What if I had gone with him? Would things have been any different?
She reminded herself of the one time she had run away with a man. At fourteen, she had still been too inexperienced to recognize Johnny’s ambitions. He’d been looking for a meal ticket, and she’d wanted to get away from Duke. As it turned out, neither of them got what they wanted. She closed her eyes tightly at the horror of what Duke had done when he had them brought back. Poor Johnny.
She had been fine before that farmer had come. He was just like Johnny. He held out hope as bait. He painted images of freedom and promised it to her. Well, she had stopped believing the lies. She had stopped believing in freedom. She had stopped dreaming about it… until Hosea came, and now she couldn’t get it out of her mind.
She clutched the curtain. “I’ve got to get out of here.” She didn’t even care where. Anything else was better.
She had earned enough gold by now to build a little house of her own and quit working for a while. All she needed was the courage to go down and demand it from Duchess. She knew the risk, but it didn’t seem to matter anymore.
Pit, the bartender, was polishing and stacking shot glasses when she came downstairs. “Morning, Miss Angel. You want to go for your walk? You want me to see if I can find Bret for you?”
Her courage faltered. “No.”
“You hungry? Henri just put something together for the Duchess.”
Maybe food would staunch the queasiness. She nodded, and he left the glasses and went out the door at the end of the bar. When he came back, he said, “Henri will bring something out in a minute, Angel.”
The small, dark Frenchman brought a tray and uncovered a plate of fried potatoes and bacon. The coffee was lukewarm. He made his apologies and said supplies were low. Angel couldn’t eat, anyway. She tried, but the food stuck in her throat. She sipped the coffee instead and tried to drown her fear, but it was there like a hard knot inside her chest.
Pit watched her. “Something wrong, Angel?”
“No. Nothing’s wrong.” She might as well get it done. Pushing her plate back, she got up.
The Duchess’s quarters were on the first floor behind the casino. Angel stood before the heavy oak door, her palms sweating. She wiped her hands on her skirt, took a deep breath, and knocked.
“Who’s there?”
“Angel.”
“Come in.”
The Duchess was dabbing her mouth delicately, and Angel saw what remained of a cheese omelet on her Dresden plate. One egg was worth two dollars, and cheese was very hard to come by at any price. She couldn’t even remember the last time she’d had an egg. The deceitful cow. Fear lessened as resentment grew.
The Duchess smiled. “Why aren’t you sleeping? You look dreadful. Are you upset about something?”
“You’ve been working me too hard.”
“Nonsense. You’re just in one of your moods again.” She smoothed the flowing red silk of her lounging gown. It did little to conceal the rolls of flesh gathering around her waist. Her cheeks were puffy, and she was developing a second chin. A pink ribbon held her graying hair back. She was obscene.
“Sit down, darling. I can see you have something unpleasant on your mind. Bret told me you didn’t come down for breakfast. Would you like something now?” The Duchess waved an indolent hand magnanimously at a basket of muffins.
“I want my gold.”
The Duchess didn’t look the least surprised. She laughed and leaned forward to pour herself more coffee. She added cream. Angel wondered where she had gotten it and how much it had cost. Duchess lifted the elegant cup and sipped while studying her over the rim. “Why do you want it?” she asked, as though merely curious.
“Because it belongs to me.”
The Duchess gave her a bland, amused look of maternal tolerance. “Pour yourself some coffee, and let’s talk about it.”
“I don’t want any coffee, and I don’t want to talk about it. I want my gold and I want it now.”
The Duchess tilted her head slightly. “You might ask a little more politely. Did you have an annoying customer last night?” When Angel didn’t answer, the Duchess’s eyes narrowed. She put the cup back in the saucer. “Why do you need your gold, Angel? What is there to buy up here? More fripperies?” Her expression was amused again, but her eyes held warning. “Tell me what you want, and I’ll try to see you have it. Unless it’s something completely out of the question, of course.”
Like eggs and cream. Like freedom. “I want a little house of my own,” Angel said.
