His fuse was lit. “You’d like it better if I joined you on the bed, wouldn’t you?”
“At least you could go away feeling you’d finally gotten something for all your gold dust.”
Michael’s heart beat hard and fast. He went to the window, shaking with anger and physical desire. Drawing the curtain back, he looked out. “Do you like your view from up here, Angel? Mud, slapped-up buildings and tents, men drunk and singing barroom songs, everyone fighting to survive.”
Angel. It was the first time he had called her that. For some reason, it hurt. She knew she was finally getting to him. She waited for the rest. He would say his piece, take what he wanted, and leave. That would be the end of it. All she had to do was make sure he didn’t take a piece of her out the door.
“Or downstairs?” he said derisively. “Maybe you’d like that better.” He let the curtain drop back and faced her. “Does it give you a feeling of power to have me bidding for your favors every night?”
“I don’t ask you to do it.”
“No, you don’t, do you? You don’t ask for anything at all. You don’t need anything. You don’t want anything. You don’t feel anything. Why don’t I just go on down the hall to that redhead’s room? Isn’t that it? The one you said could take me off your hands.”
So that was it. His pride was hurt. “I just wanted to see you leave town with a smile on your face.”
“You want to see me smile? Say my name.”
“What is your name? I forgot.”
He pulled her up off the bed. “Michael. Michael Hosea.” Losing himself, he cupped her face.
Michael.
The feel of her skin made him forget why he was there, and he kissed her.
“It’s about time.” She moved forward against him, setting him on fire. Her hands moved, and he knew if he didn’t stop her, he would lose—not just the battle but the whole war.
When she unbuttoned his shirt and slipped her hand in, he jerked back from her.
“Jesus,” he said. “Jesus!”
Stunned, she looked up at him. It came to her with a shock of clear understanding. “How did you manage to make it to the ripe old age of twenty-six without ever having been with a woman?”
He opened his eyes. “I made a decision to wait for the right one.”
“And you really think I’m it?” She laughed at him. “You poor, dumb fool.”
She finally got to him.
Jesus, I misunderstood. This can’t be the one you sent for me.
He could spend the rest of his life trying to make her understand. He wanted to grab her and shake her and call her all kinds of a fool, and all she did was look back at him with that smile on her face, as though she had finally figured him all out. He was labeled and put in a bin.
Michael lost his temper. “If that’s the only way you want it, so be it.” He slammed out the door and strode down the hall. He went down the stairs, straight across the casino, slapped the swinging doors out of his way and went out. He kept on walking, hoping the night air would cool him down.
Michael…
Forget it! Just forget I ever asked for a wife! I don’t need one that badly.
Michael…
I’ll stay celibate.
Michael, beloved.
He kept walking. God, why her? Tell me that. Why not a gently reared girl, untouched until her wedding night? Why not a God-fearing widow? Lord, send me a plain woman, kind and enduring, someone who would work at my side in the fields, plowing, planting, and harvesting! Someone who’ll get dirt beneath her fingernails but doesn’t have it already in her blood! Someone to give me children or someone with children already if it’s not in your plan for me to have my own. Why do you tell me to marry a harlot?
This is the woman I have chosen for you.
Michael stopped, furious. “I’m no prophet!” he shouted at the darkening sky. “I’m not one of your saints. I’m just an ordinary man!”
Go back and get Angel.
“It’s not going to work! You’re wrong this time.”
Go back.
“She’s good for sex, I’m sure. She’ll give me that much, but nothing else. You want me to go back for that? I’m never going to get more from her than one measly half hour of her time. I go up to that room with hope and come out defeated. Where’s your triumph in this? She wouldn’t care if she ever saw me again. She’s trying to pass me off to the others like a… a—No, Lord. No! I’m just another faceless man in a long line of faceless men in her life. This can’t be what you had in mind!” He raised his fist. “And it’s sure not what I asked for!”
