Read Waltzing In Ragtime Online
Authors: Eileen Charbonneau
Waltzing In Ragtime (39 page)
“Since when do we need your servant’s approval?”
“I told you he’s not my servant.”
“No, you didn’t.”
She blushed, her eyes scanning plowed covers. “I was trying to.”
“Well, whatever in hell he is — butler, footman —”
She took in a deep breath and needed all of it for the three words. “He’s my husband.”
“No. He isn’t.”“His name is Basil Edward Hamilton. He’s the younger brother of the twelfth Duke of Spenser.”
“You’re married to me.”
“Matthew, listen.”
“Did you divorce me? Did you burn sage and divorce me?”
“No.”
“Then you’re married to me, goddamn it!”
“Please, listen.”
“Then what? Be happy that I’ve shared Lady Hamilton’s bed? That her lord approves? Should I be grateful that you’ve found a husband who brings me breakfast instead of bullets?”
He went to the window, flung open the shutters. Morning light flooded the room. Olana’s tears stung, but she howled out her own rage. “Why didn’t you send word you’d recovered, damn you?”
He swung around. “It was you left me, remember?”
“I stayed until — Matthew, the doctors said there was no hope! You had your women, you’ll always have your women. Do you think it was easy? Watching you? I begged you to stop holding her and help me heal ourselves if we couldn’t heal her. The doctors
said you hadn’t breathed for so long. That you would stay there, locked in that moment. They said your mind was affected, was gone. You were holding her last night, weren’t you? You were still holding her!”
said you hadn’t breathed for so long. That you would stay there, locked in that moment. They said your mind was affected, was gone. You were holding her last night, weren’t you? You were still holding her!”
“Yes!” She saw a steel rod ride up his back as he stared down at her. “You afraid?”
“A-afraid?”
“That you gave yourself to a madman? Afraid of a child? A tainted child? Coming from us, from last night? Or do you have ways of flushing away all but blue-blooded children?”
“Stop it!” she screamed.
Even in the heat of his anger he knew he’d crossed the line to abuse. He stood still, finally listening. There was no hatred in her face. There was almost nothing at all. She was cut off from him utterly, there, in her separate grief for their child. He felt alone again, in this city. He wanted the farm, his daughter, and grandmother. His visions. Lost his mind. Was she like the others? Did she think his dreams were madness? He would not give them up, even for her. They had sustained him through everything, his visits with Lottie, with the grandfathers, with her own brother Leland. He touched his fingers to his closed eyelids.
“I held onto her as long as I could. I couldn’t win against the ancestors,” he whispered.
“What?”
“That’s where I was, in that moment. I held onto her as long as I could, don’t you understand? I would have stayed with her, even if the sun never went down. I would have stayed with her. They pushed me back. What for, I’d like to know.”
He picked up his coat and left her house.
Matthew sat behind his desk, scanning the land survey, while the Mexican silversmith watched, holding his hat in his hand.
“What’s this?” Matthew asked of a mark on the paper.
“A tree, sir.”
“What kind?”
“A young ash. Marked for cutting down.”
“Why?”
“It is too close to the house sight.”
“Move the house site.”
“But then the road will have to be longer.”
“The tree will shade the house in summer, keep the place cooler. And your children will not like you cutting down an ash, Mr. Lopez. That’s a good climbing tree. We can increase the loan to cover another fifty feet of road. Agreed?”
“Agreed? You mean that’s all?”
“Everything else looks in order. I’m sorry you had to wait for me this morning.”
“Wait? Wait? It was nothing! I can go?”
“Yes, go home. Make plans.”
As the man pumped his hand, Matthew watched his small garnet earring do a jig against the lobe. He wondered what Olana had done with his grandmother’s ring. Was it in some forgotten drawer? Should he try to get it back for Annie? It had her outlaw’s mother’s name engraved inside, and a date: 1828.
When the silversmith left, Matthew turned to the window, leaned his head against the pane, tried to imagine the Lopez children swinging from the ash tree. He was thwarted by Olana’s scent in his pores. Hyacinth. Not lilies anymore. He returned to his desk and sat, tried to concentrate on the survey for his next appointment. Then Sidney Lunt was leaning over him. When Matthew tried to rise, Serif anchored his shoulder.
“I’d knock you senseless if I weren’t so glad to see you,” Sidney grumbled. “Get your coat.”
“I’m at work —”
“You have just been relieved. To do some catching up.”
“Sidney, I think you should stay out of this.”
“And I think you should be quiet until we’re through.” Sidney Lunt lifted his eyebrow in the direction of his massive servant. “Now you can get your coat, or I can drape it over your unconscious form. That’s up to you.”
The Whittaker house on Russian Hill looked the same and yet different than Matthew remembered. The neatly trimmed boxwood and forsythia hedges and ornamental trees were neglected. Inside, the impression persisted as the open spaciousness was diminished by sealed-off rooms and darkness. A lady’s maid opened the door. She smiled at the trio.
“Mr. Lunt! Serif! We weren’t expecting you today! Mrs. Whittaker will be so pleased!”
The servant had loaned the first air of brightness to the place, It quickly sank into darkness when she left.
“Sidney, what’s happened here?”
“Darius Moore, Matt. He happened here too, remember? Drove them close to financial collapse — James from his business, Dora from the social register. Moore embezzled from every one of her charities. Olana took over the books, chased the charlatan doctors away from her father before the house went on the block, too. She knows that losing the house would finish the old man off, so she’s managed to keep the great behemoth running, albeit in reduced circumstances. And she’s working to restore her mother’s philanthropic reputation.”
