Heart of the West (53 page)

"Good." Clementine tugged on her glove, smoothing it up over her bunched knuckles. The color was now high in her cheeks. "Then we won't have to come up with any more polite excuses for not attending." She pulled at the velvet Byron collar of her dress, trying to let in a little air. "Oh, heavens. I am so nervous I am perspiring worse than a horse thief at a hanging bee."

A startled laugh burst out of Hannah's tight throat. "Oh, Clementine! Wherever did you pick up such an expression?"

"From Nickel Annie. Really, Hannah, I am about to die of fright. I never would have joined this silly organization in the first place, let alone become its president, if I'd known I was going to have to stand up there and make a spectacle of myself."

Hannah patted her arm. "You'll do fine," she said, although she understood the reason for Clementine's attack of nerves. Respectable, well-brought-up ladies simply did not give speeches and conduct auctions.

Clementine drew in a deep breath and squared her shoulders, as if she were indeed a horse thief about to mount the gallows. "Yes, well... Perhaps the thing to do is go and get it over with."

Hannah's fingers tightened on her sleeve. "Auction off my cake first."

Clementine's gaze darted around the milling crowd. "But Rafferty isn't—"

"He ain't here, I know. And I don't expect he's coming. Go on and do mine first. Please. If no other man is brave enough to make a bid, I reckon your Gus will jump in with an offer."

Gus had only now come up to join them. He had his boy by the hand, and the look that came over his face as his gaze settled on his wife was one of pride and yearning and a little awe, as if he still couldn't quite believe even after four years that this paragon of all the female virtues was really his. "Won't you, Gus?" Hannah said, beaming him a smile bright enough to melt lead.

He blinked and looked at her as if only just noticing her existence. "Uh, yeah, sure, Hannah. Sure," he said, though she knew he hadn't the foggiest notion of what he'd just agreed to.

She had no fear, anyway, that Gus would have to come to her rescue. She had seen Drew Scully standing at the back of the crowd, and she knew what he was after. If that boy had to buy a lopsided, lumpy molasses cake with stoned raisins to get it, he would.

Clementine took Hannah's cake from her hands and climbed onto the platform. She set the cake among the others on the trestle table, pulled at her collar, and cleared her throat.

Hannah studied her friend, feeling proud of her. She looked so much the fine lady up there in her classy dress of olive-green foulard silk. And it was so much like Clementine that, while the cut of the waist concealed her delicate condition, in her nervousness she was rubbing her palm over and over her rounded belly so that no one watching could possibly miss it.

"Education," Clementine began in a trembling voice that grew steadily firmer with each word, "is a prerequisite of civilization. We cannot afford to allow our children to grow up to be barbarians for want of the proper tools for learning..."

She paused and looked down at Charlie and the almost desperate love she felt for her child suffused her face and plucked at Hannah's heart. She remembered something Clementine had said to her once, years ago, when poor Saphronie had lost her little girl: "She is also a mother. No matter in what ways you both have sinned, you are
women.
Like me."

"Is Mama gonna eat all those cakes by herself?" Charlie demanded loudly.

"Hush, now," Gus said. "She's going to be selling them, button."

Charlie pulled against his father's hand, pointing at the pathetic-looking specimen Hannah had baked with her own two hands that morning. "I want that one. Buy me that cake, Papa!"

Gus restrained his son by planting two rope- and rein-callused fingers on the boy's shoulders. He tossed a grin at Hannah. "If my boy has anything to say about it, you'll be watching the fireworks with him tonight."

Hannah bit her lip, not sure whether she should smile back at him or not, though she could feel her dimples deepening of their own accord. She and Gus had been easier with each other the last couple of years. He still didn't approve of her, and he never would. But he had quit kicking against her very existence.

Clementine had finished her speech and had now taken up the auctioneer's gavel. She began to extol the virtues of Hannah's cake, making it sound as if it had come from the kitchen of a prize-winning Parisian chef.

Hannah elbowed Gus in the ribs. "Bid."

"Huh?"

She poked him again. "Go on now, cowboy. You promised."

He squinted at her in confusion, then a sudden smile creased his face. He put a finger into the air as if testing the direction of the wind. "One dollar."

"Twenty dollars!" Drew Scully shouted.

