Houston held the front of her destroyed habit together and mustered as much dignity as she could and rode to the kitchen entrance, while Kane dismounted at the front and all the people ran to him.
“Probably wants to brag,” Houston murmured. Somehow, she managed to get through the kitchen and Mrs. Murchison’s smiles and unsubtle questions.
Upstairs, Houston dismissed Susan and drew her own bath. After a short time in the tub, she climbed into her bed and went to sleep. She heard Kane enter the room at some time, but she pretended to be fast asleep and he went away.
After nine hours of sleep and a huge meal, she felt physically better, but her mood was worse. When she walked in her rooftop garden, she could see the street and the extraordinary number of people who were strolling in front of the house.
Kane came into her room once to tell her that he was on his way up to the Little Pamela to see if any help was needed, and he asked Houston to go with him. She shook her head in refusal.
“You can’t hide in here forever,” he said angrily. “Why aren’t you proud of what you did? I sure as hell am.”
After he had left, Houston knew he was right, that she had to face the townspeople and the sooner she got it over, the better. She dressed slowly in a serviceable blue cotton, went downstairs and asked that her buggy be hitched.
It didn’t take Houston but ten minutes to find out that Kane’s prediction of how the people of Chandler would react was dead wrong. She was not being cast as a heroine who’d rescued her husband, but as a silly, flighty woman who went hysterical first and asked questions later.
She drove her little buggy through the back side of town and up the road to the Little Pamela. Perhaps at the mine they’d need so much help that they wouldn’t have time to talk about her escapade.
No such luck. The victims of the disaster wanted something to laugh about and Houston’s escapade was their target.
She did the best she could at holding her head high while she helped to clear the debris and tried to make arrangements for the relocation of the widows and orphans.
Her real complaint was that Kane was enjoying everything so much. At the wedding, he’d been hurt because the people believed that any woman would prefer Leander over him, but now he had very public proof that Houston was in love with him.
Houston kept thinking of all the times he could have told her that he wasn’t really being charged with murder. He could certainly talk fast enough when he wanted to, so why was he so tongue-tied the night she informed him that she’d just inserted dynamite under his feet?
As the day wore on, and the people became more bold about asking her questions (“You mean you didn’t ask the sheriff what his chances were or talk to an attorney? Leander was in on all of it. He could have told you. Or you could have . . . ”), Houston wanted to hide. And when Kane walked past her, gave her a hearty punch in the ribs, a wink and said, “Buck up, honey, it was only a joke,” she wanted to cry that it might be a joke to him, but to her the public humiliation was horrifying.
Toward evening, she saw Pamela Fenton standing nose to nose with Kane and, on the cool evening breeze, she heard the words, “At the wedding, you said that you wouldn’t humiliate her. What do you think you’ve done now?”
The thought that someone was fighting her case was gratifying to her.
At home, she had dinner in her room and Kane made one more attempt to talk to her, but she just looked at him. He stormed out of the room, complaining that she had no sense of humor and was too damn much of a lady too damn much of the time.
Houston cried herself to sleep.
Chapter 33
The next day, Houston was arranging flowers in a large vase in the hall outside Kane’s office. She was still angry, still too hurt and humiliated to speak to him, and she couldn’t bear the thought of leaving the safety of her own house.
Kane had the door to his office open and with him were Rafe, Leander, and Edan. Kane’d called a meeting to discuss the possible consequences of the mine explosions. Kane had been concerned when he found out that the miners’ widows would probably not be given any compensation.
Houston listened to the men discussing the future of Chandler and she felt a great deal of pride at what her husband was doing. She wondered how she could ever have believed that he would foreclose on the people whose mortgages the Chandler National Bank held. Yesterday, Opal’d had a long talk with Houston and told her why Kane had used blackmail to get Houston to come back to live with him.
“He loves you so much,” Opal’d said, “and I don’t see why you have to be angry with him now.”
It might have worked, except at that moment she heard three women in the hall giggling like schoolgirls. They’d come to see Houston and “catch up on the latest news” was what they told the maid. Houston politely declined to see them, or anyone else.
Now, standing in the hallway, she listened with pride to the reforms her husband was planning, but then she heard Leander ask a question that caused her back to stiffen.
“Is this a bill from the City of Chandler?” Lee asked.
“Yeah,” Kane answered. “The sheriff wants five hundred dollars cash to repair the jail. I think it may be the only bill I ever wanted to pay.”
“Maybe you could have a grand openin’ and Houston could cut the ribbon,” she heard Rafe say.
There was a long silence. “If she ever speaks to him again,” Edan said.
There was another pause.