He raked his hands through his hair. “She’s made it plain enough. I can have her anyway I want. From the neck down. Excluding the heart. I’m only a man, Lord! Do you know what she makes me feel?”
It started to rain. A cold driving rain.
Michael stood in the dark, muddy road a mile out of town, rain running down his face. He shut his eyes. “Thanks,” he said harshly. “Thanks a lot.” Hot, angry blood pumped fast through his veins. “If this is your way of cooling me off, it’s not working very well.”
Do my will, beloved. I drew you up from the desolate pit, out of the miry bog, and set your feet upon a rock. Go back for Angel.
But Michael held his anger close like a shield. “Nothing doing. The last thing I want or need is a woman who doesn’t feel a thing.” He started walking again, this time heading for the livery stable where his wagon and horses were.
“It’s a poor time for traveling, mister,” the liveryman said. “A storm’s coming.”
“It’s as good as any, and I’m pure sick of this place.”
“You and a thousand others.”
Michael had to pass the Palace to leave town. The drunken laughter and the piano music grated. He didn’t even look at her upstairs window as he drove by. Why should he? She was probably working. As soon as he got back to his valley and forgot about that hell-bound girl, he would feel better.
And the next time he prayed for God to send him a woman to share his life, he would be a lot more specific about the kind he wanted.
Angel was standing at her window when she saw Hosea go by. She knew it was him even with his shoulders hunched against the downpour. She waited for him to look up, but he didn’t. She watched him until he was out of sight.
Well, she had finally succeeded in driving him away. It was what she’d wanted from the start.
So why did she feel so bereft? Wasn’t she glad she was finally rid of him? He wouldn’t be sitting in her room again, talking and talking and talking until she thought she would go crazy.
He had finally called her Angel. Angel! She raised a trembling hand and put it against the glass. The cold seeped into her palm and up her arm. She pressed her forehead against the pane and listened to the drumming rain. The sound of it made her remember the shack by the docks and her mother smiling in death.
Oh, God, I’m suffocating. I’m dying.
She began to shake and let the curtain fall back into place. Maybe that was the only way out. Death. If she were dead, no one could ever use her again.
She sat on the bed and drew up her knees tightly against her chest. Pressing her head against her knees, she rocked herself. Why did he have to come to her? She had come to accept things the way they were. She had been getting by. Why did he have to destroy her inner stillness? She clenched her hands into fists. She couldn’t get rid of the vision of Michael Hosea driving away in the rain.
She had the awful gut feeling she had just thrown her last chance away.
Death is before me today. As a man longs
to see his house when he has spent many years in captivity.
PAPYRUS FROM ANCIENT EGYPT
The storm lasted for days. The rain streaked the glass like tears, washing the grit away and making watery images of the outside world. Angel worked and slept and looked out over the shanties, clapboard buildings, and sagging canvas tents lit by a thousand lanterns until dawn. No green
anywhere. Just grays and browns.
Henri would be serving breakfast now, but she wasn’t hungry, and she didn’t feel like sitting with the others and listening to their squabbles and complaints.
The rain came harder and faster, and with it came memories. She used to play a game with her mother on rainy-day afternoons. Anytime it rained, it grew cold in the shanty, too cold for anyone who didn’t have to be there. The men stayed away, warming themselves in a comfortable tavern, and Rab stayed with them. Mama would set Sarah in her lap and wrap the blanket around both of them. Sarah had grown to like storms because then she had Mama all to herself. They would watch the large drops on the glass pane touch and grow and finally slide down into a river on the frame. Mama talked to her about when she was a child. Just the happy things, the good times. Mama never spoke of being turned away by her father. She never spoke of Alex Stafford. But whenever she was quiet, Sarah knew Mama was remembering and hurting all over again. Mama would hug her hard and rock her and hum. “Things will be different for you, darling,” she would say, and kiss her. “Things will be different for you. You’ll see.”
And Angel had seen.
