Diamonds and Dreams (36 page)

“Well, no, but—Look, mister, I already
spoiled kidneys for you. I don’t want to spoil your pleasure with
eels too.”

“Nothing you say could spoil eel pie for
me.”

She took his statement as a dare. “They’re
slimy. May as well eat worms. Y’know, mister, I’m purty sure you’re
dukish. You flare and wheeze better’n I ever saw anybody do it
before. And you’ve got a real nice wiggle to your walk. But you
could be even more dukish if you could manage to talk like
Shakespeare. A cane and a white wig wouldn’t hurt either. Didn’t
anybody ever tell you about those things?”

“A wiggle?” He closed his eyes for a moment,
struggling for composure. When he opened them again, he saw his
coach was ready, the footman waiting beside the door. “Miss, it has
been a...an experience meeting you. The best of luck to you in all
your endeavors—whatever they may be.”

“Just one more question. What’s your
name?”

He took her paper and pencil from her and
jotted down his name. “Good day.” With that, he walked to his
carriage.

Goldie waved as it rumbled down the
street.

* * *

Saber’s mind was still on his meeting with
Tyler Escott when the coach halted in front of the house. Looking
out, he saw a streamer of knotted sheets hanging from Goldie’s
bedroom window. His first notion was that she’d washed them and
hung them out to dry. But upon remembering that the house was full
of servants, he discarded that assumption and became immediately
angered when a second conclusion came to mind. He jumped out of the
carriage and raced up the steps of the house. In the few seconds it
took him to reach the front door, his anger had catapulted to
fury.

“Saber!” Goldie called from across the
street. She raced to the house, her curls flopping as she bounded
up the steps. “See that carriage goin’ down the street?” she asked,
pointing to it. “There’s a dukish man inside it, and I met and
talked to him! He—”

Saber took her by her shoulders. “What in
heaven’s name is that?” he demanded, motioning toward the
sheets.

She waited to feel the hurt his anger would
surely cause. It didn’t come. Instead, she felt flippancy. “It
looks like a homemade rope to me.”

“And what, may I ask, is it doing there?” He
clenched his jaw.

“Hangin’ out the window and flutterin’ in
the breeze.” She noticed his jaw moving. “Saber, are you
eatin’—”

“Goldie—” He broke off when Bennett, the
butler, opened the door.

“Mr. West—Miss Mae!” Bennett exclaimed, his
brow creased in confusion. “How did you—”

Goldie tossed him a bright grin. “I bet
you’re wonderin’ what I’m doin’ out here, aren’t you, Bennett?”

“Bennett is not the only one,” Saber
muttered, urging her inside. For the sake of the servants, several
of whom were spying from various corners, he smiled and led Goldie
upstairs. Once in her room, he marched straight to her window and
pulled in the rope. “Explain this, Goldie.”

“I think you already know everything you’re
askin’,” she replied, tossing her hair off her shoulders.

“You left the house. After I
told
you
to—”

“You said I couldn’t go through the front
door. You didn’t say a damn word about leavin’ through the
window.”

He threw the sheets down and rammed his
fingers through his hair. “Where did you go? You didn’t, God
forbid, return to the East End, did you?”

“No, but if I’d wanted to, I would
have.”

He stared at her. This was another glimpse
of the new Goldie, he realized. One who not only stood up to him
and bore his anger, but dared to disobey him as well. And as much
as he wanted to stay mad at her, he couldn’t. She was wonderful
this way, he decided. He loved seeing her look at him with such
stubborn confidence in her beautiful eyes.

Still, he could not allow her to come and go
as she pleased. It was simply too dangerous. He crossed to her,
enfolding her in his arms. “The East End is a dangerous place,
Goldie. All of London is full of perils. I’m only worried about
your safety. If something happened to you while you’re in my
care... God, poppet, I can’t even think about it.”

His gentle voice and sweet words touched her
deeply. She hugged him to her, inhaling the scent of sandalwood
that clung to his clothes. “I’m sorry for leavin’ the house, Saber.
Really I am. I’m not usually this much trouble. But this duke stuff
is so important to me that I just can’t calm myself down over it.
And when I saw the dukish man in the street, I just had to talk to
him. I was only outside for about fifteen minutes before you got
here. Daddy’s honor, I’ll try not to worry you like that
again.”

