Merline Lovelace (2 page)

Heads turned. Eyes widened. The buzz of conversation slowed, then petered out altogether. The faces of the guests crowding the high-ceilinged room registered a variety of reactions.

Victoria caught flashes of envy from some of the younger women. Surprise and perhaps a frown or two from the older matrons…including her mother, who hadn’t been consulted by her daughter concerning the alterations to the sapphire gown.

If the women eyed her with varying degrees of approbation, the males appeared universal in their wholehearted approval. Victoria couldn’t help but
preen a bit under the admiring stares of the young men and smile saucily at the older gentlemen. A wink from her papa won one from her in return. Even Sam, she saw with a stab of smug satisfaction, broke off his conversation and swept her from head to toe with a startled look.

Head high, her pulse fluttering under the black velvet ribbon tied around her throat, she glided into the room and made straight for her host and hostess. Elise’s parents stood near a round, claw-footed table draped with lace and filled to overflowing with canapés on silver trays, crystal champagne flutes and a towering ice centerpiece sculpted by the Hotel Sheridan’s French chef, who’d driven with his minions through the whirling snow to cater the birthday fete.

“I’m sorry for taking so long to dress,” Victoria apologized prettily. “I do hope I haven’t held up dinner.”

“Not at all,” Elise’s mother assured her. “We’re still waiting for another of our guests to come downstairs.”

Almost twenty years of marriage and four children had added a glow of maturity to Suzanne Sloan’s beauty. Her soft brown hair, so like her younger brother Sam’s, showed only a few strands of silver.

The man who stood beside her wore his years a bit harder. Once a notorious gunslinger, Black Jack
Sloan was now a prosperous horse rancher and an elected member of the Wyoming state legislature. Although he could still the antics of his lively off-spring with one piercing look from his steel-gray eyes, they held a distinct twinkle tonight as he surveyed his daughter’s closest companion.

“You look lovely, my dear. And rather, er, grown-up.”

Victoria gave him her most brilliant smile. “Thank you, sir.”

“Yes, you quite take the shine from me,” a willowy brunette declared as she joined the group. “You always have, you wretched, wretched excuse for a friend.”

“Not tonight, Elise.”

Victoria spoke only the truth. She’d never seen the brunette sparkle so vivaciously. Or appear to such advantage. The dratted girl much preferred to spend her time in horse barns instead of drawing rooms, and usually had to be forced into ball gowns and dancing slippers. Tonight, however, she looked positively radiant in a stylish creation of rich, ruby velvet. Diamonds winked at her throat and ears, and a delicate touch of pink tinted her cheeks.

“Lieutenant Duggan’s here,” Elise informed Victoria. “He’s been asking for you.”

“Has he?”

“Yes, and he brought a friend with him.” The
color in her cheeks deepened. “A new lieutenant, just out of West Point.”

Good heavens! Had a male with two legs instead of four finally captured her friend’s interest? Intrigued, Victoria murmured her excuses to the Sloans and tucked her arm in Elise’s.

More than one male glance followed them as they crossed the room. They made such a contrast, Victoria knew. One so dark and slender, the other so fair and well curved, each kissed with the bloom of budding womanhood. Her spirits gratifyingly restored after the way Sam had all but ignored her upstairs, she allowed Elise to draw her toward the two eager lieutenants from nearby Fort Russell.

She had to admit they presented a rather splendid picture in their dress uniforms. The belted dark blue jackets sported gold epaulets and ropes. Long silk tassels dangled from their sabers. With their hair parted rigorously down the middle and their mustaches waxed to sharp points, they represented the flower of America’s military establishment.

The look of almost slavish adoration that came over Lieutenant Charles Duggan’s face as Victoria approached raised her spirits even more. Charles was really a delightful young man. Quite polished and so very anxious to please.

Graciously, she allowed him to fetch her a glass of champagne and laughed merrily at the tales he and his friend shared of their days at the Point. Oth
ers drifted over. Within minutes, Victoria and Elise were surrounded by their wide circle of friends.

She let several moments pass before she slanted a look over her shoulder. Sam caught her provocative glance. Grinning, he lifted his champagne flute in silent salute. A delicious heat raced through Victoria’s veins and she was feeling a flush of feminine satisfaction at having snared his full attention when his gaze shifted to her left.

