McCrory's Lady (18 page)

      
“The Simpson woman has spread her gossip all over Prescott. Even Jeb Settler came up from Tucson, verifying that Colin McCrory had hired some half-breed gunman last month to ride with him into Sonora. Use your brains, Edward. They were chasing Eden and that trashy Lazlo person she ran away with.”

      
“But Eden arrived home at Crown Verde with her father and his new bride. Colin said they went to Yuma to meet Mrs. McCrory. Perhaps the whole thing's just been a misunderstanding. Colin McCrory is one of the wealthiest and most influential men in the territory. You went to great lengths to arrange my engagement to Eden.”

      
“Are you implying that I am at fault because that stupid little fool had an affair with a gunman?” Her voice was brittle, but carefully modulated, cool, dangerous.

      
Edward took another swallow of his coffee, now decidedly cold, then set the cup and saucer down. “Of course not, Mamá.”

      
“Then you will write to Colin McCrory at once indicating that it would be best if the engagement were discreetly broken.”

      
“I dislike having Colin McCrory for an enemy,” Stanley said with a frown.

      
Sophie sniffed. “By the time this whole tawdry affair comes out, he'll have so many other things to worry about, you'll be the least of his problems.”

      
A sly smile insinuated itself on Edward's boyishly handsome face. “I imagine Mariah Whittaker is ready to kill McCrory—or his new wife.”

      
Sophie gave her son a quelling look. Men could be so vulgar at times. “She was a fool to take him to her bed before she wrung a proposal out of him.” Dismissing the jilted Mariah, she tapped her cheek with one bony finger. “I wonder what hold this mysterious female has over Colin? Heaven knows he's avoided matrimony all these years.”

      
“I have every confidence you'll find out, Mamá,” Edward said dryly.

* * * *

      
Ed Phibbs had a nose for news and it was twitching as she sat at her desk in the cluttered office of the
Arizona Miner
. Desk was really a lofty appellation for the rickety old table in one corner of the narrow room. She shared the long table with the newspaper's typesetter who had stacked his case boxes and linseed oil rags on it.

      
Sniffing the pungent aroma, she tapped her pencil on the tablet in front of her and squinted in concentration. “Lucille Guessler's holding a tea this afternoon to welcome Colin McCrory's new wife to Prescott,” she said to her boss, Clement Algren.

      
Clement, disdainfully called Fatty Algren behind his back, raised his gray eyebrows and squinted at her from myopic eyes. “Thought you hated covering teas and other such female folderol,” he said suspiciously.

      
Ed's hatchet face was all blandness and guile. “It is news when the richest and most confirmed bachelor in the territory brings home a mysterious new wife after keeping company with Mariah Whittaker this past year.”

      
Clement harrumphed. “Keeping company” was probably a polite euphemism for what really went on with the scheming Mariah, but Clement let it pass. “You better not be thinking about that story on McCrory's war with the Tucson merchants. I told you to keep that long, bony nose out of it.” He stood up, all five feet of him, formidable only because of his girth. One wag in town had said, “He’s so fat he don’t have no sideways.”

      
Ed knew better than to trade insults with the cantankerous old newspaperman who had given her a desperately needed job as a reporter last month. “I'll just write up the tea,” she replied innocently. “Lucille Guessler is having it to challenge Sophie Stanley as social arbiter of Prescott. I wonder who'll win,” she added idly, not really caring a fig.

      
“You might see what you can find out about that girl of McCrory's while you're at it. I don't believe that tale about her going with him to Yuma to witness his marriage for one minute.” If he could get the goods on Colin McCrory, Win Barker just might be real grateful, real grateful indeed. He looked at the tall, gangly woman who grated on his nerves. She was altogether too quick for a female, taking on airs above herself, wanting to usurp his rightful role as the reporter and editorial writer on capital politics.

      
“It does seem fishy, but all that gossip of old Elda Simpson's about her girl Louise helping Eden elope with some gunhand sounds just plain crazy.” Ed loved playing devil's advocate to Fatty Algren.

