The Invitation

by Jude Deveraux

  And then, as if she didn’t have enough trouble, Rowena sent a telegram saying she was arriving in a matter of days. And Rowena, dear sweet Rowena who couldn’t keep her mouth shut about anything, had announced in her message that while she was there she intended to find a husband for her sister.

  Of course the man in the telegraph office had shared this information with all of Latham and at least half of the people who came through town on the train. Dorie wouldn’t be surprised if by now the entire population of San Francisco knew that her meddlesome sister planned to find her a husband.

  Dorie loved her sister, but sometimes Rowena had no common sense. Did she think that Dorie was going to be thrilled when she read the telegram and say, “Oh, wonderful, my sister is going to marry me off to a man I don’t even know”?

  While Dorie was recovering from this shock and daily listening to the snickers and laughter of her tenants, young and old alike, her well-meaning sister sent another telegram asking her to please not marry Alfred before she got there.

  So maybe her mention of Alfred was Dorie’s fault. About two years ago, before their father’s death, Rowena had written from her beautiful house in England that she was worried about her little sister, so she was going to return to America and find her a husband. This had horrified Dorie because she knew that if her father thought there was any possibility of losing his remaining daughter, he would make Dorie’s life even more difficult than it was. After Rowena’s defection—that was how Dorie thought of her marriage—their father had kept his younger daughter as nearly a prisoner as possible, but over the years his hold over her had lessened. Slowly Dorie had been allowed to walk in the fields behind the house and to sit by the river with a book in the afternoon. Her father had taken her along with him in his carriage when he went to collect the rent. In fact, with each month that passed after Rowena left, Dorie and her father had become more and more companionable. Not that they talked, but they were less like prisoner and guard than they had been.

  But if Rowena had her way and returned to try to force their father to allow Dorie to marry, she knew her life would become a living hell. If she’d thought Rowena could have pulled it off and found a wonderful man for her to marry, Dorie would have been happy to allow her to do so. But Rowena’s taste in men ran toward poets who wore ruffled shirts and said asinine things like “Life is a road few may travel.” Things that made no sense to Dorie but made Rowena weak-kneed. Dorie had pointed out to Rowena a thousand times that she didn’t have the wisdom to choose someone as strong and intelligent as Jonathan, that Jonathan had chosen her and then pursued her and followed her; in truth, he had besieged her until Rowena gave in to him out of weariness.

  To protect herself, to keep from finding herself married to a man who drank sherry and wore a pinky ring, Dorie had begun writing letters to her sister saying she was planning to marry a man in Latham. Unfortunately she hadn’t thought far enough ahead to make up a man. A fictional man could have been killed off in some romantic tragedy and Dorie could now be wearing black in mourning. Instead, she had written about a man she and Rowena had known all their lives: Alfred Smythe. At the time Dorie started the letters, Alfred’s second wife had just died and as she and her father had driven by in the carriage, Alfred—whom Dorie considered to be as old as her father—had looked up at Dorie as though wondering if she could be number three.

  Somehow everything had snowballed from there. To her great surprise, Dorie found that she had a talent for fiction, maybe because she wasn’t actually living in life, so she could live on paper. She began to formulate a grand romance with Alfred. And the more she wrote, the more enthusiastic Rowena’s responses became, so the more flamboyant Dorie’s descriptions became. She began to glorify Alfred, to talk of his swaggering walk, of the danger of him. She told Rowena that Alfred appeared to be a mere shopkeeper, but the truth was that he was involved in something hazardous and daring. Since Dorie’s knowledge of daring was limited to escaping her father’s eye for one whole hour, she never really explained what Alfred was doing. Besides, hints were so much more exciting than reality.

  But then Rowena got tired of waiting for a marriage announcement from Dorie, so she sent a letter saying she was coming to America to arrange the marriage. Dorie fired back a letter saying she and Alfred had parted company, so there was no need for Rowena to come. Rowena sent a telegram, which all of Latham saw, that said she was coming to find another husband for her brokenhearted sister.

