by Carole Howey
But what, exactly, has he told you? she wondered, with a renewed sense of chagrin.
"Y-yes, ma'am."
Lucy moistened her lips, obviously aware that she'd committed a breach of decorum with her unceremonious entrance. Missy took that moment to observe her, and she realized in a glance that the girl was at least five years younger than she and, with her fine blond hair and liquid blue eyes, certainly a good deal prettier.
Moreover, she was very obviously several months gone with child.
Missy had never been a covetous woman, not even when she'd thought that Antoinette Deauville was the object of Flynn's amorous attention in Louisville. But looking at Lucy, then glancing at Flynn who looked like a fox caught in a henhouse and back to Lucy again, she was aware of a screaming bolt of jealousy that made her want to claw the girl's fair face and pull out her silky golden hair in great clumps.
Missy welded her feet to the floor to prevent herself from running from the room. This was her house, after all, and if anyone was going to leave, it was going to be Flynn Muldaur's pregnant trollop.
"What is your last name, Lucy?" She was amazed at the even quality of her voice. Lucy, to her credit, looked down at her burgeoning middle.
''It's Battle, ma'am. Mrs."
"Of course. And Mr. Battle?"
Lucy bit her lip. "I'm a widow."
A widow. That's what every whore says of herself when she gets into an interesting condition and is forced to move on. Missy hated herself for the mean things she was thinking and feeling for the girl before her.
"I see. But you can cook?"
Lucy's eager nod was genuine.
"I cooked for the commander and his wife at Fort Pierre," she offered. "Col. and Mrs. Pettigrew. Then my husband, who was sergeant at arms, was killed when a powder magazine blew up." The blue eyes filled with tears. "That was three months ago. We'd only been married a year. After that, the army didn't have no use for me and I was let go." If Lucy was acting, she was doing a mighty credible job of it. She even sent a grateful look Flynn's way that Missy found painful to behold.
"I met up with Mr. Muldaur here when he first come to Rapid City," she said, blushing. "He"
Lucy Battle did not seem able to go on. She looked down at the steaming bowl of aromatic broth on her tray and sniffled.
"There's a boy upstairs in the front bedroom." It was Flynn who broke the uncomfortable stillness in the parlor. "The broth's for him, not for me. I hope it's not too tasty; he needs to be taught a lesson. Although if it tastes as good as it smells, I expect the lesson will have to wait for another time."
For all her pregnant girth, Lucy grinned becomingly at the compliment.
"Can you that is, are you quite all right to climb the stairs?" Missy could have bitten off her tongue for so solicitous a question. "Oh, sure." The girl smiled again, her brief melancholy apparently forgotten. "I feel wonderful. Haven't been sick a day. I like being busy, and I like your place. When I started, the hands told me I had pretty big shoes to fill since you were such a good cook yourself. But soon they allowed I was almost as good as you. There're fine people here at the C-Bar-C, Miss Cannon. Especially Mr. Muldaur. I owe him a lot."
Yes, she was sure Lucy did, although Missy was uncertain of precisely how much the cook owed him.
"It isn't what you think, Missy." Demonstrating uncharacteristic tact, Flynn waited until Lucy had excused herself and closed the door behind her before he made his quiet declaration.
Missy felt as if she'd spent an entire afternoon plowing without benefit of a draft animal. She wanted to take a hot, soothing bath, then sleep for a week and awake to find that this dreadful afternoon had never happened.
And she did not want to exchange further words with Flynn Muldaur.
"Oh?" she breathed, still staring at the closed door of the parlor. "And what, exactly, do I think?"
Flynn's sigh was the perfect mirror of her own exhaustion.
"Lucy's a fine cook, and the hands all like her. They've taken a personal interest in her and her baby, and I expect you'd find a lot of them would take it hard if you were to let her go now. Give her a chance. If not for my sake, then for hers, and for the sake of the men's feelings. I think Micah especially has taken quite a shine to her."
Micah only? she wondered. She said nothing.
"I really am sorry about what I said earlier," he went on, scarcely above a whisper.
So am I, she thought, silently damning him as tears pricked the backs of her eyes. She heard the sound of movement as he walked toward the door. She turned the opposite way as he passed her so she did not have to look at him.
"I'll get my things out of your room and have a cot brought up from the bunkhouse."
The casters of the sliding door creaked. Missy, remembering something Flynn had said to Lucy, composed herself.
"What did you mean when you told Lucy that Gideon needed to be taught a lesson?"
"Oh." Flynn laughed, but it was a hollow, forced sound. "Micah said he and the mares followed a trail of molasses home behind the wagon. So that means"
"Gideon pretended to have eaten all of it, and is feigning his stomachache," she finished for him. "But why?" she asked, turning to face him.
He was looking at her with a blessedly blank expression; she could not have tolerated a look of remorse or contrition. He shrugged and shook his head.
"He's a kid; who knows how he thinks?" he dismissed; then with a nod he left the room.
Missy was not so sure. It seemed to her that Flynn actually knew a great deal about how a young boy thought. Certainly more than she did.
