Denim and Lace

by Rice, Patricia

  Denim and Lace

  By

  Patricia Rice

  Praise for the novels of Patricia Rice

  Paper Moon

  "Ms. Rice uses her delicious, subtle sense of humor to reunite us with her zany cast of characters. . . . A definite keeper."—Romantic Times (4 ½ stars)

  Paper Tiger

  "Pure romantic fun ... a sheer delight!" —Mary Jo Putney

  Paper Roses

  "A special gift she gives all her readers." —Romantic Times (4 ½ stars)

  The Marquess

  "Marvelous . . . her mastery of subtle humor will please the most discriminating reader." —Romantic Times (4'/2 stars)

  "An enthralling story of passion, love, sabotage, and betrayal.''—Rendezvous

  "This fast-paced, witty novel will definitely delight." —Gothic Journal

  Denim and Lace

  "An exceptionally well-crafted novel." —Romantic Times (4 ½ stars Gold)

  Texas Lily

  "Ms. Rice is in her element as she gives us a recipe for romance . . . one delicious read." —Romantic Times (4'/2 stars)

  Denim and Lace

  Copyright © 2010 by Patricia Rice

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portion thereof, in any form.

  First published by Signet, New York. Copyright © Rice Enterprises, Inc., 1996

  PUBLISHER'S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  Chapter One

  Sierra Mountains October 1868

  “I may have to kill him."

  The words were horrifying, even though said in the most thoughtful tones a soft, feminine Tennessee accent could produce.

  The wagon lurched over a rock, and the speaker hauled on the reins while her companion grabbed her bonnet and held on to the rough wooden seat.

  The October air was pleasantly mild for this high in the Sierras, but the occupants of the wagon weren't aware of that. Too tired to admire the flutter of a golden leaf as it blew by on the breeze, they had their eyes set on the swirl of gray smoke over the next hill. Two thousand miles they had come, and the end was near.

  "You can't kill him, Samantha. They'd put you in jail and hang you, and then we would all starve. What would that solve?"

  Sam smiled a trifle grimly. Leave it to Harriet to see things in a practical perspective. Her younger sister had the bright blue eyes and golden curls of a china doll, but she had the brain of a first-class merchant. If anything, Harriet's looks were her downfall. Had she been as homely as Samantha, she could have started her own mercantile store, and no one would have thought twice about it. As it was, men laughed at her when she tried to persuade them she was more than qualified to run a store.

  On the other hand, Sam was just as plain as they came, but she didn't have a penchant for sitting in a musty old store, counting pennies. She wanted to work the land, and she watched the plant life around her with more than just a casual interest. Her father had promised that the valley he had found would be temperate enough for good crops despite its location. He'd said the soil was rich and the water plentiful, a veritable treasure trove better than any gold or silver a man could want. Sam knew her father well enough to have her doubts, and those doubts grew by leaps and bounds at the sight of rocky soil and towering evergreens, but it was much too late to turn back now.

  "What am I supposed to do when I meet the man?" Sam returned to the subject, casting aside her concerns for the future for the worries of the present. "Ask him politely what he did to our father? Smile and tell him we haven't heard from our father since he threw him out of town? Demand he find Daddy or we'll call the law? From what I understand, this character is the law here."

  Two thousand miles had taken their toll on Samantha. As the eldest, she had always been their father's favorite, the son he'd never had. She'd imitated everything her father had done since she was little more than a toddler, and she resembled him in more ways than anyone else in the family. She had always adopted a boy's attire and preferred the occupations of males to females, but after two thousand miles of acting as man of the family, Sam was actually beginning to look like a man. Her hands were callused from days hauling on the reins of recalcitrant oxen. Her always slender figure had slimmed to wiriness from riding her horse in search of game. No hat brim could keep the pounding sun from setting freckles across her nose and cheeks. And she'd cropped her hair short for ease of care. The red curls were growing out now, but they were the only real evidence that she might be other than a half-grown boy. That, and her voice. She’d been told her sultry drawl could be disconcerting coming from a redheaded tomboy wearing pants.

  "Maybe someone has shot him already," Harriet said decisively. "A man like that is bound to be shot sooner or later. Then we can just find Daddy and tell him to come back."

  Samantha sighed. She loved her father dearly, but she knew better than anyone that her father wouldn't be content to settle in a valley and raise crops and chickens. He had a wandering mind that kept him flitting from one project to another, always forsaking them as soon as the challenge was solved rather than carrying it through to riches. He might come back to visit if they settled here, but he would never stay. At least now they would be close enough for him to visit.

  "There it is! There it is!" Twelve-year-old Jack galloped his pony ahead of the two wagons, sending up swirls of dust in his wake.

  The dust worried Sam, too, but she tried not to think about this evidence of lack of rain as she gazed eagerly at the scattering of buildings in the road ahead. She sighed with relief that they were more than the shacks and tents she had seen in the mining towns. Good solid adobe had been used in the construction of these buildings, a certain sign of permanence. Her father hadn't been dreaming when he had chosen this town.

