by Carole Howey
The vanity in her reply was sufficiently maddening to make Missy want to pull out her perfect gold curls and fling them in her face. She clenched her hands instead.
"I believe you ensured that no one could forget you, Miss Deauville," she said through her own teeth, which were fine but, she knew, nowhere near as stunning as the younger woman's. "I meant, who are you to Flynn? To Seamus? And why have you come here now?"
Missy had always thought laughter, particularly that of young people, to be among the most pleasing and musical sounds in the world, but Antoinette's vocal merriment was chilling. Missy longed to cover her ears.
"Why do you think we have come?"
"You and your mother have some hold over Flynn and his brother," Missy said, before she had any intention of replying. "I want to know what it is. I have heard . . . things. You are Seamus's daughter; that much I know. That means nothing to me. I don't care about Seamus. I don't even like him. But"
"But you do like Flynn, I think," Antoinette interrupted with a slow, unpleasant smile. "Very much. Suppose I were to tell you that I am not Seamus's daughter, but Flynn's?"
Missy recoiled inwardly. Impossible, she told herself, rallying, remembering the story Joshua had told her so very long ago.
"But you aren't." She sounded more certain than she felt; for that she offered a scant prayer of thanks.
Antoinette raised one amused eyebrow. "And how can you be sure that I am not? My mother has said that there have been times when even she could not be certain."
The fact that the girl could so blithely hurl in Missy's face that her mother had known both men appalled Missy; she guessed that was Antoinette's intention. She felt revolted, but the sensation was not directed at Flynn or, amazingly, his brother.
"I am certain," Missy told her, realizing that it was the truth, "that no child of Flynn's, however corrupted by its mother, could behave the way you do."
"You believe that because you want to believe it," the girl sneered. "Women who are foolish enough to fall in love with a man find it very easy to deceive themselves as to his character."
That was true enough, Missy knew, to her own dismay. She'd seen it happen before, although not to herself. Until now, that is. She blinked hard and tried to keep her breathing slow and even.
"And people women with no character of their own have an easy time finding fault with the character of others," she replied, shoving aside her disloyal doubts. She had to believe in Flynn now, or else everything she'd done in the past few minutes, even in the past few months, was a sham.
Antoinette shrugged. It was an exquisite expression of youthful disdain.
"Believe what you will," she said, sounding bored. "It still does not explain why you have come here to us. Unless it is because Flynn himself has made mention of my mother in an affectionate way, and you wish to protect the interests of your heart?"
"Flynn has never mentioned either you or your mother by name, and certainly not with what you might call affection."
"Then you have come here to satisfy your own jealousy."
Antoinette seemed to be growing larger with each passing moment, and Missy felt as if she herself were shrinking. She placed her hands flat against the oak door behind her, and a cold finger of sweat traced her spine. Rather than try to deny Antoinette's words, which sounded like a hanging judge's proclamation, Missy decided to take another path altogether.
"My ranch is at stake," she breathed, feeling dizzy
with the heat, the stuffiness, and the rich, heavy scent of Antoinette's perfume in the room. "The C-Bar-C. My home. My livelihood. What you what you are doing to Flynn and to Seamus in some way affects that."
"An odd calling," Antoinette observed, inclining her head. "For a woman, I mean. There are certainly far easier and far more lucrative pursuits. Although," she added, looking Missy up and down as a breeder might an inferior mare, "perhaps not so unusual after all for one of your, ah, temperament."
Her meaning was not lost on Missy, but Missy was too intent on her mission to allow the insult to rile her. She drew in a deep, steady breath and leveled as hard a gaze as she could at the insolent snipe.
"A vocation which fosters strength of character as well as strength of quite a different sort," Missy agreed, pronouncing each word with careful deliberation. "I was called upon only recently to deliver a foal in pieces to save the life of the mare. Nor was that the first time I have been obliged to dismember a creature with my bare hands. I also once killed a man who would have brought great harm to someone I love."
Missy could not deny that she enjoyed Antoinette's resultant shudder, nor that she felt a bitter thrill of triumph at last as the girl looked at her askance.
"My daughter is regrettably impressionable. In that regard she is much like her father. I, however, suffer no such affliction. Killing a man is, to me, no significant accomplishment. I myself have done so, and felt his blood warm my fingers. However, keeping a man in the palm of your hand how shall I say . . . dancing to your music? is by far a more satisfying achievement."
The new voice was lightly accented. Carefully modulated. Faintly amused. Missy abandoned her scrutiny of Antoinette in favor of the older woman, who had returned to the room with a vengeance. Madeleine Deauville wore a gown of midnight blue taffeta in a cut Missy had never seen on anyone in Rapid City or, indeed, anywhere else that she could recall. Missy herself was skilled with a needle, but she could only stare as a starving person would gape at a sumptuous meal at the cunning embroidery and elaborate lapis beadwork on the bodice and draped hem of the gown. Not even Allyn owned a gown as spectacular as this. It was indeed a most impressive armor.
