“I’ll protect myself,” she said finally.
“Oh, but Maggie, how you going to tell the sharks from the whales?”
“Yes, and who will gobble up the town faster. Maybe I’ll throw them some bait, and we’ll see who gets bloodied first.”
“And maybe,” Arwin added somberly, “they’ll all take a damned big bite out of you.”
After that, she thought she didn’t want to see Arwin again for a month. Every visit ended with a prophesy of gloom. She felt as though she were a branch of a tree caught in a turbulent storm, where it would take only a crack of lightning or a strong wind to destroy her altogether.
She couldn’t fight lawyers and railroad directors. She could barely keep her own end up with her mother-in-law. And she had allowed herself, even knowing the consequences, to pitch headlong into something with Logan that could never lead to anything concrete—ever.
She had needed only one night, one incident, to bring it home forcibly to her. It had been sheer folly to encourage him, to allow herself to wallow in his unleashed desire.
That was the thing that gnawed at her this morning, not lawyers and mothers-in-law, or what Reese might have been led to think last night. She cared about none of them; she cared about Logan, and she knew there was nowhere to go with him, nowhere that wasn’t a dark office, a hideaway, a room somewhere where no one knew them, but there was nowhere like that in Colville, or his ranch, assuming she could travel at night with impunity, which of course she could not. There was no hope, none.
And she knew too that things could only escalate from last night. She already felt the driving need for completion, to have him within her. And it would happen. She knew it would happen the first night she crept down the stairs to meet him.
And if it happened … she could have joined with him last night, so urgently did she feel the force of her feminine response to him … if it had happened …
She took a deep breath. There was no going back. There might be a child. He would want her to marry him. She would have to live at the ranch that was his livelihood. He wouldn’t live in town. No, she didn’t know whether or not he would live in town, but it seemed likely he would not want to. And she didn’t want a child now, she didn’t want constraints. The decision had to be that she had stored up enough memories and could not chance another near-discovery and the drenching fear that utterly decimated her passion.
She could live without that now; she knew it in a way that she had never felt it with Frank. She could even have a wrenching regret that Logan had not been the one to court her first, but she couldn’t go back. She couldn’t go forward either, and she damned the fates and blocked out all the words they had said and all the things he made her feel.
She never should have allowed him to seduce her.
She had been a partner to it all because in the dark words were easy and the molten sensations all seemed part of something not real, something that would never reach beyond that room and that passion-fraught darkness.
But it had gone outside the room, and now she was in danger—from her feelings and from external forces that sought to control her as completely as her passions. She didn’t even know which was the worse threat.
She found out on Thursday, when A.J. picked up the readyprint from the express station. He returned with something more: a handbill that was being placed all around town publicizing construction jobs on the railroad, with good pay and accommodations. And on the inner page of the supplement, a small ad announced the news: “Come one, come all, ready money and good jobs for everyone on the Colville line.”
“Well, the lawyer’s name is Mr. Brown,” Dennis told her, “and he wants to see you at your convenience.”
“I don’t trust lawyers named Mr. Brown, and I’m sure we have nothing to discuss,” Maggie said plainly, sifting through the papers on her worktable in order to give Dennis the impression she was inundated with work so that he would not bother her any further with this lawyer nonsense.
“You should at least give him a chance to speak with you,” Dennis said.
“Why?”
He looked uncertain for a moment. “Because he contacted me, as the executor for Frank’s estate, to see whether there is some way, under the terms of the will, around your adamant refusal to hear their offer.”
“And you told him there was none of course and that we had nothing to talk about.”
“I’m not sure that’s true, Maggie.”
“I see. You’ve gone through the clauses with a magnifying glass and you’ve found something that could be construed, but doesn’t say in as many words, that…”
“Maggie!” He was at the end of his tether at her sarcasm.
“All right. So I meet with Mr. Anonymous Brown and he offers me many thousands of dollars to sell up and I say no and that is the end of it. Is that what you want?”
“I want you to listen very carefully to what he has to say, Maggie, and make an informed decision, always remembering your duty to Frank’s mother, and your own monetary need, especially concerning the paper, which isn’t going to run at a profit any time soon.”
“Fine. Now we know whose side you are on.”
“I am on your side, Maggie. The land is useless to you and the money is not.”
“That is one way of looking at it.”
“And what is the other? That in twenty or thirty years you’ll retire and want to be bucolic in your old age and run cattle? Please Maggie. You are really being quite irrational about this. Believe me, the cost of buying the land is less than rerouting, and they will dig deep in the corporation’s pockets to find a sum that you will find very attractive.”
“I suppose you might have some idea of what it could be?”
“I don’t. But you will tell me, Maggie, and we will discuss it, and then we both will come to an informed decision as to what you should do.”
More pressure. Pressure from all sides: Arch Warfield’s smug assurance that Maggie now had to let him have a free hand with his coverage of the railroad’s progress since she had let them advertise in the paper. Pressure because of the fact that Logan was returning the next day and she would have to deal with him sometime on the weekend. And now Mr. Brown, the mysterious, glad-handing, high-rolling Mr. Brown, with his dollars falling out of his pockets as he walked, paving the dusty streets of Colville with promises.
