Читать книгу Nora - Diana Palmer - Страница 6

HER NAME WAS ELEANOR MARLOWE, but most people called her Nora. The nickname was straightforward, without artifice. So was Nora herself, most of the time. Born into the Victorian era, she was raised in Richmond, Virginia, in a manner befitting a lady of quality. But she had a surprisingly adventurous streak for so conventional a young woman. Nora tended to be impulsive and sometimes reckless. Her quicksilver nature had been a constant concern to her parents in the past.

As a young girl, she survived dunkings while sailing on yachts, and a broken arm in a fall from a tree while bird-watching near the family’s summer home in Lynchburg, Virginia. In private school she achieved high honors, and later she attended one of the best finishing schools. By the time she reached her twenties, Nora had settled a bit, and with her family’s great wealth behind her, she became a socialite of note. She had traveled up and down the eastern seacoast and in the Caribbean as well as Europe. She was cultured and well-mannered and very knowledgeable about other countries. But her lingering infatuation with adventure dealt her a devastating blow in Africa.

She had been on safari in Kenya, traveling with three of her male cousins and their wives, and an overbearing suitor who had invited himself along. Their hunting party also included Theodore Roosevelt, who was now running for vice president under President William McKinley, who was seeking a second term.

Roosevelt had gone hunting with her cousins and the other men, while Nora had stayed with her female cousins in an elegant mansion. She was thrilled when she was allowed to join the hunting party for an overnight stay when the men were camped by a nearby river.

Her particularly persistent Louisiana suitor, Edward Summerville by name, was irritated by Nora’s continued aloofness. She had a reputation of being cool, while he was known as a ladies’ man. Her indifference seemed to enrage him, and he redoubled his efforts to captivate her. When he failed, he made himself frighteningly offensive when they were left briefly alone on the bank of the river. His unwanted caresses had made her panic. In her struggle to escape him, Nora’s blouse had torn, along with the net veil that had protected her delicate skin from the bites of swarming mosquitoes along the river. While she was struggling to cover her exposed flesh, she was repeatedly bitten. One of her indignant cousins knocked Summerville down and threw him out of camp. But before he left, Summerville accused Nora of leading him on, and swore vengeance. She hadn’t led him on, and everyone in camp knew it, but his pride was crushed and he wanted to hurt her. However, Summerville’s ire was the least of her worries afterward.

Nora had known about the dangerous fevers that could come from mosquito bites, but when three weeks passed and she was still healthy, she had relaxed. It wasn’t until she was home again, almost a month after she was bitten, and in the throes of a desperately high fever, that the family physician diagnosed malaria and prescribed quinine crystalline powder to combat it.

The quinine upset her stomach at first, and she was told that it would only protect her from infection while she was actually taking it. There was no cure for her malarial condition, a prognosis that made her sick at heart and furiously angry at Summerville for putting her at risk. Her family doctor in Virginia hadn’t told her until she was through the first paroxysms of the attack, and on the road to recovery, that he thought it possible that she might yet contract the fatal “blackwater fever.” And, as well, he said, the paroxysmal fever would surely recur unpredictably over a period of years, perhaps for as long as she lived.

Nora’s vague dreams of a home and family died. She had never found men very attractive physically, but she had wanted children. Now that seemed impossible. How could she raise a child when she was subject to a recurring fever that might one day prove fatal?

Her dreams of adventure died as well. She had wanted to go down the Amazon River in South America, and to see the pyramids in Egypt. But faced with recurrences and the terrible fever, she was afraid to take the risk. As much as she craved travel and adventure, she valued her health more. So she led a remarkably placid life for the next year and contented herself with recalling her African adventure for her friends, who were impressed by her courage and daring. Inevitably her exploits were exaggerated and she became known as an adventuress. At times she enjoyed the reputation it gave her for daring, even if it wasn’t quite accurate.

She was lauded as a prime example of the modern woman. She was asked to speak at women’s suffrage rallies and afternoon charity teas. She rested on her laurels.

