Tomorrow's Dreams (6 page)

“Gladys?” Seth laughed as he extinguished his cigar with practiced stealth. “Can't say as I've read that play.”

“Tried to call her Cassandra, but she was too stupid to remember the name. Never came when she was called.” Floyd took a drag off his cigar. “With her figger, she don't need a brain, so I kept her anyway.”

Pouting at being ignored, Desdemona eased herself onto Seth's lap and blatantly ground her backside against his groin. He grinned down at her, noting that her golden hair was black at the roots. “So, Desdemona, have you an Othello?” he teased.

She stared up at him as if he'd lost his mind. “What would I want with a mangy black varmint like that? Nasty fella left a headless rat in front of my bedroom door this morning.”

Seth looked back at her as if she were the crazy one.

“Othello is Monty Dowd's cat. Best mouser in town,” supplied Floyd.

“Mangiest cat in town, more like it,” mumbled Desdemona.

Capturing the girl's gaze with his, Seth asked gently, “Ever read Shakespeare?”

“Never read nothin', never learned how.”

Seth felt a surge of pity for the girl. It wasn't so long ago that he, too, had been unable to read. Toying with the coarse lace trimming her neckline, he explained, “Othello was a noble blackamoor who married a beautiful girl named Desdemona.”

“And they lived happily ever after?” she asked, dreamily.

“Not exactly. He strangled her.”

Her eyes widened with horrified fascination. “How come?”

“Jealousy, of course.”

“But if he loved her enough to marry her, why did he kill her over a little thing like jealousy?”

Seth chuckled, but in a way that voiced no amusement. “Love is a kind of madness, sweetheart. It possesses a man's soul and consumes his reason. When he's in its clutches, he does all sorts of crazy things.”

Desdemona considered his words, then smiled flirtatiously. “You ever been possessed by crazy love?”

Seth stared into her dark eyes for a moment, remembering another pair of eyes: silvery-green ones, seductively tip-tilted at the outer corners. Penelope's eyes. Like a pugilist striking his challenger, the memory slammed the breath out of him.

“Well, have you?” she demanded.

He drew in a hissing breath. “Only once.”

Chapter 5

Even from where she stood waiting in the stage wings, Penelope could tell it was going to be another rough night at the Shakespeare Variety Hall. Uncouth men, drunk off cheap liquor and crude company, were already heckling Euphemia Hotchkiss, the actress who was onstage singing, venting their impatience for a glimpse of Lorelei Leroux. It was the same depressing scenario night after night, and Penelope knew that it was only a matter of minutes before the rest of the crowd joined in the badgering.

This evening the audience was right on schedule.

“Sounds like my ma-in-law after she got kicked in the head by our mule,” jeered one man, his lampoon accompanied by the tinkle of breaking glass.

“Hell. Sounds jist like
my
mother-in-law when I told her to put a cork in it and mind her own business.” That drew a roar of approval from the crowd.

As if by clockwork the rest of the men joined in, each taunt louder and more barbed than the last. Eventually they grew so thunderous that they all but drowned out Euphemia's admittedly grating voice. As she warbled the last note, Penelope heard Bertram McAllister, the dramatic actor, shout her cue:

“Here comes the stagecoach now!”

Self-conscious in her scanty costume, Penelope gave her peacock blue bodice a tug, though she knew that all the tugging in the world wouldn't render the neckline decent. After rubbing her lucky ribbon, which she'd tied around her throat, she strutted onto the stage, swinging her hips in a seductive manner.

As always the hisses and boos gave way to whistles and cheers, followed by clapping and foot-stamping. Somewhere in the back of the hall, she heard the chant: “Lorelei! Lorelei!”

When she lifted her skirts almost to her knees and swayed to the prelude of her solo, an appreciative roar shook the walls.

“Yank it higher, darlin'. Pull it up! Pull it up!” hooted a drunken bullwhacker in the front row.

Ignoring the man, Penelope began to sing, trilling sweetly at the entrance of Miles Prescott, the actor playing the hero in the piece. Spellbound by her voice, the rowdy crowd fell silent.

