Fireblossom (7 page)

Inside the Gem, exhausted and dirty miners were drinking, while the card tables were filling up with dishonest-looking types ready for a night of gambling. Fox approached the bar and stood next to a heavyset man who was pungently malodorous. He wondered if he smelled anything like that, then decided that Madeleine Avery would have given some sign of it, like delicately wrinkling her nose in revulsion. Annie Sunday had raised her son to perceive such hints.

After a long wait for the bartender's attention, Fox ordered a double whiskey and downed it without delay. Perhaps it would banish the memory of the past few weeks and all the conflicting emotions that had been churning inside him since his final confrontation with Custer.

"Want another, pard?" asked the bartender, a frail, bald man with a black mustache.

Fox nodded. He took the second a little slower, but instead of erasing his thoughts, the liquor seemed only to intensify them. He'd always tried to conduct his life honorably, allowing for lapses into harmless sorts of masculine vice. He wasn't a saint, but he believed in the rights and freedoms upon which America was founded.

Why, then, did his experience in Montana leave him with the taste of cowardice in his mouth? He'd offered to ride into battle, and he would have insisted on it if he'd felt the cause was just. Emotionally he continued to feel torn between his sense of duty as an American and his sympathy for the plight of the Indians. Which side was right?

What the hell, Fox thought. It was a bigger problem than one person could unravel, so what did it matter what he thought or did?

"I declare, I thought you'd forgotten me," a soft voice purred at his shoulder.

Fox glanced down through burning eyes to discover the little raven-haired girl who had flirted with him from the balcony. Now she wore a dress of worn blue sateen, specially altered to reveal half her breasts. The fabric poufed over a bustle set high in back, then trailed down across the sawdust-covered floor. She smelled of toilet water and had a thin powder blue ribbon tied around her neck. Fox liked that.

"No, I didn't forget." He touched a tanned finger to her cheek. "What's your name, sweetheart?"

"Victoria." She couldn't believe that he was as attractive up close as he'd looked from a distance, but it was true. His eyes were deep blue, he had even teeth, a full head of hair, and a strong face. He looked like he could pick her up with one hand and lift her overhead. "My mama named me for the queen of England."

Fox arched a brow, appreciative of this irony. "That was a fine gesture of faith on her part."

"Folks say I'm prettier than Queen Victoria."

"Well, I'd have to agree with that."

Victoria asked for gin and bitters from the bartender
and
Fox paid for it, extending his own glass for a refill at the same time. He was beginning to feel the way he'd hoped to feel - numb and distant from the real world. It was almost possible to pretend that he had no problems, no guilt, no past, no future. All that the moment demanded of him was that he enjoy himself.

"You look like you've wore yourself out getting to Deadwood," Victoria decided, leaning against his broad chest so that her breasts brushed against him. "Was it worth it?"

Before he could answer, someone shouted for quiet and an odd-looking trio appeared on the Gem's small stage, which was located at the far end of the barroom. There was a woman wearing a fancy gown of crimson velvet that looked too hot for the season, a man with a fiddle, and a youth carrying what appeared to be a trumpet. The man who'd been shouting stood in front of the stage. He waved his hands in the air.

"Now, folks," he cried, "give us your attention. You all are in for a
rare
feast for the senses, a performance by the one and only Queen of Song. Yes, pilgrims, I am referring to the world-famous Miss Viola de Montmorency, who is here in Deadwood on the eve of her departure for the great capitals of Europe!"

As Miss de Montmorency began her first ballad, accompanied by the two game musicians, it occurred to Fox that she looked a bit worn around the edges for this songbird role. Victoria seemed to read his mind.

"You look like you're in the mood for a little repose. Want to come upstairs where it's quiet? I can take off your boots and rub your neck...."

