“I really don’t see why we have to go with Leander,” Blair said to Houston who sat quite straight on a white brocade chair. “I haven’t seen you in years and now I have to share you.”
Houston gave her sister a little smile. “Leander asked us to accompany him, not the other way around. Sometimes I think you don’t like him. But I can’t see how that could be possible. He’s kind, considerate, he has position in the community and he—.”
“And he completely owns you!” Blair exploded, jumping up from the bed, startling Houston with the strength of her outburst. “Don’t you realize that in school I worked with women like you, women who were so unhappy they repeatedly attempted suicide?”
“Suicide? Blair, I have no idea what you’re talking about. I have no intention of killing myself.” Houston couldn’t help drawing away from her sister’s vehemence.
“Houston,” Blair said quietly, “I wish you could see how much you’ve changed. You used to laugh, but now you’re so distant. I understand that you’ve had to adjust to Gates, but why would you choose to marry a man just like him?”
Houston stood, putting her hand on the walnut dresser and idly touching Blair’s silver-backed hairbrush. “Leander isn’t like Mr. Gates. He’s really very different. Blair”—she looked at her sister in the big mirror—“I love Leander,” she said softly. “I have for years, and all I’ve ever wanted to do is get married, have children and raise my family. I never wanted to do anything great or noble like you seem to want to do. Can’t you see that I’m happy?”
“I wish I could believe you,” Blair said sincerely. “But something keeps me from it. I guess I hate the way Leander treats you, as if you were already his. I see the two of you together and you’re like a couple who’ve lived together for twenty years.”
“We have been together a long time.” Houston turned back to face her sister. “What should I look for in a husband if it isn’t compatibility?”
“It seems to me that the best marriages are between people who find each other interesting. You and Leander are too much alike. If he were a woman, he’d be a perfect lady.”
“Like me,” Houston whispered. “But I’m not always a lady. There are things I do—.”
“Like Sadie?”
“How did you know about that?” Houston asked.
“Meredith told me. Now, what do you think your darling Leander is going to say when he finds out that you’re putting yourself in danger every Wednesday? And how will it look for a surgeon of his stature to be married to a practicing criminal?”
“I’m not a criminal. I’m doing something that’s good for the whole town,” Houston said with fire, then quieted. She slipped another hairpin invisibly into the neat chignon at the back of her head. Carefully arranged curls framed her forehead beneath a hat decorated with a spray of iridescent blue feathers. “I don’t know what Leander will say. Perhaps he won’t find out.”
“Hah! That pompous, spoiled man will forbid you to participate in anything dealing with the coal miners and, Houston, you’re so used to obeying that you’ll do exactly what he says.”
“Perhaps I should give up being Sadie after I’m married,” she said with a sigh.
Suddenly, Blair dropped to her knees on the carpet and took Houston’s hands. “I’m worried about you. You’re not the sister I grew up with. Gates and Westfield are eating away at your spirit. When we were children, you used to throw snowballs with the best of them but now it’s as if you’re afraid of the world. Even when you do something wonderful like drive a huckster wagon, you do it in secret. Oh, Houston—.”
She broke off at a knock on the door. “Miss Houston, Dr. Leander is here.”
“Yes, Susan, I’ll be right down.” Houston smoothed her skirt. “I’m sorry you find me so much to your distaste,” she said primly, “but I do know my own mind. I want to marry Leander because I love him.” With that, she swept out of the room, and went downstairs.
Houston tried her best to push Blair’s words from her mind but she couldn’t. She greeted Leander absently and was vaguely aware of a quarrel going on between Lee and Blair, but she really heard nothing except her own thoughts.
Blair was her twin, they were closer than ordinary sisters and Blair’s concern was genuine. Yet, how could Houston even think of not marrying Leander? When Leander was eight years old, he’d decided he was going to be a doctor, a surgeon who saved people’s lives, and by the time Houston met him, when he was twelve, Lee was already studying textbooks borrowed from a distant cousin. Houston decided to find out how to be a doctor’s wife.
Neither wavered from his decision. Lee went to Harvard to study medicine, then to Vienna for further study, and Houston went to finishing schools in Virginia and Switzerland.
Houston still winced whenever she thought of the argument she and Blair’d had about her choice of schools. “You;’re going to give up an education just so you can learn to set a table, so you can learn how to walk into a room wearing fifty yards of heavy satin and not fall on your face?”
Blair went to Vassar, then medical school, while Houston went to Miss Jones’s School for Young Ladies where she was put through years of rigorous training in everything from how to arrange flowers to how to stop men from arguing at the dinner table.
Now, Lee took her arm as he helped her into the buggy. “You look as good as always,” he said close to her ear.
“Lee,” Houston said, “do you think we find each other . . . interesting?”
With a smile, his eyes raked down her body, over the dress that glued itself to her tightly corseted, exaggerated hourglass figure. “Houston, I find you fascinating.”
“No, I mean, do we have enough to talk about?”
He raised one eyebrow. “It’s a wonder I can remember how to talk when I’m around you,” he answered as he helped her into his buggy, and drove them the six blocks into the heart of Chandler.
