Spirit of Love

by Duncan, Alice

  “Oh, look,” Maybelle cried, sounding pleased. “There’s Georgina. Maybe she knows how Mr. Pierce could have sustained such an injury after walking outside with her.

  The crafty old woman was squinting up at Ash like the devil himself. Confound it, was she wise to all his secrets? He scowled at the door and saw Georgina standing there, looking serene and unruffled and infinitely ravishable. He stifled a groan, which was a good thing because Maybelle’s sharp glance was darting between him and Georgina as if she were a hawk and they were a pair of fat, juicy mice.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Maybe she can tell you.”

  As for him, he was going to go to the Turquoise Bracelet Saloon and drink for a while. And maybe chat with one of the girls there. He might even do more than chat. He was so upset and bothered at the moment, he didn’t know what he wanted to do, but he sure as blazed didn’t aim to stick around the church basement and watch Georgina Witherspoon dance with other men all night long.

  Maybelle’s cackle followed him out the door along with the rasping strains of “Turkey in the Straw.” He felt like killing something.

  “I never want to see him again as long as I live.” Georgina spoke through tightly clenched teeth. She wasn’t sure her jaw would ever loosen again.

  The Murphy-Witherspoon ladies had to rent a buggy from Tooley’s Livery because no one could find Payton Pierce when the time came for them to go home after the dance was over.

  Georgina had rejected the notion of leaving immediately after her sojourn in the graveyard because she’d not give Ash, the despicable lout, the satisfaction of knowing his lustful, improper advances had driven her away. Then she could have screamed when she didn’t see Ash again for the rest of the dance. How could she lord her serenity over him if he wasn’t there to resent it?

  Blast the man He was the most intolerable, horrid, beastly, ghastly, awful person she’d ever met in her life. She refused to think about how she’d felt when he kissed her

  Anyway, she also wouldn’t have allowed Payton Pierce to take her home even if he’d been found. She’d rather have walked the seven miles to the Murphy place than share a buggy with him, the slimy toad. Georgina wondered why she didn’t consider Payton Pierce’s advances lustful and improper but only annoying, whereas she considered the sheriff’s not merely lustful and improper, but entirely too close to stunning. She decided it was because Pierce was merely ridiculous.

  Ash, on the other hand, could be downright dangerous.

  Blast the man.

  “Won’t be able to work that one out, girl,” Maybelle said, grinning up a storm. “Town’s too small. Got to see folks whether you want to or not. There’s no avoiding ‘em. Especially the sheriff.”

  “Gr-r-r-r-r,” said Georgina.

  “My goodness,” tittered Vernice. “I never would have imagined Mr. Barrett doing anything untoward. He’s always been such an upstanding gentleman.”

  “Gentleman? Ha!”

  Vernice let that one slide. “But I do wonder what happened to Mr. Pierce. He went outside with you looking perfectly respectable, and came back a few minutes later looking as if he’d been in a fight.”

  “He had been in a fight. He tried to kiss me, and I hit him.”

  Maybelle went off into a loud and raucous string of guffaws.

  Vernice said, “Merciful heavens.” She didn’t sound particularly shocked.

  “He’s a ridiculous excuse for a man,” Georgina said. “A worm.”

  “My goodness.” Vernice was gazing at her curiously. “But Georgina, if he tried to kiss you, it must mean he favors you.”

  “Favors me? That miserable pip-squeak?”

  Taken aback by Georgina’s assessment of Pierce, Vernice blinked once or twice, then ventured timidly, “You don’t care for Mr. Pierce, dear?”

  Georgina frowned grimly into the blackness in front of her. Driving in the territory at night wasn’t anything akin to driving in New York City at night. For one thing, her parents would have had a conniption if Georgina had gone out at night without several chaperones and someone to drive her wherever she was going. For another, out here there were no street urchins begging for money. In addition, as she drove the Murphy buggy to the Murphy farm, there was no loud music blaring from dance halls, no streetlamps, and no other traffic. Not only that, but there wasn’t a speck of light anywhere except the moon, a few stars, and the bouncy light afforded by the single carriage lantern swinging from a hook at the side of the buggy. That one measly lantern didn’t cast enough illumination for a prairie dog to see a snake by. Fortunately, the horse didn’t seem to be able to go fast enough to hurt himself, so Georgina wasn’t worried. Besides, she was too angry to be worried.

