Just thinking about it was unsettling. Talking about it would embarrass both her and Penny.
“Sassy?” Penny asked, using the old childhood nickname.
“Hunter accused me of flirting with Mickey.”
“Don’t you?”
“Of course not! In the time that I’ve been home, have you ever seen me so much as smile at that bullheaded wretch?”
“No, but from what Mickey said, I assumed you did a lot more than smile.”
“What? When was he talking about me?”
“Every time he goes for supplies to the settlement or visits the Dugout Saloon up north.”
Is that why Hunter is so scornful of me? Elyssa asked silently. Has he heard all the talk?
The answer was obvious. Hunter had heard the gossip. And he had believed it.
“Mickey has no right to talk about me,” Elyssa said, her face pale. “I can’t help what his lusts are. I want no part of them, or of him.”
Penny looked over at the girl, caught by the emotion in Elyssa’s voice.
“Don’t worry,” Penny said gently. “There used to be a lot of talk about your mother, too. Just talk. It didn’t hurt her.”
“She was married to the man she loved,” Elyssa pointed out. “What if she had been single and a man who interested her wouldn’t come close because he wanted nothing to do with a little flirt?”
Penny looked into the oven and pulled the biscuits out to cool.
“Is that why you’re wearing silk and lace?” Penny asked. “To catch the new man’s eye, even though he’s rude?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“That dress makes you look like an angel freshly fallen from heaven.”
“Bother.” Elyssa’s cheeks flushed. “I’ve been wearing my foolish English clothes because I don’t fit into the clothes I left behind and there’s no money for more sensible clothes.”
Penny smiled, then laughed softly, not quite believing Elyssa’s denial. Penny’s smile was like the woman herself, generous and warm, bringing light to even the darkest corner of life.
Elyssa peeked at the other woman over her shoulder and began smiling too.
“Every time I see you smile,” Elyssa said, “I know all over again why my mother grabbed you off the street in Saint Louis and brought you west. ‘Nine years old and a smile like Christmas,’ she always said. You should smile more, Penny.”
“Not much to smile about lately, I’m afraid. It’s not like the past.”
“I miss my mother, too.” Elyssa sighed. “And I miss Father, though not as much. He was always off after gold somewhere. It’s Bill I remember teaching me how to ride and shoot and hunt and work cattle.”
Penny’s expression became even more unhappy. She, too, had been taught many wonderful things by Bill. As a young girl she had worshipped the ground beneath his big feet. She still did.
“Maybe we should get together, grab Bill, and bring him back here,” Elyssa said. “Hunter has forbidden any alcohol on the Ladder S. In a few days we would have our old Bill back. He certainly never used to drink so hard.”
A sad smile was Penny’s only answer. She looked at the headstrong girl who was like a sister to her. Elyssa reminded Penny so much of the equally headstrong woman who had rescued a nine-year-old from cruel city streets and headed west with her for a better life.
And for a time, life indeed had been better.
“You should have sold out to Bill when he offered,” Penny said.
“Why?”
“You could have gone back to England and lived quite well.”
“I hated England,” Elyssa said.
“What about New York or Boston or Los Angeles or San Francisco?”
“I don’t care much for cities. The sky is the color of coal smoke and the streets smell of sewage.”
Rather savagely, Penny forked cooked bacon out of the frying pan. She sliced more bacon, wielding the big knife as though killing snakes.
Elyssa watched her with sideways glances, wondering why Penny was so upset.
“What about Bill?” Penny asked abruptly. “You care for him, don’t you?”
“You know I do.”
“Then sell him the Ladder S! Maybe having a real ranch to run would make him drink less. And maybe if he didn’t see your pale hair and fine eyes, he would be able to forget the past.”
“What are you talking about? What is in the past that so bothers Bill?”
Bacon hissed wildly as it hit the frying pan. With a muttered word, Penny wrapped her apron around the heavy iron handle and moved the pan to a cooler part of the stove.
