by Zoë Archer
“Whoever writes those books doesn’t know a thing about cowboyin’,” he said.
“I don’t read them for their verisimilitude,” she said with a smile.
“All the same, they give people the wrong idea about pushin’ cows. Stampedes in the mornin’, Indians on the warpath at noon, and wildfires at night. Plus lunk-headed Lorna Jane runnin’ around without a lick of sense, gettin’ kidnapped, tied up, and lost regular as Old Faithful.” He shook his head. “If I’d had to contend with half the stuff those books write about, I’d be too tired to herd cattle. I’d just lie under a cottonwood tree and wait for someone to tell me the Comanche are diggin’ up the tomahawk, and by the way, Lorna Jane’s lashed to the train tracks again.”
“I’m a little disappointed,” Lady Xavier admitted, though her face was cheerful. “I had hoped that some of those stories were true. Especially the Buffalo Bill novels.”
He snorted. “Bill Cody is a big blowhard.”
“You’ve met him?” Her eyebrows rose.
“He wanted me to ride in some rodeo, what’d he call it? A Wild West Show in Omaha.”
“Sounds exciting.”
“Playin’ cowboy ain’t for me. I have my fair share of the real thing.”
“And no ‘lunk-headed’ girls to rescue, either.” She added with a pointed smile, “Unless you count me.”
“You ain’t lunk-headed,” he said. “You’re a fine woman with good sense.”
He thought he saw a little flush creep up her cheek, but the gaslight flickered.
“What brings you to England, Mr. Coffin?” she asked suddenly. He watched carefully as she helped herself to some chicken from a dish a servant held out to her. He knew that there was no way he could manage all the rules needed for a fancy dinner, but he was determined not to show himself too much of a greenhorn where high society was concerned.
“I’m lookin’ for some people.” The servant came around with the dish and Will did his best to follow Lady Xavier’s lead.
Her face lit up. “Are you tracking down the men who did you wrong?” she asked. “Are you out for justice?”
“You’ve read too many of those dime novels, ma’am.” He laughed. “I ain’t no vigilante.”
She struggled to keep the disappointment from her voice. “That’s good.” After taking a sip of wine, she asked, “If I may ask, who are you looking for?”
He was so hungry he wanted to cram the whole chicken right into his mouth, but he reminded himself that he wasn’t in the bunkhouse any more, and he didn’t have to worry about rotten bastards like Omaha Dave or Frank Bell getting to all the food before he had the chance. Forcing himself to cut a genteel bite, he said, “My family.”
“You don’t know your family?” Her pretty eyes widened in horrified surprise. Starved as he was, he thought Lady Xavier was a damned sight more appetizing than the roast bird he was chewing, and that was saying a lot because he’d never tasted anything finer.
“No, ma’am. Never have. When I was little, my folks were killed by a dynamite blast.”
She placed her soft, tapered fingers on his sleeve. “I am very sorry.”
Damn it, was he blushing? “Thanks, ma’am, but it was a long time ago. I don’t even remember it.” He regretted when she took her hand away, but at least it allowed his heart to stop racing like a runaway train. “They were just poor ignorant sodbusters—farmers—tryin’ to make a go of it in the Rockies. They had some dynamite and nobody told them that they shouldn’t bring it inside. Near the fire.”
“Oh, no.”
He nodded ruefully. “Yeah. The whole cabin went up. Only reason I wasn’t killed, too, was on account of me playin’ out by the woodpile.”
“How did you survive?”
“A miner heard the noise and could tell the difference between a planned blast and an accidental one. When he got to the homestead, he found me buck naked, covered in ash, and messin’ around with a coffin-handled bowie knife. Since my folks were dead and there wasn’t anything to show who I was or what my name might be, he named me.”
Her food was now completely untouched as she stared at him. He couldn’t decide if he liked having her look at him, or if it was like staring right at the sun. “I was wondering how a man could be named Coffin.”
