Lady X's Cowboy (3 page)

“Reward?”  He frowned.

She considered where he said he was staying—a “flophouse,” which did not sound particularly pleasant or accommodating.  And Wapping certainly wasn’t known as one of the finer neighborhoods.  So she did what she had been trained to do: throw cash at people.  “Of course, a reward.  Some money, perhaps.  Arthur?” she asked, since her few shillings were lying in the street.

“Yes, my lady.”  The coachman reached into his pocket.  She would reimburse him later, since she never traveled with more than a sovereign.  Everything was on account, and everyone accepted her credit.  She was the widow of a businessman, a successful business owner, and more likely to pay her bills than a peer’s spouse. 

“Keep it,” Will Coffin said.

She looked at him with surprise.  He was angry.  And angry in a different way than when he was fighting the thugs.  This was a deep, personal anger that vibrated off of him like inaudible sound. 

“But—”

“I don’t want your money.”

“I’ve insulted you.”

Will Coffin put his hat back on, and what she had seen of his face became obscured.  She suddenly felt very foolish and gauche, younger and more awkward than she had felt in years.  

“Ma’am.”  He stepped back.  “I’ve got to get back before this damned fog turns me blinder than a mule in a mineshaft.”

“Really, Mister Coffin, can I not—?”

“You get on home, and don’t go walkin’ by yourself in mean territory.”

Before she knew it, her footman was helping her into her carriage.  “Can I at least give you a ride?”  Again, she was violating the rules of propriety by inviting a man into the carriage with her.

She need not have worried.  Even as the words were leaving her mouth, Will Coffin tipped his hat, a definitive dismissal.  But courtly, in its way.  Like him, a strange amalgam of coarseness and chivalry.  Once more she felt his eyes on her, one final, measuring gaze that swept over her in a warm tide.  She kept one hand braced on the open carriage door as Will Coffin turned and, in the arc of his coat, disappeared into the foggy London evening.  Strange how such a big man could vanish so completely.  She strained, and could just make out the fading sound of his boots against the pavement.  In his wake, the commonplace and often irritating fog became a spectral coda, an annoyance turned enigmatic through his presence and absence.

“We really ought to go, my lady,” Arthur said worriedly.

She barely noticed when the footman closed the door after her and the carriage began to move north, across the river and back to Bayswater, back to everything familiar.  She kept staring out the window, hoping to catch another glimpse of Will Coffin, but finding in his place only fog.

Chapter Two

George Pryce entered the Three Graces Pub on the Strand looking for his failed henchmen.  He was furious, more furious than he had been since they’d tried to throw him out of Cambridge for cheating.  His father’s authority had kept him ensconced at university for two more years, but the outrage remained.

He slid into an empty booth at the back and ordered a beer.

“Greywell’s or Bass, sir?” the publican asked.

“Bass,” Pryce snarled.  His mood blackened even further.  It always came back to that damned brewery.  He still lived with his parents, the last remaining son at home.  His three older brothers had all married and set up their own prospering households.  They had taken up mundane responsibilities such as sessions of Parliament, arguing bills, and calculating interest.  But as the fourth son of an earl, Pryce did not desire the things his brothers had been so eager to claim.  He loved his life of leisure, the only true life of a gentleman as far as he was concerned.

But still Father would fix him with his piercing, critical glare and demand to know what his youngest son was doing with his life.  Apparently, being a gentleman wasn’t enough of a profession for Henry Pryce, fourth Earl of Hessay, nor his sons. 

His Bass arrived and he took a deep drink.  Bass was one of the most profitable breweries in all of England, with warehouses in Edinburgh, Paris, London and Dublin.  He could only dream of such wealth now.  George Pryce often bemoaned the fact that he wasn’t born a hundred years earlier, when the thought of a man of his station actually
working
was considered vulgar and beneath him.  But now everyone in society was possessed with a mania for practicality and usefulness—Pryce blamed sober Victoria and the ink-stained captains of industry that now held the reins of the kingdom.