  It was after Rowena’s second message that Dorie panicked. What was she going to do? In her own way, Rowena was as big a bully as their father. After all the letters of passion Dorie had sent to her sister, Rowena truly believed that Dorie actually loved that awful little Alfred Smythe, so Rowena had no guilty conscience for pushing Dorie into marriage.

  The only thing Dorie could think to do was to marry someone else. And it had to be someone who would satisfy Rowena’s romantic spirit and make her believe that Dorie had fallen for him so soon after her grand passion with Alfred.

  Dorie wasn’t her father’s daughter for nothing. When she set out to get a husband, her first thought was to buy one—rather like buying a new pair of shoes. After all, her father had bought his wife. He’d gone back east, read the notices of bankruptcy in the papers, and befriended the first man he found with a daughter who was unattractive enough to never make him worry about another man’s attentions. Then he paid off her father’s debts and married her.

  So Dorie thought she’d hire some man who was in need of money, but it had to be a man who was romantic enough to make her sister leave her alone. It had taken her days to come up with a list of appropriate men, and then by luck she had found that the blacksmith in Latham knew one of them, a man others thought of as a killer. But the blacksmith had told Dorie that Cole Hunter had the softest heart he’d ever seen. Cole didn’t know this, and he was such a fast draw that no man was about to tell him, but Cole’s soft heart was a big joke among real killers.

  “His blood’s too warm,” the blacksmith said. “He really hates killing anybody.”

  Since Dorie wanted to ask him to pretend to be married to her, this was good news.

  She’d found the man in Abilene, and he had not been what she had expected. What was worse, he seemed to dislike her rather heartily. But that didn’t surprise Dorie. She had never been successful with men. Not that she’d had any experience, but when Rowena still lived in Latham, Dorie had met a few of the boys-almost-men who came to visit her gorgeous sister. And each and every encounter had been a disaster.

  Rowena would say, “Dorie, you are not to tell Charles Pembroke that he has the intelligence of a carrot and the grace of an elephant in ballet slippers.”

  For a while Dorie had tried to keep her mouth shut and watch—and learn, but Rowena began to make her ill. Rowena oohed and aahed over each and every male creature she met, no matter how stupid or repulsive. It didn’t seem honest to Dorie, and above all, Dorie loved honesty.

  Eventually, of course, Rowena got married and had two beautiful children, and Dorie lived alone in a big, dark house and gave money to people. She still couldn’t understand why men liked lies better than the truth, but they seemed to.

  As for Mr. Hunter, she couldn’t figure him out at all. He had made sense to her when she first went to him and told him the truth. Like all the other men, he seemed to hate her honesty. Dorie knew that Rowena would have lied to him and flattered him and he would have been eating out of her hand. But Dorie had told him the truth and he’d made it clear that he couldn’t stand her.

  Unfortunately this hurt Dorie, because much to her disbelief, she rather liked him. She had no idea why she liked him, but she did. Maybe it was that heroic aspect of him. The truth was that when he saved her from the bank robbers, she had felt, well, rather like the heroine in the type of novel her father refused to allow in the house.

  But Mr. Hunter had not felt the same way she did. When she went to his room to apologize for whatever it was
that she had said to make him so angry the first time, she had succeeded only in making him furious.

  But then he had shown up at her hotel room and told her she was to marry him. Maybe he thought Rowena was part of marriage to Dorie. That was the only thing that made sense to her. He had disliked her rather heartily when she alone was involved, but he wanted to marry her after he saw Rowena.

  Oh, well, what did it matter anyway? The arrangement was only temporary; in six months he’d be gone. He’d have his five thousand dollars, and Dorie would be back where she’d started. She wasn’t fool enough to believe any of his talk about wanting to learn a trade; she knew all he wanted was the money—and maybe a chance at Rowena, but then, all men seemed to want that. It was a perfect arrangement.

