The Indiscretion (28 page)

"Ah, that." He nodded. "Yes. Your father. I'm
supposed to take him down a few pegs. He's giving us a hard time. Who would've
thought, huh?"

She sluiced him a sideways glance. "You lied to me—"

He let out a gust, disbelief. "Hell, you lied so much
that—" He stopped himself; they'd only argue. "About what?" he
asked. Better to deal with her complaints directly.

Without looking at him, she pulled the bowstring back. "You
let me believe you were a cowboy who worked on a ranch—"

"I did work on a ranch." He frowned. "By the way,
what story
are
you telling? Your
brother, this morning, told me you and Rose were left on foot with 'a fool,' a
cowboy who wandered off one night to relieve himself and never found his way
back. This was your story?" He was briefly annoyed again to remember Clive
Bedford-Browne's rollicking humor, unbeknownst at Sam's expense. "Why? Why
was there any man at all in your story?"

She glanced at him again, a moment's fluster, then lowered her
bow. "Because you rode off without your coat. Or your crazy hat, which
I—" She pressed her mouth. "I picked up—"

"My hat? You have it?"

She turned on him, direct now. "And there was your underwear
– oh, for goodness' sakes, you know perfectly well that I couldn't allow the
man who belonged to those – those – well, he had to be so far removed from
anything attractive—" She shook her head. "Thank God your underwear
was red."

"Why 'thank God'?"

"Because it's a silly color for men's underwear. It made
people laugh."

"Oh, Jesus—" He caught himself back. Next thing he knew,
he'd be talking about shithouse doors again. "Heck," he corrected,
"folks are so silly about underwear anyway, they laugh in public over them
no matter what color they are." He looked at her. "Did the red make
you laugh?"

"It made me uncomfortable."

"Why? And what's so crazy about my hat?" He missed it.
He wished he had it.

"Well, red is so—" She frowned at him, stumped, then
said, "So loud. And the hat is so—"

Oh, yeah. That again. He understood. "So not-English,"
he offered.

She sighed. "Yes." She bent her head. "You should
leave. You don't belong here." She pulled a face.

He changed the subject. Squinting toward her target, he said,
"You're good. Really good."

"Yes, I am. The regional champion. Just this past week."

"I'm not surprised. Congratulations."

When he looked at her again, she'd tilted her head, standing there
holding her bow, staring at him. She took a quick breath, looked down, then up
again, and, as if it pained her to say it, said nonetheless, "Look. I
appreciate your trying to be civil, reassuring, as you call it. But in truth
I'd just like you to leave."

"Leave?"

"You make me nervous."

"Nervous?"

"Yes. Leave. Leave Yorkshire."

"I can't. I have obligations—"

"Yes, you can. You just get on a ship and go."

More alarmed, he said, "Leave England? You want me to leave
the damn country?" How crazy was this? "Liddy—"

"I'll shoot you for it," she said suddenly. "Right
now. And my prize, if I win, is you go."

He drew his brow up and scratched his head. "I can't very
well leave England—"

"Yorkshire then. If I win, you walk back to the house, go
upstairs, pack, and call for a carriage. You go. We'll shoot for it."

He laughed. "I'd be crazy to shoot against you. You're better
than I am."

"Oh, come now." She smiled that little line of a smile
of hers. "Where's your sense of competition?"

"Nowhere." He snorted. "How much competition would
it be, me shooting against the regional champion?"

"
Women's
champion," she amended. "The men's competition is much more rigorous,
of course. More arrows, farther distances."

He laughed at her attempt. "I don't know anything about an
English bow. I'd lose."

"But you're so good with a Comanche bow and arrow," she
said, the syrupy curve of her smile challenging again his story this morning.

"They're not the same thing."

"Then a handicap."

He paused, looked at her. "How much of a handicap?"

"Whites. The outside circle. None of my arrows that land in
it will count. It's a standard winner's handicap. I've played it before."

And still won, he'd bet. Though he found himself ruminating,
staring at the target.

"Ten arrows," she said. "Two rounds of five arrows
each at sixty yards. How's that?" When he didn't dispute this time, she
tilted her head and made that little line of a smile he was so fond of. It was
a wicked smile, he was coming to understand. Which was probably why he liked it
so much. "We go by points." She named the painted rings of the target
from the outside in: "One point for whites, three for blacks, five for
blue, seven red, and nine points for a gold. Do you understand it?"

Sure, he thought. "And blacks, too," he added.

"What?"

"I want blacks, too, in the handicap. They don't count
either."

She frowned, studying him, which made him sure it was the right
move. "Well, I—"

"Come on," he encouraged. "You're the champion, and
I've never done it before."

"Oh, all right," she said – Miss Cocky – and smiled more
of that same smile. Or at least he thought she was being cocky. He hoped so.
She sure did agree quickly.

Which was how he realized he had agreed too. The dare was on.

He nodded again as he looked at the target in the distance. How
hard could it be? he asked himself. It wasn't even moving.

While, beside him, the woman broke into cackles, the witch:
raucous caterwauls of pleasure.

*

Given
her laughter, Sam was a little nervous as he tromped out to the targets –
butts, she called them – to gather her arrows and set up their match. The State
Department would not want to see him back in London. So why he'd taken the fool
challenge was a mystery to him.

Till Liddy bent down to get an arrow that was buried in the ground
at the foot of the target (proof she could miss), and her bottom went straight
up in the air. Staring at her backside, he smiled. "More motion than an ocean,"
he murmured.

"Pardon?" She looked around, upside down at him, and the
arrow released into her hand.

