Violet Vanquishes a Villain Page 3

  “Do you think that’s why he seemed so tense when her name came up on the trip here?” Annie turned to go back into the house.

  “You noticed that, did you? I hope not. What I do know is that he’s unhappy with her brother, Alec. While we were taking up the luggage, Billy told me that he’d contracted with Alec to help him build the house. Alec spent a couple of summers working for his uncle, who is the biggest builder in San Jose, and he was looking for extra income. So he’s been working afternoons and evenings and weekends since March.”

  “If he’s responsible for the finished work downstairs,” Annie said, “he’s a really skilled carpenter. We didn’t kick him out of his room, did we? I did notice there was a camp bed and some clothes in one of the small bedrooms.”

  “Billy says Alec was living over at the ranch house since he started work, but he moved up here as soon as the walls and roof went up. Means he’s getting free room and board on top of the money he’s going to get when the job is finished.”

  “Sounds like a good deal for everyone. Didn’t you say Alec’s a cashier at a local bank? Bankers’ hours would mean it wouldn’t be too difficult for him to ride into town for work and then make it back out here to get a few more hours done before the sun set.” Banks were generally open only between ten and three, which always seemed pretty cushy working hours to Annie.

  “The problem seems to be that Alec’s been spending more and more nights in town and only putting in a few hours during the weekends. He was supposed to have the whole house finished by the beginning of September, and it doesn’t look like he’s going to make it. But that’s not our problem. All I care about is that there is a roof over our heads,” Nate said, pulling Annie towards the staircase. “We have an hour before we’re expected down at the main house for supper, so let’s go try out that new bed I saw upstairs.”

  “Oh Nate, behave yourself.” Annie pushed him away. “What if your father stops by? Didn’t Billy say he might?” She then took the sting out of her words by pulling him close for the kisses she’d been longing for ever since they left the Palace Hotel this morning.

  Chapter 3

  Tuesday morning, August 10, 1880

  San Jose

  Violet waited until Billy rode off with his father and brother to do some more fence mending before using the excuse she’d come up with to explain why she needed to go up to the new house. Annie was washing the breakfast dishes, while Mother Dawson sat doing some mending, with little Francis at her feet, and Rosa worked on the ironing. Annie’d been telling them some ridiculous story about how she once worked as a servant in order to find a murderer and how hard the ironing had been for her. Violet didn’t know which was more upsetting, that her new sister-in-law had worked as a servant or that she had been mixed up with a murderer. Or that Mother Dawson seemed to be enjoying the story.

  Violet picked up several freshly ironed towels and murmured that she would take them up the hill. What she wanted was time alone to think. Alec had finally showed up at the ranch yesterday afternoon about four, stuck his head into the kitchen just long enough to be introduced to Annie, and then he’d said he was going up to do some work on the new kitchen. He couldn’t have done much work, because less than an hour later, his horse was gone, and he’d not returned…much to her husband’s disgust.

  At least Billy hadn’t been at the ranch when Alec showed up, so she’d been spared the embarrassment of Annie and Nathaniel witnessing an argument between the two men. He’d been out with his father and Nate, showing off his stupid apricot trees. You’d think he’d given birth to them the way they occupied his mind. No, that’s not fair. He just wants this crop to be a success…for us. To help pay for the house.

  Why must Alec ruin everything? He knew that Billy wouldn’t be able to pay him for the work he’d done until November, when he sold his crop to her father’s cannery. That was the agreement. But on Saturday morning, Alec told her he needed her to ask Billy for an advance. They’d had a big fight when she said she would do no such thing. And if he’d not come yesterday to do any work, why had he come to the ranch at all?

  Walking into the new house, she went right back to the kitchen, thinking that maybe he’d at least dropped off some of the new fittings she’d ordered for the sink. But as far as she could tell, the kitchen looked the same as it had when Billy stopped work on it Sunday evening, looking like a thunderhead because Alec had left him to work alone all weekend. She walked through the parlor and dining room, her usual pleasure at the polished wood and fine proportions marred by her growing anxiety over what she felt was some inevitable showdown between her husband and brother.

