by Craig, Emma
“Er, yes. Yes, Miss Loveless and I go back a long way, Virginia. We met . . . oh, ten or eleven years ago, I reckon.” He wasn’t about to get into how they’d met or what Mary Ellen’s profession, then and now, was. Poor Virginia had her hands full merely coming to grips with her reprobate uncle.
Elijah scowled at Joy to let her know he he’d deal with her later. Imagine Joy having the guts to write to his niece! If she’d planned and connived for a hundred years, she couldn’t have come up with a better way to get back at him for all the teasing he’d done to her since they’d met.
She smiled back at him, a smile so honey-coated and serene, Elijah knew it was a mockery. Damn it. How’d she get so uppity all of a sudden? He used to be able to reduce her to tears with a couple of winks or a leer or two. He huffed, aggravated, and was galled to see an expression of satisfaction spread across her face, as if she knew he was caught in a corner and she was gloating. Let her gloat. He’d get her later.
“This is delicious stew, Mac,” Virginia said. She’d not experienced one iota of trepidation about calling the wagon-yard owner by his nickname, Elijah noticed. Unlike some pinched-up, starchy, too-good-for-this-world females he could mention.
Mac nodded. “Thank’ee, Virginia. We’re proud to share it wi’ ye.”
Virginia gave Mac one of her glorious smiles and turned again to Elijah, who heaved a large internal sigh. God, he wished the inquisition would end. It was his fault, he supposed, for not having had the nerve to meet her in person earlier. Although he wasn’t half ready to admit it, he was glad to have done so at last. Virginia was a niece to make any man proud.
She opened her mouth to speak, and Elijah revised the opinion he’d just formulated. She’d be a great niece if she weren’t so damned curious about his personal life. And blabby. The woman was blabby.
“Well, I’m sure she must be a lovely woman if she’s a friend of yours, Uncle Elijah, but I must admit that I’ve never met anyone quite like her before.”
“I should hope not,” Joy said—the first words she’d spoken since they sat down to supper.
Virginia’s pretty blue eyes went round again. “Mercy sakes, do you mean she’s a woman of . . . of . . . questionable character?”
Joy stabbed a carrot out of her stew. “Oh, I don’t think there’s any question about her character, Miss Gladstone.” Butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.
Virginia said, “Really?” in an awed-sounding voice. Her smile was huge, as if she’d been longing to meet just such a woman for years.
“Mary Ellen’s character is fine,” Elijah ground out between clenched teeth. “Miss Hardesty doesn’t cotton to anyone who doesn’t share her strict moral views, is all.”
“Oh.” Virginia sounded disappointed. “I was hoping Miss Loveless might be one of those saloon women one reads about in yellowback novels. I’ve always wanted to meet one.” She popped a piece of cornbread into her mouth and chewed happily.
Joy choked on a bite of stew.
Elijah beamed at Virginia. A girl after his own heart, his niece.
Pausing only to pat Joy on the back, Virginia went on, “Rio Hondo is such an intriguing place, Uncle Elijah. I’ve never seen anything quite like it. The novels don’t do the west justice, you know. I’ve read a million of them, too, trying to imagine you doing some of the things the heroes in them do.”
Since she was smiling sweetly at him and sounded utterly sincere, Elijah did not snort or gag in disgust. Maybe she wasn’t a girl after his own heart, after all.
“Your parents don’t object to you reading novels?”
Virginia and Elijah turned to look at Joy, who evidently realized she’d all but shouted her question. She stammered, “I . . . I mean . . . well . . . but . . . Oh, bother. I beg your pardon, Miss Gladstone, but my own parents would have died sooner than let me read a novel. I’m only surprised that some parents don’t mind, is all.” She glanced around the table and her gaze stuck on Elijah as if daring him to say anything, anything at all, about her or her parents or novels.
He gave her a treacly smile, and then turned to Virginia. “Miss Hardesty had a rather strict upbringing, you see, Virginia.”
“I see. I’m glad my parents weren’t strict with me, because I do so enjoy doing new things and learning about the world. And reading novels. I truly adore novels.” Virginia popped a bite of stew into her mouth, chewed it energetically, and swallowed.
