Wanton Angel (6 page)

At first Eli was quiet, too stunned to react; he simply watched Seth Callahan’s Adam’s apple try to fight its way free of that constricting collar. But then, as he thought of Bonnie’s baby and traced it back to conception, he gave a bellow of rage and proceeded to clear every surface in the room. He overturned most of the furniture, shattered every lamp, reduced the basin and pitcher to shards of glass, destroyed the mirrors and even the windows.

Only the picture taken on Fire Island, before the end of the world, remained unharmed.

In early October, Eli sailed for Europe. He visited England and Scotland, France and Italy, Germany and Belgium, lingering as long as he could bear to in each country, recuperating, gathering strength with every passing day.

For over a year, cables from Seth kept him apprised of the havoc Forbes Durrant was wreaking with the holdings at Northridge and, in the spring of 1900, Eli could no longer
ignore his responsibilities toward his grandfather’s company.

He dreaded seeing Bonnie again, at the same time craving the sight of her, and for all this he decided that, since she was no longer his wife, she would be easy to ignore.

When Eli’s ship docked in New York, Seth was waiting with evidence to the contrary.

“W
HERE THE HELL
is Forbes?” hissed Dottie Thurston, standing beside Bonnie on the marble steps of the Brass Eagle Saloon and Ballroom. A train whistle keened in the distance; the four-fifteen was rounding the last bend in the river, drawing nearer and nearer.

For some reason, the sound compounded the wire-tight tension that charged the spring air. Bonnie kept her eyes on Menelda Sneeder and her hatchet brigade and tried to smile companionably. “I don’t know,” she answered, barely moving her lips, “but somebody had better find him. And fast.”

Dottie turned and, with a quick gesture, dispatched Eleanor on the mission. According to Bonnie’s hasty calculations, that left roughly a dozen be-rouged and perfumed troops to face the petulant multitudes gathered behind Menelda.

“Step out of our way,” challenged Mrs. Sneeder, member in good standing of the Friday Afternoon Community Improvement Club, her eyes sweeping over Bonnie’s green silk dress and lingering, for one contemptuous moment, at her feather-fluffed bosom.

Bonnie stood her ground and smiled harder. “Let’s be reasonable, Menelda—”

“Don’t you dare address me by my Christian name, you—you shameless floozy!”

Bonnie’s patience was ebbing fast. She was vaguely conscious of a growing crowd of spectators, men and boys who would not lift a hand to prevent a full-blown conflagration, should matters come to that. Perspiration prickled between her breasts and on the palms of her hands—Lord in heaven, wasn’t it hot for an April afternoon? She drew a deep breath and began again.

“Is it ‘Christian,’ Mrs. Sneeder, to threaten innocent people—”

The word “innocent” had been a foolish choice but, by the time Bonnie realized her folly, it was too late. The mob of corset-bound, ax-bearing townswomen was stirred to a new level of vexation.

“Innocent?!” shrilled Miss Lavinia Cassidy, who worked in the public library three afternoons a week and was known to cherish hopes that a certain handsome smelter worker would give up his rascal’s life to court and marry her.

Bonnie might have argued that she and several of the other women congregated behind her only danced with men, declining to do anything more, but she knew that the effort would be futile. These angry wives, mothers and sweethearts believed the worst, and nothing short of a miracle would change that fact.

“It is against the law,” Bonnie went on, stalling for time now, praying that Eleanor would find Forbes in time to avert total disaster, “to destroy private property. Now if you ladies would just go home where you belong—”

The calico crowd buzzed like a swarm of bees and Bonnie closed her eyes for a moment, silently berating herself for once again choosing exactly the wrong words.

Menelda Sneeder lifted her hatchet high in the air, rousing her followers to a fever pitch of righteous wrath with the motion. “This place of iniquity and sin shall not stand! Step aside, Bonnie McKutchen, you and the rest of those whores!”

That did it. Bonnie lunged off the step, a crimson fog shimmering before her eyes. At her lead, Dottie and the others waded in and the resulting melee delighted the cheering spectators.

Bonnie went directly for Menelda, wrenching the hatchet from the woman’s hands with a strength she hadn’t dreamed she possessed. After dropping the weapon to the muddy ground, she gave Mrs. Sneeder a push that sent her stumbling backward to land bustle first in the muck.

With murder in her eyes, Menelda shrieked a war cry and struggled to her feet, her legs tangling in her voluminous skirts. She knotted muddy hands in Bonnie’s hair and pulled hard.

