Silver Lies (38 page)

He smiled the merest of civil smiles. "Sands is detained. Trapped in conversation with Mrs. Titweiller. He won’t begrudge me one turn on the floor with you."

Inez found herself smashed against Harry’s starched white shirt front. He held her tight, as if she might run away if held at a polite distance.

She addressed her remarks to the shoulder of his elegant swallow-tail jacket. "Just what do you think you’re doing?"

"That’s exactly what I intended to ask you." He spoke close to her ear. "It appears your fancy has shifted to men of the cloth."

The bitterness that threaded his voice seemed to spread from his body to hers by contact alone, like a contagion.

She looked up into his distantly polite face, mere inches from her own, and tried to rein in her responding ire. "It appears yours, Harry, has shifted to well-heeled madams of State Street."

He looked over her head, nodded to someone behind her, and continued as if she hadn’t spoken. "You know nothing about him. What kind of man he is."

"Of course, I forgot. You were on the church selection committee that considered interim candidates and extended the offer. So, tell me, what kind of man did you bring in to lead the church?"

She watched his jaw tighten as he gritted his teeth. "This is preposterous," he muttered.

Perceiving an advantage, she pressed on. "And, furthermore, if we’re going to compare the moral standings of our companions, Mrs. DuBois hardly strikes me as a paragon of virtue."

He pulled her almost viciously aside from an imminent collision with another circling couple. "At least she states her price up front and doesn’t renege on a deal."

"Price, oh yes. You’re a great one for saying everyone and everything has a price." Inez shifted her attack. "Emma said you offered to buy Joe’s property for eight thousand dollars. The place is worth half that. What are you trying to buy, Harry? Peace of mind?"

She felt him take a deep breath. He glanced around at the spinning couples as if to remind himself of where they were. When he looked back down at her, his eyes were as cold as a Colorado winter sky. "Save the business discussion for the bank, Inez."

"Oh, that’s right. We discuss only matters on your agenda. So, what is it about the Roses, Harry?" Inez felt his hand clench in the small of her back. "Was it just the assays? The fact that Joe pulled the wool over your eyes, but now he’s dead and you’re sorry about the bad blood between you? Or," she searched his face for clues, "is there more?"

"My business with the Roses is a closed book, Inez. And none of your concern."

A sudden thought struck her. "Harry. Are you Emma’s anonymous benefactor, the one who paid off Joe’s bank loan?"

His face revealed nothing. Making her all the more certain that her hunch was correct.

"You are! Why?"

Those pale eyes were fixed on her, watching and giving nothing away.

Inez’s mind began to race like the wind, chasing connections like scattered leaves. "You’re after something, Harry. You only throw money at those things you can’t get any other way. Chet’s claims, Marshal Hollis’ loyalties, Mrs. DuBois’… services." She spat out the word. "Just like you tried to buy the Silver Queen. I told you I’d not sell, not at any price. So, you wooed me. And, when you thought I was yours, you went to Abe and tried to buy his share of the business behind my back. What have you done that you need to buy forgiveness from Emma Rose?"

In the midst of her accusations, a flash of astonishment crossed his face followed by a calculating expression. She could almost see him sorting through her speech, focusing on what interested him, throwing the rest away. The room whirled about as Harry turned her in a tight circle.

"So that’s what was going on last fall when you refused to talk to me." Harry lifted his eyes to steer her between two swaying couples. When he looked back down, his expression had settled into amused irritation, like a parent tolerating a pampered child’s outburst. "Inez, you’re a fool."

She jerked and began to pull away. "This dance is over, Harry."

"It’s over when I say it is," he responded, his eyes focused over her head again. "Sands has been rescued from Mrs. Titweiller by Mrs. DuBois."

He turned so Inez could see Cat DuBois standing close to the reverend. As Inez watched, Cat tapped him lightly on the chest with her closed fan and shifted her weight to one hip. Her red and gold dress shimmered.

"They suit each other." His voice dismissed them as irrelevant. "I have a carriage outside. When the music ends, we’ll leave and go where we can talk privately."

"We have nothing to discuss."

"Yes we do." Harry spoke as if all was decided. "It’s a conversation long overdue."

He absentmindedly caressed her back like a rider stroking a favorite thoroughbred. She stiffened.

"Harry, if you do not escort me to a chair immediately, I will leave you standing right here in the middle of the floor."

"Wouldn’t that set people talking." There was definite amusement in his tone now. "And whose reputation would suffer from such an episode, Inez, yours or mine?"

"That’s poor coin to buy my acquiescence with, Harry."

A small smile hovered beneath his mustache. She could feel him relax his guard, confident that she was merely bluffing.

