For the Roses (5 page)

"You'll get along," Dooley advised. "You're big and you got muscle. You can always hire out and work to keep food on your table."

"That's what I figured," Harrison lied.

"What exactly are you doing in Blue Belle?" Billie asked. "I know it isn't any of my business, but I'm curious to know. You mind telling us, mister?"

"Call me Harrison," he said again. "I don't mind telling why I'm here. I'm on what I'm pretty certain is a wild-goose chase. At least the man I work for believes my trip will end up running after a dream."

"You already got yourself a job?" Dooley asked.

"I've taken a temporary leave."

"So you could end up staying here. Is that the way of it?" Henry asked.

"I suppose I could."

"I say you should stay," Billie announced. "Don't work for anyone but yourself. That's our way. You don't have to answer to anyone."

"You mind answering a question about the law?" Ghost asked.

"What is it you want to know?"

"I'm thinking hard about stealing a horse," Ghost announced. He stood up and walked over to the table.

"The fella I'm thinking about robbing stole my woman years back, so, the way I see it, I ain't really doing nothing wrong. The law's on my side, right?"

Harrison leaned back in his chair. He stopped himself before he smiled. The question was amusing, but he didn't want Ghost to think he was laughing at him.

"Sorry to disappoint you," he said. "Pride might be on your side, but the law isn't." Dooley slapped his hand down on the tabletop and let out another hoot of laughter. "That's what I told him," he announced in a near shout. "Pride will get him hung by the vigilantes if he steals Lloyd's horse." Ghost didn't like Harrison's answer. He walked away from the table muttering to himself. His question opened the door for others, however, and for the next hour, Harrison dispensed free legal advice. Although he'd been educated at Oxford and had done his apprenticeship in England, he also worked for a man who owned two manufacturing plants. Because the company regularly shipped to the American

east coast, Harrison had had to familiarize himself with the laws regulating export and import. The difference between the way the law was interpreted by the courts in England and in America fascinated him. He tirelessly pored over any material about unusual decisions and cases that he could get his hands on.

His associates thought it was dry reading indeed, especially the older cases he'd wanted to discuss with them. He was told it was boring material at best, and it reminded them of all the mandatory reading they'd had to suffer through while at university. Harrison didn't agree. He loved reading the philosophers, especially Plato, and he enjoyed reading the opinions of the scholars who founded his country's government as well. But most of all, he loved the law. The discipline of the court system appealed to him. He thought it was imperative to keep up with all the latest decisions so that he could eventually become one of the best in his field. Good wasn't enough for him. Harrison strove for excellence in everything he undertook. Unfinished puzzles drove him crazy. Whatever he started, he finished. His passion for the law and his compassion for his fellow man had made him unpopular in many circles. Because he worked for the powerful Lord Elliott, he had never actually been blackballed, although he'd certainly come close on several occasions, and all because he took on unpopular cases. He was rapidly getting a reputation for being a champion of the less fortunate in London's slums. He hadn't set out to become anyone's champion, of course, and if anyone had told him at school that he would eventually become a criminal lawyer, even on a part-time basis, Harrison would have thought he was out of his mind.

The unsought distinction had cost him his engagement to Lady Edwina Horner, who informed him in a letter that she couldn't abide being married to a scandal-setter, whatever in God's name that meant. Men who still called themselves his friend tried to warn him that he had to get over his ridiculous notion that the poor in England should be entitled to the same rights as the rich. Harrison, however, refused to accept such an elitist, self-serving view.

"Maybe them laws in England are different from our laws," Ghost suggested. He strolled back across the room and gave Harrison a hopeful look. "I'm thinking that maybe I wouldn't get hanged, if I stole the horse, because Lloyd started the dirt first."

Harrison shook his head. Ghost, it appeared, wasn't ready to give up his plan.

"I've studied enough American law to know you'll still be found guilty."

"Even though he wasn't on the square and he started the dirt first?" While Harrison wasn't familiar with either of those odd expressions, he still felt he was giving sound advice. "Even so."

Another round of questions followed. All the curious who'd started out watching him from across the saloon had filed over to Harrison's table and now formed a half circle. None of them seemed to be in any particular hurry to get on with their day.

