Lady Sundown (#1 of the Danner Quartet)

by Nancy Bush

  ¤ ¤ ¤

  Lexie looked despairingly at the corset her mother had left on her bureau. It was a wicked thing, with arched stays and long strings that dangled down. Lexie swallowed, glancing at herself in the wavy mirror. Drawing a breath, she wrapped the corset around her rib cage, attempting to tie the strings behind her back.

  Her first effort was clumsy. The corset fitted lopsidedly, looking for all the world as if it didn’t want her any more than she wanted it. A grin reluctantly formed on Lexie’s lips. She pulled her one good dress from the closet and tried to fit it over the corset. Somehow she managed, fighting back bits of hysterical laughter. When she looked in the mirror again, however, the laughter died.

  Even she had to admit it was a rather miraculous transformation. The lavender and pink calico dress cut demurely over Lexie’s breasts, but the lift from the corset pushed her soft flesh daringly forward. A frothy ruffle caressed her neck and, when she breathed, the ruffle and her whole bosom quivered in a way that made her lips part in delight.

  She stepped back, her hand at her throat, alarmed. There was something unexpectedly seductive about looking like a woman. She hadn’t expected to feel it.

  “Lexie?” A soft rap sounded at her door at the same moment her mother called.

  “I’m almost ready,” she said, reaching for her lavender cape. Quickly she connected the hook and eye at her throat. At the last moment she glanced once more in the mirror. Her hair was tied back in a long braid. Unable to stop herself, Lexie coiled her braid into a knot at the nape of her neck. She pinned it there, then stepped away from the mirror, almost afraid to look at herself again.

  When she walked into the hall she was breathless. Eliza regarded her questioningly, then smiled, touching the coil of sun-bleached hair. “I like this,” she said softly.

  Lexie immediately felt foolish. Squeezing past her mother, she hurried outside to the buggy.

  The Danner’s didn’t own a carriage; Joseph felt it was too fine a vehicle for farmers. But the buggy was warm and roomy, with extra blankets and soft black-leather padded seats. Pa took his place beside Eliza and Lexie, after making certain they were all tucked in.

  “Someone’s bandaged Matilda’s leg,” he said, shooting a glance in Lexie’s direction. “You wouldn’t happen to know who, would you?”

  Lexie kept her eyes on the rutted mud track ahead of them. “Tremaine.”

  “The boy’s taken up horse doctoring, too, then?” Humor threaded through Pa’s voice.

  “One profession isn’t enough for him, I guess,” she said primly. Spying the full-blown grin on father’s face, Lexie sighed. “How is Matilda? I didn’t get a chance to look at her this morning.”

  “She does seem better,” Pa answered thoughtfully.

  The ride to Rock Springs gave Lexie plenty of time for reflection, something she wasn’t certain she wanted to do. Belatedly, she remembered the conversation she’d overheard between Tremaine and Pa. With all the concerns about her future, she’d forgotten what Tremaine had said, but now it came back in a rush. I want her to know how many brothers she has.

  Shooting a long glance out of the corner of her eye, Lexie studied her father. It was all a bafflement. She couldn’t imagine what Tremaine had meant.

  But she was determined to find out.

  ¤ ¤ ¤

  The town of Rock Springs lay in the foothills of the Cascades. It tangled around the base of a sheer rock cliff and could only expand westward — which it was doing in leaps and bounds. Mid-center of town, coursing down the side of a rock cliff, was Fool’s Falls. It bubbled into a frothy pond at the base, forming Rock Springs’ northern boundary, curling into a stream that ran behind the bank, the feed store, the Half Moon Saloon, and McBride’s rooming house.

  The town itself stood on a crossroads. The north-south road dead-ended at the falls. It was believed that a hangman’s gallows once stood in front of the rushing water; now that section of land was an empty square.

  The east-west road bore most of the bustling town’s businesses — and every other store was a shrine to Joshua Garrett, Jace’s father. As Lexie rode by, she read the signs: Garrett Tannery, Garrett Blacksmithing, Garrett Mercantile.

  Pa stopped the buggy in front of the mercantile. “Mind your feet,” he said, helping Lexie down onto the muddy, rutted road. When Lexie and Eliza were safely on the wooden sidewalk, he strode toward Garrett Livery and Feedstore.

