The Temptress (12 page)

Chris's lips tightened into a line. “I can play whatever role is needed. How would Owen Hamilton know what I was like?”

“I'm sure that if he's a man like you think he is, to take away a child's inheritance, to have his relatives killed, then he's the type who would investigate a person. Surely he knows about Diana's father's suicide and he must have heard about the funds I”—he winked at her—“was embezzling.”

“You're willing to risk your life for something that's none of your business?” She still couldn't believe he
wanted
to do this. Did he like her that much? Or was it her father's money?

“If you hadn't risked your life so many times as Nola Dallas, there would be fewer reforms in our laws. Chris, I'd be honored to be your husband whether for a night or forever.”

“Oh,” Chris said, blinking.

“Now, shall we start making plans?” Asher asked. “I think we should stay here today and maybe tomorrow, and read that diary aloud and find out everything we can about Diana Eskridge and her husband. You'll walk into this as prepared as you can be. Agreed?”

Chris looked up from under her lashes at Asher who was smiling as if he were extremely pleased about something. This time tomorrow this man would be her husband—sort of.

When he turned and looked at her, she noticed for the first time how thick his lashes were and now he was looking at her in a way that was decidedly making her uncomfortable. She shifted in her chair while listening to him make plans.

Owen Hamilton's house was a three-story mansion not far from the sea on Washington's west coast. It had taken them three days of preparing for the trip, before Chris and Asher had climbed into a buggy that had to be fifteen years old and ridden west.

Asher and she hadn't spoken a great deal on the way to the Hamilton house, both of them going over what they needed to know to carry off this escapade. They spent the night at an inn, taking separate rooms, and started in the early morning.

They were within a few miles of the house when Asher turned to her. “This is your last chance, Chris,” he said. “If you want to back out, now's the time.”

“Not unless you do.”

Ash chuckled. “This is a man's dream. I get to spend nights and days with a beautiful young lady, I get to do something constructive with my time besides beg banks for loans they won't give and I might get some of the satisfaction you get from helping people. What more can I ask?” He looked at her out of the corner of his eye. “By the way, Chris, I mean to use this time to win you over. By the time we leave here, I plan to have you in love with me.”

“Me or my money?” she asked, one eyebrow cocked.

“Did your gunslinger tell you that?”

“No,” she said honestly. “But isn't it true that my father sent you on the rescue mission in the hopes that I'd fall in love with you? My father badly wants me to marry, stay home and have babies.”

He smiled at her, snapping the reins to make the horse go faster. “It started out that way. I think I was to the point that I would have married a three-headed ostrich if I thought I could have a chance at getting my self-respect back. But the truth is, Chris, it's come to mean more to me. You're the most courageous woman I've ever met. You're the most…most interesting woman I've ever met. If we lived together for ninety years, I don't think I'd get bored with you.”

Chris had to laugh. “I think that may be one of the nicest compliments I've ever received.”

“And now that that strutting criminal is out of the way, I think I'll have a chance. I'll never understand why you ladies fall for that type.”

As Chris watched, he shrugged. Was Tynan just a type? she wondered. Was that all he was and nothing more? He had seemed so special, so unique. Maybe she'd been blinded by his extraordinary exterior beauty. A horse pounding along the road beside them made her heart nearly skip a beat, but it was just a cowboy. She relaxed against the back of the seat—relaxed as much as she could in the springless carriage. “You have my permission to try, Mr. Prescott,” she said. “You may try.”

Two hours later, they arrived at the Hamilton house.

“Now remember that you are Diana Eskridge, a meek, mild-mannered woman and not the notorious Nola Dallas. If you step out of place, I may have to reprimand you.”

Chris, with eyes wide, looked up at him and started to speak, but the front door was opened by a fat, aproned woman and Chris put her head down. She'd chosen clothes she thought Diana would wear, simple little calicos, all insipid colors, all hint of stylishness gone. They were the clothes of a woman who'd allow her husband to make her life miserable.

“You must be the Eskridges,” the heavy woman with the broad face said. “We've been expecting you for days. Was beginnin' to worry about you. Just set those bags down and I'll get Mr. Owen.” She went straight ahead, up some stairs. “By the way, I'm Unity,” she called over her shoulder.