He didn’t miss the fact that she swore only
to
try
. Smiling, he buried his face in her wind-blown curls,
feeling them tickle his nose.

“You’re right to eat kidneys, y’know,”
Goldie informed him. “Lord only knows how you can choke ’em down,
but dukish folks eat ’em, Saber. And you might try bein’ a little
rude every now and then too. The man I met today started out bein’
an ill-box. He came around after a while, but he never did fall all
over himself tryin’ to be nice to me. Anyway, eat eel pie sometime
too. And talk about the Queen’s ear. The dukish fella has it,
y’know. And in case you don’t know, that isn’t a literal
expression. It only means that the Queen listens to his opinions
and usually thinks they’re right.”

“He has the Queen’s ear?” Saber’s mouth fell
open. Many moments passed before he could properly phrase the
question that exploded into his mind. “Goldie—Who—He—What was the
man’s name? Did you find out who he was?”

She dug into her pocket, withdrawing her
paper. “He wrote it down on here.”

Saber took it from her, examining it
closely. His hand shook when he saw the name. “Oh, God.” He sat
down upon the dressing-table stool and glanced at the name again.
His only consolation was that the gentleman Goldie had met
presented absolutely no danger to her.

He looked up at her, almost afraid to ask
her what she’d said to the man. After all, he mused miserably, she
could take the most innocent of subjects and turn them inside out
before her listener had time to understand a word! “What did you
talk about with the man, Goldie?”

“Oh, lots of things. Grits, stabbings,
guts—”

“Guts?” Saber covered his face with his
hands and looked at her through his fingers. “You talked about guts
with Lord John Russell.”

“So? Who the hell’s Lord John Russell?”

“The Prime Minister of Britain.”

Asa looked up from the pile of dust on the
stone floor of the cottage and saw Big busy hanging curtains at the
window by the door. Quietly, he lifted the small throw rug by the
hearth, and swept the dirt under it.

“I know what you did, Asa,” Big announced,
without ever turning around. “Now you’ll have to beat the rug as
well as sweep the dust outside.”

Asa cracked the broom over his knee. “I
ain’t no damn maid, Big!”

“Nevertheless, you cannot leave the dirt
under the rug. You don’t want Goldie to see it, do you?”

Asa shuddered with heartache, frustration,
and his need for a whiskey. “No. No, I don’t want her to see
it.”

“What do you think Goldie will say about the
curtains we made?” Big asked, stepping back to examine them. “They
cover the cracks in the panes nicely, don’t you think? For two men
who have never held needles, I don’t think we did too badly.
They—”

“My hands are shakin’ again. Big—Big, I need
a drink. You don’t understand how hard it is.”

Big turned immediately, his heart going out
to the suffering man. “Asa, no. Don’t. Think of how proud of you
Goldie will be when she gets home. Think of how happy it’ll make
her to know you’ve given up drinking. And don’t forget how much
better a few of the villagers have been treating you since you’ve
cleaned yourself up. Granted, they’re still wary, but they’re
coming around. That will mean the world to Goldie.”

Asa clenched his huge fists to keep them
from trembling. Thoughts of Goldie tumbled through his mind. He
ambled to her cot, picking up the rag doll he’d bought her years
ago. Smoothing his quaking hand over the doll’s stained face, he
sighed deeply. “This is the only thing I’ve ever give her. Besides
heartache. I’ve give her plenty of that.”

Big joined Asa at the cot. “Asa, I couldn’t
believe it when I got here and saw the change in you. If your
efforts to straighten yourself out don’t prove your love for her, I
don’t know what does. How can you say you’ve never given her
anything? One of her many dreams was for you to give up drinking.
Well, you’re giving it to her now.”

Tears filled Asa’s bleary eyes. “I chopped
down her tree.”

Big frowned in confusion. “You did a lot of
things, Asa. The point is that you’re trying to change and—”

“I ain’t been without her since the day we
laid her mama and daddy to rest. She’s been taggin’ along in my
shadow for some twelve years, Big. I never paid much attention
to—I—She—I didn’t understand how much she meant to me until I
stayed sober long enough to realize I didn’t have her no more. God
Almighty, Big, she had so many dreams. She’d tell ’em to me
sometimes, but I never listened real good. I—I didn’t make none of
her dreams come true for her. I’ve given the girl nothin’ but tears
and problems. Now she’s done grown up on me, and I ain’t never
gonna get another chance to be with the little girl she used to
be.”

