Scandal with the Rancher

by Julia Justiss

  With that, she nodded to Mr. Anderson and walked, head high, to her seat.

  After she finished, the members gathered closer, talking quietly among themselves. Several looked troubled. Several, including Mr. Anderson, seemed to be arguing with Lydia McCleary.

  A moment later, her angry tones rising above the murmurs, Marguerite heard her declare, “Of course, you must act as your conscience dictates! But remember this, all of you. When she goes back to her own kind in San Antonio, those of you who live here will have to answer for what you decide. I shall not forget, nor will my husband!”

  Intimidation, pure and simple, Marguerite thought. Mr. Anderson must have drummed up considerable support for her, if the banker’s wife had to resort to outright threats.

  Would they be effective? She hardly dared hope the board would support her against the continued opposition of the town’s most powerful woman.

  Perhaps she ought to feel a twinge of conscience for downplaying her relationship with Ronan, but she didn’t. What had passed between them had no bearing whatsoever on her ability to teach or her relationship with her students. What if they had made love at the ranch? They were both single and unattached, and what they chose to do in private was no business of any of these people.

  As she reached that defiant conclusion, Mr. Anderson rose and faced her. She knew immediately from his pained expression that the final vote had gone against her.

  “Mrs. McMasters, it grieves me to tell you that the board has reconfirmed its earlier decision. We must ask that you retrieve any personal possessions you may have here at the school, and not enter the building again.”

  For a moment, she felt...nothing. She’d heard that after a serious injury, the shock at first masked any sense of pain. Nodding to him, she stood. “There is a higher authority than those here in attendance, to whom all of you will one day have to answer. But I thank you for reconsidering. I’ll gather my things.”

  The banker’s wife gave her a triumphant glance. Marguerite met it with a cold, hard stare, and after a moment, the other woman looked away. With an artificial trill of laughter, Lydia linked arms with the other lady board member and sashayed out of the school, the other members drifting out behind her.

  Mr. Anderson lingered, looking distressed. “I’m so sorry, Mrs. McMasters. It’s a travesty, I know. But her husband controls the bank, you see, and she controls him. With all of us having loans for our homes and businesses, I just couldn’t convince enough of them to risk going against her.”

  Marguerite nodded. “Thank you for trying, Mr. Anderson. I do hope your own business will not suffer as a result.”

  He laughed grimly. “One thing certain as death, is that folks will get sick and need medicine—even Mrs. ‘High-and-Mighty Banker’s Wife.’ At least, after that abomination of a procedure, I’ll be able to push them for a larger advance on your salary, enough to keep you comfortable until you can make arrangements to go back to your family. Again, I’m sorry.”

  With that, he caught up his hat and hurried out.

  Numbly, Marguerite went to the desk and removed her lesson notes and the few toys and games she’d brought to entertain and instruct the children. Then she, too, walked out into the gathering darkness.

  Fury and anguish and fierce determination churned within her.

  Damn them. Damn them all. If behaving with propriety and refraining from telling Mrs. McCleary some hard truths about herself hadn’t saved her, then she’d embrace impropriety.

  Because whatever it took, Marguerite would never, ever give up her land.

  She slept little, going over and over in her mind the decision she’d made earlier that week. She had to be certain she was acting not out of desperation and anger, but from a clear and cold-minded assessment of what was required. Well, there was some desperation.

  If she did this, it would be as life-changing as her decision to run away with Aidan McMasters. And like her decision to elope, there would be no going back.

  As dawn lit the sky the following morning, she rose and took an early breakfast, then came back to her room to pack her things. It wouldn’t be wise to approach a lady who worked late until at least noon, but as soon as the clock struck twelve, she would call on Miss Evangeline.

  Chapter Nine

  Dressed neatly in her serviceable bombazine—she wondered a little hysterically if she’d no longer have need of dresses—Marguerite pinned her hat on her braided coronet with trembling hands and walked quietly out of the boarding house. If all proceeded as she envisioned, she might only return once more to the room that had been her home for the past thirteen months, to retrieve her trunk.

