“I am going back to bed,” he said, “I have never been able to sleep well on a train and tonight I hope to make up for the hours I stayed awake.”
“But you can’t leave so early,” Waldo objected.
“There is no need for you to accompany me,” Lord Harleston smiled. “I have enjoyed my evening enormously, but for you the night is still young.”
“That’s true,” Waldo agreed, “as long as you don’t mind.”
“I assure you, I am quite happy to go back alone,” Lord Harleston replied.
“I hope you will come again tomorrow evening,” Jennie suggested in an inviting tone.
“I will certainly consider it,” he promised.
With Jennie at his side and Waldo just behind him, he walked towards the front door.
As they reached it, it was opened by one of the servants and waiting to come in were three men wearing dusty riding boots, wide-brimmed hats and with pistol holsters around their waists. They were obviously cowboys.
The cowboy in front held nothing in his hands, but the two behind him were carrying a woman in their arms.
“Evenin’, Miss Jennie,” the man in front began. “We’ve brought you a present.”
“A present, Brooker?” Jennie echoed. “What is it?”
“The prettiest little filly you ever set eyes on.”
“I don’t want no more girls,” Jennie replied, “and certainly none of your choosing.”
“Hold your horses until you hear how we got her,” Brooker replied. “We picked her up about six miles outside of town. The Injuns had killed her Pa and Ma and her’s bin walkin’ for a night and day afore we found her.”
“I’m sorry for her,” Jenny said sharply, “but Indians are your business not mine. Take her someplace else.”
“We thought,” Brooker said, “of handin’ her over to them strait-laced old crows who talk about doin’ somethin’ for orphans, but that means they’d make her a servant. Her’s too pretty for that and, if you don’t take her in, she’ll end up in a crib.”
“I am not interested!” Jennie insisted.
“Take a look at her afore you decide,” Brooker responded pleadingly. “Her’s pretty as an angel and as sweet as one too.”
“That’s true,” one of the other men said who was holding the girl, “and talks like a lady, her do. There’s no one we can take her to with a kind heart except for you, Miss Jennie.”
As he spoke, he pulled the blanket that the girl was wrapped in from her face and Lord Harleston saw that they had not exaggerated when they had claimed that she was very pretty.
She was obviously asleep or unconscious and her eyelashes were dark against the very white almost translucent skin of her small pointed face.
She had almost perfect features and hair that was so fair that it was lighter than the sun at dawn.
“She’s certainly pretty,” Jennie admitted grudgingly. “Do you know who she is?”
“She says when we first picks her up that her name were Nelda – Nelda Harle,” Brooker answered.
At the sound of the word ‘Harle’, which he had mispronounced, Lord Harleston started.
“What did you say?” he asked.
“Nelda Harle,” Brooker repeated. “Sounds strange, but that’s what her says, wasn’t it, boys?”
“Yeah, that’s what she says,” the two other men agreed. “Come on, Jennie, take her, we can’t stand here a-holdin’ her all night.”
The men were silent while Jennie Rogers considered what she should answer.
Then Lord Harleston spoke.
“I will take her,” he said. “If I am not mistaken, she is a relative of mine.”
Everybody including Waldo turned to look at him in astonishment.
“But her name’s ‘Harle’,” Jennie pointed out at length.
“My family name is Harle,” Lord Harleston replied, “and if this girl is who you say she is, then I suspect she is the daughter of somebody called ‘Harold Harle’ who Mr. Altman was talking about earlier this evening.”
“Handsome Harry!” Jennie cried. “Now we know who she is. But I never knew Harry had a daughter or a wife for that matter.”
She turned back into the house saying as she did so with a jerk of her head,
“Bring her in!”
The cowboys removed their hats and, carrying the girl called ‘Nelda’, followed Jennie.
She opened a door off the hall and Lord Harleston saw that it was furnished as a bedroom.
There was a large comfortable brass bedstead, a great number of decorative mirrors on the walls and bright pink curtains bordered with a silver fringe.
The cowboys put the girl they carried carefully down on the bed with her head resting against the pillows.
As they did so, the blanket that she was enveloped in fell open and Lord Harleston could see that her dress was torn and thick with dust while the shoes on her feet were in tatters.
As if he followed the direction of Lord Harleston’s eyes, Brooker explained,
“Her’s bin walkin’ for miles and were half-dead with hunger and thirst. We fed her and her fell asleep in the back of the wagon and hasn’t moved since.”
“And you say that her father and mother were killed by the Indians?”
“Yeah, her told us that they’d stopped to cook a meal and she’d gone up the side of the mountain to find water,” Brooker replied. “The Indians swooped on ’em and there was nothin’ her could do but watch.”
“Poor little devil!” Jennie said. “It must have been a terrible shock.”
“Her didn’t tell us much, but you know what happens when the Indians attack.”
“We sure do,” one of the other cowboys piped up. “And there’s trouble the other side of the mountains from all we hears.”