  “Come along,” Eliza said, clasping her daughter’s arm.

  The town was a beehive of activity. The echoing sounds of hammers could be heard in four different directions from where she stood; buildings were going up before Lexie’s very eyes. People window-shopped and met each other on the sidewalk, laughing, happy, glad to see one another.

  Thinking of giving all this up made Lexie feel sick inside. What would Portland be like? It was a big city. There was bound to be crime and corruption and God only knew what else. She had a sense of her simple life slipping away from her and her mouth went dry.

  First Eliza took her to Rock Springs’ one and only bank. It was a two-story clapboard structure with gold-lettered windows, iron bars spaced ominously behind them. Eliza walked up to the teller’s cage and said to the mutton-chopped man at the window, “My main account is at Portland Security Bank. Could I wire funds here?”

  Lexie stared at her mother’s back, stunned. Eliza and Pa had money in a Portland bank? “Mother,” Lexie murmured, drawing close to her. “What money?” she whispered.

  “Money for your education, dear. I told you.”

  “In a Portland bank?”

  “We’ll talk about it later.”

  Hearing her dismissal, Lexie tightened her lips and walked away, staring at the glass-covered plaques containing old money, which decorated the walls of the bank. It felt as if a door were cracking open; a door into a secret world that she’d either never noticed, or that had been hidden from her. Her mother never ceased to amaze her.

  Her mind suddenly jumped again to the conversation she’d overheard at the barn between Tremaine and Pa. She silently resolved to ask Tremaine what he and Pa had been talking about at the first opportunity. Tonight, sometime. Eliza had already told her they were having a special dinner to toast her acceptance into Miss Everly’s school and that Tremaine would definitely be back to join in.

  Lexie was determined to pull the truth out of him, if it killed her.

  ¤ ¤ ¤

  The mercantile smelled a little of perfume, and a little of formaldehyde, the preservative used in making textiles. Lexie followed after her mother, and Eliza gave her a worried look. “Are you all right?” she asked.

  Lexie nodded. She just wanted this day to be over.

  “Well, Mrs. Danner!” A voice boomed from behind the counter. A round-faced gentleman appeared, his smile broad. It was Walter Pennington, the man who had been late paying Jace the rent.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Pennington,” Eliza said in her soft tones. “It’s surely a rainy spring.”

  “That it is. A rainy spring.” He smiled at Lexie.

  “Hello, Mr. Pennington,” said Lexie.

  “You’re looking awful pretty today, Miss Danner,” he said.

  “Thank you.” Lexie shifted uncomfortably.

  It was then she realized that Walter Pennington had been helping someone else and had dropped them as soon as she and her mother had walked in the store. A beautiful woman with black coiled hair stood at the counter. Though still young, she exuded a tarnished, faded loveliness, like a rose just beginning to wilt. Her skin was soft and unlined, but something about her expression suggested she’d seen more of the world that anyone had a right to, and had given up worrying about the miseries of life long ago. To Lexie’s amazement, she didn’t seem to mind being forced to wait her turn.

  Seeing Lexie’s gaze, Walter said to the woman, “I’ll be with you in a minute, Jenny.”

  “Take your time.”

  Her voice was husky and rich. She lifted the top of a
jar that contained dried rose petals and inhaled in such a way that her whole bosom seemed destined to rip from her bodice. Lexie watched in fascination. The woman heaved a sensual sigh and replaced the top of the jar.

  Eliza was in her element. She showed Walter Pennington bolt after bolt of cloth, creating an enormous stack of riveting colors cascading over the mercantile’s counter. Looking at the pile of material, Lexie wondered how her mother could afford such luxury. Once again came the unsettling feeling that there was more going on than she could grasp.

  “What about this taffeta?” Eliza asked. Holding out the bolt for Lexie to touch.

  It was jade brown and had a faint raised pattern of twisting flowers. Lexie couldn’t imagine where she would wear such fine cloth, but then her future tumbled back with terrible clarity.

  “It’s nice,” Lexie mumbled. She walked over to the patiently waiting woman.

  “You’re Miss Danner, then,” the woman said. “I’ve met your brother.”

  “Really? Which one?”

  She smiled, and there was a world of knowledge in the way her lips curved. “Tremaine.”

  “Lexie!” Eliza called sharply.