Chapter 2
Chandler, Colorado, was a small place, only eight thousand inhabitants, but its industries of coal, cattle, sheep, and Mr. Gates’s brewery made it a rich little town. It already had a telephone system and electricity, and, with three train lines through town, it was easy to reach the larger cities of Colorado Springs and Denver.
The eleven blocks comprising downtown Chandler were covered with buildings that were almost all new and built of stone from the Chandler Stone Works. The greenish gray stone was often carved into intricate patterns for use as cornices for the Western Victorian style buildings.
Scattered outside the town were houses in varied styles of Queen Anne and High Victorian. At the north end of town, on a small rise, was Jacob Fenton’s house, a large brick Victorian structure that until a few years ago had been Chandler’s largest house.
At the west end of town, just a short distance from the Fenton house, on the flattened top of what most citizens had once considered part of the mountains, was Kane Taggert’s house. Fenton’s house would have fit into the wine cellar of the Taggert house.
“The whole town still trying to get inside the place?” Blair asked Houston as she nodded toward the house barely visible behind the trees. That “barely visible” part was large enough to be seen from almost anywhere in town.
“Everyone,” Houston smiled. “But when Mr. Taggert ignored all invitations and extended none of his own, I’m afraid people began spreading awful rumors about him.”
“I’m not so sure all the things people say about him are rumors,” Leander said. “Jacob Fenton said—”
“Fenton!” Blair exploded. “Fenton is a conniving, thieving—.”
Houston didn’t bother to listen but leaned back in the carriage and gazed at the house through the window at the back of the buggy. Lee and Blair continued arguing while he halted the carriage to wait for one of the new horse-drawn trolley cars to pass.
She had no idea whether what was said about Mr. Taggert was true or not, but it was her own opinion that the house he’d built was the most beautiful thing she
’d ever seen.
No one in Chandler knew much about Kane Taggert, but five years ago over a hundred construction workers had arrived from the East with an entire train loaded with materials. Within hours, they’d started what was soon to become the house.
Of course everyone was curious—actually, a good deal more than curious. Someone said that none of the construction workers ever had to pay for a meal because all the women of Chandler fed them in an attempt to get information. It didn’t do any good. No one knew who was building the house or why anyone’d want such a place in Nowhere, Colorado.
It took three years to complete, a beautiful, white U-shaped building, two stories, with a red tile roof. The size of it was what boggled people’s minds. One local store owner liked to say that every hotel in Chandler could be put on the first floor, and considering that Chandler was a crossroads between north and south Colorado, and the number of hotels in town, that was saying a great deal.
For a year after the house was completed, trainloads of wooden boxes were delivered to the house. They had labels on them from France, England, Spain, Portugal, all over the world.
Still, there was no sign of an owner.
Then one day, two men stepped off the train, both tall, big men, one blond and pleasant looking, the other dark, bearded, angry. They both wore the usual miner’s garb of canvas pants, blue chambray shirt, and suspenders. As they walked down the street, women pulled their skirts aside.
The dark one went up to Jacob Fenton, and everyone assumed he was going to ask for a job in one of the mines Fenton owned. But instead, he’d said, “Well, Fenton, I’m back. You like my house?”
It wasn’t until he had walked through town and onto the land of the new house and then through its locked front door that anyone had had any idea he mean that house.
For the next six months, according to Duncan Gates, Chandler was the site of a full-fledged war. Widows, single women and mothers of young women made an all-out attack for the hand in marriage of the man they’d swept their skirts aside for. Dressmakers by the dozen came down from Denver.
Within a week, the women’d found out his name and Mr. Taggert was besieged. Some of the attempts to get his attention were quite ordinary; for instance, it was amazing how many women fainted when near him, but some attempts were ingenious. Everyone agreed that the prize went to Carrie Johnson, a pregnant widow who climbed down a rope and into Mr. Taggert’s bedroom while she was having labor pains. She thought he’d deliver her baby and of course fall passionately in love with her and beg her to marry him. But Taggert was away at the moment, and all the assistance she got was from a passing laundress.
After six months, newly every woman in town’d made a fool of herself with no success, so they began to talk sour grapes. Who wanted a rich man who didn’t know how to dress properly? And his grammar was that of the lowest cowboy. They started asking questions about him. What had he meant when he’d said, “I’m back”?
Someone located an old servant of Jacob Fenton’s who remembered that Kane Taggert had been the stable lad until he started dallying with Pamela Fenton, Jacob’s young daughter. Jacob kicked him off his property—and rightly so.
This gave the town something new to talk about. Who did Taggert think he was, anyway? What right did he have to build that outlandish, garish house overlooking the peaceful, pretty little town of Chandler? And was he planning revenge on dear Jacob Fenton?
Once again, women started sweeping their skirts aside when he passed.
But Taggert never seemed to notice any of it. He stayed in his house most of the time, drove his old wagon into town once a week and bought groceries. Sometimes, men would arrive on the train and ask directions to his house, then leave town before sundown. Other than these men, the only people to enter or leave the big house were Taggert and the man he called Edan, who was always with him.