“Going to see Mr. Brown are you?” Mother Colleran said as she found Maggie rummaging through her closet for her most severe dress.
“Oh, did Dennis incite you to put pressure on me as well, Mother Colleran? I hope you know that your comfort is not my first concern,” Maggie said edgily as she discarded one dress after another, finally settling on the one she had worn to Frank’s memorial service even though she would swelter in it on this warm day.
“I think all you have to remember is that Frank would have sold that land in a trice, Maggie. He was forever regretting even having started the ranch in the first place. It’s not hallowed ground or anything.”
“Oh my heavens, it isn’t? You mean there is one place that Frank touched that isn’t consecrated by his mere presence?”
“Don’t blaspheme, you shameless girl. I always knew you hated Frank anyway.”
“No one would believe you if they were told, Mother Colleran. I would deny it, and everyone knows how valiantly Mrs. Frank has carried on, shouldering the burden of her indigent mother-in-law. Have you never heard them say that?”
Mother Colleran shook her head. “Poor Maggie. You live in a dream world, and your lies will drive you mad someday. And then I will take over everything.”
That statement was stunning. “Oooh?” Maggie murmured consideringly. “Is that the plan? The wonder is you’ve waited so long.”
“You’re right about that,” Mother Colleran snapped, and she turned on her heel and left the room.
For the first time Maggie felt a real fear. Was that her plan? And Reese’s purpose in having come to Colville? Dear God, she thought,
but the old hag never would have come right out and said it if that were her intention. It was stupid. It was a warning.
Yes, it was a warning, and Maggie felt it deeply as she was ushered into the elegantly appointed hotel office of Mr. Brown, whose offer to her could fend off every threat.
“Maggie Colleran.” He had the deep rumbling voice of an actor. His hands swallowed her and he pressed them with sincere welcome and motioned her to a delicate chair.
“Mr. Brown,” she murmured with irony; such a nondescript name for such a flamboyant presence.
“We have business to discuss.”
“You have business to discuss. I’m just not sure whether it is with me,” Maggie said pointedly, not allowing him to obscure his purpose with a lot of fancy words.
He looked nonplussed, then he smiled and she thought he was the oiliest man she had ever met. “We’ll cut to the core, Maggie Colleran. We need the land, and my sources tell me you could be in need of money.”
“Or they could be wrong.”
“Twenty thousand dollars.”
“I’d call that cutting through to the core all right, Mr. Brown, except that the apples in your barrel are all rotten. Your offer is unacceptable, and before you say anything else, I will tell you that any offer is unacceptable. My lawyer must have told you I don’t want to sell. I haven’t changed my mind.”
Mr. Brown shrugged. “I suppose that’s the way it will have to be then, Maggie Colleran. I’m sorry we can’t do business.”
“Oh, but I know you will be doing business, Mr. Brown, and I’m sure you will spend your money very wisely.”
“It would give me great pleasure to spend it on you,” Mr. Brown said evenly. “Perhaps there will even come a day you might change your mind. But until then, I bid you good afternoon.”
“So nice to meet you, Mr. Brown,” she said, and was politely escorted out of his presence.
That couldn’t be the end of it, she thought; although she had not expected him to raise his offer at all, she had anticipated a great deal more harrassment. Mr. Brown’s abruptness dismayed her. She felt wary and pressured from a source she could not identify. It wasn’t Mr. Brown. It was something in the air, something unidentifiable, something that surrounded her.
Which, as she came into broad daylight on this balmy March afternoon, seemed like a horror story that she herself made up; looking for threats around every corner, and enemies where there were none.
It made Mother Colleran’s prediction all the more chilling. She had the brief sensation that she was indeed going mad and that nothing around her was really what it seemed.
Chapter Ten
When she returned to the office she went after the railroad full bore, ordering A.J. to strike everything from the editorial page while she rewrote her column, removed Warfield’s sodden prose to the back page, and added an additional article about the coming of Mr. Brown and what the motive of the railroad directors could possibly be in sending him as their emissary.
“This is too harsh, Miz Maggie,” A.J. cautioned her.
“I don’t like being bribed. And I will wager you the offer will go up within the week, especially after this edition appears.”
“This is asking for trouble,” Jean said, reading her copy over her shoulder. She looked up at him to see his troubled dark eyes.
“Am I going crazy? Is everyone suddenly convinced that we should not hold Denver North accountable for anything?” she demanded.
“Now, now, Miz Maggie, we just don’t want no libel actions on our hands. You’d have to sell out to fight the damn company in court,” A.J. said with a trace of humor. “And you’ve cause not to be too objective about what you’re putting in that box of copy. You’d be very prudent, Miz Maggie, if you’d just let me …”
“All right, all right,” she said abruptly, thrusting the page at him. “You tone it down. I’m ready to spit ems. We have to shift the layout on those two pages, Jean. Damn, I wish I could black out that ad. Why can’t I black out that ad?” And that, she thought, as she paced the room, was the one thing that blighted the whole. Because of her contract with the printing company, she was forced to run the supplement just as it was, and by damn, she was going to rewrite that contract tomorrow.