The Duchess’s face changed, darkening. “So you can go into business for yourself? Are you getting ambitious, my dear?”
“You’ll have no competition from me, I assure you. I’ll be a hundred miles from here. I just want out. I want to be left alone.”
The Duchess sighed and gave her a pitying look. “Angel, we all go through these silly notions. Take it from me. You can’t quit. It’s too late.” She leaned forward and set her cup and saucer down again. “I take good care of you, don’t I? If you have reasonable complaints, of course I’ll hear you out, but I can’t just let you walk away. This is wild country. You wouldn’t be safe out there on your own. All kinds of dreadful things can happen to a pretty girl when she’s on her own.” Her eyes glittered. “You need someone to look out for you.”
Angel tipped her chin slightly. “I could always hire a bodyguard.”
Duchess laughed low. “Someone like Bret? I don’t think you like him the way I do.”
“I could get married.”
“Married?” She laughed. “You? Oh, that’s rich.”
“I’ve been asked.”
“Oh, I’m sure you’ve been asked. Even your drunk little friend Lucky has been asked, but she’s also smart enough to know it would never work. A man doesn’t want a harlot for a wife. Men say all kinds of foolish things when they’re lonely and aching for a woman and there’s no one else around. Ah, but they come to their senses quick enough. Besides, you wouldn’t like it.”
“At least I’d only be working for one man.”
The Duchess smiled. “How would you like to wash a man’s dirty long johns and cook his meals and clean out his chamber pot? How would you like to do all that and then have to give him whatever he wanted besides? How would you like that? Or maybe you have some idea that he would let you lie around all day and have servants to take care of everything. In another place, you might have managed that. But not here in California, and certainly not now. You would’ve been smarter to stay where you were.”
Angel was silent.
The Duchess’s mouth curved. “The trouble comes from you thinking too much of yourself, Angel.” She shook her head. “Sometimes you girls make me feel as though I’m dealing with spoiled children. All right, my dear. Let’s get to the point of this little visit, shall we? How much more do you want? Thirty percent?”
“Just what I’ve earned. Now.”
The Duchess sighed heavily. “All right, then, if that’s the way it has to be. But you’ll have to wait. I’ve invested it for you.”
Angel sat very still, frustration and rage building. She clenched her hands. “Uninvest it. I know you have enough gold in your safe right now to square with me.” She gestured to the platter. “You have enough to buy eggs and cheese and cream for yourself.” She cupped her hands and made a shape. “A sack about this big is all I expect. One of the men you sent my way last night was an accountant, and he made a few calculations for me.”
Duchess glared at her. “You, my dear, are speaking like an ungrateful fool.” She stood with injured dignity. “You’re forgetting all I do for you. Costs aren’t what they were when we started this little operation. Everything has gone up. Your clothing costs a fortune. Silk and lace aren’t commonplace in a mining town, you know. Your food costs even more. And this building wasn’t put up for free!”
Angel’s resentment and bitterness had long since dissolved fear and rational thought. “Is my name on the deed?”<
br />
The Duchess stopped. “What did you say?”
“You heard me. Is my name on the deed?” Angel stood as well, past control. “You have cream for your coffee, and eggs and cheese for breakfast. You dress in satin and lace. You even sip from fine china.” She picked up a cup and smashed it against the wall. “How many men have I served so you can stuff yourself like a pig and dress up like a grotesque parody of royalty? Duchess from where? Duchess of what? You’re nothing but a fat old harlot no man wants anymore!”
The Duchess’s face was white with rage.
Angel’s heart beat faster and faster. She hated her. “You aren’t charging four ounces of gold for my time anymore. How much is the toll these days? Six? Eight? I should have earned enough by now to be free of this place.”
“And if you haven’t?” the Duchess said very quietly.
Angel jerked her chin up. “Well, a smart girl could do real well for herself.”
Duchess became very composed. “A smart girl would never even consider speaking to me in this way.”
