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out of its frame.”
    “Why?” Will couldn’t contain his curiosity.
    “Because I was locked out of my room and it was taking that incompetent hotel manager too damn long to find a locksmith to get me back inside it.”
    “No Barbary Coast whore named LilyBeth?”
    “Definitely not,” James told him, remembering the vulnerable expression in Elizabeth’s beautiful blue-green eyes.
    “No silk robe?”
    James smiled for the first time since Will had joined him at the table. “I was wearing a silk robe, all right, but I had a pair of trousers on beneath it.”
    “Oh, well, I knew it was too good to be true.”
    “Well?” James demanded.
    “Well what?”
    “How do you think this latest rumor will affect the company and the men?”
    Will began to chuckle. “Oh, I think this rumor will prove beneficial to the company and the men.”
    “How so?”
    “This one will make you seem more human. More fallible. The men will tend to think of you as one of them once they learn you were caught with your trousers down around your ankles just like the rest of us have been at one time or another while in San Francisco.”
    “But I wasn’t,” James insisted.
    “Doesn’t matter,” Will told him. “Once the men hear the rumor, that’s what they’ll believe.”
    James exhaled a long, slow, deep breath. Why was that? he wondered. Why did everyone always want to believe the worst about someone else? Why would the men in his employ want him to be fallible? Didn’t they understand that he couldn’t afford to be fallible? Not when he held their livelihoods, and sometimes their very lives, in his hand.
    Will Keegan reached over and clapped James on the shoulder. “Cheer up, old man. The men are going to be positively gloating about this one.”
    “I know,” James replied glumly.
    “They’ll like you better,” Will replied.
    “I don’t care whether they like me or not,” James reminded his second-in-command, “but, dammit, I do want them to trust me.”
    “Trust has to be earned,” Will said.
    “How well I know it.” James focused his gaze on the polished wooden surface of the table.
    Will finished his cup of coffee and rose from the table. “Give them time, Jamie. We’re still new here in California. Our ways of doing business are new. But I’m certain that once the men who work for us realize that we pay equal wages for equal work to everyone, regardless of background or skin color, they’ll relax, learn to work together and to trust our leadership. Once the men figure out thatyou don’t favor one group over the other, everything will be all right.”
    “I hope you’re right,” James said fervently.
    “I am,” Will told him. “You’ll see.” He clapped James on the shoulder again. “I have to see to the unloading of the supplies we ordered,” he said as he prepared to leave the warmth of the salon and return to the deck and the bitter cold. “Don’t forget to read your telegram.”
    “Is it important?” James asked, knowing Will read every telegram that arrived at the San Francisco office of Craig Capital whenever he wasn’t there to do it himself.
    Will smiled. “It depends on how you look at it,” he said. “If I were in your shoes, it would be a tragedy. Your latest governess quit and Mrs. G. is threatening to, unless you find someone else to take care of the Treasures.”
    James ran his fingers through his thick black hair. “Damn. If I had known about this earlier, I could have hired a new governess while I was in the city. As it stands now, I’ll only be able to stay in Coryville a day before I have to turn right back around and return to San Francisco.”
    “Why not simply spend the night in Oakland and take the morning ferry back to the city and hire a new governess?” Will suggested even though he knew James wouldn’t consider it.
    “I can’t,” James told him. “I promised the Treasures I’d be home tomorrow morning. And I can’t disappoint them.”
    “Have you tried to