by Ana Morgan
Vi reached into her voluminous bag and pulled out a shiny silver flask. “Who wants a splash?”
Running Bear leaned forward and held out his mug. So did Zed. When Vi held the flask over Stormy’s mug, Stormy covered it with her hand.
“Suit yourself.” Vi poured herself a generous dose and picked up her mug. “Kile, why don’t you ask these nice gentlemen about their cattle? Stormy, let’s you and me go out on the porch and get acquainted.”
“Zaagijiwidoon,” Running Bear said softly.
Stormy walked outside, as Running Bear had asked, and leaned against the porch railing, biding her time. Let Vi throw the first punch. She’d duck and then bloody the woman’s nose.
“This sure is a pretty place.” Vi sipped her drink. “I bet Blade loved it here. He wants to live on a ranch real bad.”
Bad enough to lie to get one.
“He’s been workin’ and savin’ to buy one since I first met him,” Vi continued. “Did you know that?”
“No.”
“Doesn’t surprise me. Things come out of him in spits and dribbles.”
It irritated Stormy that Vi knew more about Blade’s past than she did. Looking for something else to focus on, she scanned the ranch yard. In the corral, Belinda rubbed noses with Odin. She forced her eyes to keep moving.
“We were his first sale. He made the down payment on the saloon for us, and when our land sold, he invested what we still had coming in his pa’s bank.”
Despite her resolve to dismiss everything Vi said, Stormy leaned closer. “His father owns a bank?”
“Masters Investment and Trust of St. Louis. Blade used to work there, but something bad happened. He never said what, but I could tell he nursed a deep hurt.”
Stormy backed up, sat in Zed’s rocker, and waited for Vi to say more. Not that she cared. She and Blade were through.
Vi hitched up her skirt to the knee and unwound a ribbon tied to the garter holding up her hose. A ring dropped into her hand. Blade’s ring. She set it on the arm of the rocker. “He wants you to keep this. So you won’t forget him.”
Forget him? She’d never forget his touch or his kiss. Unwanted tears filled her eyes and blurred her sight. She turned her head to blink them away.
When she looked back, Vi was in the house, asking who wanted more coffee.
Stormy picked up the too-big ring and slid it onto her index finger. There was so much she didn’t know about Blade, but dammit, he could have come clean about his past when he accepted Zed’s job offer. Or, the day they finished the fence. Or, on the way home from the Founders Day dance.
She twisted the ring in circles as she thought.
Vi said Blade had been hurt. People hurt people because they were jealous or greedy or just plain mean.
Or, because they lost someone they loved. Zed rarely mentioned Flora. Running Bear never talked about his wife or his son.
Her anger wilted like a yanked-out weed. She pushed the ring firmly onto her finger and walked upstairs to change into clean clothes. She’d slip out the back door and leave a note where Brownie or Zed could find it. Tell them that with luck, she’d find Blade before nightfall. The moon would lend enough light to ride home in the dark.
~ ~ ~
Stormy galloped into Yankton and followed Olin Olsen’s instructions to the livery stable near the docks. She knew Blade and the madam of Purdy’s Place were acquainted. At Founders Day, Purdy had shown him a telegram about his nephew and niece. He’d said she served the best food in Yankton.
Walking quickly to avoid the stares of passers-by, she hunted for the brothel and finally found it on a block between a laundry and a beer brewery. Two burly men stood like sentinels in front of the entryway. She drew a deep breath and pushed through the swinging doors.
Clusters of overstuffed chairs, plush loveseats, and polished tables filled a high-ceilinged room. Everything from the hanging lights to the red tablecloths sported gold tassels. A grand staircase swept up three floors, and a piano player banged out a melody on a small raised stage.
Stormy caught her reflection in a huge mirror mounted over the bar. A country girl stared back at her, small and out of place.
A matron with peacock feathers tucked into her upswept hair washed glasses behind a bar stocked with more bottles and decanters than Stormy ever imagined existed.