“She’s still that girl,” Big assured him.
“One minute she’s an adult, and the next she’s just as young as she
always was. I’ve often thought she presents the best of both
worlds. And believe you me, Asa, she still has her dreams.”

Asa nodded and crossed the small room to
stand in front of the fireplace. “It was her note that done it to
me, Big. The day y’all left, I woke up and found it layin’ by my
whiskey bottle. She—She figured I’d find it there. She wrote that
she’d gone to fetch the duke. Said for me not to worry. Said
everything would work out. Said...said she loved me and that she’d
miss me. She even left money for me and told me to use it for food.
I—Big, I spent every damn coin on drink.

“Two nights later, I was lay in’ in my bed
sober as all get-out, and hungrier’n hell. I started thinkin’ about
them nice things she wrote in her letter. I laid there, and it all
of a sudden come to me that Goldie had laid in bed many a time with
an empty belly, too. Sometimes, Big...sometimes I didn’t feed her
good. I was always gone, y’see. In the bars or wenchin’. Makin’
trouble, fightin’. And Goldie? She was alone. In the darkness of
whatever shack I stuck her in. Her only company was this doll. And
I even laid into her for naggin’ me to buy the damn thing for
her.

“A doll,” he groaned, leaning his head
against the mantel. “Whatever love this doll give her, it was the
only affection she got. Big. I don’t think it was much because she
used to cry into her pillow at night. It made me so damn mad! I’d
yell at her to shut her mouth, but she only cried harder.
Once...God Almighty, Big, once I kicked her out of the house for
sobbin’. She slept on the porch step. When I got up in the mornin’,
there was snow all over her. She was seven then. Only seven years
old. I picked her up from the step and said I was sorry. I was
always apologizin’ when I was sober, but it was too late by then. I
held her in my arms, wiped the snow off her red cheeks, and I knew
in my soul she was gonna hit me for doin’ what I did. But she
didn’t. Big, she...she
hugged
me!”

He began to sob, his huge shoulders shaking.
“I ain’t never give her nothin’! All I ever done is holler at her
and tell her how worthless she was! Over and over again! Not a day
passed when I didn’t tell her what a no-account bother she was to
me! I even told her she was so bad that she didn’t
deserve
better treatment’n what she got!”

“But Asa—”

“I never knew what to do with her! She
needed so much, but I didn’t know how to give it to her. I didn’t
know what little girls—It’d make me so damn frustrated that
sometimes I’d yell at her just so I wouldn’t have to figure out how
to act with her. Then I’d start drinkin’. Once I was drunk, I
didn’t care.

“Goldie,” he continued, tears still coining,
“she cooked, cleaned, and mended for me. She saw to it that I was
warm in the winter. She even prayed for me. She did. I heard her at
it one night. And now she’s gone. Maybe I won’t ever see her purty
little face again. Maybe—”

“Asa—”

“And I didn’t ever even get her the damn
curtains she wanted for so long! I—”

“But we did make her curtains!” Big
exclaimed, rushing to the hearth to try and soothe the tortured
man. “Asa, we worked for days on them! Goldie will love—”

“But they ain’t her
dream
curtains.
Big! They ain’t pink and white gingham!” Asa wailed, his face still
buried in the vee of his arm, his tears wetting his shirtsleeve.
“And that white picket fence she wanted—I kept promisin’ and
promisin’ I’d find us a house with a fence like that. I never did.
I wouldn’t even let her have the cats she kept tellin’ me she
wanted. And I let her bird go, too! I didn’t make a single one of
her dreams come true! And now... Now she needs me more’n ever, and
I ain’t with her. Maybe I won’t ever be with her again!”

Big reached up, trying to put his little arm
around Asa’s thick waist. He considered telling him about Saber,
but decided against it. If Asa should slip back into his old ways
and begin drinking, all of Goldie’s efforts would be for naught. “I
told you I left her in a very nice boarding-house,” he lied. “She
has plenty of money, and knows exactly what she has to do to find
the duke. She’s fine. Otherwise I never would have left her there
alone. You’ll see. She’ll be along real soon, the duke in tow.”