"Oh my goodness!"
It was red. And gold. Ruby-red flocked wallpaper covered the walls, while the woodwork and moldings—even the mantel above the fireplace—were coated in gold. A gilt chandelier, decorated with dozens of crystal droplets, hung from the plaster ceiling. Even the ceiling, some sixteen feet above the hardwood floor, was painted red.
As if that weren't bad enough, a huge billiard table dominated the room. Two smaller game tables, several leather chairs, and a built-in mahogany bar occupied a good deal of the remaining floor space, along with a marble statue of Merlin that overlooked the gaming tables. Silver ash stands stood beside the leather easy chairs and brass spittoons occupied each corner of the room. The red Turkish carpets were dotted with tiny burns and brown tobacco stains.
A gilt-framed portrait of a female reclining nude hung above the fireplace, and a replica of Excalibur hung over the bar. A roulette wheel took up most of the area along one wall, and two floor-to-ceiling windows—covered in heavy Chinese-red velvet drapes fringed in gold that reeked of cigar smoke—overlooked the unkempt front lawn.
"What's wrong?" Lee asked, coming up to stand behind her.
"This room," Mary told him. "It's every bit as bad as I feared. It looks like…" Mary shifted Maddy to her hip.
Lee leaned over her shoulder to get a view of the parlor and began to laugh. "At least this castle has some creature comforts. This room reminds me of nearly every private gentlemen's club I've ever visited." That was his polite way of telling Mary the front parlor of her new home could have doubled as a gaming room in some of the most exclusive brothels this side of the Mississippi.
"And I'll bet you've seen quite a few," Mary snapped back.
"I've seen my share," he replied good-naturedly. "After all, I am a grown man." Lee let his gaze wander over the attractive blush spreading across Mary's cheeks. "And I do travel a lot."
He was right. She was acting snappish. But the house was such a shock. And this room… Mary didn't know what to make of it. She turned to Lee. "You don't suppose Maddy's father ran a gambling house, do you?"
"Nah," Lee said. "Not with a two-and-a-half-year-old daughter around." He turned Mary to face him, then unbuttoned his duster so that she could put Maddy down. Mary leaned over and set the child on her feet. "Then why do you suppose he had a parlor like this?" Mary couldn't imagine anything reputable taking place in a red room furnished with a bar, a billiard table, and roulette wheel.
"A lot of big houses have rooms like this. Places where a man can entertain his friends and business acquaintances. It comes in handy. A man can play cards and gamble, shoot billiards," Lee walked into the room and over to the bar where he picked up a bottle of Scots whisky. "And consume vast quantities of expensive liquor and tobacco without leaving the privacy of his home." He turned to Mary and grinned, waiting to see her reaction.
"Something you know a great deal about," Mary replied acidly, remembering Lee's days masquerading as a barman at the Satin Slipper Saloon in Peaceable. "You'll probably feel right at home in no time."
"So will you, if you give it half a chance," Lee told her.
"I'll never feel at home with that," Mary pointed to the painting of the nude woman hanging over the mantel, "hanging in my parlor."
Lee studied the painting. "It's not so bad," he said. "In fact, I'd say the artist was rather good. Think of it as having a Rubens on display in your very own home."
"It's not a Rubens," Mary reminded him. "It doesn't look anything like a Rubens."
Lee looked at the painting again, then raised his right eyebrow at Mary. "It doesn't?"
"I was referring to Rubens' style of painting, not his choice of models."
Lee smiled at her. "You're being a little prudish, don't you think? Even for a schoolteacher? After all"—he teased—"we're talking about art."
"That painting isn't art," Mary informed him. "It's a cheap, tawdry advertisement, just like all the other nude pictures you find hanging in saloons. It's designed to entice men into the bar so they can spend their hard-earned money on liquor."
"I kinda like it."
"Don't tell me you plan to leave this room as it is." Mary wasn't trying to pick a fight with Lee, but the house, the town, the situation with Judah and Maddy, and marriage to Lee was so daunting. So overwhelming. She felt like a failure before she had even begun. She didn't know the first thing about really young children. She didn't understand "Maddy-talk," as Lee called it, or know how to be a good mother. And although she understood the basic nature of Judah's illness, Mary didn't know enough about the elderly gentleman to avoid inadvertently touching on unpleasant memories that triggered Judah's retreat into childhood.
