Vampires Gone Wild (Love at Stake #13.5)

Vampires Gone Wild (Love at Stake #13.5) Page 25

“Mother?”

“He’s as obsessed with the Golden Gate as Misters Ralston and Blackwell. I suspect he’s an architect or an engineer. How many men of such persuasion can fit into my house?”

“Three at least, it seems.” Angelina turned from the mirror. “I’m ready.”

Her mother narrowed her eyes. “You’re positively glowing, child. Are you sure you’re not fevered? How’s your appetite?

“I could eat a horse,” she said, making Jeanie smile and her mother gasp. Angelina headed downstairs, leaving them to follow.

STELLAN GLANCED NOW and then at Mason Blackwell. The human was unimpressive, as far as he was concerned. Stocky build but leaning toward portly, a weak jaw, and hairline receding like a full-moon tide. None of this would matter if he had heart. Strength of spirit. Reverence for Angelina. So far, these attributes had not been displayed. Blackwell had barely asked after her, making Stellan’s opinion of the man fall even lower. Utterly unworthy.

Stellan. . .

He startled, turning his gaze to the dining-room entrance. It was empty. Now I’m imagining her voice in my head?

Moments later, Angelina appeared in the doorway, her eyes going to Stellan’s and resting there.

“Miss Ralston,” he said, and stood. “And, Mrs. Ralston,” he added, as her mother came straight in and sat down.

The other men finally rose as well. Mr. Ralston gave his daughter a cursory look. “I trust you’re fully recovered and have written formal apologies to Mrs. Blackwell and her son?” He indicated Mason, who stood next to him.

Angelina seemed unable to respond.

Mr. Ralston sat back down, leaving Stellan to pull her chair out, seating her next to him. It put her directly across from Mason, who was still standing. When the other man spoke, Stellan had to contain the low growl threatening to escape his lips.

“Dear Angelina.” Blackwell spoke as if reciting a passage. “It was such a relief to hear of your safe return. Mother is still recovering from the shock of it all, of course.” Somehow, he managed to make it sound as if it were Angelina’s fault. “A harrowing experience, I am sure, but all’s well that ends well.” He smiled briefly, then sat back down to his morning paper.

“Thank you, Mr. Blackwell, for your, and Mrs. Blackwell’s concern for my welfare.” She kept her hands in her lap as her breakfast was served: two fried eggs, bacon, and toast with blueberry jam. Along with it came a silver tray with a mountain of envelopes. “I can see my recovery is an utter relief to some. Thank heavens.”

The paper rustled. “Yes, thank heavens.”

She didn’t reply, but Stellan thought the San Francisco Call might ignite from her look alone. He turned to her slightly. “Do you feel completely yourself today?”

She blushed. “I feel more myself than I ever have in my life. I might go so far as to say a new self is emerging.” She focused on her breakfast, attacking it with knife and fork, taking large bites of egg followed by the toast. After washing it down with tea, she said to the table, “I seem to be ravenous.”

I, too. . .

Her head jerked up, eyes on Stellan’s. “Pardon?”

“It’s . . . a beautiful day.” He tried to cover his shock. “Sunny again. I’d always thought your city was filled with fog.”

“Not always, sir,” she said softly.

Blackwell, ignorant of the small exchange, interrupted by reading aloud from the morning paper. “Dockworker found in the early hours of the morning, drowned.”

“A careless man, no doubt,” Mrs. Ralston said. “Falling down on the job.”

“Quite careless, I agree. He also managed to have his throat torn out.” Blackwell read on. “Second man found in such a state in as many days . . .”

“Sharks?” Stellan asked in a level voice.

“Don’t they usually take the whole torso?” Mr. Ralston asked, his paper lowering as he took a sip of tea.

“Mr. Ralston, please. How morbid,” Angelina’s mother said.

“It’s a scientific fact. Sharks feed in a kind of frenzy, dismembering . . .”

“Enough!” Mrs. Ralston snapped. “Our daughter was only just fished from the very same bay. Please don’t conjure such frightful images.”