Now she was being invited out West, to a fabled land she’d read about and always dreamed of seeing, a region that was as potentially wild as Africa. Her fever had not recurred for several months. Surely there would be no risks out West, and hopefully she would remain healthy for the duration of her visit. She could see something of the Wild West, and perhaps there would be an opportunity to shoot a buffalo or meet a desperado or a real Indian.

She stood with brimming excitement at the lace curtains of the family parlor in Virginia, looking out at the pretty late-summer landscape while she fingered the letter from her aunt Helen with delight. There were four Tremaynes of East Texas: her uncle Chester, her aunt Helen, and her cousins, Colter and Melissa. Colter was on an expedition to the North Pole. Melissa was desperately lonely since her best friend had married and moved away. Aunt Helen wanted Nora to come and spend a few weeks on the ranch in East Texas and help cheer Melly a little.

Nora had once taken the train to California and had seen the rugged country between the Atlantic and Pacific through the window. She had read about ranches and Texans. They both sounded romantic. Dashing cowboys fighting Indians and one another, rescuing women and children, and making all sorts of heroic sacrifices paraded through her mind as she recalled the old Beadle dime novels that she’d been reading of late. She would meet a real cowboy if she went to visit her kinfolks on the ranch. And it would be an adventure, even if it didn’t involve lions and hunters. It would be a great adventure and she would have a second chance to test her courage, to prove to herself that she wasn’t crippled by the African fever that had kept her confined so long.

“What have you decided, dear?” Cynthia Marlowe asked her daughter as she scanned the latest issue of Collier’s magazine.

Nora turned, the soft material of her lacy blue dress swirling gracefully around her trim ankles. She touched the fashionable big tulle bow at her throat with fingers that almost shook with excitement. “Aunt Helen is very persuasive,” she said. “Yes, I should like to go! I look forward to seeing the majestic knights of the range that my novels describe.”

Cynthia was amused. She hadn’t seen Nora so enthusiastic about anything since her disastrous trip to Africa. Her daughter’s chestnut-brown hair in its elegant high coiffure caught the light from the window and took on the sheen of copper. Cynthia’s hair had been that color when she was younger, before it went silver. But Nora also had the deep blue eyes of the Marlowes, and the high cheekbones of a French ancestor. She was taller than her mother, but not unusually tall. She had elegance and grace and manners, and a gift for conversation. Cynthia was deeply proud of her.

Nora was peculiarly cool with men, especially after the fright Summerville had given her and the dreadful illness that had plagued her. She would really have thrived on the adventurous life, Cynthia thought sadly, but the African fever had clipped her wings. Now, at twenty-four, she had settled down to spinsterhood with resignation.

“Among other things, this visit would at least give you respite from your father’s attempts to bring socially acceptable young men home for you,” Cynthia murmured, thinking out loud. Her husband had, in fact, made himself painfully obvious of late, and he tended to be overbearing and a little insensitive.

Nora laughed, without real humor. A man in her life was the very last complication she needed. “Indeed it would. I shall have Angelina pack for me.”

“And I shall have my social secretary make the necessary reservations at the train station,” Cynthia agreed. “I’m sure that you will find the trip enlightening.”

“Of that,” her daughter replied with sparkling humor, “I have no doubt. It has been a long time since I traveled so far alone.” Her face went taut with the memory of Africa. “But after all, Texas is not Africa.”

Cynthia stood up. “My dear, it is unlikely that the fever will recur so often. It has been several months since your last bout. Try not to worry. Remember that Chester and Helen are family, won’t you? They’ll take care of you.”

Nora smiled. “Of course they will. It will be a delightful adventure.”

NORA WAS TO REMEMBER those words when she stood on the deserted depot platform at Tyler Junction, Texas, waiting to be met by her aunt and uncle. The train ride had been comfortable enough, but it was long and she was very tired. So tired, in fact, that her enthusiasm had dimmed, just a little. And she had to admit that this dusty railroad terminal did not live up to her expectations. There were no gloriously attired Indians, no masked desperadoes, no prancing stallions with gallant and colorful cowboys riding them. In fact, it looked like a small eastern town. She became aware of mild disappointment and vicious heat as the Texas sun beat down on her pretty hat.

