Maverick Heart

by Joan Johnston

  She had immediately noticed the difference in Miles’s pattern of speech, how his crisp English accent had broadened and flattened over the years spent away from England. His dialogue was equally foreign, being dotted with quaint Western provincialisms. His manner of dress was no less influenced by the land he had apparently adopted as his own. His fringed buckskins were worn shiny smooth in spots and looked like they might have served more than once as a table napkin. But he didn’t seem to mind being seen by a lady in all his dirt.

  He had also lost the delicacy of manners common to English noblemen of his rank. He was sitting—if his deplorable posture could be called that—in the presence of a lady, and showed no intention of rising to his feet. She felt a flare of anger at the insult but bit her tongue. She needed Miles’s help. Castigating him for his lack of courtesy would not help the situation.

  When he spoke, he ignored her as if she weren’t there and addressed his comments to the colonel.

  “I plan to take the four men I brought with me and keep looking for that band of Sioux until we catch up to them. I’ll take the responsibility for keeping an eye on Lady Talbot if she comes along with us.”

  “Are you sure you want to take a woman on such a dangerous journey?” the colonel asked.

  Miles shrugged. “It’s up to her. She’s the one who wants to find her son.”

  Miles was the last person Verity would have chosen for the job. Because he was going to know, the instant he laid eyes on Rand, the secret she had kept from him all these years. She dreaded what vengeance he might feel he had to exact for that wrong. Verity couldn’t worry about that now. She would simply have to deal with that problem if—when—it arose.

  She searched Miles’s face, suspicious of his motives. Why had he offered to help? What did he want from her in exchange? They hadn’t spoken since he had threatened vengeance on her. He had ridden back to the tail end of the column and joined the four men in civilian clothes who had turned out to be cowhands on his ranch.

  Unfortunately, she was in no position to haggle. It didn’t matter what price he asked. She would pay it. She wasn’t about to deny herself the assistance he offered. She had to find her son. Rand might be lying hurt somewhere. He might be dying … And Freddy … It didn’t bear thinking what horrors she might be forced to endure. Every moment mattered.

  “I’ll gladly accept whatever help you’re willing to offer, Lord Lind—Mr. Broderick,” she corrected herself. “When do we leave?”

  Miles made a sound that might have been a snort of amusement. “It isn’t quite that simple.”

  “Why not? My son is wounded. Lady Winnifred may be—The situation is urgent. We must leave as soon as possible.” Thanks to years of hiding what she felt from Chester, she managed to keep her voice calm, even though she felt frantic inside.

  But Miles had always been more perceptive of her feelings than Chester, because he had cared what she felt. From the narrowing of his eyes, from the way his hands closed on the arms of the rawhide chair, she realized she hadn’t fooled him with her act of bravado. He knew just how scared she was.

  But he didn’t offer words of comfort, as a man who cared might have done. His voice was hard, uncompromising, unrelenting. No, this was not the Miles Broderick she had known.

  “Rushing out of here isn’t going to help if we end up having to turn right around to come back for supplies. You’ll be another mouth to feed, and I sure as hell didn’t pack anything for a lady first time around. I need to spend a little time with the sutler here at the fort.

  “Meanwhile, you better get yourself rigged out in some clothes that let you ride astride. I don’t have a sidesaddle, and even if I did, you’ll need a better seat if we have to make a run for it.

  “And you might want to wash up a bit before we go. It’ll be the last chance you’ll have for a while. There’s not much in the way of amenities out on the range. You look like you could use a rag and some soap.”

  She flushed as he gave her a rude examination that was nothing short of insolent. For the first time Verity became aware of her rumpled and torn velvet riding habit. She had forgotten entirely about her appearance in the desperation of the moment. She reached up to smooth her hair and realized that blond strands had fallen down where pins were missing from the bun she had secured at her nape that morning.

  Her thin leather gloves were torn, revealing scratches on her palms, and she could only imagine the condition her face was in. She reached up and winced when her fingertips came in contact with the bloody scratches on her cheek.

  “My things are all with the wagon,” she said. “Has it arrived at the fort?”