Chris stepped farther into the room. They were standing in an entryway, with a music room to the right, a parlor to the left, and to the right, farther down the hall a dining room. She looked up as a man came down the stairs. He was tall, broad-shouldered, with a small mustache over full lips. The last thing in the world that he looked like was anyone's idea of a villain. He was smiling in such a pleasant way that Chris wanted to tell him the truth of who she was.

“You must be Diana,” he said and he had a deep voice that instantly made a person relax. “We meet at last.”

She offered him her hand. “Yes, finally,” she murmured. “May I introduce my husband, Whitman? We can't thank you enough for inviting us to your lovely home.”

He smiled at both of them with genuine warmth. “Think nothing of it. I'll be glad for the company and Unity will be pleased to have someone to fuss over. Now, you must be tired. Let me take you to your room. We'll eat in about an hour and until then I'm afraid you'll have to excuse me as I have mountains of paperwork to do. Quite unexpectedly, I have a buyer coming in from the East day after tomorrow and I have to be ready for him. Make yourself at home. There's a garden in back that you might like. Here we are.” He opened the door to a large, spacious room with a big, double, four-postered bed, a closet and a little bay-window seat in the corner. Chris was grateful to see a fainting couch along one wall. Ash followed her eyes and winked at her, making her face turn pink.

“This is more than adequate,” Ash said. “Thank you very much.”

“If you need anything, just let out a holler. We're not formal here. Unity is usually in the kitchen below or sometimes you can find me upstairs. I have a billiards table up there and a complete bar. One of my great luxuries in life. I'll see you in the dining room at twelve-thirty.” He closed the door behind him and was gone.

Asher sat on the bed, bouncing a bit to test the springs. “I wouldn't want this to squeak. More marriages are ruined by loud mattresses than any other—”

“He didn't say a word about Lionel,” Chris said, cutting Ash off. “Do you think he's here? You don't think he's already done something to him, do you?”

“Buried him in the rosebushes? Owen doesn't look like a man who'd do anyone a bad turn. I never met anyone who welcomed his destitute relatives with such open arms before. How about a nap before dinner?”

“I sincerely hope that you aren't going to persist in talking of the…the intimacies of married couples. I think I'll see this garden Owen mentioned. An eleven-year-old boy might be there playing.”

Chris went down the stairs to the kitchen. Unity wasn't in the room but the smells of the food cooking were delicious. She felt as if it had been years since she'd had a decent meal.

The garden outside was beautiful, full of azaleas, wildflowers from the mountains, bulb plants. It was obviously the great love of someone and she guessed it was Owen Hamilton. There was a curved stone bench under a big Douglas fir and she sat on it, leaning back against the tree and closing her eyes. At the moment she'd never been so homesick in her life. Her mother used to have a garden like this but since she'd died, her father had not taken care of it. Now, when she visited, she almost cried to see the weeds overtaking it. “You should stay home and see to it yourself,” her father kept saying to her.

“You will not be allowed to sit there. That is
my
bench.”

Chris opened her eyes to see a boy standing in front of her. He looked a little like Owen except where Owen's face was pleasant, this boy's was scowling.

“You must be Lionel,” she said, smiling. “I'm—”

“I know who you are. You're the poor relatives who've come to live off me. Now get up and go away.”

Chris just sat there looking at him.

Lionel's face began to turn red. “I told you to get up. That is
my
seat. This is
my
garden. This is
my
house. Do I have to call my uncle to get rid of you?”

“Why, yes, I do believe you'll have to do just that,” she said, wondering what Owen would do if he were summoned away from his paperwork to tell a guest to give her seat to a rude little boy.

Lionel's face began to lose its redness but she could see that his anger was just beneath the surface. “You have to obey me.”

“Why is that?”

“Because I own everything here and you are at my mercy.”

Chris smiled at him, repressing a laugh. “It doesn't look like you own this seat at the moment. Nor do you seem to own any manners. Shall we begin again? I'm your cousin, Diana Eskridge.”

Lionel took a step back from her, then, in a split second, he grabbed a handful of mud from a flower bed and threw it onto the front of her clean dress. Before Chris could speak, he ran out of sight.

