Rose (8 page)

“Need any help?” Zach offered.

“No, just rest her hat on her stomach and put the valise in my hand.” Kase thrust his fingertips forward from beneath the mound of velvet. “You might go on down to the depot for me and ask John Tuttle to store any other luggage she might have brought along. Tell him to hold tomorrow’s noon train, ‘cause she’ll be getting on it.”

Zach looked doubtful but held his tongue.

“Anything else?”

“Just open the door and stand out of the way.”

Bertha Matheson was as uncaring as he had expected. She barely glanced at the girl in Kase’s arms when she opened the door and asked, “What are you doing here? You know you ain’t welcome.”

The fact that he was marshal held little weight with Bertha. He was a half-breed, and in her eyes that made him an undesirable boarder. She had put him up for two nights because Quentin Rawlins had insisted she rent Kase a room when he first arrived in town. He had not been back since he took a room at Flossie’s, preferring to live among people who did not glare at him every time they eyed him across a room.

He briefly explained the circumstances and then agreed when she told him he would have to pay for the girl’s room in advance.

“Can’t tell about these foreigners,” she grumbled as she led him to one of the rooms at the top of the narrow stairs. As Kase carried the girl over the threshold and moved toward the iron-railed bed, Bertha warned, “I’ll have no funny business here, mister. I run a good clean boardinghouse. You be down those steps in two minutes or I’ll be up here with my broom.”

He watched her huff out, his eyes following the motion of her ample hips and buttocks as they swayed along behind her. From the back she looked like a wide wall of calico banded by an apron bow.

Shifting the weight of the girl in his arms, he set her satchel on the floor and then gently laid her on the coverlet atop the narrow bed. The springs groaned in protest and he feared for a moment she might awaken, but it seemed shock and exhaustion had taken their toll. Kase set her hat on the bedside table, then smoothed her heavy skirt down, taking care to cover all signs of her ruffled white petticoats beneath. He straightened and for a moment stood staring down at her.

It was funny, he thought, how responsible he felt for this waiflike woman. He guessed that holding her in his arms as he carried her down Main Street accounted for this sudden feeling of protectiveness. That and the fact that she reminded him of his mother. At least Analisa had been accompanied by her family when she made the journey to America. This girl had traveled all the way alone. As he stared down at her, he became determined to see that she left Busted Heel and went back to Italy so that she would not have to endure any of the hardships his own mother had suffered.

No use getting all worked up, though, he told himself as he reached out to push her hair back off her face and spread it out on the pillow. After all, by tomorrow afternoon, she would be gone. He’d see her safely to the train and be done with it.

The room was nearly stifling. Kase was careful not to make a sound as he opened the windows to admit a cooling breeze, then returned to the bed. Perspiration glistened on her brow and dampened the wisps of hair near her face. He glanced back at the open door and hesitated. Bertha wouldn’t take kindly to any request from him.

It took more than two minutes to remove her high-button shoes without a hook, but finally the task was accomplished. He listened intently, but still didn’t hear Bertha making good on her threat, so he reached down and around the girl, gently slipped his hands under her, and began to unfasten the long line of round black buttons that ran down the back of her gown. At least she’d be a bit more comfortable, able to remove the gown alone when she awoke. The idea sounded logical enough until his fingers met with the soft silken feel of her skin and he felt a surge of warmth deep inside that didn’t come from the heat in the room. At the same moment, he realized that his shirtfront was near enough to brush against the bodice of her gown and that it would only take the merest pressure from the palms of his hands at her back to press her against him. By the time he reached the last button at her waist, Kase had begun to sweat. Carefully he slipped his hands out from beneath her and straightened.

“Damn.”
The whispered word escaped him and his eyes narrowed as he stared down at the sleeping figure on the bed. What was there about the girl that just the sight of her, the slightest touch of his fingertips against her ivory skin, aroused him? What perverseness made him long to ignore her plight and take advantage of her unconsciousness?

Shaken by his thoughts, Kase quickly stepped back and walked away from her. Something inside made him stop at the threshold and turn to stare at her. She looked like a broken doll lying in the center of the bed, hair streaming out around her pale face, eyes closed, arms stretched out at her sides. He remembered her name and whispered it aloud. “Rose.”

Without a sound, Kase stepped out into the hallway and closed the door behind him.

Rosa opened her eyes and found that she was still enshrouded in darkness. Startled, she sat up, her heart pounding as she looked about in confusion and tried to ease the panic that crowded in on her. Ghostly silver moonbeams streamed in through a side window to shed muted light on her surroundings. The moonlight illuminated a small, sparsely furnished room and as her vision adjusted to the weak light, she became aware of the ominous quiet that enveloped her. The quiet of death.

She realized suddenly that she was very much alone.

Now that the sun had set, the air was much cooler; the slight breeze lifted the translucent white curtains away from the windows. She was comforted somehow by the fluttering movement of the curtains; it seemed as if something were alive in the room beside herself. On shaking limbs, she rose and stood beside the bed, fighting the wave of dizziness that assailed her. The wooden floor was slick against her stockinged feet, and as she carefully crossed the room toward the window, she wondered who had removed her shoes. When her dress fell forward and slipped off her shoulders, she guessed that the same kind soul had unbuttoned it for her.