  Now, sitting across the tiny table from him, the big bed looming behind them, a wedding ring—courtesy of Rowena—weighing down her finger, Dorie pushed her food about on her plate. It was a moment before she was aware that Mr. Hunter was saying something.

  “I beg your pardon,” she said, looking up at him.

  “I said that if you want to get yourself a husband—a real one, that is—you ought to try to be more, well, charming.”

  Dorie could only blink at him. Charming. It was a word she had heard connected with Rowena’s name and with witches’ spells but not much else.

  Ever since that cold little farce that was called a wedding, Cole had been asking himself what in the world he had done. He’d never thought of himself as a romantic, but that quick, boring ceremony, with the preacher anxious to get back to his dinner, was not his idea of a wedding. Wasn’t a woman supposed to want flowers and a pretty dress? Weren’t women supposed to be sentimental about weddings and such? Wasn’t the man supposed to act as though that sort of stuff didn’t matter to him, but secretly he rather liked the smell of flowers and the sight of a bride dripping lace?

  Since the wedding she hadn’t said a word, had just let that bossy sister of hers manage everything. After a few hours around Rowena, Cole was beginning to realize that under that coaxing, honey-coated exterior of hers was a core of steel. She had complimented Cole so much that, had he believed her, he would have thought he was the smartest, bravest, best-looking man on the planet. But while she was flattering him, she was making sure her little sister got married. She told Dorie where the wedding was going to be, where Dorie was going to spend her honeymoon, and when the couple would return to Latham. Rowena arranged the wedding supper and ordered Dorie’s clothes packed and readied for the trip. It was at the end of the ceremony when Rowena said, “You may kiss him now, Dorie,” that Cole had put his foot down.

  “She’s my wife now,” he said quietly but in a voice he’d used to tell men that he believed they were cheating at cards. One good thing about Rowena was that she seemed to know when to back down. Graciously she stopped giving orders and stepped aside, smiling happily, pleased that she had arranged everything.

  So now he was alone with a stranger who was and was not his wife, and he had a sudden urge to get to know her better. Was she as hard as she’d seemed the first time he met her, or was she as soft as she sometimes seemed? Was she calculating or innocent? Did she mean to wound with that tongue of hers or did she just not know any better?

  “I’m afraid I don’t know how to be charming,” she said, not looking up from her food. “I leave the charm to my sister.”

  After today he knew that in order to wade through Rowena’s “charm” one needed very tall boots. As Cole looked at the top of his wife’s head, he realized that he’d never really seen her smile. Did she smile? What would she look like if she did smile?

  He sat up straight in his chair, like a schoolteacher. “Attention, Miss Latham—er, Mrs. Hunter,” he corrected himself and found that he rather liked the sound of that name. “We are now going to have a lesson in charm.”

  She looked up at him in surprise.

  “Now, answer me this: If you find yourself alone with a man and you want to engage that man in conversation, what do you say?”

  The look on her face told him she was taking this very seriously. “What does he do?”

  “He doesn’t do anything. In most of the world it is up to the woman to be the social one. The man is to be the strong silent type, and the woman is to try to draw him out.”

  “Oh,” Dorie said. This was something she’d never heard before, but it explained some things she’d never been able to understand. “I mean, what does the man do for a living? To support himself. Perhaps there is conversation in that.”

  “Good point. The man is a farmer.”

  “Well, then, I would ask him how his crops are doing.”

  “Mmmm,” Cole said. “That might be all right for a man who’s old enough to be your father, but what about a young, good-looking man, someone with broad shoulders?”

  A little sparkle of humor came into Dorie’s eyes. “Just exactly how broad are this man’s shoulders?”

  Cole didn’t smile. Holding out his hands, he said, “Oh, about this wide. No, this wide.”

  Dorie’s eyes sparkled more. “Mr. Hunter, no man has shoulders that broad.”

  For a moment Cole looked defensive as he looked from his outstretched hands to his own shoulders and saw that he had his hands apart exactly the width of his own shoulders. When he opened his mouth to point out that his shoulders were indeed that broad, he looked at her eyes and saw that she had been teasing him. Well, well, he thought, I’ll get her back for that.

