No Place for a Lady Page 4

  “Goldie who?”

  “Uh, Nugget, I guess.” He bobbed his head at the house. “This is her house.”

  “Her house? You mean…?” Suddenly Madolyn felt like an imbecile. A private home. Of course. No wonder it was so well kept. A private home, with the top floor for boarders. “You mean paying customers aren’t allowed to use the front door?”

  Tyler’s brown eyes practically popped from his head at that. He laughed out loud. A full, rich, bass-toned, straight-from-the-belly laugh.

  Leaning her head back against the tub, Madolyn closed her eyes and let the remembered sound trill down her spine. It was a rare sound, a good, soothing sound. It had invited her to laugh, too. But of course she hadn’t. With a strange sense of loss, Madolyn realized she couldn’t recall the last time she had laughed.

  “Boarders use these stairs,” Tyler had agreed, after he stopped laughing. Even then, however, the corners of his mouth twitched and his eyes danced with that conspiratorial expression she had noticed earlier.

  She had gone willingly, then, with thoughts of a hot bath soothing her tired body. Her aching feet slipped only once on the staircase, and Tyler had been right behind her. He caught her with a firm hand to her waist. And Lord help her, if she hadn’t gained strength from it. Briefly she allowed him to support her.

  Briefly. She hadn’t needed his support. But afterwards, the climb seemed somehow easier, with his strength rising as a buttress behind her. Before she knew it, she was standing in the middle of this elegantly appointed suite. Both rooms were draped and carpeted in rose-red. The furniture was of fine-quality walnut, and the brass chandelier sported burgundy glass globes.

  The luxury was a surprise; the plump-mattressed bed beckoned. Shortly afterward, young Clements and Lucky arrived with the tub and hot water, and Tyler took his leave.

  He paused, hat in hand. His bulk filled the doorway. “Listen, Maddie, I, uh…Don’t be nervous here. My rooms are across the hall, an’ I’ll…” His words drifted off. His gaze alighted on the sitz bath, then darted to a trunk. “I’ll be going. See you in the mornin’.”

  “Fine.”

  He didn’t leave, however, but stood in the doorway, looking again like that overgrown child with a secret to tell; this time it was a worried child. “Sure you’re all right?”

  “Yes. Thank you, Mr. Grant.”

  His warm eyes held hers, and she allowed it, unable for some reason to look away. At length, he nodded curtly, turned to leave, paused again. “Remember to use the back stairs.”

  His discomfiture concerned her. When he was gone, she stood momentarily stunned, by what she couldn’t guess. The steaming water beckoned her tired muscles; her feet fairly cried to be out of her heavy, sensible shoes. As soon as Lucky left her alone, she disrobed and slipped into the piping water of the first real bath she had taken in two weeks. And an hour later, she secretly admitted it had been every bit as refreshing as she had known it would be. Not only had she cleansed her body, but her peace of mind had been restored.

  After drying with the flannel bathing towel, she rubbed cream into her skin from hairline to the bottoms of her feet, paying careful attention to the blistered ring around her neck.

  Next she rubbed ample cream into each elbow, recalling her mother’s admonition not to let her elbows get rusty. As a child, Madolyn had worried about that. Were rusted elbows like rusted hinges? Would they squawk when moved? Or refuse to move altogether? Later, learning the meaning of the term, she wondered why it mattered whether one’s elbows were rusty. No one ever saw them. Now, she knew that the sensuousness of caring for her body somehow restored her sense of well-being. Not that she would ever admit as much to a single living soul.

  Wrapped in a soft flannel robe, she knelt on the floor beside the tub and began to scrub her hair. How good it felt! At a knock on the door, she started.

  “Miss Maddie?”

  Lucky.

  “I’ve brought more hot water. If you want, I’ll help wash your hair.”

  What luxurious treatment guests received here! Dare she indulge? “Oh, yes, Lucky, that would be wonderful. Come in.”

  By the time Lucky finished scrubbing Madolyn’s scalp with hands that were both strong and gentle, the remaining traces of tension had vanished and Madolyn felt ready to tackle the world, as Miss Abigail would have said.

  “Wrap your head in this towel, honey, and let me look at that neck of yours.”

  “My neck?”

  “Mr. Tyler said your neck is plumb blistered.”