“Welcome to Purdy’s Place,” the matron called. “You looking for work?”
Stormy’s cheeks flamed. “I’m looking for a man.”
“Aren’t we all, dearie! This man, is he your husband?”
“Not exactly. He asked me to marry him.”
“And, he’s here for a last fling?”
Stormy gulped. This woman was so matter-of-fact. “He came to catch a steamer, and I need to find him before he goes.”
“Ah, a runner. Are you sure you want to catch him?”
“His name is Blade Masters.”
“Blade’s in town?” The bartender extended her hand. “I’m Purdy Fine.”
“Stormy Hawkins.” Stormy stepped up to the bar and shook her hand.
“So, you’re looking for Blade. I haven’t seen him, but maybe one of my girls took care of him.”
Stormy flinched at the thought of Blade lying with a prostitute.
“As in served him a drink, dearie. Blade’s never walked upstairs.” Purdy pushed aside a curtain behind the bar. “Follow me.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Stormy followed her down a long, dim hallway, past several closed doors, and into a back room.
Three girls not much older than her, wearing short lacy robes, ate at a table. One was breathtakingly beautiful, with blond hair twisted high on her head. Encased in black dancing stockings, her long, shapely legs rested across a neighboring stool.
The second was a dark-skinned Amazon with a voluptuous figure and wide-set almond eyes. The third looked precious—porcelain complexion, ruby lips, lustrous raven hair dotted with sparkling pins.
Stormy felt like a prickleweed in a hothouse of exotic orchids.
Purdy waved toward a sideboard set with plates and chafing dishes. “You hungry?”
Stormy’s stomach yowled. “I can’t. I spent all my money getting here.”
“You’re a blue-eyed redhead,” the porcelain beauty said. “One shift and you’ll make enough for a week’s worth of meals.” She patted the stool next to hers. “Sit. Eat.”
“Go ahead, dearie. I’ll put it on Blade’s tab.” Purdy looked at her girls. “Stormy is looking for Blade Masters. Anyone seen him today?”
The responses came at once. “No.” “Wish I had.” “Heez very beautiful.”
While she ate, more girls drifted in. She learned that the blonde was named Aimee, and the raven-haired girl was Marie. They plied her with questions and commiserated with her situation. No one had seen Blade for weeks.
“You said Blade intends to catch a steamer,” Purdy said. “Going up river or down?”
“Down.” Stormy’s heart sank. It would be evening soon. Olin had warned her to stay off the pier, and she didn’t dare to wait near the docks for Blade to stroll by. Yankton’s riverfront wasn’t safe. And, Blade might already be gone.
The blonde jumped up. “Cheevers knows the schedule.” She strode out without looking back.
“Cheevers is the junior dockmaster,” the Amazon explained. “He keeps a close watch on who comes and goes.”
“And, Grace likes to thank him.” Marie ran her tongue slowly over her ruby lips.
“Is she going to . . .?” Stormy’s cheeks heated again.
Peals of laughter filled the room.
“Grace has her sights set on Cheevers,” Aimee said. “She’s helping herself as much as you.”
“Well, I haven’t heard a frei
ghter whistle all day.” Purdy turned toward Stormy. “I’ll bet Blade is still around. You want to gussie up while we wait for Grace?”
“Let us dress you.” Marie clapped her hands. “It will be fun.”
Stormy shook her head vigorously. She was a cowgirl, not a painted lady.
“You should do it, dearie,” Purdy admonished. “Blade’s a man, and the best way to lure a man is to tease his senses.”
She did want to convince Blade to come home, and these women were being very nice. There was no harm in playing along, if only to pass the time. She smiled. “All right.”
Chattering like magpies, Marie and Aimee drew her up a back stairway and into a room littered with costumes and feather boas. They stripped off her shirt and jeans, tugged on beribboned cotton drawers, and cinched her waist into a lacy purple and black corset that plumped her breasts into oversized orbs. Marie sooted her eyelashes and rouged her lips while Aimee twirled and pinned her hair.