  After the news swept through town, Mrs. Lowery wouldn’t permit her under her roof again.

  The building which housed Evangeline’s Angels stood a short distance outside of town, south and east along the banks of the river. Since the road to her property led out of town to the west, Marguerite could count on one hand the number of times she’d passed this building. She’d been with Aidan, returning from a trip to San Marcos for supplies, the last time she saw the place.

  Something painful twisted in her gut. She wouldn’t let herself imagine what Aidan would have said about what she meant to do. It’s the only way to save our dream, she pleaded with him silently.

  Besides, there was a chance that Evangeline might not want her. What she would do in that eventuality, she wasn’t sure. Perhaps return to San Antonio and look for a teaching job there, try to send money back to Whiskey River? Leaving a prime tract of land unoccupied, with the strong possibility, in view of Lydia McCleary’s animosity, that the bank would find a reason to foreclose the loan and sell the land to someone else?

  Like Michael McCleary’s good friend, Ronan Kelly.

  Anger, anguish, pain and a sense something almost like...betrayal struggled within her.

  She didn’t truly blame Ronan Kelly for this debacle. However, even though she didn’t regret the interlude at the cabin or the few days during which she’d felt understood, appreciated—and no longer alone—she couldn’t help wishing she’d never met him.

  Paradoxically, the idea of having never experienced what they’d shared hurt even worse.

  From the outside, the house looked unremarkable, a solid, two-story building with a wide front porch that made it one of the larger residences in town. Only a discrete sign posted over the entry bell announcing “Evangeline’s Angels” indicated what sort of business was conducted here.

  Taking a deep breath, Marguerite walked up the steps and rang the bell.

  Instead of the scantily clad female she expected, the door was opened by a girl in a maid’s uniform—who stopped short, looking as surprised to see a respectably dressed female on the threshold as Marguerite was to see the maid. Before the girl could recover enough to speak, Marguerite said, “Mrs. McMasters to speak with Madame Evangeline, if you please.”

  Still looking perplexed, the girl bobbed a curtsey and said, “I’d best put you in the back parlor while I tell her you’re here.”

  “I—I’m not too early, am I?” she asked, following the girl.

  “No, the mistress is probably finished with breakfast by now. Wait in here,” she said, leading Marguerite into a dim room with its shades tightly drawn. “Nobody can see you from the street. I’ll go ask her what she wants me to do with you.”

  Marguerite wasn’t sure what she expected to find inside a house of ill repute—plush couches, velvet drapes, mirrors on the walls and ceilings, perhaps the lingering odor of cigars, lust and vice? But both the entry hall and the parlor to which she’d been shown looked like what she would find in any home of a well-to-do resident.

  Yes, well-to-do, she reminded herself. She hoped this...occupation would pay better than teaching, so she might accumulate enough capital to move to the ranch as quickly as possible.

  A few minutes later, the girl returned. “Madame says to bring you to her sitting room. It’s at the back of the house, so no one can see you fro
m the street there, either.”

  Marguerite smiled wryly. If the madame decided she wasn’t good material to become a fille de joie, at least it appeared she’d be leaving the house with her reputation still intact.

  Such as it was. The news was undoubtedly already racing about town that she’d challenged Lydia McCleary’s school board—and lost. Confirming to the residents that she was the woman of dubious morals Lydia had claimed her to be.

  She swallowed hard, burying that hurt deep where it couldn’t touch her. No point worrying about that small laceration, when she was about to open herself to being cut by every respectable woman, and most of the men, in town.

  Straightening her shoulders, she knocked at the door the girl indicated and walked into the room.

  Despite her nervousness, she had to suppress a smile. Instead of the “voluptuous blonde in a transparent gown reclining on a sofa” of Marguerite’s lurid imagining, Miss Evangeline sat behind a desk, garbed in a modest day dress, spectacles perched on her nose as she made entries into a ledger. The bank of windows behind her framed in pale linen draperies opened onto a small private garden. The sunlight streaming through them illumined a casual sitting area adjacent to Madame’s desk, revealing a chintz-covered sofa and chairs that might have graced the parlor of any of the respectable matrons in town.

