Lake of Fire (16 page)

Laura fought the urge to gulp the bourbon in her glass, then considered flinging the contents in Cord’s deceitful face. Instead, she sipped the pungent liquor and watched him greet her father in a guarded tone.

How different Cord looked. His curling hair had been tamed, razor precise to the edge of his starched collar … she had never imagined he carried this fine suit in his rough leather saddlebag. Though he wore a neatly trimmed mustache instead of his wild black beard, the scar thus revealed reinforced his exotic air.

“It’s time we went in to dinner,” Hank announced.

Lips pressed together, Laura watched Cord’s bent
head, while he listened to a murmur from Constance. Her raven hair blended almost perfectly with his.

With a hand at Laura’s waist, Hank led the way to the dining room. He pulled out a ladder-back cane chair for her at a table covered with snow-white cloth and took the seat beside her. “The view of Yellowstone Lake is tremendous from every table,” he said with pride.

Golden afternoon light poured in through the windows. Outside, a moose lay placidly on the ground, its palmate antlers turned toward the setting sun.

Across the table, Cord sat by Constance. She touched his arm and made doe eyes while they discussed the menu. Her garnet flashed in the glow of electric chandeliers that seemed to grow brighter as the light faded from the sky.

“The trout is caught fresh every day, Miss Fielding,” Hank explained. “I would be honored if you would let me order for you.”

She strained to hear what Cord was saying to Constance while Hank went on, “Our wines are brought in on the train from St. Paul, nothing but the best French vintages for a civilized meal.”

Laura’s bourbon glass had somehow gotten empty. Hank poured a Sauvignon Blanc into a crystal flute set at her place and ordered jellied consommé, tomato aspic on a bed of shredded lettuce, and the trout.

“I will enjoy showing the park to you, Miss …” his thigh brushed hers,”… Laura.”

Cord laughed at something Constance said. Laura
missed her cousin’s reply, for she was affecting a sultry tone that seemed to thrill men to their toes.

Hank moved his chair closer. “You must come aboard the
Alexandra
some evening. My quarters are quite well appointed; I would enjoy showing you my collection of Persian rugs.” His thigh made another pass at hers.

The waiter placed a dish of chilled consommé before her. Across the table, Cord and Constance both smiled at the arrival of their shrimp cocktails.

Unable to contain herself any longer, Laura sent Cord a direct look. “Mr. Sutton, how come you by your interest in owning a hotel? I might have taken you for a cowhand or a member of some other rough profession.”

Cord met her hard gaze with one of his own. “It happens I do own a ranch, in the valley of Jackson’s Hole.” He bit off a shrimp with white teeth, chewed, and swallowed. “I am also a principal in the Excalibur Hotel off Temple Square in Salt Lake City.”

Laura felt as though she’d been struck. She noted, however, that Constance did not show surprise.

Giving up, at least for the time being, Laura wet her spoon in the consommé and gave it the barest taste. A few minutes later, the dish was removed and replaced by the tomato aspic. Though Hank dug in with relish, she stuck her fork into the quivering red mass and set the implement aside.

Cord and Constance both dipped into a cream of chicken soup. Aunt Fanny and her father conversed
over hearts of lettuce dressed in creamy mayonnaise for him and French onion soup for her. Hank refilled Laura’s wineglass and she drank deeply.

The wait staff—Cord had thought her a member—took away the plates of their second course. Hank’s thigh grazed Laura’s for the third time.

She moved away, grateful for the arrival of their entrée.

The waiter placed a gold-rimmed platter before her. The pink meat of the cutthroat trout glistened in a lake of butter sauce. She broke off a piece of the firm flesh and conveyed it to her mouth.

She dared a look across the table and found Cord also raising a forkful of trout to his lips. Their eyes met, and the succulent meat turned tasteless.

Hank wanted to tell Forrest he’d been a fool for doubting him.

He found Laura exquisite, seated beside him at table while the last light off Yellowstone Lake reflected onto her face. Her green eyes were boldly inquisitive one moment and demurely downcast the next. Striped satin accentuated her waist, her small breasts swelling the material of her dress.

Hank found his palms sweating. He wiped his hands on the snowy napkin across his long thighs. Raising his wineglass, he toasted his banker partner.

Forrest broke off conversing with his sister, Fanny,
to lift his glass; he waved an expansive hand at the roomful of chattering diners. “Let’s drink to the day when Hank will be the owner of the Lake Hotel.”

Hank recalled his elation when he’d first heard the Northern Pacific was selling, but in the midst of his triumph, he suddenly felt as though he’d been dashed with cold water … Cord Sutton was giving Laura Fielding a heated, speculative gaze. The hell of it was that she appeared to be responding with a look that made Hank’s mouth go dry.

He raised his toast. “To our mutual success, Forrest.”

Sutton turned away from Laura. His blue eyes hard as flint, he placed his palm over the top of his glass. “I’m afraid, sir, that I cannot drink to that.”

The assembled company went silent.

Hank met Cord’s stare. “Then shall we toast this?” He looked around the table. “That the best man wins.”

B
y dawn, Laura felt as though her world was upside down. Cord, not a simple cowhand, but a rancher who also ran an elegant hotel … She’d been right to think he was too well spoken to be who he pretended to be.