She stopped thinking about the past. She let the curtain drop back in place and sat down at the small, lace-covered table. She stuffed the memories down again. Better the hollow nothingness than the pain.
Hosea won’t come back. Not this time. She closed her eyes tightly, her small hand a fist in her lap. Why did she think about him at all? “Come away with me and be my wife.” Sure, until he tired of her and gave her to someone else. Like Duke. Like Johnny. Life never changes.
She lay down on her bed and covered her face with a pale satin sheet. She remembered the men sewing the shroud closed over her mother’s stiffly smiling face and felt empty inside. Whatever hope had once been inside her had drained away. There was nothing left to hold her together. She was caving in.
“I’ll make it on my own,” she said into the silence around her, and could almost hear Duke laughing: “Sure you can, Angel. Just like last time.”
Someone knocked on her door, jerking her back from her dark memories. “Can I come in, Angel?”
Angel welcomed Lucky. She reminded her of Mama except Lucky drank to be happy. Mama drank to forget. Lucky wasn’t drunk right now, but she was holding a bottle and two glasses.
“You’ve been keeping to yourself lately,” Lucky said, sitting on the bed with her. “Are you all right? You’re not sick or anything, are you?”
“I’m fine,” Angel said.
“You didn’t have breakfast with us.” Lucky set the bottle and glasses on the side table.
“I wasn’t hungry.”
“You’re not sleeping well, either. You’ve got shadows under your eyes. You’re just feeling sad, aren’t you?” Lucky gently stroked Angel’s hair back. “Well, it happens to the best of us, even an old harlot like me.” She liked Angel, and she worried about her. Angel was so young—and so hard. She needed to learn to laugh a little at the cards she had been dealt. She was beautiful, and that would always come in handy in this business. Lucky liked to look at her. Angel was a rare flower in this weed patch, something special. The others didn’t like her because of it. And because Angel didn’t mingle. She was self-possessed.
Lucky was the only one allowed close, but there were rules. She could talk about anything except men and God. She never stopped to wonder or ask why. She was just grateful Angel allowed her to be a friend.
Angel was especially quiet today, her lovely face pale and drawn.
“I brought a bottle and two glasses. You want to try drinking again? Maybe it won’t turn out so bad this time. We’ll go slower.”
“No.” Angel shuddered.
“Are you sure you’re not sick?”
“Sort of, I guess.” She was sick of living. “I was thinking about my mother.”
It was the first mention of anything from Angel’s past, and Lucky was honored to be trusted with even a tidbit. It was a great mystery among all the girls where Angel had come from. “I didn’t know you had a mother.”
Angel smiled wryly. “Maybe I didn’t really. Maybe it was just my imagination.”
“You know I didn’t mean it that way.”
“I know.” Angel stared up at the ceiling. “It’s just that sometimes I really do wonder.” Had there ever been a cottage with flowers all around and the scent of roses drifting in through a parlor window? Had her mother ever really laughed and sang and run with her across the meadows?
Lucky touched her brow. “You’re feverish.”
“I have a headache. It’ll go away.”
“How long have you had it?”
“Ever since that farmer started pestering me.”
“Has he been back?”
“No.”
“I think he was in love with you. Are you sorry you didn’t go away with him?”
Angel tightened up inside. “No. He’s just a man like all the rest.”
“You want me to leave you alone?”
Angel took Lucky’s hand and held onto it. “No.” She didn’t want to be alone. Not when she had been thinking about the past and couldn’t seem to push it away. Not when death was all that was on her mind. It was the rain, the constant, battering rain. She was going mad.
They sat silent for a long while. Lucky poured herself a drink. Tension rippled through Angel as she remembered Mama’s drinking herself into oblivion. She remembered Mama’s grief and guilt and the endless weeping. She remembered Cleo, drunk and bitter, raging against life and telling her God’s truth about men.