Tonight the company was performing
The Gregory Gulch Bride
, one of Denver's favorite operettas. It was the tale of a mail-order bride trying to win the love of her indifferent husband.

Swishing her skirts in a tantalizing manner, Penelope danced around Miles, tempting him with her amply displayed charms. The measures poor Molly Snow, the lovesick heroine, took to seduce her husband were nothing short of vulgar.

“Pull 'em up! Bend 'er over!”

From the corner of her eye, Penelope saw that the bullwacker had staggered to the edge of the stage and was now trying to look up her skirt, his face the picture of besotted lechery. Shuddering with disgust, she dropped her hem back to her ankles.

“Hell, we paid our money—show us some leg!” he shouted, pounding his fists against the stage floor in protest.

“Shut up and let the lady sing!” hollered a cowboy, seizing the bullwacker by the neck and attempting to pull him back to his seat. With a backhand swat the bullwacker sent the cowboy flying into the crowd, knocking over several onlookers and drawing a threatening rumble from the rest of the audience.

“I paid my money to see some leg, and I'm gonna git what I paid for,” he snarled.

Before Penelope could think, much less react, the man jumped onto the stage and wrestled her into his arms. In one rending yank, he ripped her skirt open. One more jerk and the skirt fell to the floor, exposing her red flannel pantaloons.

Shrieking her indignation, she ground her boot heel into the man's instep. His grunt of surprise escalated into a howl of pain as she finished her performance by kicking him in the shins.

With an echoing roar the crowd surged forward. Some of the men were intent on rescuing the beauteous Lorelei, while others were eager to join the bullwacker in his molestation. Everyone was enjoying the ensuing brawl.

Panicked, Penelope hastily presented her bruising encore, an act accompanied by the ever-gallant Bertram. Executing their movements with the precision of an elaborately choreographed ballet, Bert thwacked the bullwacker over the head with a prop tree while Penelope hooked her foot behind the man's ankle and pulled his leg out from under him. The actors' combined efforts were enough to send the drunk toppling backward, a performance that brought down the curtain …

… Literally. In a wild attempt to break his fall, the bullwacker grabbed the curtains, wrenching them from their moorings. With a
whoosh!
of gold velvet the curtains billowed downward, engulfing everyone onstage in their suffocating folds.

As Penelope grappled with the imprisoned cloth, she could hear her attacker cursing in the darkness … cursing that grew louder as the seconds ticked by. Alarmed by the man's nearness and terrified of being recaptured, she scrambled toward a sliver of light. To her everlasting relief, the sliver broadened into a warm ribbon, and she easily found an opening in the curtains.

But her relief was short-lived. No sooner had she crawled from her velvet prison than she was pulled from the stage by another man, this one drunker and dirtier than the first.

Violently she struggled, gagging at the stench emanating from her new captor's filth-encrusted clothes.

“Hows 'bout a kiss, girlie?” he growled, smiling in a way that displayed the sum of his teeth—two rotten stumps. Pinning her against his body, he ground his lips against hers, trying to force his tongue between her clenched teeth.

Feeling as if she were living her worse nightmare, Penelope increased her struggles tenfold. But it was to no avail. Aside from grunting once when she managed to land a kick on his booted ankle, he easily ignored her frenzied efforts to escape.

Somebody else's efforts were harder to ignore. As the man groped at her bodice, Penelope heard a mighty
smack!
, which elicited an even mightier
yelp!
from her molester, immediately followed by a
thud!
and a breathless
oomph!
Bellowing like a wounded buffalo, the bullwacker thrust her aside and rounded on the man who was attacking him from behind.

Without pausing to spare her rescuer so much as a backward glance, Penelope raced toward the stairs leading up to the private rooms, swatting away the arms that sought to recapture her. With breakneck speed she vaulted up the stairs until a stitch in her side forced her to sink to the steps. It was then that she heard the pounding of footsteps hot on her trail.

On the verge of hysteria now, she tried to crawl the rest of the way up the stairs. But it was too late, and once again she was wrested into a steely grip.