Inez twisted out of Harry’s grasp and pushed through the crowded dance floor without looking back. Startled stares and speculative murmurs rolled behind her like a spindrift avalanche. She kept her eyes fixed on the far wall, praying that the velvet curtain straight ahead hid an empty window alcove.

Reaching the drape at last, she yanked it aside and entered a cool sanctuary surrounded on three sides by mullioned windowpanes. Inez walked to the furthest window and pressed her forehead against the freezing glass to collect herself.

A shaft of light and a rustle announced that she had company. Inez turned quickly, expecting Harry or Reverend Sands.

A ghostly figure stood just inside the curtain, shades of silver and pearl spilling in a column of silk to the floor. Only one person wore a gown that ethereal tonight.

"Angel?"

Angel held a finger to her lips: Wait.

She tweaked the curtain back to survey the dance floor, then closed it tight. She hitched up her long narrow skirts, revealing a length of white silk stocking topped by a wide silver garter banded with rosettes. Angel fussed with the garter, retrieving an object tucked into the band. She released her skirts. Waves of silver and pearl cascaded back around her shoes. Angel glided forward and thrust the object—flat, round, and hard—into Inez’s palm. Inez could just make out the initials "JR" engraved on the dustcover.

"Joe’s pocketwatch," Inez whispered.

Angel turned to go.

Inez seized her wrist. "Where did you get this?"

Light stabbed across the alcove as the curtain was wrenched back.

"What have we here?" Cat DuBois held one corner of the velvet drape up, her narrowed eyes darting from Inez to Angel.

"The oh-so-imprudent Mrs. Stannert and my very own Angel. What an odd pair."

Inez slipped the watch into her pocket while Cat gazed at Angel.

"Is Mrs. Stannert describing the moral advantages of a virtuous life or some such drivel? It so happens she just cast her own dubious reputation into the mud by insulting one of the most powerful men in the state." Cat raised her penciled eyebrows at Inez. "That was quite entertaining, watching you stalk off the floor. I daresay Harry won’t soon forget being publicly spurned by a State Street saloonkeeper."

"Pardon me, Mrs. DuBois." Relief weakened Inez’s knees as Reverend Sands squeezed past Cat.

"They’re temporarily out of champagne." He handed Inez a brandy goblet.

With her fan, Cat DuBois traced the swell of her breasts above her low-cut neckline. "I so enjoyed our conversation, Reverend. Let’s continue another time, shall we?" She held out a hand to Angel. "Come, Angel. It’s not proper to leave Mr. Elliston cooling his heels."

The curtain fell as the two women disappeared into the noisy ballroom, leaving Inez and the reverend in a muffled space of moonlight.

Inez tossed down the brandy. She sighed once, as the fierce and familiar warmth loosened the knot in her stomach.

Reverend Sands, who’d been lounging against one of the windows, hands in trouser pockets, straightened up. "How was it?"

"Couldn’t say. I didn’t taste it." She held out the goblet. "Let’s try again."

The reverend took her glass, paused, then spoke as carefully as a man stepping out onto a frozen lake, testing for thin ice. "One minute, I saw you dancing with Harry Gallagher. The next minute, you’d disappeared. Mrs. DuBois was right about one thing—he did not look happy out there. Tell me, is there something between you and Gallagher? I don’t want to step on any toes. At least, not without knowing who they belong to."

Inez traced a line down a frosty pane. "Once, there was. But it’s over. And I really don’t wish to discuss it."

She turned back to Sands, who had moved a couple of steps closer. "Now I have a question for you. Did Harry pay off Joe Rose’s bank loan?"

He tipped her empty glass back and forth. The moon slid across the bulbous surface. "The benefactor demanded anonymity."

Several brandies, two glasses of champagne, and half a dozen dances with Reverend Sands later, Inez succeeded in drawing a mental curtain over the whole wretched waltz with Harry. Even the sidelong glances and whispers from other revelers didn’t touch her.

Close to one in the morning, Inez and the reverend paused to recover from a fast-moving schottische. Inez was thinking that the musicians weren’t so bad after all—as long as they steered clear of Mozart—when she spotted Harry watching her from across the room. Once their gazes locked, he turned away, grasped Cat DuBois’ bare arm, and pulled her toward him. As he murmured into her ear, she leaned against him. Her vivid dress shimmered against the dark silhouette of his evening clothes, a fire about to be engulfed by the night. She nodded acquiescence. They moved toward the entrance.

"I think," Inez announced with careful precision, "more champagne’s in order."

"Your wish is my command. Only this time, you’re coming with me." Reverend Sands steered her toward the bar. "No more disappearances."

"Noooo. Won’t happen." Inez tripped, then concentrated on her feet. As she walked, the toe of one green dancing slipper then the other peeked out from under the satin ruffle hemming her skirt. Those feet seemed far, far away.