Chock-full of brag and fight, he was. Hannah almost laughed aloud right then. She wanted to throw her arms around his neck and kiss him. She had the satisfaction of hearing all the
good
ladies of Rainbow Springs gasp with shock, and of seeing Miss Luly Maine's face crumble with disappointment.
Her cake
sure wouldn't fetch anything near like twenty bucks, and she wouldn't be spending the fireworks-watching time making sheep's eyes at Drew Scully, either.

"Sold!" Clementine slammed the gavel down so hard and fast that Miss Luly Maine's saffron cake almost slid off the other end of the table.

Drew Scully pushed his way up to the platform, slapped his hard-won double-eagle gold piece on the table, picked up his cake, and came for Hannah Yorke. Hannah took a step forward to meet him, slipping a hand into the crook of his arm.

"You gonna tell me what's going on?" Gus demanded.

"Nope," she tossed back over her shoulder, and then she did laugh.

She didn't look at the boy until they were free of the crowd around the auction, although she could feel his intent gaze on her. "Won't your brother mind that you've spent all your prize money on a molasses cake?" she said. She looked up in time to catch his soft, slow smile.

"I'll explain to the lad how it went for a good cause."

Another laugh gurgled up her throat. "And what cause is that, Mr. Scully?"

He widened his eyes in a useless effort to look innocent. "Why, schoolbooks and slates and such, I thought 'twas."

"How noble of you, sir. And for your reward you are to have my molasses cake, and an hour or two of my company."

"For now."

She started to pull away from him, but he held her hand in place on his arm. "Don't go getting your dander up. I didn't mean that how it sounded. I only meant you can expect me to be behaving myself for now."

"And later?"

"You'll be havin' to take your chances later on, my beautay," he drawled, exaggerating his Cornish brogue.

She laughed again, suddenly no longer caring what all those
good
ladies thought of her. She was Hannah Yorke, keeper of a thirst parlor and a fallen woman, and that damn pedestal she'd fallen off of so long ago could go topple into hell for all she cared. She might have wanted it to be different once, but it was too late for wishing and wanting. Now she had to take what she could get.

And at the moment what she had was the arm of a handsome young man who'd just tossed away twenty dollars for an hour or two of her company. She cast another sideways glance at him. She wanted to trace his sullen lower lip with the tip of her tongue. To push her fingers through the thickness of his dark brown hair. To watch the reckless hunger flash in his granite-gray eyes.

He selected a spot in the shelter of the cottonwoods along the river. He took off his coat and spread it on the grass for her sit on. He stretched out beside her and put the twenty-dollar cake between them.

He rolled up his shirtsleeves and loosened his tie against the heat that had built up over the afternoon. The sun was just starting to slip behind the western mountains, leaving red streaks in the sky. The wind would pick up soon, but the heat would cling to the earth for a while yet.

Beside them the river moved silently, sluggishly. Hannah felt suddenly sleepy, drugged with sun and air. She breathed and smelled horse. About a dozen of them were tied up to a rope fence staked out across the river. They dozed in the heat, tails switching at flies. It was hard to believe these docile creatures were of the same species as the mustangs that roamed the open prairie beyond the RainDance Butte. But these saddle ponies had been tamed. The mustangs were the wild ones.

He was one of the wild ones, was Drew Scully. Once you'd seen a wild one running free through the tall grass, chasing the wind, no other would do. Only a wild one seemed worth having. But you couldn't keep him unless you tamed him, and once you tamed him you no longer wanted him, because he wasn't a wild one anymore.

She kept her eyes off the boy and on the horses, but she thought of him and something swelled within her, a yearning that brought swift color to her cheeks.

"What are you thinking, Hannah Yorke?"

Her head swung around, a frown pulling at her mouth. "How old are you? And don't lie."

"I wasn't going to lie. I'm nearly twenty."

She flipped open her fan and flapped it vigorously through the heavy air. "Land, a baby."

His fingers closed over her wrist, stilling her hand. His smile was part boy and part devil. "Not such a baby where it matters, Hannah. Care to give me a try?"

She couldn't help but laugh at the way he betrayed his cocky youth. But then, all men from eight to eighty took such pride in what hung between their legs, and they never stopped marveling at what it could do.