“Besides,” Penny said, ignoring the questions. “You’re like your mother in more than looks. You don’t belong out here. You belong in a castle somewhere, with people waiting on you hand and foot.”
Elyssa gave Penny a startled look, then laughed out loud.
“Whatever gave you that idea?” Elyssa asked.
“Something Bill said.”
“Bill knows me better than that.”
“Not when you’re wearing silk. You look so much like your mother it’s…heartbreaking.”
“Rubbish,” Elyssa said emphatically. “I’ve seen pictures of Mother. I’ve seen myself in the mirror. You would have to be blind drunk to think we looked alike.”
The instant the words were out of Elyssa’s mouth, she regretted them. Penny was even more upset by Bill’s turn to the bottle than Elyssa was.
“Blazes,” Elyssa said. “Why are men so stupid?”
The outer door to the kitchen closed softly.
“Are you talking about any man in particular?” Hunter asked.
Elyssa made a startled sound and spun toward him.
“Don’t you believe in knocking?” she asked.
“I did, but nobody noticed. Too busy talking about the sins of men, I guess.”
In the cozy ranch kitchen with its golden lantern light and delicious smells, Hunter looked startlingly male. The width of his shoulders brushed against the door-frame. He was so tall that he had to duck beneath the lintel, even though he was carrying his hat in his hand. His hair was clean, thick, black as a starless night.
Hunter’s gunmetal eyes took in Elyssa’s clothes with a glance that said he knew she had dressed for him. The look reminded Elyssa of the searing moment when she had been closer to Hunter than to any man in her life, ever.
And how much she had liked it.
Despite the pounding of Elyssa’s heart and the sudden, vivid color of her cheeks, her voice was cool and controlled when she turned to introduce Hunter.
“Penny, this is Hunter, the new foreman,” Elyssa said. “Don’t bother calling him mister. He doesn’t believe in formality. Hunter, meet Miss Penelope Miller.”
“A pleasure, Miss Miller,” Hunter said, bowing very slightly, his voice gentle.
Penny smiled suddenly and dropped a small curtsy.
“Please call me Penny,” she said. “Everyone else does.”
“For a smile like that, and a cup of coffee, I’ll call you the Queen of Sheba.”
Penny laughed out loud, delighted.
“I’ll hold you to it,” she said. “Welcome to the Ladder S.”
Elyssa stared, unable to believe that the polite, soft-spoken, gently teasing man in her kitchen was the same rude gunfighter who had called her a flirt and all but caressed her breasts in the silence of the barn.
And I let him.
I can’t forget that part of it. I let him!
Unhappily Elyssa looked from Penny to Hunter. He was taking a cup of coffee from Penny, smiling at her over the rim, and complimenting her on the strength of the brew.
For all that Hunter noticed Elyssa, she might as well have been a grease stain on the floor.
Is this what Penny meant? Elyssa asked herself. Is this how she felt when some idiot male couldn’t see past Mother to her?
Elyssa looked again at Penny, seeing her in a different way. At thirty, Penny was as fresh and appealing as a d
aisy. She had an honest face, a generous mouth, and faint lines of life and laughter around her wide brown eyes.
Most of all, in any man’s book, Penny had passed beyond the age of girlhood. She was a woman who had grown strong on the frontier of a wild land.
Elyssa thought of Hunter’s cutting words—If I marry again, it will be to a woman, not to a spoiled little girl who doesn’t know her own mind.
The thought that Hunter might just have found his woman was a chill moving beneath Elyssa’s skin. Even as she told herself that she shouldn’t begrudge Penny whatever happiness she could find, the nasty taste of envy soured Elyssa’s tongue.
In that instant she understood just how deeply she was attracted to Hunter. Thinking of him with another woman was like having the ground cut out from beneath her feet, leaving her with no support.
My God.
Is this what it was like for my mother, this sudden, overwhelming desire for just one other person on earth?
Is this why an English aristocrat left her solid gold luxury and disgraced her family and abandoned her country…all for a man who was only slightly less wild than the land he loved?
In the end, though, Mother got the man she loved.
