Iron Ties Part 8

He c.o.c.ked his head, regarding her. "Which brings up something I've been wanting to ask you. Why is it that the only time you're available to see me is between midnight and dawn?"

"What do you mean?"

"Don't play coy, Inez. You're many things, but coy isn't one of them." He jabbed a post through the cufflink hole. "Why no to the picnic, no to even a simple after-church stroll to visit a friend. The last time we attended a public function together was...." He paused, thinking. "Was it March?"

"Justice B. Sands." She squeezed her eyes shut in frustration, then opened them. "For the past half year, you've had the congregation, in fact, Leadville in general, eating out of your hand. Particularly the 'polite society' women whose husbands are on the church board."

She turned her back on him, reached under her pillow, fished out her silk knee-length drawers, and flung back the quilt. The cold air hit her bare skin like a splash of glacier water. "Those men listen to their wives. At least, on church matters. And those women draw the line between 'proper' and 'improper' with a firm, unwavering hand."

"My deeds speak for my conduct." He finished with the cufflinks and unlooped his tie from around the bedpost.

Inez twisted around on the bed to face him, holding the silk to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. "The mission, the poorhouse, all your other 'good works' will count for nothing if....Don't you see that Mrs. Terrence, Mrs. Price, Mrs. Johnson, and the others would drop you down the nearest mineshaft if they knew you were committing adultery? And with a saloon owner! Their husbands might not care-most of them frequent the district at least once a week-but if their wives catch wind of us...."

She leaned forward, trying to make him understand. "To them, I'm no different from Frisco Flo, the waiter-girls, the actresses, and all the rest of the women on State Street. All of them, souls you're trying to save. Saving lost souls is acceptable, commendable even. But adultery!" Saying the word was like dynamiting a dam inside her. The words flooded out without consideration. "Didn't that ever cross your mind? Doesn't it bother you in the least that what's going on between us is not only a sin, but illegal as well?"

The reverend pinched the bridge of his nose, eyes closed. He glanced past her to the window, then draped the tie around his neck, snugging it under the stand-up collar. "There's no time to discuss this if I'm to slink away before dawn."

"I'm only thinking of your future!" Inez flapped the drawers. The pant legs snapped out momentarily like pleading arms. She pulled them on and reached for the chemise hanging on the bedpost. "What would happen if you lost your position? What would you do?" Her despair felt dangerously close to tears. She hastily pulled the undershirt on.

"There's law enforcement, carpentry. I could preach and minister without a church. But I can't do without-" he took a deep breath- "you. I want to wake up with you by my side, the sun shining through the window."

"Stop," she whispered.

"To break fast with you in the mornings. To-"

She covered her eyes with one hand. "I said stop." Her throat ached, echoing the pain in her heart.

He stopped. "Then what is our future, Inez?" His voice was sharp. "You know what I want. I've made it clear, time and time again. From you, I get smiles and embraces, but no more. So, what do you see as our future? Because sneaking around for a few hours of pleasure once or twice a week...that's not what I had in mind for the long haul."

"I'm not ready for this, Justice."

She felt the mattress sag as he sat beside her. Gently, he pulled her hand away from her eyes. "You still wear these." He rolled the two bands on her ring finger, one gold, one silver. "You're still married, I know. I haven't forgotten. But you're the only one who can change that, who can give us a chance at any kind of real future together. Inez, when are you going to get a divorce?"

She pulled her hand away. "I'm looking into it."

"Looking." The disbelief in his voice rang clear.

"I've asked around." She winced, remembering how she'd cornered Cooper one evening, presented her carefully phrased question. How he'd looked surprised first, then speculative as he'd answered: "My specialty is mining litigation, Mrs. Stannert, not domestic law. But if you wish, I'll see if I can find a reputable divorce lawyer for your...'friend'."

"Well, I've asked around too." Sands reached into a waistcoat pocket and extracted a handful of calling cards. Sorting through them, he handed her one.

There was just enough light for her to make out the name embossed at the top: "William V. Casey, Attorney-At-Law."

"Handles divorce," Sands said. "New to town, so you probably haven't met him. Not the type to frequent State Street."

"That's what they all say."

"Bill Casey's different." Sands faced her squarely. "This is it, Inez. My cards are on the table. I'm a patient man, but no saint, and I want some guarantee that you're serious about us. Two guarantees, in fact. The first being that you'll make an appointment with Casey about getting a divorce."

