Eyes of Silver, Eyes of Gold (2 page)

Also galling was the knowledge that if he had found any other woman asleep in his barn he would have waked her with a pail of cold water in the face, frightened her half to death, and run her off the place as fast as she could go. But not Anne. Anne was the only woman in the town of Mason, or for that matter in the whole State of Colorado, he would cross a street to help.

Moreover, sometime during the last hour, he’d given up trying to pretend he felt anything but pure pleasure at the thought of her in his house, waiting for him.

Well, his feelings didn’t count for much. There was nothing for it now but to see that she got home or wherever she wanted to go in one piece as fast as possible. Leaving mud-covered moccasins on the porch, he stepped inside, his eyes immediately drawn to her, studying her.

The wonder of it was that every eligible bachelor for miles around hadn’t courted Anne Wells. She was taller than fashionable maybe, but her slim five and a half feet was uncommonly graceful. Her femininity came not from an exaggerated full blown figure, but from subtle curves that blended one into the other, inviting the eye to follow. Soft brown hair made a silken frame for her heart-shaped face and huge gray eyes that gave away every thought. Of course, it was the directness of those great gray eyes that most people faulted her for and blamed for her being a spinster.

Anne had always looked to him as fresh as new spring grass, but now as she raised her head, giving him a trace of a smile, her condition appalled him. A long walk in last night’s rain did not explain hair darkened with filth. Her face was so thin the magnificent eyes were light centers in huge black pits. The slightly pointed chin that had always seemed so delicate and feminine was now painfully too sharp, and the smell in the kitchen testified to her thoroughly unwashed state.

“I hope you don’t mind that I borrowed your shirt.”

It would need one hell of a scrubbing. “No.” Cord searched for an explanation for the state she was in. “You been sick?”

She looked away evasively. He started to hang his coat and hat next to Anne’s things, nearly missing her low-voiced answer.

“No, not sick, not exactly.”

He did not push for a better answer but set the pail and eggs on the table, rolled up his sleeves, and started to wash up in the large pan near the stove. Drying his hands, he turned to catch Anne staring at the milk and eggs with a disturbing look of naked hunger.

How could her condition be starvation? Her family was well off. Only Edward Wells himself even pretended profits from his tailor’s shop provided any part of the big house or other fancy things. Mrs. Wells had inherited money. Still, there was no mistaking that look.

When Anne finally tore her gaze from the pail and eggs, he said, “I’ll cook. You talk.”

The house seemed smaller to Anne with him in it. The flutters in her stomach were hunger; they had to be. Her mind darted from one problem to another, trying to think of a way out of telling him what he wanted to know. It was not a matter of washing her family’s dirty linen in public. She felt no loyalty of that sort to them at this point. It was more a sense of personal embarrassment, and so she tried to avoid a real explanation.

“Well, I suppose you can tell I’ve left home. I need to get to Grenerton. I’m going to take the train from there and go to my Aunt Clara in Chicago. Maybe she’ll let me live with her again. Would you maybe consider taking me to Grenerton?”

Ignoring her question, Cord asked one of his own. “Are there people looking for you?”

“Yes, probably, but they can’t know where to look. I saw the Brower brothers’ wagon behind the saloon - it was empty, they must have delivered something to town - and hid under the tarpaulin. I thought if I rode there until the wagon turned straight south I’d be just a few miles from Grenerton.”

Cord stopped slicing bacon and gave her a hard look. “You have any idea how much trouble you’d be in if the Browers got their hands on you in the middle of nowhere?”

She knew, but the risk seemed necessary at the time. “Yes, that’s why when the rain started and I heard them talking about stopping to fix the tarp to keep them dry I rolled out of the wagon and hid in some bushes by the road until they were out of sight. They actually did stop and fiddle with the tarp.” She repeated her request, “Would you help me get to Grenerton?”

Again the answer was another question, “How much money do you have?”

Drat him. Did he have to be difficult? “Enough,” Anne stated firmly. “Will you help me? Please?”