"It is a Worth creation, Mlle Cannon." Madeleine commanded the small room with her regal gait and spread herself upon the settee without once releasing Missy from her gaze. "That undoubtedly means nothing to you, but I assure you that in matters of fashion, Worth has no equal."
Missy, staring, could not speak. She knew of Worth; what woman did not? His creations were known to be spectacular and unique, priceless and accordingly expensive, works of art better suited, to Missy's mind, to a well-guarded museum display rather than as practical garments for any but the most elegantly ostentatious social affairs. The creature reclining on the settee was wearing a single article of clothing that represented three months' earnings for the C-Bar-C, very likely more. I need five thousand dollars, Flynn had said in May. . . .
Five thousand dollars in the form of a Worth gown lounged on the settee before her. Worn, it seemed to Missy, for no better reason than to make her feel insignificant.
In matters of gall, apparently Madame Madeleine Deauville had no equal.
Missy clenched her fists and took two steps away from the door. Her strength and the good sense with which she was long credited returned. Madeleine Deauville and her daughter were all show and no substance. Worth gowns and expensive accessories might dress up a sow's ear, she realized, but underneath it all was still a sow's ear.
Madeleine was a daughter of a whore, and a whore herself, and very likely worse, if Joshua's tale had been true. She had a wicked web of some sort spun about Seamus and Flynn who, for all Missy knew, deserved all or part of their misfortune for having consorted with her sort to begin with.
Missy hesitated. Had Flynn's transgression been so great as to earn him a lifetime of purgatory in this woman's clutches? Missy could not bring herself to believe it. From what she had learned of Flynn in the past months, it seemed more likely to her that his role in the sordid business was to protect his brother in some way. How like him that would be!
Missy regarded both women, one after the other, and realized that the pair no longer intimidated her. She felt a resurgence of love for Flynn, and a wish to be back with him to tell him so. The only fear she experienced was the dread that she might lose her temper sufficiently to rearrange the Gallic noses Madeleine and her daughter looked down.
"You're leeches," she muttered, sickened. "Bloodsuckers. Both of you. You prey
on an innocent man who"
"Innocent?" Madeleine laughed, not seeming to mind Missy's harsh characterization at all. "Hardly that. The Muldaur brothers are many things, cherie, but innocent is not a word anyone who truly knows them would use to describe them. Oh, Seamus might pretend otherwise, but Flynn” she pronounced the name as if it rhymed with spleen"would never deny it. Of the two of them, he is the more honest. But that is like saying mud is more clean than dirt."
Madeleine opened a matching ostrich-plume fan with an efficient snap and extended her arm along the arched back of the settee like a lazy snake. Missy observed her, hoping to keep her feelings of revulsion carefully hidden from view. It was better, she decided, for the women before her to believe her to be cowed by their superior physical beauty and elegance than to realize that she felt nothing but loathing for them. Loathing and possibly, if she dredged deeply enough for it, a trace of Christian pity.
"It is often hard to determine how dirty another individual is when one is covered with filth," she could not resist commenting.
"How dare you"
"Silence!" Madeleine shot her daughter a lethal look that effectively stilled the young woman's indignant outburst. "You must forgive my daughter, Mlle Cannon. She is quite young, and has not yet learned the value of keeping one's emotions in check. I am really quite at a loss as to why you have come here, if you mean only to exchange insults and to debate everything I tell you about your Flynn. You should ask yourself what reason I have to lie to you about any of it. I stand to gain or lose nothing by his marriage to you."
She was lying; Missy felt it.
"Then why have you come to Rapid City?" she challenged.
Madeleine blinked, and her blue eyes remained half-closed as if better to assess Missy.
"My reasons are my own, and do not concern you in the least."
Missy doubted that, but she said nothing. She was determined to oblige Madeleine to continue to speak until she said something that sounded truthful. Missy hoped she would recognize the truth, but surrounded as she was by pretense and pageantry, she was not at all sure that she would. The older woman betrayed a moment of discomfort by averting her gaze and changing her position on the settee.
"Flynn is lucky to have found a woman so willing to overlook his many faults," she remarked. "Either that, or you are far more foolish than you appear to be. In any case, your position in Flynn Muldaur's life is of no concern to me or to my daughter."
"Except as to how you are to continue receiving tribute from him," Missy mused aloud, watching her adversary. "Tell me, did you come here intending to marry him yourself?"
Madeleine laughed in a melodious alto, wearing a look that betokened pity rather than astonishment. She was indeed practiced in this art, Missy thought, with no small, grudging admiration. Far more so than she herself could ever hope to be.
"Whatever would I gain from such a folly?" Madeleine inquired as her laughter faded into a bad memory. "I am accustomed to circumstances far more elegant than this mean establishment can offer." She waved her hand and looked about the room, one of the finest Missy could imagine in Rapid City, with a scornful look. "How can you seriously suggest that I or my daughter might be content in so rustic a place?"