      
“Well, Edward Stanley sure must've thought there was something to it. He broke his engagement with the high and mighty McCrory's daughter fast enough,” he said nastily. “Never could see why a smart young state councilman like Stanley, with his political future, wanted to marry into a family of Apache lovers.”

      
“Maybe their money? Or McCrory's political influence back in Washington?” Ed couldn't resist taunting.

      
He harrumphed again, his face glowing cherry red. “Just you have a care about the Stanleys' good name—and stay away from politics. That's
my
business.” He rocked back on his heels and the floorboards groaned in protest.

      
Ed blinked her protuberant gray eyes innocently. “I'm on my way to report on the tea. I do so wonder what Mrs. McCrory will be wearing.”

      
Algren gave her a warning look, then turned around and sat down at his desk. Ed Phibbs smirked at his back before leaving the office.

* * * *

      
Maggie was no more concerned with what she would wear to the tea than Ed Phibbs. Her major concern since arriving in Prescott was Eden, who sat by the hotel window, shoving some chicken and dumplings back and forth on her plate without eating a bite.

      
“I let you skip breakfast on condition that you'd eat lunch if I brought you a tray, Eden,” Maggie said, trying to sound stern.

      
“I just couldn't face that crowded dining room of whispering people again,” Eden said, her voice breaking.

      
Maggie forced a cynical smile. “They were whispering about me, not you—wondering about my mysterious past.”

      
“Everyone will think you're a perfect match for Father.”

      
Some perfect match. We sleep in separate bedrooms and act like polite strangers.
Maggie wondered if that was how Eden envisioned the life she had expected to have with Edward Stanley. If so, small wonder she ran away with Judd Lazlo! “You have to stop brooding over Edward Stanley. Any man who would send a note to break his engagement without the courage to talk to you face to face was never worth having,” Maggie said indignantly, still furious over the cruel, cowardly way Eden had been treated. “He made a decision based on gossip.”

      
“He didn't make the decision at all, I'm certain. His mother did. Sophie Stanley could never abide the faintest hint of scandal. She believes Edward will be a United States senator, perhaps even president one day.” Eden's voice was cold now. Thinking of Sophie as a mother-in-law had always chilled her to the bone.

      
“No man with that lack of gumption will ever be elected president,” Maggie said firmly. “Eden, you can't let the Sophie Stanleys of this world win. If you don't stand up to her and all her friends right now, you'll spend the rest of your life hiding. The young woman who put that centipede in Judd Lazlo's boot wasn't a coward. She was incredibly brave—willing to sacrifice her own life to save her father.”

      
“Who wouldn't have been in danger except for me.” Looking up at Maggie's determined expression, Eden sighed and took a bite from a dumpling.

      
“You're getting so thin you have to walk down the street twice just to make a shadow, young lady. Eat every bit of that food.”

      
In spite of herself, Eden smiled. “What would I do without you, Maggie? You're the one with the real courage.”

      
“Pshaw. We'll show this town's old biddies that a couple of McCrory women can face down whatever they dish up. Finish that food while I lay out your dress for the tea. The green dimity, I think?”

      
An hour later the McCrory women climbed down from their carriage in front of Lucille Guessler's white gingerbread house ringed with her prize-winning pink Baroness Rothschild roses. Maggie was dressed in a powder blue linen suit with a frilly white blouse, sophisticated and understated in contrast to Eden's demurely innocent dimity frock.

      
“Chin up. You've had lots more practice balancing teacups than I have,” Maggie said as they approached the front porch and an unctuously smiling Lucille.

      
Her gushing welcome could not hide her avid curiosity as she inspected both women with over bright spaniel brown eyes. “I have been so excited about introducing you to Prescott society, Mrs. McCrory. You simply must tell us all about how you were able to capture that elusive rascal, Colin.”

