Bound for Sin

by Tess LeSue

  She looked suspicious.

  “I prefer coffee. And I take it with cream,” Seline said sweetly, “if you could make sure she sends cream and not milk. Thank you very much.”

  That didn’t help. Georgiana was looking stubborner than a bull now.

  Matt managed to find what little charm he possessed. “Please,” he said. “I would greatly appreciate it.”

  She was a smart woman. She knew she was being managed. But she also couldn’t think of a reason to protest, since the sandwiches were her idea in the first place. He saw the black look she gave them as she left the room. He didn’t imagine they had much time; she’d move as fast as she could to get back in here before she missed anything. She didn’t trust Seline one bit. And why should she?

  Although why she cared was beyond Matt. They weren’t actually engaged.

  “Speak quickly,” Matt ordered Seline.

  “My money is good.” She pulled out a drawstring bag and dumped it on the desk in front of him. It made a solid noise as it hit. “There ought to be enough in there to get you over the stumbling block of my profession.”

  Matt picked it up and untied the rawhide cord. There certainly was.

  “There’s more for Mr. Sampson, if you ain’t of a mind to share with him.”

  “I’d share,” Matt said. Taking any more from her would be highway robbery. He retied the cord and handed the bag back to her. She pouted. “Take it,” he insisted. “Let me see how it goes with Joe. You can pay me if I succeed.”

  She squealed and threw herself at him. He fought her off, keeping her firmly at arm’s length. “You won’t regret this,” she said.

  He already did. How was he going to explain this to Joe?

  “Come and see me tonight at the Bunkhouse?” Seline asked coyly.

  “So you can earn back some of that money?”

  “Honey, I’m so good, I’ll earn it all back.”

  Matt rolled his eyes. The woman was incorrigible.

  * * *

  • • •

  “WHAT’S THE BUNKHOUSE?” Georgiana asked Becky, as she watched the children clean up their latest kitchen catastrophe.

  “Where did you hear about that?” Becky giggled. She was friendly again now that she knew Georgiana was engaged to Matt Slater and had no romantic interest whatsoever in Pierre LeFoy.

  Georgiana shrugged. “Does it matter? What is it?”

  Becky lowered her voice. “It’s a bordello.”

  Georgiana had suspected as much. “Where is it?”

  “Just around the corner. It used to be an actual bunkhouse, but when the whorehouse burned down a few years ago, the whores just moved into Ralph’s Bunkhouse and turned it into a whorehouse. Ralph up and married the madam. They fight like a cat and dog; you can hear them some nights, going at it like they’re going to murder each other. My money would be on her though. She’s bigger than he is.”

  Come and see me tonight at the Bunkhouse?

  She hadn’t heard his response. Had he nodded? Or shaken his head in the negative? It was eating Georgiana up inside, not knowing if he was going to see the whore tonight or not.

  “Mrs. Smith?” Becky had to repeat her name a few times before she managed to break into Georgiana’s thoughts. The girl was looking bashful. “I was wondering if you could show me how you do your hair like that? For the dance tomorrow night . . .”

  Georgiana blinked. The dance?

  “I was thinking, now that I’m eighteen, I could wear my hair up . . . the way you do. Pierre said he’d dance every dance with me,” she sighed.

  The dance. That’s right. Matt had said there was a dance every Saturday, and that their group would meet under the sycamore. Georgiana took in the girl’s shining eyes and shy excitement, and felt a bittersweet envy. She wished she were still young and unbruised by love. The girl had no idea how painful a hurt heart could be.

  “Of course I will,” Georgiana promised. Because what else could she do? She didn’t want to discourage the girl. After all, the risk also came with soaring joy. Her mind drifted to Matt’s kisses. And perhaps the joy was worth the pain that came afterward.

