“How…wonderful.” Ophelia managed a weak smile. “And this happens in three weeks?”
“So we really do have a great deal to do and a very short time in which to do it.”
“Don’t we, though,” Ophelia murmured.
“I have a hundred tiny details to attend to before this afternoon’s meeting.” Lorelie rose from the bed. “I rather suspect we’ll start right in on the fundamentals of proper behavior today. Although that shouldn’t take more than a half an hour or so.”
“And then what?”
Lorelie’s eyes widened. “Why, then, my dear, we’ll play cards, of course.”
“Lorelie, I’m afraid I have a bit of difficulty in that regard.” Ophelia drew her brows together and chewed on her bottom lip. “I don’t have a significant amount of cash on me. I wonder if the other ladies would accept my marker?”
“Oh, goodness, no, dear.” Lorelie shook her head emphatically. “We decided long ago that anything written down could be read by the wrong people, husbands and such. But it should be no problem for you to withdraw funds from your new account at the bank.”
“But won’t the banker be suspicious?”
Lorelie laughed. “Gracious, Ophelia, you don’t want to go through Randolph. That would never do. His wife, Henrietta, lovely woman, a bit of a bluffer, though, you can always tell, her right eye blinks a bit when she hasn’t a decent card in her hand, and sometimes—”
“The money?”
“Oh, yes. Henrietta will arrange to procure some of it for you, and Randolph will never know.”
“How much do you think I’ll need?”
“Let me think.” A thoughtful frown creased Lorelie’s forehead. “We have fourteen regular players, fifteen with you, we shall be playing most of the afternoon, I should think five or six hundred should do it.”
Ophelia gasped. “Dollars?”
Lorelie’s eyes widened. “Well, my dear, we certainly don’t use pounds.”
“No, I meant isn’t that a lot of money to squander on poker?” Ophelia stared with disbelief. “Aren’t these incredibly high stakes?”
“Perhaps, although it doesn’t seem terribly significant.” Lorelie paused as if considering the question. “We’ve been playing for years, and at first we started with pennies. But that got rather boring and the stakes just kept getting higher.”
Lorelie shrugged. “You must understand, Ophelia, in spite of its appearance, there is a great deal of money in Dead End. Jack isn’t the only area rancher to have made a fortune here. And as for businesses, well, we’re the only real town for a fairly good distance, and there is the influence of the railroad as well. Altogether, our merchants have become quite prosperous. As wives we see nothing wrong with using some of that prosperity for our own entertainment. Do you?”
“Not at all.” Ophelia shook her head. The activities of the Every Other Tuesday and Thursday Afternoon Ladies Cultural Society could well provide her with the means to get her money out of the bank, and a little extra besides. Of course, it would take some time. But the ladies planned on playing nearly every day, and as long as she could get out of town before this Englishman arrived, she was safe. “In fact, I think it’s more than reasonable for wives to share in the profits made by husbands,” Ophelia declared.
“So do I.” Lorelie smiled and headed to the door. “By the way. Tyler left that for you yesterday.” She pointed to a tiny package on the washstand. “He said he didn’t want to disturb you so he didn’t come up.”
Ophelia picked up the small, awkwardly shaped, tissue-wrapped item. “How is his shoulder?”
“Practically perfect.” Lorelie chuckled. “My goodness, the way the man carried on about that tiny, little scratch, you’d think he was seriously injured.”
Ophelia cast her a look of surprise. “Well, I did shoot him, after all. I can’t believe that was an entirely pleasant experience.”
“No, but it was an accident. I imagine if you’d really wanted to shoot him you would have killed him.” She smiled sweetly. “Wouldn’t you?”
“I suppose so.” Ophelia pulled off the tissue and studied a delicate piece of glass that resembled a fish with two tails. “Lorelie, do you know what this is?”
“Haven’t you seen one of those before?”