  When she went upstairs, she noticed the door to the front bedroom was ajar…and she struggled with her desire to peek in and see if her suspicions would be correct, that her new sister-in-law, used to full-time servants, would leave her room a mess. Certainly Violet’s own mother never thought to pick up after herself. But not Mother Dawson. She was as neat as a pin in everything she did. Something Violet tried to emulate. Succumbing to the temptation, she looked in and saw that, except for a navy robe that was slung across the carefully made bed, nothing was out of place.

  She deposited the towels in the bathroom and took up the wet ones that were hung on the door hook. As she idly wiped away a few drops on the side of the brand new porcelain sink, she looked at herself in the mirror that hung there. She knew she looked pale. And tired. Billy told her the other day she needed to get outside more. Maybe come riding with him the next time he went to the orchards further up in the hills. “Get some roses in her cheeks.” But she didn’t think it would be safe to ride…not at this early stage in her pregnancy, so she’d fobbed him off.

  She’d been afraid to tell Billy about her condition when he was so preoccupied with getting ready for fall round up and working every spare minute to get their house done before winter. And she didn’t want to add to his worries that an early frost might kill his fruit crop.

  Her mother had warned her. Said she needed to do everything she could do to postpone getting in the family way too soon after the birth of Francis. She said it was hard on a woman if she conceived again too soon, undermining her health, ruining her beauty, and putting a strain on her marriage. What her mother hadn’t said was how to keep this from happening. Had the five years between the birth of Violet and her brother just been an accident of nature? Or had her mother and father resorted to one of those mysterious “devices” that were mentioned in newspaper advertisements?

  Violet shuddered, trying to imagine what Billy would have said if she’d brought up such a subject. She couldn’t even tell him how uncomfortable and tired she was during the first months after Francis was born. She’d started to once, but the hurt look on his face silenced her. Anyway, the pain went away soon enough. And once Francis began to take solid food and sleep through the night…was that what had gone wrong? She felt the heat rise in her face as she thought about the return of her own enthusiasm for the nightly…activities. Had she sacrificed her own health and the safety of her next child for some moments of pleasure?

  She fled the bathroom, where her image in the mirror, cheeks now stained red, accused her. She had to find out what was going on with Alec and smooth things over. Then she would tell her husband what she sincerely hoped would be welcome news.

  “Oh Violet, there you are. I came to get my bonnet so I could help Abigail in the garden. I didn’t mean to startle you,” Annie said as she stepped onto the second floor landing and saw her sister-in-law standing in the middle of the small room that held her brother Alec’s things.

  Violet turned, her hand flying up to her mouth as if to stifle a scream. Then she began to swallow convulsively, looking positively sick.

  “My dear, are you all right?” Annie started to enter the room then hesitated when Violet waved her back. “Can I get you something? Perhaps you should sit down.”

  “I am fine. Just…oh no!”

  Violet began to retch, and Annie snatched
up the wastebasket next to the door and thrust it in front of the poor young woman. She then pulled her down onto the camp bed, sitting beside her and holding her heaving shoulders as Violet lost her breakfast.

  As the paroxysms quieted, Annie ran out to the bathroom, wet one of the wash clothes, and brought it to Violet, who wanly nodded and began to wipe her face.

  “Do you think you can make it back to the farm house? Should I go get Abigail?”

  “No, no. I will be fine in a moment. I don’t want to distress her.”

  “Surely she knows…” Annie stopped, remembering the good reasons she’d had for keeping her pregnancy secret during her marriage to John.

  Violet looked over at her and shook her head. “I think she has probably guessed, but she hasn’t asked. I have been waiting until after I’ve told Billy. Of course he must be the first I tell.”

