by Tess LeSue
“Come on, children.”
“We can wait for her here,” Phin said quickly. “We don’t mind.”
“Nonsense. It’s well past a respectable hour for children to be in bed.” Mrs. Bulfinch clapped her hands at them, rounding them up like they were chickens.
“I can carry the little one,” Mr. LeFoy volunteered.
Georgiana thanked him as he scooped Wilby up and followed Mrs. Bulfinch and the children out of the laundry.
“You might as well get their clothes in the copper pot to wash while you wait for me to bring yours down,” Mrs. Bulfinch said over her shoulder as she left, “and heat some more water for your bath while you’re at it.”
Georgiana had never realized how much work there was in organizing a bath. She was so tired; it was an effort to work the water pump and carry jugs to the two big copper pots that sat on the stove. She’d also had no idea how much work the laundry was, or how much work it took to get the children through the hazards of an ordinary day. She thought longingly of Mrs. Creed the housekeeper and Mrs. Wyndham the nanny, and of the unseen troops of scullery maids and laundry maids and housemaids who had kept her life clean and neat and effortless.
Not anymore.
This was life now, she realized as she used the wooden paddle to stir the clothes in the copper. Perhaps it was just tiredness, but Georgiana couldn’t quite suppress a few self-pitying tears. They rolled into the bubbling water and dissolved. No one was coming to help her. She was all alone. If she wanted a bath, she had to draw it; if she wanted well-mannered children, she had to discipline them; if she wanted anything, she had to make it happen . . .
She gave in and had a good cry as she wrestled the bathtub into the scullery and carried endless jugs of warm water from the copper pots to the tub. She kept moving because she had no other choice. Someone had to wash the clothes. Someone had to fill the tub. And that someone was now her.
“You make sure you empty that tub when you’re done,” Mrs. Bulfinch ordered when she delivered Georgiana’s nightgown and robe. “I’ll sit with the children. Don’t be long.”
Georgiana was glad to latch the door behind her. She fought her way out of her gown, which had buttons designed for a lady’s maid to undo and required contortions for her to unfasten. She kicked the gown across the floor and wriggled out of her undergarments. The warm water was heaven. She wished nothing more than to close her eyes and relax into it, but she was torturously aware that Mrs. Bulfinch was waiting upstairs for her, probably tapping her witchy black boot and giving the children nightmares. So it was a short and unrelaxing bath. She scrubbed her face and washed her hair, and once she was dressed, she had the thankless task of emptying the tub one jug at a time. By the time she eventually trudged up to bed, her back was aching. It was the least relaxing bath she’d ever taken.
5
MATT DIDN’T CARE if the moon had barely risen and it was his first night of civilization in months; he didn’t feel the need to visit a saloon or a whorehouse or to seek the company of other people; he just wanted to be alone in his own room and to sleep in a comfortable bed. You’d think a wish that simple could be granted, wouldn’t you? But that was never the way his luck ran.
For a start, he’d forgotten to feed his animals. And then there was Dog, who came whining out of the stable the minute he saw Matt coming and needed to be settled.
But none of that would have bothered him overmuch. What bothered him was that he had company.
“What kind of horse is that?”
“Is that an Indian pony?”
And not just any company. Children.
“I bet it is. I’ve never seen one in real life, but I’ve seen pictures, and they’re always speckled like that.”
“What’s its name?”
Loud children.
The two boys were already in the stable when he got there. They were climbing around the hayloft and had straw sticking up in their dark curls.
Matt didn’t have much experience with children, but it didn’t seem right that they were climbing around a hayloft well after dark. It also didn’t seem right that they were so forward in approaching strangers. Was it normal for children to talk this much? He had nieces back home in Oregon, but they were too young to do much talking. Not like these two boys, who never seemed to stop talking.
“Shouldn’t you be in bed?” he asked, scowling.
“We don’t have horses anymore.” They ignored him and just kept chattering.
“My horse was called Goliath and his was called Apollo.”
He didn’t know how old they were. They were however old up-to-his-belt-buckle was. Old enough to talk, that was for sure.
“Apollo’s a grand name for a horse,” Matt said as he rustled up some oats for the animals.
“No grander than Goliath,” one of them replied.
They looked the same. Exactly the same, right down to the moles next to their right eyebrows. The only thing different about them was the color of their shoes. One wore black boots and one wore brown.
“Why do you have so many horses?”
“They ain’t all mine.” Matt didn’t know why he was talking to them, except that it was easier than not talking to them. When he didn’t speak, they barraged him with questions until his head hurt. Not that the questions stopped when he did answer them.
“Did you steal them?”
“What?” Matt gave them a disgruntled look. “No.”
“Well, whose are they?”
“You ask a lot of questions.”
“Curiosity is a virtue. That’s what they used to say at school. When we went to school.”
“Mrs. Wyndham used to say curiosity killed the cat though,” his brother said.
“I don’t see how it could be both,” the first kid complained.
His brother shrugged, clearly used to the contradictory nature of adults.
“Here.” Matt thrust empty pails at the boys. “Make yourselves useful and fill these up. There.” He pointed them in the direction of the oat bin. “And then take the oats over there.” He pointed at the feed troughs. “And don’t drop any, or that old witch will charge me for it,” he muttered under his breath.
