Authors: Eileen Charbonneau

Waltzing In Ragtime (38 page)

BOOK: Waltzing In Ragtime

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“Circumstances?”

Patsy cast a quick glance toward the sound of Olana’s advancing footsteps, and raised her voice. “You’ll both take some tea into yourselves this cold night, Miss —”

“Go!”

Olana came through the laced French doors in a deep green silk kimono, shirred at the shoulders, and falling gracefully to the floor. She was still brushing out her hair, hair almost as long as when it had protected her face from frostbite. Already? How could that be? Her glance chased Patsy to the door. Olana closed it behind her. Then she turned, smiled shyly at him. Matthew forgot the fragrant tea steaming between them. And any questions about circumstances.

Matthew Hart looked like he had always been sitting there, in her rooms, drinking tea, smiling. He searched for safe territory like her O. Lanart editorials, phrases of which he recited to illuminate points about his own views. They spoke of Sidney, her house, parents, and the servants he’d taught her to cherish. And she’d woven stories about them all, rapidly at first, then more slowly, with more thought and detail, once she’d relaxed. Now she was even allowing silences — soft, easy silences to fall between them. And he was stretching out his long legs by the fire. How still he was. She was not used to his stillness anymore, after being around the nervous energy of Sidney and Basil. She stretched her hand, touched his knee.

“Matthew. Are you well?”

He smiled with one side of his mouth. Yes, she remembered that, but now the mustache accentuated it, made it more self-effacing, and sadder. It went with his rougher voice.

“Can’t sing worth a damn,” he admitted. “Then, I never could carry a tune in a bucket, could I?”

She fought the images of him singing rounds with Possum, then walking the baby, his lullabies softly, dearly out of tune. She would bring them back later, she promised herself, later. He was so afraid of tears.

“But you can dance. Tell me you still dance.”

“Dance?”

“Yes!” She leapt to her feet. “Dance with me.”

She wound her gramophone and put on a cylinder blindly. A Straus waltz began. She turned, expecting him to be gone. But he was standing there in his shirtsleeves, his open vest, as if he’d just steamed some sassafras for Patsy’s morning sickness. His long, gentle hands were formally outstretched. Shaking slightly. Waiting. She went into his arms. They danced around the sitting room. He’d lost none of his grace.

Olana lifted her head. “With you it is as easy as —” Walking. She was going to say walking, but he’d covered her mouth with his by then. Before the machine wound down he was kissing her throat in three-quarter time.

He smelled of the rain, of the leather bindings of his ledgers instead of the leather of his saddle, and down beneath it all, pine. She caught it as he lifted her into his arms and brought her through the opened French doors to her bedroom. She slid her fingers through hair so thick it was still wet at the roots from the rain. A small, rough sound escaped his throat. He swayed, and for a moment Olana thought he would drop her. But he widened his stance. “I am for you,” he said, “you are for me.”

“Yes,” she promised, pulling her eyes from the scarred knot of ugly purple in his throat — opened clumsily, like the back of his daughter’s doll, and closed, stitched up in haste, cheating death. He sat her on the turned-down bed, and knelt behind her. He kissed the back of her neck softly. “Stars,” he whispered, there against her ear, “colored stars. See them?”

“Yes,” she said. The stained glass of her bay windows’ transoms made them appear that way. He knew that was the source of their tones, but the childlike wonder was still in his voice. He was the same man she had loved for years, despite all his changes. He kept kissing her as his fingers discovered the pattern of the frog closures of her kimono, and opened each with an aching slowness. His hand reached inside, lifting the kimono and her gown from her shoulders in one motion. They fell into an ivory and green silk pool around her hips.

His right hand fanned out just under her breasts, steadying
her as his kisses flowed down her vertebrae. She giggled when he reached the base of her spine. He emitted a gruff purr, glided over and bit her side so gently she could feel the tiny ridges in his teeth. She even knew the cold metal of the gold one as he smiled wide in response to her own deep, free, laughter.