The hunger she’d glimpsed so briefly upstairs flitted across his face again, quickly come and just as quickly gone. With a sudden, hollow feeling in her stomach, Victoria sensed Mary Two Feathers Prendergast had entered the drawing room.

The gay atmosphere around her seemed to deflate. All at once the air seemed thick and stuffy. When Suzanne Sloan ushered her guests in to dinner a few moments later, a dull ache throbbed at the base of Victoria’s skull.

T
wenty-eight sat down to feast at the Sloans’ mahogany dinner table. An elaborate chandelier with cut-crystal globes hung overhead. The pools of light from its many bulbs cast a golden glow over a sideboard laden with serving dishes. Silver gleamed, and the tall crystal stemware purchased during the Sloans’ recent trip to Europe gave off a brilliant luster.

Once his guests were seated, Jack Sloan exercised his privilege as host to toast his daughter on the occasion of her birthday. The hard edges of his face softened for a moment, just long enough for the assembled guests to glimpse the man behind the once-legendary gunslinger.

“To you, Elise. May you find as much joy in the years ahead as you’ve given your mother and me the past seventeen.”

A rousing chorus of “Hear, hear!” colored
Elise’s cheeks again. The murmured comment of the young lieutenant beside her turned them even pinker.

Victoria was seated directly across from her friend, with Charles Duggan at her right side. Sam, she noted, occupied the chair next to Mary Prendergast near the foot of the table. He’d obviously made good on his promise to rearrange the name cards tucked in delicate silver filigree holders. With something dangerously close to a sniff, Victoria bestowed a smile so brilliant on the young man seated to her left that he almost dropped his soupspoon.

Course followed course, but in the heart of cattle country, the main dish could only be beef. The Hotel Sheridan’s imported chef had outdone himself with his artistic presentation of four-inch-thick tenderloins baked in a sherry mushroom sauce and flaky pastry shells.

The gastronomic delights, free-flowing champagne and well-traveled guests made for a lively dinner party. As always at any gathering of Cheyenne’s elite, the conversation ranged from ranching to the activities of the state legislature to the upcoming visit of one of Italy’s noted tenors. Inevitably, the talk soon turned to the Cuban situation and the very real possibility of war.

“Dashed bad luck, that horse rolling on your father,” a whiskered gentleman huffed to Sam. “Andrew Garrett should be the one to lead our Wyo
ming regiments into action when the call to arms comes. Where is the general, anyway?”

“He and my mother are in Denver. They’re consulting a surgeon, a specialist just out from Boston who has some expertise with crushed spines.”

The portly gentleman huffed again and shook his head. “Let’s hope this sawbones knows what he’s about. Hard on a man like your father to be reduced to wheeling himself around in a chair.”

“Yes, it is,” Sam replied evenly.

Too evenly, Victoria thought. And in almost the same tone he’d used upstairs, when Mary asked him how he liked being out of uniform. As he turned the conversation away from the accident that had crippled his father and brought him home to manage the Garretts’ business affairs, Mary’s soft observation came back to Victoria in a rush.

Like his father, Sam was a warrior at heart. He’d been raised on army posts, had attended West Point, had served in uniform for almost eight years himself. Yet Victoria had never thought to ask him if he missed army life. She’d been too titillated by his return to Cheyenne, and too infatuated to look beyond the lazy grin he habitually presented to the world. Chewing on her lower lip, she sat silent while his sister raised the question that burned in everyone’s mind.

“Do you really believe it will come to war?”

“After the insults the Spanish ambassador gave
our president?” the same portly gentleman said indignantly. “I should think so!”

A vigorous chorus of agreement rose from others at the table. All America was incensed by the contents of the letter stolen by the Cuban junta in New York and published just last week in newspapers all across the country. In the missive, the Spanish ambassador had labeled President McKinley weak and vacillating—mild adjectives indeed when compared to some of the epithets those same newspapers regularly hurled at the president. Yet the incident added another spark to Americans’ smoldering dislike of the Spanish.

“Spain has apologized and vill recall her ambassador,” Victoria’s papa pointed out in the heavy German accent that flavored his speech despite almost five decades in the States. “Perhaps the pacifists vill prevail, after all.”

“I for one sincerely hope not,” Lieutenant Duggan put in. “The army hasn’t seen any real action since that little fracas at Wounded Knee eight years ago.”

“It was hardly a ‘little’ fracas,” Mary countered quietly, entering the conversation for the first time. “My people call it a massacre.”