But worst of all, she didn't know what to expect from her new husband. He had kissed her before the wedding with tenderness and passion and hunger, then rejected her after the ceremony. He wanted a marriage on paper and a mother for Maddy, not a wife and lover for himself. But Mary didn't know if she could settle for the kind of marriage Lee wanted—not when she wanted more. The very thought of another rejection at his hands frightened her more than she liked to admit. He had carried her over the threshold, but the least he could do was take her in his arms once again, kiss her senseless, and promise her that everything was going to work out.
"Okay," he agreed. "I'll tell you I plan to take the luggage upstairs and fall into the first bed I see."
"You don't know what we'll find upstairs," Mary reminded him. "Or if the beds have clean linen."
"I don't care."
"You must care. The beds could be filled with fleas, or bedbugs, or worse…"
Lee stared at his wife, and recognized the look of apprehension in her beautiful brown eyes. Unfortunately, he had reached the end of his physical reserves. He wanted to allay her fears, but he was too damn tired to be diplomatic. He couldn't think straight anymore—he needed sleep. Still, he made an effort to humor her. "What could be worse than fleas and bedbugs?"
"Well, you know."
"What?" He was too tired to play guessing games or dance coyly around the subject.
"You heard what Judah said about the Silver Bear Saloon." When Lee looked at her blankly, Mary decided she needed to prod his memory. "You know what he said about the women there." She lowered her voice to a whisper so Maddy wouldn't hear. "What if this house is a place like that? What if the beds upstairs are all occupied?"
Lee couldn't help but grin. "Fortunately, I easily adapt to almost any situation."
"Lee!" Mary's face turned a bright shade of pink.
"Just look how well I've adapted to being a family man. After spending nearly a week on a train and practically crossing the continent, I inherited a little girl and the company of an old man who can't remember his name or where he lives most of the time, and a beautiful bride—not to mention a house, a silver mine, and a load of unexpected responsibilities. I'm dead on my feet and nearly delirious from lack of sleep."
"I had to persuade my wife to enter her new home when all I want is a bed and a few hours of uninterrupted sleep. And now that I've got her inside the house, I find myself standing in the entrance hall calmly discussing the possibility of whor—soiled doves—residing upstairs with my bride who's upset because the town I've brought her to is too small and the mansion I've given her isn't quite up to standards and has a billiard table, a roulette wheel, and a Rubenesque nude in the front parlor."
"I'm sorry you feel I'm being ill-tempered or petty, but this isn't a joke, Lee Kincaid. This is serious. We don't know what we've stumbled into," Mary reminded him in her prim schoolteacher voice.
"I know I've stumbled into a house with beds upstairs and that's all that matters to me right now."
"But, Lee…"
"Good God, woman, where did you get your tenacity?" Lee removed his hat and raked his fingers through his hair, then mumbled, "It must be the result of your 'unfortunate heritage.'" He had hoped to provoke a smile from her or a heated comment at his mention of her pedigree, but Mary did
n't respond. She simply stood there and looked at him. He stared down at her. Her brown eyes appeared bigger and darker in her face than he remembered. Her lips were red, chapped from the cold, and marred by abrasions from her teeth. Mary was so capable, so intelligent, so strong and decisive, that he forgot she probably had as many anxieties about their partnership as he did, maybe more. She was, after all, a bride miles away from her family and friends, saddled with a host of new and unfamiliar responsibilities—himself among them. Lee reached out and touched her bottom lip, tracing the liny marks with the pad of his thumb. "Mary, I'm fairly certain there aren't any other women upstairs, but if there are, I promise not to take advantage of them. Or let them take advantage of me."
"I wasn't…"
"I know," he replied gently. "I was just trying to allay your fears." He grinned suddenly, and his thick blond mustache tilted at the corners. "I am, after all, a married man now. I have no interest in any woman who isn't my wife."