      
Maggie gave vague answers, smiled a great deal and attempted to include Eden in as much of the conversation as possible while she made small talk with half a dozen women clustered around her in the Guesslers' cluttered parlor. In spite of Eden's reticence, Maggie sensed no overt rancor on the part of the women she had been introduced to so far. Even if they were a bit curious about the gossip, they had the good breeding not to bring it up.

      
Gradually, as Maggie was embroidering on the tale of how she met Colin while he was on a business trip to San Francisco a year earlier, the room began to grow quieter. By now, there were at least two dozen ladies present, all sipping tea and sampling the Guessler cook's baking expertise, which ran to gooey petit fours and sodden cream puffs.

      
A striking woman with ebony hair, dressed in magenta silk was staring daggers at Maggie's back from the front hallway. Her face was pale, as perfectly chiseled as a Michelangelo sculpture. And just as cold. The low, furtive whispers began as she made her way across the crowded room. She stopped in front of Maggie and her thin delicate lips smiled but her icy blue-gray eyes did not.

      
“You must be Colin's new wife. I'm Mariah Whittaker. Colin and I have been friends for nearly fifteen years. I don't know what I would've done without him after my husband passed on two years ago.”

      
So she's the one Eden warned me about
, Maggie thought wryly, returning the cool, distant smile. “My condolences on your loss, Mrs. Whittaker,” Maggie said dulcetly. She could see Lucille Guessler wring her linen hankie until the lace ripped loose from the edges.

      
“Your marriage was quite a surprise to everyone in Prescott,” Mariah said, ignoring Maggie's taunt and continuing her offensive. “Colin has never mentioned you at all, I'm afraid.”

      
“My husband, as you should know—being such old friends—is a taciturn Scot who keeps his own counsel, Mrs. Whittaker.”

      
“Really. My, I wonder if even poor Eden knew about Colin's plans.” She turned with mock solicitude on her face to question Eden. “Had you even met your new stepmamá—that is, before you went to Yuma for the wedding?” she added slyly.

      
Eden's face went scarlet as every eye in the room was now fixed on her; but before she could think of how to field Marian's nastily insinuated question, Maggie intervened.

      
“As a matter of fact, Eden was just as surprised by her father's wedding plans as you were—but considerably happier about them,” she added. She winked at Eden.

      
Mariah's eyes turned opaque with fury. “Of course, Eden did have other things on her mind before she returned to Crown Verde with you and Colin.”

      
“You are referring to my relationship with Edward Stanley, I assume. The engagement has been broken, and no one is happier about that fact than I,” Eden said with quiet dignity.

      
Maggie could have kissed her. “No one but her new stepmamá,” she said, parroting Mariah's pretentious pronunciation. Turning to her agitated hostess, she dismissed Mariah with a swish of her skirts, presenting her back to the fuming woman. “You must show me your famous roses, Lucille.” Taking her stepdaughter by the arm, she added, “Eden's told me all about them,”

      
They strolled across the parlor, with Lucille making further introductions as they moved from one small group to the next, wending their way to the side door adjacent to Lucille's rose garden. After their exit, conversation returned to its earlier buzzing, although the group that gravitated to Mariah's side was decidedly dour-looking and spoke in sharp whispers intended to carry to their neighbors.

      
“A nobody from heaven knows where...probably married Colin for his money.”

      
“That girl ran off with a common gunman. Who'd believe that fool story about Yuma?”

      
“I for one don't blame Edward Stanley one whit. Eden McCrory is ruined.”

      
Ed Phibbs had taken in the entire confrontation and its aftermath and admired the gumption of McCrory's women. Lordy, how she detested backbiting busybodies. Perhaps, if she could do a flattering piece about the new Mrs. McCrory, she might learn a bit more about the taciturn Scot himself. It was worth a try, and Ed Phibbs would shake hands with the devil himself if it meant a story.

      
She bided her time until the tour of the rose garden was over. As the trio drew near the porch stairs, Ed descended to meet them.

      
Maggie saw a tall, mannish-looking woman wearing a shapeless brown dress and sensible shoes approaching them with a no-nonsense look on her elongated, quizzical face.