Blind to everything except her desperation to free herself, Penelope fought, kicking and punching with mindless fury. Beneath her screams she could hear the man shouting, but she was too panicked to listen. A year and a half of playing the gold circuit had taught her that most men's intentions were less than honorable, especially where actresses were concerned. And she would have bet her lucky ribbon that this man was no exception.

With that certainty in mind, she jabbed her elbow into her attacker's belly with all her strength. To her relief, he uttered an agonized groan and released her. Feeling her freedom close at hand now, she gave him one final shove before turning to resume her flight. But before she could take a step, she heard him moan.

“That's a hell of a way to greet a man, Princess.”

That stopped her short. Only two people ever called her Princess: her brother, Jake, and …

“Seth Tyler!” she gasped, finally looking at her latest captor. Even slumped on the stairs with his face shadowed by his veil of sun-kissed hair, the man's identity was unmistakable. Stunned, she slowly sank down next to him.

Damn! Of all the people in the world, why did it have to be Seth who had discovered her in such a disreputable place, performing in such a bawdy show? Too shocked by his presence to mask her dismay, she blurted out, “What are you doing here?”

“Shouldn't that be my line?” he drawled, shifting aside to allow a scantily-clad saloon girl and her eager client to pass.

“What I'm doing here should be obvious,” she replied tautly.

“You're doing the obvious?” He stared after the pair with a significant lift of his brow.

It took all of Penelope's self-control not to do a repeat performance and jab him in the belly again. “Damn it, Seth! You know better than that!”

“Do I?” His gaze slowly and deliberately took in every tawdry detail of her appearance.

Bristling like a cat with its back up, she hissed, “How dare you insinuate that I'd—”

“I dare because I know you,” he snapped, effectively silencing her protests. “Have you forgotten about the little scene I witnessed in New York?”

Penelope released an exasperated snort. Apparently the words
forgive
and
forget
weren't in Seth Tyler's vocabulary, just as it was equally apparent that he hadn't come to his senses about what had happened in New York. She snorted again. Well, to hell with the narrow-minded bastard! If he wanted to hold a grudge, then so be it. She'd gladly oblige his stupidity and do the same.

Calling forth all of her acting ability, she assumed an air of imperious cool and retorted, “You have no right to judge me on something that you're obviously incapable of understanding.”

He eyed her with disdain. “I'm perfectly capable of understanding what's going on when I find a half-naked woman lolling in a man's arms. I'd venture to guess that the foregone conclusion would be the same no matter who was drawing it.”

Abandoning all pretense of composure, she practically shouted, “I wasn't half-naked, and I certainly wasn't—lolling!”

He shrugged. “You have your definitions, and I have mine.”

“And my definition of Seth Tyler is arrogant bastard.”

“Is that listed before or after the term ‘trash'?” he inquired cryptically. “I believe that was the word you used to describe my person the last time we met.”

“Well, if the title fits …”

Seth laughed at that. “Touché. One point for the lady.”

“One point for what?”

“One point for your frank response, of course.”

She shrugged dismissively. “Who's keeping score?”

“I am. And I feel obligated to report that you're running woefully behind in the honesty column.”

A thousand scathing retorts sprang to Penelope's lips, but she firmly refrained from voicing them. It would be a cold day in hell before she rose to Seth Tyler's bait. Pointedly ignoring his goading expression, she demanded, “What do you want? Surely you have better things to do than torment me.”

“Better things? Yes. More entertaining? No.”

Rankled by his arrogance, she opened her mouth to tell him exactly what he could do with his amusement, but again she stifled the urge. Instead she repeated, “What do you want?”

“I want to know why you lied to your brother.”

“Why I … what?” she asked, genuinely taken aback by his words. “I didn't lie to Jake.”

Seth raised one slashing eyebrow. “He showed me your last letter, the one where you were bragging about going abroad and singing for the crowned heads of Europe. You said that you'd be touring the Continent and therefore unable to write. So unless the Colorado Territory has been annexed by Europe and crowned a few heads in the process, I think it's safe to assume you lied.”

Penelope groaned privately. Of course Jake had shown Seth her letter; she should have realized he would when she wrote it. He'd probably been so puffed up with pride at her fictitious success that he'd shown it to everyone in San Francisco.