Angel heard the danger and realized what she had done. She sank down slowly, her heart in her throat.
The Duchess came over to her and touched her hair. “After all I’ve done for you,” she said grievously. “You have a short memory about your first weeks in San Francisco, haven’t you?” She cupped Angel’s chin and lifted her face. “When I first saw you, you were still showing the marks of a rather nasty beating. You were living in a lousy shack and almost starving.” Her fingers tightened painfully. “I picked you up out of the mud and made you into something. You’re a princess up here.” She let go.
“A princess of what?” she said bleakly.
“You’re so ungrateful. I think Bret is right about you. You’ve become spoiled with special treatment.”
Angel was shaking inside. Her unreasoning rage had evaporated. She took the Duchess’s hand and pressed it against her cold cheek. “Please. I can’t stand anymore of this. I’ve got to get out of here.”
“Maybe you do need a change,” the Duchess said, stroking Angel’s hair. “Let me think about it. Go upstairs now and rest. We’ll talk later.”
Angel did as she was told. She sat on the end of her bed and waited. When Magowan walked in without knocking, Angel had her answer. She got up and backed away from him as he closed the door quietly.
“Duchess said you had a lot to say to her a little while ago. Well, little dove, now it’s my turn to do a little talking. When I’m done, you’ll be as obedient as Mai Ling. And I’m going to enjoy it. I’ve been waiting for this for a long, long time. And you know it, don’t you?”
Angel looked at the closed two-story window, then back at the locked door.
“You won’t get past me.” He took off his black coat.
Angel’s mind flashed back to a tall dark man in a black evening suit. It came to her with sudden finality that there was no way out, not for her. There never had been; there never would be. Everywhere she turned, every time she tried, she was trapped again, worse off than before.
“Don’t worry. I won’t leave any marks that show. And you’ll be working tonight whether you feel up to it or not.”
Hopeless rage filled her. She remembered everything ever done to her from the time she was a child in a shack on the docks to now, in this room. It was never going to get any better. This was all she could ever expect of life. The world was full of Dukes and Duchesses and Magowans and men to come line up outside her door. There was always going to be someone to enslave and use her, someone to profit from her flesh and her blood.
There was one way out.
Maybe she had always known it was the only way. She could feel it like a living presence in the room, a force standing beside her, dark and beckoning. And she was finally ready to embrace it. A few well-aimed words, and Magowan would end it for her. She would finally be free—free forever.
Magowan frowned at the look on her face, but she didn’t care. She wasn’t afraid anymore. She was grinning at him. “What’s the matter with you?” Her eyes glowed bright and wild, and she started to laugh. “What’re you laughing at?”
“At you. Big man. Duchess’s pet dog.” She laughed harder at the stunned expression on his face. Her laughter rose, sounding strange and bright in her own ears. It was all so funny, so incredibly funny. Why hadn’t she seen it before? Her whole life was a great big joke. Even when Magowan came at her, she couldn’t stop laughing about it. Not on the first blow or the second. Or even the third.
After the fourth blow, all Angel heard was the beast roaring in her ears.
To have and to hold from this day forward,
for better for worse, for richer for poorer,
in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish,
till death us do part.
BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER
Michael couldn’t get Angel out of his mind. He tried to concentrate on his work and found himself thinking about her instead. Why did she keep eating at him? Why did he have this gut feeling that something was wrong? He worked until past dark every day and then sat before the fire, tormented with thoughts of her. He saw her face in the flames, beckoning to him. To hell itself, no doubt. Or was he getting a taste of that already?
He remembered the tragic air about her as she had passed him that first day, and then reminded himself how hard-hearted she was. He swore he wouldn’t go back to her, then did so every night when he slept and Angel haunted his dreams. He couldn’t escape her. She danced before him, like Salome before King Herod. He would reach out for her, and she would move back, tantalizing him. You want me, don’t you, Michael? Then come back. Come back.
