She didn’t know why, but his every word seemed to grate on her. The chauffeur waited for them, but Dr. Montgomery hesitated before getting into the back seat with Amanda.
Amanda did her best with him, oh how she tried, but he never seemed to be listening to her. Taylor had drawn a map for her that showed the route they were to take around the ranch and he’d listed facts she was to tell Dr. Montgomery, facts she’d memorized about how much it cost to run a ranch the size of the Cauldens’. She told Dr. Montgomery acreage, number of hops produced, number of employees fed and sheltered. She showed him the other crops grown on the ranch: figs, walnuts, almonds, corn, and strawberries and asparagus in the spring.
But he just sat in the back of the limousine and stared out the window and said nothing.
She showed him the grape fields and the small winery.
“How about a bottle?” he asked, pulling one from its holder.
“My family does not drink alcohol,” she said. “This is for sale.” She turned away from him and continued telling him the facts about the winery.
“You’re a regular little encyclopedia, aren’t you?” he said as they got back into the car.
Amanda, under other circumstances, might have thought his words were a compliment, but somehow his tone was not that of a compliment. She didn’t know what to reply to him.
At 3:51, as Taylor’s schedule said, she had the chauffeur return them to the ranch house so that they arrived back at precisely four P.M. Amanda suggested that Dr. Montgomery make use of their library, but he had given her an odd look, said he could take care of himself and had left the house. Later, Amanda had seen his little two-seater, topless car speed down the road toward town.
She sat down at her desk and tried to study her French textbook, but her hands were shaking. He was a very unsettling man. She had never been very good with strangers, but this man made her feel awkward and strange and, well, she didn’t like to think this, but he somehow, well, made her feel angry. He didn’t exactly sneer, he didn’t ridicule, but somehow, she felt disapproval coming from him. Not disapproval of the ranch—at times he’d shown some interest in things, such as listening for the rustling sound a hop made when it was ripe—but she felt he disapproved of her.
She left her desk and went to the small mirror over the dresser. What was it about her that he disapproved of? Did he find her physically repulsive? Stupid? She had tried to be as accurate a guide as possible and had spent several days memorizing Taylor’s facts about the ranch, but she felt she had failed. Were Dr. Montgomery’s female students so much more erudite than she that by comparison she was a moron?
Again, she had that feeling of anger but she pushed it down and returned to her desk. Tomorrow she was scheduled to take him to a museum in Kingman and she had to tell him about Digger Indians, the Donner Party and early mining in the area. She had better review her facts.
Hank sat on a bar stool eating a three-inch-thick corned-beef sandwich and drinking a beer—his third.
What a little prig she was, he thought. What a self-righteous, know-it-all, fact-spouting little prig! She lectured him as if he were an elementary school student. She was the lady of the manor and she had been given the onerous task of entertaining the town blacksmith, an uneducated lout who didn’t know a knife from a fork. He’d seen the way she looked down her little nose at him while they were eating that tasteless meal.
No doubt she thought of him the way her father thought of the laborers, that they should be grateful to get to work for so illustrious a family as the Cauldens and how dare they ask for decent wages? Why, it should be enough that he allowed them to bask in his sunshine, to touch his crops. She, that sanctimonious little Miss Amanda, probably thought he was thrilled to get to stay in a house like theirs. Tomorrow she’ll probably ask if I’ve ever seen a flush toilet before, he thought, slugging down the rest of his beer.
He wasn’t sure what he should do. His instinct was to leave the Caulden house immediately, but he felt an obligation to the governor and, most of all, to the unionists. Maybe his presence could prevent trouble. Maybe he could watch out for the laborers’ rights better if he were inside the Caulden house. Just being there, he might be able to stop something before it started. Logically, he knew he should stay. Emotionally, he wanted to get away from the cold little Amanda and her even colder fiancé. And to think that when he’d first seen her he’d—
He didn’t know what it was that he’d felt, but she’d snowed on it and killed the seed.
He left the cool, dark bar and stepped into the bright sunlight, thrust his hands into his pockets and went to his car. It was about time for dinner at
the Cauldens’. Wonder what they were having? Boiled chicken and boiled rice and boiled potatoes?
Amanda had never seen Taylor so angry.
“That is not the dress I told you to wear to dinner,” he said under his breath.
Amanda tried to keep her back straight and not cry. Taylor hated tears. “I forgot. Dr. Montgomery upset me and—”
“Upset you how?” If possible, Taylor made himself taller. “Was he forward with you?”
“No, he doesn’t…I mean, I think he dislikes me.”
“Dislikes you?” Taylor was aghast. “Amanda, I am surprised at you. I thought you above these female vapors. Did you follow the schedule? Did you explain to him each part of the ranch?”
“Yes, I did it exactly, to the minute as your schedule said.”
“Then there can have been nothing wrong. Now go upstairs and change your clothes and do not tell me any more of your fantasies. You are going to make me think that I have chosen the wrong woman to marry.”
“Yes, Taylor,” she whispered and went to her room. Alone in her room, dressing as fast as she could, she felt it again, that little gnawing sense of anger. She hadn’t felt anger since Taylor came to live with them. Before he came she often felt anger. She used to get angry at her mother, at her father, at her friends at school.
Then her father had hired Taylor and given him absolute control over Amanda. He had taken her out of school in Kingman and started giving her private lessons. Things had changed then. Amanda soon learned that anger and/or defiance was a useless emotion; Taylor didn’t allow either. He had put Amanda on a schedule that didn’t allow for anger (4:13 P.M. temper tantrum). No such thing was permitted. And he had hired Mrs. Gunston to make sure Amanda did what she was told.
Besides the classes, Taylor had said Amanda’s mother was a bad influence on her. After all, didn’t Grace Caulden have a “past”? J. Harker had agreed, and Grace had been sent to some expensive spas around the world, and when she returned, her daughter had not even been allowed to hug her hello. Grace had retired to a spare bedroom at the back of the top floor and had rarely come out since.