Ophelia turned it over in her hand. The tails were clear, and inside the round body, droplets of yellow color met and meshed with a swirl of blue green. “I don’t think so. It looks something like a piece of candy.”
“Exactly, it’s supposed to look like candy. Tyler brought home a handful of them. He thought they’d be a nice remembrance. He got them in Europe. Venice, I believe.” Lorelie nodded and swept out the door.
“I see.” Ophelia couldn’t stop the satisfied smile that quirked the corners of her mouth. She hadn’t seen him since the shooting, but she was obviously on his mind just as he was on hers. These past days of enforced rest had given her time to think. Too much time. And most of those thoughts centered on Tyler Matthews.
Would she take what he offered? How had he put it? Oh, yes.
“I want to show you the heights a man and woman can reach. I want to make love to you until you swoon from the sheer sensation and cry my name into the night.”
Ophelia could admit, at least to herself, that she wanted that too. But did she want the risks that went along with it? Not that she cared especially about losing her virtue. She just didn’t want to lose her heart.
A sudden thought struck her with the crystal clarity of the glass in her hand. Perhaps it was already too late? Perhaps her heart was already lost?
She stared at the bauble and faced the truth. Regardless of her feelings for him, she was a liar and a cheat and a fraud. And he could never love her the way Shakespeare’s heroes loved his heroines. Not that she wanted his love anyway. Love only crippled women and made them objects to be pitied and discarded. Lust, on the other hand…
Perhaps, with this particular man, it was time to sample the pleasures of the flesh. It would be something of an appropriate farewell to the life she’d led since her father died. And once she and Jenny had a respectable home, there would be no opportunity for such goings-on. Yes indeed. Tyler Matthews would be a memory to keep captive in her heart for the rest of her life.
Just as the color was held captive in the tiny ornament in her hand. She stared into the glass and smiled slowly. Did he pick this piece deliberately, or was it just a coincidence? Did the glassmaker know what he did when he mixed these particular colors?
Or was she the only one who stared at the piece and saw the yellow of the full moon teasing the blue waters of Venice.
“Are you quite certain you wish to go through with this farce?” Frederick Hunt, the Marquis of Charleton, dropped into an elegant wing chair and propped his feet on a conveniently placed footstool.
“That will be all for today.” Eloise Dunstall nodded to the troupe of seamstresses she’d had working nonstop ever since her arrival in Chicago. The young women left the extravagant hotel room in a flurry of quickly gathered silks and satins and giggles and promises. Eloise sighed and settled on a nearby chaise longue. “Honestly, Freddy, I never knew commissioning a completely new wardrobe would be so exhausting.”
Freddy quirked a jaded brow. “You could have waited until we returned to London and civilization.”
“You obviously know far less about women than you think you do, my dear.”
“I obviously know far less about you than I thought I did.” Freddy heaved a long-suffering sigh. “Explain to me again why you’ve changed your mind about letting the authorities handle this whole matter.”
“I will admit that when you first received the telegram, I was quite upset. However, my curiosity overcame my annoyance and I decided it would be far more interesting to deal with this myself.”
Freddy groaned. “I don’t see why you have to drag me along to this godforsaken spot. What’s the name of it again?”
“Dead End.”
�
��Sounds bloody awful,” Freddy grumbled.
“It sounds like an adventure.” Eloise cast him an impish glance. “Just think of it, Freddy. Out there, practically in the middle of nowhere, some woman is using my name and selling my title.”
“It’s fraud is what it is.”
“No doubt, but don’t you find it amusing?”
Freddy glared silently.
“Well, I do. Besides, it’s just the kind of thing I might have done in my younger days.”
“Well, you most certainly wouldn’t do it now.”
“Of course not,” she said in a chastising manner. “I have no need for such adventures these days. Now, I’m the dowager Countess of Bridgewater—”
“You could be the Marchioness of Charleton if you’d just give in and marry me.”
“—and my poor, dear Charles left me extremely well off. Still, when I met my late love I was simply another young, pretty American actress struggling to survive on the London stage.”