"Um, nothin'. A Texas saying."

She stood up, swinging around with a swish of skirts. "About
what?"

"Um – the targets." Sam busied himself, pulling arrows
from the "butt." "Hardly seems fair. No motion. They can't
move."

"They're straw."

"Right. I'm just saying, um – rabbits are more my line."

"Good," she said and laughed again, cheerfully sadistic
at his discomfort.

Once the targets were set to her satisfaction – at sixty yards,
when she'd been shooting fifty – she was quick to get started.

"Ladies first," he said and, like that,
thwack
, she shot a bull's-eye
immediately. Arrow in the grass or not, he began to wonder if she shot anything
else.

"Nine points," she chimed out, turning toward him with a
smile.

She invited conversation as she shot her round. "So how did a
cowboy end up a diplomat?"

He shrugged. "It was something different to do."

She glanced at him, then aimed another arrow. "Cowboys can't
afford to be in the company you're in." She let the arrow go. It flew
across the field, straight for the target, which sucked it in. A red. Just
outside the gold center. Thank goodness. "Sixteen," she said.

"This one can."

She reached back, pulling another arrow from the quiver as she
glanced at him under her elbow – she threw him another peeved look that once
more accused him of withholding information.

"Railroads," he said quickly. "Railroads and
cattle. The combination's been good to me."

"And the diplomatic appointment?"

"I volunteered for the quick war we had with Spain a year and
a half ago, then ended up translating at the first treaty talks."

"Translating?"

He laughed. "All my pop's mistresses were Mexican. You
wouldn't believe what I can say in Spanish – nothing gets by me. Anyway, by the
second round of talks, I was negotiating. The U.S. didn't have much experience
with foreign wars and acquisitions. I was there. I could speak the language.
And it turned out I was good at bringing everyone's interests together. I used
the same approach I use in business. Ended up going to Havana, Manila, Madrid,
then Paris. By then I was working for the State Department." He paused,
then finished up. "McKinley thought I'd make a good person for the English
negotiations on the canal through Central America, since it floats around the
same ideas as the other treaties. And that, more or less, has brought me
here."

Thw-w-wack
. Another
bull's-eye. Sam stared at the target. Jesus, he didn't stand a chance.

"Twenty-five," she said, then paused to look at him,
puzzled. "So what about all the cowboy talk? As if you ride the
range?"

"I have. I did. I want to again."

Though it wasn't the same anymore. As he watched her shoot a total
of thirty-seven points in five arrows – two golds, two reds, and a blue (she
didn't need the goshdamn whites or blacks!) – he flapped his jaw: about the bad
winter in '85, the summer that followed that was so dry the grass smoked and
rivers dried up to nothing but paths of wet rocks. Then the next winter, a
blizzard with temperatures to forty-six below.

"It was worse than anything anyone knew."

Liddy had let her hand, her bow come to rest in her skirts. She'd
fixed on him all the attention she'd up to now given the target, her head
tilted, the feather on her hat fluttering in the light breeze. And Sam suddenly
didn't want to stop talking. He wanted her to keep looking at him like that –
he wanted to stand forever where he was: in the heart of her interest,
speculation, and questions.

She encouraged him. "Go on."

"It cut the heart out of my father. I went to see him, to
help. He had cattle suffocating in drifts of snow as they tried to find shelter
in gulches – maddened, ice-encrusted, staggering into town, starving, desperate
for warmth. When the snow finally melted, the coulees were deep with dead cows.
My pop lost ninety percent of his herd.

"He died the year after and left me the ranch, where I did
what he and I, one time, had argued over: I fenced all the land I dared, kept
the herd small on purpose, and grew hay, alfalfa, and sorghum for feed. When
I'd suggested this before, Pop had said I 'thought small.' Turned out, that was
the way to think. I have a foreman who manages it now. The ranch makes good
money." Sam grew quiet.

Liddy's regard remained fixed on him, full of … curiosity,
sympathy, something. "I'm sorry," she said. "When was the last
time you were there?"

He shrugged. "A couple years ago." He smiled at her,
teasing. "So can I stay? I mean, that was a pretty sad story."

She laughed, and their gazes held, the two of them smiling. So
like the moor for a minute. Then she said, "No. Here." She held the
bow toward him. "Your turn." But she asked, "You didn't live
with your father?"

"Till I was sixteen. We got on terrible. When my mother died
– she'd left long before that – my grandmother came to visit, to bring me some
of her things. When Gram went back to Chicago, I went with her."

"Where you made good money in railroads."

He smiled and nodded, mostly because he liked agreeing with her.
"More or less."

He and she contemplated each other through the bow held in her
fist between them. With her other hand, she pushed hair from her face, the
white hat feather flitting for a second against her bare hand with its strap
and strip of leather protecting her draw fingers.

Ordinary? Had he thought the word
ordinary
in the context of her looks? There was nothing ordinary
about Liddy's thin face, starting with her gold-brown eyes, rimmed in long,
thick lashes. Intelligent, circumspect eyes.

"Your round," she said.

He quirked an eyebrow as he took the bow. "Can I take a few
practice arrows?"

"Be my guest. Would you like these?" She held up her
fingertips covered in leather.

"Nah," he said. "That's for sissies."

*

His
first three practice shots missed that target completely, with him swearing and
Liddy laughing till she was bent over into her skirts.

"Why?" he asked. "Why are you so happy to make me
leave?"

She halted, her smile fading a little. "That's right,"
she said as if just realizing. "If you leave, I won't get to enjoy your
terrible shooting."