  “On second thought, this man you’re sitting next to is a renowned peacemaker.”

  “Peacemaker? Do you mean a gunslinger? A killer?”

  Cole’s face was very serious. “Mrs. Hunter, would you please listen to the assignment? The lesson is in charm, and so far you haven’t convinced me you know the meaning of the word.”

  “Oh, yes, I do. It means lying.”

  That threw Cole for a loop. “Charm means lying?”

  “Rowena practices charm by lying.”

  “Please give me a demonstration.”

  Dorie started to say that she couldn’t possibly show him what she meant by Rowena’s lying, but then she realized she had spent a lot of time watching her sister. She should be able to pretend to be Rowena.

  Her elbows on the table, she leaned across her plate so her face was close to his and batted her lashes at him. “Oh, Mr. Hunter, I’ve heard so much about you. I’ve heard of your wisdom, how you settle disputes and save entire towns single-handedly. My goodness but you are an important man! I do hope you don’t mind my staring. It’s just that I’ve been looking for a sapphire just the color of your eyes, and I can’t find that deep a shade of blue anywhere. Perhaps the next time I visit my jeweler you’ll come with me so I can show the man just what I mean.”

  Dorie leaned back from the table, her arms crossed over her bosom.

  For a moment Cole couldn’t speak. She had been making fun of him and of her sister, of course, but, damn it anyway, he liked hearing what she’d just said. He had an almost uncontrollable urge to pick up the knife and look at his eyes in it.

  What made him control himself was the look in her eyes that said she knew just what he was thinking. That’s two for her, he thought.

  “Lies,” he said. “They are terrible. You know that men lie too, don’t you?”

  “Not to Rowena. They don’t have to. What can they make up about her beauty that is a lie?”

  “True charm contains no lies.”

  “Ha! Rowena is an expert at charm, yet all she does is lie.”

  “Then it is not true charm. What wins the men’s hearts is her beauty. But what will happen to her when her beauty fades? No man is going to fall for her lies when they come from lips that are no longer beautiful.” He could see he had her interest now. Obviously she liked lies that sounded as though they were true.

  “Here, let me show you what real charm is. Give me your hand.”

  She kept her hand where it was, folded close to her body. “If you
tell me lots of really dumb lies about my magnificent beauty, I won’t like it.”

  “Could you give me credit for a little sense? Now, give me your hand!” Damn, but the woman got to him. He was sure there wasn’t another woman on the earth who would refuse a lesson in seduction. Especially when the man trying to seduce her was her husband.

  Gently he took her hand in his. With another woman he might have worried about scaring her, but he wondered if anything scared this little creature. Holding her hand, he raised it to his face but didn’t kiss it. Instead, he pressed the back of her hand against his cheek. “You know what I like about you, Mrs. Hunter?” He didn’t wait for her answer. “I like your honesty. All my life I’ve heard compliments. Men have been too afraid of me to say much of anything that wasn’t nice, and women have so much liked the look of me that they purred when they were near me.” At the word “purr” he rolled his r in a soft, silky way that made Dorie’s eyes widen.

  “It is refreshing to meet a woman who is honest with me, who tells me that I have things to learn. And it is invigorating to have my mind challenged. You make me want to work hard around you; you make me want to show you that I can do the work, even though you think I can’t.”

  He brought her hand to his lips and began to kiss her knuckles one by one. “As for beauty, there is a sparkle about you that your sister cannot match. She is a rose, full blown, lush, and showy, but you are a violet, sweet and shy, gentle but strong. Yours is not the kind of beauty that a person sees merely by looking. Your beauty is gentler. One has to search for it, and it is therefore worth much more.”

  Dorie sat still, her eyes widening with every word he said. Little prickles of feeling ran from her hand up her arm, then spread throughout her body.

  Abruptly he released her hand. “There,” he said. “That’s what I meant. Charm without lies.”