Lucky wasn’t Mama or Cleo. She was funny and uninhibited, and she liked to talk. The familiar words flowed like balm. If Angel could just listen to Lucky’s life story, she might be able to forget her own.
“My mother ran off when I was five,” Lucky said. “Have I told you all this?”
“Tell me again.”
“My aunt took me in. She was a fine lady. Her name was Miss Priscilla Lantry. She gave up marrying a fine young man because her father was ill and needed her. She nursed the old miser for fifteen years before he died. He wasn’t even cold in his grave when my loving mother dumped me on her doorstep with a note. It said, ‘This is Bonnie.’ And it was signed ‘Sharon.’” She laughed.
“Aunt Priss didn’t much like the idea of having a child to raise, especially a castoff from her no-good sister. Everyone in the neighborhood thought she was a saint for taking me in.” She poured another glass of whiskey. “She said she was going to make sure I grew up proper and not like my mother. If she didn’t use a switch on me at least twice a day, she didn’t feel she was doing her duty. ‘Spare the rod and spoil the child.’”
Lucky plunked the bottle on the side table and pushed her dark hair back from her flushed face. “She drank. Not like I do. She did everything proper. She just sipped. Not whiskey, mind you. Madeira, fine Madeira. She’d start in the morning, a sip here, a sip there. It looked like liquid gold in her pretty crystal glass. She was so mellow and sweet when neighbors came to call.” She giggled. “They thought she had such a charming lisp.”
She sighed and swirled the amber fluid in her glass. “Meanest woman I ever knew. Meaner than the Duchess. As soon as the guests were out the door and off in their fine carriages, she would start in on me.” She began to mimic an elegant southern drawl. “You didn’t curtsy when Missus Abernathy came in. You took two biscuits from the tray when I said to take only one. The schoolmaster said you didn’t do your arithmetic yesterday.”
Lucky drank half her whiskey. “Then she would make me sit and wait while she searched for just the right switch to cut from the willow tree. It had to be as thick as her pointer finger.”
She held her whiskey glass up to the lamp and looked through it before she emptied it. “She went to tea one afternoon with the parson’s wife. They were going to discuss my enrollment in a young ladies academy. While she was gone, I chopped the tree down. It flattened the roof and fell right into the m
iddle of her fancy parlor. Smashed all her fine crystal. I ran away before she came back.”
She laughed softly. “Sometimes I wish I had stayed long enough to see the look on her face when she came home.” She held the empty glass and stared at it. “And sometimes I wish I could go back and tell her I’m sorry.” She took her bottle and stood, her eyes glazed. “I’d better go to bed and get my beauty sleep.”
Angel caught her hand. “Lucky, try not to drink so much. Duchess was talking about kicking you out if you don’t slow down on the booze.”
“Don’t you worry about me, Angel,” Lucky said, smiling bleakly. “Last I heard there was still one woman to twenty men out here. The odds are definitely in my favor. You watch out for yourself. Magowan hates you.”
“Magowan is a worthless piece of horse dung.”
“True, but Duchess has a thing for him, and he’s been telling her you’re lazy and insolent. Just watch out for yourself. Please.”
Angel didn’t care. What was the difference? Men would still come and pay to play, until the decent women arrived. Then they’d treat her like Mama. They would pretend they didn’t know her when they passed by her on the street. The good women would turn away while the children gawked and asked who she was, only to be cuffed into silence. She would still have work—after dark, of course—until she wasn’t pretty anymore or was too sick to be appealing.
If only she could be like one of those mountain men who went out into the wilderness and stayed there, hunting their food and building their own shelter and never having to answer to another living soul for anything. Just to be left alone, that must be heaven.
She got up and went to the washstand. Pouring water into the bowl, she washed her face, but the coolness gave her no relief. She held the towel over her eyes for a long time. Then she sat at the small table beside the window and looked out through the curtain. She saw an empty buckboard in the street below and thought of Hosea. Why did she have to think of him now?