It was a funny thing, the instincts a man had for a woman. Fox didn't care for her scent, yet it worked on him; and he didn't find her particularly attractive, but his body responded anyway to her warm curves pushing at him and the suggestive invitation in her voice. Annie Sunday used to say that a true man rose above his primitive impulses and would never sleep with a woman he didn't love, let alone barely knew. Too bad the world couldn't live up to those standards. It kept tempting Fox, and sometimes he felt reckless.

"That sounds like an invitation I'd be a fool to refuse, Victoria. I'll bring the bottle, just in case we get thirsty." He gathered his other possessions and followed Victoria up the stairway, which was already beginning to warp. It smelled like freshly cut pine and cheap perfume and men who needed baths. Fox watched the way Victoria's bustle twitched as she mounted the steps above him.

Upstairs, there were more curtained doorways with girls' names written above them in chalk. Fox was relieved to discover that Victoria's room had a real door; it seemed a favorable portent. When she turned the knob and stood aside, she glanced at him under her lashes with coy shyness and he almost believed that it was genuine. Inside the narrow bedroom, with one window overlooking Main Street, Fox set down his belongings, doffed his hat, and let out a harsh sigh.

"Sit right down there on the bed and make yourself comfortable," she instructed, while lighting an oil lamp on the bureau. "Here, lie back. I'll take off your boots."

Sheer exhaustion, coupled with the wallop of the whiskey, struck Fox with astonishing force as soon as he put his head back on the pillow with its perfumed-lace covering. Victoria was a blur above him, tugging at his boots.

"I don't know," he managed to mutter, "if that's a good idea. I should've had a bath...."

Victoria poured him another whiskey and held it to his lips, cooing, "Now, now, don't you fret. You think I'm used to a clean man in
this
town?" She laughed, hugely amused by that notion. "I know you're tired, and I know what you need for a good night's sleep. Just lie still. I'll undress you."

God, tired was a weak description for the way he felt. The bed, with its lumps and broken springs, was like a gift from the angels, and Fox seemed to sink into it. He let his mind drift. He saw Custer, with his curls shorn, sitting astride Vic in the dawn light. And then he dreamed about a rattlesnake stalking him as he slept under the Wyoming moonlight. Madeleine Avery was making tea and serving it in her best china cups, but she said that Fox couldn't come into her house and drink his portion until he'd had a bath and donned proper clothes. "You must wear a paper collar," she said, backing away from him as if repulsed, "and a Prince Albert frock coat, and I will not permit cursing...."

Victoria found that it was rather a chore to undress such a big man, particularly since he appeared to be completely unconscious. Still, she enjoyed every moment, each glimpse of lean, tanned flesh. The more she saw, the more she prayed that he'd revive enough to do what they'd come upstairs for. Fox was the best-looking man she'd seen since coming to Deadwood. His hair, burnished in the lamplight, curled a little. There was a crinkled pattern of laugh lines framing his eyes, which had thick lashes. His face was weather-beaten, but there was something about his cheekbones and the line of his nose and the shape of his mouth that reminded her of a man of breeding... the kind she'd seen pictures of but had never actually met.

Biting her lip, she unfastened his buckskin trousers and slowly worked them down over his hips and long, well-muscled legs. Her heart beat fast when she stood back then and drank in the sight of him, for Fox wore no drawers. He was a big man: tall, yet lean-hipped, and chiseled like a statue. Even his private parts looked highly promising to her now experienced eye. When she tried to get his blue shirt off, Fox woke up a little. He smiled at her, as if she were a nurse, and lifted his arms obediently.

"Mercy," Victoria breathed, tilting her head to one side as she stared at his naked body. His face was turned on the pillow and he'd slipped back into his dreams, one arm curved above his head. Victoria decided that this was the ideal male body. His sun-darkened chest was broad, hard, and lightly covered with the perfect amount of crisp hair, just like his legs and forearms. Although she didn't care for men with smooth chests, an overabundance of hair was almost worse, especially when it grew up their backs and over their shoulders. Some fellows also had big white bellies, and she longed to charge them double.

Her inventory of Fox ended, there seemed little for Victoria to do but have another drink, get undressed, and join him in bed. It was awfully early to be in bed with the intent to sleep, but it would probably do her complexion good.