“My parents would have killed me if I’d even looked at a novel.” Joy sounded disgruntled.
“My goodness. Your youth must have been rather, er, circumscribed, Miss Hardesty.”
“It was.”
Virginia and Joy were polar opposites when it came to personality, Elijah decided. While every single move Joy made was weighed and deliberated over for fear someone would pounce on her and berate her for it, Virginia had no qualms about forming, holding, and speaking her opinions, no matter how bizarre they might be. She was a bold bit of goods too. Imagine her coming all the way out here by herself. By damn, his sister had done a good job with her. He ought to write and tell her so.
“I’m awfully glad my parents didn’t hold such strict notions,” Virginia went on. She laughed gaily. “Although, I must say your parents might be right about refusing to allow you to read some of the novels I’ve come across.”
Joy tried to recover her composure. “Actually, Mr. Perry and I have had an opportunity to read two novels during his convalescence.” She hadn’t been smiling much since she’d met Mary Ellen Loveless, but she doled out a smile to Virginia now. “We read The Moonstone and The Woman in White.”
“Oh!” cried Virginia. “Didn’t you simply adore The Moonstone?”
“Yes, indeed, it was most entertaining.”
If Joy got any more demure, Elijah thought sourly, she’d sprout wings and a halo.
“And I liked The Woman in White, too,” said Virginia. “Although I thought that schoolteacher was silly to have chosen Laura over the other sister. I mean, the one—drat! I can’t recall her name.” Virginia demolished another bite of stew while she frowned and thought.
“Marian?” Joy offered helpfully.
Virginia smacked her hand on the table, making Joy jump and Elijah grin. “That’s it! Oh, I beg your pardon, Miss Hardesty. I really should try to control myself. My mother would lecture me roundly for getting boisterous at the dinner table.”
“Please, Miss Gladstone, think nothing of it. I’d give my eyeteeth to have a single ounce of exuberance inside me.”
Elijah smirked at Joy. She made a face at him, and his smirk turned into a goggle. God damn, maybe she was learning too fast.
“Would you really?” Virginia seemed puzzled, but quickly put the emotion behind her. “At any rate, I liked the sister who ferreted out the villainy, not the one who was the victim. Victims are so boring, don’t you think?”
“Er, yes,” said Joy. “Yes, I do believe victims are a trifle boring.”
“Exactly! I thought that schoolteacher fellow—”
“Mr. Hartright?”
“Yes, that’s it. I thought he really ought to have fallen in love with the daring, bold sister who did all the work instead of the one who got locked up in the asylum. Laura was such a prim, silly little thing, don’t you think so?”
“Yes.” Joy’s forehead wrinkled as she pondered Virginia’s assessment of Wilkie Collins’s sisters. “By Jupiter, I do believe you’re right, Miss Gladstone.”
“I know people are always saying that young ladies should be proper and demure and sit in the corner and knit, but I have more exciting things planned for my life.”
“Do ye now?” Mac’s eyes twinkled like candles.
“Oh, yes. This is part of it, actually. Seeing the west.”
“My goodness.” Joy stared at Virginia as if she hadn’t considered her own trek west in the light of an adventure. “You mean you’d have come out here even if you hadn’t been trying to meet your uncle? You mean to say you wanted to?”
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“Miss Hardesty came here originally to be a missionary.” Elijah dropped that tidbit into the conversation in order to see how Virginia would react to it. Joy shot him a scowl, so that was good. He resented her attitude about Mary Ellen, even though he knew his resentment to be irrational. Hell, any well-brought-up young lady would resent a fellow’s whore girlfriend showing up right after he’d asked her to marry him. Damn it, what was wrong with him, anyway?
“A missionary? How fascinating. Did you perceive a vocation, or feel a call, or something like that? I’ve always been interested in how people choose the religious life.”
“Er, not exactly.” Joy frowned at Elijah, as if she expected him to say something derogatory about missionaries—or her. He didn’t. Rather, he donned his most ingenuous expression and smiled a smile of pure innocence at her. From the way she shot a look at the ceiling and grimaced, he guessed she didn’t believe it. Smart girl, Joy.
“Not exactly? I don’t believe I understand, Miss Hardesty.”