He threw the bacon in a large frying pan and started mixing flour, milk, and eggs in a bowl. Anne could see nothing but his back, which was no less expressive than his face. Finally, he answered, “Maybe. Talk.”

So the price of his help was going to be the whole ugly story. With a resigned shrug, she began to talk.

“My father has been upset for years that I’m not married, you know. He thinks having an old maid for a daughter is a reflection on him somehow.”

Cord didn’t turn around, but said, “He didn’t want you married bad enough to favor Elroy Turrell, did he?”

“No. He didn’t think a farmer’s son was good enough, and I was only eighteen then. It was when I started seeing what he thought was too much of Elroy that he sent me to Chicago - to my Aunt Clara.”

Watching him drain the bacon and start eggs frying, Anne was suddenly sure Cord agreed with her father about Elroy, although it would be Elroy’s lack of gumption and not his prospects a Bennett would fault.

She distracted herself from the sharp hunger pains that the sight and scent of food were bringing on by studying Cord’s back, admiring his easy, efficient movements. It should be funny. She was alone with Cord Bennett, and
he
was cooking
her
breakfast. It wasn’t funny; it was humiliating. She hated her nerves, her filthiness, and having to tell him, of all people, about her troubles.

And he wasn’t going to leave it alone. “You were engaged in Chicago,” he prompted.

“Yes, for four years. His name was Richard Tyler, and he was a banker’s son. My family was delighted about it. When I broke the engagement, Father was on the first train to Chicago to try to fix things. I never wanted to go East to start with, but Father wanted me to go, and I went. I didn’t want to come back then, but he wanted me to come home, so I came - although I don’t know why he wanted me back, he was that angry. He went on and on for months about what a disgrace and failure I was - am. He hasn’t lectured as much since, but every year he’s been a little more desperate than the year before.”

She tried to change the subject. “You were gone some of those same years yourself, weren’t you? People say you looked like a wild Indian when you got back. Where were you off to?”

He didn’t even turn around. “Some people say too much. You aren’t saying enough.”

Thwarted, Anne wrinkled her nose at his back and continued. “Well, that’s the way things have been, and then early this summer, every time I turned around I was bumping into George Detrick. Do you know him?”

“I’ve seen him around.”

“He’s a widower, you know, and he’s older than my father. His sons are older than I am, and they’re - louts.”

With an effort, Anne lowered her voice, which had been rising. “I know it’s a sin to judge people by appearance, but I can’t stand him. He’s fat and greasy and has little beady eyes and he smells worse than I do right now all the time. His sons frighten me, and he’s arrogant and patronizing and boring, and he keeps trying to pat my hands or arms when he talks to me, and it makes me feel dirty….”

Anne ran out of breath before she ran out of the litany of horrors.

Cord turned to face her while waiting for breakfast to finish cooking, arms folded across his chest. “Repulsive says it.”

“Yes. Well. The thing is when he realized how I felt, he didn’t give up. He just went to my father and said he wanted to marry me, and Father was overjoyed. He ordered me to marry Mr. Detrick.”

“And you said no.”

“It was the first time I ever defied Father in any way. He gets…, but I was sure when I explained….”

Her voice trailed off, but then she raised her head and met his eyes. “It doesn’t make any difference to my father at all. Mr. Detrick is the only one who wants to marry me, and Father wants me married, and that’s all that matters. All summer he bullied me and made the whole family miserable about it, but how could I agree? Marriage….”

In the instant before he turned back to the stove, she saw Cord’s eyes turn icy, and the skin around them pull taut and flat. His anger on her behalf was even more mortifying, but it was easier to get the rest out without him looking at her.

“When Father realized I wasn’t going to give in, he just came home from the shop one evening and nailed boards over the windows in my bedroom and locked me in. I couldn’t believe it. I was sure he was just trying to scare me, but then he told my mother to give me less than enough to eat. My mother - of course she didn’t, and when he realized it he took the bedroom key, and after that there was less food every day than the day before. It’s been weeks, and yesterday ‘meals’ were a slice of bread.”