  “Uh … that’s another problem,” the colonel said. “I’m afraid your wagon was a total loss. The buffalo didn’t leave much but splinters. Everything was trampled beyond recognition.”

  “What?” Verity stared at him, goggle-eyed. Her jaw worked, but she found herself momentarily speechless. She closed her eyes to keep the two men from seeing the depth of her despair. She gritted her teeth to still the quiver in her chin.

  She felt a hand at her elbow, and her eyes snapped open. Miles stood beside her, ready to assist her.

  “I’m fine,” she said, stiffening her knees to keep them from collapsing under her. “Only …” She took a shuddery breath and said, “Everything I brought with me from England was on that wagon. Everything we needed …” Verity sank onto a wooden chair Miles shoved behind her knees.

  She looked up at him, letting him see the desolation she felt. She searched in vain for a spark of sympathy, an offer of comfort in his remote gray eyes.

  Then she remembered Rufus and Slim. She turned to the colonel. “The two men—”

  “I’m afraid they’re dead, ma’am.”

  “My God.” She held herself rigidly upright in the chair, clenching her hands together in her lap to still their trembling.

  She had been grateful—and amazed—to discover when Chester’s will was read that he had left her anything at all. It had seemed like a miracle that she would be able to offer her destitute son a way to redeem his fortune. She had convinced herself that they would enjoy their new life in the Wyoming Territory.

  So far everything had gone dreadfully awry.

  Rand and Freddy had been captured by Indians. Everything she had brought with her to start a new life had been trampled by buffalo. And the one man she had ever loved had turned up demanding vengeance for a wrong she had done him more than two decades ago.

  She lifted her eyes and sought out Miles, who had leaned back against the planked wall, his arms crossed over his chest.

  “Do you still want to come with me?” he said. “Or would you rather wait here until I get back?”

  Verity looked—really looked—at Miles. The coiled tension in his shoulders betrayed him. He wanted her to say she would go with him. Because she would be completely at his mercy if she did.

  She eyed the slashing scar running through the shadow of beard, his shaggy black hair, the filthy buckskins. She tried to remember the handsome youth who had courted her, but found nothing in the steely gray eyes staring back at her from beneath dark brows that remotely resembled the English gentleman she had loved.

  There was nothing gentle about this man.

  She stared out the colonel’s window onto the immense parade ground at the center of the fort and considered her choices.

  Fort Laramie, located at the junction of the Laramie and North Platte rivers, wasn’t much of a refuge from marauding Indians, to Verity’s way of thinking. There were no stout walls, no walls of any kind, just wooden buildings arranged around a central quadrangle with the river curving around one end of it.

  There were blue-coated soldiers aplenty, several two-story barracks’ worth, and maybe that was all that was needed to hold off the savages. She had to be out of her mind to consider leaving what safety the fort offered to travel into the wilderness with a man who despised her.

  But she couldn’t bear to stay behind, to
wait and wonder what had happened to Rand and Freddy. She had to know.

  “I’ll go with you,” she told Miles. “However, since my wagon was lost, I don’t have anything to wear besides—”

  “I’m sure my wife will have something to fit you, ma’am,” the colonel offered.

  Verity wanted to refuse, but realized it would only be foolish pride speaking. “Thank you, Colonel Peters. I would be much obliged.”

  “I’ll meet you at the colonel’s quarters in an hour,” Miles said. He turned without another word or look and left the colonel’s office.

  Verity took a deep, calming breath. In an hour they would be on their way to find Rand and Freddy. She could last another hour without going to pieces. She knew she would be all right once they were on the trail.

  Help is on the way, my dear ones. Be strong. We shall soon have you safe.

  “Lady Talbot?”

  She turned to the colonel and forced a smile onto her lips. “I’m ready, Colonel Peters.”

  The colonel walked her to his home, a white clapboard house shaded by a deep railed veranda on each floor, one of several structures that he explained were officers’ quarters, all set along the southwest side of the parade ground, at the bend in the river. As they entered the house she saw that the stairs took up half of a long central hallway with rooms branching out to either side.

