Carole Howey - Sheik's Glory

by Carole Howey

  And Flynn Muldaur.

  She was near tears, and she shook with a confusion of emotions she'd tried to hold back all evening. She took several swallows as she listened to the stillness and tried to keep herself together for one last effort.

  "I do hope Gideon comes with us," she managed in a heavy, choked voice, her cheek pressed against Glory's. "I suspect you'll miss him dreadfully if he doesn't. And so will I."

  A soft rain began to tap on the roof above their heads, but there was no other sound in the stall. Missy wanted to say something else. to talk forever if she had to, but there was nothing left to say. It was just as well, for her throat had closed up so she could scarcely breathe, let alone speak.

  She allowed some time to pass, then a little more. She sighed brokenly. If Gideon was there, by his silence he'd refused to have any part in the picture she'd tried to paint. If he was not, she'd merely poured out her heart in vain.

  Either way, she had lost him. And she had lost a part of herself, as well.

  A single tear strained through her eyelashes and slid partway down her cheek before she brushed it away. How could a waif so quickly and easily have found his way into the complicated maze of her heart? She sighed, straightening her shoulders, shrugging in her habit. Her armor had never felt so oppressive.

  "Well, then." She cleared her throat. "Good night, Glory. If you see Gideon again, tell him we'll miss him."

  Her feet felt as if they were made of lead as she trudged to the stall door.

  "I heard tell some about Dakota."

  It was Gideon's voice behind her. It sounded small. Raw. Young. Missy could not see for the water that suddenly flooded her eyes. She put a hand on the wall to steady herself.

  "That you, Gideon?" She tried to sound nonchalant.

  From behind Glory, there was a shushing of straw. Missy turned around to see him shuffle into the light. His cap was fixed low over his brow, shading his eyes, and his hands were jammed into the pockets of his old, too-short coat. Missy suspected, guarding a smile, that his fists were balled. She resisted a mighty urge to hug him.

  "You really mean it? You'll take me to Dakota, too?" he asked gruffly, keeping his head bowed.

  Missy would have promised him far more than that, had he asked.

  "You'll have to do something for me in exchange," she told him, keeping her voice light out of fear that it would betray her joy.

  "Take care of Glory? You know I'll do that." He sounded defensive again. Surly. A smile tugged the corners of her mouth even as the youthful defiance in his reply tugged at her heart.

  "More than that, my lad," she told him, trying to sound severe. "The C-Bar-C is a working ranch, and we all pull our weight. You'll have your chores, of course, but the most important thing will be for you to go to school. To better yourself. I take my responsibilities as seriously as you do, and one of them will be seeing to it that you grow up just as fine as I can manage."

  Gideon looked up unexpectedly and met her gaze with a direct, probing look.

  "Why do you want to do that?"

  Missy had not expected so candid a question from him, and she was obliged to look away. Honesty, she told herself. The boy has had so little of it in his lifetime, and if you mean to set an example, you must start with yourself. But how could she be completely honest when she wasn't sure herself that she understood her motivations? She swallowed and met his gaze again.

  "I think we need each other, Gideon, just as you need as Glory needs you," she answered at last, folding her hands before her. "God put us in one another's paths for a reason."

  "Hmph. God never did me no favors."

  Missy bit her lip.

  "He found Glory for you, didn't He?"

  "Found her myself," he retorted. "When I broke in here two months ago Shit." Gideon, abashed, hung his head. Obviously he had not intended to reveal such a detail to her.

  We'll work on your language, too, Missy thought, hiding her smile.

  "Seems to me we have a choice, here." She smoothed over his gaffe and kept her distance, despite her desire to take off his filthy cap and ruffle his hair with her fingers. "Both of us. Your choice is whether or not you want to come with us, Glory and me. Mine is whether or not I want to take you. I already made mine. Now it's up to you to make yours."

  Gideon buried the toe of his shoe under the straw and looked up. He wanted to go with Glory. He would be lost without her. He sure liked Missy Cannon enough, too, although he couldn't bring himself to tell her that just yet. Dakota and the C-Bar-C sounded like heaven, if anything did. And while he didn't know about God and such things, he had a funny, prickly feeling that Missy was right about there being some reason why the three of them, he, Glory, and Missy, had met up.

  He had another thought.

  "That Muldaur fella. Is he comin', too?"

  Even in the dim light of the small lantern, he could see Missy's face go beet red.

  "Why ever would you ask a question like that?" Her voice was funny all of a sudden. Like she'd swallowed a bug. "I hardly know the man."

  Gideon shrugged, watching her with wonder.

  "I didn't say nothin' before," he remarked, "but I'd seen him around here a couple of times before today. This morning, too, in fact. Talkin' to some of the grooms and owners and such, askin' questions about the C-Bar-C. And about Melissa Cannon. That's you, right?"

  Missy nodded twice. She looked as if she were strangling. Her expression made him want to laugh, although he thought she might not appreciate that.

  "He was makin' noises like he was interested in buyin' the place, was what I thought."

  Missy's eyelids fluttered like the wings of a butterfly.

  "He say anything to you about it yet?" Gideon prodded.

