The Seduction Of Ellen. Nan Ryan

him. He knew she had. He pressed on. “Is he a mama’s boy?”

      The insult of his question unleashed an angry diatribe from Ellen. Turning, she snapped, “My son is not a baby and he most definitely is not a mama’s boy. Christopher is a man and he has proven it.” She gave him a sneering look and added, “But then, that’s something you would know nothing about. You’ve probably never even heard of the Citadel, much less know what a great honor it is to attend the prestigious South Carolina military academy. Only the brightest and the best enter those gates and many of them are gone within days or weeks, unable to stand up to the rigid rules of the institute.”

      “Is that a fact?”

      “It most certainly is! And that is exactly as it should be. Those who are weeded out, and there are many, do not belong there. The academy’s goal is to make brilliant, steely-nerved officers of fine, intelligent young men like my son. I assure you that no fools or cowards or weaklings graduate from the Citadel.” She gave his lean frame an assessing glance, and asked, “Do you think you could have made it, Mister Corey?” Her tone, as usual, was condescending. “Could you have withstood the harsh discipline and intense punishment a plebe endures? Or would you have been too much of a coward?”

      Ellen was looking directly at him when she asked, so she noticed the tension in his jaw. She immediately recalled the same thing happening the day Alexandra had suggested he accompany her to Charleston.

      She was curious, but in an instant his expression changed and he said in a flat, drawling tone, “Looks like you’ve found me out, Ellen Cornelius. Yesiree, the truth is I’m a sniveling, quivering, trembling coward.” He laughed then.

      She did not. “It isn’t funny, Mister Corey. I would think you would at least have enough pride to be ashamed to admit that you are a coward.”

      “There was a time, long ago, when I was. But now I’m used to the label and it doesn’t sound that distasteful anymore. There are worse things to be called.”

      “Yes, I suppose there are. Like swindler or cheat or thief,” she said hatefully, a smirk on her face.

      “Perhaps, but I know some that are worse.” He pinned her with his night-black eyes. “Like toady or bootlick or kowtower.”

      Ellen’s face instantly flushed with hurt and anger. Her green eyes flashing with fury, she said, “Insult me if you will. What you think of me is of no importance whatsoever. I do not need—nor want—your approval.”

      “I don’t believe you,” he calmly replied.

      In the 1890s America’s privileged took great pride and pleasure in showing off the expensive toys their vast wealth could provide. And so it was a period of the most splendid and ornate private railroad cars man could imagine. The wealthy all owned them, even if they seldom or never traveled. For the snobbish upper crust, the private rail car was an absolute necessity. The quintessential exhibition of ostentatious elegance.

      Of all the private rail cars, none were finer than the sleek, gleaming ebony car with the gold script lettering on the door. The elegant car belonging to one of America’s richest women, Miss Alexandra Landseer.

      Commissioned by the Pullman Company at the beginning of the decade, it had taken the company more than a year to finish the luxurious conveyance.

      The delay was not the fault of Pullman, but of the persnickety lady who was to own the car. The interior had been changed no less than half a dozen times because Alexandra couldn’t make up her mind as to what she wanted. The harried workmen would think that they had finally completed the Landseer job, only to be told by a frowning Alexandra, bejeweled hands on her hips, that “No, this just won’t do! The bedroom is too large, the sitting room too small! All these walls must be torn out. You’ll simply have to start over. I will not pay you a penny until I get exactly what I want!”

      And so it had gone for the entire year.

      But, giving the devil her due, when finally the rail car had passed Alexandra’s discriminating inspection, it was a rolling wonder.

      Inside, intricately carved boiseries exhibited the craftsmen’s infinite capacity for detail. A composite observation-sleeping car, the Lucky Landseer boasted a marble bathtub with gleaming gold fixtures. In the spacious sitting room, beneath a vaulted ceiling heavily embellished with Gothic fretwork, sat a handsome, oversize sofa and two matching easy chairs. The pale blue velvet furniture rested upon a thick, plush Aubusson carpet of blue and beige.

      At the rear of the handsome room, a door opened onto an observation deck. A waist-high railing of beautifully carved iron lace bordered the small open-air deck. A narrow steel ladder went from the floor of the deck to the car’s top.

      There was no furniture of any kind on the observation deck, although there was plenty of space. Alexandra saw no need for chairs or a settee. She had absolutely no interest in sitting out in the open, and it was always her own comfort that concerned her, no one else’s.

      If Ellen or any invited guests wished to spend time on the observation deck, they simply would have to stand.

      On the other side of the living room, in the car’s opulent bedroom, all the windows were draped with ice-blue velvet curtains. Alexandra never allowed those heavy drapes to be opened. She stated unequivocally that when she was inside her boudoir, she did not want some unwashed peasant along the tracks looking in at her.

      The bedroom was capacious and comfortable and decorated with heavy carved furniture, gold-framed mirrors, marble statuary and handsome globed lamps and sconces. Beautiful artwork graced the wood-paneled walls.

      Alexandra thought the room ideal.

      Ellen did not.

      It would have been, had it been hers alone. But the room was Alexandra’s and Ellen was forced to share with her aunt. Two specially built beds, covered in pale blue velvet spreads, were separated by only a small night table. The lack of privacy made Ellen dislike traveling in the splendid car.

      But, tomorrow she would be trapped inside the velvet prison for several long days and nights as the train rolled westward.

      Ellen exhaled loudly. Tonight, the eleventh of May, 1899, was the last night she’d spend in the quiet serenity of her own bedroom for many weeks.

      Slipping her nightgown over her head, Ellen sank down onto the edge of the bed. It was well past midnight, but she wasn’t sleepy. Her anxiety was rising steadily as departure time neared. The last thing on earth she wanted to do was to go out West on this outlandish, expensive lark.

      It was more than just the senseless waste of money that bothered her.

      She had a nagging premonition that once the journey westward was under way, nothing in her life would ever be quite the same again. She felt as though she would be caught up in some clandestine web of danger from which she could never escape. She had the frightening feeling that she might never return to the safety of this Park Avenue town house.

      And, that even if she did, she would not be the same person she was when she left.

      Ellen shook her head and silently scolded herself. She was being unforgivably silly. Nothing was going to happen to her. Nothing more than a long, boring trip across the country and a senseless trek to some ordinary water hole where Alexandra would learn, too late, that there was no such thing as a fountain of youth.

      Then, at last, back home to her sheltered, well-ordered existence.

      Ellen sighed, took the pins from her hair and let it spill down around her shoulders. Without aid of a mirror, she swiftly plaited it into a thick braid. She yawned, blew out the lamp and got into bed.

      There was nothing to worry about, she assured herself. She had cleverly managed to avoid Mister Corey since the morning he had met her at Grand Central Station. Four pleasant days without seeing him.

      And in that time the memory of his burning kiss had faded until she could hardly remember what it had felt like.

      Out of sight, out of mind was actually true. And