Inez considered, then nodded, secretly relieved not to have to pursue Cooper any further on the matter. "And the second?"

"When this morning's service is over, I want the pleasure of walking you to Miss Carothers' boardinghouse."

"But the congregation-"

It was light enough to see him raise his eyebrows.

"All right." She glanced nervously toward the covered square of window. "Then it's up to you to handle the rumors, the innuendoes. And if this costs you your church position, don't you ever, ever-even in your dreams-blame me."

"Agreed."

"Now I want a guarantee as well."

His eyebrows rose higher.

She leaned toward him and, with lips a fraction of an inch from his, whispered, "A guarantee that you will not allow yourself to be seduced by Miss Snow." She closed the s.p.a.ce between them. After a moment, she felt his hand on her knee. Warm and sensuous on the silk, his touch glided up her thigh, slid beneath the silk undershirt, followed the curve of waist to her breast....

She pressed his hand to her skin and pulled back, staring hard into his eyes. "Do you promise?" Her heart beat rapidly, answering the pressure of his hand. She watched him with the intensity usually reserved for drunks on the verge of violence or cardsharps on a losing streak.

But when he smiled, she saw nothing but tenderness mixed with a touch of sadness. "That you would even ask. Very well. Neither Miss Snow nor any other woman-be she an eighteen-year-old debutante from Philadelphia or the Queen of England herself-will take me from your side."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

Inez listened to the creak of floorboards as Reverend Sands made his way down the hallway and into her small kitchen in the back of the house. The back door squeaked open. Birds trilled, and animal-drawn vehicles clickety-clacked down Harrison, one block away. The steady thump of the stamp mills, crushing ore in the first step to extract the silver, threaded through it all like a heartbeat. The door snapped shut, muting the sounds.

Inez bundled into her flannel wrapper and retrieved several lumps of coal from the kitchen hopper. After coaxing a fire from her bedroom stove, she settled herself at the secretary, unstoppered an inkbottle, and retrieved a sheet of thin writing paper to begin a letter to her sister Harmony.

She sat, tapping the steel nib of her uninked pen on the blotter, staring at the roller shade covering the street-side window. The brown fabric, brightened by the rising sun, was now the color of light caramel. Out on Fourth Street, two carriages squeaked by, their harnesses jingling, heading west.

Several thoughts troubled her and interrupted the formulation of her letter. On the one hand, there was Miss Snow.

"I know you, Birdie Snow," she mused. "I'll wager better than you know yourself."

Set the time fifteen years ago, change the venue to New York and the fashions to hoop skirts, and that'd be me. Flirting with men twice my age.

"Papa would have whipped me black and blue if he'd caught me doing half the things I did," she said aloud. The fire in the stove popped in reply.

And on the other hand, there was Justice Sands. A minister, but admittedly no saint.

I'll bet he's never had to seriously deal with a seductive snip of a high-society girl like Birdie.

She sighed, dipped the pen, and attempted to ink the date at the top of the paper. The "J" in June ended up a big blot. Muttering over the waste, she commenced doodling, drawing out the tail of the J in a long undulating line.

Sands had had romantic liaisons with married women before he took up the ministry; Inez knew that for a fact. She did a quick calculation and concluded that he'd spent his formative social years skulking about the war-torn countryside. She doubted very much he'd had many opportunities to engage in the drawing-room equivalent of hand-to-hand combat with young women of Birdie Snow's inclination and social stature.

And if she's half as bold as I was at her age....

Inez tried to shrug off her misgivings and focus on the letter to Harmony. What words could she muster, what could she say to ensure a s.p.a.ce of time with her son William? And once Harmony agreed to a meeting, where could they meet? It had to be accessible by train. Not too far from New York. But not too close either. Should Papa catch wind of my plans, I wouldn't put it past him to be there. G.o.d knows what he'd do. Probably shoot me. As often happened when she considered her father's extreme displeasure, memories of her elopement with Mark Stannert, the act that had sundered her rocky relationship with her father, crowded all other thoughts aside.

She squinched the paper up in an angry twist and stood to throw it into the stove. As the paper hit the coals, it flashed into a golden light. Gripping her elbows, she glared at the consuming flames.

