Thurston House Page 4

  Jeremiah nodded and then looked at her. “Do you know him?”

  She shook her head. “I’ve seen him around town, but we’ve never spoken. I hear he’s as stubborn as a mule, and he can be twice as mean. Men like that don’t usually break, no matter what happens to them.”

  “I don’t think he’s really mean. I think he’s just very young and very strong and he wants what he wants when he wants it.” Jeremiah smiled. “I wouldn’t want to work for the man, but I admire what he’s done.”

  Mary Ellen shrugged. She was not greatly interested in John Harte. She was far more interested in Jeremiah Thurston. “I admire you.” She smiled, and moved closer to him.

  “I don’t know what for. I’m the old mule you were talking about before.”

  “But you’re my mule, and I love you.” She liked saying things like that, as much to reassure herself as to say it to him. He had never really been hers, and she knew it, but once a week she was allowed to pretend, and she was satisfied with that. She didn’t really have much choice. He had offered to marry her once, but she hadn’t wanted to then, and now the moment had passed. He was content with seeing her once a week. Now that Jake was dead, and he was never coming back, she would have married Jeremiah gladly, but she knew that he was never going to offer her marriage now. He didn’t want that anymore, and she had long since given up that hope. She had been a damn fool not to press for that from the beginning. But she had thought Jake was coming back then … the drunken son of a bitch.…

  “What were you thinking about just then?” He had been watching her face. “You looked angry.”

  She laughed at how perceptive he was; he always had been. “Nothing important.”

  “Are you mad at me?” She was quick to shake her head with a gentle smile. He rarely ever gave her reason to be angry at him. Jake had been a different story. What a bastard he had been. But he was dead now, and she had wasted fifteen years of her life on him, five of them waiting for him to come back when it turned out he’d been living with another woman in Ohio. She’d found that out after he died, and the girl came to see her. He even had two little boys by her. And Mary Ellen had felt like a damn fool. She had always held back from Jeremiah, thinking her husband would return … husband … that was a joke.…

  “I’m never angry at you, silly. You never give me reason to be.” It was true. He was a lovely man, and he had always been good to her. Almost too good. He was generous and polite and thoughtful, but he also kept a certain distance between them, and he held out no hope for the future. There was just today, and next week, and seven years of Saturdays stretched out behind them. But it didn’t make Mary Ellen angry, only sad from time to time. She lived her whole week waiting for him.

  “I’m going away soon.” He always told her ahead of time, it was just the way he was. Considerate and decent and thoughtful.

  “Where to this time?”

  “The South. Atlanta.” He often went to New York, and once the year before he had gone to Charleston, South Carolina. But he never invited her to go with him. Business was business. And this was something else. “I won’t be gone too long. Just long enough to get there and back, and do business for a few days. Maybe two weeks in all.” He nuzzled her neck, and then kissed her. “Will you miss me?”

  “What do you think?” Her voice was muffled by desire and they slid back down into the bed together.

  “I think I’m crazy to go anywhere, that’s what I think.…” And he proved it to her again as she lay in his arms, and writhed with pleasure, and her screams of exquisite agony would have been heard by the entire neighborhood if he hadn’t had the forethought to close the windows. He knew her well, and they both enjoyed their Saturday nights together.

  By the next morning, he felt like a new man, as she cooked him sausages and eggs, a small steak, and corn bread on the old stove in her kitchen. He had offered to buy her a new one the previous winter, but she had insisted that she didn’t need one. Greed was simply not part of her makeup, much to her mother’s chagrin. She frequently reminded her daughter that Jeremiah was one of the richest men in the state and she was the biggest fool that ever lived. But she didn’t give a damn. She had everything she wanted … almost … or once a week anyway, and that was better than every day with a lesser man. She had no complaints, and she was free to do as she chose. Jeremiah never asked what she did with the rest of her time. She saw no one else and hadn’t for years, but it was by her own choice. If someone else had come along who was serious about her, she could have pursued it. Jeremiah was careful to demand nothing at all from her.

  “When do you leave for the East?” She was eating her own corn bread and watching his face. He had wonderful blue eyes, and when he looked at her she felt her soul turn to mush.

