McCrory's Lady (9 page)

      
Colin narrowed his eyes, giving his face an even harder cast. “Sleeping potions, abortive herbs. Is there no end to your medical talent?”

      
She stiffened and met his harsh, cynical stare head on. “I didn't need to use the herbs on Eden. She just finished her flow three days ago. She's safe.”

      
His shoulders crumpled and he looked away. “Thank God for that, but what if”—he struggled to say the words—“what if any of those bastards were poxed?”

      
“Only Lazlo took her, and he was healthy.”

      
His head swiveled. “How do you—”

      
“He was a regular of Henrietta's. I make all my girls check their customers—and make the men wash—before they're even allowed near a mattress.” She felt that irritating urge to blush again and forced herself to ignore it. Better to confront him now and have done with it. “While we're discussing such indelicate matters, I suppose, for your peace of mind I should assure you I'm not poxed either.”

      
“I suppose that means your Sassenach lover is healthy, although he does look a bit gaunt of cheek—”

      
“Bart isn't my lover!” she said furiously, damning his mawkish display at the dinner table.

      
“Right,” Colin replied with a sardonic lift of one eyebrow. “That's why the two of you have this cozy arrangement with your private apartments adjoining each other. Do you meet at night in your office to do bookkeeping together?”

      
Her fingers dug into the back of the settee. If she let go she was certain she would fly at him and slap that cold, hard smirk off his handsome face. “We keep separate bedrooms because we sleep separately. Bart is not, nor has he ever been, my lover. I haven't had any other men since...” Her voice faded as she fought the memories that clawed at her. “If you don't believe me, there's a doctor—”

      
“That won't be necessary,” he said curtly. This was humiliating for her—he could tell by the rigid stance of her body, the heightened color in her cheeks, that small pulse beating wildly at the base of her throat. He felt a wholly irrational urge to reach out to her, to touch that pale golden skin and feel the fluttering of her heartbeat.

      
Damn! This was exactly the opposite of what he had come here to do. “I don't need to know anything about your physical condition. If the marriage were to take place, it wouldn't be consummated anyway.”

      
His words fell like bricks in the quiet room.

      
“
If?
” Her eyes bored into him. “You mean you're breaking your word with no more regret than a Scots borderer would? No wonder you've called me Sassenach!”

      
“I'm not breaking my word,” he said defensively, spreading his hands across the delicately carved back of a slipper chair.

      
They faced each other like two combatants across the small room, each using a piece of furniture for a shield.

      
“Then what exactly are you doing?” Why was it so hard for her to breathe? Damn the man for his power to wound her.

      
“I'm making you a business proposition. As you probably gathered at dinner, I'm a reasonably wealthy man. And I'm grateful for your help with Eden.”

      
“But now that you have her back, you don't want me contaminating her. Who knows, after what she's been through, I might make her into a whore just like me,” she snapped.

      
“That is not what I meant,” he said, his jaw clenched. “You want out of this town, this life. I understand that. I'll send you ten thousand in gold as soon as I can get to a bank in Tucson.”

      
She nodded her head, looking at him with scorn radiating from every pore in her body. “Ten thousand. So that's the price you put on your daughter. Well, I guess you do care for her. She must be worth at least as much as...let's see, a good-sized herd of fine cattle or even one of your stagecoach contracts.”

      
“You conniving, gold-digging—”

      
“If I only wanted money, Colin, I'd take the fifteen thousand Bart and I settled on this afternoon and move to San Francisco. I could open a real fancy parlor house there and make a bloody fortune!”

      
“Just what is it you do want, Maggie?” His voice sounded as uncertain as he felt. Damn, the woman had money. Why in the hell had she stayed buried in this wilderness all these years?