  15

  OH, NOW HE came! Georgiana spotted Matt the minute he walked into the lantern light under the sycamore. What time did he think this was? She’d been at the wretched dance for more than two and a half hours! She’d been waiting for him. And now it was late and time to take the children home to bed! She’d even come out of mourning for this, she thought sourly. Well, not so much for this as for him.

  Georgiana had been pinning up Becky’s hair like she’d promised when she’d been overtaken by the urge to play fairy godmother and lend her a gown. Becky’s best dress had been a sad, well-worn affair, and her forlorn attempt to brighten it up with a corsage of tissue paper roses had pinched Georgiana’s heart. So she’d dug through her trunks to find an old gown she could lend the girl. Her trunks were full of gowns she couldn’t wear anymore. She’d been in mourning for years. First for her mother and then for Leonard. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to leave her gowns behind, even if she couldn’t wear them; now she was glad she had brought them: someone might as well enjoy them.

  Georgiana had felt such a bolt of envy when Becky was decked out in all of her borrowed finery. The girl looked lovely. While Georgiana looked like a gargoyle. Impulsively, she decided to ditch her black dress and come out of mourning. After all, she was at the gateway to the frontier—who cared if she was in black or not here?

  Deep down she knew her decision had more than a little to do with the thought of seeing Matt Slater at the dance. What would he think when he saw her in something becoming—something that wasn’t black and high necked and stuffy? Would he get that look again? The one he got when he wanted to kiss her?

  She bet he would.

  She’d been soaring with hope and girlish excitement as she and Becky bustled the children along to the town square. She’d been charmed by the lanterns and the music and the rustic vision of the lively dance, craning her neck to catch sight of Matt. Would he be dressed up too? Would he be nervous? Would he ask her to dance? Her heart raced and skipped.

  But the wretched man hadn’t been there. She’d kept her spirits up for a good hour or more, searching for him, too distracted to keep a conversation going. But after the second hour, she realized he probably wasn’t coming. And then a horrid thought weaseled in: Was he at the Bunkhouse? With that whore?

  When he arrived at the dance, she was across the square, sitting at a table with Becky and a woman from New York. The woman was buying them jugs of rum punch and telling outrageous stories. She was pretty and vivacious and shockingly confident for a woman alone; she talked a mile a minute and peppered them with questions about themselves. Georgiana was really quite tipsy after all the cups of punch and had trouble following the conversation. Wilby was half asleep on her lap, his thumb in his mouth and one hand playing with the curls over Georgiana’s ear.

  “Well, look who’s here,” she said crankily when she spotted Matt.

  Becky and the woman turned to look.

  “Is that the man from your fortune?” The redheaded New Yorker craned her neck, trying to get a better look.

  “That’s her fiancé,” Becky giggled. “But who knows if it’s the same man as in the fortune.”

  They’d met the redhead while they were waiting in line to have their fortunes told. The redhead wasn’t waiting for a fortune; she was just being friendly. She’d struck up a conversation and asked to join them. Georgiana had missed her name, and after a while it was too awkward to ask again.

  “I don’t know anyone else,” the woman had said ruefully as she tagged along. “I only got to town yesterday.”

  Georgiana liked her. She was brash. And certainly a lot more fun than Becky was. The girl had done nothing but moon and mope over LeFoy all night. The redhead
also had a welcome talent for helping Georgiana to dodge Wendell Todd. She’d just sent Wendell back to the hotel to fetch a blanket for Wilby. Before that he’d been on multiple errands, for plates of barbecue and jugs of punch, to check on the children, to request songs from the fiddle player. If it hadn’t been for the redhead’s ingenuity, Georgiana might have had to suffer his attentions all night long.

  “Well, let’s hope this Matt Slater is the man from your fortune. After all, she did say he’d be tall, dark and handsome, and it certainly looks like he is.” The redhead was smirking as she sized Matt up.

  He certainly was. Georgiana watched as he shook hands with people. He was the size of a tree. And he looked very fine in his nice clean shirt. Very, very, very fine.

  Although he’d look even finer without it.