  “In a few days.” He smiled, feeling restored. He had slept well, but not before making love to her for several hours. “I’ll let you know as soon as I’m back.”

  “Just be sure you don’t meet the girl of your dreams in Atlanta.”

  “Why would I do a thing like that?” He picked up his mug of coffee and laughed. “After last night, how can you even say such a thing?”

  She smiled with pleasure. “You never know.”

  “Don’t be silly.” He leaned over and kissed the tip of her nose, and as she leaned toward him, her cleavage beckoned him. She was wearing a pink satin dressing gown he had bought her on his last trip to Europe to visit the French vineyards. And now he slid a hand down beneath her breasts and felt them receive his fingers warmly. It sent a shiver through his entire body, which he could not resist, and he put down his cup and walked around the table to her. “What was that you were saying, Mary Ellen?…” His voice was a hoarse whisper as he scooped her up in his arms and headed toward the stairs with his irresistible bundle.

  “I said … don’t go—” But he crushed her words with his lips and moments later deposited her on her bed again, pulling the satin robe away from her naked flesh with ease, and it was difficult to tell where the robe ended and the silk of her flesh began, so smooth did her skin feel to his touch as he pressed his own body against hers and entered her again, and once again their pleasure began and went on until dusk when he rode home at last, tired and happy and sated. Mary Ellen Browne had served him well, and the sorrows of the night before were all but forgotten as he stabled his horse in his barn in St. Helena. And when he walked inside, he barely had the strength to take off his clothes. When he did, he could still smell the roses of her perfume on his flesh, and he went to sleep smiling and thinking of Mary Ellen.

  3

  “Make sure you behave yourself while you’re gone.” Hannah glared at him and wagged a finger as though he were a child, as Jeremiah laughed at her.

  “You sound just like Mary Ellen.”

  “Maybe we both know you too well.”

  “All right, all right, I’ll behave!” He looked tired as he pinched her cheek. It had been a rough week, and she knew it. He had been to the funeral of John Harte’s wife and two children. And now there were a few cases of the dread influenza at the Thurston mines, but so far no one had died, and Jeremiah was forcing everyone to be seen by the doctor at the first sign of a problem. He would have liked to put off his trip to the East, but he couldn’t. Orville Beauchamp had insisted, in his response to the telegram Jeremiah sent him, that if he wanted to make the deal, Thurston had to come now. And Jeremiah had almost told him to go to hell, he felt like giving the deal to John Harte, but Harte was in no condition to discuss business, let alone go east, so Jeremiah decided to go ahead and take the train to Atlanta. But he wasn’t looking forward to the trip. There continued to be something about the man in Georgia that annoyed him, no matter how good the terms of the deal sounded.

  He bent and kissed the top of Hannah’s head as he left, glanced around the cozy kitchen, picked up his leather bag in one hand, and his battered black leather briefcase in the other, his cigar clenched in his teeth, and his eyes squinting from the smoke. Th
ere was a big black hat pulled low over his eyes and he looked almost devilish as he walked quickly to the waiting carriage, flung his bags up and hopped up beside the boy driving the horses, quickly taking the reins from him.

  “Good morning, sir.”

  “Good morning, son.” He blew a thick cloud of smoke around him and touched the horses with a flick of the whip, and a moment later they were off, moving at a handsome pace down the main highway. He said nothing to the boy as he drove, his mind already involved with the deal he would be completing in Atlanta. And the boy watched him with utter fascination, the narrowed eyes, the deep lines beside them, the brow furrowed in concentration, the elegant hat, the broad shoulders, the huge hands, and the sheer cleanliness of him. The boy thought he was too clean to have been a miner, yet they said that he used to work in the mines himself. It was hard to imagine this powerful, enormous man ever squeezing himself into a mine. He seemed bigger than that to the boy as he watched him.

  They were halfway to Napa before Jeremiah turned and smiled at him. “How old are you, son?”

  “Fourteen.” It was exciting just being here beside him, and the boy liked the smell of his cigar, to him it seemed pungent and manly. “Well … I’ll be fourteen in May.”

  “You work hard in the mines?”

  “Yes, sir.” The voice trembled slightly, but Jeremiah wasn’t checking up on him, only thinking back to his own life at fourteen.

