by Carole Howey
His feet hit the floor with a guilty thud.
He looked at the bed on the other side of the small room, half expecting Miss Hammond to leap out of it and demand to know why he was up. She didn't. He let out the breath he'd been holding, and slowly, stealthily, Gideon got to his feet.
Chapter Six
''I thought you were going to spill your punch on him," Missy whispered to Allyn after Joshua had alighted from the cab.
"So did I," Allyn muttered back. "I think Muldaur thought so, too. Did you see the expression on his face when I took the punch glasses from him? He looked as if his eyes were going to fall out of his head, one into each cup."
The notion was amusing, but Missy could not muster a laugh.
"It's a good thing he excused himself when he did." Allyn smoothed her seal muff. "Joshua is furious as it is."
"He must be. He hasn't spoken since we left Filson's."
"We'll make this right, Missy," Allyn declared, patting her hand. "Joshua will see to it. Surely this document, this letter of debt, that Muldaur claims to have is a forgery of some sort. It must be."
A letter of debt. The more Missy thought about it, the more frighteningly plausible it sounded.
"My uncle was something of a wastrel," she ventured. "I remember my pa saying, more than once, that his brother was fond of gaming"
"None of that, Missy," Allyn interrupted her firmly. "Muldaur must first prove his claim beyond a shadow of a doubt, and I suspect he'll find that difficult to accomplish. You mustn't allow him to think, even for a moment, that you believe his nonsense. In the meantime, we will simply behave as if nothing were amiss. You know, Flynn's brother Seamus is a congressman from Ohio."
"A congressman?" Missy wondered just what that might have to do with her, or with Flynn's claim.
"Yes. Joshua knows well, knows of him. He may be able to give us a clue as to what this Flynn is up to."
This Flynn, Allyn said. As if Muldaur were not a man, but some sort of blight or vermin.
Missy's heart ached. Well, wasn't he? How different was he from the bloodsucking parasite carpetbaggers who had run the Cannons off their place in Virginia back in '68? And where had Muldaur been with his so-called letter of debt back in the early days, in '84, when she and Allyn had struggled alone at the C-Bar-C to make tax payments and keep a roof over their heads? Why had he waited until the ranch was not only solvent but thriving before bringing this document and its significance to light?
Missy knew the answer. The man was a fortune hunter, or a confidence man, or both. A sob knifed her. She should have known better than to think that a man, especially one as charming and as attractive as Flynn Muldaur, might actually be interested in her for herself. Joshua had said something to her a year ago that she'd let pass, something about her being an easy mark. Being vulnerable. Being prey to ruthless con men. Feeling strong and self-confident at the time, she had dismissed his concerns.
But that had been when she was willing to believe she was meant to go through life alone. Before she'd been rescued by a fallen angel who had tugged her shoulder right side up and her heart upside down.
"Oh, I'm quite the prize fool, I am," she mourned, and it was not until Joshua appeared at the door of the coach wearing a consoling look that she realized she'd spoken the opinion aloud.
"Don't be so hard on yourself," he reproved, helping her out of the coach. "This isn't the fiasco you imagine it to be. We averted a scandal at Filson's, although for a time” he sent a severe look in his wife's direction, which she ignored” I feared we would not. And I'm nowhere near satisfied that this claim of Muldaur's is genuine."
"I was just telling her that," Allyn declared, stepping down with Joshua's assistance. "Rest assured, Missy, we will"
"We will do nothing." Joshua contradicted his wife with a meaningful shake of his head. "I will start an investigation. On my own." The emphasis Joshua placed on the final three words was aimed at Allyn, and it was unmistakable. To Missy, at least. Allyn, she knew, might conveniently choose to disregard it.
"First thing in the morning," Allyn asserted.
"Actually, I was planning to start right now," he corrected her, holding on to her hand. "I'll see you both inside first, but I've asked the driver to wait for me. There were some people at Filson's who might be of some help. I've no time to go into details now, though."
"But it's so late!" Missy felt deeply indebted to both Joshua and Allyn already, and she hated the notion of either of them fretting so over her crisis.
"It's not even midnight," he soothed. "And we can't afford to lose any time. Go along, both of you. And don't wait up for me."
"Don't order me about, Joshua Manners," Allyn huffed, tugging Joshua's lapel playfully. "I have a daughter for that purpose."
Joshua kissed her. "I'll be back soon."
"See to it that you are."
It was obvious as ever to Missy that he adored Allyn, and she him. Stifling a sigh rife with painful longing, Missy looked away from the lovers, wondering if a man would ever look thus at her.
Every lamp in the suite was lit. Albertine's nurse, Phyllis Hammond, met Missy and Allyn at the door. She was wearing a flannel dressing gown on her tall, dead-tree frame, a whiny, fractious Albertine on her hip and a distracted look on her lined face.
"It's the molars," she explained as Allyn reached out to take her daughter in her arms. "She woke up half an hour ago, crying for you."