After a few days, his dreams turned to nightmares. She was fleeing from something. He ran after her, calling out for her to stop, but she ran on until she came to a ledge. She looked back at him then, the wind whipping her golden hair about her white face.
Mara, wait!
She turned away and spread her arms wide and went over.
“No!” Michael awakened with a start, his body streaming sweat. His chest heaved; his heart raced so fast his body shook with it. He raked trembling hands through his hair. “Jesus,” he whispered into the darkness. “Jesus, deliver me from this.” Why did she haunt him so?
He got up and opened the door, leaning heavily against the frame. It was raining again. He closed his eyes wearily. He hadn’t prayed in days. “I’d be a fool to go back,” he said aloud. “A fool.” He looked out at the dark, weeping sky again. “But that’s what you want, isn’t it, Lord? And you’re not going to give me any peace until I do.”
He sighed heavily and rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t see what good will come of it, but I’ll go back, Lord. I don’t like it much, but I’ll do what you want.” When he finally went back to bed, he slept deeply and without dreaming for the first time in days.
In the morning, the sky was clear. Michael loaded the wagon and hitched up the team.
When he drove into Pair-a-Dice late that afternoon, he looked up at Angel’s window. The drapes were drawn. A muscle jerked in his jaw, and a hard pain tightened his belly. She was probably working.
Lord, you said do your will, and I’m trying hard. Does it have to hurt so much? I need a woman, and I’ve waited for your choice. Why did you give me this? Why am I back here again in this camp, looking up at her window with my heart in my throat? She doesn’t want anything to do with me.
Shoulders hunched, he headed down Main Street to take care of business at the mercantile. He needed the gold to get upstairs at the Palace. When he pulled up before Hochschild’s Store, he jumped down from his wagon and strode up the steps. A note was stuck in the window. Closed. Michael knocked hard anyway. From inside, Hochschild yelled a string of curses that would wither a seasoned sailor. When he threw open the door, his anger vanished.
“Michael! Where’ve you been? I’ve been out of everything for weeks and no sight of you.” Unshaven, half drunk, his shirttail hanging, Joseph came o
utside to look in the wagon. “A full load. Thank heaven. I don’t care if it’s bug-ridden and rotting; I’ll take everything you’ve got.”
“You’re the sort of fellow I like doing business with,” Michael said, smiling slightly. He stacked crates and carried them in two at a time. “You look terrible. Have you been sick?”
Joseph laughed. “Too much to drink. You in a hurry or something? Could you stop long enough for a talk?”
“Not this time.”
“You planning to spend everything I give you at the Palace again? It’s one of man’s afflictions, isn’t it? Need of woman.”
Michael’s jaw stiffened. “How do you come to know so much about my personal business?”
“It wasn’t hard when you were still in town after four days last time.” Hochschild took one look at Michael, made a silent whistle, and changed the subject. “There was a strike about three miles up river.” He gave details. “With all that gold dust coming in I can raise my prices.”
Michael slammed the last crate on the counter. Angel’s price had probably gone up, too.
Hochschild paid up. He scratched his grizzled cheek. Usually Michael was sociable, but today he looked downright grim. “Got your herd yet?”
“Not yet.” He had invested all his hard-earned gold dust in courting Angel last trip. He poured his payment into his belt.
“Rumor has it that Angel’s not doing business for a while,” Joseph said.
Her name was all it took. Michael felt as though he had been struck in the chest. “Did she earn herself a rest?”
Joseph’s eyebrows rose. The remark wasn’t like Michael at all. He must have fallen hard and been hurt bad. Shaking his head, he grimaced. “Forget I mentioned her.”
He followed Michael outside and watched him jump up onto his wagon. “Town got a pastor just last Wednesday. If you’ve a mind to hear him, he’s preaching at the Gold Nugget Saloon.”
Michael was thinking about Angel. He took up the reins. “I’ll see you in a couple of weeks.”
“You had better rest those horses awhile. Looks like you pushed them pretty hard getting up here.”