  After completing an entry in her ledger, Miss Evangeline looked up. “Good morning, Mrs. McMasters. Have a seat, won’t you?” She waved Marguerite toward the sofa. “How about some coffee? After you’ve risked your reputation coming here, I can at least offer you a drink while you tell me what I can do for you.”

  Now that the moment had come to state her business, Marguerite’s throat was dry and her heart drummed against her ribs so hard she felt faint. “C-coffee would be lovely,” she replied.

  Evangeline rose and went over to the door. “Rosalie, darlin’,” she called. “Would you bring us come coffee, please?”

  She turned back to Marguerite, studying her as she walked over to take the chair next to her. Marguerite studied her in turn.

  Like most of the respectable women of the town, she’d seen Evangeline before, but never up close. The woman was younger than Marguerite expected, and uncommonly pretty. Her curly blonde hair had no need of the bleach bottle, her complexion was fair and smooth, and her cornflower-blue eyes looked so open and beguiling that, if not for her voluptuous figure, one might have taken her for an innocent rather than the proprietor of the town’s bordello.

  “I’m awful sorry about your situation,” Evangeline said, startling Marguerite out of her reverie.

  “You heard about it already?”

  “Oh, honey, that was the prime subject of conversation among my guests last night! Some were condemning you. But most knew a crock of bull when they heard it, and thought it gutless that the board wouldn’t stand up to Mrs. ‘I’m-Going-To-Run-This-Town’ McCleary. Poisonous woman! Though I reckon they might not have been so brave if they had to defy her themselves. Most everybody hereabouts has some loan or other from her husband’s bank. A pity she didn’t talk her husband into staying in Galveston and working at his family’s bank, instead of spoiling the waters by moving here. Ah, here’s our coffee.”

  The maid brought in a tray with a pot, cups, saucers, and some slices of cake. “Mrs. J makes a wonderful pound cake. Have a slice. Cream and sugar?”

  “Just sugar, thank you,” Marguerite said. It seemed her hostess wanted to observe the civilities before discovering the reason she’d come. In fact, the visit thus far seemed so much more like the morning calls her mother used to make in San Antonio than a clandestine visit to a bordello. Marguerite was having a hard time convincing herself it was real.

  After they’d both sipped some coffee, Evangeline set down her cup and looked at Marguerite, concern in her eyes. “Do you need a loan to tide you over until you can get back to your family in San Antonio? After last night, I don’t expect you’d be asking for one from the bank. It’s hard for a woman alone. We ought to help each other out.”

  Marguerite felt the burn of tears. After Lydia McCleary’s petty cruelty and the board members’ refusal to treat her with fairness or respect, Evangeline’s unexpected sympathy almost cracked the tenuous hold Marguerite had been maintaining over her loneliness, humiliation and despair. “It’s wonderfully kind of you, but I don’t want to leave Whiskey River. I want to keep my land. What I need is...a job.”

  Evangeline stared at her. “You’re not saying—you want to join my Angels?”

  Marguerite nodded. “I...don’t have much experience. I mean, I was married, of course, but I’ve only ever been with...” she had been going to say ‘one man,’ but innate honesty made her alter that to, “a man I cared about.”

  Still looking astounded, Evangeline shook her head. “Oh, honey, when a lady’s as pretty as you, experience isn’t needed! Just let the gentlemen do what they want, and you’d be fine. You, an Angel!” She shook her head again and laughed. “Hell and tarnation! They’d be lining up in the street!”

  Marguerite’s face burned. “Am I that infamous already?” she asked bitterly.