Standing, Chris looked down at the front of her dress, then started back to the house.

Unity, taking a pan of cornbread from the oven, looked up. “I take it you met Lionel. Here, honey, sit down and we'll get you cleaned up. That boy is gonna be the death of us all.”

“I'm sure it's none of my business, but does anyone ever discipline that child?” She took the wet cloth Unity gave her.

“Till their hands near fell off. When you get as old as I am, you learn that kids are as different as night and day. Some of 'em you can discipline with a look, most of 'em you can discipline with a birch rod—and then there's Lionel.
Nothin'
has any effect on him. Believe me, his uncle's tried ever'thing.”

“How about gentleness?” Chris asked, wiping at the mud on her dress. “I mean he is an orphan.”

“You ain't been here long, but you'll see. Mr. Owen is the gentlest man alive. It breaks his heart when he has to take a rod to that boy. For years, he wouldn't do it. He kept sayin' he wanted the boy to feel at home here but I've known him since he was a baby.”

Chris wasn't sure how much Diana was supposed to know, but she had to chance it. “You were with Lionel before his uncle was?”

“I keep forgettin' that you don't know about us.”

“If you'll hand me that bowl of peas I'll shell them for you,” Chris said.

“Now this ain't to be usual. You're family, but for today I'll let you help. Now, where was I? Oh yes. I worked for Mr. Owen's brother and sister-in-law; I was there the night Mrs. Laura had little Lionel. That was a happy night. But it wasn't but a few months later that they was killed in that fire. Lionel was only six months old. Of course everything was left to him, with Mr. Owen to take care of the property until Lionel reached twenty-one. He's done the best he could, but that boy…” She trailed off, leaving the rest to the imagination.

Chris couldn't get anymore from the woman and Unity spent the rest of their time together talking about what a wonderful man Owen was and how she was fortunate to be able to work for him. Chris thought that this was every homeowner's dream, to find a dedicated servant.

At dinner, Lionel came to the table late, his mouth set into a sulky pout. Owen greeted him and introduced him to his cousins, Diana and Whitman, but Lionel just gave them a sullen look and began to push the food about on his plate. Twice, Chris caught him looking at her with especially hostile looks. Both times she smiled at him.

“What a brat of a kid,” Ash said when they were alone in their room. “Has anyone taken a switch to him? And why was he eating with adults anyway?”

“Probably because he owns the place,” Chris said as she hung up her meager wardrobe.

Asher ran his hand along the edge of the wardrobe. “I never thought I could come to love a piece of furniture. Remember the first time I saw you? I told Tynan we shouldn't be hiding in a lady's bedroom but he said we had to get to you without your making any noise. We thought you'd be asleep but the bed was empty and we jumped into the wardrobe when we heard you coming back into the room.”

“I don't want to talk about him.”

“Him? Who? You don't mean that two-bit gunslinger, do you? I thought you were over him. After what he did at that picnic, I'd think you'd never want to see him again.”

“I don't. Could we talk about something else? Such as how we're going to find out what's going on in this house? What is making that child so miserable?”

“Being spoiled rotten is all that's wrong with him and if you had any children of your own, you'd know that.”

“And you do have children? So many that you're an authority on the subject?”

“I know enough to be sure of what I see. He's been given everything and he expects more. Chris, let's not argue. Let's enjoy this time together.” He reached out his arms to her, his hands almost catching her, but she sidestepped him.

“I'm going outside to the garden. I'll see you later. See if you can make yourself useful to Owen and find out something. We're here for a story and that's what I plan to look into.”

Chris left the room with a sigh of relief. She hadn't given much thought to actually living with a man, of being in the same room with him night after night. But already, she could see the problems that it was going to involve.

Downstairs, she found Owen and Unity looking perplexed. “I'll take care of it,” Unity was saying. “You just go back to work where you belong.”

Chris bit her tongue to keep from asking what Lionel had done now, but, instead, she politely murmured that she would like to help with whatever was the problem.

“It's merely one of those household complications that can't be helped,” Owen said. “But today I do need to get work done before the buyer arrives and I don't have time to—”