Matthew lifted her out of the remains of her clothing and nestled her in her pillows. Then he was astride her, his own hardness melting back her thighs, even through the worn weave of his trousers. Clothes, too many clothes. She was much worse on his than he’d been on hers, tearing, pulling. He didn’t seem to mind, he even helped her yank the damp shirt, shuck the trousers.

Olana leaned back then, admiring his firelighted, taut body, muscled thighs. She caught his scent again as he brought up the sheet like a white fogged night behind him. His tongue circled adamant nipples, stroking hard, stronger, guided by her breathing, her cries, her fingers dancing at his shoulders. Olana leaned back, took his head between her hands, and wailed softly at the stars beyond her windows as he entered her. This wild, tender man was pushing her again, over cliffs of delight, into beds of pine needles and roses. How had she lived so long without his pushing?

When she woke his side of the bed was empty. Olana felt around her wildly. Twisted sheets. A pillow molded into an hourglass shape and wet with sweat. The baby. He was still holding Lavinia, still plagued by that bloody afternoon. Olana raised her head toward the dim light, finally saw him through the French doors, sitting half-dressed by the fire. She slipped into her kimono and joined him. Matthew looked up. His eyes were red and swollen. He turned back toward the fire’s light. “You weren’t going to leave without saying good-bye?” she asked him quietly.

“No. Fire needed tending.”

She placed her hand on his shoulder. He leaned his face into it. “I wish it had been me, ’Lana, I swear it.”

She laughed hard, shocking him. “Listen to me,” she demanded.
“Darius Moore wanted to flush her out, back before I even knew she was inside me. That’s when I ran away.”

More pain in his eyes.

“Had it happened then, before I felt her, saw her, before the ocean and the women and the chocolate! Before you taking even the pain of my laboring time away — oh God, I think, sometimes, it would have been a mercy! I lied, because I wanted you to love me, not your obligation. Lavinia was your child, Matthew.”

“I know that,” he said quietly.

“What?”

“After you left, my mother told me. She and Annie learned the Yurok ways of figuring to the day of conception. They knew I went to your father’s house, made such a mess of trying to stop you from marrying him, and that we got her started then.” He bowed his head. “Damned women know everything.”

She approached. “Matthew, don’t you hate me?”

“Why? I told you it didn’t matter.” Olana saw his face struggle with incomprehension. “Does it make you feel better, that I know?” he asked.

She collapsed onto his shoulder. “Of course it does, you great, thick —” Her heaving sobs were loose now. He was not running away from them, though she could feel his fear. He held her close, stroking her hair. Olana heard a faint rumble. Humming. Her fingers, warm now, found the knot of stitches, touched them as she kissed behind his ear. His skin was warmed from the hearth fire.

“I love you,” he whispered. “Lord, how I love you.”

Matthew,“she breathed against his neck. “It’s not possible.“

“’Course it’s possible. Anything’s possible. We might even learn to forgive each other one of these days.”

She slipped her hand into his. “Come back to bed,” she whispered.

Soft, filtering light. Matthew was wrapped in softly swaddling peach colored comfort and Olana’s scent. It was none of it a
dream. He didn’t need to dream when his night had been so full of her and the new heights they’d explored together. He wouldn’t let her go. He’d never let her go again. He reached through the softness for her, but she was not beside him. He smelled coffee and oranges. He smiled, closed his eyes.

Then the footsteps. Not hers. Not Patsy’s. A man’s. Light. Sneaking. Watching him. The blood in his veins ignited, alert. He kept his face serene while his muscles tensed, waited. There. He felt the light weight of silk cross his hip. He grabbed the arm, twisted, sent the man sailing over himself on the bed. He pinned him there with a choke hold.

“What are you doing? Where’s ’Lana?” he demanded.

The man’s eyes were wild with fear.

“Coff —”

“What?” Matthew eased his grip. The man gasped, coughed. About his own age. Foreign, some kind of foreign. Bright, almost fevered eyes, indignant now. “I live here!”

