The Genuine Lady (Heroines on Horseback) (33 page)

The station-master came out of the office, surveyed the wreck of a man sitting on his stairs for a moment, and decided to take pity on him. “Say, Jared, why don’t you go get cleaned up and get some breakfast? Not at the saloon, mind. Go down to my house and knock on the back door. My wife will give you some grub in the kitchen.”

Jared craned his neck to look at Mike. “That’s awful good of you.”

“It’ll stop you scarin’ off nice normal passengers,” Mike said with a grin, and went back into the office.

Jared dutifully went straggling down the street and around a few corners, looking for the station-master’s house. He’d been friendly with Mike since that first week of haunting the siding, waiting for the train with Hope to arrive, and he knew the station-master had thought Hope was trouble from the moment her feathers and lace climbed down from that car. “And he was right,” Jared said to himself, not even minding that he was, at this point, looking like a hobo talking to himself as he wandered around a strange town. He kind of felt like that, anyway. Might have been easier to be a hobo. Supposin’ he just hopped on that train and kept going west?
 

He knocked at the kitchen door as Mike had instructed and waited. A few minutes went by. The sun, newly risen, promptly went behind a cloud. Jared was starting to feel like maybe parts of him had gotten frost-bitten last night.

Then the door opened, slowly, just an inch or two, clearly done with an abundance of caution, and a woman’s face peered out through the tiny crack. She looked tired, and wan, and beautiful all at once. “Can I help you?” Her voice was all of those things as well.

“Mike sent me here and said maybe you could give me breakfast,” Jared said apologetically, knowing he sounded like a beggar. “I’m sorry, ma’am, I shouldn’t have come. I just… I had a hard night last night, and I have to wait until eleven to get the train and get out of everyone’s hair.”

The door opened; the woman’s face cracked a smile. “Oh, you must be Jared Reese. I heard a mouthful about you last night, honey. Come on in and sit down at the kitchen table. I’ve got a pot full of oatmeal that is just what you want.”

Jared could scarcely believe his good luck. Either Mike really was determined to get him permanently out of Opportunity’s once-peaceful streets, or he and his wife were just out-of-control do-gooders, but by ten o’clock that morning he found himself cleaned up, shaved, and well-fed. His headache was doctored with coffee, oatmeal, fried eggs and bacon. His oilskin was brushed clean of mud and stains. Mike’s wife even sent to his hotel for his bag and made sure he put on clean trousers.

Jared stood in the doorway, stammering his thanks. “I don’t know what to say, ma’am, but you sure have been a help to me today. I can’t thank you enough.”

The station-master’s wife just smiled at him. She really was a pretty thing. Jared wondered they didn’t have any children. She was still young, despite the lines that the wind and sun had left on her face. “Just go and get your girl, Jared Reese,” she said. “And for that matter, I hope you find your horse, too. I hear he’s a nice one.” And she stepped back and shut the door.
 

Jared stood on the porch for a moment, looking at the neat, white-painted door, thinking of the trim young woman on the other side. She knew his story;
everyone
must know his story. And instead of making him out to be the biggest fool west of the Mississippi, they urged him to go and fix the problems he’d made.
 

A man was lucky to have friends like that. Even friends he barely knew.

Newly fortified, Jared hoisted his saddle-bag over his shoulder and went marching down the street towards the train station.

Richard Beacham had never enjoyed traveling, and he was heartily sick of it now. The only pleasure he was taking in anything at all these past few days was how equally unhappy Cousin Anne was. He looked at her now, rocking from side to side gently as she tried to sleep. The rails west of Chicago were rough and the ride was anything but soothing. He doubted Anne had had a proper sleep in three days. God knew he hadn’t.

But they were nearly there now, their train passing through dead, empty lands that were punctuated, at regular intervals, by gray little railroad towns. He looked out at the straggly streets and tumble-down buildings of raw lumber and tired people, and felt only an indifference towards them and their struggles. Most of them were no better than criminals, he supposed, on the run from their sordid lives back in America’s dirty, sooty cities. Places like New York, where only a barbarian would live. He glanced again at his cousin and smiled grimly. Anne Braithwhite, did you get what you wanted? he thought. A fistful of cash and a mansion amongst the colonials. She’d never looked twice at him, the fortune-seeking witch.
 

