by Pat Tracy
They reached the boardwalk together, both of them flushed and panting.
“My goodness, do you go through that every time you want to cross the street?” she gasped, holding her hand over her heart.
“It does enliven one’s senses, doesn’t it?” Mr. Pritchert asked, his eyes twinkling with irrepressible humor.
“Good grief, if we’d been a minute slower, that wagon would have run us down.”
“In a second,” Pritchert agreed cheerfully.
Victoria surprised herself by laughing at the man’s unfailing goodwill.
“Is that why you hired me, because I looked like a fast runner?”
Before Mr. Pritchert could respond, one of the men jamming the crowded sidewalk evidently misjudged the space needed to weave through the milling masses and bumped into Victoria. It was only a glancing blow, yet it was delivered with sufficient force to send her flying toward Mr. Pritchert. Startled by the unexpected impact, she braced herself against the older man’s flabby chest.
Before she could disentangle herself, two beefy paws closed around her arms and set her back on her feet. “I’m sorry, miss. I didn’t see you standing there.”
Victoria pushed back the straw hat that had fallen over her eyes. Before her stood a huge, grizzled man twisting a battered, dirt-stained hat between his broad hands. His deeply set brown eyes were filled with contrition, and he resembled nothing so much as a hulking Saint Bernard that had offended its master and sought forgiveness.
Someone else rushed by, jostling Victoria’s other shoulder. She glanced around the chaotic melee of moving men. With herself, Mr. Pritchert and this massive stranger blocking a significant portion of the roughly planked walkway, it felt as if they were a bit of flotsam caught in a surging river.
“Watch what you’re doing!” the giant yelled after the man who’d brushed too closely to them, before returning his attention to Victoria. “Are you all right, miss?”
“I—I’m fine,” she said, a bit breathlessly.
“Here, then, stand clear!” came Goliath’s mighty roar.
Almost magically, a pocket of space cleared around them.
Victoria smiled at the man. “Thank you, sir.”
“Hell.” A look of chagrin swept his rough features, turning his swarthy completion crimson. “Pardon my language, miss. I’m right sorry about that. Nobody calls me sir, though. My name’s Newt. Newt Timothy White.”
“Well, Newt,” she said, deciding to forgo formalities and address him by his Christian name, “no harm was done. As you can see, I’m perfectly fine.”
Newt bobbed his head. “I can see that, miss. You sure are mighty fine, and I’m mighty pleased to meet you.” he man shot a surprisingly fulminating glance at Mr. Pritchert. “You need to take better care of the young lady.”
Mr. Pritchert looked significantly at the crush of humanity sweeping past them. “With the sidewalks filled like they are today, my good man, that’s not an easy task.”
Newt nodded gravely. “Where are you headed?”
“Miss Amory and I are on our way to Western Banks United.”
“If it’s okay with you, I’ll walk beside the lady and make sure nobody else bumps into her.”
Considering what she’d survived over the past few weeks, the man’s concern would have been ludicrous, had his intentions not been so obviously sincere.
“Thank you, Newt,” she said, taken aback by the stranger’s unusually friendly manner.
The giant beamed. Mr. Pritchert coughed. And Victoria found herself accompanied by two gentlemen instead of one. They had only advanced a few more steps before they were stopped.
“Who’s your lady friend, Newt?”
The short, bandy-legged man asking the question had just emerged through the swinging doors of a saloon. He was framed by several companions. They all stared at her as if she were the missing nugget of gold for which they’d been searching. Their avid interest made Victoria feel selfconscious. She wasn’t used to generating this much attention.
“This here is Miss Amory. I’m walking her to the bank to make sure she gets there safely,” Newt announced importantly.
The men crowded closer.
“Say, your Miss Amory’s a right pretty woman.”
“She’s a real lady, sure enough.”
“She smells good, too.”
“What’s she doing in Trinity Falls?”
Newt beamed. “I don’t know, but she sure is fine.”
“A fine lady.”
“Don’t that beat all…”
None of the complimentary observations that swirled around Victoria were addressed directly to her. It was a curious sensation, being talked around, as if she were a statue to be gawked at instead of a real person.
“We’ll walk with you, Newt.”
“That’s right.” The shorter man nodded enthusiastically. “You can’t be too safe.”
“You’re right about that,” Newt said. “Is that okay with you, Miss Amory?”
Somewhat dazed, Victoria nodded. She glanced at Mr. Pritchert. He didn’t look the least bit surprised by what Victoria thought was a remarkable turn of events.
Thus, their numbers grew. It wasn’t long before they were stopped again. As before, the only introduction made was that she was Miss Amory and on her way to the bank. By the time they reached their destination, no fewer than thirty men had joined in the short exodus. As she and Mr. Pritchert stepped through the front door, dozens of male voices called out good-days, assorted good wishes and gratitude for having been allowed to walk her down the sidewalk.
When the bank’s door closed, their hearty farewells only dimmed in volume. She looked at Mr. Pritchert in stupefaction. “Goodness, what was that all about?”
“There aren’t that many young, pretty women in Trinity Falls,” he informed her blithely. “You’re going to find that you’ll draw a crowd wherever you go in town, until the men get accustomed to your presence. Most of them are decent sorts who are lonely for the sight of a refined woman.”
