Gold (40 page)

Pamela looked up at
Nazareth with tear-filled
eyes. “I tried,” she said brokenly. “I did all I
could.”

“
I saw you did,” he said. “I’m grateful, ma’am. Everywhere else I went no one would help. Poor
little thing didn’t have nobody but me. She always
was sort of puny but I—” He broke off and
covered his eyes with his hand. “I loved Lydia
May. I don’t know what to do now; I just don’t.”

“
I’m sorry, Nazareth.” Pamela laid her hand on his arm.

He blinked tears away, his expression changing.
“How come you know me?”

“
Because I—I’m Lydia May’s grandmother,
God help me,” Pamela said.

Nazareth
stepped back from her, scowling. “You are that,” he muttered. “I see that now.”

“
I’m sorry,” she repeated.

After a
moment he took a deep shuddering breath. “I expect you couldn’t help it,” he said.
“But that daughter of yours will burn for all
eternity. If Lydia May had had a proper mother
to take care of her, she wouldn’t have come to this.”

“
Where are you going? We—we have men here
who
...”
Pamela began.

Nazareth
brushed past her with Lydia May in
his arms. “No!” he said. “I won’t let her die here.
I won’t let Selena come and pretend to weep over
her corpse. That’s all your daughter ever did—
pretend! The Tedders care for their own. I’ll see
to her burial myself. God damn you all!” With
the dying child in his arms, he burst into sobs and
ran from the hospital.

***

Selena hummed as she pirouetted in front of
the pier glass in her bedroom, examining the new
peach gown from all angles. A shirred bodice
bound at the scooped neck with satin binding
showed off just enough of her breasts to be in
triguing. The vee of the bodice where it joined
the skirt made her small waist look even tinier.
And the cage crinoline thrust the skirts out ex
citingly.

“
Sounds like a mighty sad song you’re hum
ming,” Veronie said. “Ain’t you happy?”

Selena glanced back at her maid.
“All Irish
airs are plaintive,” she confided to Veronie. “The
Irish like to make themselves cry.”

The girl shook her head doubtfully. Selena
already knew Veronie wasn’t especially bright but
she was a wizard with curls and could mend a
seam so not a thread showed. What more did one
expect from a personal maid?

Selena sang the words:

“The harp that once through Tara’s halls,its soul of music shed.
Now hangs as mute on Tara’s walls as though that soul were fled…

“Don’t make no kind of sense,” Veronie said.
“But you sure got a pretty voice. All the gentlemen say so too.”

Selena smiled at her. The peach gown was
definitely provocative. That new dressmaker on
California Street showed a true French flair. If
only she could persuade Pamela to have a few
gowns made. Her mother’s clothes were all so
drab. But Pamela insisted fashion wasn’t im
portant to the sick.

Selena grimaced. How could her mother go
into those ghastly charnel houses they called
hospitals? “Someone has to look after the cholera
patients,” Pamela kept saying. “I can’t under
stand how people can pass by the sick and suffer
ing without even a second glance.”

I can understand very well, Selena thought. I can
’t bear sickness.

“
You sure got a lot of gentlemen after you,”
Veronie said.

Selena
’s mouth twisted wryly.

“
Like a bitch in
heat,” Barry Fitzpatrick had growled at her. “All the pack gathering ‘round.” Jealous, that was his
trouble. Barry intrigued her, but since he’d
trapped W.W. she’d refused to see him and would
continue to do so. She loved W.W. almost like a
father.

The front door opened and closed and she
heard Pamela’s light step on the stairs. Waving her
hand at Veronie in dismissal, Selena waited for
her mother to come along the hall. Seeing the
peach gown ought to be enough to persuade
her . . .

Selena
’s thoughts broke off abruptly as Pamela
appeared in the doorway.

“
Mother! What’s the matter? Are you ill?”
Selena hurried toward her, reaching out her hand.

“
I’m not sick,” Pamela said, clasping her daughter’s hand. “No, I’m quite all right.”

Selena examined her mother
’s tired face with
concern. “But something is wrong, isn’t it?”

Pamela pulled away and lowered her face into
her hands. “Oh, Selena, my dear child. I don’t
know how to tell you.”

“
Is it W.W.? Oh my God, have they lynched
him?”

“
No, no, he’s safe enough in jail for the time being at least.”

“
The cholera then. Who is it, who’s sick?
Barry? Danny O’Lee?”

Pamela shook her head.
“They’re fine as far as I know. But it is the cholera and it’s killed her,
your—my—”

Tears rolled down Pamela
’s cheeks. “So young
to die, her life hardly begun. When I found out
who she was, for a moment I wished I’d been taken instead.”

“
Mother, what are you talking about? Who’s dead?”

“
Lydia May.”

Sel
ena stood for a moment without speaking. A muscle twitched in her face. Pamela held out
her arms but her daughter ignored them. So she told Selena of Nazareth’s coming to the hos
pital, of the child too far gone to save.

“
I told you long ago it was too late,” Selena
said. She turned away to sit at a vanity table
where she picked up a powder puff.
Pamela watched her unbelievingly as she con
tinued her toilette. “You can’t be thinking of going
out this evening,” she cried. “Not now!”