“Ahem. I don’t know that I felt a calling, exactly . . .” Joy’s voice trailed off.
“Oh.” Virginia tilted her head and looked perplexed. “Yet, I should think missionary work would be quite a bold step in a person’s life. Did you plan to establish a church in Rio Hondo or something?”
“Lord, no,” Elijah cut in, hoping to irk Joy further. “She and her missionary friends were aiming for the South American jungles, where they were going to torment the natives into believing in Jesus.”
“We weren’t planning to torment anyone!”
Elijah was pleased she’d grabbed his bait. He offered her another toothy smile, and had the satisfaction of seeing her stiffen in her chair like water freezing. She turned to Virginia and pretended to ignore him.
“The Reverend Mr. Hezekiah P. Thrash—”
Virginia burst out laughing. “Mr. Thrash? What a droll name!”
Joy appeared displeased, although she tried to hide it. A tickle of appreciation made Elijah chuckle. Joy shot him a glare hot enough to boil water before she continued.
“Yes, well, I don’t suppose he could help his name. Anyway, he has set up a medical mission in the jungles of Mexico, and has asked me to join him.” This time her scowl held a ton of defiance.
Elijah almost dropped his fork. Damn, he’d forgotten all about the letter Joy’d received today. If he goaded her too hard, she might just up and go off to her Mr. Thrash to spite him, and Elijah couldn’t allow that to happen. Backpedaling furiously, he said, “But she’s decided the missionary life isn’t for her.”
“And how, pray, did you come to that conclusion, Mr. Perry?” Joy set her fork down deliberately, and glowered at him.
“Because it’s the truth.” Elijah set his fork down, too, and glowered back.
“Nonsense.”
“It’s not nonsense. You’ve said as much.”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Yes, you have.”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Yes, you have. You’d hate it, Joy, and you know it.”
“I don’t know it. Who are you to tell me what I’d hate and what I wouldn’t hate?”
“I’m me, and I know you, and I know you’d hate it.”
“Jerusalem! You’re the most exasperating man in the universe. Did you know that, Elijah Perry?”
“I don’t care how exasperating I am, dammit. You’re not going down there to Mexico to torment the Indians!”
“And why not? I have to earn a living somehow, and you know it!”
“Dammit, you can earn a living anywhere, doing anything! You don’t need to go to Mexico!”
“Oh? And what if I want to? What then, Mr. Know-it-all?”
“You don’t want to!” Elijah had begun to holler.
“How would you know?” So had Joy.
“Because I know you, dammit! You’re not going to any damned South American jungle, and that’s final!”
“You don’t have any say about what I can and can’t do!” Joy stood, pressed her hands on the table, and leaned toward Elijah as if a hurricane were blowing at her back.
“I do too have a say about it, dammit!” Elijah rose as well, slammed down his linen napkin—Mac had set out the best dinnerware this evening—and his voice became a bellow.
“You don’t either! You don’t have one single, little, tiny thing to say about what I do!”
“I do too!”
“Do not!”
“Do too!”
“Do not!”
“Do too!”
“Oh, this is ridiculous. You don’t have a single, solitary thing to do with my life, Elijah Perry. You never have, and you never will.”
“Damn it, I do too have something to do with your life, Joy Hardesty!”
She crossed her arms over her breasts and frowned at him as if she hated him more than bugs and snakes and lizards. “Oh? And just why do you think that, pray tell?”
Elijah shouted so loud the windows rattled, “Because I’m the man you aim to marry, damn it!”
Joy’s mouth dropped open. So did Virginia’s. It was a struggle, but Joy managed to say, in a voice shaking with rage, “I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last man in the entire world, Elijah Perry!”
She turned and stormed out of the house. Elijah, feeling helpless and hating it, watched her go. Virginia’s eyes were so big they looked like they might fall out of her head. Mac sat back in his chair and laughed and laughed. The air around him filled with sparkles.
