Gold (5 page)

“
Not for five years? Ten or fifteen at the most?”

“
I’m thirty-eight. When I lay ill with the fever
at the mission at Santa Clara, I felt my mortality. Five more years?” She tightened her grip on her
bag.

“
Sit down, Lady Pamela. Please sit down.”

“
No, I choose to stand. Mr. Gowdy, I want you
to consider me as you would any other petitioner. Now then. Will you advance me the five thousand
dollars or not? Needless to say, the diamonds are
worth far more.”

“
To hell with your diamonds. I may work for
my living but I’m not a pawnbroker! I can’t let
you have the money. Your blood would be on my
hands. God knows, Lady Pamela, I’d give you
money for almost anything else. Give it to you.”

“
Tell me, then, who will lend me the money?”

“
No one will. Merchants like Brannan might
have the cash but they’d be fools to finance a com
petitor. Miners who’ve made their stake? No, the ones who haven’t lost their gold dust to drink or gamblers are already bound for the States.”

“
What of the gamblers themselves?”

He scowled.
“Men like W. W. Rhynne? You’d
do better to try to shake hands with a grizzly than
deal with his kind.”

“
You paint a bleak picture.”

“
I intend to. How else can I show you the truth?
What you propose is a dangerous folly.”

“
Thank you.” Pamela nodded at the papers on his desk. “I’m sure you have more urgent matters
of business than mine. No, don’t bother—I’ll see
myself out.”

She reached the door before he could get there.
As she started to close it after her, Pamela turned
and smiled at him. “I really do understand, Rob
ert,” she said softly.

When she had gone, Robert Gowdy reseated
himself, savoring the lingering scent of lilacs.
After a time he relit his cigar. For him marriage to
Pamela would in all probability be a disaster. She
was as stubborn as only an English aristocrat
could be. His people had been in trade for gen
erations—not a title among them. And yet, if
she would only smile at him once each day as she
had just smiled at him, he’d run the risk twenty
times over.

Avoiding the glances of passing men, Pamela carefully skirted mud puddles and made her way
back to the Parker House. In the hotel, she found the manager perched on a high stool behind the front desk.

“
Mr. Hotchkiss,” she said, “could you tell me
where I might locate a Mr. Rhynne?”

“
W.W. Rhynne?” The manager’s voice rose in
surprise.

“
I believe he’s a gambler.”

“
Gambling is one of his ventures.”

From the man
’s expression Pamela concluded
the other ventures were even less respectable.

Hotchkiss glanced at the Seth Thomas on the
wall. “This time of day you’re most likely to find
him at Bidwell’s. He left here early this morning.”

“
You mean he lives at the Parker House?”

“
Yes, ma’am, he’s our guest when he’s in town.
He rents a room from us permanent like. He
checked in last night.”

Feeling suddenly lightheaded, Pamela grasped the edge of the desk to steady herself. She closed
her eyes.

“
Are you all right?” Hotchkiss asked.

Pamela took several deep breaths.
“Yes, thank
you. I’m merely tired.” She walked slowly toward
the stairs.

“
About Mr. Rhynne,” Hotchkiss began.

“
Later,” Pamela said, her lightheadedness in
creasing.
By holding the railing, she barely managed to
climb the stairs. Her vision was blurring when
she reached her room; she thought she would faint.
Quickly, she unlocked the door and went inside
to her dressing table. Through the thin wall she heard Selena singing to herself in the next room.

Opening a drawer, Pamela took out a bottle of
amber liquid and poured a teaspoonful. She
needed this medicine. When she swallowed it, a
feeling of color came back to her cheeks. Since
being ill with the fever she found that her strength
ebbed rapidly and her natural optimism could
turn to anxiety and depression without warning.
At least Robert Gowdy hadn’t noticed her ma
laise, At least neither he nor anyone else knew
how desperately she relied on the bit of laudanum
she took for it.

Gowdy was so different from Lord Lester,
feeling stronger, Pamela stared straight ahead
and pictured her husband, recalling the early
years, the good years before he was seized with
his dream of being a king. The mad dream
that destroyed him and almost killed Selena as
well. She hadn’t loved Lester for many years. Indeed, toward the end she had despised him. And yet she would never love another man as she had loved him at sixteen.

The rapture of being young
and in love could never be repeated. Not even
Barry Fitzpatrick, the young guide who was her
sometime lover on the wagon train west, had quite
managed to do that for her.

And Robert Gowdy thought she might one day marry him. How absurd! She liked him
and she knew
she could trust him. As she had never trusted Les
ter. But she would never marry Robert. Indeed,
she doubted if she cared to marry any man. Even
for Selena’s sake.

She closed her eyes and listened to Selena
’s
voice:

“
Oh, Susanna! Don’t you cry for me I’m bound for California with my washbowl on my knee.”