  “I worked in the mines at your age too. It’s hard work for a boy … for anyone, for that matter. Do you like it?”

  There was a long pause, and then suddenly the boy decided to be honest. He trusted the huge man with the cigar, he had an appealing air of kindness about him. “No, sir, I don’t. It’s dirty work. I want to do something different when I grow up.”

  “Like what?” Jeremiah was intrigued, with the boy himself, and his honesty.

  “Something clean. Like work in a bank maybe. My Dad says that’s a weak man’s job, but I think I might like it. I’m good with figures. I can do all my sums in my head faster than most people can write them.”

  “Can you?” Jeremiah attempted to keep a serious look on his face, but his eyes showed that he was amused. There was such an intensity about the youth and it touched him. “Would you like to help me sometime on a Saturday morning?”

  “Help you?” The boy looked stunned. “Oh, yes, sir!”

  “I come in on Saturdays until about noon, because it’s quiet. When I come back, come and see me some Saturday morning. You can help me with some figures and accounting sheets. I’m not as quick with my sums as you are.” Jeremiah laughed. The boy’s black eyes were suddenly as big as quarters. “How does that sound to you?”

  “Wonderful!… Wonderful!…” He practically bounced up and down on the seat beside Jeremiah, and then suddenly subdued himself, remembering to assume a more manly demeanor, and that amused Jeremiah too. He liked the boy. In fact, he liked most children, and they liked him. And as he urged the horses on toward Napa, he found himself thinking of Mary Ellen’s children. They were nice, and she did a good job with them. There was a lot on her shoulders, and he knew it, yet she never let him help her. And he certainly never had as far as the children were concerned. His only contact with them was for an occasional Sunday afternoon picnic. He wasn’t there when they were sick, or when they caused trouble in school, when she had to nurse a sick baby, or spank them or hold them. He only saw them in their Sunday best, and that not very often. He wondered if he had failed her, by not helping her with the children more, but she didn’t seem to expect that from him. She expected nothing more than what she got, his body meshed with her own in exquisite pleasure two days a week in the little house in Calistoga. And then suddenly, as though he thought the boy could read his mind, Jeremiah glanced worriedly over at him as they drove to Napa.

  “You like girls, son?” He didn’t know the boy’s name and didn’t want to ask him. He didn’t really need to know, and he knew whose child he was. The father was one of his most trusted workers at the mines, a man who had nine other children, and most of them were girls, as Jeremiah recalled. This boy was one of three that worked at Thurston mines, and he was the youngest.

  The boy shrugged in answer to Jeremiah’s question about girls. “Most of them are dumb. I’ve got seven sisters, and most of them are just plain stupid.” Jeremiah laughed at the answer.

  “Not all women are stupid. Believe me, boy, a lot fewer of them are than we’d like to think. A lot fewer!” He laughed out loud and drew hard on the cigar. There was certainly nothing stupid about Hannah, or Mary Ellen, or most of the other women he knew. In fact, they were even smart about covering up just how smart they were. He liked that in a woman, a pretense of helplessness and simplicity, when in fact there was a razor-sharp mind beneath. It amused him to play the game. And then suddenly he realized that maybe that was why he had never really wanted to marry Mary Ellen. She didn’t really play the game. She was direct and straightforward and loving and sensual as hell, but there was no mystery about her. He knew exactly what he was getting, you knew just how bright she was and no more … there was no guesswork, no discovery, no tiny sparring matches concealed beneath lace, and that had always been something that intrigued him. At least in recent years he seemed to like more complexity than he once had and wondered if it was a sign of old age. The thought amused him. He looked over at the boy again, with a knowing smile. “There’s nothing as pretty as a pretty woman, boy,” and then he laughed again, “except maybe a rolling green hill with a field of wild flowers on it.” He was looking at one now, and it tore at his heart as they drove past it. He hated leaving this land to go east. There would be a piece missing from his life, from his soul, until he returned here. “Do you like the land, son?”