Am I going to be like Penny, an old maid who wants only the man who didn’t want her?
“What do you think?” Penny asked.
With an effort, Elyssa focused on the other woman.
“About what?” Elyssa asked.
Penny smiled. “Wool-gathering about ballrooms and carriages again?”
The faintly scornful look Hunter gave Elyssa put the world right back under her feet. She straightened her spine and returned the cool look.
“You think more about England than I do,” Elyssa said crisply to Penny. “My thoughts are about problems closer to home.”
“Hunter suggested that we bake enough bread for several weeks,” Penny said.
“It will go moldy.”
“Better moldy bread than none,” Hunter said succinctly. “I’ll hunt antelope and deer every chance I get. Can you jerk meat?”
“Of course,” Elyssa said. “I can hunt, too.”
Hunter’s black eyebrows rose, but he said nothing.
“But the men prefer to eat beef,” Elyssa said.
“We can’t spare any more steers until we know how many you have,” Hunter said bluntly. “In any case, you should have enough rations on hand to withstand a siege.”
“We aren’t going to war.”
“Yet,” Hunter said in a clipped voice. “But we will, Sassy. Bet on it. I put Mickey to work making some water barrels. Seems he was apprenticed to a cooper before he ran away from Boston.”
Elyssa barely heard. She was still hearing Hunter’s certainty that it would come down to a range war in order to hang on to the Ladder S.
Ever since Mac had been murdered by the Culpepper gang, she had been afraid of just that.
“You should have given that spotted stud to the army,” Hunter added, seeing Elyssa’s dismay. “Then they might have worried about protecting the Ladder S as well as the immigrant trains.”
“The stud wasn’t all the captain wanted,” Elyssa said.
Hunter’s eyes narrowed. “You?”
“Yes.”
Hunter shrugged. “So you should have given him a little of what you were giving Mickey. There’s plenty to go around. Ask any ‘working’ girl.”
Elyssa’s temper flared.
“All I ever gave Mickey was orders,” she said hotly.
“Uh-huh,” Hunter said.
His expression said he didn’t believe her.
“Miss Penny,” Hunter said, his voice polite once again, “would you show me to an empty bedroom? Sassy said I was supposed to sleep in the big house.”
Taken aback by Hunter’s attitude toward Elyssa, Penny just looked at the younger woman questioningly.
“I told him to sleep inside because I didn’t want him shot to death like the last foreman,” Elyssa explained without looking away from Hunter. “Now, however, the idea has a positively wondrous allure.”
Penny looked startled and amused at the same instant.
“Put him in one of the empty rooms upstairs,” Elyssa said ungraciously. “The stairway creaks so much that no one can sneak up on him no matter how loud he snores.”
“I don’t snore,” Hunter said.
“Father used to say the same thing. But you know how it is when a man gets older, don’t you, Hunter?”
Hunter’s eyes narrowed.
Penny was horrified.
“Sassy,” Penny said, using Elyssa’s childhood nickname, “shame on you. You know how touchy men are about their age. Besides, Hunter is younger than Bill, and Bill is ten years younger than your father.”
“Any man who thinks I’m a little girl must be old enough to snore,” Elyssa said sweetly.
“I see,” Penny said, hiding her smile. “Well, you’ll have a chance to find out. I’m putting him in the room next to yours.”
Uneasiness and something else streaked through Elyssa.
“My parents’ room?” she asked. “Why?”
“It has the only bed big enough to hold him,” Penny said matter-of-factly.
Elyssa opened her mouth to argue, then shrugged.
“If you snore,” she said to Hunter, “that big bed is going straight to the nursery at the far end of the house. You’ll love the rainbows and butterflies Mother painted on the walls.”
An odd look went over Hunter’s face, a shadow of agony that touched Elyssa despite her anger with him. She wondered if he had lost children as well as his wife to the war. It would certainly explain the pain she had sensed beneath his ruthlessly controlled surface.
“Never mind about the nursery,” Elyssa said quietly. “If your presence bothers me, I’ll sleep downstairs with Penny.”