  “Well, I think it is probably time. From everything Nate has said, I am sure Billy will be ecstatic to learn the news.”

  “Yes, but with the house and Alec and everything…I don’t want to add to his worries.”

  Annie noticed that Violet waved vaguely at a pile of papers on the bed beside them when she mentioned her brother. Looking for some clue to why this very conventional woman was hesitating to tell her husband about her pregnancy, she picked up the papers and saw at a glance that they were stock certificates, mining stock certificates.

  “Violet, has Billy been investing in mining stocks? Is that what has you worried?” Annie could hear how fear had sharpened her tone, fear that another young couple might be facing the nightmare of financial ruin.

  “No, not Billy. I just found these in Alec’s valise,” said Violet. “I was looking for some explanation for why he would be giving up his dream of going to the university, why he needs money so badly.”

  She began to cry.

  Annie hugged her sister-in-law and gently rocked her while simultaneously looking at the certificates to try and figure out how much Alec might have sunk into them. She recognized the stock. It was for a Colorado silver mine that had caused a big stir about three months ago and then failed to pan out. If he’d bought the shares at the height of the boom, when she knew they were selling at $20 a share, this pile of paper represented about a $1000 investment––that was currently not worth the paper it was printed on. Wherever would eighteen-year-old Alec have gotten that amount of money?

  “She’s pregnant!” Nate looked over at Annie, who rode next to him on the gentle sorrel mare. “And Billy doesn’t know?”

  He now realized he must have been dominating the conversation for the past two hours, because Annie would normally never have been able to keep this information to herself all this time. He halted his horse at the entrance of a path that branched off from the road they were on.

  If he remembered correctly, the path led down to a pleasantly shaded glen next to Smith’s Creek. He put up his hand as Annie started to speak and said, “Wait. It’s near enough time to stop for our picnic, and this might be the best place until we get to the top. I can tell there is more to this story, and I would rather not hear it on horseback.”

  “A splendid idea.” Annie smiled warmly. “You have no idea how much my back is protesting sitting in this position. I should have insisted on riding astride instead of sidesaddle, but I didn’t want to shock your mother unnecessarily. And I guess riding astride would have just brought on a whole different set of…shall we say…sensations?”

  The wicked smile that accompanied Annie’s last statement caused Nate’s heart to misbehave, and he noticed that the heat of the noon-day sun seemed to have intensified, despite the fact that they were now a good two thousand feet above sea level. They’d been riding up the steep switchback road that led to the top of Mt. Hamilton. The goal was to see where an astronomical observatory was being built with money donated by James Lick, who’d made his millions in San Francisco real estate.

  Nate had readily agreed to the excursion when his mother suggested it last evening at dinner. She said that if they started out by ten this morning, they should have plenty of time to take in the view from the top and return before the sun had completely set around seven. From Nate’s perspective, the best thing about the plan was it would mean almost a whole day alone with Annie.

  “Follow me,” he said, turning his bay to go down the path towards a winding line of alders and oaks whose presence in this dry land proclaimed the existence of water.

  He’d done his duty to his father by getting up before the crack of dawn, which meant right around five, so he could breakfast early with his brother and father and put in several hours’ work this morning. They’d been riding the fence lines, making sure there weren’t any places where the cattle could escape once they were brought down from the back foothills of Mt. Hamilton. Fence mending was just one of the constants of cattle ranching…and looking for any growth of locoweed, which cows mindlessly kept eating, despite the distressing effect it had on their health.

  The whole morning reminded Nate of how boring he found ranching. The long stretches of doing nothing but looking at the ground or fence posts, then a brief spurt of hard physical labor, digging postholes, or hammering nails to refasten the barbed wire to the posts, then more riding and looking at the ground. He had enjoyed the time with his father and brother, though, and it felt good to be outdoors, even in the summer heat.

  But breakfast had been a good five hours ago, and now he was hungry and looking forward to dismounting…if only for a short time. He sympathized with Annie, since after a morning of riding and working, he had aches of his own. Not that he would admit this to her.

