry for him. The ranger turned toward the glass doors. No. He would not be defeated. Not yet. “City life seems to be agreeing with you as well,” he tried.
“I can forget where I am sometimes,” Matthew muttered, his eyes fixed on the trees in the solarium below.
“How I wish I had such a luxury. But I breathe newsprint and deadlines. Mr. Hart, our readers wish to hear from their silent correspondent. Perhaps in your official capacity, you could put in a word with her father?”
“Word?”
“Recommendation. That she is now well enough to begin a career that her first assignment’s circumstances cut so brief?”
“First assignment?”
“Sidney!” Olana looked ready to strangle him.
“Have I spoken out of turn? Surely Mr. Hart also wishes you to begin the profession so dramatically nipped by a real life adventure?” Sidney picked up his hat and gloves from the chair. He’d done it this time. She was furious. And he’d known Olana Whittaker in her fury. Let her handsome lover handle her now. He’d started it, with his unreasonable demands. “Well, I’m off! Glad to see you both!”
 
 
They watched Sidney Lunt’s heels snap down the hallway before Olana returned to the sitting room. She spoke to the ghostly reflection
of Matthew Hart she saw in the glass doors. She couldn’t bear to look at him directly.
“Sidney’s all right, really, and doesn’t mean to pry. He’s so used to his questions.”
The ranger’s head bowed, an uncharacteristic gesture for him. “I didn’t realize how much I was asking of you.”
“Well, now you know.”
“’Lana. Write about yourself, getting lost in the woods. You could do that, leaving me out of it, couldn’t you?”
“Leaving —”
“The tree house could have been abandoned. I sometimes camp out for weeks at a time.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No.”
“Without you, I’d be writing a novel.”
“Hey, maybe you should write a good, rip-roaring novel!”
“Matthew!”
He ran his hand through his hair.
“Don’t trouble yourself so. Go ahead, gloat,” Olana invited. “Your first impression of me was quite correct. I’m a sham journalist, Sidney is a childhood friend, who took pity on me. The essays on the park were my first assignment. Maybe he had no intention of even printing them, just of getting me out of his way for awhile. It almost worked, imagine that? It almost worked forever.”
Matthew touched her shoulder gently. “You’ve got your chance now. To prove me wrong.”
“Chance?”
“He’s got you on the payroll now, doesn’t he? Bring him a story.”
“What story?”
“I don’t know! It’s your city.”
“I’ve never done anything so brazen —”
“Brazen? You work for the man, ’Lana!”
“But — I’ve only ever seen him socially. At dinner parties, balls, and here. It’s all Papa will allow.”
“Miss Whittaker, you’ve braved a Sierra mountain storm. You’ve stood up to the worst human animals nature ever wasted life on. And you can’t walk into a newspaper office without your father’s permission?”
Olana turned away sharply, stood between him and the steamy world of her father’s neat, hemmed-in garden solarium. “Of course I can.” He rested his hand lightly on her shoulder.
“Matthew, when I’m ready, will you come with me?”
“Sure.” He backed away from their proximity. “Now you come.” He held out his hand.
“Where?”
“Downstairs. It’s time for your feet to be up for an hour. I can keep an eye on you while I boil these leaves.”
“I’d rather we read.”
“Patsy’s hurting, ’Lana.”
“Going into the servants’ quarters isn’t as simple for me as it is for you. And they are as uncomfortable as I am down there, Matthew.”
“Why?”
“It’s just not done. They deserve some privacy, don’t they?”
“They deserve warmer sleeping quarters.”
“I’ve already presented that to mother.”
He raised an eyebrow. “How?”
“In a way I thought she’d understand.” His silence, his sharp, unforgiving scrutiny, spoke volumes. “I can’t possibly discuss coal allowances with my father!”
“Why not?”
“He’ll — he’ll know you’re behind it.”
“So?”
“It’s not your place to criticize.”
“But it is yours, isn’t it?”
“Matthew Hart, you are impossible, ungrateful and —”
“Suffering stiff-necked clothing and stiffer callers who come to stare at me like I’m some stuffed and mounted species.”
“You’re unfair! Sidney’s quite fond of you despite your open hostility!”
He exhaled most of his anger as he opened the doorway to the back stairs. “I wasn’t talking about your Mr. Lunt. At least he’s got some purpose.”
“Why, Matthew Hart,” Olana exclaimed as she followed his long strides. “Wait until I tell him he’s risen above your contempt.”
He turned, his eyes became suddenly contrite. “Contempt? Is that what you think it is?”
“Isn’t it?”
“No.” His fingers grazed the leaves of the sassafras in his arms. “’Lana, you’re almost well now. And I feel, sometimes …”
“Without purpose?”
“Yes.”
“What about your secret mission from Mr. Parker?”
He smiled. “Which is?”
“To convince my father that he and his associates are not maximizing the efficient development of the West, but are responsible for the devastation of California’s natural resources. To convince us that we are vandals destroying your sacred temples. To seek new forest reserves and so leave us and all our employees impoverished.”
“Now, would I be doing that before I’ve collected my fee?”
She frowned. “Why are you so intent on disarming my anger?”
“I’m not intent on any such thing. You have a fine anger, ’Lana. I admire it.” A cool breeze swept up the landing and among her skirts. She moved closer to his heat. There. She had his eyes. They were darker, here, in the shadows. How she wished he’d kiss her. “Daniel would hardly talk that way in the lion’s den.” He said the words softly, a touch distracted, Olana thought.

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