“I don’t know why we left London in the first place,” Freddy muttered.
Eloise released an exasperated sigh. “Goodness, Freddy, I haven’t been home in more than twenty years. I wanted very much to see the land of my birth. And I especially wanted to see the West before I remarry.”
Freddy brightened. “Me?”
“Well, naturally you. Who else would I marry?”
Freddy narrowed his eyes. “When?”
“Soon, dearest, very soon,” she said vaguely. “But first, as soon as my wardrobe is completed, it’s off to Wyoming and Dead End.”
“And what happens then?”
She drew her brows together and thought for a moment. “I’m not entirely certain. We shall simply have to wait and see.”
Freddy rolled his eyes heavenward. “Dead End, Wyoming. What a horrible name.”
“But weren’t we suppose to visit there originally? I thought it was on our initial itinerary, and we even had train tickets before I lost my luggage and we had to return to Chicago.”
“It was.” Freddy winced as if anticipating her response. “But it was a joke and I gave the tickets away. At first I thought the name sounded quite in the spirit of the Wild West, but tickets or not, I never intended for us to actually go there.”
“Well, now we shall. And right now, the joke, my love, is on us.” She shrugged and smiled. “But when I am face to face with the other Countess of Bridgewater, we’ll see who has the last laugh. I suspect this will be the most fun I’ve had in ages.
“I do wonder, though”—Eloise picked up a length of sky-blue satin and held it up to the light—“if in addition to my name, the woman has my clothes as well.
“I don’t mind sharing the name so much,” she said with a sigh, “but I would like my bloody clothes back.”
“Hell and damnation.”
Tye threw the book across the room and rubbed his hand over his eyes. He couldn’t work, he couldn’t sleep, he couldn’t concentrate. All because of that woman. That infuriating, annoying, desirable woman.
It wasn’t enough that she hadn’t an honest bone in her beautiful body, or that she was trying to steal from Big Jack, but she had to go ahead and shoot him as well. His shoulder still twinged where the bullet had grazed it.
He pulled himself to his feet and stalked across the room to pick up the volume of Shakespeare. He had a list of things as long as his arm he should be doing in the middle of the day, and reading the work of dead British playwrights wasn’t on it. But the book had lured him this morning, as it had yesterday and the day before. He couldn’t seemed to get away from the words of the Bard or from her.
Ophelia.
Every word he read reminded him of her. Every quote had a double meaning. Every line of dialogue brought his mind back to thoughts of her.
Ophelia.
He’d stayed away since she’d shot him. At first he was just too damned mad. It was still hard to believe even his aunt didn’t seem to take the shooting seriously. Why, Ophelia could have killed him. And that maid of hers, or whatever she was, was apparently just as big a liar as Ophelia. Who on earth couldn’t pronounce “countess” or “my lady” or “Bridgewater”?
“Hah! She must think I’m a complete fool.”
Lord, now she had him talking to himself. Maybe he was a complete fool. Yesterday, he’d even brought her a gift, the little glass bauble he’d picked up in Venice. It reminded him of moonlight and water and—he groaned—her. He raked a hand through his hair. What had she done to him?
Ophelia.
He wanted her in his bed. Hell, he’d wanted that from the moment he’d first seen her. But he’d wanted women before and he’d had them. Those he hadn’t lost to Sedge, anyway. And he wanted proof of her deception. Proof that would save Jack a great deal of money and more than a little embarrassment. But now it seemed he wanted more.
What did he want anyway?
He sank back into the chair, the answer hitting him like a blow to the gut. He wanted mahogany-haired children to teach to ride a horse and chase calves and fish in the creek. And he wanted long winter nights around a crackling fire with the sonnets of Shakespeare read aloud in a voice lilting and lush and just a bit husky, with an accent that melted something deep inside him. And he wanted the first thing that he saw every morning and the last thing he saw every night to be eyes the color of emeralds and lips full and lush and made to be kissed and hair like a Wyoming sunset.
