“If I ever wondered what happened to us, I need only to spend a few minutes with you,” Rachael said. “And who are you to criticize me? Here you are, playing for a square dance in a hotel, not performing in a concert theater.”
Rachael started to get up from the table, but Edwin reached out for her.
“Wait, please,” he said.
Rachael looked down at him.
“Please,” he said again. “Another moment?”
Rachael sat down again.
“I’m sorry,” Edwin said. “You are right, I am playing music for a square dance and I am a little pompous.”
“A little pompous?”
“A lot pompous,” Edwin corrected with a smile, and Rachael smiled with him.
“What a joy to see a smile on your beautiful face,” Edwin said.
“Don’t think that it means anything,” Rachael said. “Because it doesn’t.”
Edwin sighed. “Is it MacCallister?”
“What?”
“MacCallister, the man I just met. The brother to Andrew and Rosanna.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about.”
“Of course you know what I’m talking about. Are you in love with this man MacCallister?”
Rachael hesitated.
“My God, you are, aren’t you?” Edwin ran his hand through his hair, then sighed. “Well, I should have known better than to think you would just still be out there somewhere unattached.”
“I’m not in love with him,” Rachael said. “I confess that I find him fascinating. Do you know that they actually write adventure novels about him?”
“Adventure novels?”
“He is quite a daring figure,” Rachael said. “They say he has faced death many, many times.”
“But you aren’t in love with him?”
Rachael shook her head. “No, I’m not in love with him. And it is for sure that he feels nothing more than friendship for me.”
“Good, good, then there is a chance,” Edwin said.
“No, Edwin. There is no chance.”
Edwin smiled. “I won’t take that as an answer.”
“Edwin, what are you doing out here anyway?” she asked. “The last I heard, you were going to Europe on a grand tour of the continent.”
Edwin shook his head. “I didn’t go,” he said.
“It’s obvious you didn’t go, because you are here. My question is, why didn’t you go?”
“The maestro thought it better that I not go.”
“But why would he think that? Edwin, you are generally acknowledged to be one of the best violinists in the business.”
“At the risk of being ‘pompous’ again, I agree with you,” Edwin said.
“Then what happened? I mean, what really happened?”
Edwin took a sip of his beer, then set the mug down. “The maestro’s wife,” he said.
“Lucinda?” Rachael gasped. “My God, Edwin, please tell me you were not being indiscreet with Lucinda.”
“It was more her doing than mine,” Edwin said quickly.
“Well, now, that I can believe. Lucinda is the biggest flirt in the business. Everyone knows that she has an eye for men. For any man,” Rachael said. “I just can’t believe that you were foolish enough to fall into her trap. No, wait, as I recall, you seem to have a problem in that department as well.”
“Rachael, you aren’t being fair,” Edwin said. “You had just left and I was feeling—”
“Oh, no, you aren’t going to blame that on me,” Rachael said, interrupting him.
Edwin shook his head. “No, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for it to sound that way. It’s just that I was depressed, and I wasn’t as smart, or diligent, as I should have been.” He sighed. “So now, instead of playing the violin in a concert orchestra, I’m playing…the fiddle for barn dances.” For the last five words he abandoned his normal cultured enunciation for a Western twang. He laughed. “Could you ever imagine me—a’playin’ the fiddle?”
Rachael laughed with him, then reached across the table to put her hand on his. “I don’t mean to laugh, Edwin. But I am glad that you can laugh at yourself. And I must confess that I think I could like the fiddle player more than I like the concert violinist.”
“If we couldn’t laugh, we would surely cry,” Edwin said. “I do not believe that it is mere coincidence that the symbol for thespians is two masks, one with a laughing face and the other with a crying face. When you think about it, we could be in the grandest theaters in Europe, performing before kings and queens, but circumstances”—he paused, then nodded—“of my own making, to be sure, have put us here in Higbee playing in a saloon and a hotel lobby—casting pearls before the swine, so to speak.”
“Or bringing culture to a grateful audience,” Rachael suggested.
“Oh, my, I was getting pompous again, wasn’t I?”
Rachael nodded.
“I must work on that,” Edwin said. He stood. “If you will excuse me, I have to meet with my—orchestra.”
“I will see you tonight,” Rachael said.
Chapter Sixteen
By dusk, the excitement that had been growing for the entire day was full blown. The sound of the practicing musicians could be heard all up and down Higbee Avenue. Children gathered around the glowing, yellow windows on the ground floor of the hotel and peered inside. The ballroom floor was cleared of all tables and chairs, and the musicians had been installed on the platform at the front of the room.
Horses and buckboards began arriving, and soon all the hitching rails on Higbee Avenue, as far up as Front Street and as far down as Bent Road, were full. Men and women streamed along the boardwalks toward the hotel, the women in colorful ginghams, the men in clean, blue denims and brightly decorated vests.
Once they were inside, the excitement was all it promised to be. Several young women were gathered on one side of the room, giggling and turning their heads in embarrassment as young men, just as embarrassed, made awkward attempts to flirt with them. At the back of the dance floor, there was a large punch bowl on a table, and Billy saw one of the cowboys look around to make certain he wasn’t being seen, then pour whiskey into the punch bowl from a bottle he had concealed beneath his vest. A moment later, another cowboy did the same thing.
Billy had been there when the doors opened because he wanted to be there before Kathleen arrived. Now his wait was rewarded when he saw Kathleen step through the front door, pause, and look around the room. When her eyes caught his, she smiled. Billy nodded toward the table that held punch and cookies, then started toward it.
“Good evening Miss Garrison,” he said when Kathleen joined him at the table.
“Good evening, Mr. Clinton,” she replied. She reached for a cup, but he put his hand on hers to restrain her.
“I wouldn’t drink any of that punch if I were you,” he said.
“Oh? Why not?”
“There may be a little more in it than you think.”
“I don’t—” she began, then she paused in mid-sentence and smiled. “Oh, I think I see what you mean.”
“The coffee is all right,” he suggested.
“Well, I don’t really need anything right now,” Kathleen said.
“We have a few minutes before the dance actually starts,” Billy said. “Could we take a walk?”
“No, I—” Kathleen began, then she paused in mid-sentence again. “All right, why not? There can be no harm in a walk.”
Stepping outside, Billy and Kathleen walked the entire length of the board sidewalk until they reached the edge of town. They continued on for another hundred yards or so until the sounds and the lights of the town were behind them. The Golden Nugget was closed for the dance, but the Hog Waller was still open and its patrons seemed to be trying extra hard to prove that they didn’t have to be at the dance to have a good time. Billy and Kathleen heard a woman’s scream, not in fear obviously, because it was followed by her laugh, which carried clearly above everything else.