Missy considered her. Rapid City was rustic, true, but marriage to Flynn, Missy knew, would not necessarily mean that Madeleine would be confined to this corner of South Dakota. She was certain Madeleine knew it, too. Thoroughbred racing was concentrated in major cities where society had money to squander, and it was obviously money Madeleine craved, not Flynn himself or even the C-Bar-C. But the ranch, or even part-ownership in it, if she were Flynn's wife, could provide Madeleine and her daughter entry into the expensive inner circles in places like New York, Saratoga, and elsewhere. Madeleine's mother, Missy recalled, had been a key figure in the smuggling affair that had led ultimately to Flynn's disgrace. In all likelihood, Madeleine had learned a great deal from the woman who had borne her.
Missy's arms and legs were stiffening from tension and from remaining still for so very long, but she did not dare to move yet for fear she might do some sort of violence.
''I haven't worked out your reasons yet," Missy admitted. "But I will. Meanwhile, you and your daughter would be well advised to stay away from Flynn and the C-Bar-C. Trespassers are shot on sight." That was an empty threat, Missy knew. She suspected Madeleine Deauville knew it, too, for the woman offered a whimsical, unpleasant smile.
"I have no need to visit your ranch. And I will stay away from Flynn, cherie," Madeleine assured her in an amused drawl. "But how will you make certain that Flynn stays away from me?"
Missy found a smile of her own meandering across her lips as if it were a scowl that had lost its way. She knew precisely how she would make certain of it. And on the morrow, Flynn, Madeleine, Seamus, and the rest of Rapid City would know it, too.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Flynn rolled over to get out of bed and promptly impaled himself on a hot metal spike. He sucked in a breath, inhaling with it several ripe oaths, and allowed his head to fall back against his pillow.
"Don't try to move, Flynn." Missy's voice was soothing. "I know it hurts. Time. You need time."
Flynn squeezed his eyes closed and remembered Seamus. And Madeleine. Time was one thing he did not have.
"Missy . . ." He tried his own voice, but it came out as a groan. He felt even worse this morning than he had yesterday, or the day before, or just how long had he lain here, anyway?
"Shh. Don't try to speak."
He obeyed, because he felt as if he'd pass out if he didn't. Besides, her voice was the sweetest balm he'd yet had. Gingerly he eased onto his back again and al
lowed himself, by degrees, to relax into the succor of the bed. In a minute, he felt strong enough to open his eyes. Missy was there in a small chair drawn up beside his bed, pale and careworn. He'd never seen anything look quite so good. The troubling images of Seamus and Madeleine evaporated to an inconsequential mist.
"What day is it?" he tried again after the pulsing ache in his side ebbed. He'd be all right, he guessed, if he didn't have to move. Or speak above a whisper.
"It's Thursday," was the answer he got, along with a sweet, if weary, smile. "Thursday morning."
Morning again. He should have figured. The inside of his mouth felt like the fur on his jaw and his bladder was so full he thought he'd burst.
"Help me up."
"But you"
"Damn it, I'm not about to disgrace myself in this bed! Help me up! Please." That declaration had cost him, but he grimaced and bore it, regretting only that he'd cussed at her.
She blushed. "Suppose I just bring you a mason jar?"
"Missy," he growled, "I'm not some damn cripple. I got up last night for supper, which you'd have known if you'd been here yourself."
"That's probably why you feel so poorly this morning," she mused, rising. "Here."
Flynn surprised himself by relying heavily on her support to ease up and sit on the edge of the bed. The ache was still there, but it was more like a reminder of his injuries than a revisitation thereof.
"You slept in your clothes, I see." There was no disapproval in Missy's tone that he could detect, merely mild amusement as she brushed the lint of the ticking from his shirtsleeves.
Gingerly Flynn got to his feet. The room spun, but he closed his eyes until the dizziness passed. "Good thing for you, I guess," he managed to tease her right back, and his reward was another charming blush. Just as he was wondering how he was going to negotiate the distance to the chamber pot without stumbling, Missy hurried to retrieve the item from its place beneath the washstand. When she placed it on the floor before him, she seemed unable to look at him.
"I'll just go over here and make up Gideon's bed," she murmured, hastily turning her back. "He's already downstairs eating breakfast. Tell me when you're through."
"I expect you'll know when I'm through," Flynn remarked wryly.
She did. She covered
the pot and carefully carried it to the door. Flynn, watching her, wondered if she'd still be blushing when she was a little old lady. He found himself hoping he'd be around to find out.
"Missy."
She turned to him. Her eyes were amethyst this morning, and clear as glass. They made him feel stronger and smarter than he knew he was.
"Put that thing down," he said gruffly. "And come over here."
He had to think. He needed to think. But he knew he needed to feel her in his arms, to know she wasn't angry with him, more than he needed anything else at the moment. If she denied him, he knew he would not have the strength to contest her. Maintaining her curious gaze, he prayed she wouldn't refuse him. She did, however, hesitate.
"I know I'm a sight," he said. "And I expect I smell like a flophouse. But I need to . . ."