Chapter One
Kingman, California
July, 1913
A gentle breeze stirred the grasses on the flat, rich farmland of the fifteen hundred acres of the Caulden Ranch. The leaves on the fruit and nut trees moved; there were peaches, figs, walnuts and almonds. Cornstalks dried in the scorching heat. As usual, it hadn’t rained a drop in two months now and everyone in the Kingman area was hoping the rains would hold off another few weeks until the hops were in.
The hops, the major crop of the Caulden Ranch, were close to peak ripeness, hanging off fifteen-foot-tall poles, beginning to turn yellow and bursting with their wet succulence. In another few weeks the pickers would arrive and the hop vines would be torn from their strings and taken to the kilns to dry.
It was very early morning, with the many permanent farm workers just beginning to rise and start about their chores. Already, the day was hot and most of the workers would be in the fields, long flat acres with no relief from the sun. Some luckier workers would be spending the day in the shaded hop fields, the vines overhead forming a canopy of shelter from the blazing sun.
Through the middle of the ranch ran a well-used dirt road with other roads branching off it, all roads leading past enormous barns, barracks for the workers and the huge, chimneyed hop kilns.
In the middle of the ranch, facing north, stood the big Caulden house, constructed of local red brick, with a painted white verandah around two sides, balconies protruding from the second story. Tall palm trees and an old magnolia sheltered the house from the sun and kept the darkened interior cool.
Inside, in the west bedroom on the second floor, Amanda Caulden was still sleeping, her thick chestnut hair pulled back into a respectable braid. Her sedate, characterless nightgown was buttoned to her chin, the cuffs carefully covering her wrists. She lay on her back, the sheet folded perfectly across her breasts, her hands clasped across her rib cage. The bedclothes were only barely disturbed, the bed looked as if it had just been turned down—yet a twenty-two-year-old woman had spent the night here.
The room was as tidy as the bed. Apart from the young woman lying so utterly still, there were very few signs of life. There was the bed, expensive and of good quality—as was the woman—and two chairs, a table here and there, a closet door, curtains on the three windows. There were no lace doilies on the tables, no prizes won by a male admirer at a fair, no satin dancing slipper hastily kicked under the bed. There was no powder on the dresser, no hairpins left out. Inside the drawers and the closet, everything was perfectly neat. There were no dresses shoved to the back that had been bought on the spur of the moment then never worn. There were eighteen books in a case under one window, all leather bound, all of great intellectual importance. There were no novels about some pretty young thing’s seduction by some handsome young thing.
Up the back stairs, bustling, straightening her impeccably neat blue dress, came Mrs. Gunston. She straightened her spine and calmed herself outside Amanda’s door before giving one quick, sharp knock then opening the door.
“Good morning,” she said in a loud, commanding tone that actually meant, Get out of that bed immediately, I don’t have time to waste pampering you. She rushed across the room to thrust aside the curtains as if they were her enemy. She was a big woman: big-boned, big-faced, big-footed, hands like gardening plows.
Amanda woke as neatly as she slept. One second she was asleep, the next she was awake, the next she was standing quietly by the bed looking at Mrs. Gunston.
Mrs. Gunston frowned, as she always did, at the slender delicacy of Amanda. It was amazing to think that these two people were of the same species, for, just as Mrs. Gunston was heavy and thick, Amanda was tall, slim and fragile-looking. But Mrs. Gunston only felt a kind of exasperation in Amanda’s femininity because she equated her delicacy with weakness.
“Here’s your schedule,” Mrs. Gunston said, slapping a piece of paper on the table under the west window, “and you are to wear the”—she checked another piece of paper she’d taken from one of her numerous pockets—“the vieux rose dress with the lace yoke. Do you know which one it is?”
“Yes,” Amanda answered softly. “I know.”
“Good,” Mrs. Gunston said curtly, as if this were a big accomplishment for Amanda. “Breakfast is promptly at eight and Mr. Driscoll will be waiting for you.” With that, she left the room.
As soon as the door closed, Amanda yawned and stretched—then cut off both halfway and looked about guiltily as if expecting someone to have seen her. Neither her father nor her fiancé, Taylor Driscoll, approved of yawns.
But Amanda didn’t have much time to contemplate whether or not a yawn and stretch would merit disapproval, for she had no time to waste.
With unconsciously graceful movements, she hurried across the room to look at her schedule. Every night Taylor made out a new schedule of courses for
her, for Taylor was not only to be her husband, he was also her teacher. Her father had hired him years ago when Amanda was only fourteen, saying that Taylor’s instructions were to make Amanda into a lady. At twenty, when Taylor deemed her educated enough to be called a “gentlewoman,” he asked her father for permission to marry her as soon as he had further educated her enough to be his wife.
Amanda’s father, J. Harker Caulden, had been delighted and had accepted promptly for his daughter. No one had found it necessary to ask Amanda so important a question. One evening at dinner Taylor had interrupted a stimulating conversation on the influence of baroque art on the world today to tell her they were to be married. At first she had not known what to say. J. Harker had said, with a touch of disgust, that she was now engaged to Taylor. Taylor had smiled and said, “If you agree to the marriage, that is.”
J. Harker had been horrified at the idea of giving a woman a choice. “Of course she wants to!” he’d bellowed.
Amanda, her cheeks pink, had held her hands tightly together and looked at her lap. “Yes,” she’d managed to whisper.
To marry Taylor! she’d thought all through the rest of dinner. To marry this tall, handsome man who knew everything, who had been her teacher and her guide since she was an adolescent! It was a dream she’d never allowed to cross her mind. After dinner she’d pleaded a headache and gone to her room. She had not heard her father’s angry mutterings of, “Just like her mother,” for Grace Caulden spent most of her life reclining alone in her little sitting room at the back of the top floor.
Amanda had not been able to sleep that night and so had done poorly on a test on the French policies of Charles I that Taylor had given her the next day. Justifiably so, he had berated her rather fiercely and Amanda had vowed to make herself worthy of the great honor of being his wife. She would work and study and learn all that she could and someday she might be worthy of him. Of course, she’d never know half as much about life and the world as he did, but then a woman didn’t need to know as much as a man. All she wanted to do was please Taylor and be the best wife she could be.
She picked up her schedule. Once again, a little shiver of gratitude went through her as she saw the list written in Taylor’s own neat, even, small handwriting. Every evening he took time out from his busy schedule of learning how to run the ranch that would someday be his to write out her curriculum. She began to memorize today’s schedule.
7:15 A.M. Rise and dress
8:00 A.M. Breakfast: one three-minute egg, one piece of toast, coffee with half milk. We will discuss President Wilson’s tariff revisions.
8:42 A.M. Study for examination on French irregular verbs. Complete essay on Puritan ethics.
11:06 A.M. Gymnastic exercises with Mrs. Gunston