  “Mr. Grant?” Abashed at the notion that a man, Tyler Grant, no less, had taken such intimate note of her person, Madolyn felt her face grow warm again. Another blush? From one who never blushed? Until today, it seemed.

  “Yes’m, Mr. Grant, honey. He told me to smear some of this on your blistered neck. Skinned it hisself, he did, with that Bowie knife o’ his.”

  “Skinned it?” Madolyn grimaced at the slimy, green mass Lucky held toward her. She couldn’t recall any slimy green creatures crawling around, but she certainly hadn’t seen everything this strange country had to offer, not by half. “Is it…was it…alive?”

  Lucky guffawed. “Don’t you go to worryin’ ’bout that, Miss Maddie. This here’s a cactus plant called aloe vera. Miss Goldie grows it outside the back door for medicinal purposes.”

  Slimy though it was, the sticky substance soothed Madolyn’s stinging skin. While Lucky busied herself making the bed, Madolyn retired behind a floral dressing screen, where she pulled on soft clean pantaloons, chemise, and stockings, and began lacing her corset. “Thanks for the bath,” she called over the screen. “I feel human again.”

  “Don’t go gittin’ used to baths on a reg’lar basis, honey. Water’s scarce as hen’s teeth in these parts. Generally we don’t take baths ’cept of a Saturday, an’ then ever’one shares the same water. Draws straws to see who goes first.”

  Never far from the surface, Madolyn’s guilty conscience blossomed. “Oh, my.” She hesitated a moment, then offered, “If another lady would like to use this water, please invite her in.”

  “You sure it wouldn’t put you out none?”

  “Indeed not.”

  With that permission, Lucky left, only to return a few minutes later, accompanied by a petite young woman clad in the most outlandish costume Madolyn had ever seen—wide-legged green satin trousers that ended at the girl’s white calves, topped by a matching kimono. Her hair was tied in a towel, turban-style.

  Madolyn stood in the doorway between her bedroom and parlor, holding her own properly tasteful black skirt. She must have been gaping, she thought later, for the girl turned big, kohl-outlined eyes to her.

  “Hi, Miss Maddie. I’m Annie, but you can call me Penny-Ante. Ever’body does.” Speaking, the young woman flung wide the lapels of her green kimono and, before Madolyn knew what was happening, dropped the garment in a puddle at her feet, exposing two extra-large, softly-rounded, bare white breasts.

  Madolyn spun away.

  Annie giggled. “Don’t worry about modesty. We ain’t a bashful bunch of— OUCH!”

  At the girl’s scream, Madolyn turned back to see Lucky with a fistful of Annie’s copper-colored hair. The turban was nowhere in sight, and Annie’s naked body was thankfully submerged in Madolyn’s dirty bath water.

  “Shut your mouth, Penny-Ante,” Lucky was ordering. “Git your bath and git outta Miss Maddie’s parlor so’s she can have some peace an’ quiet.”

  Madolyn hastily completed her toilette, her brain astir. She donned her bodice, pinned on her brooch, and twisted her thick wet curls into a tight bun at her nape. She adjusted her proper black bonnet, picked up her reticule, and entered the parlor, her eyes carefully averted from the immodest bather.

  “I’ll swan but don’t you look like an angel, honey.”

  “Thank you, Lucky. Could you kindly direct me to Miss Nugget—”

  “You gonna work for—”

  “ANNIE!” Lucky bellowed. “I told you
onct an’ I don’t aim to tell you agin. Hush your mouth. Git your business finished and git outta Miss Maddie’s parlor.”

  Outside in the hallway, Madolyn attempted to organize her flustered thoughts. Annie must be a maid, or perhaps another boarder. But her outlandish costume looked more like…

  With grim determination, Madolyn pulled her thoughts away from the impossible. When she headed for the back staircase, however, her feet refused to oblige. What a ridiculous rule. Why should she be required to traipse down two flights of steep stairs, round the house on the outside, and knock on the front door? Even with her laces loosened at the top, her ankles were beginning to swell again.

  Surely she would not disturb anyone’s sense of propriety by using the central staircase. Of course, she wouldn’t. If Madolyn’s mother had taught her anything, it was proper etiquette, and nothing she ever heard instructed a lady to use the back entrance of a private home. Obviously Mr. Grant’s education in such matters was lacking.