She looked around again for her relatives. The train had been late, so perhaps they had gone to get something to eat or drink at the restaurant she could see in the distance. She glanced around her at her elegant leather cases and trunk, wondering how she was going to get them out to the ranch if no one came for her. Late summer was going to be even more uncomfortable in southeastern Texas than in Virginia, she decided. She was dressed in one of her stylish traveling suits. The garb that had felt so comfortable when she left Virginia was suffocating her now.

Aunt Helen had written her about this place. Tyler Junction was small and rural, a southeastern Texas town not too far from Beaumont. Here most of the local gossip was passed around at the post office and the drugstore soda fountain, although the daily Beaumont Journal gave all the national news as well as social notes and local-interest stories. There were two of Henry Ford’s little black automobiles on the dusty streets, driven by founding-family members, and the rest of society made do with buggies and surreys and buckboards and horses. That ranching was still an important local occupation was not difficult to see. In the distance Nora’s eyes spotted several men wearing boots and jeans and those wide-brimmed Stetson hats. But they weren’t young, dashing men. Most of them, in fact, seemed stooped and bent and old.

Uncle Chester had told her once when he and Helen visited the family home in Virginia that most of the ranches in Texas these days were owned by corporations, held by big businesses. Even Chester’s ranch was owned by a big West Texas conglomerate, and he was paid a salary for managing it. The old days of ranching empire builders like Richard King, who had founded the famous King Ranch in southeast Texas, and the equally famous ranching giant Brant Culhane out in West Texas, were gone forever.

These days the money was in oil and steel. Rockefeller and Carnegie had control of those industries, just as J. P. Morgan and Cornelius Vanderbilt controlled the nation’s railroads, and Henry Ford the new transportation rage, the automobile. It was an era of empire builders, but industrial ones, not agricultural ones. The day of the cattleman and the cowboy was almost at an end. Aunt Helen had written that a handful of prospectors were drilling for oil over at Beaumont, because some geologist had said a few years ago that the land around the Gulf was probably sitting on a veritable lake of oil. She found the thought amusing. As if anyone were going to find great patches of oil in this lush green land!

As she considered that, Nora absently watched a striking, tall man in chaps and boots and a dark Stetson walk through the dusty street toward the station. Now, there was a real cowboy! Her heart quickened as she imagined what sort of dashing man he was. What a shame to see men like that go the way of the Indian, driven to extinction at the end of a railroad track! Who would rescue widows and orphans and fight off the red man?

She was so engrossed in romanticizing the rapidly approaching myth that it took a minute to realize that the cowboy was heading straight toward her. Her brows lifted excitedly under the pert veil of her Paris hat, and her heart pounded.

It occurred to her quite suddenly that the man she’d been romanticizing about was actually little more than a paid servant. A cowboy did, after all, tend cattle. And she suddenly discovered that looking at a romantically picturesque and immaculate cowboy in the pages of a book was a good bit different from coming face-to-face with the real article.

The cowboy, so dignified and attractive across the width of the street, was a definite shock when he got closer. This man looked unshaven, even dirty. She restrained a fastidious shudder as her eyes fell to the bloodstains on the worn leather chaps that flared out from his long legs as he walked. Spurs jingled musically with each step he took. His boots were curled at the toes and they were liberally caked with a substance that was emphatically and explicitly not mud. If this man tried to save a widow or orphan from an upwind direction, both would probably run from him!

His blue-checked Western shirt was wet with sweat and plastered to him in a way that was almost indecent, disclosing broad muscles and thick black hair from the area of his collarbone down. She clenched her purse tightly in both hands to maintain her composure. How odd, that she could feel a skirl of physical attraction to a man so…uncivilized and in need of cleaning. Why, lye soap would hardly be adequate for such a job, she thought wickedly. He would have to be boiled in bleach for days….