The doors to the saloon suddenly flew open. "Miss Mary's coming. Cole's riding behind her." The man who shouted the announcement bounded off at a trot down the walkway. The reaction to the news was astonishing to witness. Every single one of the men jumped to his feet and

ran outside. Dooley was almost knocked to his knees in the stampede. He eventually regained his balance and turned back to Harrison.

"Ain't you coming along? You ought to at least take a peek at our Miss Mary. She's worth your time." Because Dooley might have thought it peculiar if Harrison hadn't shown an interest, he got up from the table and followed the old man out the doorway. Harrison wasn't in any hurry to meet the young woman, however, and Dooley was already down the block and halfway across the street before Harrison reached the hitching post in front of the corner building.

His hunt could very well end in just a few minutes. Harrison was suddenly filled with all sorts of conflicting emotions. He had made a promise to Lord Elliot that this adventure would be his last attempt to solve this puzzle, and if Elliot turned out to be correct, then traveling all this distance had been just another wild-goose chase.

He let out a weary sigh. The facts, Elliot had argued, were indisputable. Mary Rose Clayborne couldn't possibly be his daughter. Victoria was an only child. Mary Rose had four older brothers. Yet while that information had been verified by the attorney in St. Louis, the man had also included several other comments Harrison found intriguing. Mary Rose had been on her guard throughout the interview and refused to give even the names of her brothers. The attorney reported that although she'd been extremely polite, it was apparent to him that she was afraid. The superior hadn't been able to persuade the young lady to cooperate.

The headmistress had proven most helpful however. She told the attorney that two of Mary Rose's brothers had traveled with their sister to the school at the beginning of each term. She hadn't met either one, hadn't even seen them at a distance, and, therefore, couldn't describe the gentlemen. She had heard a disturbing rumor about one of the brothers, but she refused to give the attorney any details. She declared she wasn't a gossip and that Mary Rose was a model student, once she'd made the adjustment to life in a boarding school, and the vile rumor one of the girls had started was quickly stopped. No one would ever have believed it anyway, of course. Gossip was for peasants and not for proper young ladies.

She couldn't be pressed for more.

Harrison shook his head. Gossip couldn't be relied on, of course. It was probably just as Elliot had predicted it would be. Another case of two women looking somewhat alike. Elliot had urged Harrison to let it go, as the older man himself finally had, and accept the soul-destroying evidence that little Victoria Elliott had died shortly after she'd been taken. In his heart, Harrison knew Elliott was right, but every time he looked at the man who had protected Harrison's father for so many years, he would become compelled to go on just one more hunt.

Harrison believed he was a realist, yet even so, his gut instinct had told him to go to Montana and find out the truth for himself. He wasn't completely grasping at rainbows. He had already been in America when he had received the wire regarding the latest sighting, and Chicago was just a day's ride away from where he'd been staying. It didn't take him any time at all to go to the outskirts of the city to talk to the woman who believed she'd met Elliott's daughter. After talking to Mrs. Anna Middleshaw and hearing the report of the attorney he'd then had interview Mary Rose, he decided it would be worth his while to go into the wilderness. Mrs. Middleshaw didn't appear to be a woman given to theatrics or emotion. She was actually quite level-headed. She believed with all her heart that she had seen Lady Victoria. Her argument was valid. No one, she said, could look that much like another without being related. Harrison

wanted to believe she was right.

He braced himself for disappointment and stepped off the wooden walkway. The gleam of metal caught his attention. He half turned to look back down the walkway and saw what looked like a shotgun barrel protruding from an alley about fifteen feet away. Whoever held the weapon had it trained on the group of people standing in front of the general store.

Harrison recognized Henry and Ghost and Dooley, but there were three other men he'd never seen before standing in a circle on the opposite walkway. A man with light yellow hair stood next to Henry, but when he took a step back, the barrel of the rifle came up. Yellow Hair moved again almost immediately, however, and Dooley inadvertently blocked him from ambush. The barrel of the rifle, Harrison noticed, lowered once again.

He decided he would interfere. The group of men filed inside the general store. Harrison removed his coat on his way across the road, tossed it over the hitching post in front of the walkway, and then went inside.