“I’m Phineas Fairchild Bee Blunt,” one of them introduced himself, sounding very pompous and formal. “And this is my brother Philip.”
“Just Philip?” Matt asked dryly. “Didn’t you leave any names for him?”
“Philip Leavington Bee Blunt,” the other one said. “The Leavington is from my maternal grandmother’s side of the family.”
“As is the Fairchild in mine,” his brother interrupted, an edge of competition in his voice. “Fairchild was Grandmother’s maiden name.”
“The Leavingtons are a much more prestigious strain of the family.”
“The Fairchilds have more senators.”
“The Leavingtons have an earl in their lineage.”
“The Fair—”
“Whoa!” Matt interrupted, holding up a hand to still the barrage of name-dropping. “Just a word of advice, Your Majesties: around here people don’t much care about things like lineage.”
“Of course they do.” Phineas rolled his eyes. “Everyone cares about lineage.”
“Now you sound like my brother talking about his horses.” He pulled a face. “Speaking of which, get to and feed these ones before they get so hungry they decide to eat you.”
“Horses don’t eat people.”
“These ain’t like your fancy eastern horses,” he told them with a straight face. “They like the taste of people.”
They got moving at that.
“You didn’t tell us your name,” Philip prodded him. He knew it was Philip because of the brown boots.
“Just plain old Matt Slater.” Matt threw blankets over the horses, taking particular care with Luke’s fillies, wh
ich were headed to market before Matt left town. “Not so much as an earl in my lineage.” He needed to get the fillies rested up and glossy again before he showed them to Jackson. It was a long way to bring them to sell and in no way worth it for the money, Matt thought grumpily. Luke was just doing it to show off to the old man. Matt’s brother was smug as smug could be about his breeding stock. As far as Matt was concerned, one animal was as good as another, provided it was healthy and could do the job you put it to.
“Well, clearly, you’re not plain old Matt,” Phineas disagreed. “Clearly, your full name is Matthew.”
“Nobody calls me that, so I don’t bother with it.” Matt ushered Dog into the stall with Fernando and his own horse, Pablo, and closed the door.
“But it’s your legal name.”
“I guess so.” He put the pails back on their hooks. “Thanks for your help. Now, you’d best get back where you came from. I assume you’re from the hotel? Your mother’s probably worried sick about you.”
“She’s asleep. She fell asleep trying to get our sister down for the night.”
“She’s a bit hopeless that way,” Phineas agreed. “You should see her. She can’t make it halfway through a lullaby without getting sleepy.”
“And then Susannah just sits there playing with her dolls while Mother sleeps.”
“She’s probably tired.” Matt would be, if he had to listen to these boys all day. He was tired after half an hour with them. “I’m going to bed myself, so I’ll take you in.”
They protested mightily, but Matt herded them like recalcitrant cattle, and they were upstairs before they knew what was happening.
“Which room are you in?” he asked as they rounded the second landing.
“The Imperial. Right at the top.”
The Imperial. That was the room that the impossibly pretty blue-eyed woman was in, the wealthy one from New York. Which meant these two chatterboxes were hers. Which meant he was sharing a floor with them all. He didn’t know which was worse: the thought of running into these talkers every day, or having to see their mother. He didn’t like the way she made him feel. Like he was walking along a cliff edge.
“Well, off you go, then.”
They stared at him, obviously burning with more questions.
“Get in there or I’ll wake your mother.”
That did it.
“See you in the morning, Mr. Slater.”
He earnestly hoped not.
6
GEORGIANA TOOK EXTRA care dressing the next morning. She was still in mourning for Leonard, so she had to wear black, but she used her mother of pearl hair combs to decorate her simple chignon, and she pinned her moonstone brooch at her throat. It was one of her few remaining pieces of jewelry. She was hoping Matt Slater would be at breakfast so she could further their acquaintance.
“How many more interviews do you have to do today?” one of the twins asked. He was swinging on the back of a chair like a monkey.
“Too many.” Georgiana pulled a face.
“They’re all a bit rubbish, aren’t they? None of them look like they could wrestle a raccoon, let alone a bear.” He sounded thoroughly disgruntled.
“I don’t see why you need another husband,” his brother said. For some reason he was under the bed and only the tips of his boots were visible. “Your last one didn’t work out so well. I don’t really see the point of them.”
“Don’t talk about your father that way, Philip.”
“I’m Phin.”
“No, you’re not.” Susannah kicked at his protruding boot. “Stop confusing her. She just works out which one’s which and you go confusing her. That’s Philip, Mother.”
“I know,” Georgiana lied. “And the point, Philip, is that the frontier isn’t a safe place for unescorted women and children.”
“Would our father have been any good at ‘escorting’ us?” Phin asked curiously.
“Of course he would.” Susannah sounded outraged that he would even ask.
“How would you know, Sooky? You don’t even remember him,” Phin scoffed.
“Neither do you!”
“I do . . . a bit. He smelled like brandy.”
“I remember that,” Susannah insisted.
Phin scoffed again. “No, you don’t.”