He wanted Ophelia and he wanted her forever.
He sighed and leaned his head back against the chair. It must be love. What else could it be? What a mess. What a disaster. She was a liar and a thief and who knows what else. But she was also smart and loyal, and there was a look in her eye when she talked about home and family that tugged at his heart.
A sudden thought stabbed him, and he straightened in the chair. She didn’t have to be a thief and a liar and who knows what else. She didn’t have to take Big Jack’s money. She could reform. He could reform her. Of course, she’d never admit anything to him, so he’d still have to get his proof first. But then—he grinned—she’d be his.
He leapt from the chair and paced across the room. He only had three weeks until some British lord Sedge had wired showed up for the bogus ceremony making his uncle a count. Ophelia was far too clever to stay for that and risk being exposed. He’d have to get to the truth before she tried to leave town. And then he’d have her.
She was smart, all right, but he was smarter. He laughed out loud. Oh, certainly, some people could say his plan smacked of blackmail. But it took a bit of a scoundrel to catch a scoundrel. And who would appreciate the irony of that better than the fair Ophelia?
Confidence surged through him. Lorelie had said that Ophelia would be at the meeting of that silly women’s society today, but tomorrow he’d start putting his plan into effect. Ophelia would never leave Dead End without getting her money from the bank. And she couldn’t possibly do that before the ceremony without arousing suspicion. But just to make sure, he’d have Randolph keep him informed as to her banking activities. And why not? He was the mayor, after all. And just maybe there were some benefits to the job.
He flipped open the book and settled back in the chair. Once he had Ophelia reformed, he had to make the woman love him. Lord knows, she already wanted him. But he’d never set out to make a woman fall in love before and, with Ophelia, Shakespeare was undoubtably the best place to start.
He glanced down at the open book and grinned. A line from The Merchant of Venice stared up at him. How appropriate. How prophetic. How perfect.
To do right, do a little wrong.
Chapter Eleven
“Who ever would have imagined a simple little building like an opera house would be so incredibly complicated?” Ophelia said under her breath. She stared at drawings and plans and ill-formed ideas spread before her on the makeshift table smack dab in the middle of Dead End’s main and, for the most part, only street.
“The way I see it, the facade of t
he building should…” The banker spread his arms in a wide, dramatic gesture that would put even the most experienced actor to shame.
“No, no, no Randolph.” The woman from the general store declared. “The front of the opera house…”
“Just think of it, Ophelia.” Lorelie sighed. “The Dead End Opera House.”
“The Empire City Opera House,” someone else said firmly.
Was every single resident of Dead End involved in this project? Obviously, the town’s people had gotten past their ambivalence over the name change and direction for the future. Now, they worked together for the same goal. At least today. Ophelia glanced around the gathering with a sense of sheer helplessness. This project had the feel of a community event or a barnraising. And she had no idea how to raise a barn.
But these people, these very nice people, were looking to her, or rather to a sophisticated countess, to direct them in the construction of their shining symbol of civilization. Certainly, from an actor’s point of view, she could guide them here and there. But a great deal of the ongoing discussion had to do with things like “joists” and “load-bearing walls,” and it was all she could do to keep a perplexed, if not downright stupid, expression from her face.
She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. Fine. If a countess confident in construction was what they wanted, they were in for a rude awakening. She was all they had and they’d better learn to accept that.
“Gentlemen, ladies.” Even Ophelia’s best stage voice couldn’t penetrate the din for more than a ten-foot radius, but those within range turned toward her expectantly. “I have been in a great number of opera houses and theaters in my life. I have even been backstage in quite a few. I am more than willing to give you my thoughts and advice on decor and design and various other details, but I simply cannot tell you how to build the thing.”
The crowd stared at her as if she was insane, then traded looks among themselves.
“Countess.” The sheriff—what was his name?—stepped forward. “We don’t expect you to tell us how to build it.”
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