“I’ve gotten a few jokes over the years, but once folks get to know me, the undertaker gags stop.”
“And what did the miner do with you after he found you?”
“He raised me.” He smiled sadly, thinking about his old friend. “He called himself Jake Gold, but his real name was Ya’akov Goldberg.”
“That sounds Jewish,” she observed.
He immediately tensed. “You got a problem with that?”
Her eyes rounded again. “My grandmother was Jewish, my father’s mother. Sarah Speigelman.” Her expression darkened, a surprisingly fierce thing. “Some people stopped speaking to my grandfather after he married her, but he said they were fools.” She looked down at her plate, toying with her food. “I was sorry when she died. She was a beautiful woman.”
He said, “Punkt vi ir,” Like you, surprising himself, both at the compliment and his language choice.
But she was more surprised. “Ir redt yidish?”
“A kleyn bisl.” A little.
The expression on her face was comically astounded but very pleased. He’d completely ambushed her, a thought which gave him no small pleasure. They were both a little different from expectations, and he liked it. It gave him, for the first time in a long while, the feeling of belonging, but belonging to a small, select group—their separate club apart from everyone else.
“A cowboy raised by a Jewish miner,” she marveled, her eyes warm as her fingertips touched the rim of her glass. “What a marvelous story.”
He shrugged. “It makes a good tale, but the life was hard. Jake mined his whole life, waitin’ for the big score, but it never came.” He took a deep drink, and marveled at the feel of wine on his tongue. “This is great stuff.” He admired the dark red liquid, holding it up to the light. “I ain’t used to such a fine vintage. Usually what passes for wine in Colorado could take rust off a wagon wheel.”
She laughed. “We’re much more refined here. We use our wine for cleaning tarnished silver.” Will laughed, too. After playing with her food a bit more, she asked, “When did Mr. Gold die?”
“Six months ago.” He looked down at his plate. “I’ve seen a lot of death in my years, and I’d grown almost used to it, but sometimes it catches a body hard. That’s what happened when Jake died.” He looked up and saw not pity in her eyes, but empathy. He’d never told anyone how he felt about Jake dying, but he knew that Lady Xavier was exactly the person who would understand and not poke fun.
“I felt as though a horse had kicked me in the chest, and even now I can’t quite catch my breath, thinkin’ about old Jake.”
“You loved him.”
Those were words Will didn’t speak, but he felt it just the same. “The alter bocher loved America but missed his home in Krakow. He told me he’d been squirrelin’ his catch away and gave me the key to a safety deposit box at a bank in Denver. I found ten thousand dollars there.”
She looked impressed, but Will knew that money like that didn’t mean much to her. He figured the furniture and gewgaws in this dining room alone cost over ten thousand dollars, what with the silver monster sitting in the middle of the table and the heaps of silver knives, forks and spoons that glinted everywhere like the Comstock lode.
“What did you do with the money?”
“Nothin’...yet.”
This news caused her more astonishment than anything. “I know what you’re thinkin’,” he said ruefully. “Some beat-up, dusty cowboy would piss away his windfall on whores and rotgut inside of a few months.”
“No!” she said immediately, then added, a little shamefaced, “Well, possibly.”
“Jake told me, just before he died, that I was different from a lot of the cattle-punchers
.” He shrugged. “Maybe I am. Haven’t quite figured it out yet.”
“I’m glad you haven’t spent the money,” Lady Xavier said, her voice quiet but warm. She looked at him, open admiration in her face. “I’m very glad, indeed. Now, let’s finish our dinner before Cook gets insulted and threatens to quit again. You must be very hungry.”
More than you know, Will thought.
She had never seen her home with someone else’s eyes. As she and Will Coffin moved through the rooms and halls where she had lived for the past eleven years, the configuration, size, shape, and even smell became foreign to her, so that as she entered a different chamber in the house, she could anticipate what he would feel, sense his reaction even before he spoke.
It was curiously intimate, and also unsettling. Not unlike finding a stray animal in the woods and having it follow you home warily, nosing under the furniture and disrupting order and stability with its undomesticated energy.