Victoria thought of her shocking involvement with Logan Youngblood and didn’t feel the least bit refined. She felt like an impostor.
“Uh, this is going to take some getting used to.” She tugged at her gray gloves while she considered what life was going to be like in the West.
It was a bit daunting to think of herself as some kind of…beauty. She had grown up with a truly beautiful younger sister and had no illusions about her own unremarkable appearance. There was the matter of her red hair and her freckles. In Boston, those were not considered attributes.
“Well, come along.”
Victoria allowed herself to be guided past four tellers’ cages, where she noticed several neatly attired young men. All stopped conducting various transactions and gawked at her.
She and Mr. Pritchert stopped in front of a sturdy oak door with gold lettering. She was unable to read what was written, however, because his portly frame blocked her view.
The older man knocked twice, then turned the brass knob and pushed open the door. “Go on in. Your employer is waiting for you.”
Before Victoria could thank Mr. Pritchert for his assistance, he left, closing the carved oak portal behind him.
Caught off guard by his sudden departure, she glanced about the apparently empty office into which she’d been shown. She realized abruptly that Pritchert had neglected to provide her employer’s name or introduce her to the man, which meant that the forthcoming meeting was going to begin awkwardly.
The room in which she found herself was as meticulously appointed as her hotel suite. There was a wide, relentlessly polished mahogany desk that filled most of the elegant chamber. Two ornately carved chairs faced it, while a large high-backed dark green brocade chair was presently turned toward a bookcase on the other side of the massive desk.
Absently she noted several brass lamps with green shades, assorted small tables and a nchly patterned Oriental rug. There was also a small settee upholstered in a
tapestry fabric composed of shades of chestnut and amber. The office bespoke money and refinement and smelled faintly of cigar smoke and lemon wax.
She took several steps into the room. The green brocade chair suddenly swiveled around. The unexpected movement, for Victoria had thought she was alone, elicited a startled gasp.
Filling most of the chair was an impeccably dressed, wideshouldered man in his late twenties or early thirties. His hair was dark brown, perhaps even black, and closely trimmed. His intelligent, watchful eyes were a deep shade of sienna. She found his unwavering gaze subtly disconcerting. He boasted a cleanly shaved, square jaw and lean, sharply chiseled cheekbones.
She knew she was staring, but couldn’t help herself. The individual presently inspecting her with his starkly riveting gaze was one of the most singularly handsome men she’d ever seen. The distinct cleft in his strong chin only added to the raw masculine vitality he radiated.
Victoria found her unexpected feminine approval of the stranger immensely depressing. For, only the morning before, she’d surrendered herself to another man whom she’d believed so completely filled her senses that she would never again experience any awareness or attraction toward another member of the male sex.
What a deplorable, wayward character she possessed!
Realizing the silence had drawn out well past the stage of awkwardness, Victoria forced a polite smile to her lips. Since he was her employer and had been the one to arrange this meeting, surely it was he who should speak first.
“Don’t you have anything to say?” he inquired at length, rising from his chair with lazy male grace.
His husky voice jarred her. Her mind was obviously playing tricks on her, because this incredibly striking man sounded very much like her Logan. In an attempt to gain control of her flagging spirits and the clumsily proceeding interview, Victoria extended her gloved hand briskly to her new employer.
“How do you do, sir? I’m Victoria Amory, and I’m pleased to finally be able to meet you.”
A look of undisguised incredulity swept the man’s gaze.
She wondered if he was confused about his day’s schedule and had been expecting someone else. Or perhaps there was something about her appearance that he found surprising. It was possible, she supposed, that he’d anticipated someone older filling the position of tutor for his ward.
“Victoria.”
For some reason, the way he said her name raised tiny goose bumps on her arms. Again, his voice reminded her of Logan’s.
“Yes, that’s right,” she confirmed.
The man continued to stare, as if waiting for her to say or do something significant.
Victoria was completely at a loss as to how to proceed. It occurred to her that, despite his sophisticated appearance, her new employer could do with a bit of tutoring himself, on how to conduct an interview.
There was another full minute of excruciating silence. The man had yet to accept her extended hand, and she began to wonder if perhaps he considered the gesture too forward upon her part. It was at this wholly inopportune juncture that her memory chose to fill her mind with the shocking image of Logan Youngblood’s magnificently nude body claiming her in one bold thrust.
She felt her ears turn hot and knew she was blushing. She started to lower her hand, but then, without warning, her employer caught it in his powerful grasp. A startling frisson of tingling energy penetrated the flimsy layer of fabric from which her gloves were made and singed her fingertips. Nor was the pulsating current contained there. Instead, it traveled with alarming rapidness up her arm, fanning outward until it reached some inappropriate and definitely vulnerable places.
Instinctively she tried to yank her palm free from his disturbingly personal grip. For the space of a heartbeat, she wasn’t certain he was going to release her. Something possessive hovered in his hooded gaze. She had a startling sense of déjà vu that left her disoriented.
“Please be seated, Miss Amory.”
