“Won’t you join us at our table? William H. Bush.”
The blood rushed into my face and I felt hot and cold. Mr. Bush had been proprietor of the Teller House until a little over a year ago and I had met him with Father Doe when he had taken Harvey and me there for meals. Mr. Bush probably knew my whole humiliating story....
Glancing up, my eyes met Mr. Tabor’s piercing dark ones across the intervening tables and I knew in an instant that I was falling in love. Love at first sight. Love that was to last fifty-five years without a single unfaithful thought. Almost in a trance, I gathered up my braided gabardine coat and carriage boots to move over to their table.
“Governor Tabor, meet Mrs. Doe who’s come from Central to live in Leadville.”
I put my hand in Mr. Tabor’s large one and it seemed to me as if I never wanted to withdraw it. What was he thinking at that moment, I wondered? Was he feeling the electric magnetism in the touch of my hand as I was in his? Or was I just another one of the women that Augusta Tabor would carp about?
“Sit down, Mrs. Doe, and order anything you want on the menu. No point in going back to the show when we can sit here and entertain as pretty a young woman as you, is there Bill? Here’s a little lady we’ll have to get to know.”
Chapter Three
Leadville, the Saddle Rock Cafe, and the gay, boisterous mining and promoting crowd about me all swam dizzily away from my consciousness as I dropped down in a chair between the great silver king, Horace Tabor, and his manager, Bill Bush. I was in love! That was all I knew.
I was in love with a married man. I, a divorced woman, whose future with Jake was merely a nebulous suggestion. Yet here I was, beside the man I had dreamed of for so long—
“Surely, Bill, we should have champagne on this auspicious occasion?” Mr. Tabor went on.