He glowered at her quickly concealed smile. His hair was jet-black, straight and damp above a lean face with a layer of dust and streaks of sweat carved in its austere lines. His eyes were narrow and deep-set under a jutting brow, hidden in the shade of his wide-brimmed hat. He had thick, dark eyebrows and a straight nose. He had high cheekbones. His mouth was wide and chiseled, and his chin had a jut that immediately set her on her guard.

“Miss Marlowe?” he asked in a deep Texas drawl and without the pretense of returning her amused smile.

She looked around at the deserted platform with a long sigh. “Indeed, sir, if I am not she, then we must both prepare for a surprise.”

He stood staring at her as if he couldn’t quite get her measure. She decided to help him. “It is very warm,” she added. “I should like to go out to the ranch as soon as possible. I am not accustomed to heat and…ahem…odors,” she added with an involuntary twitch of her nostrils.

He looked as if he might burst trying not to reply, but he didn’t say a word. His look summed her up as an eastern woman with more money than was good for her and a lack of sensitivity. He was amazed that he felt insulted.

But he merely inclined his head, glancing around at her stacks of luggage. “Are you moving in?” he drawled.

Her eyes widened. “These are the bare necessities,” she defended. “I must have my own things,” she added, being unaccustomed to such questioning by servants.

He sighed loudly. “It’s a good thing I brought the buckboard. With the supplies I’ve already bought, this will sure run over the sides.”

She turned her purse over in her slender hands and smothered a smile. “If it does, you could run alongside with the overflow on your head. Bearers do that in Africa on safari,” she said pleasantly. “I know because I myself have done it.”

“You’ve run alongside a wagon with baggage on your head?” he asked outrageously.

“Why…of course not!” she muttered. “I have been on safari! That was what I said!”

He pursed his lips and stuck his hands on his hips to stare down at her ruffled expression. “On safari? A fragile little tenderfoot like you, in a rig like that?” He eyed her immaculate tailored suit and velvet hat with amusement. “Now I’ve heard everything.” He walked back the way he’d come, to a buckboard hitched to a fine-looking horse across the way from the depot.

She stared after him with conflicting emotions. None of the men she’d known had ever been anything less than polite and protective. This man was unflappable, and he didn’t choose his words to pander to her femininity. She was torn between respect and rock-slinging fury. He had a fine conceit for such a filthy man.

He hadn’t removed his hat or even tipped it in a gesture of respect. Nora was accustomed to men who did both, and kissed her hand in greeting in the European fashion.

She was too censorious, she told herself. This was the West, and the poor man probably had never had the advantage of being taught social graces. She would have to think of him as she did the native bearers she’d spoken of, kind but uneducated folk whose lot it was to serve for their meager fare. She tried to picture him in a loincloth and had to smother another laugh.

She waited patiently until her benefactor drove up in the heavily loaded wagon and tied the horse pulling it to a hitching post before he began to load her bags in with long-suffering patience.

She hesitated at the side, thinking whimsically that she must be grateful that he didn’t suggest that she ride in the back with her luggage. She looked to him to help her up to the wide driver’s seat. It shouldn’t have surprised her that he was already seated, with the reins held impatiently in his lean hands.

“You were in a hurry, I believe?” he asked patiently, and he pushed back his hat and fixed her with a look from the most unsettling eyes she’d ever seen. They were unexpectedly light in that dark face, a gray that was almost silver in color. They were as piercing as a knife blade, and just as unfathomable.

“How fortunate that I have athletic abilities,” she said with smiling hauteur before she stepped up onto the hub of the wheel and daintily swung herself into the seat. Sadly, she overshot the seat and ended up in a tidy heap across the cowboy’s chaps. The smell was dizzying, although the feel of his hard, muscular thighs against her breasts made her heart run wild.

Before she had time to be very shocked by the intimacy of the contact, he hefted her up with steely hands and put her firmly on the seat. “None of that, now,” he said with a stern look. “I know all about you wild city women, and I am not the sort of man to be toyed with, I’ll have you know.”

She was embarrassed enough at her clumsiness, without being labeled a hussy. She pushed back her disheveled hat with a hand that, appallingly, smelled of the cowboy’s boots. Her hand must have brushed the cuffs of his jeans.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” she burst out, digging furiously for a handkerchief, with which she tried to wipe away the vile smell. “I shall smell like a barn!”