  “How do you know Tremaine?” Lexie asked, ignoring her mother even as Eliza bore down upon her.

  The woman glanced incuriously at Eliza. “Oh, we’ve been acquainted a long time. I own the rooming house at the end of town. He stays there now and again.”

  Like a door being opened on a long-forgotten world, Lexie remembered, then, a remark Pa had made to her mother: “…the woman’s reputation is in shreds. Since her husband died, she’s been taking in boarders. There’ve been some cruel rumors. Folks seem to think she’s no better than Templeton’s upstairs girls…”

  Templeton’s upstairs girls. The Half Moon Saloon. Lexie made a sudden giant leap into adulthood as she understood what that meant. No wonder her mother was grabbing her arm and half-dragging her away from the counter. Eliza would never countenance Lexie’s associating with anyone from McBride’s rooming house. This, then, must be Jenny McBride — Tremaine’s friend.

  “Lexie is attending Miss Everly’s School for Young Ladies this fall,” Eliza said in a loud voice to Mr. Pennington. She didn’t actually glance over her shoulder to Jenny, but it was clear to Lexie she was drawing feminine battlelines. Embarrassed, Lexie felt like dropping through the floor.

  The rest of their time in the mercantile, Lexie couldn’t keep her mind on what she was doing. She was haunted by a vision of Tremaine wrapped in Jenny’s arms, enjoying God only knew what kind of sinful pleasure. Every now and again, while Eliza bought yards and yards of cloth, Lexie would slide a secret glance Jenny’s way. She couldn’t help comparing herself to the other woman. What magic did Jenny possess that called out to Tremaine? She shuddered. Whatever it was, she hoped it didn’t call to Jace the same way.

  Mr. Pennington was ringing up their purchases. Jenny stood by, seeming oblivious to the slight of being forced to wait. Lexie, acting on pure feminine instinct, said in a low voice that was still loud enough for Jenny to hear, “Jace is coming by today, Mother. Later this evening.”

  Eliza stiffened, smiled, and said, “That’s nice,” then turned her attention back to Mr. Pennington. Jenny gave Lexie a long, searching look.

  On the street, Eliza said, “Lexie, don’t ever do that again.”

  “Do what?”

  “Alert people to the personal goings-on in our family. I don’t want rumors spread.” She squared her shoulders. “Come along, we’re going to see Mrs. Weatherby.”

  According to Eliza, Mrs. Weatherby was the only seamstress worth her salt in Rock Springs. Lexie was fast losing enthusiasm for this pursuit, and as she dragged along behind her mother, her gaze swept past the Half Moon Saloon toward the rooming house at the far end of town. She thought about Tremaine’s sexuality and experienced a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach. She could see how women were attracted to him. Tremaine was magnetically male, possessing a hard, sensual face and the kind of stripping gaze that seemed to stop women in mid-sentence. He was, she decided objectively, pushing her own realization of him to the very far corners of her mind, quite potently attractive.

  Which was why, in very unladylike fashion, Lexie determined she was going to have to speak to Tremaine about the facts of life. Next time Jace kissed her with passion she wasn’t going to be caught unaware. She needed to know what was expected of her, and Tremaine was so obviously the right person to ask

  She had a lot of things to get straight with him. She could hardly wait for tonight.

  ¤ ¤ ¤

  Jace Garrett lay back in the tilted chair, sighing with contentment as the young woman leaning over him kicked the wooden box behind the chairs back legs, propping it up. Simple pleasures, he thought with an inward grin, smelling Betsy’s clean soapy scent, feeling the tickle of her long black hair as it brushed his cheek. He indulged his lusty appetite at every opportunity. Oh, he could have had one of Templeton’s whores, but why pay for hardened boredom when Betsy was so willing, so pathetically naïve?

  “I’ve got you set fast and secure now, Jace,” she said in her soft, uneducated drawl.

  “Thank you, Betsy,” he murmured, eyes closed.

  The steamed towel came next, so hot he involuntarily sucked in a breath. Betsy wrapped it around his face, her long fingers delicately touching and testing. He could smell the starch and feel the moist heat. He sighed, his senses replete.

  “I’ve been wishin’ you coulda been here last night,” Betsy said huskily.

  “I’ve been wishing the same.”

