Midnight Star (Star Quartet 2)

“Do you know something?” Del said finally, almost as if speaking to himself. Not waiting for a response, he continued, “I have come to believe in the past two hours—that is the length now of our engagement—that it was somehow inevitable. Sounds rather idiotic, doesn’t it?”

“Does this mean when I decide to marry I’m going to begin waxing philosophical?” Dan asked, grinning. He watched Delaney swallow a generous portion of his beer. “Inevitable? Well, Miss Jameson did come in asking for you the same day she arrived in San Francisco.”

“Do you think my fame as the brilliant lover lured her over from England?”

“I’d like to be a mouse in your pocket if you asked her that!”

“Oh, I probably will. No blushes from her, I’m sure. She’d probably tell me she heard I needed instructions.” But that wasn’t true; he knew it now. She was incredibly naive, her working knowledge of her own sexual responses to him, a man, nonexistent.

“What about Penelope Stevenson and Tony Dawson?”

“The two flies in the ointment? Well, set your mind at ease about Penelope. I told her yesterday when I took her riding that I was going to marry Chauncey.”

“Chauncey?”

“Elizabeth’s nickname. I find it rather . . . endearing.”

“Quite confident about the lady’s feelings, weren’t you?”

“Perhaps. But it didn’t really matter. I would no more marry Penelope Stevenson than sign over my ownership of the bank to you!”

“How did Penelope react to your announcement?”

“Let me put it this way. I never knew that an eighteen-year-old girl, supposedly raised in the most proper way imaginable, could spout such colorful language. After she finished raking Chauncey up and down, she lit into me. Her parting shot was to tell me to go to hell. I spoke then to Bunker. He surprised me. No bluster at all. Merely sighed and wished me well. Told me in a wistful voice that I was a lucky man.”

“It’s not as if you were engaged to the chit, for heaven’s sake, Del.”

“True, but Penelope has a high opinion of herself and her charms. I had heard that she was spreading the word that it was she who was holding me off. Amazing, absolutely amazing.”

“You know, Del,” Dan said thoughtfully, “you really don’t know Miss Jameson very well. She’s been here under a month.”

“Yes,” Delaney said slowly, gazing into his beer mug, “that’s quite true.” He gave Dan a rakish grin. “I will now have years to get to know her. She is a puzzle that I will delight in solving, but slowly, very slowly.”

James Cora, owner of the El Dorado, strolled over to their table, his habitual cigar dangling in the corner of his mouth. A tall man, he was floridly handsome, his wide, white-toothed smile always slightly suspect, at least in Delaney’s jaundiced view. “Del, Dan, how are you boys doing?”

“Making money, but I doubt at your rate, Jim,” Delaney said, shaking the older man’s hand. “I don’t need to ask you how your business is faring.”

“Nope,” James Cora said, turning his head to proudly survey his opulent kingdom. “How ’bout I buy you boys another beer? On the house?”

“Sure,” Dan said. “But I don’t intend to stay around and lose all my money playing poker with you.”

“I’ll live, son, I’ll live, which is more than I can say about that fool Jack Darcy. Stupid ass.”

“I heard he accused Baron Jones of cheating,” Dan said.

“Not a smart move,” Del said, shaking his head, remembering his own duel with Baron more than two years before. “The man’s an excellent shot and something of a sadist to boot. Is it true he moved in on Darcy’s mistress before the man was even buried?”

“Yep,” James Cora said. “Nice piece,” he added, dismissing quite coldly the entire incident. “You boys keep out of trouble.” He nodded to them and strode over to greet Sam Brannan.

“That man is going to come to a bad end,” Dan said, shaking his head.

“You’re doubtless right, particularly with Bella and her rages. I heard she threw a vaseful of wilted flowers with slimy stems right at his head just last week.”

“Let us trust that a wife is less violent than a mistress! Incidentally, Del, what about Marie?”

Delaney gave him a twisted smile, remembering Chauncey’s innocent questions regarding men and their need for mistresses. It occurred to him that she had said not one word about his giving up his mistress. She hadn’t even seemed overly impressed that he’d willingly offered to give her up.

“I’ll speak to her soon, Dan. I doubt she’ll have any difficulty at all finding a generous new protector.”