  “Mr. Pierce is all right, I suppose,” she muttered grudgingly.

  “Oh.” Vernice sounded puzzled. “But you didn’t care for him kissing you?”

  “I should say I didn’t!”

  “Oh.” Vernice sat back, evidently unable to think of another question.

  Maybelle didn’t suffer from her daughter’s lack of imagination. “I’ll warrant that silly banker’s got a kiss like a wet noodle. Not like Ash Barrett’s kiss, eh?”

  She poked Georgina in the ribs with her pointy elbow, which hurt. Georgina also didn’t appreciate her inference.

  “Whatever do you mean, Grandmother?’’

  “I’ll wager good money that Ash Barrett kisses like a man. A man who knows what to do with a woman.” She chortled wickedly.

  Georgina decided she was glad, after all, for the darkness. If Maybelle could see how hot a blush she blushed, she’d never live it down. She said “Certainly not!” Then she said, “I mean, how should I know?” Then frustrated and irked, she said, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “But you never want to see him again.” Maybelle cackled some more.

  Georgina thought her grandmother had an entirely too wicked cackle, and she couldn’t understand how her own dear mother, Evelyn Witherspoon, every inch a lady, had survived a childhood with Maybelle Murphy. Perhaps Evelyn was a changeling. On the other hand, Vernice seemed fairly normal and sedate. Perhaps it was Grandmother Murphy who was the changeling.

  For pity’s sake, she was losing her mind. I prefer to let the matter drop,” she said in a tight voice.

  Maybelle laughed some more.

  Vernice murmured, “I’m afraid I don’t understand, dear,” and subsided into silence.

  Georgina understood. And she’d never been so humiliated in her entire life. Not only had she succumbed to the lures of a practiced seducer, but she’d then been totally, absolutely, and unconditionally rejected by him. She hoped Ash Barrett would die a long, miserable, agonizing death. Perhaps he could be stung to death by wasps. Or nibbled to death by red ants. Something painful. Something that would last long enough for him to regret the evil way he’d treated her. Something that would make him pay for rejecting her. Leprosy. Consumption. Scalping. That was a good one. Too bad scalping had ended in eighteen seventy-six. She growled again.

  Georgina was not accustomed to being rejected. While it was true she wasn’t the most beautiful female in the world—and while it was also true she’d never gone out of her way to entice men, a practice she considered demeaning—she still had a healthy respect for herself and an appreciation of her assets, both as a woman and as a person.

  Never, not once, had a man thrust her away as Ash Barrett had done tonight. As if she were of no more import to him than a piece of dust As if she were some loathsome and disgusting vermin.

  And after she’d all but raped him. It was too humiliating. Too mortifying. It was simply too gruesome to think about, yet Georgina couldn’t think of anything else.

  The fiend. The cad. The beast.

  She’d pay him back. Somehow. Some way. She’d pay him back or die trying. Even if it meant playing up to that idiot Payton Pierce, she’d pay Ash Barrett back for treating her as if she were of no more worth than an old shoe, suitable only for discarding.

>   Suddenly—and for the first time in days—Georgina thought about Henry Spurling. Good heavens, she’d forgotten all about poor Henry. Yet they were supposed to be almost engaged. Sort of. After a fashion. Was she being disloyal to Henry? Bother. She glared into the blackness of the surrounding desert, wishing life could be simple for once. She’d come out here longing for adventure, but tonight she felt as though she might have experienced one adventure too many.

  Well, contemplating disloyalty could wait. Henry Spurling could wait. He was in New York anyway and couldn’t see what transpired here in the territory. If Georgina had to flirt a little, Henry would never hear about it. She felt better.

  Besides, Henry was as big a poop as Payton Pierce. They deserved each other.

  Evidently, Maybelle had filled Devlin O’Rourke in on what had transpired at the dance, because he materialized in Georgina’s room as she prepared for bed.

  “You’ve got it all wrong, child.”