  “This is my wife, Mrs. Peters,” the colonel said, as he introduced the two of them in what turned out to be the parlor. “This is Lady Talbot, dear, the Countess of Rushland.”

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Lady Talbot,” Mrs. Peters said with a welcoming smile. The woman dipped a slight curtsy which Verity would have considered her due in England, but which seemed out of place here.

  Verity put a hand under Mrs. Peters’s arm to assist her out of the curtsy. “I’m the one imposing on you. I hope we can be friends.”

  She could see Mrs. Peters was pleased by her overture. “I’d like that very much,” Mrs. Peters said. “We don’t get many white women out here. I’m glad to meet you.”

  “I thought you might help Lady Talbot freshen up and find something for her to wear,” the colonel said. “She has a long ride ahead of her.”

  “Of course, darling,” Mrs. Peters said to her husband. “I’ll take care of everything. Now shoo, go back to work.”

  Verity watched, entranced, as the colonel leaned down to give his wife a quick buss on the cheek, which raised roses among the wrinkles. Familiarity in public between spouses was another difference from the world she had left behind. Most upper-class English gentlemen confined contact with their wives to the dance floor and the bedroom.

  The endearments between husband and wife, the dear and the darling, were stranger still. She fought back a rush of envy, a wistful longing for what might have been. Surely if she had married Miles all those years ago, they would have used such expressions for each other. She forced such thoughts away. She had learned to make the best of what life offered rather than sink into melancholy over what she couldn’t have. It was the only way she had survived the past twenty-two years.

  “Let’s see what we can do to get you cleaned up,” Mrs. Peters said as she led Verity toward the kitchen that was appended to the back of the house. “Although,” the elderly woman said, her brown eyes sparkling with laughter, “I don’t know what the colonel was thinking of to imagine anything of mine would fit you.”

  Verity could see why the colonel had believed his wife might find something for her to wear. They were both unusually tall women. The resemblance ended there. Mrs. Peters was broad-shouldered, small-bosomed, and stout. Perhaps the colonel remembered her as she once had been.

  The older lady pursed her lips. “Perhaps I can take something in. At least the length will be right,” she mused.

  “Sit here,” she ordered Verity, pulling out a chair at a small wooden table in the kitchen. The lever squealed as she primed the pump and filled a bowl with water. She found a clean cloth and some carbolic in a brown bottle and sat down beside Verity.

  “That’s a nasty scratch,” she said as she surveyed the damage to Verity’s cheek.

  “My horse threw me.” Verity inspected her hands. “Thank goodness I was wearing gloves. There isn’t much damage to my hands.” She pulled off the torn gloves, gritting her teeth as the leather rubbed against the bloody scratches on her palms.

  “This might sting a little.” Mrs. Peters daubed the cloth with carbolic and applied it to Verity’s cheek.

  Verity hissed in a breath. The antiseptic acid burned like fire.

  “Sorry, dear. It’s the only thing I know to do.” Mrs. Peters repeated the process with Verity’s palms. “Shouldn’t leave any scars after you heal,” she said. “Lucky for you. Your hands are quite beautiful, and so soft.”

  The contrast was apparent. Mrs. Peters’s hands were rough and reddened from whatever harsh soap she used and callused from hard work. Verity looked at her own hands, soft and smooth except for the new scratches. She had never done any physical labor in her life. The butler, the footman, the cook, the housekeeper, the groom, the gardener, and the maids had done everything, and Leah had kept her company. But the servants were all in England, and Leah had died two years ago from an infection of the lungs.

  Now she had to rely on her own ingenuity and willingness to work. She was willing. She just wasn’t sure how she would ever be able to learn everything there was to know. Verity wondered—not for the first time, and she suspected not for the last—whether she had made a mistake leaving England, whether she would be able to survive in this new land. But she didn’t have much choice. The ranch was the only home she had left.

  Mrs. Peters kept up a steady stream of chatter as she led Verity to her upstairs bedroom and began rummaging through her wardrobe. Verity kept waiting for the questions. Why are you here? What happened to your own clothes? But the colonel’s wife managed to keep a dialogue going without once indulging her curiosity.