She pulled her wrist from his grasp. Yet the feel of his fingers remained, warm, tingling. "You ought to be calling me Mrs. Yorke," she said. "I'm old enough to be your mother."

He grinned at her. "You don't look like any mother I've ever known. And besides, you're not—old enough to be my mother, that is."

"Near enough." There was thirteen years' difference between them, a lifetime in every way that mattered. She knew what he wanted from her, what he would take if she let him. He would dally with her until he was ready to settle down and have a family. And then he would look around for the right sort of girl to be his wife, someone young and sweet-tempered. Someone virginal.

And someone like Miss Luly Maine would wind up with the gold ring.

Well, what did she want with a gold ring anyway? She wasn't the marrying kind, not Hannah Yorke. Hadn't she thought this whole thing through a hundred thousand times before? It was too late for wishing and wanting. Maybe she was the one who should be taking what she could get.

For a while, for the moment, she could make this boy love her, for if she was good at anything, she was good at that. The thought brought her a rush of fear and shame. It was a frightening and shameful thing—to realize that you wanted to be loved more than you wanted anything.

He drew up one knee, bracing his elbow on it, his hand dangling. Blood had started to seep through the bandage. But his other hand, the uninjured one that lay still for the moment in the grass, had scars on it as well, from where chips of blasted rock had nicked his flesh and other errant hammers had left their mark. Her father had had hands like his.

The hand that had been lying so peacefully in the grass moved suddenly and came toward her face. She held herself still as he threaded his fingers through the heavy ringlets that fell over her shoulder. He leaned into her. Her head filled with the yeasty smell of the beer he'd been drinking all afternoon. And the smell of him.

"Will you let me kiss you?" he said.

Her mouth thickened and burned beneath his gaze, as if he had already done so. She wet her lips. "No."

"I think you want me to kiss you."

She jerked her head away and drew in a deep, wit-saving breath. "I think you want me to slap your face."

"Am I never going to be getting you out of your corset stays, Mrs. Yorke?"

"I think it very unlikely, Mr. Scully."

Somehow his hand was back in her hair again, and then his fingers were sliding across her collarbone, which pressed against the creamy Belgian lace of her bodice. She swallowed hard, and the bone jerked beneath his touch.

His smile was knowing. "A challenge always does get my blood up. My blood and other things."

She smacked him on the arm with her fan, hard enough to leave a welt. "You, sir, are wicked."

"You, lady, are a tease," he said. His head fell back and a laugh burst out of him. A man's laugh, deep, sensual. Sunlight glistened off the sweat on his strong throat. It glimmered in the brown hair on his bare arms, arms strong enough to wield a sixteen-pound hammer, strong enough to hold a woman tight.

She took a breath, and as if one wasn't enough, she took another. Oh, Lord, Lord, Lord, what a fool she was. She shouldn't be sitting here laughing and smiling and teasing with him, knowing it was only a matter of time before they would be lying upstairs on her big soft bed, making the mattress groan and the springs squeak, making memories that were only going to hurt down the years. She ought to be running away from this boy as fast and far as she could.

This boy she could love in an instant, and with all of her heart.

A lone dust devil danced down the street, spun around a corner, and disappeared into the pale light of the setting sun. Gus followed it down the row of saloons and bawdy houses that lined the south end of Dublin Patch. It seemed strange to see this part of town so empty. But then, everyone was up at the big meadow awaiting the fireworks.

He stopped in front of the Gandy Dancer. The saloon was a new building, as most were in Rainbow Springs, but it looked old enough to have quenched the thirst of Lewis and Clark. The logs were weathered as gray as old buffalo bones, and the mud chinking was crumbling. The signboard swung loose on one hinge in the wind and had been riddled so many times by bullets it could have been used to net trout.

Being mostly a teetotaling man, Gus didn't patronize many saloons, and if he'd wanted to wet down a parched throat with a beer or sarsaparilla, he wouldn't have picked the Gandy Dancer. It was sure enough his little brother's kind of place, though. The boy and Hannah must've had a lovers' tiff, because they'd been avoiding each other all day, and then she'd gone off with that rock-buster who'd bid a double-eagle on her cake. Now trust Zach to crawl off to the worst hellhole in Rainbow Springs to soothe his wounds.