"My, my!" Allyn cooed in a high, placating voice to the mewling toddler. Albertine's sweet little face was distorted with sleepy irritation, and her finger was rooting about inside her pretty pink mouth. In no time at all, there was a spot of drool staining the breast of Allyn's emerald green silk. Allyn either did not notice or did not care. Missy suspected the latter.
"Does our mouth hurt?" Allyn bounced the little girl lightly in her arms, touching the tip of her finger to Albertine's round cheek. "Poor precious. So much noise for one little girl!"
Missy concurred. She could scarcely hear Allyn's voice over Albertine's caterwauling, and Allyn was by no means softspoken.
"I'm surprised she didn't wake Gideon up," she commented, undoing her cloak with Phyllis's assistance.
"She didn't wake him up because she couldn't," the nurse informed her. "He was up and gone before she even started to fret."
"What!" Missy's face drained of color.
"When I turned up the lamp, I noticed his bed was empty," Phyllis reported sourly. "It was cold, too, so he'd been gone a while."
"My God!" Missy felt faint for the third time that day, and she found herself a chair in which to collapse. Gideon, alone late at night in Louisville . . . She remembered the two men at the stable, and how they had nearly beaten the child for that was what he was, despite his air of fierce independence and her heart faltered.
"Did he leave a note explaining where he might have gone?"
Albertine laid her head down and chewed on Allyn's shoulder. The room was filled with a tense quiet, as if it might explode with noise again at any moment.
"I doubt he can read," Phyllis replied, tugging on her thick, graying braid. "And I'm sure in any case that he doesn't write."
Phyllis, Missy guessed, was brusque because she keenly felt her own failure in this new crisis. Missy understood the feeling precisely.
"This isn't your fault," she muttered, wanting to reassure the conscientious nurse. "It's mine. I had no business leaving you an extra responsibility for the evening. After all, I'm the one who brought Gideon here. I should have stayed behind myself to see to him."
That way I might have avoided making a fool of myself and learning Flynn Muldaur's nasty surprise as well, she though, but could not bring herself to add. It was a naive assumption, she knew. In reality, she would only have postponed the inevitable.
Her decision was made before she drew another breath.
"Help me change out of this thing," she told Phyllis tersely, striding toward her room as fast as she could in the cumbersome hob
ble skirt. "I'm going out to look for Gideon."
"But Missy, you shouldn't!" Allyn whirled around so quickly that she startled her young daughter, who began to howl again. "You can't! It's late. It's unthinkable. And you don't even know where he might have gone!"
"On the contrary," Missy heard herself say in a firm, sure tone that both surprised and pleased her. "I know exactly where he's gone."
She changed into her comfortable old riding habit, closing her ears to Allyn's strong and, she knew, wise arguments.
Curses paraded through Missy's mind as she stalked her way through the long, dark stable. She should not be here now, alone. She hadn't needed Allyn's admonitions, or the cabdriver's disapproving looks, or the night watchman's surliness to tell her so. She needed only her good common sense which, like a fickle lover, deserted her at the thought of Gideon in danger.
The night watchman, who hadn't seen anyone fitting Gideon's description and acted as if he doubted her story, followed her like a suspicious, sniffing hound. Missy was glad not for the company, which was taciturn at best, but for the safety it represented: the few stable hands who idled about looked more than passingly interested in the presence of a female, otherwise unescorted, in the stable at night. More than one lewd remark stalked her down the darkened corridor, but she ignored them. She felt at ease in her familiar working habit, in complete command of herself and her surroundings. Words and gestures that might make her uncomfortable in a dress scarcely affected her at all in her working clothes. They were a form of armor for her, she realized. And she was glad of even that flimsy defense in this dark and hostile place.
She assumed her bold, no-nonsense stride and made straight for Glory's stall, less certain than hopeful of what she would find there. Tacked outside on the stall door was a tag marked Sold that bore her name, Glory's, the mare's mark, and the name of Missy's ranch. Glory was hers. Feeling nowhere near the elation she usually felt over a new acquisition, she tried the door with a tentative left hand.
It was unlocked. She'd half expected it to be stopped somehow from the inside. Had she guessed wrong about Gideon? A dark shadow of dread stilled her heart: if the boy wasn't here, he might be anywhere. She might never see him again.
She commanded herself. He was here. He was devoted to Glory, just as she herself had been, and was, devoted to Allyn. Where else would he be but by the mare's side?
She pulled the door back and slipped inside with her new mare.
"Gideon?" she called softly.
There was no reply, except for a patient snort from the huge, dark shape that was Glory.
"You'll be all right here, miss?" The night watchman was impatient. "I got rounds to make."
Rounds. Most likely with a jug, Missy mused grimly. She remembered her painful accident of this afternoon, and the crude stable hands who had marked her arrival tonight. She thought of the dubious protection this watchman represented to her and decided she could do better herself. She bit her lip.
"Can you leave me the lantern?" she asked.
There was a rich sigh of untold suffering.
"I suppose."