He gave her a narrow glare and snapped the reins to set the horse in motion. He grinned then, and accentuated his West Texas drawl for her benefit. He might as well, he decided, live down to her image of him. “What do you expect of a man who works with his hands and his back?” he asked her pleasantly. “It’s the best kind of life, I tell you, living out here in the open. A cowboy doesn’t have to bathe more than once a month or dress up fancy and practice parlor manners. He’s free and independent, just him and his horse under a wide Western sky; free to carouse with loose women and get drunk every weekend! How I love the free life!” he said fervently.

All Nora’s illusions about cowboys took a fast turn. She was still scrubbing at her hand when they were on the rough road out of town, having decided that her beautiful gray kid leather gloves might have to be thrown away. The smell would never come out.

It had rained earlier in the week, and there were deep ruts in the road that made the ride on the board seat uncomfortable. “You don’t talk much, do you?” he probed. “Eastern women are supposed to be real smart, I’ve heard,” he added, doing his rustic rube imitation to the hilt.

Nora, oblivious, didn’t realize that she was being taken for a ride in more ways than one. “If I were intelligent,” she said indignantly, glaring at him, “I would never have left Virginia!” She scrubbed furiously at another stain, on the hem of her long skirt. “Oh, dear, what will Aunt Helen think!”

He gave her a slow, wicked grin. “Well, perhaps she’ll think that you and I have been spooning on the way home.”

Her expression even through the veil would have sent a lesser man off the wagon and running. “Spooning? With you? Sir, I had sooner kiss a…a…coal miner! No, I take that back, a coal miner would not smell so foul. I should sooner kiss a buzzard!”

He dashed the reins gently against the horse’s flank when it slowed under a shady mesquite tree, and he chuckled. “Buzzards are worth their keep out here. They clean up the rotting carcasses so that the world smells sweet for you dainty little socialites.”

That was obviously a bit of sarcasm at her expense. She glared at him, but it bounced off.

“You are very forward for a hired man,” she said indignantly.

He didn’t reply. She had a nasty way of sounding two steps above him socially, as if to remind him that he was a lowly servant, she a lady. He could have laughed out loud at the irony of it.

Having given up on removing the foul stench from her hand, she fanned herself with a colorful cardboard fan obtained from the porter on the train. It was the last week in August and unbearably hot. It must be from the gulf breezes that danced up from the nearby coast, she thought, wondering at the smothering intensity of it. Back East, one would expect furious storms when confronted with this sort of heat. Just the year before, there had been a hurricane on the eastern coast, one that had taken the life of a cousin. She had nightmares about high water that remained with her even now.

She was almost overcome by the smothering humidity. The corset she was wearing under her long skirt and long-sleeved jacket was robbing her of breath.

Not that her companion looked much cooler, she had to admit. His thin shirt was soaked in front, and she was surprised that her eyes were drawn to the vividly outlined hard muscles of his arms and his hair-roughened chest. She had seen men of other races without shirts, but she had never seen any gentleman in a similar condition. This man was no gentleman, though. It was incomprehensible that a common laborer should stir senses that she had always kept impervious to any sort of physical attraction. Why, he made her nervous! And the slender hands holding the wooden handle of the neat fan, with its colorful representation of the Last Supper on one side and an advertisement for a funeral home on the other, were actually trembling.

“You work for my uncle Chester, do you not?” she asked, trying to make conversation.

“Yep.”

She waited, but the one word was all the response he gave.

“What do you do?” she added, thinking that he might work in some more skilled job than just punching cattle.

His head turned slowly. Under the shadow of the wide-brimmed hat, his silver eyes glittered like diamonds. “I’m a cowboy, of course. I work cattle. You might have noticed that my boots are full of…” He enunciated the slang word that described the caked substance on his boots. He said it with deliberate intent. To add insult to the word, he grinned.