Missy lay on her back and stared up at the ceiling. She missed her own bed most of all when she traveled, and she always enjoyed a blissful, unbroken night's slumber on the first night of her return. But not on this occasion. Accustomed to solitude, she was all too aware of the new people breathing in the house, both across the hall and in a room downstairs off the kitchen. Besides, despite the fact that her body had long since resigned itself to a need for rest, her mind still hummed like a hive of bees.
Despite her having known him now for months, she discovered that Gideon was still capable of astonishing her. She'd challenged him about the molasses incident, gently, as one might prod a sleeping partner to ease over in the dead of night. He'd looked her in the eye, as he was wont to do, and denied it. She'd known he was lying at once, but something stopped her from accusing him outright; such a confrontation, she knew from experience, would only lead to an argument and would solve nothing. As his guardian, she knew she had her work laid out for her. Gideon, after all, was as accustomed to lying as ordinary people were to breathing.
What kind of example, she found herself wondering as she stared at the ceiling in the darkness, would Flynn Muldaur make for such a youth?
She flopped over onto her stomach, sinking her face into the freshly aired feather pillow. She did not even want to think about Flynn Muldaur, his opinions, his behavior, or his cook. But she found, as the hours dragged by, hours she should have spent sleeping, that she was unable to think of anything else. Like, for example, the fact that the man had slept in this very bed for the past three weeks . . .
She inhaled deeply, trying to catch some trace of his familiar, spicy scent in the pillow. What she found was that she couldn't breathe at all with her face buried in the pillow that way. Disgusted with herself, she turned on her side and instead hugged one pillow to her breast.
As if it were a willing lover.
Outside in the distance, a coyote howled. It sounded just enough like laughter to make her face grow warm. You haven't any husband, or real children, to shower your affections on, Flynn had callously reminded her only that afternoon. He hadn't added And you never will, but she'd heard the words nonetheless as if they'd been shouted. She heard them because in her heart she had always suspected it was so. Still, she could have lived a long time without having someone point it out to her so coldly. Especially when that someone was a man for whom she e
ntertained outlandishly fanciful romantic notions. Then the pretty, very pregnant young Lucy whom he had hired to cook for him had appeared, cheerful as only a contented woman could be.
Missy might as well have been a bug, and Flynn might as well have stepped on her.
She seized the pillow and was about to pull it over her head when she heard a floorboard creak in the hallway.
She listened hard, not breathing, not moving. She heard nothing more for what seemed a long time. Then there was another protest of wood, this one nearer to her door.
Mice? She was doubtful. Mice scampered and skittered, scratching on the floor with their tiny claws. Mice didn't make floorboards groan. And mice didn't carry lamps that made a dull yellow glow on the floor at the seam beneath the door.
Another board reported. This one was right outside her door. The pale light flickered.
Missy clutched the bed sheet in a knot just under her chin and strained her eyes. Should she call out? Suppose it was Flynn? But what would he want? No, more likely it was Gideon, unable to sleep in a strange place. But that was absurd. Gideon, thanks to his vagabond orphan existence, had no doubt slept in far less hospitable environs than the spare bedroom at the C-Bar-C. She knew him to be capable of falling asleep even in the most adverse conditions.
Whoever it was seemed to stop right outside her door, for she heard no more noises of advance or retreat and the light did not subside. She waited, expecting next to hear a knock or a soft voice call to her from the other side of the door. She heard neither.
Then she had a dreadful thought.
Was it Lucy, come to her regular nightly assignation with Flynn Muldaur?
Missy had not mentioned the change of rooms to the girl, and neither, to her knowledge or recollection, had Flynn. Dinner had been a noisy affair with everyone, including Micah and the two other hired hands, sitting down at the table right along with Missy, Flynn, and Gideon. Missy did not recall seeing Flynn exchange any words with Lucy then. After dinner, he'd stepped out back to have a smoke with the hands, and then they'd all repaired to the bunkhouse to play cards. Flynn might have paid Lucy a call in the cook's small compartment behind the kitchen when he came in, but Missy suspected that he would prefer his liaisons in more spacious surroundings, such as those that could be had here in this very room where he had slept for the past three weeks.
Missy's mouth went dry at the thought. If Lucy were, indeed, outside her door looking for Flynn, then she, Missy, would be well within her rights to discharge the girl on the spot, pregnant, popular, or not.
Missy slid out from beneath the covers as quietly as she could. She found herself desperately wanting it not to be Lucy. She didn't know whether she wanted it more because she wanted not to believe that Lucy and Flynn were lovers, or because she genuinely liked and pitied the unfortunate girl. Moreover if it was not Lucy, Missy did not know whether to be afraid or hopeful that it might, instead, be Flynn Muldaur.
Did he wear a nightshirt? she wondered, then chided herself for her foolish whimsy.
Missy crossed her own carpeted floor in silence. She couldn't swear to it, but she thought she heard short, nervous breaths on the other side of her door. A child's? A guilty lover's? She placed one hand over her stomach,
where a tight, painful knot had formed; she would soon find out which.
She closed her fingers about the lever. Drawing a deep, steadying breath, she turned it and pulled the door wide.