He traced the contours of her lip one more time, then reached down for his leather satchel. "Don't worry so much." He raised up and met her solemn gaze once again. "All I need is a few hours' sleep. When I wake up, we can sit down and try to work out a plan. Okay?"
Lee looked so exhausted that Mary had no choice but to relent. "Okay."
He turned toward the stairs at the end of the hall and slowly began to climb them.
"Lee!" Mary called out when he reached the top of the stairs.
"Yes?" Lee leaned over the rail so he could see her. He needed to assure himself that Mary would be all right in this mausoleum, with only Judah and Maddy for company, during the few hours it would take for him to get his long-delayed and much-needed sleep.
"What do I do while you're sleeping?"
He wanted to suggest that she tuck Maddy and Judah into beds of their own, then come up and join him, but he didn't. He smiled down at her instead and tried to make useful suggestions that would provide a couple of hours of busywork to keep Mary from dwelling on her anxieties. "You can find Maddy's bag and get her some more clothes to wear. And you might see to whatever it is you have bundled in your jacket. Then, you might want to do a little unpacking yourself. Oh, and check out the kitchen and see if there's any food. I'm sure Maddy and Judah must be hungry. Make a list of the supplies we need and explore the house. Just make yourself at home. I'll be down in a couple of hours."
* * *
Chapter Eleven
"Make yourself at home, check out the kitchen, find something for Maddy to wear. I'll be down in a couple of hours," Mary grumbled as she poured a measure of rolled oats into the farina boiler. "And I might fly to the moon tomorrow. Who does he think he is, leaving me to cope with everything while he takes a nap?" She wiped a stray lock of hair off her forehead with the back of her hand. Her husband, that's who. Mary's heart seemed to skip a beat as she answered. The bridegroom who had sat up on the train all night watching over her and Maddy and Judah while they slept. He was her legal spouse, and as such, Lee had every right to expect her to take care of Maddy and Judah while he slept. He was her husband. She was his wife and lady of the house. There was nothing wrong with his suggesting she perform a few necessary household chores, as long as he didn't make a habit of it. As long as he didn't expect her to behave like a well-trained servant rather than his wife. They were, after all, marriage partners. Equals. And Mary expected Lee to contribute as much to the upkeep of this monstrosity of a house as she did.
She held her tongue and had waited until Lee disappeared from view before she had began rummaging through the carpetbags he had left in the entrance hall. She found Maddy's bag, pulled out a petticoat, drawers, and a pair of thick black stockings, and dressed the little girl in those. Once she had Madeline warmly dressed, Mary took a bottle of bath salts and a pair of soft deerskin moccasins from one of her trunks, then picked up the jacket-wrapped bundle and began a search for the kitchen.
She finally located it and an adjoining food pantry in the servant's wing. The food pantry contained the usual bulk staples of flour, lard, sugar, coffee, tea, rice, rolled oats, and molasses, as well as an assortment of spices, dried foods, canned goods, and a barrel of salted pork. Wasting no time, Mary took off her black lace-up shoes, slipped on her comfortable moccasins, rolled up her sleeves, and built a fire in the stove.
After carefully priming the pump, she pumped water into a kettle for tea, filled a farina cooker to make boiled oat porridge with molasses, then filled a large pot with water, poured a bit of the bath salts into it, and hefted it onto the stove to boil. She didn't attempt to locate the springhouse to see if there was any butter or eggs, nor did she try to find a smokehouse that might contain meat other than salted pork because she would have had to leave the house to do so, and she couldn't leave Maddy and Judah unsupervised.
Once the porridge was done, she fried a few slices of pork, dished up bowls for the three of them, and opened a can of peaches, which she served along with the rolled oats. Rather than eat in the dining room, they sat at the worktable in the warm kitchen. It wasn't much of a breakfast, eaten as it was, without milk, butter, or fresh meat, but it was hot and nourishing and Maddy and Judah seemed to enjoy it.