“I’ve heard that too,” Jennie said. “You boys take care of yourselves. Will you have a drink on the house? There’s nothing else, unless you can pay for it.”
“Aw, come on, Jennie, be a bit more generous than that,” Brooker pleaded.
“I think you should be my guests,” Lord Harleston interposed, “as I am grateful to you for bringing this young woman, who may be a member of my family, to safety.”
He handed Brooker a one hundred dollar bill and after one startled glance at it the cowboy’s big fist closed over it compulsively and he smiled through his blackened teeth,
“That’s mighty generous of you, mister. Thanks a lot. We’ll sure make a night of it now we can afford to do so.”
Jennie smiled at him.
“You know where to go.”
With obvious delight they filed out of the bedroom.
When they had gone, Jennie looked at Lord Harleston.
“I meant what I said,” he said in answer to the question in her eyes. “If this is Nelda Harle, then she is my responsibility.”
Jennie smiled.
“If you recall, my Lord, thatshe was a present for me!”
“I understand,” Lord Harleston said, “and, of course, I must compensate you for your loss.”
From being a proficient entertainer Jennie became in the flash of a second a hard-dealing businesswoman.
She began by asking a ridiculous price for what she considered ‘her property’ and in the end accepted less than half of what she pretended to consider was her rightful due but was undoubtedly delighted to receive so much.
Only when she finally capitulated and accepted with a glint in her eyes the dollars that Lord Harleston gave her did he say somewhat ruefully to Waldo,
“I hope I am not presuming on your hospitality by taking this young woman back with me?”
“Of course not,” Waldo answered, “and the carriage is outside.”
“Do you want me to wake her?” Jennie now asked.
“Let her sleep,” Lord Harleston said. “I can tell by the condition of her shoes that the cowboys were not exaggerating when they said that she had walked a really long way.”
“What do you intend to do w
ith her?” Jennie enquired.
“I will have to take her back to England,” Lord Harleston said in a hard voice, “and hand her over to my relations.”
The way he spoke made Jennie glance at him with curiosity before she commented,
“You don’t sound particularly pleased at the prospect.”
“I can assure you that it is something I find damnably annoying. I have no wish to become encumbered with a woman at this moment, but, knowing who she is, I can hardly leave her here.”
It struck him as he spoke that it would have been much more convenient if he had not been present when the cowboys brought her to Jennie as an alternative to being an orphan on the charity of the City Fathers.
Then he was ashamed of himself.
After all, even though she might be Handsome Harry’s daughter, she was still a Harle and he knew that he could not have it on his conscience that he had neglected to help a member of the family in distress.
‘God knows what I am letting myself in for,’ he murmured to himself.
“Shall I carry her to the carriage for you, my Lord?” Waldo asked.
There was something about the way the young man spoke that made Lord Harleston aware that he had not missed the fact that Nelda was extremely pretty.
“Thank you,” he nodded, “or perhaps one of the servants can do it.”
“I’ll do it.”
Waldo picked Nelda up in a way that told Lord Harleston that she was very light. She did not move and was obviously in the deep dreamless sleep of complete and utter exhaustion.
Taking her to the bedroom door, Waldo carried her through it.
A servant opened the front door and, as Waldo went out to where the carriage was waiting, Jennie put her hand on Lord Harleston’s arm.
“I look forward to seeing you tomorrow night,” she said in a caressing voice, “and I’ll be ever so disappointed if you don’t turn up.”
“You are very kind,” he responded automatically.
“And you’re exceedingly good-looking!” she retorted.
She bent forward as she spoke and kissed his cheek.
“Au revoir,” she smiled as he moved away.
Chapter Four
Lord Harleston awoke in a bad temper.
He had slept well, but the moment he came back to consciousness he was acutely aware of the responsibilities that he had taken on the night before and that he was now encumbered with Handsome Harry’s daughter.
He thought to himself cynically that she was doubtless like her father and would be a problem to whoever had to look after her.
He was quite determined that once he had taken her back to England that would not be himself and again he was wishing that he had not been in Jennie Rogers’s house when she arrived.
At the same time everything decent within himself revolted at the idea of any girl, however disreputable her father might be, being incarcerated in a house of pleasure and she did not look old enough to know that once she had started on the downhill path there was no way back.
He was well aware that charming and certainly attractive though Jennie Rogers looked on the surface, she would not have been a successful madam if she did not rule her house and its occupants with a rod of iron.
The rules were the same the world over, once a girl had become what was to all intents and purposes the property of a madam she could seldom leave or start a different life.
There were, of course, sometimes men who paid for a girl’s freedom and even, if they were foolish enough, married a woman from a brothel.
But inevitably, when respectability became disenchanting, they drifted back to their own profession because it was more amusing.
Because he had been so angry at what had happened, he had hardly looked at Nelda, except to notice her dishevelled appearance when they had laid her down on the bed.
That the cowboys were impressed by her looks was no criterion from Lord Harleston’s point of view and he wondered how uncouth and uncivilised she might have become in view of the life her father led in gambling halls and mining camps.