Since her knees had become woefully inadequate for the task of supporting herself, she accepted his suggestion with alacrity and plopped down upon one of the chairs that faced his wide desk. She couldn’t help but wince at her inelegant collapse, knowing that, had her mother been present, she would have been distressed by her elder daughter’s lack of grace.
An irreverent bubble of laughter threatened to break free as Victoria realized there were other, much more grievous aspects of her daughter’s recent behavior that would have distressed her mother far more than a momentary bout of clumsiness.
Like bathing outdoors with a man who wasn’t her husband, and letting him have his evil way with her. Only, of course, at the time, nothing about Logan Youngblood’s irresistible seduction had seemed the least bit evil.
Get hold of yourself, Victoria:
“Well, as you can see, I’ve finally arrived,” she observed with dogged brightness, wanting to get the interview back on track. After all, she’d already been hired by Martin Pntchert, and she had a signed contract in her possession to seal the arrangement. This meeting with her employer was really nothing more than a formality.
In a smoothly fluid movement, the impeccably dressed man reclaimed the large chair behind his desk. “I imagine your trip west was a difficult one…”
The husky observation was left hanging, as if to encourage her to elaborate upon any hardships she might have endured. Yet, as casually voiced as the remark seemed, it was accompanied by a piercing stare that made her shift uncomfortably. Again his voice sounded identical to Logan’s Would there ever come a time when he wasn’t on her mind? “For the most part, my journey was…uneventful.”
In a gesture hauntingly reminiscent of Logan, her employer’s left eyebrow rose. “I was led to believe from my assistant, Mr. Pritchert, that you somehow became separated from the wagon train and were forced to travel the last part of the way alone.”
“Well, yes. That’s true.”
“Through hostile Indian territory?”
“I never actually saw any Indians,” she pointed out, in the interest of accuracy.
He leaned forward and steepled his fingertips. “Forgive me, Miss Amory, but I find it difficult to believe a woman alone could have driven a team of oxen all the way from Fort Brockton to Trinity Falls during an Indian uprising and not encountered any hostile opposition.”
“I came by way of the mountains.”
That left eyebrow rose again. “Did you?”
She nodded. “It seemed the best way to avoid trouble.”
“Allow me to compliment you on your keenly developed sense of direction, Miss Amory.”
“Uh, well, thank you,” she replied, with what she hoped was believable conviction, all the while assuring herself that it was only her guilty conscience that made him seem so similar to Logan. “I was very fortunate.”
“My thoughts exactly,” came his rough rejoinder.
Another pool of silence widened between them. Victoria was confused by the small inner voice that warned her to be careful of the man across the desk. It was as if she sensed upon a primary level that defied logic that her new employer harbored a residue of antagonism toward her and was deeply suspicious of everything she told him. And yet, at the same time, she felt herself drawn to him.
Unsettled by the conflicting feelings churning inside her, Victoria cleared her throat. “I’m very much looking forward to meeting Madison. From what Mr. Pritchert told me last night at dinner, I understand she’s a bright and enthusiastic young woman.”
“Madison is very special.” His lean fingers plucked a sheet of paper from a neat stack of documents on the desk. “For that reason, I intend to be extremely demanding of her tutor.”
A warning alarm sounded in Victoria’s head. “What precisely do you mean by ‘demanding’?”
For the first time during their interview, the corners of the man’s mouth curved upward. For some reason, Victoria’s sense of disquiet grew.
“I made my specifications emphatically clear to
Mr. Pritchert. I want Madison to be instructed by a woman of rare breeding. It goes without saying that she must have a spotless reputation and set a strong example of moral integrity for my ward. Of course, she must also be intelligent and capable of bridging the unfortunate circumstances of Madison’s early history.”
The queasy distress in Victoria’s stomach grew. If her employer was to discover that she had surrendered her virginity to a common criminal like Logan Youngblood, the self-righteous man would boot her out of his elegant office in a heartbeat.
“I have other requirements, as well,” came the deeply modulated voice that scraped the last fragments of Victoria’s composure. “Tell me, do you wear spectacles, Miss Amory?”
The unexpected inquiry had her raising her eyebrows. “I beg your pardon?”
“Pay attention,” he chided softly. “My time is valuable, and I dislike having to repeat myself.”
Victoria flushed. She resented his arrogance, his highhanded manner and, most of all, his smug, condescending attitude. She wondered how long he would be able to survive on his own in the rugged mountain country through which Logan had safely guided her.
Victoria raised her chin. “I do not wear spectacles, sir.”
She bit her tongue to keep from pointing out that whether she did or didn’t wear eyeglasses had nothing to do with her competence to instruct a young woman.
“Then you consider your eyesight to fall within normal abilities?”
Victoria nodded.
Again, something about the man’s measured tone put her senses on alert.
Several times in her life, she had been allowed to watch her father preside as a judge over legal disputes. Her new employer’s confrontational manner bore an alarming resemblance to the attorneys who had figuratively waged war upon the witnesses they questioned.
“And your memory?” he probed deliberately. “I assume you’re capable of remembering facts and dates of historic significance.”
“Of course.”
“In what year did the Norman Conquest begin?”