Authors: Alice Duncan
The
President of the United States had asked for him by name when he’d
come West on a hunting trip. Said he’d read all about Tom in Claire’s
dime novels.
Maybe
it had been kind of gratifying when that Russian archduke had insisted
that nobody but Tom Partington could lead his expedition. Dime novels
again.
If
he were to be absolutely, unconditionally honest with himself, he might
even have to admit that the silly books had boosted his confidence and
turned him into a better scout. Not that he wasn’t the best to begin
with, of course. Still, when one had an image to uphold, one was apt
to perform one’s duties with more flair. People would be watching,
after all.
Humph.
He shoved his soup bowl away, his appetite gone.
He
guessed it might be true, too, that he hadn’t bothered wearing those
outlandish fringed buckskins until the first of the
Tuscaloosa Tom
books hit the stands. Those buckskins were his trademark now, and he’d
always feigned utter oblivion of his myriad imitators. In fact, he used
to laugh inside when he saw people dressing like him. Well, actually,
not like him. Like Tuscaloosa Tom Pardee. Claire’s creation.
When
Absolute Candor finally struck Tom, it hit during the roast beef course
and with a humbling blow.
Great
God in heaven. Claire Montague, his housekeeper, his mistress, his—his
lover, had created a national icon. And not just any old icon, either.
She’d created an ideal of American manhood, a model of masculine virtues
to which young boys aspired. What was it she’d said that long-ago
day when they’d been discussing the books? That little boys in America
who strove to emulate Tuscaloosa Tom Pardee were striving to achieve
goodness and chivalry and—and—and—
Tom
couldn’t remember everything she’d said. He did remember, however,
that at the time her words had struck him as ridiculous. Staring blindly
at the long, polished table stretching out in front of him, Tom admitted
to himself that her words no longer seemed foolish. He found himself
strangely moved, in fact.
And
she’d based her fictional character on what she perceived him to be.
“Good
grief,” he murmured, stunned, and swallowed an ache of maudlin emotion
that had lumped up in his throat.
“I
beg your pardon?”
Tom
jerked and stopped staring into space. He’d forgotten for a minute
that Jedediah was sharing the table with him.
“Oh,
nothing. Sorry. Just thinking.”
“Mmmmm.”
Jedediah returned to his own thoughts, obviously of Dianthe St. Sauvre.
Why,
Claire must have loved him—or her image of him—before she’d even
met him. According to her, she loved him still. Even after she’d come
to know him. Did that mean he possessed enough of Tuscaloosa Tom’s
many fine qualities that she hadn’t been utterly disillusioned? It
was difficult to imagine.
Taking
great care, Tom ate what he could of the rest of his dinner. He skipped
dessert. And, since Jedediah was obliging enough to leave him after
supper and go courting, he skipped port in the parlor. All Tom could
think about was how hurt Claire had looked in the face of his rage.
He
didn’t know what to do. The memory of Claire’s penitent expression
as he’d yelled at her made his head ache. The thought that Claire
might think he wanted her to go away was too awful to contemplate. He
should apologize to her, but how? Should he wait until tomorrow, until
she’d calmed down? If he waited, would she suffer all night? Would
he suffer all night?
Yes,
he decided, he would. The notion held no appeal.
As
he slowly trudged up the stairs, his mind kept churning over the same
problem and ending up in the same conclusionless muddle. Then he remembered
the wire Scruggs had handed him before supper and pulled it out of his
pocket. Turning it over in his hands, he stood in front of Claire’s
door, undecided.
Then,
concluding he was being idiotic about this whole thing, he rapped sharply
on her door.
“Claire?
Claire, there’s a telegram for you.”
Silence
greeted his announcement. He cleared his throat and tried again.
“Claire,
please come to the door. There’s a telegram for you from town, and
we need to talk.”
Nothing.
Tom
stood at the door and frowned. Was she in there and avoiding him? Maybe
she’d gone out for a walk. No; it was pitch black outside and cold
as a witch’s— Well, anyway, he was pretty sure she hadn’t gone
out walking.
“Claire,”
he called, more loudly.
Nothing.
This
had been a hard day for Tom. His entire very satisfying new life had
been kicked topsy-turvy by the woman who wasn’t answering his knock,
the same woman who had claimed to love him not three days hence. Frustrated,
he closed his fist and pounded on the door once, hard.
Not
so much as a rustle of petticoats could he hear from the other side
of that blasted closed door.
“Claire!
Damn it! Here’s a telegraph message for you. If you won’t speak
to me, at least look at your wire!”
Furious
when he got no response from this last caustic command, Tom declared,
“Well, then, if you don’t care what it says, I’ll open it myself
and tell you.”
Knowing
he was behaving like a thwarted schoolboy, Tom nevertheless yanked the
wire out of his pocket and ripped it open. “Here. It says, ‘Miss
Montague, I regret that there is no legal way I can—’”
Tom
stopped reading aloud and finished scanning the message silently. Then
he looked at the door. “Claire?” He rapped several times, loudly.
“Claire, why did you wire Oliphant to direct your royalties to my
bank account?”
The
unearthly silence finally made Tom’s brittle patience snap. With one
final thud on Claire’s door with his fist, he barked, “Damn it,
if you won’t come out here and talk to me, I’ll just come in there.”
Although
he expected he would have to break the door down since Claire was obviously
planning to out-stubborn him, Tom rattled the knob only to have it unlatch
silently. He pushed lightly and the door swung open without a sound.
Of course. There wasn’t a door at Partington Place that squeaked,
because Claire saw to them herself, every week, like clockwork.