  Oh my. She’d had too much to drink. She pushed her glass away. She needed to remember that she was mad at him. And for a very good reason: because he’d rather spend the night with a whore than be here at the dance with her.

  “She said he’d take you far, didn’t she?” the redhead teased. “I suppose Oregon is far enough?”

  Georgiana pulled a face. “She hardly needed to be a fortune-teller to know that much. Everyone in town must know about us,” she said. “She knew very well who I was marrying and where we were going.”

  The redhead laughed. “Well, you did advertise in the paper. That’s a sure way of letting people know.”

  “You know about my advertisement? Even though you only got into town yesterday?” Georgiana groaned. “I must be top of the gossip list!”

  “The very top,” the redhead agreed. “The Notorious Widow Smith and her Mail-Order Groom.”

  “You make me sound like I belong in one of those dime novels!”

  The redhead laughed. “Maybe you do!”

  “We should go over there,” Becky suggested. Her gaze was fixed on LeFoy, who was talking to Matt. Her fortune had promised a long journey with love as the reward. It wasn’t too different from Georgiana’s, only hers had her winning love at the end of her journey, rather than at the beginning.

  “That means I’m going with him to California!” Becky had said excitedly as they’d left Mrs. Ware, the ersatz fortune-teller.

  Georgiana hadn’t had the heart to ask her how that was going to work. It wasn’t like Mrs. Tilly was going to let her tag along after a strange man, all the way across the country, all on her own.

  “Come on,” Becky pleaded, standing up and straightening the big pink skirt with its big pink bows. “Quickly!”

  “The journey begins,” the redhead called after her as she started for the sycamore. Georgiana struggled to get to her feet without dropping Wilby. He hooked his arm around the back of her neck and burrowed his face into her bodice. He was getting heavy. Georgiana and the redhead skirted the dance floor, which was bouncing with people. “Do you think the fortune-teller would have seen a dark, handsome man in my future too?” the redhead asked cheerfully.

  “Probably. One who’ll take you on a journey,” Georgiana said dryly. She was getting nervous as they approached the sycamore, aware of how disheveled she looked. They’d danced and toured all the stalls around the edge of the dusty square; she’d perspired and drunk too much punch and was looking nowhere near as fine as she had at the beginning of the night. Her beautiful dress was dusty, not to mention crushed under the weight of Wilby.

  Up close, Matt was disheveled too, she saw. His hair was messy, and his shirt was damp with perspiration. He looked like he might have run all the way here.

  Or been exerting himself with that whore.

  The sick, jealous feeling was all too familiar to Georgiana. It was a horrid feeling. One she’d hoped never to feel again, and she hated him for making her feel it.

  Georgiana stopped short of the sycamore, her nerves and jealousy getting the best of her.

  She didn’t have to do this. She could just gather the children and go back to the hotel. She didn’t have to put herself in his orbit; she didn’t have to stand near him and feel the zing of desire; she didn’t have to face the horrid thoughts about where he’d been tonight and who he’d been kissing. She could just take herself away and remember the lesson Leonard had taught her.

  Love was for fools.

  But then Matt looked at her, and all the thoughts fled from her head. The wind ruffled his hair, and his eyes were pools of darkness in the lantern light. His gaze skimmed over her, taking in the dress, the beribboned curls, the boy in her arms.

  Time grew slow and heavy. Georgiana felt like she was trapped, like an insect enveloped in a slow-moving tide of sap. He walked toward her and her heart stumbled.

  “Do you need help?”

  Of course she did. She was clearly losing her mind. He made her forget all her plans, all her resolutions. Because of him, she was standing here in an inappropriately fancy dress, pretending to be engaged to him instead of actually finding a husband, fantasizing about kissing him and touching him and doing all sorts of sinful things . . . while her problems sat there in the corner, gathering dust, unsolved.

  “Hold on.” Matt turned on his heel and left.

  What was he doing?