  Jack galloped away, and Sam bit her lip in displeasure. Her Uncle William was supposed to have acted as head of the family when they joined the wagon train. A widower with a young son to raise, he had thought it a good idea to join his brother in California rather than suffer the aftermath of a war he'd never believed in. But William had died of cholera long before the wagons had reached the plains, and Jack had run wild ever since.

  Conscious of Harriet's excitement and the eagerness of her mother and Harriet's twin, Bernadette, in the wagon behind them, Sam urged the weary beasts to a faster pace. As if sensing the end to this journey, they plodded obediently onward.

  They had left the rest of the wagon train behind some days ago, following the directions from Emmanuel Neely's letter. This had to be their new home. If nothing else, their father gave excellent directions. He'd said the old Spanish mission town would be easy to find. He'd bought the deed to their house from the Spanish grandee who owned the original land grant after the church left. The description of their new home would have been sufficient to draw them out here without all the other factors that had induced their move.

  The sun settled low on the horizon as they rattled down the hill. The wagons threw up clouds of dust, but the little town appeared serene and golden in the dying light. The hotel and trading post looked just as Emmanuel had described it: the lower half of adobe and s
haded by a gallery on the wooden second floor. As Emmanuel had said, the town still looked like an old mission plaza. The hotel formed one side of the square. Stables, a blacksmith shop, and a harness-maker's establishment formed most of another side. Instead of a church, however, the third side held a lovely old home with sprawling porches and glass windows and trees forcing their way through the desolate dust of the front yard. That would be their home.

  Nearly faint with relief that her father had actually found them decent accommodations, Sam took her time examining the rest of the town. She couldn't tell if the rest of the buildings on the plaza contained shops or residences, but most of them seemed solidly built with tile roofs and adobe foundations. A few wooden shacks were scattered in the streets off the plaza, but this was definitely not a mining town. She had seen enough of them as they had come over the mountains. Her father had written colorful letters describing some of the activities of the miners. Her gently bred mother had nearly expired at the words. She would have never survived in those crude surroundings.

  As it was, Sam's father had been ominously silent on the subject of their new neighbors, except for that last letter mentioning his confrontation with Sloan Talbott. The man had to be a menace, judging from his actions. Greedy, stingy, mean-tempered, and violent—Sloan Talbott didn't sound like the kind of acquaintance one looked forward to. But he was the only inhabitant of the town they knew anything about. He was the man Sam thought she might have to kill.

  As the wagons rode slowly into the deserted plaza in a curtain of dust, a few people wandered into the daylight from cavernous, dark doorways to examine the novelty. After a sharp whistle or two, more came out to observe the sight.

  Sam itched uneasily, watching the watchers from the corners of her eyes. Every last filthy one of them was male.

  Hideously conscious that they were four women and a boy, Sam donned her most menacing expression and shifted her gun belt forward where it could be seen. Pulling her hat over her face, she prayed that they thought she was a man. Seeing her in a loose checkered shirt and a leather vest, they shouldn't be able to tell much else—for the moment. She found the rifle at her foot and eased it closer.

  Sam clenched her teeth at the sound of whistles and shouts. Bernadette must have her bonnet off. She cast a quick glance at Harriet, but as usual, the practical twin was examining their new home with an experienced eye and wasn't in the least aware of the attention they attracted. It must be nice to be so accustomed to attention that one could ignore it. Scowling, Sam looked for Jack as she halted the oxen in the shade of the town's only trees.

  He was nowhere to be seen, but his pony was tied to the porch post. Men already sauntered across the plaza before the second wagon came to a halt. Grabbing her rifle, Sam jumped down and started back to her mother's wagon. If Harriet would step to it, she could be off the far side of the wagon and into the house before the men reached her. Sam's goal was to reach her mother and Bernadette before every man jack in town had them surrounded.

  Cautious enough to see the danger, Alice Neely had already pulled her long skirts around her to climb from the wagon. Bernadette, however—despite her mother's warning—was dreamily admiring the shaded porch of their new home, as completely unaware of her swarming admirers as her twin.

  "I'll get her in the house, Sam," Alice said, hurrying toward the lead oxen. "But there isn't any way we can keep them out. We're going to need their help to unload the wagons. Distract them with hard work and offers of payment, and I'll see what I can do."

  Sam wasn't certain if the approaching men were the equivalent of man-eating Zulus or not, but her protective instincts were the same. At least back in Tennessee she had known the scores of admirers haunting their front room in hopes of some sight of the twins, and she had known their weaknesses well enough to keep them off balance. Ever since the Neelys had set out for California, however, it had been a constant battle. There had been women with the wagon train, but none of them quite like the twins. And once they all reached California, there seemed a dearth of females in every town they passed. Miners waved bags of gold at them in hopes of drawing the twins' attention. Less scrupulous men had crept up at night and tried to carry them off. Sam had every right to be wary of this crowd of breeches-wearing rattlers.