So he cast about, seeking the easiest way to make some money of his own.  It
was
a bit galling that at thirty five he still drew an allowance.  One morning, after reading the cricket scores in the
Times
, he saw an article trumpeting the fortune that could be effortlessly made in breweries.  And he had his answer.  All he had to do was find some little brewery and buy its owner out.

Trouble was, the brewery he wanted was owned and operated by a presumptuous widow who wouldn’t see reason.  He wasn’t accustomed to people saying no to him.  In fact, his father’s money and influence made sure no one said no.  If there was one thing he learned about the rise of the disgusting merchant ranks, it was that they respected money. 

He remembered his days at Eton and how the sons of those merchants would receive lavish presents from home on their birthdays, or when they performed well on their examinations, or at just about any bloody time their revolting parents thought to pet and praise their noxious offspring.  Pryce received nothing from home except angry letters from his father when, yet again, his son failed to live up to expectations.  On his birthday, he was always sent the same present: a Bible covered in Spanish leather, the passages about filial duty underlined in his father’s bold hand.

Pryce came to hate all those boys, and their families, too, the upstart class that struggled so hard to show themselves worthy.  Of course their marks were better than his—they had something to prove.  As the son of a nobleman, he didn’t need to struggle and strain to distinguish himself.  He was already distinguished by birth.  It was his responsibility, his
duty
, to show Britain and the rest of the world that those born into the aristocracy cherished and embodied the ideals of gentility.  This meant that he must elevate himself above the muddy roads of commerce.  His income—such a sordid word—ought to arise from the land, the lifeblood of England, not banks and machinery.  But this didn’t seem enough for his critical father.  Knowing that he could never please Henry Pryce with his academic or business triumphs, his son George made sure that he excelled at living the proper and genteel life of a gentleman, a life of cultured idleness.

Yet everywhere he went—at the races, the opera, balls, even the club, for mercy’s sake— he was forced to interact and rub shoulders with the new, purchased titles or, even worse, those who relied solely on their pocketbooks to gain entry and never bothered with titles at all.  He was, at best, coolly polite to these men and their over-decorated wives, brash sons and grasping daughters.  All the while, he nursed a growing and poisonous hatred of those whose fortunes had brought them into the closed world of the British aristocracy.

So Lady Olivia Xavier’s refusal was particularly infuriating.  But he was confident that the men he hired yesterday would help make up her mind at last.

And then he’d received word from his men.  When the scribbled note arrived that morning, his confidence fell and his outrage grew. 

“What the hell happened to you?” Pryce demanded as a trio of bruised and swollen faces sat down opposite him.  “Don’t tell me Lady Xavier did that.”

“She didn’t,” Bill Dunsby mumbled.  “Some daft American did.”

“American?” 

The publican hovered nearby to take their orders.

“Greywell’s,” the three men chorused.

“I’m not buying you drinks, you idiots,” roared Pryce.  “Piss off,” he said to the publican.  Dunsby and his companions looked disappointed.

“He came out of nowhere,” he said, “an’ beat the stuffing out of us.”

“Pathetic,” sneered Pryce.  “One man defeating three?  What do I pay you for?”

“You didn’t see ’im,” whined Davey Stoke.  “As big as an ox, and four times as strong.  All the time laughing, just laughing at us, like he was stepping on ants.”

The beginnings of a sharp and unrelenting headache stabbed behind Pryce’s eyes.  “Get out.”  He pinched the bridge of his nose.

“What about the rest of our money?” Dunsby complained.  “You said you’d give us half before and half after.”

“I didn’t anticipate you failing so spectacularly.  You’ll get only what I’ve paid you.”  When the men started to object, he added softly, “I have many friends of influence at the Metropolitan Police, and just one word from me could see you three scum on the treadwheel for the rest of your lives.”

Muttering and cursing, the three men pulled themselves out of the booth and left the busy pub.  Once alone, Pryce ordered a stiff glass of whiskey.  Beer was not enough.

Lady Olivia Xavier would have to see things his way, American or no American.  Eventually, she would learn that it was impossible to say no to George Pryce.

Will knew something about fog.  And snow, and rain, and sandstorms, and just about every other weather condition that nature sought fit to bedevil a cattle drive.  After a life spent almost entirely out of doors, a little thing like the heavy yellow fog rolling of the Thames didn’t bother him much. 