  If there was anything Georgina didn’t need at the moment, it was an argument with Devlin O’Rourke She turned and gave him her most furious frown. “Leave me alone! Get out of here! Go haunt my grandmother!”

  “Ah, dearie, you’re being silly. It’s not Pierce you want to he flirtin’ with, child, it’s Ash. Pierce is the biggest bore in Picacho Wells.”

  Georgina could well believe it, but she wouldn’t admit it to a soul—or even to a ghost. “Go away.” She was brushing her hair violently, wishing she could be dragging the sharp boar bristles of her hairbrush across sensitive portions of Ashley Barrett’s body. If there were any sensitive portions of his body. She doubted it.

  “Now, now, dearie. You’re only being stubborn. Ash Barrett’s’ a big, strong, red-blooded fellow. If he stepped over the line tonight at the dance, it’s only because he thinks you’re a lovely young thing. And he’s right. He probably couldn’t control his reaction to your beauty.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.” Her jaw ached from clenching her teeth so tightly for so long.

  “Ah, Georgie, you’re as pigheaded as your grandmother.” Devlin sounded glum.

  “Don’t call me Georgie!” She hated that nickname almost as much as she hated Ashley Barrett. “And don’t call me pigheaded either!”

  ‘You ‘re being foolish.”

  “I am not.”

  “Sure, and you are. You’re just mad because Ash made you feel like a woman for the first time in your life. You ought to be thanking the lad.”

  It was too much. Georgina rose from her vanity bench and turned to face the specter. She knew good and well heaving a hairbrush at a ghost wouldn’t do her any good in the long run, but she did have the pleasure of hearing the brush smash against the wall after it sailed through Devlin O’Rourke’s ghostly essence. And she took great satisfaction from the look of transparent shock on his transparent face.

  She went to bed that night wondering if the territory made all females into raving lunatics, or only those associated with the Murphy clan.

  Chapter Nine

  Georgina took special care with her toilette on Sunday morning. She didn’t know if she’d see either Ash or Payton in church, but she aimed to put on a good show if she did. She wasn’t going to let either one of those evil men know that they’d unsettled her. At all. In any way.

  This Sunday, Maybelle was going to accompany her and Vernice to town. She claimed that if she was well enough to go to a dance, she ought to be well enough to attend church. Personally, Georgina didn’t know how Maybelle Murphy dared enter the portals of a church for fear of being blasted by a bolt from heaven as the result of desecrating the Lord’s sanctuary.

  “You’re looking spiffy this morning,” Maybelle said around a mouthful of sausage as they all sat around the table eating breakfast.

  “Thank you.” Georgina took a bite of sausage, too, and wondered if she’d ever be able to make sausage that tasted this good. Until she visited her aunt and grandmother, she’d never considered what went into creating sausages. She’d never had a reason to. In her mind, sausage had simply come from the kitchen, cooked and ready for eating. No one in the Witherspoon family ever had to make the stuff.

  But Vernice had made these sausages which Georgina had to admit were much better than any she’d eaten in New York—out of a hog the Murphy ladies had raised and butchered themselves. The notion of slaughtering a hog didn’t appeal to Georgina much. If she could slaughter something else—a sheriff, perhaps—she might have looked upon the prospect of sausage-making with greater pleasure.

  On the other hand, she supposed sausage-making was a frontier art and, therefore, something she ought to learn. She sighed, wondering if she’d ever get the hang of this territorial life.

  “I’m looking forward to hearing the choir now that you’re in it, Georgina. No one else there can sing worth spit.” Now there, to Georgina’s mind, was an expression that left nothing to the imagination and, therefore, ought to be used sparingly, if at all. She wrinkled her nose. “They’re singing to the glory of God, Grandmother. I don’t suppose the good Lord cares if they have splendid voices or not.”

  “I suppose He doesn’t.” Maybelle didn’t sound as if she appreciated the good Lord’s complacence in this instance. “You could sing with us, Mother. You have a very pretty voice.” Vernice smiled lovingly at her mother.

  Georgina had to hand it to Vernice. Nothing kept her spirits down for long—not even a grouchy mother or a disturbing ghost.