The reply made her face red. She should hit him, but she wouldn’t. She wasn’t going to do what he obviously expected her to do and rage at his lack of decency and delicacy. She only gave him her most vacant look and then made a slight movement of her shoulders in dismissal and turned her attention to the fall landscape as if nothing had been said at all.

Having traveled through West Texas once, even without stopping, she was aware of the differences in climate and vegetation from one side of Texas to the other. There were no cacti and desert here. The trees were magnolias and dogwoods and pines; the grass was still green despite the lateness of the year, and high where cattle grazed behind long white fences and gray-posted barbed-wire fences. The horizon seemed to sit right on the ground in the distance, as there were no hills or mountains at all. The haze of heat could be seen rising from the ponds, or tanks, where cattle drank. There were two rivers that ran parallel to the Tremayne ranch, her aunt had written, which might explain that lush landscape.

“It is very beautiful here,” she remarked absently. “So much more beautiful than the other side of the state.”

He gave her a sharp glance. “You easterners,” he scoffed. “You think a thing has to be green to be pretty.”

“Of course it does,” she replied simply, staring at his profile. “How can a desert be pretty?”

His head turned and he studied her with narrow eyes. “Well, a hothouse petunia like you might find it hard going, for sure.”

She gave him a hard stare. “I am not a hothouse plant. I have hunted lions and tigers in Africa,” she embroidered on her one-day safari, “and—”

“And one night on the Texas desert would be your undoing,” he interrupted pleasantly. “A rattler would crawl into your bedroll with you, and that’s the last you’d be seen until winter.”

She shuddered at just the thought of a rattlesnake. She had read about the vile creatures in Mr. Beadle’s novel series.

He saw her reaction, although she belatedly tried to hide it. He threw back his head and roared. “And you hunted lions?” he asked outrageously, laughing harder.

She made a harsh sound under her breath. “You nasty-smelling brute!”

“Well, while we’re on the subject of smells,” he said, leaning toward her to take a breath and then making a terrible face, “you smell like sunned polecat yourself.”

“Only because you refused to help me into the seat and I fell on your foul-smelling…” She gestured helplessly toward the wide leather chaps. “Those things!” She pointed at them, flustered.

He leaned a little toward her, his eyes sparkling with humor. “Legs, darlin’,” he contributed. “They’re called legs.”

“Those leather things!” she raged. “And I am not your darling!” she burst out, her poise deserting her as she flew off the seat.

He chuckled. “Oh, you might wish you were, one day. I have some admirable qualities,” he added.

“Let me out of this buggy! I’ll walk!” she raged.

He shook his head. “Now, now, you’d get sore feet and I’d get fired, and we wouldn’t want that, now would we?”

“Yes, we would!”

He grinned at her red face and wide, furious eyes. They were like blue flames, and she had a pretty, soft mouth. He had to force his attention back to the road. “Your uncle couldn’t manage without me right now. Now, you sit easy, there, Miss Marlowe, and just let your blood cool. I’m a fine fellow once you get to know me.”

“I have no intention of getting to know you!”

“My, my, you do get riled easy, don’t you? And here I thought you rich ladies from back East were even-tempered.” He flipped the reins, increasing the horse’s speed gently.

“The ones who were probably hadn’t met you yet!” she exploded.

His head turned, and something twinkled in his silver-gray eyes before he glanced back toward the road with a tiny smile on his hard mouth.

Nora didn’t see that smile, although she had the feeling that he was laughing at her under the enormously wide brim of his hat. He’d knocked her legs right out from under her, until she couldn’t even find a comeback. It was a new experience for her, and not one she enjoyed. No man had ever made her mad enough to yell like a fishwife. She was ashamed of her outburst. She settled into her seat and ignored him, pointedly, for the rest of the drive.

THE RANCH HOUSE was long and flat, but it was white as sand and had a long, elegant front porch and a white picket fence around Aunt Helen’s beautiful mixed flower gardens. Aunt Helen was standing on the porch when the wagon pulled up at the walkway, looking so much like her mother that Nora felt immediately homesick.

“Aunt Helen!” she exclaimed, laughing as she stepped onto the hub of the wagon wheel and stepped gingerly down out of the wagon unassisted, before the man beside her could display more of his bad manners by showing her aunt how he ignored common courtesy.