# # #
“Dammit, I know I made a mess of it,” Elijah grumbled. He hadn’t been able to find Joy, although he and Virginia had been searching for her for an hour or more. Thank God the days were long in the late spring, because Elijah’s heart went cold with fear whenever he thought about Joy being caught out on the plains at night. Anything might happen to her. Hell, a cougar might get her. Or a bandit. Or a coyote. Or the weather. The weather was unpredictable in these parts. It might take it into its head to snow, and then where would they be? Elijah feared that if he lost Joy, he’d be left with nothing but the insufferable emptiness that had ridden into Rio Hondo with him all those weeks ago.
“Do you really want to marry Miss Hardesty, Uncle Elijah?”
Virginia was panting from trying to keep up with him. Elijah’s terror for Joy was so great, he hadn’t slackened his frenzied pace for Virginia’s sake. “Yes.” He didn’t elaborate, mainly because he couldn’t explain it.
“I think that’s sweet.”
Sweet, was it? Elijah could think of lots of words to describe his state of mind, but sweet wasn’t one of them. Deranged, perhaps. Foolish. Idiotic. Unwise.
“Do you love her?”
Elijah stopped walking so abruptly, Virginia bumped into his back. He mumbled, “Beg pardon.”
“Think nothing of it.” Virginia pressed a hand to her heart and tried to catch her breath.
Did he love her? Shit. Love? What was that?
“I suppose that was a silly question,” said the chatty Virginia. “Of course, you love her, or you wouldn’t want to marry her. She does seem to be an awfully nice person. And so funny! Why, I don’t believe I’ve ever met anyone with such a splendid sense of humor. Except you, Uncle Elijah.”
Elijah turned and stared at her. He didn’t think he could possibly have heard her correctly.
Virginia gazed up at him, apparently bewildered. “What? What did I say?”
There was no point in arguing with the girl. She was obviously suffering from the effects of her long journey to the territory. What else could account for her mistaken belief that Joy Hardesty possessed a sense of humor? “Nothing.”
He turned again, and resumed his search. After exhausting all the other places in Rio Hondo, he decided to lead Virginia to the Spring River, recalling the pleasant picnic he and Joy had shared there.
Lord, he wished he’d made love to her then, when he’d had the chance. Then she wouldn’t balk at marrying him, and he wouldn’t h
ave to be going through this torture now. Of course, Joy probably wouldn’t have let him, but . . .
Elijah wished he could stop thinking about all the things he wished he’d done before Joy ran away from him.
# # #
Joy had never climbed a tree before, and was no expert. She’d ripped her skirt on the rough bark of the cottonwood and wasn’t quite sure how she’d manage to get down again, but the view was certainly spectacular from up among the branches. She swung her feet back and forth, feeling a sense of freedom as foreign to her as tree-climbing.
“Children climb trees all the time. What a shame I had to wait until I was five-and-twenty to discover the sport.” She laughed at herself and allowed her mind to wander.
Did Elijah Perry really want her to marry him? Such a scenario seemed incredible to her, mostly because, while he infuriated her more than any other human being on the face of the earth—now that her mother was dead—she loved him. Joy couldn’t feature anyone she loved loving her back.
“Of course, he hasn’t declared his love,” she reminded herself. “He’s only demanded that you marry him. He probably only needs someone to help him run his hotel, and you’re handy.” She sniffed, feeling cynical and slightly world-weary, two emotions every bit as unfamiliar to her as the sense of freedom.
“Joy! Joy Hardesty, where the hell are you?”
Joy’s lips pursed. She’d been listening to Elijah and Virginia holler for her for almost an hour now, but she wasn’t about to show herself yet. Let them worry. Not that she wanted Virginia to worry, but Virginia was with Elijah, so there wasn’t anything Joy could do to alleviate Virginia’s worries without also informing Elijah. As far as Joy was concerned, Elijah could just suffer. It would do him a world of good, after all the suffering he’d put everyone else through in his life.
Self-righteous prig, she thought suddenly. “Good heavens, I sound just like Mother. What a horrible idea.”
“Where else could she have gone, Uncle Elijah?”
“I don’t know. There’s nothing here but nothing.”
Joy was pleased to hear the apprehension in Elijah’s voice.
“Haven’t we looked everywhere?”
Virginia sounded tired. Joy felt a little guilty. On the other hand, it wasn’t her fault Elijah had all but driven her out of Mac’s house. Nor was it her fault that Virginia had opted to go with him when he barreled out after Joy.