That was Will Coffin, padding cautiously into the apartments of her house and taking everything in with a feral, perceptive gaze. When they had settled back in the drawing room, she felt strangely awkward. From an early age, she had been trained in the proper forms of what a hostess should do with her guests, but all that seemed like empty, ridiculous ceremony now. Why on earth would Will Coffin, a rough, orphaned man of the Colorado Rockies, want to drink sherry and play euchre? It seemed frivolous, a means to waste time, and from the sound of things, time was short for men like him.
Lately, her own life had been so exhausting, so enervating. Running Greywell’s had always taken her time and energy, and now George Pryce was making things incredibly difficult. It was a lot for one woman to shoulder by herself, almost overwhelming. But having Will Coffin in her home helped all this fade to the back of her mind, if only for a little while.
“Whiskey?” she asked, standing by the decanter.
“Yes, ma’am.” He hunkered down by the fire and stirred the smoldering logs with the poker, his gestures practiced and experienced. He was so focused on his task that she actually caught him off guard when she came to stand next to him, bearing two glasses of single-malt scotch.
“You joinin’ me?” He straightened to his impressive height.
“My late husband used to drink this after dinner, but it was only after his death that I thought to give it a try. It’s not a drink for ladies, but I like it.”
He took a glass from her and winked. “I promise not to tell.”
No one had flirted with her in so long. And certainly not in such a bold fashion. What an incredible feeling, as though she were ten, fifteen years younger.
“To new friends.” She held up her glass for a toast.
He seemed to like the sound of that. “Here’s how,” he said, and their glasses made a chiming sound in the normally still room. She felt it like a ringing bell in her own heart.
“You never answered my question, Mr. Coffin,” she said after taking a sip of whiskey. It slid down her throat and pooled warmly in her belly, but she wondered if it was the scotch that made her feel that way or the lanky, raw man beside her. When he looked at her questioningly, she explained, “How is it that you are in England?”
Coffin took a drink of whiskey, and gazed into the fire, contemplative. “Jake left me a note in that safety deposit box. He told me to get out of pushin’ cows while I still had all my fingers and toes. He said I had too much goin’ on upstairs to sit on the back of a horse the rest of my life, and he wanted the money to be a way out.”
“Do you agree with him?”
He shrugged. “A body can’t cowboy forever. I know that. Eventually, a man’s going to wind up dead. And the railroads are makin’ men like me unnecessary. Soon enough, there won’t be any cattle drives any more, and I’ll be just another blowhard sittin’ in the saloon, spinnin’ yarns.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“That’s what brought me out to your lovely country, Lady Xavier,” he said, a smile disappearing under one side of his mustache.
Coffin reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and produced a brittle, blackened piece of paper. It looked to be damaged by fire and years of use. Setting down his glass on the mantle, he carefully unfolded the paper. It astonished her to see him handle something so tenderly and with such care—his hands seemed capable of immense strength, and yet he opened the paper as gently as holding a baby chick.
“Careful, now,” he warned as he handed the paper to her.
Also setting down her glass, she took the sheet and scanned it. It was written with a man’s sure hand, but the ink had browned and faded.
“Dear Mister Hardene,
We have at last settled and the baby is fine. Tomorrow we will start blasting out some of the larger rocks so we may begin clearing our fields. It is so different here than in London, but we are determined to make a new start. Please be sure to let my father know that—”
“That’s all there is,” Will explained. “The only thing my parents left me is that little scrap.”
“You want to find the rest of your family.” She returned the letter to Coffin and he put it away. She leaned back against the side of the fireplace and felt a small touch of the cool marble against her shoulders. “You want to know about where you come from before you determine where you’re going.”
He frowned in contemplation, absently stroking his mustache. “I hadn’t thought about it like that,” he said slowly, then nodded, “but it makes sense.” He gave a little snort of recognition. “Me comin’ out here to figure myself out. Yeah, I guess that’s what I’m doin’.”