  The carpeted stairs wound from the third-story to the foyer below in a sweep of elaborately carved walnut newels. Madolyn felt rather grand taking them, even on wobbly ankles.

  “Evenin’, Miss Maddie.”

  She stepped onto the second floor landing to the greeting of another young woman, this one clad in a floral satin dressing gown. Caught in the midst of dressing for dinner, Madolyn assumed. “Good evening.” She resisted fanning to clear the air of some exotic, but potent fragrance.

  “I’m Dolly.” The woman brushed slender fingers across the chest of her shimmering, silver-colored garment. “Folks call me Silver-Dollar.”

  “How nice to meet you, uh, Dolly.” Madolyn glanced around. The second floor hallway looked exactly like the one on the third floor, except the carpet was a bit more worn. Threadbare down the center, for that matter. No doubt this was a large and active family.

  “I’m looking for Miss Nugget.”

  “Goldie? She’s downstairs. Call out when you reach the bottom. She’ll come a-runnin’.”

  Madolyn smiled hesitantly. She couldn’t quite see herself stepping into the foyer and shouting for her hostess.

  Dolly hurried to her rescue. “Where’re my manners, Miss Maddie? Come on, I’ll show you to Goldie.”

  On the way to the stairs, two more ladies joined them—Daphne, who claimed the improbable nickname of Gold-Dust; and Bertie, called, incredibly, Two-Bit. Each wore a separate fragrance, applied with equally heavy hands.

  Surrounded by a growing entourage of scantily clad ladies and a cloud of their mixed scents, Madolyn continued to the foyer. Then suddenly, midway down the staircase, the disconcerting truth struck her with the velocity of a winter storm. Without warning, it screeched through her brain and left her cold with dread that her premonition could be—might be—true. She halted on the staircase; turning, she scrutinized the ladies who followed behind her like a flock of doves.

  Surely not. But…Madolyn scanned their billowing masses of hair—Dolly’s was black, Daphne’s the color of mahogany, Bertie’s was blond, and upstairs Annie was washing her copper-colored mane in Madolyn’s dirty bath water. Although Madolyn had never to her knowledge set eyes on artificially colored hair, something told her these colors were not the natural shades given the women at birth.

  Her gaze darted from the flocked wallpaper in the stairwell to the brass, burgundy-globed light fixtures. Suddenly everything seemed garish instead of luxurious. She thought of the threadbare carpet and in her mind heard boots tramping up and down the hall and raps on doors and…

  Tyler Grant’s rugged face rose like a giant specter through the fog in her brain. Fury vied with revulsion. Panic rose in billows, blinding her. Turning swiftly, she raced down the stairs. In her haste to escape, she forgot to hold her skirts. She tripped. Caught her balance.

  The next thing she knew, her right foot had slipped out from under her. She reached for the banister, but the carpet was slick, and her ankles were weak in her loosely laced shoes. With effort she managed to land on her bottom a couple of stairs down. Her bustle collapsed.

  A hand reached for her from behind, but when Madolyn began to slide, she brought the helping hand, and its attendant body, along with her. Lord in heaven! She wanted to crawl under the carpet and die. Miss Abigail would be mortified!

  Then all thoughts of Boston and Miss Abigail and woman suffrage fled before the most basic of human needs—survival. A body landed on Madolyn’s shoulders, flipped over her head, and tumbled to the foyer floor, which was by now only three or four stairs distant. She heard a shriek. Surely it hadn’t come from her own lips.

  She felt another bump; a second body thudded into her from behind. Voices, shrill with panic, shrieked all around.

  “Miss Goldie!”

  “Help!”

  “Miss Goldie!”

  “Come quick!”

  With a kaleidoscope of satin colors blurring her vision, Madolyn tumbled into the body sprawled before her on the foyer floor; two others landed on top of her. Everything fell silent. No one moved. Mixed scents of heavy perfumes clogged the air.

  She struggled to unearth herself from the layers of bodies. But she was effectively scotched in place, with a knee to her stomach, a foot to her back; someone’s buttocks pressed against her inner leg, and Lord in heaven, if the perfume didn’t choke her, the bosom mashed against her face surely would.

  Had she died and gone to hell, to find, not fire and brimstone, but tangled masses of reeking, half-clothed bodies?

  Miss Abigail would be mortified!