After Dodge, Leadville was supposed to be their new start. It had begun well enough. Mark had won the Silver Queen Saloon in a poker game, fair and square. Or so he claimed. When he'd slid the silver ring on her finger and snugged it up to the gold wedding band, he'd promised her: they'd settle down, have a family, live a respectable life in Leadville.

"We tried," she said softly to the flames. "We tried."

But Inez was no housewife. She chafed at home, scorched their meals, hated the tasks that never saw conclusion, and suffered from chronic nausea that seemed to last her entire pregnancy. One miserable day blended into the next. Their son, finally brought into the world after a long, hard travail, struggled for life, laboring to gasp the thin mountain air into his weak lungs. Then, shortly after their decision to sell the saloon and move to California with its gentler climate, Mark had vanished.

At first, she'd thought him dead, the victim of foul play. As time went on and no body surfaced, her certainties faltered. She'd heard a slight music of whispers concerning Mark and a blonde actress from The Comique, who had vanished about the same time. Perhaps, with all the responsibilities and burdens, the temptations of State Street had been too much to ignore.

"If I ever find out you ran away with that actress," Inez hissed, "I'll kill you, Mark Stannert."

She dropped back into the chair, a little surprised that so much emotion still seethed below the surface for her errant, and perhaps erring, husband.

And if I get a divorce, what then? Marry Justice Sands?

A vision of herself pouring tea for visiting parishioners-all sitting in a proper parlor stuffed with knickknacks and tatted antimaca.s.sars, the legs of chairs and tables modestly covered so as not to give offense-made her want to laugh or cry.

Of course, that's not all there is to marriage.

Her gaze strayed to her bed, its crumpled sheets, the hollow where she and Sands had lain together, fitting like two nested spoons.

She looked away. Would he want children? Most likely. Men always do. What of William? Would Justice take him in? Would my father give him up?

The stove's heat bathed one side of her body in unbearable warmth while the other side remained cool. She pushed up a sleeve, thinking irritably how much it was like her life. Hot or cold. Debutantes or drunkards. Tea in the drawing room or rotgut in a red-light saloon. Married or alone. Yet, while I'm married but unhusbanded, I remain in the middle. Free.

Her hands stilled as she took in the truth of it, handed up from some place deep inside. While I wait and wait for Mark-who will probably never return-I'm free to do what I want, order my life as I wish. Why do I hesitate to divorce, to set the wheels in motion for Justice and myself? Is it because I'm waiting for Mark, a fool deluding only herself? Or is it because I prefer to live as I wish, beholden to no man?

She stared at the empty desk blotter. First things first. She could not go another year, another six months, without William. Come fall, he'd be nearly two years old. Would he even recognize her as his mother? The question pained her.

Slowly centering another sheet, Inez redipped the pen and began again.

Dearest Harmony, I received your letter of June 15 only yesterday and am, of course, sorely disappointed in the news. My heart aches to see my son before the year is out. If not this summer, then early fall. If we were to meet in Chicago or Philadelphia- The ink flowed smooth and untroubled.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

The notes of the last hymn shivered and died in the air.

"Please turn and greet your neighbors." Reverend Sands gathered up his notes and stepped down from the pulpit, shaking the hands of the nearest church members.

Inez pressed the satin ribbon in place to mark the last hymn and tucked her pocket hymnal into her bulging reticule. The smell of fresh-baked bread, still warm, wafted up from the bag. Uneasy about appearing at Susan's boardinghouse empty handed, Inez had detoured through the saloon's kitchen before church, looking for something edible and easy to take with her after the service. Bridgette had stopped her chopping and cooking long enough to smooth a sheet of brown paper on the kitchen table and settle a clutch of biscuits in the center. She wrapped those biscuits as efficiently as she'd no doubt diapered the last of her five sons.

All the time, she cluck-clucked over Susan's misfortune. "What's a young woman like her doing out all alone? She should've arranged for an escort from Twin Lakes. It's a mercy she wasn't killed!" Bridgette upended the paper bundle with a thump and whipped a string around it. "If she needs anything else-a poultice for scratches, a good beef broth to bring back her strength-you tell me. I know the widow that runs her boardinghouse. That Mrs. Flynn. She thinks nothing of buying the latest fancy hat, but tight with a penny when it comes to her boarders. She's not likely to part with so much as a fresh bit of marrow to help in Miss Carothers' recovery."