The young officer reddened. In his war zeal, he’d forgotten that a full-blooded Arapaho sat three chairs down from him. Taking pity on his obvious
embarrassment, Mary picked up the thread of the conversation.

“I, too, think it will come to war.” Her glance shifted to Sam. “That’s why I left Wind River. I’m on my way to Washington.”

“Washington?”

“Yes. I leave Cheyenne on the eastbound train tomorrow.”

“The devil you say!”

He made no attempt to hide his displeasure, Victoria noted. The ache at the base of her skull grew sharper.

“Surely you can stay longer,” Sam protested.

“Unfortunately, I cannot. I’m on my way to consult with a colleague of my husband’s. Dr. Anita Newcomb McGee. Perhaps you’ve heard of her?”

“No.”

“She’s a very prominent physician and currently vice president of the Daughters of the American Revolution. She, too, is concerned about the possibility of war and the potential casualties it will bring. She’s suggested that the War Department establish a Hospital Corps and recruit women nurses to fill the positions.”

The quiet pronouncement captured the attention of the entire table.

“Do you mean the army would put women in uniform?” Elise asked, astounded by the concept.

Smiling at her astonishment, Mary nodded.
“Countless number of women volunteered their services as nurses during the War Between the States. Some acted as couriers, spies, even saboteurs. But they worked individually, never as part of an organized corps. Dr. McGee’s proposal would give the army the surge capacity it needs to augment the male nurses.”

“And give the nurses the protection of the Army,” Sam put in.

“Exactly.”

Sensing an interesting piece for the next edition of the
Tribune,
Victoria’s papa leaned forward and caught the widow’s attention.

“If I may be so bold, vhy does Dr. McGee vish to consult vith you?”

“I have some little skill at organization as well as medicine,” she replied modestly. “My husband and I helped train volunteer nurses during the great typhoid epidemic that swept through Philadelphia in ’93.”

Deitrich Parker’s bushy gray brows twitched like a rabbit’s, a sure sign that he’d unearthed an exclusive.

A newspaperman to his bones, he’d learned typesetting from his father before immigrating to the United States as a boy of ten. After landing a job as a runner at a New York daily, he’d worked his way up the ladder to senior editor, married the owner’s very beautiful and quite wealthy daughter
and subsequently moved to Cheyenne to establish his own paper.

“May I talk mit you after dinner?” he asked, his accent thickening in his enthusiasm. “I vould like to print a story about your trip to Vashington.”

“Better you should print one about Dr. McGee. She’s truly a great physician.”

“
Ja, ja,
and so she is! Victoria shall write a piece on her. My daughter, she is good mit words.”

“Is she?” In an obvious attempt to shift attention away from herself, Mary addressed the author in question. “Do tell me what you’ve written.”

“Nothing very profound, I assure you. Mostly little anecdotes about the social events here in Cheyenne. Fourth of July picnics and such.”

“You’re being too modest,” the loyal Elise protested. “What about that serial you did on Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee last year?
Victoria Regina,
by Victoria Parker. Your vignettes about the queen’s life enthralled us all.”

“I merely collected bits of information and arranged them in chronological order.”

“Don’t listen to her,” Elise advised the young widow. “She has the keenest wit. Everyone in Cheyenne looks forward to her amusing stories each week.”

“Perhaps she should do a piece on the ‘cowboy cavalry’ our esteemed Senator Warren wishes to organize,” one of the guests suggested. “That’s as
interesting around these parts as Britain’s doddering old queen.”

From the corner of one eye, Victoria caught the smirk the two lieutenants exchanged. Elise’s father noted it as well. Leaning back in his chair, Sloan put the topic on the table for general conversation.

“You don’t agree, Duggan?”

Chagrined at being caught in the smirk, the young officer nevertheless answered truthfully. “At the risk of putting my foot in my mouth again, I can only echo the opinions of the regulars at Fort Russell toward volunteer infantry regiments. They drill irregularly, if at all, and sorely lack experience in the field. Yet those sentiments are mild indeed compared to our feelings concerning volunteer cavalry regiments.”

Jack Sloan grinned. “The idea of a regiment composed of rowdy wranglers, undisciplined bronc busters and broken-down old scouts gives you the willies, does it?”

“Well…yes.”