He was better off, so. Louisa had been a good wife, tractable and kind to tenants and attractive on his arm at parties. Neither woman had borne children, so he had no regrets on that score. And now he was off to find the last Beacham. Born on the wrong side of the sheets or not, the boy belonged in England, as close to Beechfields as Richard could manage. If he could have forged documents that said Walsall had married Charlotte and the boy was legitimate, he’d have done it. He still had a fellow looking into it, as a matter of fact. He wondered how the fellow was getting on. Supposedly he had gotten a bastard duke legitimized, but he wouldn’t say which one. He was very good. But Edward’s death and the Walsall’s very public snubbing of Charlotte had made the task much more difficult.

There was a rattle at the compartment door. Anne startled, her eyes flying open and her hands seizing the seat on either side of her. Richard just shook his head. Such a goose. “Come in,” he announced in a strong voice. His marquess’s voice.
 

The door opened with a click, revealing a rather forbidding man in the train’s narrow corridor. He was dressed like a cowboy, with a black hat, black oilskin, and a dirty yellow neckerchief tied at his throat. His trousers and boots were black, as well. Richard liked him; he thought the man looked terribly dangerous and intimidating, and that was precisely why he had hired him. Well, that and his two shiny pistols tucked back behind the lapels of his long coat.
 

The cowboy glowered at Richard. Through the train windows, the empty countryside whipped by behind his head.

“Can I help you?” Richard finally asked, as genially as if he was talking to a peer.
 

“You gotta a plan?” The cowboy’s voice was raspy, as if he’d been gargling with moonshine and rusty nails. It added to the entire image of danger most admirably, Richard reflected.

“Beyond finding the girl and convincing her that the child will be leaving with us? I’m not sure how much of a plan will really be necessary.”

“She’ll hardly have an armed guard to fend us off,” Cousin Anne added dryly, sitting up a little straighter in her seat. “With our words and your presence as a deterrent, I have no doubt we shall be on the next train east without any trouble.”

The cowboy looked skeptical. He opened his mouth to speak, but just then there was a loud roar as the train’s door opened and closed. A conductor came weaving down the swaying corridor, keeping his balance with one hand against the walls. He tapped the cowboy on the shoulder. “Excuse me, sir, if you could just step into the compartment and let me pass… thank you, thank you sir.” He started to walk on past.

“Excuse me, conductor!” Richard commanded, and the conductor stopped dead. “How many stops to Bradshaw?”

“Two, sir. This next stop is Opportunity.” On cue, the train whistled and began to slow. “We’ll be in Bradshaw mid-afternoon.”

“Be sure to send someone for my bags,” Richard said imperiously. “I shall be disembarking at Bradshaw and I do not wish to be kept waiting.”

“Yes sir. Excuse me, sir. I must help with bags at Opportunity.” The conductor slipped away quickly.
 

Richard looked at the cowboy. “Johnson?”

“John. Just John.”
 

“John, Johnson, whatever your name is, listen to me. This girl — my niece — she’s headstrong and willful. She has put this child into danger by bringing him out here with no real means of caring for him. If she cries, if she pleads, if she begs, just remember: she is a disobedient and dishonest
child,
and she will not hesitate to lie and scheme to keep us from taking the child back to where he belongs. Do you understand?”

John just rolled his eyes. “I’m a hired gun, old man. I don’t give a damn about no cryin’ women. You just show her to me and I’ll scare her, alright. She’ll be beggin’, alright. But you’ll get that kid you want, and I’ll get paid, and that’s all that matters.” He turned and slouched away, back to his own compartment. His insistence on his own compartment had been a sore point with Richard, who thought he ought to sit in third-class with other people of his own station. But John wasn’t the sort of fellow one argued with. That was precisely why Richard had hired him, so he couldn’t complain too much.

“Do you think she’ll get hurt?” Anne waited until the door had clicked shut to speak up, and even then her voice was low. “She really is a mad girl. If things got carried away… I mean, I could see that man doing whatever came into his head in order to be certain of getting his payment, Richard.”

“Anne, at this point what happens to Charlotte is of supreme indifference to me.” He tilted his head back and closed his eyes, indicating that the discussion was over. But in his head, he was fighting a sudden vision of a golden-haired child cantering up to his library window and asking for a candy for her pony. The little girl he’d named Cherry. And Richard Beacham swallowed hard, and sniffed, and worked his jaw, and finally pretended to fall asleep, so that he would not have to answer Anne’s questioning gaze.

