Midnight Star (Star Quartet 2)

“No,” she said, her voice sounding suspiciously like a child on the verge of tears.

He rose and methodically straightened the covers. Say something, you fool! “If Saint says it is all right, would you like to take a carriage ride with me tomorrow?”

“Yes,” she said after a moment. “I would like that.”

She lay in the darkness, staring toward the closed door. She heard him down the corridor, pause, and retrace his steps. Then he was striding down the front stairs and out the front door. Where, she wondered, frowning, was he going?

Delaney spent the next three hours with Marie, giving his body exquisite relief. But not his mind. He was broodingly silent as he rode Brutus through the dark streets of San Francisco.

“Yes indeed,” Saint said, smiling at his patient’s obvious enthusiasm, “but mind you don’t gallop those horses of yours, Del! It’s a beautiful day, not a whiff of fog. Take her to see the ocean, but careful you don’t overtire her.”

How free and unfettered it felt to wear a gown without a corset, Chauncey thought as she tilted her face back to bask in the warm sunlight. This must be what men feel like. She turned her head slightly to look at Delaney seated beside her. Lucas was driving a bay gelding whose name was, ironically enough, Stud.

“Thank you,” she said. “The landau is perfect. I feel utterly spoiled and cosseted.”

“The landau is on loan from the Stevensons,” he said, giving her a wicked grin.

She drew in her breath, then smiled back at him. “I will not allow you to draw me, not today!”

“You are warm enough, Chauncey?”

“If you pile another blanket on me, I shall roast.”

Delaney gave her a long look, thinking he would like to make her roast all right, but with his body, not a damned blanket.

Lucas guided the horse through the maze of wagons, pedestrians, and vendors down Market Street. “All the new building,” Chauncey said, gasping slightly as a Chinese nearly stumbled into the path of the carriage, weighted down with several heavy boards.

“It never ends. Lucas, let’s drive past the Mission Dolores. When you’re well again, Chauncey, we’ll visit the Russ Gardens. You know about them, don’t you?”

“Oh yes,” she said pertly. “Tony, dear Tony, told me all about them.”

“Touché, witch. This, my dear Chauncey, is the plank road that was built in 1851 to connect the center of San Francisco with the Mission Dolores. We now have a racetrack there. All the comforts of civilization.”

“I’ve never been to a racetrack before,” Chauncey said somewhat wistfully.

“What? Not even Ascot?”

She shook her head, her lips pursing primly. “Father didn’t think it proper.”

“Now that you’re an independent woman, will you deem it proper?”

“Perhaps,” she said, giving him a coy smile, “with the proper escort.”

“I’ll ask Tony if he’s free,” Delancy said blandly.

“You—”

“Did you know that San Francisco got its name only six years ago? Washington Barlett was the alcalde, or mayor, then. He ordered the name changed from Yerba Buena to San Francisco in our first newspaper, the California Star.”

“Yerba what?”

“Yerba Buena. It means ‘good herb.’ Supposedly because of an aromatic shrub that grew about the shore. Everyone, you know, wanted to claim California—the Russians, the French, even you British. We Americans, of course, won out in the end. The Spanish ceded California to us in 1848, when we won the war, only five years ago.”

“When was gold discovered?”

“It’s ironic. The treaty was signed early in 1848. Only nine days earlier, Marshall had picked up the first flakes of gold at Sutter’s sawmill. All hell broke loose a few months later.”

“With you as one of the . . . what are you cal