“I can’t imagine Miss Ralston being too distraught,” Blackwell said from behind his paper. “Knowing her, she’d want to photograph the scene.” He laughed.

Mrs. Ralston didn’t approve of that statement either.

“Only if the light was good,” Angelina said. But her hand went to her neck. Stellan watched as a drop of blood escaped the confines of the dressing and trickled toward her collarbone. Quickly, Stellan handed her his napkin. She blotted up the drops and secured the dressing tighter. It took her a moment to recover, but when she did, she squared her shoulders and addressed Mr. Ralston’s paper. “Father, I must prevail on your generosity. My camera was lost . . .”

“Negligent of you,” he said. “I hope you learned from the experience.”

“Yes, Father. But if I am to photograph the shores . . .”

“I see.” He dismissed her with a wave. “Procure the camera. I need those images by next week.”

“Thank you, Father. I shall be about it today.”

“Today?” Mrs. Ralston said. “Isn’t that a little soon to be traipsing about the Emporium?”

“I’m fine, Mother.”

“You’ll not go out alone.”

“I am perfectly capable of . . .”

“I will escort her,” Stellan said. “If that suits you, Miss Ralston.”

She smiled. “Thank you, Mr. Fletcher. I know you have an interest in the arts. Your presence would be helpful.” Her voice was even, but she was blushing.

“If there are no objections?” Stellan said to the other men in the room.

Slowly Mason put the paper down and folded it in thirds. “None from me.” He turned to Mr. Ralston. “We’re going over the designs with the steelmaker today, aren’t we?”

In moments, Ralston and Blackwell were in deep conversation, Angelina’s shopping expedition forgotten.

“It’s settled then,” Angelina said. She dabbed the corners of her mouth and stole a look at Stellan.

Mrs. Ralston didn’t miss it. “You’ll not go out with this young gentleman unattended, Angelina,” she said. “Mr. Blackwell may condone it, but I do not. Think of the press . . .”

“Gerald will drive us,” Angelina cut in. “But really, Mother, it’s the twentieth century. Women are . . .”

“As capable as men, yes, I know. Emancipated whatnot. Take Gerald to chaperone. That would suffice.” Mrs. Ralston knit her brows. “Be back by dinner. Six o’clock sharp.”

ANGELINA WAS BEAMING. The Emporium on the corner of Market and Fifth, two blocks down from the Call Building, was one of her favorite stores. It had everything from garden tools to lingerie, hot coffee, books and sheet music, furniture, horse harnesses, and china teacups. Most important, it catered to the arts, with a section of brushes, paints, and canvases, stage props, costumes, and the latest in photographic equipment. She smiled as she led the way up to the second floor and toward the back corner, where the scent of linseed oil, fine leather, and boar bristles was welcoming. As soon as the shopkeeper spotted her party, he gave a frantic wave. “Miss Ralston! What a comforting sight. I read all about it in the papers! Are you quite alright?”

“Mr. Higgins, thank you. I’m fine, but my camera was lost. I must replace everything.”

“Such a relief to see you alive and well,” he said. “Gave us all a shock.” He hefted a thick catalog and opened to a bookmarked section. “I can order in exactly what you had before, but you might like to consider some new innovations. “A plastigmat lens, for example . . .”

Angelina was lost for some time in the catalog. The Plate Series D was an improvement, indeed, and it sported a price tag to match. “Ninety-seven dollars and fifty cents?”

“Plus shipping, but you get what you pay for, as I am sure Mr. Ralston knows. It’s superior quality. Aluminum body, nickel frame, mahogany inserts, and fine leather cover. Two tripod sockets.” He tapped the picture. “Nothing surpasses Eastman Kodak, and a woman of your talent deserves the best.”

A woman of my means can afford the best, I’m sure you mean to say.

Stellan, who was studying the photographs along the far wall, chuckled.

“I’ll take it.” Angelina smiled. “How soon will it arrive?”

“The tripod is in stock. The rest will be sent as soon as I telegraph the order through. Call back late next week. We should have it by then.”

She sighed. “That long?”