Matthew followed his glance to the breakfast tray on the bed table, the blue paisley robe. “Shit.” He breathed. “Sure. Right, ’course you do. But you oughtn’t go sneaking around a man like that!”

“I’m — frightfully sorry.”

“Well, ain’t no harm done, is there?” Matthew tried to brush away the wrinkles in the man’s vest. “I mean, there won’t be any need to tell ’Lana, will —”

“Basil!” she summoned from the doorway, her hands on her hips, reminding Matthew of his grandmother in all her fury.

The man leapt off the bed, gestured to the tray. “I brought you breakfast,” he tried. Stony silence. He went to Olana’s side. “It’s he. Your ranger, isn’t it?” he said, then whispered something else against her ear. When her arms shook in response, he jumped. “I’m going!”

Olana didn’t move until the doors closed.

“I’m sorry, Matthew,” she said, the anger still making her quake. She sat on the bed beside him, her kimono opening to reveal
a distracting blush between her breasts. “Aren’t you cold?” she asked softly.

“No.” He glanced down at his nakedness, back to her blush. He couldn’t be the source, he reasoned. Men weren’t beautiful. She couldn’t feel the way he did, now, as he placed his hand on her knee, guessing she was bare too, under that one layer of silk. “Aw, don’t be hard on him, ’Lana,” he tried. “Fact is, I think I scared him half to death already.”

“That would have served him right.”

He slipped his hand inside her robe. “Since when have you got men servants at the meals anyway? Where’s Patsy?”

“He’s not a servant, Matthew!” She stood, but did not break free of his light hold. “I have to get dressed.”

Yes, she was nude under the gown. He had a chance. Though her hair was already pinned up, she was responding to his caress. “Aw, ’Lana, have breakfast. It’ll do wonders for your disposition.”

“My disposition is perfectly …”

He eased her closer. “Let’s start over. Good morning.”

She sighed, touched his face. “Yes, of course. Good morn — oh. My. Matthew, I told you I have to —” Her head fell back. “Yes, yes … there.”

Olana watched him pull up his suspenders as she nestled against the pillows. She wondered if the colors were too soft, if there was too much lace in the room. What was she thinking? He pulled on his vest, took out his watch and stared at it, then shook it.

“It’s past ten?” he asked as he went to the shutters, cracked them open and stared out onto the street below. “’Possum’s used to me being home. Us sitting in the garden together a little before we go our separate ways. She even likes the lumps in my porridge.” He took his forehead between his thumb and middle finger; a gesture so graceful, so familiar. “If she really needed me, Annie would have telephoned,” he spoke to himself. Olana hungered to be included as more than the reason for his worry.

The half-smile was back as he sat beside her. “I make them both a little crazy, I think.” He lifted the hair from her shoulders, and kissed the back of her neck. “I’ll telephone from work.”

“You’re not so concerned about being late there.”

He shrugged. “It’s not far from here. And the women operate the place, truth to tell. It pleases them to make me feel useful. Annie’s already told them I haven’t been run over by a street car, I expect.”

He took both her hands.

“I’d like to see your family, Olana. I’d like you to visit us. You should see how Possum’s grown, and goes off to school, and recites her Robert Louis Stevenson rhymes — ’Lana, if this is going too fast, you’ll let me know, won’t you?”

She nodded. He picked up the forgotten blue paisley robe, looked at it more closely, held it against his face. Searching, she knew, for her scent. Not yet, she heard the voice screaming inside her.

“This isn’t yours.”

“No. It’s Basil’s.”

“Now I feel worse.”

“Don’t. He’s very pleased. I told him about you, Matthew. He knows we found each other again. He brought the breakfast, the robe to show he approves.”

Matthew glanced at the orange peels, the other remains of the breakfast they’d devoured together after their morning lovemaking. “Approves?”

“Of us, Matthew.”

BOOK: Waltzing In Ragtime

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