She ran to the older woman and was hugged warmly. “Oh, it is good to see you again!” she enthused, her face animated and lovely as she pushed back the veil to reveal her exquisite complexion and bright, deep blue eyes.

“Mr. Barton, it would have been courteous to have helped Nora from the wagon,” Aunt Helen told the man who bore her luggage to the porch.

“Yes, ma’am, I meant to, but she lit out of it like a scalded chicken,” he said with outrageous courtesy, even tipping his hat to Helen, and he smiled charmingly as he waited for her to open the front door and direct him to the bedroom Nora would occupy. Beast! Nora thought. The word was in her eyes as he passed her, and his silver eyes registered it and twinkled with pure hellish amusement. She jerked her head around angrily.

When he was out of sight, Helen grimaced. “He is Chester’s livestock foreman, and he is very knowledge able about cattle and business. But he has a rather unusual sense of humor. I’m sorry if he offended you.”

“Who is he?” Nora asked reluctantly.

“Callaway Barton,” she replied.

“Who are his people, I meant?” Nora persisted.

“We don’t know. We know his name, but we know very little about him. He works during the week and vanishes on weekends—that was in the contract he signed with Chester. We don’t pry into people’s lives out here,” she added gently. “He’s rather mysterious, but he’s not usually rude at all.”

“He wasn’t rude,” Nora lied, brushing at the dust on her cheeks to camouflage their color.

Helen smiled. “You would not have said so even if he was. You have breeding, my dear,” she said proudly. “It’s very evident that you come from blue bloods.”

“So do you,” she was reminded. “You and Mother are descended from European royalty. We have royal cousins in England, one of whom I visit twice a year.”

“Don’t remind Chester.” Helen laughed conspiratorially. “He comes from a laboring background, and mine sometimes embarrasses him.”

Nora had to bite her tongue to keep back a blunt comment. She couldn’t imagine hiding any part of her own life to placate a man’s ego. But, then, Aunt Helen had been raised in a different era, by different rules. She had no right to judge or condemn from her modern status.

“Shall we have tea and sandwiches?” Helen asked. “I’ll have Debbie bring refreshments to the living room after you’ve had a few minutes to freshen up.” Her nose wrinkled. “I must say, Nora, that is a very…odd scent you’re wearing.”

Nora flushed. “I…fell against Mr. Barton getting into the wagon and brushed my hand against some of that…vile material on his…on those leather things he was wearing,” she faltered.

“His chaps,” she said.

“Oh. Yes. Chaps.”

Helen chuckled. “Well, it is unavoidable that working men get dirty. It will wash off.”

“I do hope so,” Nora sighed.

The tall cowboy came back down the hall, his burdens unloaded.

Helen smiled at him. “Chester wanted to see you when you got back, Mr. Barton. He and Randy are working down by the old barn, trying to fix the windmill,” she added.

“I’ll put up the wagon and join him as soon as possible. Good day, ma’am.” He tipped his hat courteously at Helen.

He nodded politely at Nora, his eyes twinkling at her expression, and walked on toward the front door, his spurs jingling musically with every long, graceful step.

Helen was watching him. “Most cowboys are clumsy on the ground,” she remarked, “probably because they spend so much time on horseback. But Mr. Barton is not clumsy, is he?”

Nora watched, hoping that he’d trip over one of his spurs and knock himself out on the door facing. But he didn’t. She reached up and removed the hatpin that secured her wide hat. “Where is Melly?” she asked.

Helen hesitated. “In town, visiting a girlfriend. She will be back this evening.”

Nora was very puzzled as she changed her traveling clothes for a simple long skirt and white middy blouse and rewound her long chestnut braid around her head. Melly was only eighteen and she adored her older cousin. They were good friends. Why wasn’t Melly here to meet her?

She joined Helen in the parlor, and while they sipped tea and ate homemade lemon cookies, she asked about Melly again.