After draping a sleek, lapelled ivory robe around her shoulders and spritzing her with a cologne that smelled like wild rose petals, they spun her around to face a mirror.
Stormy gasped. She looked like a Harper’s Magazine coquette, primped for her wedding night. She almost wished she could have a souvenir photograph taken.
Aimee fussed with a lock of hair that seemed perfectly in place. “You are beautiful, no?”
“She is beautiful, yes.” Marie found Stormy’s hands and pulled her out of the chair. “We have to show everyone.”
“Oh, no. This was fun, but . . .”
Marie made a sad face. “At least let Purdy see. She has been very kind to you.”
Stormy had to agree. “Just Purdy. Then, I have to change back into me.”
Instantly brightening, Marie pulled her down the stairs.
The back room was deserted. Aimee tiptoed down the corridor and back. She pantomimed that Purdy was in one of the rooms.
“Let’s surprise her.” Marie whispered. “It will be fun.”
A wave of silliness crashed over Stormy. This outfit, being in a brothel, the acceptance of these girls, and the uncertainty of ever seeing Blade again. She felt like doing something crazy. With a wink, she counted, “One. Two. Run!”
Marie followed on her heels.
She heard Purdy’s voice, and then a man’s, just as Marie shoved her through the doorway.
The broad-shouldered man turned around.
Stormy clapped her hands to her mouth.
Chapter 18
Blade glanced at the girls who’d interrupted his business with Purdy. Am I losing my mind? The fancy one in the middle is the spitting image of Stormy. Same red hair, same bluebonnet eyes. His breath hitched as he remembered what he’d left in Prosperity.
The fancy girl didn’t smile. Her eyes evaded his, and her hunched shoulders made it seem she wanted to be anywhere but in Miss Purdy’s office.
She was definitely cut differently than her companions. One brazenly moistened her lips. The other sidled her knee to show off more leg.
“Look closer,” Purdy said softly.
He stood, approached the redhead, and gently raised her chin. The scent of roses clung to her shoulders and neck, and her eyes glistened with tears.
“Stormy?”
“It’s me. I should have let you explain. I’m sorry.”
He didn’t know whether to be furious with her or elated for himself. He opened her robe and fingered the seductive lace hugging her pushed-up breasts. “What’s this?”
“Aimee and Marie thought this get-up would make it easier to talk.”
Talk? In a brothel? Her outfit was designed to make him want to carry her upstairs, tear off her bloomers, and bury his face between her legs.
Willing his body to remember how he’d been ordered off the ranch at gunpoint, he drew a deep breath and took a step back. “How did you get here?”
“Just like you. I rented a horse from Olin. It’s at the livery by the docks.” A tear trickled down her cheek, and she swiped it away with her hand.
She wore his ring! Now he felt jubilant. “Could we have a moment, Miss Purdy?”
“Take all the time you need, Blade.” Purdy rose from her chair, shooed out Stormy’s two sidekicks, and shut the door behind her.
The urge to seize Stormy’s hand and run to the nearest Justice of the Peace was barely controllable. If they were married, Zed, Brownie, and Running Bear would have to let him back on the ranch. And, he’d have legal justification for killing Vance if the banker ever tried to force himself upon Stormy again.
Uncertainty flamed his frustration. He’d had a plan all worked out before she showed up. Hop on the next eastbound freighter. Make the treacherous journey to St. Louis. Extract his savings from his father’s control. Rush back to Prosperity to claim her.
In this plan, Stormy stayed on the ranch, safely away from Vance. But, she never did what he expected.
Stormy threw herself into his arms. “Zed and Brownie and Running Bear will be so mad at me for running away, they’ll forget all about being angry with you. I’ll tell them how you saved me from Sultan. You can explain about being a land speculator. We’ll go back to the way things were, only better.”