Anne had recited these facts steadily and without emotion, but now her voice wavered. “I was beginning to be really afraid. People get hungry enough to eat rats and snakes. I knew I would get hungry enough to marry George Detrick. Father was going to win.”

With the most humiliating part over, Anne told the rest quickly. “I never really believed they’d leave me locked up like that for long, but even so, it was boring, and right from the first day I spent a lot of time working at the boards on the window over the porch. They were really loose by yesterday, and I was afraid if I waited any longer someone would notice. So I put all my strength into getting those boards off. I dropped to the ground by hanging from the edge of the porch roof and climbed into Browers’ wagon without a second thought. No one in town would have been able to help, you know. They wouldn’t believe it to start with.

“After I left the wagon I walked cross country until I saw your lamplight, but I didn’t know who lived here. I didn’t know it was Bennett land this far south. The dog barked once or twice and then ran out and sniffed me and acted friendly, so I curled up in the hay in the barn. I meant to leave as soon as the rain stopped, but I fell asleep.”

“Of course if you’d known who did live here you’d have come right to the house.”

His tone and the amusement that warmed his eyes almost restored Anne’s spirits. She could not help but respond in kind to such an utterly impossible suggestion. “Of course, and asked if you’d like a house guest.”

At this point he put two plates with hotcakes, eggs, and bacon on the table, and Anne stopped talking and started eating with an unmannered vengeance.

After watching for a few seconds, Cord said, “Slow down, or it will come back up even faster.”

Glancing up, Anne decided he wasn’t criticizing, but advising. She forced herself to stop shoveling and began to chew. They ate in silence, and when her plate was clean, she regretfully turned down the offer of more.

“No, thank you, I’d like more, but you’re right, it wouldn’t stay down. You have no idea how much I needed that. Truly, thank you.”

Cord leaned back in his chair and pinned her with the eyes that caused so much comment. Not yellow, amber maybe. He repeated his previous question. “How much money do you have?”

A most persistent and exasperating man, she thought, but admitted, “Twenty dollars. It was in my room. It’s mine.”

Now Anne searched his face in vain for clues to what he was thinking as he said, “I’ve got some cash around here. I can spare you a hundred and fifty. If you’ll take it, I’ll hitch up the buggy and take you to Grenerton. I don’t suppose you can ride?”

“No, I can’t, but I can’t take your money either. Please just help me with getting there.”

“A loan from me wouldn’t be proper, huh?”

“It not only wouldn’t be proper. It wouldn’t be right. If I live with my aunt, I’ll be living on her charity. If she’s on Father’s side and won’t let me stay there, and I go to friends and find employment somewhere, I’ll still never be able to repay you a hundred and fifty dollars. You know that.”

He stood and picked up the dirty dishes and put them in the dishpan and began covering them with hot water from the reservoir in the stove. She started to rise, thinking to help, but he ordered, “Sit,” and she sat.

Anne studied him again as he washed the few dishes. He was probably about her brother’s height, an inch or so over six foot, but leaner and leggier. Rob might be as broad in the shoulders, but while her brother was certainly not fleshy, he did not taper so smoothly to such a narrow waist and hips.

Standing perfectly still Cord radiated a raw power. Small wonder people feared him. He was always polite enough to shopkeepers and others in town, but he never offered an unnecessary word, and his face was an impassive mask. Anne’s own pulse was disconcertingly strong and quick in her throat.

Finished cleaning up, Cord refilled both coffee cups and sat back down across from her. His words, deliberate and considered, changed the direction of her thoughts abruptly.

“Assuming your folks don’t catch you and drag you home, if you go into Grenerton with only twenty dollars, you’ll be lucky to get to Chicago. If your aunt won’t help, you’ll end up whoring. You’re pretty enough, but you’re not young enough. You’ll service men older, uglier, and meaner than George Detrick, and lots of them.”