  Soon he could hear the burble of water, and in a few minutes he saw through the undergrowth that, despite it being August, Smith’s Creek was flowing along merrily, albeit shallowly, in its bed. As he remembered, there was a nice flat grassy place by the creek bed, well shaded by oaks, with a circle of stones that made a fire pit and a bucket tied to a tree for fetching water from the creek. They would not be the first to choose this as a secluded place to stop; he just hoped they would be the only ones using it today.

  After lifting Annie down from her horse, he took off the saddles and saddle blankets and led the two mares further into the trees, where he tied them to convenient hooks dug into the trunk of an oak, the dried dung on the ground making it clear that was their purpose.

  When he went back to fill the bucket to give them a drink, he saw that Annie had spread out the blankets and was unloading the luncheon provisions his mother packed in the saddlebags. She was wearing a dark green riding skirt and jacket his mother had pressed on her. Since Annie was taller than his mother, the skirt only reached her ankles, but everything else fit nicely. As she turned to smile at him, he saw that despite the wide-brimmed straw hat she was wearing, the strong summer sun had produced a sprinkling of freckles across her nose. He knew she would hate that…but he thought she’d never looked more beautiful.

  She put her hands at her waist and leaned back, then threw her arms up and stretched, saying, “Nate, why are you just standing there? Finish watering the horses and come eat. I’m famished.”

  About a quarter of an hour later, Nate sighed and leaned up against his saddle, which he was using as a back rest. His mother always made the best ham and cheddar sandwiches. There were also a couple of the first apples from this year’s crop, tartly green but refreshing, a handful of walnuts, also locally grown, and oatmeal cookies, which he would never admit to his mother weren’t quite as good as the ones that Annie’s cook, Beatrice, made.

  “Do you remember our first picnic, Nate? I was wearing that pink dress the Moffets made me, the one with the ridiculous bustle that I gave to Kathleen to do over for herself this summer? What a terrible time I had trying to remain ladylike while sitting on the ground.”

  Annie, who was sitting cross-legged in a very un-ladylike manner, then laughed and threw an apple core at him.

  What Nate remembered about that day was how her laugh had aw
akened a level of desire in him he’d never before experienced.

  Nate leaned over and pulled Annie squealing onto his lap, where he discovered the particular inconveniences and pleasures of marital relations on a horse blanket on the bare ground.

  The road that led up to the top of Mt. Hamilton consisted of steep grades with ever more frequent switchbacks, and an hour after their picnic, Annie’s horse was beginning to struggle, so she brought her to a halt. The mare was showing her lack of exercise, compared to Nate’s bay, but she was an obliging soul with a very gentle gait that Annie appreciated more and more as the day wore on.

  The picnic in the glen had renewed everyone’s spirits, but now, at nearly two in the afternoon, the sun was striking them full in the face whenever the road curved to the west.

  “Are you doing all right?” Nate pulled up beside her. “Take a sip from my canteen. We should be there in less than half an hour. I must say the view is pretty spectacular, despite the distortion from the heat waves coming up off the valley floor. Can you see Mt. Loma Prieta to the west? On a clear winter’s day, San Francisco Bay seems close enough to touch.”

  Annie took a sip of the lukewarm water and handed the canteen back to Nate, who was looking as wilted as she felt. He’d taken off his jacket, opened up the neck of his shirt, and rolled up his sleeves, which made him look rather roguish, but she could see the perspiration dripping down his face from under his Stetson. She dabbed at her own mouth with a handkerchief and grimaced, her lips feeling tender. From the sun or from Nate’s kisses in the glen?

  Annie couldn’t believe how their passion had swept them away. Making love in the open like that? What if someone had come? At the time, nothing—not the rough weave of the horse blankets against her bare skin, the bruising pressure of the stones under the blanket, the potential damage to her borrowed dress—had deterred her.