  “I suppose you’re wondering what I’m doing out here,” Verity volunteered. She held herself still while Mrs. Peters measured and pinned the waist of a brown corduroy skirt that was split into two legs to enable her to ride astride.

  Mrs. Peters eyed her keenly. “I figured you’d tell me if you wanted me to know.”

  “I came here with my son and his fiancée—” She was surprised when her throat constricted. She had to swallow to clear a path for speech. “They were captured by Indians,” she said evenly.

  “I’m so sorry. So very, very sorry.”

  Verity took one look at the sympathy on Mrs. Peters’s face, registered the tone of her voice, and realized the woman was offering her consolation on her loss. “They’re not dead,” she said sharply.

  Mrs. Peters didn’t contradict her, but it was plain she didn’t believe her, either.

  Rand couldn’t be dead. She had given up too much for her son, had changed her life forever because of him. Her happiness had revolved around him, and his happiness had always ensured her own. God couldn’t let him die. She would do anything to get Rand back, promise anything. Only, please, God, he couldn’t be dead!

  “Mr. Broderick is going to help me search for my son and his fiancée,” she explained to the older woman.

  “Miles Broderick is a good man. If anyone can find them, he can.”

  Verity felt reassured as much by Mrs. Peters’s assessment of Miles’s character as by her confidence in his tracking ability.

  “What brought you here, if I may ask?” Mrs. Peters said.

  “My son and I plan to settle on a ranch my late husband purchased as an investment.”

  “Oh? Whereabouts?”

  “As I understand it, the ranch house is situated where the Chugwater runs into the Laramie River.”

  “Oh?” She frowned. “Who sold your husband that place?”

  “A man named Loomis, I think.”

  Mrs. Peters’s lips pursed, and she made a sound in her throat.

  “Is something
wrong?”

  “Wouldn’t be Ben Loomis sold you that ranch, would it? The Muleshoe Ranch?”

  “Yes, it was. I believe it is called the Muleshoe.”

  “Oh, dear.”

  “What?” Verity asked, alarmed by the look on Mrs. Peters’s face.

  “I knew that Ben Loomis was no account, but I never thought he would do anything as low-down as this.”

  “As what?” Verity said.

  “That ranch of yours, the one Ben sold you, well, I think he also sold it to somebody else.”

  “What are you talking about?” Verity felt her heart skittering around in her chest. She had never counted on this, never counted on fraud. Although she shouldn’t be surprised, not really. That was how Chester had lost his very large fortune, investing in every harebrained scheme presented to him.

  This was disaster on a scale she hadn’t imagined. The loss of the wagonload of supplies was a minor setback in comparison. It simply wasn’t possible that the ranch she had counted on becoming her son’s heritage, the only home they had, belonged to someone else.

  “Are you telling me that someone is living on the Muleshoe Ranch right now?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Mrs. Peters replied.

  “Who?” Verity asked.

  “Why, Mr. Broderick bought the place near two years ago.”

  Verity breathed out a shaky sigh and put a hand to her head where the pulse was pounding at her temple.

  Of course it would be Miles. How had he done it? Was he a part of the swindle? Was that what he had meant when he said he would have his revenge? Had he known all along that both of them laid claim to the same piece of property?

  The echoing knock at the front door made Verity jump. Oh, God, that was probably Miles now! What should she do? What should she say?

  “I’ll be finished here in a moment,” Mrs. Peters said, knotting a thread in the hem and cutting it with her teeth. “Why don’t you go downstairs and make Mr. Broderick comfortable in the parlor?”

  Verity hastily put back on her lavender velvet riding skirt. She gripped the banister with her fingertips to spare her scraped palm as she headed down the steep stairs. Her mind was scurrying to make heads or tails of the information she had just gleaned from the colonel’s wife. What did it all mean? Was it sheer coincidence? She couldn’t believe that. How had she been so neatly manipulated into such a trap? What further revenge did Miles have in mind for her?