Inez pulled the reticule string tight, cutting off the olfactory memory. She looked up and caught Reverend Sands gazing at her over the head of Mrs. Terrence, the sole proprietor of a candy store on Harrison. Mrs. Terrence had the dubious claim to fame of having stood off a lot jumper twice her size with a pistol. The exploit had been immortalized forever in the town's newspapers.

Mrs. Terrence shook a bony finger under the reverend's nose. His attention snapped back to her. Her reedy, but determined voice reached Inez's ears: "Reverend-you must do something about these pews! All splintery and splitting, the whitewash peeling off. It's a disgrace. The church should have mahogany pews, like the ones at St. Anne's Episcopal. St. Anne's has Mr. Tabor to pay for them, but we have Mr. Gallagher, who is surely as rich and who could buy a whole church without batting an eye."

Reverend Sands, nodding in time to her words like a metronome, took advantage of a pause to soothe her. "I understand, Mrs. Terrence, I understand. The church board is looking into it, debating costs of repairs versus replacement. Perhaps you ought to talk with one of the board. Say, Mr. Warner, over there." Sands sidestepped, opening a straight path to Mr. Warner of P.T. Warner Books and Stationery, who stood with a glazed look in his eyes while his wife chatted with two other women. Mrs. Terrence bore down on him unwaveringly, a bullet closing on its target. Unaware of the immediate jeopardy, Mr. Warner smiled and lifted his hat in polite greeting.

Inez smiled as Reverend Sands materialized by her side. "Nicely done, Reverend."

"A good soldier-whether of G.o.d's army or otherwise-always knows when to take evasive action." He raised an eyebrow. "Did you enjoy the sermon?"

"Oh, immensely. You were splendid, as always."

"What part did you like best?"

"Ah-" Caught out, she wasn't about to admit that she'd lost total track of his message and floated away on the music of his voice, daydreaming over their previous night together.

From his expression, it appeared no explanation was necessary. "I see." His mouth twitched with a suppressed smile. "I should find ways to encourage your spiritual awareness. We can discuss scripture on our way to see Miss Carothers." He glanced toward the cloakroom. "I'll get your coat."

"Don't you have to close up the church?"

"I found a willing volunteer to take my place." He headed toward the cloakroom, greeting Mrs. Warner and her friends in pa.s.sing.

The group of women looked from Reverend Sands to Inez, curiosity etched on their faces.

Inez smiled frostily at them and turned away. Brushing the top of the last pew with a gloved hand, she strolled toward the stained-gla.s.s windows. The gla.s.s threw dazzling patterns of color onto the whitewashed interior. Inez paused at the first window, focusing through a rectangle of clear leaded gla.s.s onto the hard-packed dirt path outside. A handful of children streaked up the path, chasing each other in a surfeit of high spirits. A moment later, a toddler in Sunday dress lurched into view, his socks sagging down over the tops of his glossy high-b.u.t.toned boots. He was obviously doing his valiant best to mimic the speed of the older children, who had by now disappeared around the side of the church. The child's mother strolled a few feet behind.

With a pang, Inez estimated the youngster at about the age of William. She leaned forward, to keep mother and child in view a moment longer.

A furtive movement caught the corner of her eye. She twisted around to see Mr. Braun, bent over the back of the last pew, hand disappearing into his pocket. He straightened up to find Inez staring at him. Pursing his lips, he tsk-tsked loudly and pulled a neatly folded sheaf of notes from his pocket. "Green wood," he murmured as he pa.s.sed Inez. "Not well cured. Eine Schande." He hurried up the side aisle toward the meeting room behind the sanctuary.

Curious, Inez returned to where he'd been standing. A good-sized split ran along the top of the pew. The raw wood inside looked shiny, fresh-a wound in the white-painted surface. She frowned and traced the gash with a finger.

Still frowning, she looked up to see Reverend Sands emerging from the cloakroom with her coat over his arm. Taking a deep breath, she approached him, meeting him halfway. They stopped, facing each other at a polite distance. Expectancy pulled against her ribs, the same feeling as before the music began.

He held out the coat. "Mrs. Stannert, if I may?" He circled behind her to settle the coat on her shoulders, leaving her an unimpeded view of several churchwomen-gazes rapt, eyebrows raised. Chin held high, she pushed her arms through the sleeves and fastened the top clasp.

He reappeared at her side. "Shall we go?"

She smiled at him and slid her hand around his proffered arm.