When she finished eating, Mary unwrapped the bundle of clothes. She counted the garments twice—Maddy's muslin petticoat, drawers, and knitted tights—her silk stockings, quilted underpetticoat, bustle petticoat, and… Mary frowned. There was no doubt about it. Her drawers were missing. Left behind in the necessary, no doubt, although Mary distinctly remembered bundling them inside her jacket. She shrugged her shoulders and swallowed an embarrassed giggle at the thought of another passenger on the Cheyenne to Denver train, or one of Utopia's residents, stumbling across her frilly underwear. But there was nothing she could do about that now. Mary shrugged her shoulders once again and scooped up Maddy's pile of laundry. At least Lee hadn't noticed anything unusual about her appearance, except that her skirt seemed longer.
She put Maddy's soiled linen and stockings in the pot with the bath salts, and covered it with a lid. She let the linen boil for a few minutes, then drew up a pan of cold rinse water. She lifted the pot off the stove and set it into the sink before she fished Maddy's undergarments out of the hot water with a long wooden spoon and dumped them into the pan of cold water. Mary added her own silk stockings to the cold rinse water and, once the laundry had cooled sufficiently, she wrung it out by hand, then carried the linen into the scullery and cranked it through the wringer. Mary hung Maddy's tights and petticoats on the wooden clothes racks in the scullery to dry along with her own pair of stockings. She didn't attempt to launder her massive petticoats or her green jacket, but simply hung them up to air out. And throughout the process, Madeline and Judah finished their breakfast and watched quietly as Mary made several trips from the kitchen to the scullery and back.
After breakfast, Mary put a pot of pork and beans on to simmer for the next meal, washed the breakfast dishes, and tidied up the rest of the kitchen. Taking a mug of tea with her, Mary ushered Judah and Maddy back to the main wing of the house. She found paper and pencils in a desk in the library and, using a book as a writing desk, made a list of the kitchen and food supplies they would need, then set out to explore the rest of the rooms of the main wing.
She found that the servant's wing housed the kitchen in the turret room at the back of the house, a water closet, and a large dining hall furnished with an oak trestle and matching benches, a china closet, butler's pantry, several storage closets, and food pantry. In addition to the front parlor and the entrance hall, there were four other rooms in the main wing of the first floor: a Baroque dining room complete with carved niches displaying china and overflowing with furnishings decorated with the curves, bumps, lumps, and knobs indicative of the rococo period; a Gothic revival style study with arched doorways, a frescoed ceiling, a massive walnut desk and matching chair, as well as a pair of huge book cabinets with stained glass fronts; a Renaissance-style sitting room which opened onto the study a
nd the library, which was located in the front turret. The library had a high ceiling and large floor-to-ceiling clear glass windows for light, built-in bookshelves, a marble fireplace, windowseat, and Jacobean furnishings.
Mary studied the rooms with a critical eye. The furniture, paintings, wallpaper, and rugs, even the assorted bric-a-brac were of the highest quality, but the mix of styles, colors, and fabrics jarred the senses. She made copious notes, numbering, describing, and, in some cases, even sketching the pieces of furniture in each room, ending her journey in the study where she sat down on one side of the massive two-person desk to make the list she hoped would help her devise a decor of her own—something she could live with—by keeping the furnishings she liked and relegating the rest to the third floor for storage. Strangely enough, she decided she liked the Arthurian touches in each of the rooms. The woven tapestries hanging in the library, the paintings of Arthur and Guinevere in the dining room, and the other items appealed to her whimsical side, and Mary decided to keep them.
She finished making her notes, then took Judah and Maddy with her back into the warmth of the kitchen and set them down at the table where she could keep an eye on them while she prepared lunch.
She gave Judah some paper and a pencil to write or draw on while she worked. Maddy sat down on the opposite side of the table and played quietly with her doll as Mary mixed up a batch of biscuits and a cobbler, made from dried apples, to go with the pork and beans.
Lunchtime came and went with no sign of Lee. Mary left the pot of beans warming on the stove as she cleaned up the kitchen once again, then sat down at the table beside Maddy to savor another cup of tea. A little while later, Mary realized Judah was growing tired and restless. She looked at the watch she'd taken off her jacket and pinned to her blouse. Lee's two hours of sleep had stretched to five and a half hours. It was afternoon and probably time for Maddy's nap… and Judah's as well. Mary remembered that her grandfather, who was around Judah's age, always took a nap after lunch.