“Probably, you understood that already,” she demurred, “though not knowingly.”
“You sure are quick, Lady Xavier,” he said with admiration. For a long time, he stared at her me, and the only sounds came from the pop of the fire and the ticking chinoiserie clock. His stare was direct, penetrating, more keenly perceptive than she would have liked. But approving, too, that look. He came to stand in front of her, then braced his hands on either side of her. His arms were long, so he did not hover too close, and yet he was close, closer than any man had been to her in years.
“You’re the only person I’ve met who’s been able to figure that out,” he said. “All the guys I know back in Colorado think I’m off my rocker. They think I should just open my own ranch and quit wastin’ time.”
She felt it, too, this thing between them, a small, secret understanding that drew them together. She ought to slip out from under his arms. She ought to tell him to stand back—no gentleman would lean so close to a lady—but she could feel the warmth of his body over hers and she saw the growing interest in his eyes, the bright spark of primitive awareness which found an answer deep in her own belly.
“I think you are doing the right thing.” Her breath wouldn’t come fast enough. Had someone slipped laudanum into her drink? She felt profoundly drugged, fluid.
“I think so, too.” His voice was even rougher, a harsh rasp full of grit. Then he leaned down further, his arms bending out to the side, and he kissed her.
And she kissed him back. Their mouths met, a light brush at first, and then becoming more definitive, slightly wet. She tasted whiskey and tobacco on him; the careful exploration his lips and tongue were conducting were counterpoint to these aggressively male flavors. The brush of his mustache against her top lip felt faintly, pleasantly abrasive. Again he surprised her. So much more refinement, if such alert sensuality could be called refinement, than she had anticipated. And it felt so good. A rumble came from his throat. Ah, mutual pleasure. Her hands at the small of her back tingled with it.
Pleasure being too mild a word. She hadn’t felt such marvelous unfolding sensations since...long before David died.
That was when she stopped, turning her head to break her mouth away from Will Coffin.
“Lady Xavier—” he began, dropping his arms.
She wasn’t about to let him speak. “I have to get to bed.” She started to rush
towards the door but made herself slow down. “It’s late, and we’ve had a long day. I must get some sleep.” At the door, she added. “If you have need of anything, just ring for the butler. But I—good night.”
And then she was literally running for her room.
Will watched silently as she left—darting out as though she were leading the stampede. He cursed himself when she had gone. Stupid, clumsy idiot, slobbering over her, like he’d never been near a woman before.
He was a fool who was completely stumped. Lady Xavier had him as lost as a pirate ship in the Rockies. He couldn’t figure out what it was about her that had him tied up in knots. She was handsome, the handsomest woman he’d ever seen, and she could laugh and smile in such a way that it made his eyes sting with gratitude. But under all that, there was something else, that fine sharpness he’d never known anywhere else.
His gaze fell on a small framed photograph on the mantle. It held a place of honor between two vases of yellow flowers. He had a goodly idea who the man in the picture might be, so he went back to examine it, drawn by morbid curiosity and—what? Jealousy? But that couldn’t be.
All the same, he stared down at the face of David Xavier, the face of a man now dead for years.
The picture Sir David Xavier took was clearly meant for family, for a wife. He was sitting in a chair, wearing some kind of long silk robe over his clothes to show that he was taking his leisure. The man wasn’t large, but he wasn’t overly small. Just average. He had a slight paunch filling out his expensive waistcoat and a fine watch chain looped around the buttons.
It was the face that interested Will the most. Not unkind, and tending towards shrewdness, handsome in a soft, well-kept way. The lines around the eyes showed a man who’d squinted a lot. His medium brown hair was thinning up the sides and would eventually give way to baldness had he lived. All in all, David Xavier looked like a man in possession of a large amount of money, a goodly bit of power, and a lot of self-satisfaction. Will couldn’t blame him—the man had what most wanted. Including a beautiful, clever wife.