“That’s Houston’s dream house,” Leander said when the trolley car had passed, bringing Houston back to the present. He’d finished—or stopped—his argument with Blair. “If Houston didn’t have me, I think she’d have joined the line of women fighting for Taggert and that house of his.”
“I would like to see the inside,” she said with more wistfulness than she meant to reveal, then, to cover herself, she said, “You can drop me here, at Wilson’s, Lee. I’ll meet you at Farrell’s in an hour.”
Once out of the buggy, she realized she was glad to get away from their constant bickering.
Wilson’s Mercantile was one of four large, all-purpose dry-goods stores in Chandler. Most people shopped at the newer, more modern store, The Famous, but Mr. Wilson had known Houston’s father.
The walls were lined with tall, walnut, glass-doored cases, interspersed with marble-topped counters covered with goods.
Behind one counter sat Davey Wilson, Mr. Wilson’s son, a ledger open before him, but his fountain pen was unmoving.
In fact, neither the three customers nor the four clerks seemed to be moving. Everything was unnaturally quiet. Instantly, Houston saw the reason why: Kane Taggert stood at one counter, his back to the few people in the store.
Silently, Houston went to a counter to look at a selection of patent medicines, which she had no intention of buying, but she sensed something was happening.
“Oh, Mamma,” Mary Alice Pendergast wailed in her high voice, “I couldn’t wear that, I’d look like a coal miner’s bride. People would think I was a no-’count . . . servant, a scullery maid, who thought she was a big cheese. No, no, Mamma, I couldn’t wear that.”
Houston gritted her teeth. Those two women were baiting Mr. Taggert. Since he’d turned all the women in town down, they seemed to think it was open season for their nasty games. She glanced toward him and, when she did, she saw his face in an advertising mirror behind the counter. There was so much hair surrounding his face that his features could barely be seen, but Houston could see his eyes. He most certainly was hearing Mary Alice’s nasty little comments and, what’s more, they were bothering him. There was a furrow between his eyes.
Mary Alice’s father was a gentle rabbit of a man who never raised his voice. But Houston knew, from living with Mr. Gates, what an angered man could say and do. She didn’t know Mr. Taggert, but she thought she saw anger in those dark eyes.
“Mary Alice,” Houston said, “how do you feel today? You look a little pale.”
Mary Alice looked up in surprise, as if she’d just seen Houston. “Why, Blair-Houston, I feel fine. Nothing’s wrong with me.”
Houston examined a bottle of liver activator. “I was just hoping you wouldn’t faint—again,” she said pointedly, her eyes boring into Mary Alice’s. Mary Alice had fainted in front of Taggert twice when he’d first come to town.
“Why you—! How dare—!” Mary Alice sputtered.
“Come along, dear,” her mother said, pushing her daughter toward the door. “We know who our friends are.”
Houston felt quite annoyed with herself after Mary Alice and her mother had left. She’d have to apologize later. Impatiently, she tugged at her kid gloves, preparing to leave the store, when she again glanced toward Mr. Taggert and saw, in the mirror, that he was watching her.
He turned to face her. “You’re Houston Chandler, ain’t you?”
“I am,” she said coolly. She had no intention of having a conversation with a man she didn’t know. What in the world had made her take this stranger’s side against someone she’d known all her life?
“How come that woman called you Blair? Ain’t that your sister?”
From a few feet away, Davey Wilson gave a little snort. There were only the four clerks in the store now besides Houston and Kane, and each one was nailed to his place.
“My sister and I are identical twins and, since no one can tell us apart, the townspeople call us Blair-Houston. Now if you’ll excuse me, sir.” She turned to leave.
“You don’t look like your sister. I seen her and you’re prettier.”
For a moment, Houston
paused to gape at him. No one had ever been able to tell them apart. When her momentary shock was over, she again turned to leave.
But as her hand touched the doorknob, Taggert bounded across the room and grabbed her arm.
All her life, Houston had lived in a town filled with coal miners, cowboys and inhabitants of a part of town she wasn’t supposed to know existed. Many women carried a good strong parasol which they found useful for cracking over men’s heads. But Houston could give looks that could freeze a man.
She gave one to Mr. Taggert now.
He withdrew his hand from her arm but he stayed close to her, the size of him making her feel small.
“I wanted to ask you a question,” he said, his voice low. “If you don’t mind, that is,” he added, with laughter in his voice.
She gave him a curt nod, but she wasn’t going to encourage his speaking to her.
“I was wonderin’ about somethin’. If you, bein’ a lady an’ all, was gonna make curtains for my house, you know, the white one on the hill, which one of these here materials would you pick?”
She didn’t bother to look at the shelves of bolts of fabric to which he was pointing. “Sir,” she said with some haughtiness in her voice, “if I had your house, I’d order the fabric specially woven in Lyons, France. Now, good day.” As quickly as possible, she left the store to emerge under the striped awnings which covered the southern side of the street, her heels clicking on the wide board-walk. The town was busy today and she nodded and spoke to several people.
As she turned the corner of Third and Lead, she opened her parasol against the brilliant mountain sun and started toward Farrell’s Hardware Store. She could see Lee’s buggy parked in front.
Just past Freyer’s Drugs, she began to relax and to muse on her encounter with the elusive Mr. Taggert.