  “Aye, that she does.”

  Speaking of ghosts ... Georgina looked up from buttering a biscuit and frowned at Devlin O’Rourke, who had just materialized and was currently hovering over the breakfast table. She sighed bitterly. She used to scoff at people who claimed to believe in ghosts. She used to think it was silly to hold séances and to pretend to commune, through spirit boards and fortune tellers, with departed relatives. She only wished her former beliefs had been true. Real ghosts were a large pain in an anatomical area Georgina was too much of a lady to mention, even to herself .

  “Maybelle and me,” Dev went on in a dreamy voice, “used to sing together all the time.”

  “Humph.” said Maybelle, sounding as disagreeable as she looked.

  “Darlin’, why won’t you tell me what I need to hear from your sweet lips. I’d be goin’ away if you did, and you’d never be bothered by my spirit again. All I need is some assurance from you.”

  “Go away,” said Maybelle, unmoved. “You’re a lying, black-hearted, worthless deserter.”

  “Black-hearted? Deserter? Sure, and it wasn’t my idea to die when I did!” Dev slapped a hand to his chest.

  Georgina glanced away quickly. It was disconcerting to see his hand slide through his body that way. She concentrated on her biscuit. She’d prepared the biscuits this morning and, while they couldn’t be said to be precisely light and fluffy, at least they weren’t hard as little cannonballs, as her first couple of batches had been. She was getting better at this life. She hoped her self-esteem would be boosted with the knowledge, but this morning it didn’t seem to want to be boosted. It merely sat there, deflated and gloomy, and didn’t move. Bother. She was tired out from the dance, that was the matter with her.

  “Pisht, Maybelle, darlin’. If you’d only admit that you love me, I’ll leave you all in peace. Admit it. You know it’s true. You’ve loved me for years.”

  Maybelle hurled a biscuit at him. Naturally, his body wasn’t solid enough to stop the progress of a flying biscuit, so it hit the wall behind him and broke into a million pieces. Georgina glowered at the mess and almost wished her biscuit-making skills hadn’t improved quite so much. At least when she made little cannonballs, they wouldn’t break apart like that.

  She heaved another sigh and murmured, “Grandmother,” in an aggrieved tone that she knew would have no effect whatever on Maybelle.

  She was right.

  “I’ll be damned if I’ll tell you I love you, you miserable scoundrel!”

  And another thing Geo
rgina despaired of was ever getting her grandmother to cease cursing. It was a highly unladylike habit, and Georgina had been shocked the first few times she’d heard her. She’d never heard a female swear before. It was very upsetting.

  She chewed her biscuit and tried to ignore the quarrelsome couple at the breakfast table. She supposed she should get up and clean the mess from the smashed biscuit, but she’d learned shortly after her arrival that it wasn’t worth, cleaning anything while Devlin O’Rourke and Maybelle Murphy remained in a room together. After Devlin dematerialized, she’d see to the cleaning up.

  “Please, Mother.” Vernice sounded hopeless. Georgina knew exactly how she felt. “Whatever will Georgina think of us if you continue to swear like that?”

  “She ought to know me by this time. She’s been here damned near a month.”

  Vernice sighed this time. Georgina merely chewed doggedly, hoping Mr. O’Rourke wouldn’t accompany them to church. Not only would the biscuit crumbs on the floor attract ants and mice if they didn’t have time to sweep them up, but singing in the choir in close proximity to Payton—if he showed up—would be a difficult enough task. If every time she looked into the congregation and saw not merely Ash—if he showed up—but her grandmother’s dead lover’s ghost as well, Georgina wasn’t sure she could refrain from running, screaming, from the sanctuary.

  This whole situation was terribly stressful. And here she’d believed she’d be dealing only with a madwoman when she set out from New York. Ha! Insanity would have been a jolly vacation compared to this. She buttered another biscuit.

  “But why won’t you declare your love?”

  Wonderful. Georgina frowned up at the ghost, disgusted. He had started whining. She did not approve. She possessed too much pride to whine, and she believed others should as well.

  “Behave yourself,” she snapped. “Grandmother won’t be impressed if you act like a mewling infant.”