“
Of course I’m going out. Lee will be picking
me up in less than an hour.”

Pamela held the black umbrella over her head, staring down at the muddy burying hole. The wind-blown drizzle lashed her face
and she could feel moisture seeping into her shoes.

Nazareth Tedder stood on the opposite side of the grave still gaunt-faced from his own bout with cholera. He did not look at her. He hadn
’t personally informed her of when Lydia May would be buried, but she’d read the burial notice in the newspaper and had come to mourn her grandchild, despite him.

“
My fellow mourners,” the minister began, “though we weep today, we must teach our hearts to rejoice that an unsullied soul is safe in the bosom of Jesus.”

Pamela shut her ear to the minister
’s voice and tried to ignore the wet chill of the day and Nazaeth’s icy unfriendliness. Water trickled into the newly dug hole. She thought of the small body in the miniature coffin soon to be lowered into it. The poor child.

She glanced from under her lashes at
Nazareth. To her surprise he was staring past her, his eyes dry of tears and narrowed with hatred. She turned and was astonished, yet unbelievably relieved at what she saw.

Muffled in a black cloak,
Selena climbed the path toward them. She had no umbrella and the wind had blown her hair loose, so that it swirled wildly about her black bonnet. Her face pale with grief
, a mother’s grief, she
might have been an angel coming to gather up
her child’s soul.

She did not stand next to Pamela but stayed
back, apart from them all. Pamela eyed her ner
vously, dividing her attention between the minister
and Selena.

There was a stir on
Nazareth’s side of the grave,
of people, his few friends, whispering to one another. If only W.W. could be here, Pamela
thought. He’d knew how to handle any unpleas
antness before it started.

Now the men were lowering the coffin. The
white blossoms Nazareth had placed on it spilled into the muck as the box tilted, their sweet smell
rising from the grave. Nazareth’s face twisted. He
glared across at Selena. He seemed, to Pamela,
almost joyful, but it was the maddened joy of
contemplated revenge.

“
Whore!” he hissed. Hands pulled at him, led him away.

Pamela started toward Selena. Before she could
reach her, Selena crumpled face down into the
mud.

“
I’m not sure you should be up,” Pamela said two days later.

“
I haven’t time to waste in bed if I’m to be of
any help.” Nevertheless Selena huddled in one of the overstuffed chairs looking pinched and miser
able.
“You may still have a fever.”
“Oh, mother, I’m not planning to die young.”

“
I know what W.W. would say,” Pamela told
her. “He would quote Shelley: ‘The good die first,
and they whose hearts are dry as summer dust
burn to the socket.’’

Selena sighed.
“I’m afraid King Sutton puts the
lie to that one. He wasn’t a good man.”

Pamela paid her no attention.
“Well, at least
it wasn’t the cholera you had. Thank God the
epidemic seems to be diminishing. There’ve been no new cases.”

Selena looked at her.
“You haven’t mentioned
King since Danny O’Lee sent us word of his death
this afternoon. And mother, I know you and
King were . . .”

“
We won’t speak of him, if you don’t mind,
Selena. He was dead to me long before that bullet
ever was fired.”

The knocker banged against the front door.
“That must be Danny now,” Pamela said.

Maria appeared in the archway.
“Mr. O’Lee,”
she said in her accented English. “And a
...”
She paused, casting a quick glance behind her.
In her confusion she lapsed into Spanish. “
Senor
Jed.”

Pamela blinked, then moved forward, smiling
to greet the men.

“
Ah, you’re still as lovely as the dawn,” Danny
told her.

“
Sunset is more appropriate these days,” Pam
ela said wryly. “I am getting on, you know.” She
smiled at Danny. “How have you been? When
we received your note we decided we would do
everything we could to help free W.W.”

“
Selena,” Danny said, nodding at her politely.
Selena waved her hand languidly. “Mr. O’Lee.”
She smiled softly them. “Hello, Dan,” she said.

He grinned at her.

“How have you been, Jed?” Pamela asked.
“Are you getting along all right? I didn’t think
when King—Mr. Sutton—was shot I should
have . . .”

“
Thank you all the same, missus.” The big
black man bowed his head and then nodded
toward Danny. “Mr. O’Lee’s been taking care of
me since then,” he said.

“
Jed’s going to help us free Rhynne,” Danny said. “Now that King Sutton’s dead they’ll hang
him sure if we can’t spirit him away.”

The knocker banged again.

“I asked Mac, Mr. McSweeney, to join us to
night,” Danny said. “If that’s all right with you.”

“
Anything that will help free W.W. is fine with
me,” Pamela said.

McSweeney seemed even less at ease in the parlor than Jed. He sat gingerly on the very edge
of a wing-backed chair, turning his hat in his
hands.

“
What can we do?” Pamela asked.

“
That we don’t know as yet,” Danny said.
“First we want to see the lay of the land. Perhaps with your aid, Pamela. No one looks quite so
respectable and innocent as when escorting a
lady.”