Bonnie brought one fist up under Menelda’s chin, breaking the woman’s painful hold on her scalp, and was about to follow through with a right cross when an arm as hard as a horseshoe suddenly curved around her waist and gripped her against an indurate midsection.

Startled at first, Bonnie went limp. Menelda Sneeder put out her tongue and hissed, “Now you’ll suffer for your sins, you painted hussy!”

The jibe electrified Bonnie; she kicked and struggled and cursed, but the arm that restrained her was immovable, a manacle of bone and muscle. She tried to look back at her captor, but he held her so tightly that she couldn’t even turn her head.

The mayhem of drab calico and brightly colored taffeta continued all around, but Menelda, for all the splotches of mud on her face and dress, held her chin high. She smirked, her beady eyes flashing with sweet triumph. “Surely God will smite you for what you’ve done, Bonnie McKutchen!”

The voice grated past Bonnie’s ear, low and fierce and audible only to her. “God,” said Eli McKutchen, “will have to wait His turn.”

Every muscle in Bonnie’s body tensed, suddenly and painfully. “Oh, no,” she breathed.

“Oh, yes,” countered her former husband.

Just then, Forbes arrived with his hired henchmen and the marshal of Northridge. The men began dispersing the mud-flinging, hair-pulling faction, but Bonnie couldn’t think about that, couldn’t think of anything but the granitelike body against which she remained hopelessly pinioned.

“Put me down,” she managed to say, after some time had passed, assuming a pretense of dignity. “This instant.”

Bonnie was not released, but the arm loosened enough
that she could turn her head—it took a moment more to gather the courage for that—and look up into Eli’s face.

“If it isn’t the mayor of Northridge,” he drawled ominously, apparently unconcerned that half the population of the town was gathered in that boggy, dung-dappled street, looking on. “Who would have thought that august office would be held by a whore?”

All Bonnie’s terror or, at least, most of it was displaced by a fury that coursed through her veins, stinging like the venom of a snake. She struggled to free her arms for attack, only to have them crushed against her sides. “I am not a whore!” she screamed.

“And
I’m
not a Presbyterian!” taunted Menelda Sneeder.

Bonnie squirmed, wild with bloodlust, making a trapped animal sound in her throat, but she could not free herself.

At that moment a man wearing thick spectacles and carrying a battered valise appeared in front of Bonnie, a savior with red muttonchop whiskers and very kind eyes. Bonnie recognized Seth Callahan, the family attorney. “Put Mrs. McKutchen down, Eli,” he said reasonably. “You are making a scene.”

Eli’s arm tightened reflexively, then relaxed. Released so abruptly, from a position that had not allowed her feet to touch the ground, Bonnie lost her balance and tumbled to her knees.

Outraged, terrified and humiliated, all of a piece, Bonnie filled both hands with mud and bounded back to her feet, hurling the sodden dirt at Eli as she rose. In the second of grace granted her by his reaction, one of seething shock, Bonnie lifted her ruined skirts and broke into a dead run.

Eli caught her easily, again with that flint-hard arm, then turned toward the Brass Eagle, carrying her against his hip the way a schoolboy would carry books.

“Let me go!” Bonnie wailed, in fear for her very life.

Eli strode inside the Brass Eagle, pausing at the base of the stairs, and neither Bonnie’s cries of protest nor her struggles slowed his pace by one whit. He started up the stairway, Seth hurrying to keep up and adding his protests to Bonnie’s.

The cabbage-rose pattern on the carpeted steps seemed to
rush past Bonnie’s eyes like pictures in a nickelodeon. “Eli,” she croaked, as they reached the upper floor, “I beg of you. Put me down.”

Eli’s dusty black boots covered the length of the hallway in mere seconds; there was no answer but for the opening of a door.

Bonnie squeezed her eyes shut, for this was Forbes’s private apartment and there was no telling what sinful sight might present itself.

“Eli!” shouted Mr. Callahan, with spirit and a contrasting note of hopelessness. “I must insist that you listen to me!”

“Later,” Eli retorted, and slammed the door of the suite, probably in Mr. Callahan’s face. There was a resolute sound of metal meeting metal—the shooting of the bolt, no doubt.

Bonnie opened her eyes in an effort to regain her equilibrium and forestall the motion sickness that was quivering in the pit of her stomach.