      
Maggie turned away from him and walked stiffly to the door. Opening it, she said quietly, “I don't, for damn sure, want you. Consider our bargain finished. You welshed. I accept it. Eden's safe, and that's all I care about now. I don't need your money”

      
Colin started to say something, then stopped. He felt guilty and very, very confused. And he did not like it. Silently, he walked past her, inhaling the faint essence of lilies of the valley as she closed the door firmly behind him. His footsteps sounded hollow as he walked to the room at the end of the hall, wondering if he had just made the mistake of his life.

* * * *

      
Eden awakened early the next morning and lay staring at the ceiling in the small room in Maggie's place. It was part of her private apartment, so Eden assumed none of the customers had ever used it. Just thinking of the terrible things men did to women in this very building made her shiver, remembering Judd.

      
She sat up, shaking the last cobwebs of a deep sleep from her head. “I hope he died slowly and painfully,” she whispered fiercely and threw the covers aside. In minutes, she had completed a simple toilette and brushed her corn silk hair until it glistened. Last night, Maggie had helped her wash it with perfumed soap and added fresh lemon juice to the rinse water.

      
Maggie. How would she have survived without her? Maggie had not spoken about her own hardships, the awful things that must have happened to force her into this kind of life. But Eden was grateful that Maggie Worthington was a woman of the world with experience enough to understand what she was going through—and compassion enough to care.

      
As long as Maggie was there as a buffer, Eden could live one day at a time with her father. Somehow, she had to gather her courage and tell him the truth about Judd. Once they were back home, the lie she had told Eileen and the stories she and Louise Simpson had made up to cover her trysts with Lazlo were sure to come out. Eden could see those accusing gold eyes turn on her in anger. She had witnessed her father's wrath on only a few occasions, for he held his fierce Scots temper in check most always; but there was not a man between Crown Verde and San Carlos who dared to cross Colin McCrory. And never in her life had she been the recipient of that cold, withering fury.

      
But I will be now
. She buried her face in her hands, but no tears would come. She had cried them all out the other night when Maggie had held her and talked to her. Maybe, Maggie could think of something if Eden had the courage to confess her folly to her older friend. Of course, her father sure seemed hostile to Maggie at dinner last night. Perhaps, he was jealous of Mr. Fletcher.

      
Now, what had made that odd notion pop into her head? Eden had never questioned the fact that her handsome father had never remarried. He had kept company with several very respectable widow ladies over the years. Mariah Whittaker was the latest to set her cap for him, but Eden knew he would never succumb. She disliked Mariah. Maggie, however, was a far different matter. Eden felt a closeness, almost a mystical bonding with Maggie Worthington—as if Maggie were a surrogate mother to replace the one Eden could not remember.

      
A smile lit her face. Wouldn't it be quite perfect if her father, the confirmed bachelor, fell in love with Maggie and married her? Perhaps in time, he might even forgive his daughter for the awful betrayal that had cost her honor and had almost cost his life.

      
For the first time since she had run away with Judd Lazlo, Eden smiled as she left her room and tiptoed into the hall, careful not to awaken Maggie. She hoped to find someone stirring in the kitchen—or if not, to at least find a bite to eat. Her stomach was growling with hunger. She had been far too nervous and upset last night to eat very much at dinner.

      
She walked to the front stairs and looked down into the big saloon, which was deserted. The kitchen was somewhere in the back. She started down the steps in search of it. A huge walnut bar ran the length of one wall. Across the rest of the room, card tables were scattered randomly. The chairs had all been carefully stacked seat side down around them and the floor beneath swept clean.

      
Eden had never been in a real saloon before, and her curiosity got the better of her empty stomach. She walked over to the bar and stared at the gaudy painting of a reclining nude that hung behind it, scandalized at the voluptuous feminine curves so brazenly revealed. The look on the model's face was one of breathless lassitude.

      
So intent was she on her inspection that she did not hear Seth Brodie enter until the drunken miner was upon her.