And pretense it had clearly been. With the horizon graying, her head felt muzzy from the strong spirits and the wine Hank had pressed upon her.

No, she had lifted her own glass and drunk every drop.

But she could accuse Cord, or William Cordon Sutton.

She threw back the covers and got out of bed. She wished she could wear her trousers, but they were in the hotel laundry, in defiance of Aunt Fanny and her father’s edict that the pants and Cord’s shirt be relegated to the rubbish bin.

Laura pulled on a camisole, step-ins, and a thin petticoat—Constance would have worn layers of crinolines—and studied the dresses Fanny had transformed with her needle yesterday. Finally, she selected a pink creation trimmed in white lace, conscious that it was in her cousin’s more delicate taste. She studied her face and hair in the bureau glass, ran a borrowed tortoiseshell comb through her sun-ripened locks, and called it good.

Hoping her father and Aunt Fanny were still asleep, she tiptoed to the hall door and went downstairs.

The night clerk looked younger than Laura, probably another student. When she paused in front of the desk, he kept his dark head bent over a dime novel. The slender magazine bore a cover picture of a bronco trying to buck off a cowboy in fringed chaps.

She could not blame the clerk for enlivening the lonely graveyard shift.

Laura cleared her throat.

The clerk started. “Excuse me, miss.”

“I’m looking for a guest.” She tried to sound matter-of fact. “His name is William Cordon Sutton.”

“William Cordon Sutton?” he repeated, reaching for the metal box that held the registration cards.

She’d thought it would be hard, but it was simple, really, standing there with her palms pressed on the high mahogany desk, while the young man said politely, “He’s in 109.”

She wasn’t going to his room. Not at an hour when he might reasonably still be abed.

If she did, what would she say? He had met her cousin first, had chosen her to be his bride. It was Laura’s tough luck to have encountered him under impossible circumstances.

She headed toward the first-floor hall. With hands knotted before her, she placed one foot in front of the other down the carpeted corridor. And stood outside the portal labeled “109.”

Her hand rose. She watched her knuckles rap the panel; any second Cord would open the door and glower at her. “What are you doing here?” he would snarl. “I was well shed of you when I thought you were headed for the servants’ quarters.”

She waited on rubbery legs but with her chin lifted to face him. Seconds passed, and she knocked again.

The sound echoed in the hall, followed by silence within and without.

Either Cord was not in his room or he had decided not to answer.

Or … what if Constance had slipped away from the family suite and was with her betrothed? A man with the virile appetites Cord had shown on the trail would surely claim a woman before they marched to the altar.

Her face hot, Laura turned away. Though she wanted to retreat in a dignified manner, she moved faster and faster down the corridor and out into the rising morning light.

She shouldn’t be surprised. Things were as they had been from the time she and Constance were girls.

The far shore of Lake Michigan had always been beyond the horizon, even when Laura peered through a spyglass from the widow’s walk atop Fielding House on Lakeshore Drive. Seven miles north of Chicago’s State Street and the growing downtown, the mansion and grounds formed a placid island, well back from the busy road.

Constance, twelve to Laura’s fourteen, already had the figure of a young woman, though her hair was still caught up in pigtails. She gave the spyglass a bored spin, rotating the brass and mahogany instrument on its tripod. Gripping the rococo wrought-iron railing, she called, “I spy.”

Laura looked around the slate roof with bronze lightning rods topped in colorful ceramic balls. They’d already spied the sailor on the weather vane today, and though Constance sometimes picked the same thing twice, she didn’t have the secret air of smugness that usually went with it.

Laura peered over the rail, down at the long green lawn that sloped to the lake. Scattered islands of roses and camellias decorated the way to a white-latticed gazebo near the shore.

“Venus,” she guessed, pointing at the statue of a life-sized woman in a clamshell atop the terrace wall. She dreamed that someday her slender-as-a-reed body would resemble that sculpture.

“Try again.” Constance chuckled.

“It must be Apollo.” Laura gestured toward the bronze god, naked in the garden save for his fig leaf.

“No.” Constance’s giggles lifted above high C, and she pressed a plump hand to her Cupid’s-bow mouth.

“That ship,” Laura crowed, when Constance cast her blue eyes briefly toward an ore boat. The vessel plowed its way across Lake Michigan with a load of copper or iron from the North Country.

“What about the ship?” Constance teased.

In their version of the game, once Laura had guessed, she was required to make up a story about the vessel.

She took a deep imagining breath that barely swelled her tiny breasts beneath her pink peppermint-striped blouse. “They come from the iron mines,” she said. “Almost everyone onboard is a poor, hard-working sailor, but on the captain’s deck there’s a special passenger.”

Laura closed her eyes against the summer sun and tried to describe the perfect man. “He’s tall, with eyes as blue as Lake Michigan, and black hair.” She smoothed her own hair, which she thought of as plain brown, and imagined the dark-haired man combing it with his fingers.

“His beard is glossy,” she embroidered. “It makes his lips look full and red and ready to kiss someone. His body …” Laura smiled wickedly, “is like the statue of Apollo.”

“And he’s mine!” Constance claimed.