Selena, her cross and her hope.

Her cross because Selena never thought beyond
the moment. Despite her own hard experiences on the trail, Selena just hadn’t grown up. She behaved
as though she was younger than her nineteen
years. By nineteen most girls were married. As
Pamela had been. Actually by then she’d given
birth to Selena.

But her daughter never seemed to
care about her tomorrows, never planned for the
future any more than she seemed to remember
the past. So Pamela had to do it for her.

Selena was her hope because, despite the fiasco
with Don Diego, she still could marry well. Even
in this desolate land. Because the girl was so beau
tiful no man could resist her. Golden hair, hon
eyed complexion, a lilting laugh, a perfectly pro
portioned figure. Her beauty was not only in her
mother’s eyes--everyone acknowledged it.

She was Pamela
’s cross, her hope and, Pamela
told herself firmly, her joy as well. At least she
was a joy when she wasn’t acting the role of a
young rebel. Directness, Pamela had discovered
before, seldom succeeded with Selena, and had
more than once been disastrous.

She had changed
somewhat for the better since her father’s death,
but what Pamela liked to think of as woman-to-
woman talk still seemed to bring forth perverse
reactions from her.

Thank God the girl had had
the luck to find out about Diego before it was too
late. For, in spite of all that had happened, Selena was surely lucky in escaping his clutches.

A movement caught Pamela
’s eye. Looking up
into the mirror she saw a man watching her from
her doorway. She spun around and stood up.

“
Who are you?” she demanded.

He smiled. At least she thought that quirk of
his lips must be a smile. About her own age, he
was tall with black hair and a black moustache.
He wore a short tan cloak with a vest of darker
brown.

“
W.W. Rhynne,” he said, his eyes challenging
hers. “At your service.”

Rhynne? Of course, the gambler.

“They told me downstairs,” he said, “that you
were asking after me.”

His eyes held hers and, unexpectedly, she
found herself glancing away. She clenched her teeth to keep the color from rising to her face.

“
A gentleman,” she said, “doesn’t enter a lady’s
room without her permission. Even in San Fran
cisco.”

W.W. Rhynne smiled, showing even and quite
attractive glistening white teeth. “Some of our
leading citizens would scoff if they heard me de
scribed as a gentleman. As for your being a lady,
I accept your evaluation pending evidence to the contrary.”

Pamela laughed, crossing her arms over her
breasts and bowing slightly. “You have an un
usual way with words, Mr. Rhynne,” she said.

“
Any facility I may have with the English lan
guage I owe to my mother.”

“
She was a schoolteacher?”

“
My mother was a madam in a New Orleans bordello.”

Pamela blinked, studying him closely to see if
he was baiting her. His face gave her no clue.

“
She read constantly in her leisure time,” he
said, “which, of course, was mostly in the morn
ings. She loved to read aloud, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Dickens, as well as Keats and the other romantic poets. Her favorite was William Words
worth who, in fact, was the inspiration for my
name.”

“
You’re William Wordsworth Rhynne?”

“
I have no middle name. I am Wordsworth
Rhynne, though in these less than civilized regions
I prefer being called W.W. Rhynne, your
most humble servant.” He sketched a bow.

This Rhynne was a humbug and a charlatan,
she was sure. A master of glib phrases, a man not
to be trusted. Why did she feel a stirring within
her? A quickening of her heartbeat? How foolish.

“
Where can we talk, Mr. Rhynne?” she asked.
“I have a confidential matter to discuss.”

“
In my room? It’s just along the hall. Number
twenty-three.”

“
Certainly not. We may as well talk here, I
suppose. Sit down, Mr. Rhynne. No, don’t close
the door.”

He sat on a straight-backed chair with his tan
wide-brimmed hat on his lap. For all his elegant
words, she noticed, he hadn’t waited for her to be
seated first. She smiled to herself, feeling better.

Though she was still
lightheaded, it was now in an agreeable way. The medicine, as always, was taking more and more of
a pronounced effect.

“
I believe in being direct, Mr. Rhynne,” she said. “I have a pair of diamond earrings which
were appraised in England for the equivalent of
ten thousand dollars. With the earrings as col
lateral, I propose to borrow five thousand dollars
from you to open a store in the mining country.”

His dark eyes held hers.
“May I be equally
direct? I have some questions.”

She nodded.

“The extent of your experience in trade?”

“
I have none.”

“
Do you have a partner? Your husband per
haps?”

“
I’m a widow, Mr. Rhynne. My daughter Selena
will assist me.”

“
Your daughter? And how old is she?”

“
Nineteen.”

He raised his eyebrows.
“I would have said
from the looks of you that she couldn’t possibly be more than ten. No, wait, don’t protest, false
modesty isn’t at all appealing. Is she the lovely
golden-haired creature I glimpsed a few nights ago
in Whittaker’s?”