Then he remembered, as if he wished to reassure himself, that her mother had been a lady and he remembered his own father speaking to her family about her with approval.
Thinking back into the past when he was quite a small boy he could hear his mother say,
“I am so sorry for the Marlowes. It is not only the scandal of their daughter running away just before she was to be married but that the man she went with was Harry.”
“There I agree with you,” her husband had replied. “Harry is a disgrace to our family, and I can only hope in all sincerity that, having left this country, he never comes back.”
Lady Harleston was, however, not really thinking of Harry for she like all women could not help secretly admiring him, but the girl who had loved him enough to forsake everything that was familiar.
“But he has such charm,” she said almost as if she had spoken to herself.
Her husband had given a laugh that had little humour in it.
“Harold can coax gold out of a stone,” he remarked, “and he will survive. But the food they eat will be bought by his ill-gotten gains at the card tables.”
Lord Harleston remembered joining in the conversation by asking,
“Is Cousin Harry a very good card player, Papa?”
“Far too good!” his father had replied sharply. “And I refuse to speak about him again.”
Thinking it over Lord Harleston now remembered that nobody ever spoke of his cousin Harry without referring first to his good looks and then to the fact that wherever there was gambling he would be there.
‘And what about the girl?’ Lord Harleston asked himself now. ‘Perhaps she has the same sleight of hand as her father.’
When he went downstairs to breakfast and found that he was alone and there was no sign of Waldo, he continued pondering on what he could do about Nelda.
He decided after some thought that he must get rid of her as soon as possible.
When he returned to New York, he would pay some respectable woman to take her across the Atlantic to an obliging member of the family who would look after her until he returned.
He wondered what her age was and thought from the quick glimpse he had had of her that she must be in her early teens.
Perhaps he could send her to school and he thought that Mr. Watson could find the name of a strict Seminary for young ladies.
Then it struck him that, if she was as badly behaved as her father, the school might refuse to keep her and that would certainly cause a great deal of unpleasant gossip and speculation.
Everything he thought about her seemed to produce new and intractable problems and he pushed aside the food that he had been eating as he was suddenly finding it tasteless.
He was just helping himself to a second cup of coffee when Waldo came into the room.
“I apologise for being late,” he began, “but I did not get to bed until dawn.”
“I hope you enjoyed yourself,” Lord Harleston replied, trying to keep the sarcastic note from his voice.
“It got rather rowdy after you left,” Waldo admitted, “and I don’t think you’d have enjoyed the dancing. Those cowboys you gave so much cash to tried to wreck the place before they left.”
“I imagine that annoyed Jennie Rogers,” Lord Harleston remarked.
“Aw, she can handle them. Wild horses and wild men are all the same to Jennie!”
He spoke with such a note of admiration in his voice that Lord Harleston smiled.
“She’s hoping you’ll call in and see her again tonight,” Waldo told him. “But there are other places I can show you if you are interested.”
“I think quite frankly,” Lord Harleston answered, “I would rather be on my way to your Ranch to meet your father. As you know, I have really come here to see the cattle.”
“Of course,” Waldo agreed. “In which case, if we leave in about two hours’ time, we can reach the Ranch before dark.”<
br />
Lord Harleston heard the word ‘we’.
Then he hesitated.
“I am just wondering what I can do about that young woman I brought here last night.”
“She can come with us,” Waldo suggested, helping himself to an array of dishes on a side table.
“I hope your father and mother will not object to an uninvited guest.”
Waldo laughed.
“It’s something that is always happening to us. People turn up.”
“So I have noticed,” Lord Harleston commented.
“Well, I promise you, there’s always a spare bed in any house my father owns.”
Lord Harleston thought for a moment.
Then he said,
“It has just occurred to me that the girl I brought here last night has no luggage and no clothes.”
Waldo sat down at the table, his plate heaped high with eggs and thick pieces of ham.
“That’s no problem,” he said airily. “I’ve already told the servants she can borrow anything that belongs to my sister. I should imagine they’re somewhere about the same size.”
It struck Lord Harleston that in this part of the world people had a generosity and a kindness that in the same circumstances might not be so evident in England.
Aloud he answered,
“I am very grateful, but, of course, since I have made myself responsible for this girl I must provide her with anything she needs.”
“Don’t worry, my Lord, my mother’ll see to all that for you.”
Again Lord Harleston could only murmur that it was very kind and listen to his young host as he talked enthusiastically of the gaieties that had occurred after he had left Jennie Rogers’s house.
He was just thinking that he should warn Portman that they were leaving when the door opened and Nelda Harle came into the dining room.
She was, now that he could see her properly, very different from the way that she had appeared last night wrapped in a dirty blanket in the cowboys’ arms.
To begin with she was taller than she had seemed then and with her hair neatly arranged instead of falling over her shoulders, she was obviously older than Lord Harleston had first reckoned.
With her eyes closed she had looked beautiful, very young and doll-like.
Lucky in Love Page 6