But here he was, wandering around London, more at sea than he’d been during that hellish two weeks crossing the Atlantic.  Partly because of the fog, partly on account of the twisting, bewildering streets that defied logic and had strange names like Middlesex, Houndsditch, and Threadneedle.  He’d been to Denver and, briefly, New York City, and at least those cities had the good manners to be laid out on a grid.  And the streets were numbered.  London could try any man’s patience when it came to figuring out the lay of the land.  But he knew that given time, he could learn London as well as he learned the Goodnight Loving trail.  That wasn’t his goal, though. 

He had only a scrap of old paper in his pocket to serve as his compass in London, and it wasn’t doing him a lick of good.  He’d made about as much progress today as he had the day before—meaning, none.  He wasn’t giving up, all the same. 

As he walked up and down the streets of this odd city, he couldn’t shake thoughts of that pretty English widow he’d met yesterday.  No, she wasn’t pretty.  She was damned beautiful.  He’d seen over a hundred actresses in his day, rouged and powdered and wearing next to nothing as they performed their fancy dances to the roars of the crowd.  Yet not a one of them matched in pure loveliness the English widow.  Lady Xavier, her servant called her.

He walked towards his hotel, rolling himself a cigarette as evening started to fall.  He’d bought himself some kind of meat pie from a shop down the street and carried it in a paper sack.  It would be his dinner for the night. 

A couple of soiled doves passed him—they looked the same as the girls in Leadville, and every other town he’d ever been in—so he wasn’t mistaken in their question.

“Lookin’ for a bit o’ fun, lovey?”  One swayed closer to him. 

“Yeah,” her friend added, “you could ’ave the both of us for a quid.”

“I don’t know what a quid is, ma’am,” he said, “but even if I did, I’m going to have to say no, thanks.”

Both women started to laugh.  “An American!” they cried together.  “We ain’t never met an American before.”

He tipped his hat.  Even whores were ladies underneath it all and he never stopped treating them as such. 

“You from Texas?” the older one asked.

“Colorado, ma’am.”

“Is that in America?”

“Last I checked.”

“That case, we’ll give you a turn on the house,” the younger one said.  “A welcome-to-England prezzy.”  She wrapped her thin arms around Will’s elbow and pressed her bosom against him.  Her friend followed suit and began playing with his moustache.  He wasn’t the least bit tempted.

“Thanks all the same, girls.”  He carefully disentangled them both and set them back on the street.  “I do appreciate your hospitality, but I just ain’t up for company right now.”

The women pulled faces of disappointment, but they both shrugged as they pulled their wraps tighter around their shoulders.  “If you change your mind, come to the King’s Head an’ ask for Jennie and Kate,” the older one said.  “Mind you don’t forget.”

“I won’t.  Have a good evenin’, ladies.” He gave his hat another tip.  With cheerful waves, the women left in the direction of the docks. 

He continued towards his hotel and got back to the business of his cigarette.  He hadn’t had a tumble since New York, but he wasn’t like other men coming off the trail, following their johnsons to the nearest bordello and squandering their money on paid company.  He liked women, fine.  No, he
loved
them: their talk, their laughter, the way they looked at the world that sometimes defied all logic, but sometimes a man had different priorities besides bouncing mattresses.

That girl in New York, she’d worked in some factory and thought it’d be great fun to polish the sheets with a real live cowboy, and he had been happy to oblige.  His body had liked it fine enough.  There was something to be said for a city girl’s sophistication.  But he’d found afterwards, slipping out of her boarding house with his boots in hand, that he was getting a bit weary of these one night encounters.  They were missing something, but he didn’t know quite what.

His mind turned suddenly towards Lady Xavier.  He hadn’t been wrong—she was a lady from the top of her silly feathered hat to the tips of her little expensive leather shoes.  Her blue dress had to have been made of silk and it covered a slim and curved body.  It wasn’t the cost or cut of her clothes that made her a lady in his estimation.  She carried herself like a falcon—noble, elegant, so keenly beautiful it made a man’s eyes ache to look at her.