Waltzing In Ragtime Read Online Free Page A

such a place. She stumbled on in the undergrowth, the twisted roots. Her teeth
chattered involuntarily. She’d never felt this cold. But the rain was stopping, the sky getting lighter. Wasn’t it? She stared up at the clouds. The squinting smile that stretched across her face froze in horror. It was snowing.
     
     
    Matthew Hart dreamed of being in the Klondike. Lottie was alive again, and shaking him awake.
    “Get up Fandango Man, work to be done.”
    He was ecstatic, but careful not to show her. If there was one thing Lottie couldn’t abide, it was sentiment. So he rolled onto his side and reached his arms around her waist. He pulled the ties of her dressing gown and nuzzled between her breasts. Some mornings, if it was early enough, if his touch was gentle, he could get her to come back to her brass bed, even let him love her once more. Other times she’d whack him between his shoulders with her hairbrush before her girls discovered she’d let any man stay longer than hourly.
    It was a hairbrush morning he figured, from the angling glide of her hips. Still, he raised himself on one elbow to admire her weathered grandeur before she chased him out. To his surprise, she took his face in her hands, let him see her eyes fill with tears the way she only had when she was dying.
    “Work to do,” she said again. “Don’t let the fear stop you. Use your gran’s good sense now.”
    “Work?”
    “Yes, work!”
    He opened his eyes. Wind howled at the window. And snow. When he rolled over, a pain cracked between his shoulders. “Damn it, Lottie, I’m going,” he surrendered, on his feet, straddling two worlds.
    He tried to hold onto the dream as he put the pine log on the fire. The scream of the bay mare brought him fully to his senses.
    Outside, the sudden drop in temperature further alerted him to the vagaries of October in the Sierras. He pulled up the collar of his buckskin coat. The snow was already drifting up the base of
the giant red trees that sheltered his home. He approached the horse who was wandering, sniffing at the smoke from his chimney. He spoke softly, holding out his hand. Matthew stroked her neck until she was content to be led into the small stable with his animals.
    It was Farrell’s mount, Rosaleen, but the stirrups were set too high for any of the men. A growing fear crept up to the roots of Matthew’s hair as he removed the saddlebag’s contents. There was a napkin from Mrs. Goddard’s and a mahogany box. A writing box. He yanked it open. Gold-plated fountain pens, ink, fine bond paper, and initials carved in a brass plate above the inkwell. O. S. W.
    “Shit,” he whispered, letting the box drop from his hands.
     
     
    Olana stared up at the towering trees, their height swallowed by the blowing snow. What did they care? They lived thousands of years, didn’t he tell her that? And they mended themselves of every disease, pestilence, even fire. Everything but the likes of her and her father, scheming for their wood. This was the trees’ revenge. They wouldn’t tell her where the horse was, they wouldn’t shelter her from the cold, the wind. They even directed the fury about her.
    The cold was white now. White, blistering, and as unforgiving as these mountains. A picnic, that was all she wanted. Wasn’t it? A picnic, to make his sad eyes laugh. Then let him kiss her, let him just try and kiss her. Olana’s hair blew out before her face. She’d lost her hat long ago. She could still raise her arms, but couldn’t move her fingers to make a proper job of clearing her hair from her face. Well, don’t come, her giddy mind flittered again, as I am no longer properly attired or coiffured to be a source of attraction to any man. Even you, Matthew Hart.
    Her wild, fragmentary thoughts settled on the ranger’s large, gentle hands. Once, during her few days at Mrs. Goddard’s, those hands had guided hers as she lifted the apron full of chicken feed. She’d looked over her shoulder then, and