chapter 3
Friday, August 24, 1900
Bret shot bolt upright in bed, gasping, drenched in the sweat of his fever dream, his eyes searching frantically around his luxurious bedroom as though he expected the home guard to leap out of the cherry wood linen closets at any moment.
Still trembling, he wiped his forehead with the blue silk bed sheet. A sudden fit of sharp coughing made him reach for the small, dark brown medicine bottle on the polished walnut bedside table.
He unscrewed the cap with fumbling fingers and drank until the bottle was empty. As the soothing warmth spread through his body and mind he leaned back on the embroidered Persian pillows and stared up at a small plaster crack in the high ceiling.
Once more the terrifying faces and sounds retreated into the darkest cavern of childhood nightmares. Bret brushed his damp black hair behind his ears and glanced at the dark circles and lean face reflecting back from the full-length dressing mirror on the wall.
Although never one to be too concerned with personal appearance—rugged work makes for rugged men, as the saying went—he had to admit that he was looking more haggard these days; something, without a doubt, the rarified Contessa Da Rimini and the aristocratic ladies of her Italian Riviera circle would never have tolerated.
Easy to blame it on the long, hard hours out at the Beaumont field and the uncertainties of securing the necessary financing, but the faded luster in his intense, blue eyes told him it was something else.
Within a few months of his arrival the exotic allure of European women had already started to fade. Their perfumed finery and seductive glances slowly replaced, as he feared it would be, by his cherished memories of Gabrielle.
Bret closed his eyes. Although it had been over two years it sometimes seemed like only yesterday they were together. Gabrielle Mavis Caldwell, the clever, impetuous, and stunningly beautiful daughter of cotton magnate Arley Falkner Caldwell. How long ago had it been now since they watched the treetops stir with the whisper of a warming breeze?
Bret let his mind drift back to the spring of ’89, when the countryside around Galveston had been verdant, unblemished. In the early morning, faint puffs of vapor hung over freshly ploughed fields. He saw himself strolling through that beautifully wooded section of the waterfront park near the boardwalk with its low, rolling hills intersected by a clean running stream flowing to the Gulf.
He had first seen Gabrielle sitting on the bank looking into the cool spring water. Her long, bright auburn hair, tied back and pinned, gleamed with deep, gorgeous red shadows under her parasol.
Concealed in her summer finery he sensed a slim, wild beauty with hips that tapered smoothly into long, straight legs. Gabrielle looked up at him with warm brown eyes, flecked with gold that seemed to sparkle on the surface of the rippling mirror.
Bret lowered his eyes and shook his head. But that was all in the carefree past of another century. Those thoughts and feelings had no place in the shrewd, levelheaded business of the new millennium.
After hot coffee, a hot shave was all a man needed to set things right. While he was in town tomorrow he’d get a haircut and buy a few new shirts, and anything else that struck his fancy. Bret rose naked from bed. He stretched and walked up to the huge bay window of his bedroom.
Parting the fine white muslin drapes he gazed out on the Gulf of Mexico shimmering in the endless blue under the brilliant summer sun beating down on the sandy beaches of Galveston.
Bret gazed down at the gently swelling waves reflecting the beauty of the cloudless sky. A group of young women dressed in their brightest Gibson girl tailored shirtwaist blouses and long skirts giggled and laughed as they plodded across the sparkling white sand clutching their parasols, beach umbrellas, and wicker picnic baskets.
Bret winced from the intensity of the sunlight and stepped back. How long had it been since he enjoyed an untroubled, relaxing day at the beach?
Was it with Gabrielle?
He closed his eyes, letting the healing rays burn away the last remaining darkness of his dreams.