  Sam glared at the crowd and held her rifle across her chest. They stared back with all the interest of curious puppies. What appeared to be the town drunk still had his whiskey bottle in hand as he politely ran his palm over his vest to clean it off before offering it for a handshake. He was short and wiry and had a hank of sandy hair hanging over his face—and a gun belt slung dangerously over his narrow hips.

  Sam ignored him and turned her glare and her rifle to the next man who dared get too close. He towered over her with a grim expression to match her own, but she detected an odd gleam of satisfaction in his eyes as he stared back.

  "Sloan ain't going to like this one bit," he announced without preamble, before adding, "welcome to Talbott." He might have added more, but a swift inspection of the red-haired creature confronting him obviously left him doubting the proper form of address.

  Before Sam could reply, another man staggered forward, this one elderly, stooped, and squat, but with the distinctive long tresses of an Indian. A face weathered to the brown wrinkles of a walnut shell stared back at her, and Sam found herself eye-to-eye with the wisdom and pain of the ages. He grunted something noncommittal before heading toward her cattle.

  Sam didn't like Indians around her cattle. She had gained enough experience in this trip to know that Indians and cattle had a tendency to depart in the same direction, and that direction wasn't her own.

  She turned to call a halt, when an ominous rumble began at the rear of the house and migrated forward until the entire town shook with the impact of an explosion that sent a spiral of smoke and dirt straight up into the air.

  "Jefferson Neely!" Samantha screamed, before sprinting in the direction of the house and the billowing smoke.

  Chapter Two

  The tall man who had greeted them grabbed a shovel and ran after Samantha. The others scattered in search of equivalent tools as the first flash of fire shot into the air. Sam nearly fell in the dust as she slid around the back corner of the house, but righted herself in time to see bits of flaming paper fly upward, threatening the wooden porch of their new home.

  "Jefferson Neely!" she screamed again as she discovered her cousin just where she expected him to be—right at the center of trouble.

  A blackened ring of smoke circled his face around his spectacles, but he didn't look the least deterred by the chaos around him. Not until Samantha grabbed his earlobe and jerked him backward out of danger did he look in the least repentant.

  The tall man shoveled a mound of dust on the already dying flames. Other men ran to join him, waving pickaxes and shovels of every degree of repair. The noticeable absence of water to douse the flames made Sam's heart plunge a little further. What had they got themselves into now?

  Refusing to give in to her fears, Sam jerked her cousin around to face her. "What in blue blazes did you think you were doing?"

  "Owww! Sam, let go of me! I didn't do nothing." Jack wiped at his chubby face with the back of his dirty sleeve. "I just wanted to celebrate with fireworks like Dad did last Fourth of July."

  Samantha tried to harden her heart as she grabbed his shirt collar and shook him, but she heard the cry behind the defensiveness, and she couldn't give him the punishment he deserved. He had probably been saving that gunpowder all across the country to use as a celebration when they finally arrived. That would be just like something his father would have done. And not knowing how to do it properly, but experimenting anyway, would be just like his uncle. The Neelys were known for their curiosity, but never for their caution.

  "He needs a man to tan his hide," the tall man offered as he wiped sweat from his brow and came forward. "Dr. Cal Ramsey, at your service, ma'am." He held out his hand in introduction.

&n
bsp; Samantha sighed. Her disguise had worked for as long as it had taken her to open her mouth. Praying this was a man she could trust, she took the offered hand and shook it. "Samantha Neely, sir, and this is my cousin, Jack."

  The others were already crowding around, offering names, making welcoming noises, and looking her over as if she were a prized heifer. When men even took to looking at her, she knew they were desperate. She tried not to glance at the house where her mother had hidden the twins. She had the uneasy feeling that this town wasn't going to have a lot of women to call on for help.

  "We didn't mean to stir up such excitement upon arrival, gentlemen." Sam leapt into a lull in the conversation. At the sound of her voice, they all fell silent. Unnerved by this rapt attention, she tried to politely send them away. "We thank you, but it's getting late, and we need to unpack. If there's any of you who could lend a hand unloading some of our things, we'd be happy to pay."

  She had scarcely got all the words out of her mouth before several of the younger men peeled off from the crowd and loped toward the wagons. A voice from the remaining crowd cried out, "Do you cook, ma'am?"

  Flustered by their continued stares, Samantha resorted to a spurt of temper. "Of course I cook. Do I look helpless?"

  Ramsey stepped in to smooth ruffled feathers. "He means we don't really need to be paid to help, but there isn't a one of us who wouldn't appreciate a home-cooked meal."

  Oh, Lord. Sam's heart fell to her stomach as she glanced nervously toward the house. They all meant to help. Her mother would die of exhaustion just trying to keep the twins away from them. Drawing a deep breath, she tried again. "Well, we'd be mighty glad to oblige, but our supplies are a little low . .."