Twin of Ice Read Free Page B

house.
    At the west end of town, just a short distance from the Fenton house, on the flattened top of what most citizens had once considered part of the mountains, was Kane Taggert’s house. Fenton’s house would have fit into the wine cellar of the Taggert house.
    “The whole town still trying to get inside the place?” Blair asked Houston as she nodded toward the house barely visible behind the trees. That “barely visible” part was large enough to be seen from almost anywhere in town.
    “Everyone,” Houston smiled. “But when Mr. Taggert ignored all invitations and extended none of his own, I’m afraid people began spreading awful rumors about him.”
    “I’m not so sure all the things people say about him are rumors,” Leander said. “Jacob Fenton said—”
    “Fenton!” Blair exploded. “Fenton is a conniving, thieving—.”
    Houston didn’t bother to listen but leaned back in the carriage and gazed at the house through the window at the back of the buggy. Lee and Blair continued arguing while he halted the carriage to wait for one of the new horse-drawn trolley cars to pass.
    She had no idea whether what was said about Mr. Taggert was true or not, but it was her own opinion that the house he’d built was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.
    No one in Chandler knew much about Kane Taggert, but five years ago over a hundred construction workers had arrived from the East with an entire train loaded with materials. Within hours, they’d started what was soon to become the house.
    Of course everyone was curious—actually, a good deal more than curious. Someone said that none of the construction workers ever had to pay for a meal because all the women of Chandler fed them in an attempt to get information. It didn’t do any good. No one knew who was building the house or why anyone’d want such a place in Nowhere, Colorado.
    It took three years to complete, a beautiful, white U-shaped building, two stories, with a red tile roof. The size of it was what boggled people’s minds. One local store owner liked to say that every hotel in Chandler could be put on the first floor, and considering that Chandler was a crossroads between north and south Colorado, and the number of hotels in town, that was saying a great deal.
    For a year after the house was completed, trainloads of wooden boxes were delivered to the house. They had labels on them from France, England, Spain, Portugal, all over the world.
    Still, there was no sign of an owner.
    Then one day, two men stepped off the train, both tall, big men, one blond and pleasant looking, the other dark, bearded, angry. They both wore the usual miner’s garb of canvas pants, blue chambray shirt, and suspenders. As they walked down the street, women pulled their skirts aside.
    The dark one went up to Jacob Fenton, and everyone assumed he was going to ask for a job in one of the mines Fenton owned. But instead, he’d said, “Well, Fenton, I’m back. You like my house?”
    It wasn’t until he had walked through town and onto the land of the new house and then through its locked front door that anyone had had any idea he mean that house.
    For the next six months, according to Duncan Gates, Chandler was the site of a full-fledged war. Widows, single women and mothers of young women made an all-out attack for the hand in marriage of the man they’d swept their skirts aside for. Dressmakers by the dozen came down from Denver.
    Within a week, the women’d found out his name and Mr. Taggert was besieged. Some of the attempts to get his attention were quite ordinary; for instance, it was amazing how many women fainted when near him, but some attempts were ingenious. Everyone agreed that the prize went to Carrie Johnson, a pregnant widow who climbed down a rope and into Mr. Taggert’s bedroom while she was having labor pains. She thought he’d deliver her baby and of course fall passionately in love with her and beg her to marry him. But Taggert was away at