“Stop it,” Georgiana snapped. “Now, we’re going to go down to breakfast, and I shan’t hear any more bickering!”
“Fine with me. Look at this!” To Georgiana’s horror, Phin stood on the writing desk.
“For the love of all that’s holy, get down from there!” Georgiana lunged at him, but before she reached him he did a neat backward somersault off the table. “Phineas! This is not a circus!”
“Isn’t it great? Honey taught me!”
“Honey?”
“Honey LeFoy. Honestly, Mother, you never pay attention.”
“I have a lot on my mind at the moment,” Georgiana defended herself. “Now, go and get your little brother, and never do that trick again. At least not inside,” she relented. Because it really was rather a good trick.
“Now,” she said once they were clumped by the door, ready to go down to eat, “you’re to be on your best behavior, do you understand me?” She gave them her sternest look. None of them seemed the least intimidated by it. “The longer we take to find me a husband, the longer it will take us to get on the trail and the longer you have to be cooped up at Mrs. Tilly’s.”
“I like Mrs. Tilly’s,” Susannah said, surprised. “She gives us strawberry tarts.”
Georgiana couldn’t think what else to threaten them with. And they knew it. “Humph.” She bent down and scooped Wilby up. “Come on, then.”
They were relatively well-behaved for a flight of stairs or two. There was no bickering and no sliding down the banisters. But then the twins caught sight of the dining room and perked up, like bloodhounds getting a sniff of a trail, and went pelting down the stairs, taking them two at a time.
“Phineas! Philip! Walk, don’t run!”
“Can I still go to Mrs. Tilly’s?” Susannah asked.
Georgiana took her little hand and pulled her along, wanting to catch the twins before they wreaked havoc.
Oh my. She entered the stuffy dining room to find Matt Slater was already there. And that her boys had taken the liberty of joining him at his breakfast table, even though there weren’t actually any seats available. They’d dragged two chairs over to where he sat at the head of the table, and sat at the corners of the table, on either side of him. She could tell it was Mr. Slater, even though he had his back to her and his wild hair had been cut, because there weren’t many men with backs that broad. His buckskins were gone, replaced by a clean white shirt and black trousers, but it was very clearly him. She would have known him anywhere.
She took a deep breath and approached.
The three men sitting with Mr. Slater looked taken aback at the twins’ intrusion. Georgiana sighed. That did seem to be the usual reaction to her children.
“I’m very sorry,” Georgiana apologized, as she swooped down on them. Two of the gentlemen at the table leapt politely to their feet. The third, a scruffy bearded man, slowly took the hint and also rose. Matt Slater, she noticed, didn’t. But he did glance up at her.
Georgiana just about dropped Wilby in shock. He’d shaved. And he was scrubbed clean. He practically shone he was so clean. And . . . oh my. Oh my, my, my.
He was . . . beautiful. There was just no other word for it. He had an aquiline nose and a sharply bowed mouth. His jaw could have been carved from marble. No, not marble. Nothing so cold. Amber. He had high, sharp cheekbones, and there was a dimple in one cheek, a deep groove that made her long to see him smile. And then there were those eyes, of course, thickly fringed with black lashes, flashing with golden lights.
Who could have known? Who could have
known that was under all those whiskers?
Georgiana felt like she’d caught sunstroke. She was hot and fuzzy-headed and her pulse was erratic. Oh my. A fluttery, pulsing warmth uncurled inside her, something she hadn’t felt in many cold and lonely years. It was a wonderful feeling. It made her feel seventeen again.
But then reality crashed in. Oh. Oh. She didn’t know if she could keep the disappointment from her face. Because the sight of him, and that feeling in her belly, meant only one thing.
She couldn’t marry him.
He was too beautiful. She couldn’t marry a man who looked like that; she couldn’t give in to those wonderful sparkling feelings. Not after Leonard. It wasn’t safe. She wasn’t safe.
Why couldn’t he have just kept the damn beard? Now she was back to where she’d started!
“It’s fine, Mother,” Phin said. “We’ll sit here, and you can go over there.” He gestured at a table halfway across the room. “You can watch us from there.”
“What?” Georgiana tore her gaze away from the beautiful brute and frowned, confused. What was he talking about?
“We’re fine here,” Phin said. “We’ll stay here and see you after.”
Oh, that’s right. She was dealing with the twins.
Georgiana smiled stiffly at the gentlemen. There was no way she was leaving them at this table. She leaned close to her son, dropped her voice and tried to sound threatening, all without losing her smile. “Get up,” she hissed.
They didn’t get up. Or even look like they were thinking about it.
“Mrs. Smith! Good morning,” a jovial voice interrupted. “It’s such a pleasure to see you again!”
Oh no. It was Mr. Dugard. He was seated at the table right beside them. He gave her a little wave and stood.
“Mrs. Smith!” The gentleman standing opposite her started blushing and fussing. “You’re Mrs. Smith? I have an appointment with you this morning. Arthur Conroy.” He held out his hand for her to shake.
“I do too,” one of the other gentlemen said, sounding vaguely surprised by the fact. If possible, he looked paler and limper than both Dugard and Conroy combined.