  “Oh, no, darlin’, that’s not what I meant at all. You’re the most beautiful woman in town—which is probably why that witch Lydia McCleary wants to run you out of it. Who wants to look at her starched-up figure and silly-ass pout when there’s a sultry Spanish beauty to ogle? Once word got out that you’d joined the Angels, the men would flock to my door. And there are a lot of lonely men in this town—some of ’em married. But—are you sure you want to do this?”

  “How much would I earn?”

  Evangeline named a figure that was five times what Marguerite had been earning at the school. “That much?”

  Evangeline laughed. “I treat my girls fair, and give them the bulk of the earnings—they’re the ones doing the work, after all. I make sure they’re treated right, too. Any rough stuff, or anyone wanting them to do something they’re not comfortable with, and the gent is out on the street and not welcome back, neither. Not all girls earn that much. But the popular ones do, and you’d be popular.”

  “How can you know that?”

  “Honey, one thing men love as much as getting their guns fired is gossip. Especially gossip about women. You’ve been a prime subject of talk ever since your man brought you to Whiskey River, even more so since you was widowed. Men speculate about when you might marry again, and who. And I’ve seen them watching you when you walk about town. It’s a habit of the business, watching what men watch and figuring out what they like. And honey, they like you plenty! Why don’t you choose to remarry, by the way? I could name you two or three who would jump at the chance to claim you.”

  Marguerite shook her head. “There aren’t any I would jump at the chance to claim, though.” Except one—and he’s the man who got me into this mess, then disappeared and left me to face the consequences, she thought bitterly. Besides, as Lydia McCleary pointed out, he’s not a marrying man. “I wouldn’t settle for just anyone, I’d have to love a man to agree to marry him. And I’d have to know he wouldn’t get his hands on my ranch and try to sell it, or tell me how to run it.”

  “Coming here might finish you with the respectable women in town, but it won’t ruin your chances to marry again, if you should find a gent to your liking. As I said, there’s a lot of lonely men here, even though it’s not frontier anymore. Sometimes one of them falls in love with an Angel, and nothing will do but for him to marry her. Happened to one of my girls just last month. Course, they can’t stay here after they marry—folks like Mrs. McCleary would never forget where they come from—but she and her man are going to some land west of here. They’ve got as good a chance to have a happy life as any couple starting out, I reckon.”

  Marguerite shook her head. “I wouldn’t want to go somewhere west. The only reason I’d sacrifice everything to work for you is to earn enough to be able to keep, and eventually run, my ranch. It was my husband’s dream, and mine, and I’m wil
ling to do almost anything to make it happen.”

  Evangeline nodded, looking at her thoughtfully. “Including ruining your reputation by becoming an Angel.”

  “Becoming an Angel, but remaining my own woman.” Marguerite laughed shortly. “Since the board meeting made it obvious that neither me nor the work I’ve done here is respected, what difference does it make what the townspeople think of me now? Their approval won’t put food on the table, pay off the loan on my land, or get me to the ranch, breeding horses.”

  “So you’re sure you want to do this.”

  Marguerite took a deep breath. “If you’ll have me.”

  “Honey, that’s never been in question.”

  “I did have one...concern.” As the madame nodded, Marguerite continued, “I’m willing to take the job. Only, since I haven’t ever been with anyone I didn’t care for, I’m not sure how I can bring myself to...do it.”

  Evangeline smiled faintly. “Some girls enjoy it. Some just tolerate it, because for one reason or another, they’ve come to the life and don’t know nothing else. Some...pretend the gent they’re serving is the man they love—and they get to love him each time they’re pleasuring someone else. It does seem strange at first. But it gets easier.”

  The poignancy of those last words made Marguerite suspect it was her own experience Evangeline was describing. Maybe someday, she’d ask her.

  “People might not believe it, but I’m choosey about the girls I take. Pretty girls are good for business, but it’s more important to me that my girls have a good heart—kind, supportive, and giving. If one slips in who’s selfish or mean or spiteful, I don’t keep her long. We care about and take care of each other in this house. So you’ll always have friends here, and someone to watch out for you.”