He
stood in the hallway for a moment or two, as still as a statue, dread
gradually overcoming anger in his chest. Taking a deep breath, he stepped
into the room. It was neat as a pin and empty of Claire. He sucked in
a breath and held it, suddenly terrified.
When
he saw the carpetbag, packed and set neatly on Claire’s bed, the last
faint spark of hope in his heart sputtered and died. Aching, he walked
to the bed, took up the note Claire had left on the bag, and read his
name scripted in Claire’s fine hand on the envelope.
His
hands trembled when he opened it. He read it silently, unable to make
a sound for the grief welling up inside him.
“Dear
Tom,” the letter read, “Thank you for everything.
You have been kinder to me than I deserve.
Please believe me when I say I did not mean to hurt you with my books.
They were written out of love, evidently misguided, and I regret any
pain they may have caused. I realize I was wrong not to have consulted
you before I used you as my model, and not to have told you about my
authorship after we’d met. I hope one day you will forgive me.
I shall send for my bag when I am established elsewhere.
May God bless you and keep you. You will always have my heart.
Claire.”
Tom
swallowed around a tremendous ache in the back of his throat. His eyes
stung and his head felt heavy. He lifted a hand and pressed his forehead
as if that could keep the pain contained.
She’d
left him. He’d driven her off. He’d hurt her, denounced the one
thing she’d tried to give him, and she’d left him.
He
whispered, “Oh, Claire,” once, and then clamped his mouth shut for
fear the next thing to emerge would be a sob.
Tom
didn’t know how long he stood there, dumbly staring at Claire’s
note. It seemed like hours. However long it was, he was eventually jolted
out of his stupor by the clanging of the front doorbell.
Claire
,
he thought, his heart soaring for a minute before it crashed to earth
again. It couldn’t be Claire. She wouldn’t ring the bell.
Unless
she’d left her key behind
. With that thought buoying him, Tom
raced from her room, down the stairs, and sent Scruggs reeling against
the wall when he dashed past him and wrenched the front door open.
“Claire!”
he shouted into the face of the tall, portly, mustachioed gentleman
who stood on the porch.
The
gent smiled an oily, seductive smile that stabbed Tom in the heart as
surely as if the fellow had used a knife. “We meet again, Mr. Partington.”
Tom
had seen his emotions in color before a couple of times before. Once,
in the heat of battle during the war, he’d viewed life through an
orange haze. Once while being pursued by a band of Cheyenne warriors,
he’d seen the world in shades of purple.
When
he saw the mustachioed gentleman who had been walking away from a frightened
Claire on the street of Pyrite Springs three months before, Tom’s
world suddenly turned red.
The
man’s greasy smile fled, his eyes bugged, and his mouth opened into
a startled “O” when Tom grabbed him by the throat and began to throttle
him.
“Where
is she? Where is she, damn you to eternal hell! What the devil have
you done with Claire?”
It
took the combined efforts of Scruggs, Jedediah Silver, and a terrified
Sylvester Addison-Addison to drag Tom away from Claude Montague before
he could kill him on the front porch of Partington Place.
# # #
“I
tell you, I’m Claire’s father.” Claude took another gulp of brandy
and massaged his Adam’s apple tenderly, as if he wasn’t quite sure
Tom hadn’t damaged it beyond redemption.
Tom
ran his fingers through his hair. He had consigned Jedediah and Sylvester
to the parlor, and had taken Claude into his library. He didn’t relish
an audience while he questioned this slippery specimen who, he feared,
had more to do with Claire’s odd behavior than he’d ever guessed.
Her father! And he’d believed they were lovers, which would have been
bad enough. But her father! Good heavens.
“Why
didn’t she tell me?” His voice sounded pathetic. For good reason.
He felt pathetic.
Rattled
out of his usual aplomb, Claude swallowed another mouthful of brandy
and muttered, “Undoubtedly because she hates me.”
“What?”
Tom stopped pacing and stared at Claude. He couldn’t imagine his Claire
hating anybody, much less her father. Not even if he was this pernicious
fellow.
Realizing
how baldly he had declared his daughter’s dislike, the wily Claude
eyed Tom and seemed to draw himself together. “That is to say, our
family life was disrupted when Claire was quite young, you see. We,
er, fell upon hard times and I greatly fear Claire blamed me.” He
splayed a plump hand over his chest and managed to look put-upon.
Tom
thinned his gaze and allowed himself to stop pacing and take in the
full glory of Claude Montague. He remembered the sly fellow from the
night they’d drunk together in the saloon. The man was a bottomless
well of amusing anecdotes, but Tom hadn’t trusted him then, and he
didn’t trust him now.
He
shook his head. “No. You said she hated you. Why does she hate you?
It can’t be just because you had a hard time making a living. Claire
wouldn’t hate anybody without a good reason.”
Rubbing
his throat again, Claude adopted a melancholy expression. “I regret
to say that Claire believed herself to be above her surroundings. I
fear it has always been a grave fault in her, Mr. Partington. We, er,
experienced a few hard times during and after the war, you see. Claire’s
dear mother passed on, and I was obliged to take up employment beneath
my capabilities.”
Eyeing
him slantwise, Tom asked, “And what employment was that, pray tell,
Mr. Montague?”
Claude
lifted his chin, opening and closing his mouth several times as if testing
to make sure his jaw still worked. Tom held onto his patience only by
force of will.
At
last Claude said, “For several years, my son and daughter and I traveled
the roads, Mr. Partington. It was a perilous life, but I provided for
my children the only way I could.”