  The truth was, Jace had been wishing it a lot. A night without Betsy was a night wasted. But then, contrary to popular belief, Jenny McBride was an old-fashioned woman who kept a sharp eye on her tenants. It wasn’t that Jenny was conventional. Lordy, no! If she wanted the lover, she took one, though Jace personally had never caught her with a man in her bed. Still, she did as she pleased, a continual thorn in Jace’s side — as she had been in his father’s side before him. Her dead husband had left her the rooming house and she ardently refused to sell it. No amount of Garrett money could buy it from her.

  But that wasn’t what bothered Jace the most. Jenny, for all her own lack of inhibition, was peculiarly tyrannical about her tenants — particularly the young female type. If she suspected Jace’s dalliance with Betsy, a drifting young female who had escaped a cruel, brutal father to wind up half-starved on Jenny’s doorstep, it would all be over. Jace would have to give Betsy up, and he was singularly unwilling to do that — until he tired of her himself.

  The hot towel was unwound and he opened his eyes to look into Betsy’s sweet face. She wasn’t as pretty as Lexie, nor as smart, Jace supposed. But she knew what to do to make him cry with ecstasy, something a wife would never be able to accomplish. In Jace’s world there were two types of women: wives and whores. He wanted both.

  Betsy pulled out the strop and started whipping the shiny-bladed razor back and forth. Jace lay back and closed his eyes again, a smile on his lips. She was no barber, but who cared? It was a treat to be waited on.

  Just as he was anticipating the smooth strokes of the razor, he heard the door to Betsy’s room creak open. The scent of jasmine perfume was cloying in its excess. “Jenny,” Jace said, never opening his eyes.

  “Thought I’d find you here, Garrett.” Disapproval wrapped around each sharply uttered syllable. “I’m needing a word with you.”

  “I’m needing a shave. Come back later.”

  “Fine. If you don’t want to talk to me in private, we’ll talk in front of Betsy. I hear you’re courting one Miss Lexington Danner. Is it true?”

  Betsy stopped her sharpening. Smoldering inside at this unexpected twist, Jace opened one eye and winked at the shattered girl. “Don’t you believe everything you hear now, Jenny.”

  “I just hope you’re being honest with Betsy about your intentions,” said Jenny flatly, stoking Jace’s anger afresh. “You’ve been fai
r-warned.”

  With that she swept out of the room, leaving Jace with the stricken-eyed Betsy Talbot.

  ¤ ¤ ¤

  Tremaine lay on the cot beneath Jenny McBride’s stairway, an alcove cut into the kitchen. His arm was tossed over his eyes and he groaned at the thunk! thunk! thunk! of Jenny’s footsteps as they hammered into the stairs.

  His head pounded with a kind of vile glee. He hadn’t had enough to drink, he realized, and now he was paying the price without the oblivion he’d so desperately sought the night before. He hadn’t spent the night in Jenny’s bed, either. Instead he whiled away the whole damn evening right here, smelling Jenny’s perfume and listening to her rant about town politics. She was a suffragette in the worst way, and though normally he enjoyed her company, baiting her at every opportunity to get a rise out of her, last night he found his attention wandering to more earthly desires. He didn’t want to talk. He wanted to take her to bed and relieve the throbbing ache that seemed to follow him around like a dark, taunting cloud.

  But though sex was in his thoughts and heart, he hadn’t given Jenny any sign of what he was feeling. He couldn’t. The trouble was he didn’t want her!

  So Tremaine had sat at Jenny’s table, nursed a spreading, cancerous ache, and done absolutely nothing about it — a situation that struck dread in his soul. What, he wondered now, had happened to his rather amoral sexual appetite?

  Lexie’s image floated in front of his eyes, and he saw her as she’d been last night: wild, tangled, her wet skin showing through her blouse. Fifteen seconds of reflection were all that was needed to ensure him all his parts were in prime working order. With a groan of disgust, he turned over and spent another miserable ten minutes trying to erase Lexie’s image.

  It was Jenny’s footsteps again pounding on the stairs that finally quenched the flame of desire, dousing it to the same dull, smoldering ache. A moment later Jenny stood in the center of the kitchen, hands on her hips, breathing rapidly, her swelling bosom rising and falling. She slammed a pot into the kitchen washtub.