The scent of leather and spices filled the air around him. The store was large, about the size of one of Elliott's stables back home. There was a wide aisle that ran the length of the store, and two other smaller aisles on either side. Weighted-down, bowed shelves were lined with jars of food, piles of clothing, leather goods, picks and shovels, and so much more the eye could barely take it all in. The entire store was built out of several different kinds of wood, though mostly pine, just like the rest of the buildings in town.

Harrison had never seen such a disorganized, stuffed-to-the-rafters establishment in all his life. His obsession with discipline and order made him mentally blanch at the chaos before him. Bolts of colorful fabric were haphazardly stacked into a lopsided pyramid on top of a round table in one corner of the store, next to three giant-size pickle barrels. He watched an unkempt man reach down and take out a large pickle from the brine, then wipe his wet hand on the edge of a lace fabric that drooped down from a bolt over the side of the table. The material fell to the floor, barring the man's path, and so he simply stepped over the bolt on his way back to the front of the establishment. Working amid such chaos would have driven Harrison out of his mind. How in God's name did the proprietor ever find anything? Harrison let out a sigh, put the matter out of his mind, then moved to the side of the entrance where he planned to stay until he spotted Yellow Hair in the crowd. Where in thunder was the man? Harrison was at least a head taller than everyone else inside the store, yet still couldn't find Yellow Hair. He couldn't have disappeared into thin air, though in this mess Harrison guessed anything was possible.

Dooley waved to him from the left side of the store. The old man stood in front of a counter, talking in a whisper to a pretty brown-haired young lady. She had to be the owner's daughter, the one named Catherine Morrison. Dooley motioned for him to come over to the counter, but Harrison shook his head and stayed right where he was. He didn't want to take the chance of missing Yellow Hair. If Dooley thought his behavior was rude, Harrison neither minded nor cared.

A few minutes later he heard Dooley say something about "being shy." Since Dooley was looking at him when he made the comment,

Harrison assumed he was referring to him. The notion was ridiculous.

The Morrison woman caught his attention when she waved at him. She leaned halfway over the countertop and gave him a provocative, come-and-meet-me smile. He didn't smile back. He wasn't in the mood to be social right now, for he felt that warning the stranger was more important. He didn't normally interfere in another man's affairs, but he fervently believed in equal treatment and fair play. Ambushing an unsuspecting man was a damned cowardly thing to do, and Harrison could never abide a coward.

He ran out of patience. He decided he was going to have to go find the man, but just as he started to move, Yellow Hair appeared at the end of the main aisle, carrying a sack of wheat or flour he'd hoisted up on one shoulder. While Harrison waited for him to get to the entrance, a young woman skirted her way around Yellow Hair and came hurrying toward Harrison.

Dear God, she was Lady Victoria. The beautiful young woman walking toward him had to be Elliott's long-lost daughter. She was the spitting image of the man's late wife. At the first sight of her high cheekbones and her brilliant blue eyes, Harrison took a deep breath and forgot to let it out. Astonishment paralyzed him. His heart started thundering inside his chest until it became painful, and he was finally forced to breathe again.

He couldn't believe what he was seeing. The lovely woman looked as if she had just stepped out of the oil portrait of Lady Agatha that hung above the fireplace in Elliott's library. The clothes were different, yes; yes, of course they were, but by all that was holy, even the spray of freckles across the bridge of her nose seemed to be identical. Harrison suddenly didn't care how many brothers she had. It was just as Mrs. Middleshaw had said. No one could look this much like another without being related. Mary Rose Clayborne. The closer she got to him, the more subtle differences became discernible. Her eyes were a little paler in color than her mother's in the portrait of her as a young woman. Harrison let out a sigh of frustration. The exotic, almost almond shape of her eyes and her facial bone structure seemed to be the same as her mother's; yet, now that she was coming closer to him, he couldn't be absolutely certain. Hell, she even looked a little bit like Yellow Hair. She had the same color of hair. No, the color wasn't quite the same. Hers was a lighter yellow streaked with honey-colored strands throughout. God, she was beautiful, but she could still be Yellow Hair's younger sister, and hell and damnation, how could that be possible when she looked so much like Elliott's wife?