Besides, she mused as she wrestled with the fastenings on her gown, there was no telling what might happen in the middle of the night....

Chapter 4

July 9, 1876

"You truly got yourself a bed?" asked old Frenchy Cachlin, wide-eyed under the frayed brim of his stovepipe hat. "That was real lucky."

"I know, and I'm grateful." Fox, who had paid ten cents extra for the clean water Frenchy'd carried in buckets from Whitewood Creek, recognized immediately that the proprietor of the bathhouse was dull-witted. Still, he liked the fellow. After soaping his head and dunking it under the water, Fox surfaced and gave him a smile. "Yesterday I went back to the Grand Central Hotel for another of their tasty meals. While I was eating, Wagner, the owner, let me know that there was space now in the upstairs. I was glad, particularly because the food's so good there."

Old Frenchy nodded with enthusiasm. "I know! Aunt Lou Marchbanks is the cook. She's a colored lady, you know."

"A woman of rare talent." Fox rinsed his hair again, rubbed the droplets of water from his freshly-shaved jaw, then stood up and shivered. Frenchy, who was also known as the "bottle fiend" because of his huge and unusual collection of glass receptacles, rushed to hand him his biggest towel.

"I like you, Fox."

"I like you, too." He gave Frenchy a grin, then began to dry his hair vigorously. Part of the reason that Old Frenchy was so happy to see him, Fox knew, was because few of Deadwood's residents ever came near the bathhouse. As much as they hated lice, they seemed to hate soap and water more.

The bathhouse was actually owned by Dr. O. E. Sick, which was why Fox had passed Frenchy an extra dime after his first bath yesterday. When at last he was dressed in clean clothes fresh from a Chinese laundry, he gathered up his toilet kit and turned to Old Frenchy.

"Now, there's fifteen cents for the clean water, ten cents more for hot, and this last fifteen cents is for
you.
Don't you go giving it to Dr. Sick."

"Much obliged!" His face lit up with innocent joy. "Y'know what I'd like? I'd like you to come to my cabin sometime and see my bottles. I got
thousands
."

"I'd be honored." Fox shook his hand, then headed out the door into the July sunlight.

Standing on a crate that was half sunk in the swamp where Wall Street turned onto Main was a thin, black-haired, bearded man with the fire of God in his eyes. "Repent!" he shouted into the badlands. "Do not stray from the laws of God and you shall find salvation!"

Fox dropped a coin into the hat that the minister had propped before him. There were a few pinches of gold there already, but nothing else. This was a place sorely in need of the word of God, and Fox knew Annie Sunday would want him to offer the fellow encouragement.

"Bless you." The minister paused for a moment, bending over to clasp Fox's hand. "The name's Henry Smith, but folks in the Hills just call me Preacher Smith. You're a good man, I think. It's something in the eyes I've learned to recognize."

"Well..." Fox bit his lip, thinking of the coy, knowing smiles he got from Victoria every time she saw him. He wished
he
knew what they meant. "I suppose I'm a sinner like everyone else."

Preacher Smith didn't smile much, but it was hard to resist this strong, tanned fellow with the look of a renegade. "God won't give up on you, son, and neither will I." Gazing heavenward, he shouted, "Dear Lord, look kindly on this town! The folks here need your love and your forgiveness, too...."

Continuing on his way, Fox felt that familiar, prickly mixture of conflicting emotions, made worse by the reminder that God knew all the secrets he was trying to keep from everyone else in Deadwood. Fortunately he had a supper engagement and welcomed the distraction of preparations. Madeleine and Benjamin Avery were guaranteed to take his mind off his troubles.

* * *

"I agree that we should fix a special meal in honor of Father's homecoming," Maddie remarked to her grandmother, "but do you really imagine that he expects such extravagance?" She looked around at the bounty that seemed to spread throughout the kitchen. "I had no idea you were buying such things. Why didn't you take me with you?"