Pausing only momentarily, Eli strode into a bathroom of luxurious proportions. He shifted Bonnie so that he held her upright again, as he had in the street below, then reached down to insert the plug in an enormous marble bathtub. Deftly, he opened one spigot.

Steaming hot water began to gush into the deep tub and Bonnie knew fresh terror. He meant to parboil her!

She began to flail and wriggle against her captor, her heart pounding in her throat and filling it so that she could not scream.

In the meantime, someone was hammering thunderously at the door of the suite, jarring it on its hinges.

“Eli!” bellowed Mr. Callahan’s voice, regrettably far away, and the doorknob began to rattle. “Damn you, open this door or I’ll get the sheriff! I’m not bluffing!”

“Neither am I!” Eli shouted back, grappling with Bonnie while he bent to add cold water to the boiling tub. “Go ahead and get the marshal—they don’t have a sheriff here. Tell him I’m giving my wife, the mayor, a badly needed bath.” He paused and chuckled speculatively before adding, “Care to place any bets whose side he’s going to take, Seth?”

“I am not your wife!” Bonnie found the courage to point out. “For the last time, Eli, let me go!”

He tested the water with a vigorous swish of one hand. “If you say so, dear,” he responded, and then he dropped Bonnie, dress, feathers, mud and all, into the tub.

The water splashed high, covering Bonnie’s face, filling her nostrils. She sputtered and choked, infuriated beyond all bearing, and let loose a stream of Patch Town invective that would have given the members of the Friday Afternoon Community Improvement Club collective heart failure.

Eli sighed as the door of the suite finally gave way with a whining crash, stepped back from the side of the tub and folded his arms across his chest. His fine clothes were muddied, Bonnie was pleased to see, and behind the mockery in his golden eyes snapped a controlled rage that was better left unnoticed.

“Are you through bathing, dear?” he asked sweetly, as Forbes, Mr. Callahan and the marshal all wedged themselves into the doorway like vaudevillians in a comedy revue, their mouths agape.

Bonnie’s dignity was entirely gone. She rose from the water like an Independence Day rocket, hair and clothes dripping, makeup doubtless running down her face. She didn’t care how she looked; at that moment, her one aim in life was to tear Eli McKutchen apart with her own hands.

Her voice, as she moved toward him, was a low, throaty monotone. “You self-righteous, overbearing,
store-stealing—”

Eli stood still, unafraid, unmoved, a maddening grin curving his perfect lips, but the three rescuers backed out of the doorway, their eyes wide.

After one quick glance about, Bonnie selected the toilet brush as a weapon and it seemed to fly into her hands. Holding it baseball-bat fashion, she took a hard swing and struck Eli’s chest a bristly blow. The slight spray of water didn’t bother Bonnie, considering the sodden condition of her person, but it made Eli’s jaw tense and intensified the quiet ferocity in his eyes. With one swift motion of his hand, he wrenched the brush from her grip and flung it aside, sending it clattering against the wall.

There was a short, ominous silence as Bonnie and Eli stood facing each other, neither willing to give so much as an inch.

Forbes, apparently the bravest of the three, edged his way past Eli’s massive frame. His brown eyes laughed at Bonnie briefly before fastening themselves to the face of her oppressor. “Mr. McKutchen, if there’s anything I can do to straighten out this—er—matter—”

“You’ve done quite enough,” Eli replied, his eyes never leaving Bonnie’s face. “And don’t delude yourself, Durrant: I won’t forget the favor.”

Forbes shuddered visibly, but he was never off balance for long and he quickly recovered his obnoxious aplomb. “You seem to misunderstand the situation, Eli—Mr. McKutchen. Bonnie—Mrs. McKutchen—is a hurdy-gurdy dancer, not a—a—”

“Whore?” Eli supplied, with biting clarity.

Lacking the toilet brush, Bonnie had no recourse but to kick her estranged husband soundly in one shin. He gave a howl of pain and during that precious moment of distraction, Bonnie dodged past him, past Forbes, and fled for her life.

She ran into the hall, bathwater dripping from her hair and her clothes, her shoes sodden and squishy, and down the rear stairs, through the kitchen. There, with the cooks and serving girls staring at her in utter amazement, she paused to catch her breath and think.

She couldn’t very well go dashing through the streets in this state of disarray, and yet every moment she tarried in the Brass Eagle increased her dire risk. The thought of facing Eli McKutchen again, before he’d had time to recover his reason, was a horrifying one.