Midnight Star (Star Quartet 2)

“What, sweetheart?”

“Nothing,” she said, biting down on her tongue. Dear God, she’d almost blurted out everything! She felt utter misery, and burst into tears.

Almost, he thought, almost she told me. Very gently he pressed her, “Come, love, what is it you cannot or don’t want to do?”

Chauncey buried her face into his chest. “Nothing,” she sobbed. “Nothing. I told you nothing, dammit!”

“Very well,” he said, holding his frustration in check. “It’s time to sleep now, Chauncey.” He pulled away from her, balanced himself on his elbow, and gently wiped the tears away with his fingers.

“You know,” he said, staring intently down into her face, “most things are easier to bear if they’re shared.” She merely stared at him, her anguish clear in her eyes, and he wanted to shake her until she spoke the truth to him. But he didn’t. Time, he thought. Whatever it is will just take more time.

He rose from the bed and doused the lamps.

He stood over her a moment, listening to her sniffing down her tears. “The sponge must stay inside you until tomorrow morning,” he said matter-of-factly.

19

Agatha Newton smiled toward her hostess. “Please tell Lin that her dinner was excellent. “I doubt I can move!”

“Yes, indeed,” Horace Newton said, wiping his mouth on his napkin and folding it neatly beside his very empty plate. “If the old girl doubts she can move, I dare swear I’ll be sitting here three days from now!”

“It wasn’t exactly what you were expecting, I’ll wager,” Chauncey said, grinning. “Yorkshire pudding, roast beef, and boiled potatoes.”

“With just a touch of ginger and soy sauce,” Delaney said. “Lin assured us that it was necessary to make the foreign fare edible.”

Chauncey glanced toward the tall clock in the corner. “Oh dear, we must be on our way. I’m certain the gentlemen don’t want to miss a moment of Lola Montez’ performance!”

“Not even an instant,” Delaney agreed. “Ah, the Spider Dance! It boggles the imagination.”

“I wonder if she’d let me into her web,” Horace said, wriggling his thick gray brows provocatively at his wife.

“You’re a lecherous old satyr!” Agatha said as she rose from her chair.

They traveled in the Newtons’ closed carriage to the American Theater. It was Chauncey’s first venture from the house since their return to San Francisco two days before. She knew Delaney carried a derringer, for she’d seen it. As for her own, it was safe inside her reticule.

“I heard that folk had to spend up to sixty dollars a ticket,” Horace said as they wended their way through the hectic crowd inside the two-story brick theater. There were few women in the audience, Chauncey saw as Delaney assisted her into their box, and many of them were as garishly gowned as the interior furnishings of the theater. The men were that unusual mixture found, Chauncey guessed, only in San Francisco: elegantly dressed gentlemen just as she’d seen in St. James in London, side by side with flannel-trousered men in rough work shirts who looked as if they’d just come in from the goldfields. There was much good-natured jesting and a certain amount of rowdiness. Their box, procured, Delaney had told her, from Sam Brannan, who’d already been seen escorting Lola Montez, held but four crimson-velvet-colvered chairs. Chauncey’s gown covered Delaney’s legs.

Chauncey found herself again marveling at the audience. “A true democracy,” she said to Delaney.

“You’re right,” he agreed, grasping her gloved hand in his and drawing it on his lap. “You never know if the rough-looking fellow on your right might be carrying a fortune in gold. Indeed, tomorrow he could buy me out.”

“Del, who is that woman in that box over there? The one in the yellow velvet gown who is smiling toward us? She looks familiar. Oh, she just waved at you.”

Delaney met Marie’s eyes and nodded in greeting. He felt a tinge of color on his cheeks but forced himself to shrug at his wife’s question. “Just a . . . lady, my dear.”

Just a lady my foot! It was his French mistress, Marie, she realized in that moment. Chauncey could see the intimate gleam in Marie’s lovely dark eyes from twenty feet away. She felt a strange churning anger and a feeling of absolute inferiority. Marie was so bloody gorgeous!

“I know who she is,” she said in a tight voice. “After all, I did see you with her before.” She wanted to box his ears, yell like a fishwife, but the moment was lost: the crimson curtains parted on the stage and Lola Montez appeared. Anything Chauncey could have said would

have been lost in the thundering applause, loud whistles, and calls from the men in the audience.

Lola Montez wasn’t classically beautiful, Chauncey decided, but she exuded a raw kind of sensuality that even Delaney wasn’t immune to, for he sat slightly forward in his seat. She was tall, voluptuously built, and her costume was nothing more than judiciously placed gauzy veils. Her eyes were snapping, vividly alive, appearing nearly black, and her thick black hair was wound in elaborate coils about her head in a decidedly Spanish fashion.

Oh well, Chauncey told herself, best to simply sit back and enjoy it. When Lola spoke, it was in charmingly lisped English. The men roared after every utterance she made.

Delaney whispered to Chauncey, “Lord, all she has to do it simply stand there! But I do believe, my dear, that her charms are a bit overripe for my taste.”

Chauncey gave him an incredulous look. “I think Horace is beginning to perspire,” she said.