  "What?" She jerked her head up. "HeI WeI mean, I No. Well" Gideon could not help laughing.

  "You ought to see your face," he told her. "You're red as the inside of a watermelon!"

  Missy's flustered agitation quickly became a scowl, and Gideon stopped laughing at once.

  "It's far past your proper bedtime," she grumbled, sending him a glare that didn't frighten or fool him in the least. "And I won't have you meddling in my business. Please keep that in mind in the future."

  "Yes, ma'am." He tried to sound meek, but it was difficult. The beginning of an idea was forming in his head, and he sort of liked the way it looked.

  Chapter Seven

  "Ironclad?" Missy echoed Joshua's grim declaration weakly.

  "The judge's very words," Joshua confirmed, slamming himself into the wing chair that faced the suite's fireplace. He'd spent most of the past week meeting with a succession of legal counselors and exchanging telegraph messages with a number of correspondents, all over the issue of Muldaur's claim. He looked and sounded as if he'd reached the end of not only his tether but his hope, as well. "That letter's properly witnessed and registered. It wasn't made out to Muldaur, of course, but the fact that he apparently won it in a poker game doesn't make it any less binding, in the eyes of the law."

  Missy digested this with a hard swallow.

  "What about Congressman Seamus Muldaur, Flynn's brother?"

  Missy was glad that Allyn had asked the question, for she doubted her own ability to sound calm.

  "Muldaur's brother claims he knows nothing about it. I have his reply right here."

  In agitation, Joshua fished in his inside breast pocket and withdrew a small, neatly folded scrap of paper. He extended it to Missy. She waved it away. She did not even want to touch it.

  "Apparently the brotherhood of congressmen is not as loyal as the brotherhood of siblings." Allyn turned away, wearing a thoughtful look. "Isn't there anything else we can do?"

  Joshua laid his head back and closed his eyes with a weary sigh. An intense, scrupulous man, he did not take such a defeat well, Missy realized.

  "If there were, I'd have done it," he said on a breath. "I'm sorry, Miss. It looks as if we'll have to meet with Muldaur after all and deal with this t
hing face-to-face."

  Flynn Muldaur had been trying to see Missy all week, since the fiasco at Filson's. She'd refused, partly at the urging of Joshua and Allyn, who had been hopeful that his claim would be proven false by their efforts. But only partly. More than anything else, she dreaded the thought of facing him after she had so horribly and embarrassingly misconstrued his motives at Filson's. That part of her never wanted to lay eyes on him again.

  "Excuse me." Phyllis Hammond slipped into the sitting room from the nursery next door. "The bellboy just brought this up. He's waiting outside for a reply. Shall I just send him away again?"

  Missy accepted the calling card from the frowning nursemaid. On it was printed the name she most dreaded: Flynn Muldaur.

  "Muldaur again!" Allyn snapped. "Tell him"

  "No." Missy's reply was crisp. "I suppose I'd best speak with him and find out what his intention is regarding his share of the ranch." "But Missy, you need time to think about this!" Allyn said, taking her by the shoulders with a little shake. "Suppose he"

  "I've had all week to think about it, Allyn." Missy surprised herself by feeling as calm as she sounded. "I've decided that Mr. Muldaur really has only three choices. Since there's nothing in the document that states a dollar amount, he must either sell his half-interest to me, sell it to someone else, or buy my half. There's no question of me selling him my half, of course. I haven't the ready capital to purchase his half from him at the current market value"

  "Of course we could loan you the money!" Allyn interjected firmly.

  "Unthinkable," Missy told her. "I would never consent to such a loan. So that leaves him only one alternative."

  "Two," Allyn corrected, giving her a direct and unsettling look. "As unlikely as it seems, he might actually be of a mind to move to the ranch and behave as a full partner."

  Missy found herself staring at the rug. She had thought of that, but she'd dismissed it as an impossibility, based on Joshua's assessment of the man. She was dismayed to discover that the thought of Flynn Muldaur choosing to live at the C-Bar-C was as intriguing as it was disturbing. It made her insides feel most peculiar.

  "I doubt that." Joshua looked disdainful. "Oh, he might move in, but if he did it would only be with the intention of driving Missy out."

  He sounded so cold that Missy felt impelled to voice what had been on her mind for the past week.

  "You told me when I first met him he isn't to be trusted," she ventured, risking a glance at Allyn's unusually stern husband. "But you never said why. You never told me how you knew it to be so. Since he was evidently telling the truth about this document of his, I would like to know what prompted you to say that. In any event it would be helpful for me to know, if I am to have any sort of dealings with him."

  Joshua glanced at her, then at Allyn, then back again, reluctance printed plainly all over his serious, angular face.

  "You don't have to deal with him at all," Joshua insisted, planting his elbow in the armrest and hooking his thumb about his chin. "I could take care of"

  "The C-Bar-C is my responsibility," she interrupted him pleasantly but firmly. "You and Allyn have done far more than you needed to on my behalf. You have your own burdens. I know you wanted to go back to Annapolis three days ago, but you stayed here to help me in this emergency. I appreciate it. But it's time I took over and handled this matter as best I may, on my own."