      
“Well, well, whut we got here, sweet thang? I ain't never seen none of Miz Maggie's gals up so early.” He hiccupped and rubbed one bloodshot eyeball. “Now me, I jest keep on celebratin' clean through till mornin'. I don't hardly never sleep whilst I'm in town fer a toot.”

      
Eden looked at his bearded face and inhaled the sour reek of cheap mescal. Greasy hair of an indeterminate color hung in his eyes. He was staring at her as if she were a bucket of cold beer in the middle of the Sonoran desert. He moved with amazing speed, grabbing her before she could back away.

      
“I'm not one of the girls—”

      
“Shore yew are, sweet thang. Don't fun with me.” A lewd grin came over his face as she twisted ineffectually, kicking at him with soft, kid-slippered feet. “ ‘Course, yew 'n me cud go ta yer room 'n fun all we wanted.”

      
“Let me go,” Eden panted, dodging his fetid mouth as he tried to kiss her. God, she was so paralyzed with revulsion she could not seem to gather breath enough to scream for help.

      
“Do what the lady says.” A soft voice cut through the warm morning air like a skinning knife through silk. Wolf stood in the back doorway, one hand resting negligently on the gun at his hip. “Now.”

      
Brodie loosened his grip on Eden and stared at his adversary. “I don't give up no white woman to a breed,” he said contemptuously, using Eden for cover while one hand slid to the back of his waistband for the Thuer Conversion Colt he always carried.

      
“Wolf, watch out! He's got a gun,” Eden cried. When she twisted away from the big brute, she lost her balance and fell to the floor.

      
Blake had seen the arm movement and drew his weapon with blurring speed, but held his fire until Eden was clear. Two shots rang out almost simultaneously. Brodie's went wild, discharging into the wall several yards away from Wolf, whose shot hit the drunken miner dead center, knocking him against the bar. Brodie slid down into a sitting position, already dead.

      
“Get up and get back to your room,” Wolf said quietly as he pulled her from the floor where she had fallen. He could feel her cringe when his hands touched her arms. Maybe she preferred the drunken miner to a breed. Lots of white women did.

      
“L-let me go,” she whispered, still breathless with terror.

      
“This is a dangerous town. You're in Sonora, lady. You can't go strolling around alone,” he said angrily. Then, he realized her eyes were glazed with fright, like a wounded fawn's. He dropped his hands. “Don't look at him,” he said when she started to glance down at the dead man.

      
“You shot him,” she said idiotically.
Of course he did, to keep himself from being killed and to save you
. Men like Wolf Blake were always involved in bar fights over loose women.

      
Just then, the whole room seemed to fill with people. Colin raced down the steps, followed by Maggie and Bart. McCrory holstered his gun when he saw the dead man lying on the floor. He looked at Blake for an explanation.

      
“She came downstairs early and ran afoul of that drunk.” Wolf gestured to Brodie. “I was out back getting our gear ready when I heard them.”

      
Eden looked at her father and Maggie, then ran into Maggie's arms for comfort.

      
“I'll take her upstairs while you get rid of Brodie. He always was a troublemaker,” Maggie said, noting the stricken look in Colin's eyes before he could hide it from her.

      
“If you've got everything ready, maybe it's best we leave as soon as Eden feels up to starting,” Colin said to Wolf.

      
“But what about all Maggie's things? She can't just ride off and leave them behind. I was going to help her pack today,” Eden protested.

      
Wolf watched the silent exchange between Maggie and Colin, making no move to do anything until they settled the matter.

      
“Has there been a change of plans, Megs?” Bart asked from his vantage point at the top of the stairs.

      
“Yes, there has,” she replied quietly, feeling Eden stiffen in her arms. “I'm staying behind until I decide if Arizona Territory is really where I want to go.”

      
“You can't!” Eden blurted out. “Oh, Maggie, I need you! I thought you...” She sobbed.
I thought you were going to marry my father and make up for what I've done
. “I thought you were my friend. Please don't leave me.” Tears brimmed in her whiskey gold eyes.