The fact that Elyssa somehow had sensed his grief nettled Hunter. He didn’t like being transparent to a girl like her.
“I’ll survive,” Hunter said curtly. “I don’t need special treatment from the local flirt.”
Penny’s breath went out with an audible rush. The antagonism between Elyssa and Hunter was strong enough to touch.
And so was the desire.
The sound of men’s voices carrying across the yard came as a relief to Elyssa. She began putting thick coffee mugs and crockery plates on the long table that ran down one side of the kitchen. In other times, Mac and Bill and John, Gloria and Penny and Elyssa, had sat there, talking about the land or the cattle or the turning of the seasons.
“Better hurry getting settled in,” Elyssa said without looking at Hunter. “The last man to the breakfast table has to clean the stables.”
The back door of the kitchen opened as she spoke. Mickey, Lefty, and Gimp crowded in, elbowing to be the first to sit at the long table.
Elyssa gave Hunter a sideways look. Then she smiled.
“Oh, dear,” she said. “I guess you’re last. After breakfast, I’ll be glad to show you where the manure fork is.”
Hunter didn’t doubt it.
5
Hunter handled a manure rake the same way he did everything else—cleanly, quickly, and with no extra motions. He also did the job without resentment, a fact that the two oldest ranch hands noted and approved.
Cupid, the marmalade barn cat, watched from a nearby manger. Five black and orange kittens nursed hungrily, undisturbed by the commotion. Cupid’s wide yellow eyes probed the shadows for tiny movements. Though quite full at the moment, the cat was a predator to the marrow of her delicate bones.
As Gimp walked unevenly down the center aisle, seemingly intent on getting a bit of grain for the horses in the corral, Hunter glanced up from his work. Gimp nodded to him and hitched along a little faster.
Lefty was walking next to his friend. Both cowhands were in their fifties. Both were gray-haired, and their faces were weathered by sun and storm. Their clothes were the same, faded and frayed. Their boots wore the marks of lo
ng use in stirrups. Spurs jingled softly at their heels.
Each man showed the unmistakable signs of a lifetime spent around large, unpredictable animals. The cowhands moved stiffly on legs bowed from saddles. Their hands were thickened by calluses, and scarred from burns left by ropes and branding irons.
Both men were short one finger. It was the cost of learning never to put your hand between a lariat and the saddle horn when a thousand pounds of angry steer is on the other end of the rope.
Except for Gimp’s stiff leg, there wasn’t a nickel’s worth of difference in the two men’s appearance.
“Just getting some grain for my best horse, ramrod,” Gimp explained.
“Got a stiff bridle here, and the saddle soap is in the back cupboard,” Lefty offered.
Hunter knew the two men were more interested in sizing up the new ramrod than they were in saddle soap or grain. So was Elyssa, who was watching him from the corner of her eye while she groomed Leopard.
Leopard watched Hunter, too, but without real interest.
“Do what you have to,” Hunter said, “but I want those ten head of cattle I saw up in the piñons brought in closer before sunset.”
“Yessir,” Gimp said.
“We’ll jump right to it,” Lefty agreed.
Bugle Boy put his head over the stall door and watched the two strange men with pricked ears and calm eyes.
The cowhands passed quite close to Bugle Boy’s stall door, because Leopard’s stall was directly across the aisle. The men gave the spotted stud a wide berth.
Hunter’s horse neither shied nor laid his ears back at the strangers walking close by.
“Nice stud hoss you have there,” Gimp said admiringly.
“Big, but easygoing, like,” Lefty said, glancing across the aisle. “Not like some other studs I could mention.”
Leopard was standing in the center of his large stall, watching the men. His ears weren’t back, but there was an elemental alertness about him that spoke volumes to men who knew horses.
“If you and all the other hands hadn’t roped, thrown, spurred, and repeatedly tried to break Leopard’s spirit while I was in England,” Elyssa said, “he wouldn’t watch you like a cat at a mousehole now. He has good reason not to trust men.”