“She went riding with Meg Smith this afternoon, and I know she’ll be back soon. I might as well tell you the truth. She was in love with the man her best friend married, and she has been inconsolable. She couldn’t even refuse to be maid of honor at their wedding.”

“Oh, I am so sorry!” Nora exclaimed. “How terrible for Melly!”

“We pitied her, but it was fortunate that the man did not return her feelings. He had some admirable qualities, but he is not the sort we want to marry our daughter,” Aunt Helen said sadly. “Besides, Melly is sure to find someone more worthy to love. There are several bachelors who attend services with us every Sunday. Perhaps she might be encouraged to join a social group.”

“Exactly,” Nora said. “I’ll do my best to help her over this sad experience.”

“I knew you would,” came the satisfied reply. “It’s so good to have you here!”

Nora smiled affectionately at her aunt. “I am delighted that I came.”

MELLY RETURNED HOME barely an hour after Nora arrived, on horseback, wearing a riding skirt and a straight-brimmed Spanish hat. She had dark hair like Nora’s, but her hair didn’t have the same chestnut highlights as her cousin’s, and her eyes were a soft brown instead of blue. Her skin was tanned, as Nora’s was not, and she was delicate and very slender, like a little doll. Looking at her, Nora couldn’t imagine a man not wanting her for his wife.

“I’m so happy that you’ve come,” Melly said after she’d greeted her cousin with sad warmth. “I’ve been rather droopy, but you can help me liven things up.”

Nora smiled. “I hope that I can. It has been over a year since we visited when you came to Virginia. You must tell me all the news.”

Melly grimaced. “Of course. But you must realize that my life is hardly as full and exciting as yours. I will have little to tell.”

Nora thought of the times she had spent in bed, shivering with fever. Melly didn’t know—none of them knew—how her adventure in Africa had ended.

“Melly, I do wish that you would not make us sound so dull,” her mother murmured. “We do have some social life here!”

“We have square dances and housewarmings and spelling bees,” came the short reply. “And the abominable Mr. Langhorn and his son.”

“When we have gatherings with other ranchers in the cooperative, Melly helps serve,” her mother reminded Nora. “Mr. Langhorn is one of the local ranchers, and he has a little boy who is worse than a wild man. Mr. Langhorn does not control him.”

“Mr. Langhorn is the one who needs controlling,” Melly added with a chuckle.

“That is true,” her mother agreed. “He has a…reputation…and he is divorced,” she whispered the word, as if it were not fit to be heard in decent company.

“Surely that should not count against him,” Nora began.

“Nora, our family name is very important to us,” her aunt said firmly. “I know that in eastern cities, and in Europe, a woman is perhaps allowed more freedoms than out here. But you must remember that this is a small community, and our good name is our most treasured possession. It would not do for Melly to be seen keeping company with a divorced man.”

“I see what you mean,” Nora said gently, wondering just how confining this small society really was. Coming from a large eastern city, she was hard-pressed to understand small-town life anywhere.

After dinner they sat in a blissful silence, one so profound and serene that the grandfather clock could be heard vividly, tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock…

The screen door slammed suddenly and heavy boots made emphatic noises on the bare wood floor.

Cal Barton stuck his head around the door, his hat held in one hand. “Excuse me, Mrs. Tremayne, but Chester would like a word with you on the porch.”

Nora wondered why his spurs didn’t jingle until she looked down. Of course; his spurs were covered with…that. So was the rest of him, Nora thought, her expression revealing her opinion of it eloquently as she sat elegantly on the sofa in just the correct posture, looking so at home in the opulence that it put Cal’s back up at once.

He saw the disapproving, superior look she gave him, and it irritated him out of all proportion. He didn’t smile this time. He simply looked through her, with hauteur that would have done a prince proud. He nodded politely when Helen commented that she would be right out, and he left without another glance in Nora’s direction.

She was miffed by his sudden aloofness, and spent the rest of the day wondering why the opinion of a hired man should matter to her. After all, she was a Marlowe from Virginia, and that unwashed son of the great West was nothing more than a glorified male milkmaid. The thought sent her into gales of laughter, although certainly she couldn’t share the joke with her ranching hosts.