Brushing aside the curtain, she leaned against the window frame and stared out at the night. The window looked down upon the main street of Busted Heel, and from the height of the second story she could see the entire length of the street and the depot beyond. It was as deserted as she had last seen it, except that now the street and buildings were spared the glaring heat of the sun.

“Giovanni è morto.”
She whispered “Giovanni is dead,” in Italian, hoping the familiar cadence of the words might make the truth real for her.

She knew with unwavering clarity that the marshal—the tall, dark man with the deep blue eyes—had not lied to her. His face had mirrored deep regret when he said the words. Giovanni
was
dead. He would not be meeting her at all. She would not be making a new home in this new land. She had nothing. And she was alone. Just as she had feared, God had finally claimed Giovanni for himself.

Her gaze moved up and away from the deserted street. As she stared skyward toward a million shining stars and tried to blink away a sudden rush of tears, the night sky served as a backdrop for the images her mind conjured. She had known of Giovanni all her life, for everyone knew everyone in Corio and Crotte, but until she was seventeen she had not met the young man who had been cloistered away with the priests since he was twelve years old. The first time she saw Giovanni, she had been in the piazza on market day. He had been walking between the market stalls with his sisters; they walked on either side of him as if to protect the young seminarian from the jostling and bustle of the Monday market.

He was home for a holiday, he said later when he came to call at the farmhouse in Crotte, home to visit his mother and sisters. For a week he found an excuse to visit the family—and in particular, Rosa—daily. Finally, as they walked through the quiet hillside above the house together, Giovanni told her he had begun thinking of leaving the seminary long before he met her. But once he met her, he had been certain a life in the priesthood was not for him.

She had never willfully done anything to tempt him away from the church, but doubt had caused her many sleepless nights in the beginning, when his family accused her of using every wile short of witchcraft to make him give up his calling. But at Giovanni’s heated insistence, the protests ended and his family grew suddenly silent once the two were married. Coolly and unforgivingly silent.

Instead of being married in the church of San Genesio in Corio, Giovanni had taken her to Torino to state their vows before the very priests who had sought to claim him for the church. Fearful of meeting them at first, Rosa soon found the priests were happy that Giovanni had finally found peace, for his heart had long been unsettled. In reality, his vocation had been his mother’s greatest wish, but not his own.

They had not been so warmly welcomed when they returned to Corio to face his family. Signora Audi took to ceaseless weeping and prayer and refused to speak to either of them. Giovanni’s father threatened and shouted, and then he, too, wept as he offered them an old stone farmhouse that was little more than a pile of rubble on the side of a hill outside of the village.

For three weeks she tried, as only a seventeen-year-old bride would, to make a home of the drafty pile of rock that was not fit for use as a cow shed. In their living quarters above the barn, Rosa did her best to please Giovanni. By the time summer ended and the chill nights of October sent winds scuttling over the Alps to rattle the wooden doors and seep through the stone walls, Giovanni had made the decision to leave for America.

“You deserve more than this, Rosa,” he had said. “I’ll make a new life for us.” His dark eyes had shone with the dream and determination he felt. “We will have everything in America.”

Now she was in America and she had nothing. Not even a drafty home on the mountainside.

The memory of Guido’s taunting words was a haunting reminder that Giovanni’s death had irretrievably altered her life. Would she go back? There seemed to be no other choice. The big man, the marshal with the luminous eyes, had been adamant. Was it he who had brought her here? She wondered as she turned around and moved toward the bed again.

Her knees were trembling. An intense pain pounded against her temples. She remembered she had not eaten since early morning, but the thought of food choked her. Perhaps it was nearly morning again; perhaps the dawn was about to bring a day filled with more doubt and uncertainty about her future. Where would she sleep when night came again? How could she go on?

Rosa fought against the tears that threatened to overwhelm her. She shrugged helplessly, stared up at the ceiling, and swallowed. “You have him, God,” she whispered aloud in the darkness. “I hope you are happy now.” Then, thinking her words and thoughts must surely be blasphemous enough to call down more sorrow and bad luck, she crossed herself, sank to her knees, and sobbed out her sorrow.

It was a while before her tears subsided, but when they did, Rosa pulled herself to her feet. Glancing down, she stared at the black dress, a pool of darkness in the filtered moonlight. The color of widows. She would wear it for the rest of her life. With unsteady hands she drew the dress away from her shoulders and pushed it off until it fell around her ankles. Stepping out of the velvet that encircled her feet, Rosa turned back the coverlet and stretched out on the cool, crisp sheet, men closed her burning eyes against the uncertainty that would come with the rising sun.

A soft rapping at the door alerted Rosa to the fact that it was time to leave. The portal swung open to reveal the woman called Bertha Matheson, the proprietress of the boardinghouse who had curtly introduced herself earlier. The woman’s bulk should have attested to her culinary skills, but if Rosa’s early morning breakfast of runny eggs, burned biscuits, and ham slices so dry they resembled shoe leather was any indication of the rest of the fare, it would seem that only Bertha relished her own cooking.