“You’d better get used to it. Despite the army’s objections, the congressional delegations from both Wyoming and North Dakota are in favor of it. I’m in favor of it, too,” the outlaw-turned-horse breeder added with a grin. “A volunteer regiment such as Senator Warren’s talking about will need a good twelve hundred head of prime horseflesh. My guess is he’ll push his regiment through.”

“So will the assistant secretary of the navy,” Sam put in quietly. “Theodore Roosevelt is as enamored with the idea as Senator Warren and he carries even more clout in the War Department.”

Sam should know, Victoria thought. He’d spent two of his eight years in the army on staff duty in Washington.

She decided on the spot that the cowboy cavalry would indeed make for an interesting piece. And the perfect person to lend his perspective was Captain Sam Garrett, but recently discharged from the United States Cavalry.

Victoria decided to ask Sam for his opinion during the lull after dinner, when the ladies went upstairs to refresh themselves. At least that was the reason she gave herself for detaining him before he could join the men in the library for brandy and cigars.

“May I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“Privately.”

He hooked a brow, but followed her into the small room just off the dining room that Elise and her mother had claimed for their own. An embroidery tambour was tilted to catch the light, and one of Elise’s split-legged riding skirts lay draped over the sewing machine, awaiting repair.

Folding his arms, Sam leaned against the door
molding and waited while Victoria ran her fingers around the tambour. If the move put her in a wash of soft light, that certainly wasn’t her intent. Nor did she consciously angle her chin a few more degrees to give him an unobstructed view of her profile.

He, evidently, thought otherwise.

“A very pretty pose,” he said with amused approval. “You’ll have to try it on your lieutenant.”

Her chin came down with a snap. There it was again. That patronizing, almost paternal attitude she thought she’d vanquished forever with her grand entrance and daring décolletage.

“What was it you wanted to ask me, Victoria?”

With some effort, she kept from snapping at him. “I’ve decided Senator Warren’s proposed volunteer cavalry would indeed make a good subject for an article. As a former cavalry officer, I’d like your views on the concept.”

“Better you should ask my father. The general spent a good deal more time as a horse soldier than I did.”

“I will, when he returns from Denver. But you spent almost eight years in the cavalry yourself. What do you think of the concept?”

“What do I think?” His shoulders lifted. “The army has only a little more than twenty-eight thousand men in uniform at present. If we go to war with Spain, we’ll require ten times that number.”

“As many as that!”

“As many as that. And we’ll need them quickly. That means recruiting men, putting them in uniform and teaching them to ride and shoot, all within a few months.”

“A process that might take less time,” she said slowly, “if they already knew how to ride and shoot.”

“Exactly. Unlike your devoted young swain, I think volunteer cavalry regiments make perfect sense. In fact, I—”

Catching himself, he bit off whatever he’d intended to say.

Victoria was too much her father’s daughter to let it go at that. “In fact what, Sam?”

“Nothing. You have my opinion, for whatever it’s worth. Now, don’t you need to go fluff your petticoats or find your fan or do whatever you girls do before you’re besieged by eager young subalterns hoping for a dance?”

She came very close to grinding her teeth together. Really, the man was insufferable. And blind as two bats tied back to back!

“Since you apparently don’t wish to share more of your thoughts,” she said icily, “I might as well join the other silly schoolgirls.”

“Uh-oh. You heard that, did you?”

“Obviously.”

Chuckling, he tried to make amends. “Well, I’ll
admit neither you nor Elise resemble schoolgirls tonight.”

“Indeed?”

“Indeed,” he tossed back in that teasing tone she hated. Scraping a hand across his chin, he eyed her up and down. “The truth is, you rocked me right back on my heels when you waltzed into the drawing room in that gown.”

That was better. Much better.

“Ooooh.” Oozing syrupy sweetness, Victoria batted her lashes. “I can’t tell you how gratified I am that you’ve realized Elise and I have put our dolls behind us. In fact—”

She let the pause string out for a long, tantalizing moment.

“All right,” he said with a grin. “I’ll take the bait. In fact what?”

Perhaps it was the three glasses of champagne she’d consumed that made her so reckless. Or the fact that she was coming of age at a time when women were throwing off the shackles of the old century and demanding rights and privileges in the new that shocked their parents. Or perhaps it was just the thrill of being closeted alone with the man she ached for with a secret, shameful passion. Whatever caused this giddy sensation, it propelled Victoria slowly across the room.