The lamp was as stingy with its light as the watchman was with its loan. He looped its handle over a hook above the door. It cast a dull, dirty glow in the stall that extended only about four or five feet from its sooty glass chimney. The watchman scarcely met Missy's gaze, and she sensed the man's personal embarrassment that he was leaving her alone.
Good, she thought, glaring at him as he skulked out of the stall. He ought to be ashamed to leave her alone, under the circumstances. Gideon would be a far more stalwart champion. And he was here. She could feel it. The watchman was guilty of downright laziness, if nothing else. Missy could not abide sloth. Without a further word of farewell or dismissal to the man, she turned her attention to the mare.
In the dim light, Glory looked black from forelock to tail. She possessed a narrow face that sported no distinguishing marks of any kind save a pair of bright, alert eyes. Missy's gaze traveled downward to the animal's right foreleg, the limb that had no doubt been responsible for her dislocated shoulder. Amid the mare's glossy, healthy black coat, Missy detected but one hint of contrast, a coronet of white about her right forehoof. Like a wedding band, she thought with a wistful pang.
She immediately felt foolish for her musing and reminded herself of the real purpose behind her mission.
"Gideon, I wish you'd come out of hiding," she pleaded softly, looking into the shadows. "You've no idea how idiotic I feel, standing here talking to myself."
Glory nudged her arm with her muzzle, and Missy caught her bridle.
"Trying to apologize to me, are you?" she scolded the mare, stroking her throat. "Hoping I'll forgive you for knocking me about earlier? I have a long memory, my girl. And if you're thinking I might have brought you a treat for your bad behavior, you're sadly mistaken."
There was a squeaking noise behind Glory, a distinctly unhorsey sound from the direction of the closed feedbox. Relieved and amused, Missy started toward it.
After only two steps, she stopped. Gideon was a child, she reminded herself. A lonely child, for all his independent bluster. A frightened child who, when he felt pangs of insecurity or doubt, turned to an animal with whom he had forged a special bond. Missy understood such feelings. She'd had them herself.
But she needed to find a way to earn some of that trust, and quickly. Glory was hers now, and her home was the C-Bar-C. If Gideon still meant to be a part of the mare's life, he would have to take a chance on trusting Missy. And the way to gain Gideon's trust, Missy was certain, lay in that elusive, unspoken covenant between boy and horse.
She drew a line down Glory's face with her finger from poll to muzzle.
"Gideon talks to you, Glory, doesn't he?" she began in a conversational tone.
Missy spoke to all of her horses, but this occasion felt a little odd. Glory did not feel like her horse. She was Gideon's, no matter what the papers of ownership might decree. And Gideon, she was certain, shared private dialogues, and private feelings, with the mare. Glory was not likely to impart these secrets, but the mare might help her make Gideon understand that she meant him no harm, and that he might trust her as he had never trusted another human being.
The importance of what she was about to undertake made her tremble. She prayed swiftly for guidance. She
felt as if she were confined in a room and shown several closed doors, behind only one of which lay deliverance.
She had no alternative but to choose one and go on.
"Gideon has taken good care of you," Missy said to the horse. "He's a fine groom, isn't he? Your coat is clean and silky. You're healthy and strong. And look why, there isn't a tangle at all in your mane or tail."
Glory snorted softly and pushed her muzzle into Missy's open palm. Missy took the gesture as a sign of encouragement.
"You want to take care of Gideon, too, don't you, girl?" Missy made herself keep her voice strong, although her inclination was to speak in a whisper. "He needs you, I think. Just as you need him. And you're going all the way to Dakota with me."
Glory nickered. She smelled warm and sweet, and Missy sensed she'd made a friend. She prayed she'd make two.
"I have a ranch there, with acres and acres of the finest grazing you've ever seen." she went on, feeling a twinge of homesickness combine with her yearning to coax Gideon from his hiding place, wherever that might be. "And lots of horses. There'll be plenty of companions for you and for the colts and fillies you'll have. Dakota's a wonderful place for horses. For boys, too. Tell me, do you think do you think Gideon would like Dakota?"
It would still be hard winter in Rapid City, Missy guessed, but by the time she made her way home with Glory and her other acquisitions it would be spring. April. The foreman, Micah, and the other ranch hands she'd left behind to run the place would be hard at work on their spring chores. The ranch house, which she'd expanded only last year to a comparatively lavish bungalow with two bedrooms, kitchen, gr
eat room, and sitting room, would be waiting for her to plant her gardens. The stock would have foaled and calved; every creature on the place would have something to look after and to show off.
And what, or who, would she have?
''I love it there, but sometimes I'm so lonely, Glory," she murmured, keeping a tremor from her voice by force of will alone. "I feel as if I put myself out there, between heaven and earth, and I don't really belong in either place. And there's no one to tell me any different. I need someone. God, I've needed someone for a very long time, and I never even knew it. Do you think he'll come with us, Glory?"
Missy had to stop. She had said far more than she'd intended. Far more than she should have. Things that she'd felt, vaguely, but had never been able to put a name to until this moment. She had Gideon to thank for that, she knew. And Glory.