“Maggie.”
She stopped pacing. “Yes, Jean?”
“I do not like to see you so agitated.”
“I don’t like it myself. I don’t like it when someone else has control of what goes in these pages. I just never thought … it has to be deliberate … it has to be. Did you see those handbills? They’re all over the place, and when I left that lawyer’s hotel office today there was a line of people queuing up outside his door. Damn it, he’ll be paying them a portion of the money he offered me, and they’ll take it.”
“That’s right, Miz Maggie, because the town’s economics ain’t exactly what you’d call well-to-do,” A.J. put in, returning her page of copy to her, and she could see already there were neat slashes through the best of her excoriating phrases.
She thrust it into Jean’s hands. “You take it. I don’t want to see what he’s done to it. What else for tonight, A.J.?”
“We’re ready to go, Miz Maggie, as soon as Jean lays out the back page.”
Later there was silence as she and Jean worked side by side at the type desk. Jean set her article and laid it onto the plate, and they each took two pages and set them while A.J. inked the press and laid out the newsprint.
The rhythmic sorting of the type calmed her somewhat. The silence was peaceful, and she had the usual sense of their work relationship running like a well-oiled machine; everything was done automatically and with precision.
This meticulousness was a pure pleasure to her, especially because she saw in it what she liked most about Jean and A.J. both. Jean had come from nowhere, and everywhere, and with his exactness and delicacy he had made a place here, while A.J. had run from the minefields when his luck ran out, and somehow Frank had seen his potential and had given him a home.
She was lucky to have them, lucky that the whole had not slipped away from her after Frank’s death. She was an elf fighting giants, she thought, and nothing magical would turn the tide. The only thing magical in her life she had to wave her wand and turn back to dust.
Colville would go on in spite of her, in spite of Denver North, and maybe even because of it. That was the epilogue to the story and nothing else.
“Well, Maggie, you say one thing and then you do another. How is one to know that you mean what you say? I hear tell there’s a Denver North ad right in this very week’s edition of the paper. Is that true?” Mother Colleran again, up early, too early, Maggie thought, and following her downstairs as she prepared to help A.J. bundle the papers.
“It’s true. It came from Denver and I had no say in whether it went in the paper or not, Mother Colleran. Does that answer your question?”
“Well, they just are not going to understand how you can take their money for your paper and not take their money for the land.”
“I understand it perfectly, and I have no quarrel with myself.”
“It doesn’t sound rational, Maggie. I really would think about it, if I were you.”
Maggie froze. There was that insinuation again. The old bitch was going to spread it around, point it out, make sure everyone read it and knew that Maggie had been offered money by Denver North and turned it down. Was that sane? That was exactly how the old she-witch would put it, too.
Her fears were well-founded. There wasn’t one of her regulars who did not comment on the incongruity, and not without malice. She had been painted into a corner and the floor was still wet; her footprint would seal her guilt.
She almost did not want to leave the office that morning, but she knew she had to be seen and she could not be cowed by an incident that had to be a deliberate set up.
She walked Main Street briskly and bore the brunt of the derisive comments. The only thing that counted, she found out that morning, was th
e fact that the ad appeared. Nothing else mattered: she was compromised through no doing of her own.
She was exhausted by the time she returned. The crowd outside the counter had grown larger, and the voices deeper with disappointment in her.
“Maggie, how could you—and then write the things you did?”
“Yeah, Maggie, we heard they was offering you big money. You just tryin’ to up the ante now, givin’ and takin’ at the same time?”
“We always said there was somethin’ in it for her. Goes to show, now don’t it, if she’s puttin’ their advertisin’ right in the middle of her paper? I tell you, Frank wouldn’t have pussyfooted around at all. He’d’ve been right in the forefront of bringin’ the railroad to town and would’ve advertised ’em for free.”
She felt an intense pain at how easily those she considered friends turned on her and immediately set Frank up as god again. Damned Philistines, bowing willingly to the golden calf of a locomotive engine.
She brushed by them briskly and closeted herself in the backroom. A.J. brought her coffee. “It’s real bad, Miz Maggie.”
“I know. We might just as well have put the damned thing on the front page. I don’t think anyone has read anything else.”
“That’s for sure. And there’s nothing to say you won’t find the damned thing right in the supplement again next week either.”
“No, we have to do something about that today. We can …”
“No, you ain’t thinking straight, Miz Maggie. They’re not going to refuse a Denver ad in Denver. They’re just not going to care about the politics of a railroad invading this town. They’ve got a hundred subscribers or more, they can’t run two hundred copies just for us minus Denver North. You understand?”
“I don’t want to understand,” Maggie said stormily. “We can’t do without it either. We need the newsprint. I hate this. I hate being tied up so I can’t move, hate having someone else in control.”
A.J. shook his head. “They’re doing it, Miz Maggie, and they probably are doing it purposely, just like you think. But it’s also good business. They’ll get a stock of workers just like me who want to run from the minefields to something easier and quicker. Some people like the idea—couple of weeks work, get a paycheck, they’re on the road again looking for the next best dollar.”
Thea Devine Page 15