  A robust voice boomed through the melee. “Bertie! Daphne! What on earth is going on? Get up from there.”

  The ladies on top of Madolyn scrambled to untangle their satin clothes and bare limbs.

  The moment she was free to sit, Madolyn struggled upright.

  “Here, Miss Maddie, let me help.”

  That voice. The fall had cleared Madolyn’s brain of the panic that precipitated it, but Annie’s voice brought the situation back in a rush of nausea.

  “I’m Penny-Ante.”

  “I remember.” Madolyn accepted the offered hand of the girl who had used her dirty bath water.

  Gaining her feet, she forced a tremulous smile, thanked Annie, straightened her skirts, and swept back a loose curl. When she reached to right her bonnet, which had shifted to the neighborhood of her left ear, Madolyn’s gaze rested on the woman who stood eye to eye with her, fists on ample hips.

  Billowing henna-tinted hair drifted around the painted face like storm clouds. Although older than the others, and larger, this woman, too, was garbed in a kimono, hers a brassy gold silk. Her air of command clearly put her in charge.

  Madolyn clasped her arms with opposite hands to still the trembling that rumbled from deep within her. What on earth was she doing in this place?

  The woman raised eyebrows, which, even to Madolyn’s untrained eyes, looked artificially arched and colored. “I’m Goldie, Miss Sinclair. We’re mighty pleased to have you with us. Believe it or not, we aren’t in the habit of tacklin’ our guests.”

  “Unless they come upstairs wearin’ spurs,” one of the girls quipped, to the accompaniment of a chorus of giggles.

  Madolyn stared aghast. She understood the ribald tone, even if the exact meaning of the statement escaped her. She glanced from one grinning girl to the next. What was she doing in this place?

  An oppressive weight descended on her lungs, forcing her breath out in a heavy, ragged gush. When she tried to inhale, the mixture of thick sweet fragrances choked her. Her gaze darted to the front door, which stood open. Its screen was decorated with elaborate wooden scrolls and cutouts of cupids and hearts and, heaven forbid, dollar signs.

  Around her the girls continued to giggle.

  Through the screen, Madolyn glimpsed a swept yard, a shade tree, the open sky. With no thought except to draw a breath of fresh air, she fled. Bursting through the screen, she crossed the porch, only to be brought up abruptly on the top step by a blinding
flare of light.

  Everything around her turned black. Inside her head brightly colored circles spun dizzily out of control. It was the voices that brought her back to the real world. Voices of the girls.

  “Tyler!”

  “When’d you get to town, big boy?”

  “Welcome home, stranger.”

  “Long time, no see, honey bun.”

  Madolyn opened her eyes to clear vision and muddled thoughts. A black-draped tripod stood in the front yard, the kind used by photographers. She watched a small man disentangle himself from the heavy drape. He peered out at her with a wide grin, made even wider by the broadest blond handlebar mustache Madolyn had ever seen. A black derby topped his head, and in his hand he held a flash.

  “Miss Sinclair,” he called. “Welcome to Buck, Texas.” Before she could think what to do, the flash went off again. Again, she blinked. Again, she heard giggles, this time from either side.

  When her vision cleared, she saw them, settled on the porch railings around her—Bertie, Annie, Dolly, Daphne, and the soiled dove in charge of the flock, Goldie Nugget, who stood shoulder to shoulder with her, Madolyn Sinclair, secretary of the Boston Woman Suffrage Society.

  Fleeting thoughts of Miss Abigail’s reaction to such a travesty left Madolyn physically ill. Lifting her skirts to ankle height—she had no intention of precipitating another debacle like the one that occurred inside—Madolyn stormed off the porch and down the steps.

  She marched straight toward the photographer, wagging a forefinger in his direction. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing!” Advancing upon the startled man, she vented her rage. “I did not give you permission to—” A form behind the photographer caught her eye.

  As if she had been struck by lightning, Madolyn stopped in her tracks. Tyler Grant, looking ten feet tall and every inch of it menacing, leaned against the trunk of a mesquite tree, chewing on a twig. He watched her from beneath hooded brows, which she now realized gave him the appearance of wearing a perpetual frown. An erroneous impression, for his eyes fairly danced with mischief. The devil, she thought. Tyler Grant was indeed the devil garbed in britches and boots.