***

Miss Rose was eying Hope Townsend with some discomfort from across the breakfast table.
 

It wasn’t that Mrs. Townsend was a sort of woman she didn’t often host in her boarding-house. After all, Miss Rose was a madam. A very well-regarded and well-respected madam, so much so that no one in town would actually have come out and addressed her as such, but the fact remained: the Red Rose Rooming House was generally known as one of the nicer, more discreet sorts of brothel. A nice cross between a brothel and a genuine boarding house, and located just far enough from the Professor’s saloon that drunken brawls and late-night noise was an unusual and unwelcome event. A man could stay at Miss Rose’s and
not
take up one of her girls, and that was just fine. Miss Rose was a businesswoman, after all. Bradshaw didn’t have a hotel — although she had heard whispers that Mr. Morrison might be considering one. Until then, Miss Rose was the only game in town if a fellow wanted to lay down his head at night and didn’t have a house of his own.

Or a woman, for that matter.

But Hope Townsend was a cat of a different color, and Miss Rose wasn’t sure she wanted that woman in her house another night. She’d been making eyes at every gentleman in the parlor yesterday evening, from Mark Heyward to Big Pete. Well, she could have Mark Heyward and welcome to him; the man had been eating her food and drinking her brandy at night for months, claiming that he was no good as a cook, but he hadn’t been paying his bills and she wasn’t allowing her girls anywhere near him. But as for Big Pete — well
no
one had better be caught making eyes at Big Pete. He was private property! Miss Rose buttered a biscuit with particular ferocity, outraged all over again at the Texan girl’s presumption. If she wanted a job, all she had to do was speak up and say so. But thinking she could just horn in on Miss Rose’s territory wasn’t going to get her anywhere!

“What brings you to town, Mrs. Townsend?” she asked suddenly, breaking the unusual silence at the breakfast table. It wouldn’t have been an unusual question, except that it had been asked several times last night and each time the woman had managed to change the subject and evade giving an answer. Now, in the quiet of the dining room, it would be much more difficult for her to get out of the question. At the foot of the table, her girls Celia and Dawn looked at each other with round eyes, and Miss Rose shook her head gently at them. She wanted no drama, if she could help it.

Mrs. Townsend buttered her own biscuit with serene strokes. She took a bite, apparently delighting in the crisp crust and smooth butter, and actually closed her eyes in ecstasy for several moments before she swallowed, put the rest of the biscuit down, and smiled at all and sundry with a beatific glow. “That was really the most delightful biscuit I have ever tasted, Miss Rose,” she announced. “My compliments to the cook.”

“Dawn makes a light biscuit,” Miss Rose admitted. She smoothed the sleeves of her sky-blue dress, touching the ivory lace cuffs in a seemingly unaffected manner. “Now tell me,” she continued, still fiddling with her sleeves. “What is your business in Bradshaw?” She looked up as she said
Bradshaw,
fixing Mrs. Townsend with a steely gaze.

Hope quailed a little under those hard eyes, but resolved to be just as forbidding and commanding as Miss Rose. She was more than this tawdry little madam’s equal, after all! She had gone from can-can dancer at Ruby Lowe’s to Mrs. Howard T. Townsend, millionaire, friend to statesmen and… other millionaires!
Beat that, Miss Rose,
she thought, buoyed by the thought. “I’m afraid my business is my own,” Hope said with a tight smile, and she gave a little half-apologetic shrug.

“How funny,” Miss Rose drawled. “I was about to say the same thing to you.”

Celia and Dawn burst into nervous giggles.
 

Hope drew herself up. “I am sure I don’t know what you mean.”

“Oh, let us not play games,” Miss Rose said with a wave of her hand. “If you want a job, only say so. Marcia went back east, and Celia and Dawn would not mind another girl in the house, I’m sure.”
 

Celia and Dawn exchanged rather nervous glances. Possibly a woman like Hope, hard-eyed and with a sort of overblown beauty, like a flower past blooming, was not the sort of girl they were hoping for. Miss Rose ignored them. This bitter little harpy wasn’t staying long, she could tell already. She was here for some sort of mischief, and Miss Rose didn’t permit mischief in her rooming house.