Lucy Battle gasped and drew back, meeting Missy's gaze with a wide-eyed stare.
Chapter Thirteen
There could, Missy realized with detached logic, be any number of reasons why her young, pregnant cook might be wandering the hallway barefoot in her nightdress and wrapper. But she could think of only one.
"Mr. Muldaur is not here," she heard herself say in a cool whisper. "He's sleeping in the smaller bedroom across the hall with Gideon."
Lucy's pretty features took on a tight expression by the light of the lamp, and Missy perceived that the girl was insulted.
"I wasn't looking for him," she replied, her words low and deliberate. "I couldn't sleep for wanting to talk to you about something, so I came up here on the chance you might still be awake. When I saw there wasn't a light under your door, I guessed I'd go on back downstairs."
Lucy did not back down from her gaze. Missy pressed her lips together, shamed by the assumption she'd made.
"Well, I'm awake now," she murmured, stepping aside and opening the door wider. "If you have something to say to me, I expect we might as well have it out."
Lucy followed her in and closed the door quietly behind her. Missy didn't want to invite the woman to sit down, but Lucy's condition compelled her to be charitable. Lucy turned up the lamp, set it on the nightstand, and settled into the small armchair Missy used for dressing. Missy realized she herself was still standing in the middle of the room clad only in her nightdress, but she had no wish to sit down with her guest just yet.
"What was it you felt you needed to tell me?" Although she dreaded hearing Lucy's disclosure, Missy was pleased by the casual tone she effected.
Lucy folded her hands beneath her belly in what remained of her lap, accentuating her pregnant bulk. Her blue eyes looked dark and hooded. Missy realized she might have felt compassion for her, if she were not so dreading what the girl was going to confess to her.
"When I said today that I met up with Mr. Muldaur when he came to Rapid City, it wasn't altogether true."
Missy wished she had been sitting down. As it was, it required all of her composure to muster a steady, dignified walk to the bed, where she sat at last.
"I thought it might not be," she said lightly, tracing the spindled footboard with an idle finger so she would not have to look directly at the girl. "Where did you meet him?"
"Oh, I met him in town," Lucy hastened to assure her. "But it was when I first came to town, not him. You see" She stopped, expelling her breath. ''I'm not altogether proud of I mean, this isn't easy for me to"
"I daresay," Missy murmured faintly. Why didn't Lucy just get on with it and crush her completely? Flynn had already done a journeyman's job of it this afternoon; why should his lover not finish the task now, in the dead (oh, what a fitting label!) of night?
Lucy took in a swallow of air, and Missy could not help noticing that the breath shuddered at the end. Obviously Lucy was upset. Well, why wouldn't she be? Missy reasoned, gripping the footboard so that her hand ached. She was about to confess to something that would likely result in her dismissal.
"What I mean is" Lucy drew in another sharp breath, and Missy felt the stabbing pain of it deep within her own breast. No, she wanted to beg the other woman. Please don't tell me. If I don't hear it, I might still believe it isn't so.
"I've always found that complete honesty is the best way to ensure a good night's sleep, Lucy," was what she said, staring at the girl's tightly interlocked fingers. "We must be able to live with our own secrets, however unpleasant." Like loving a man who has the power to devastate you, both emotionally and financially? her conscience taunted her. She fell silent, waiting for Lucy's response. Lucy sighed heavily.
"You're right," she admitted, sounding miserable, a fact from which Missy took no consolation whatever. "What I didn't tell you today was that Mr. Muldaur came up to me on the street in Rapid City as I was standing outside of Lettie's," she said, naming the town's most notorious brothel. "I was trying to get up the courage to go in and ask for a job. A job as a cook," she hastened to add, with a proud look. ''See, I hadn't had but a few jobs here and there since I'd had to leave Fort Pierre; seems no one wanted to take me on, being as I'll have the baby and all. But you see, I had to eat. I have to live. I have Jed’s that is, Mr. Battle’s baby to think of. And it got to where I couldn't afford to worry that decent people wouldn't look at me. I mean, they could look at my starved corpse, sure, but I'm not much interested in dying of starvation or anything else, and I'd have stolen before it came to that, believe me."
Lucy placed a protective hand over her swollen abdomen. Her narrative was coming easier now, as if the floodgates of a dam had been opened. Indeed, the roar in Missy's ears could be likened to that of rushing water.
"Anyway, Mr. Muldaur, he rode up on a fine-looking bay; he must have seen me from quite a ways off, 'cause he wasn't anywhere around when I'd first got there. I could tell right off he was a gentleman, like my Jed. He tipped his hat to me and asked if he could be of service. Well, Miss Cannon, it had been so long since anybody had even sounded like they cared about me, and I guess I was so ashamed that I'd been about to take Jed's baby into one of those places, that I admit, I up and cried on him right there in the street."
Lucy sniffled and dragged the back of her wrist across both eyes. Missy felt water back up behind her own eyes, but she pictured Flynn Muldaur standing in a public street with his arms full of a weeping, very pregnant woman and very quickly brought herself under control.