Blade closed his eyes and hugged her, committing to memory how good she felt. This, and knowing she was truly his fiancée, would sustain him while he was gone. He kissed the top of her head and eased her back. “Sweetheart, I’m going to ask Purdy for a room. Promise me you’ll put on your own clothes in the morning and ride straight home.”
She ran her fingertips suggestively across her corset. “It’s laced in the back. You’ll have to help me out of it.”
Three hoarse blasts of a steam whistle interrupted his thoughts. “Wait here,” he ordered.
He yanked open the door and strode into the lounge. The evening rush had started, and Purdy was pairing customers with girls. He waited impatiently for her to finish. A freighter was approaching, and he needed to find out if it headed east.
If the approaching freighter was leaving tonight, and he managed to talk his way onto it, Stormy would need a room equipped with a door lock. Purdy’s charge for that, plus Stormy’s meals and dressing-up, was more than he had left on his account, and Purdy was an uncompromising businesswoman.
He couldn’t spare the time to help Stormy undress, and he couldn’t leave her in the brothel dressed in that get-up while he checked out the freighter. Odds were she wouldn’t stay out of trouble.
Two whistle blasts sounded. Purdy wasn’t finished.
He retreated behind the curtain and returned to Purdy’s office. Stormy stood at the window, looking tired and forlorn. “Where are your clothes?” he asked.
“Upstairs.”
“Put them on over that . . . that costume and come straight back.”
She perked right up. “Are we going to ride home by moonlight?”
“We’re going to the docks. A freighter is coming in. I need to know if it’s headed to St. Louis. Hurry. We don’t have much time.”
~ ~ ~
Stormy gripped Blade’s hand as they approached the docks.
Fires in iron cressets, mounted on poles, gave off smelly black smoke and illumined the dock with an eerie, writhing glow. Hulking men in mismatched clothes spit tobacco on the rough-hewn planks suspended over the river. A woman wearing an eye patch leaned against a stack of burlap sacks and tossed a small dagger into the air.
Showing no fear of challenge, Blade strode through the maze of goods piled on the pier. Soot-covered dock rats who stared at them looked away after saying, “Evening, sir.”
Blade stopped a foot from the edge of the dock and looked down at the river.
She did the same and gasped. The water flowed with a ghostly light.
�
��Moonlight reflects off silt particles suspended in the water. Missouri River freighters run day and night.”
With a stab of guilt, Stormy realized Blade’s tales of working on the river were true. She’d chosen not to trust him. About this and a lot of other things. Hoping he wouldn’t read her thoughts, she turned her head and peered downriver. “I don’t see the freighter.”
Blade tapped her arm and pointed in the opposite direction.
The freighter rounded a bend. Gray-black smoke and an alarming number of glowing sparks billowed from its single stack. Its whistle shrieked like a berserk ghoul.
Blade sighed like he was disappointed, but she didn’t know why.
“Is it headed toward St. Louis?” she asked.
“Yes. Stay close and don’t say a word.”
Stormy looked around apprehensively. Despite the late hour, or maybe because of it, dozens of unsavory people milled about on the pier. She shivered and tried again to button her shirt over her corseted breasts.
The steam freighter glided up. It was much smaller and plainer than she expected, having seen hundreds of pictures in Harpers. And, it was missing an upper deck with staterooms and a promenade deck with well-dressed ladies and gentlemen parading about.
At the very front of the freighter, a giant beam rose thirty feet in the air. Tethered to cables at its peak, it was attached to another beam that plunged straight down into the river. In the eerie light, she read the ship’s name, painted on the side of the wheelhouse. Snagger II. She wondered what had happened to Snagger I.
An ebony-skinned giant, with hands big enough to crush coconuts, jumped off and tied a thick rope to a dock post. Hastily, he wrestled a stack of crates and sacks onto the dock. A tall man emerged from the wheelhouse and wiped his face with a bandana.
Blade hailed him. “Captain, would you have room for a passenger?”
“Who’s askin’?” The captain wore dark trousers and a ruffled shirt ornamented by a diamond stickpin. His accent was deep Southern-bayou.