“I’m afraid so, unless you’d like to rent in the interim? A similar setup for, say one dollar a day, with your tripod and plates?”

“Done!” She signed the various documents Mr. Higgins pushed in front of her and nearly jumped out of her skin when Stellan appeared at her side as if from nowhere.

“You’ve found what you were looking for?”

She lifted her eyes to his. “I believe I have, but you must see something over here.” She stopped herself from taking his hand. “This way.” Angelina went to the visual arts display and looked on as he studied the range of oil paints, tube upon tube, mounted in fans of colors on the wall.

“Extraordinary!” He leaned in very close and motioned her to do the same. “Look at the subtle shifts. From yellow ochre to sienna to gold. Like the sun.”

She quivered, wondering if he could hear her heart pound. “I love the names,” she whispered. “Terra Rosa, Prussian Green, Quinacridone Magenta . . .”

“These are the colors of daylight, but your photographs are of the night, the shades of gray.”

“I capture the truth of light,” she said. “What is seen in the absence of color.”

You would love my world then . . .

“Pardon?”

He stared at her blankly, and in her nervousness, she reached out to touch the indigo tube at the exact same moment he did. Their hands collided and seemed to entwine of their own accord. She pulled back. “Pardon me . . .”

Gerald cleared his throat behind them, and they both straightened. “Are you ready to proceed, Miss Ralston?”

“Quite.” She looked to Stellan. “Join me for late lunch? The clam chowder on Fisherman’s Wharf is beyond superb.”

“It would be a pleasure.”

Gerald frowned but hoisted the camera gear and followed them out of the Emporium.

Fisherman’s Wharf was across town, across being a misnomer. They drove up steep inclines, streets rattling with cable cars and all manner of traffic, and down such severe slopes that if the brakes failed, there would be no saving them. Angelina let it all rush by as she sat in the backseat, chatting with Stellan. “Do you want to stop in Chinatown?” she said, her face lighting up. “It would make an exotic background for a portrait of you, Mr. Fletcher. I shall try the camera today.”

“Is Chinatown wise, Miss Ralston?” Gerald said from the driver’s seat. He made no apology for eavesdropping. “The quarantine has only just been lifted.”

She shrugged. “I suspect that affair was motivated more by politics than good medical practice, a heinously racist move by Governor Gage.”

“As you say, Miss Ralston.”

She glared at the back of Gerald’s head.

Stellan spoke before she could say more. “I agree he’s not taking his custodianship seriously, at least not in favor of American-Chinese civil rights.”

“Thank you.” She nodded to Stellan. “Far from helping, it appears Gage is thwarting all advancements.”

“Still, is it wise?” Gerald let his protest hang.

As they crested Telegraph Hill, she gazed out at the East Bay. “Very well. The fog’s rolling in anyway.”

“It will be a cloud sea about us,” Stellan said.

She smiled. “We’ll take photos here then.” She gestured out the window. “While we still have the sunlight.” Her eyes danced. “I will capture you yet, Mr. Fletcher.”

“Perhaps.” Stellan smiled.

“Are you shy of being photographed?” she asked.

“Not by you.”

Gerald parked the Ford, and he and Stellan made to unload the newly rented camera gear. Angelina elbowed in before they could get very far. “I’ve got it,” she said to both men. “I need no assistance, thank you.”

STELLAN WAS CAPTIVATED as Angelina moved here and there, testing the light, feeling the wind. She chose a gnarled old oak as the backdrop and had him stand beside it, his hand resting on the trunk. The light dappled through the branches like ripples in a tide pool. The touch of the wood was solid as reef.

“You like trees?” Angelina approached him to straighten the fall of his coat.

“I like all living things.”

She paused. “What a splendid and unusual response. Are you a humanitarian?”

“You could say so, yes.” He was lost in her dark eyes and the gentle floral scent that rose from her body. He memorized her every movement, comment, and instruction, letting her fill his mind completely.

“With the coat over your shoulder, I think.”

He obliged her.

“Perfect. Can you hold that?”

He didn’t answer but instead studied the tree with its twisting branches that reached for the sky, dark arms against the glimpse of blue.