  Allyn paled. "Missy, you can't mean that you intend to"

  "I can, and I do," she said as reasonably as she could through the turmoil of uncertainty in her stomach. "I have relied on you both for far too long. I made my decision years ago to keep the C-Bar-C and to maintain it myself. I've had good years and lean ones, mostly good, of course, since Sheik. This is nothing more than a new challenge for me. And you both understand me well enough, I think, to know that I have no intention of losing everything I've worked so hard for. What would be helpful, though, is to know as much about the man as I possibly can, so I can enter into whatever arrangement I may with my eyes open, so to speak."

  "Actually, I should like to know, too," Allyn remarked, her grudging tone proclaiming her surrender to Missy's resolution.

  Joshua granted them both a whimsical smile with his mouth, but not his eyes. "Knowledge is power, eh?" He addressed his comment to Missy. "You're right. The least I can do is tell you what I know of Flynn Muldaur. But I warn you: You won't much care for what I have to say."

  Missy nodded swiftly. She did not like it already, and so far Joshua had not said a word. She directed Phyllis to convey the message that Mr. Muldaur was to come up to the suite in ten minutes' time. Then she sat in the little Queen Anne chair facing Joshua's and folded her hands in her lap.

  "I'm ready," she said.

  Joshua shifted in his chair as if hoping to make an uncomfortable subject more comfortable for both of them.

  "Flynn was an agent under me in the Secret Service," he began, stroking his cheek with an idle, telling finger. "He was a good one. A little brash, a little hotheaded sometimes. The kind to act before he thought . . . Hmm. Come to think of it, he sounds a little bit like"

  "Joshua!" Allyn's warning was a low growl.

  "As I was saying, he was, unlike anyone we know, somewhat precipitous. But he was dependable and honest. At least until one disastrous case. It involved a smuggling ring out of New Orleans, operated through a very exclusive, ah, bordello. We'd worked for months undercover"

  "I wager you did your part for God and country," Allyn interrupted, her features a thundercloud.

  "Be still, Allyn. This is serious," Joshua scolded.

  Allyn said nothing more, but looked as if she were mentally preparing a lengthy and passionate oratory for later.

  "As I was saying, we worked undercover to be sure that the net, when we finally cast it, would be tight. No one involved could be allowed to slip through. It would compromise the entire effort. Muldaur volunteered to spearhead the final phase of the operation, and because he'd been undercover the longest, it was natural that he should.

  ''When the hour came, Muldaur just flat out wasn't where he said he'd be. The net failed because of it; more than half of those involved got away, including the ring-leader, the madam, and several crooked high-ranking government officials. Those who were caught eventually were let off with light sentences, because the evidence had been severely compromised. It was a disaster. And the worst of it was, when we discovered that Flynn wasn't where he should have been, we assumed something had happened to him. Two men lost their lives in the trouble that followed. Another lost his sight." Joshua let out a long sigh and shook his head, as if he still could not credit his own stupidity in having trusted Muldaur.

  "Flynn turned up a little while later, after the dust had settled. We were surprised. We thought he'd been fed to the sharks in the Gulf. He offered no excuse for his behavior. At first he was believed to have acted as an accomplice to the smugglers, but in the end nothing could be proven. He was charged with dereliction of duty, but he opted to resign rather than to be dismissed from service.

  "It came out during the hearing that he'd gotten involved with the daughter of the madam, a woman by the name of Madeleine Deauville. The adjutant accused him of having betrayed his colleagues for the charms of this woman, and so costing two men their lives. He never denied it."

  "Deauville?" Missy could not prevent herself from echoing the name aloud.

  Joshua arched an eyebrow. "You're heard of her?"

  She did not answer right away. Her mind was racing

  right along with her heart. Deauville was the name of the "niece" Muldaur had been squiring at Filson's last week. Antoinette. Could Muldaur be, in reality, the girl's father? But she was far older than this story, certainly. Joshua, she knew, was 36 years old; Muldaur could not be much older than that. Antoinette Deauville was no younger than 16, probably closer to 18. That would have made Flynn no older than 20 at her birth, far too young to have been a Secret Service operative at the time. The mathematics o
f it were all wrong. Unless . . .

  Unless Muldaur had known the woman in question for a much longer time than he'd admitted to his superiors. Unless he was even less principled than Joshua's story implied.

  Unless there was another explanation entirely for the events Joshua had outlined to her, and the very existence of the lovely Miss Deauville.

  "After that” Joshua had gone on, and Missy strove to catch up” he helped his brother campaign for Congress, but with his connection to that scandal, he proved a greater liability than an asset and he was asked to resign. He's been notably successful in a number of speculative ventures over the past ten years, some land deals, involvement in a professional baseball team, and, I believe, once even a partnership in a thoroughbred stable. But his profits always seem to dry up or vanish. His associates come out all right, which is a wonder, considering his peculiar record of building, then quickly and mysteriously losing, his fortunes. But he ends up as broke as he started. Some say he lives under an unlucky cloud. I think he makes his own bad luck."