“Sidney!” The woman in gray rushed to greet him, kissing his cheek tenderly. Matthew almost didn’t recognize her from the life in her walk, the brightness of her eyes. Dora Whittaker didn’t know him at all. She glanced in his direction, smiled politely, then addressed Sidney. “Isn’t Olana with you?”
“No. Mrs. Whittaker, I’ve brought —”
Her hand went to her mouth. “Mr. Hart.”
Matthew smiled. “You’re looking right well, Ma’am.”
A sadness replaced her shock. “Winnie’s been telling me about signs that you were coming — her stars and moon. I thought I was humoring her! She’ll be so glad. And James. James will be ecstatic.” She turned to Sidney Lunt and Serif. “Don’t you think, gentlemen?”
“Anything is possible,” Sidney conceded, grudging.
She laughed. Olana’s mother was taking his part against men who used to be his friends, Matthew realized. And Sidney and Serif were now acting as his jailors. The world was upside down. Matthew’s head ached. “Come.” Dora Whittaker took his arm, when he hadn’t even offered it. “Winnie’s napping, but James is in the solarium.”
The solarium was the only part of the place that looked better to Matthew in its overgrown, wilder state. James Whittaker sat with a woolen blanket across his knees, shrunken deep inside his clothing. One side of his face was frozen in a deadened, downward pull. The other side twitched as a colorful bird bounded from bush to tree to the glass dome of the solarium. A uniformed nurse sat at her patient’s side. She too followed the bird’s flight.
“Very good, sir. Yes, isn’t she pretty?”
His face reddened, and garbled sounds burst from his mouth.
“Yes, I daresay, spring is showing her signs!” she chirped.
“Open the transom,” Matthew Hart instructed.
She gave him a cold look. “I beg your pardon?”
“Let the bird out.”
“Really, sir, I don’t see how —”
He’d already found the pulley. The bird soon flew through the opened window. James Whittaker sighed in exhaustion. His head lolled against his shoulder. Matthew Hart knelt by his chair and took up his hand, over the protestations of the nurse.
“Is that what you wanted, sir?” he whispered.
“Mmmm,” he murmured, nodding. Then James Whittaker’s good eye blinked three times. He lifted his head with an effort that created beads of perspiration along his brow. “Mmmmatt!” he called, triumphant. “Matt,” he said again.
“That’s right, sir.”
“Gracious. Gracious me,” Dora Whittaker breathed.
Matthew felt a hand at his shoulder, and caught the scent of oat scones and remedies in the starched white apron. “Welcome home, Mr. Hart,” Mrs. Cole said. “You look destroyed in your hunger, sir.”
Mrs. Cole pointed him to the best chair in the servants’ parlor. “Before Miss Olana came home,” she continued, “I’d lost the downstairs staff but for Patsy and her Selby and the wee one. Selby was off hawking seltzer drinks outside the opera house to keep us fed, it was so long since we’d gotten regular wages!”
Sidney Lunt sat on the couch, stretching out his impeccably tailored, black and white form, then rubbing his temples. His voice was still pitched with anger. “Without Olana the Crockers or the Huntingtons would have lapped the place up, even if it’s not as exclusive a neighborhood as Nob Hill! And her father would be dead, her mother broken. Dora’s changes were forged in Olana’s fire.”
“Mrs. Whittaker seems almost … happy,” Matthew admitted.
“She’d put him in a sanitarium,” Mrs. Cole whispered, “and took to her bed until Olana came home. That’s the change in her!” the cook pronounced. Then her expression saddened. “And you, sir. You’ve had your trials over this long time gone, have you not? Trials the good should not have to bear.”
She cleared the hair from his forehead and planted a no-nonsense kiss on his brow. Matthew closed his eyes, welcoming the comfort that didn’t require explanation. He felt pulled taut by just being here. Somehow she knew, and was not pulling. Matthew was not so sure of Sidney, and so wanted to call Mrs. Cole back when she took up their hats and left for her kitchen with Serif in tow.
Matthew waited. But Sidney Lunt seemed preoccupied with the way the sun’s slanting rays made the side of the teapot glow. So stationary. So unlike him. Matthew stood, took up a raisin scone and began pacing the room’s periphery.
“You’re supposed to be suffering, not feasting on Mrs. Cole’s confections!”
Matthew put the scone back on the plate like a schoolboy corrected. That drew an elaborate sigh.
“Will you sit down, man! You’re making me dizzy.”
But Matthew could not think as well sitting down. And he had to think. “So she married to keep the house for her father?”
“We just told you she’s kept the house by her own wits!”
“Yes, but —”
“I thought you were dead! I was so sure you were dead! It was the only way any of it made sense!”
“Any of what?”
“How … how bereft she was.”
“Olana never told you what happened?”
“Not me. Not her parents.” He exhaled. “Coretta knew something of it, but wasn’t telling. Sworn silent, I’d think. Listen, Matt. Spense is titled, landed, and cut off without a cent. Olana married him as a favor to me.”
“To you?”
“He was facing his family’s ire. He was supposed to find a rich bride, marry, and bring her and her millions to buck up the crumbling ancestral home. He intended to, he’d always followed his family’s wishes. Please sit down, Matt, this isn’t easy for me.”
“For you? I’m the one —”
“No, you’re not!” he called out sharply. “Not the only one, I mean. Basil’s family was going to let the government deport him, don’t you see? He was caught in a vise! Matt, before I even approached Olana with it, I asked if there were any hope for you and her. Olana said there wasn’t a chance.”
“Why did she say that?”
“How in hell do I know? Years ago I gave up trying to figure out this crazy dance you two do around each other. I only know I let you both down in not talking her out of that first marriage. Now I’ve done the same thing talking her into the second!
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