  The boy looked unimpressed, not sure what he meant, and then decided to play it safe. He had been brazen enough for one morning, and now he had the promise of Saturday mornings to protect. “Yes.” But Jeremiah knew from the empty way he said the word that he understood nothing of what Jeremiah meant … the land … the soil … he still remembered the thrill that used to run through him at the boy’s age as he picked up a handful of soil and squeezed it in his hand.… “That’s yours, son, yours … all of it … take good care of it always.…” His father’s voice echoed in his ears. It had started with something so small, and had grown. He had added and improved and now he owned vast lands in a valley he loved. That had to be born into your soul, bred into you, it wasn’t something you acquired later. It fascinated him that it was something not all men had, but he had known for years that they didn’t. And it was something that women had not at all. They never understood that passion for a “pile of dirt” as one of them had called it. They never knew, nor did the boy who rode along beside him, but Jeremiah didn’t mind. One day the boy probably would go to work in a bank, and be happy playing with papers and sums for the rest of his life. There was nothing wrong with that. But if Jeremiah had his way, he’d have tilled the soil for a lifetime, wandered through his vineyards, worked in his mines, and gone home bone tired at night, but content to the very core of his being. The business end of things interested him far less than the natural beauty and the manual labor it required to maintain it.

  It was almost noon when they arrived in Napa, passing the farms on the outskirts first, and then the elaborate homes on Pine and Coombs streets with their well-manicured lawns, and perfectly trimmed trees surrounding large, handsome homes that were not unlike Jeremiah’s house in St. Helena. The difference was that Jeremiah’s house looked unloved and unused, it was a bachelor’s home and somehow that showed, even on the outside, in spite of Hannah. It was the place where Jeremiah lived, where he slept, but his mines and his land meant more to him and it showed, and Hannah’s influence was only felt in the comfortable kitchen and the vegetable garden. Here in Napa, on the other hand, were homes run by devoted matrons, who saw that the lace curtains at the windows were fresh at all times, the gardens lush with flower
s, and the top floors filled with children. The houses were beautiful and it always pleased Jeremiah to drive past them. He knew many of the people here, and they knew him, but his was a more rural existence than theirs here in Napa, and the hub of his life had always been business, not social life, which was far more important here in Napa.

  He stopped at the Bank of Napa on First Street before going to the boat and withdrew the money he needed for the trip to Atlanta. He left the boy outside with the carriage, and a few moments later he emerged, looking satisfied and glancing at his pocket watch. They were going to have to hurry to catch the boat to San Francisco, and the boy took special pleasure in urging on the horses for Jeremiah as he glanced at some papers. And they arrived at the boat in good time, as Jeremiah jumped down and took his bags in his hands. He smiled up at the boy for a brief moment. “I’ll see you on the first Saturday after my return. Come in at nine in the morning.” And then suddenly he remembered the child’s name, it was Danny. “See you then, Dan. And take care of yourself while I’m gone.” Jeremiah instantly thought of Barnaby Harte, dead of influenza, and felt something catch in his throat, as the boy beamed at him, and Jeremiah walked away and stepped onto the steamer to San Francisco. He had a small cabin reserved, as he always did on his trips to the city, and he sat down quickly and pulled a thick sheaf of papers out of his briefcase. He had plenty of work to do in the five hours it would take to reach San Francisco. The Zinfandel was a particularly nice boat, and Danny watched the paddle wheel with fascination as she left the dock.

  At dinnertime, Jeremiah emerged from his cabin and sat at a small table by himself. A woman traveling with a nurse and four children eyed him several times from across the room, but he appeared not to notice until finally the young matron gave him a haughty look when they left the dining room, embarrassed to have had no effect on the handsome giant. He stood outside on the deck for a while smoking a cigar after that, and watched the lights of the city as they docked in San Francisco. His thoughts seemed to drift back to Mary Ellen more than they usually did when he was away from her, and he felt surprisingly lonely that evening as the Zinfandel docked and he took the hotel carriage to the Palace Hotel, where his usual suite waited. From time to time he was given to visiting a house of ill repute, with a madam he particularly liked, but now he had no such inclination. Instead, tonight he stood in his room, looking out on the city, and thinking back over the years. He had been in a melancholy mood ever since his night with John Harte, and it was hard to shake off even now, although here he felt light years away from Napa, its beauty and its sorrows.