  Being wonderful, that’s what he was doing. He’d crossed to one of the stalls, where he purchased a big, beautiful padded quilt. She watched in astonishment as he returned and laid it out at the base of the sycamore, forming it into a Wilby-sized cocoon. He took the sleepy boy out of her arms. Wilby struggled for a moment, but only until Matt laid him in the cushiony bed of the quilt.

  Oh. Georgiana hadn’t felt this before. This was an entirely new feeling: a keen tenderness that brought tears to her eyes.

  It was something about the way those big hands, swollen with muscle, gently tucked the quilt around the boy’s little shoulders, something about the way Wilby’s heavy-lidded eyes slid closed, utterly trusting, utterly safe.

  “I brought two, just in case!” Wendell’s eager voice broke into her thoughts.

  He was standing there, proudly, holding out two of Mrs. Bulfinch’s scratchy woolen blankets. Then he saw Matt bent over Wilby and the quilt and scowled.

  “Slater!” He dropped the blankets at Matt’s feet. “Can I have a word with you? In private?”

  “Well,” the redhead murmured to Georgiana as they watched Matt sigh and follow Wendell to a more private spot. “I must say, if he is the man your fortune meant, you’re one lucky woman.”

  * * *

  • • •

  “WHAT ARE YOU doing?” Wendell gave Matt a shove the minute they were out of sight of the sycamore. “The deal is you give me a chance to win her over, not you go winning her over. What are you playing at?”

  “I was just making the kid comfortable.” Matt tried to keep his temper in check. Wendell had no idea how close he was to a thumping. Matt wasn’t really in the mood to have a lovesick Wendell Todd berating him.

  “You were just making the kid comfortable? And how in hell are my blankets supposed to compete with a quilt like that?”

  “Listen. You wanted me to get pretend engaged, and I got pretend engaged. You’re the one who has to go woo her, so stop your whining and go and woo her.”

  “It’d be easier if you’d back off and let me!”

  “I ain’t been here all night!” Matt snapped. “You’ve had plenty of time.”

  Wendell looked really black at that. “You turned up just when I had her primed, that’s all!”

  “Primed?”

  “Just stay away from her,” Wendell growled, “and let me work my magic.” He stormed off.

  The only magic that idiot had was the power of repulsion. Matt set after him. He wasn’t about to be chased away from his own damn party.

  Wendell had all the charm of an outhouse. While Matt kept his distance, trying to focus on getting to know the emigrants in his party,
he couldn’t help but watch Wendell in action. Men surrounded Georgiana, and Wendell had a hard job elbowing his way through to her side. It was no wonder. She didn’t look like anything that belonged on earth. Is that how all women looked back east, or was she special even there? Any other woman Matt knew would have been outshone by that dress, which was fancy in the extreme. But Georgiana seemed to glow in it, her beautiful white shoulders rising from the lace, her long neck elegant, the charm of her face accentuated by the ribbons and curls of her fussy hairstyle. Rather than being swallowed by all her finery, it merely served to draw attention to her incredible loveliness.

  Hell. Since when did he think about gowns and ribbons and pretty faces?

  Matt resolutely turned his back on her. She had all the suitors she needed there, as well as Outhouse Wendell. She’d be able to find a husband among their number in the next few months. Meanwhile, he had a business to run.

  “Ain’t you going to ask your missus to dance?” Seb asked, noticing how Matt kept well away from her.

  “I don’t dance,” Matt said shortly. It was an enormous effort not to look at her.

  “I’m sure she could teach you.”

  “I’ve got better things to do.” He moved on to the next cluster of people, who were gleefully gossiping about a certain goddamn Indian.

  “Slater! You were there!” Joe Sampson gestured him forward. “You saw the Plague of the West get shot in Kearney, didn’t you?” He beamed at the redheaded woman standing next to him, the woman who’d been with Georgiana and Becky all night. He seemed smitten, Matt noticed. Good. That might keep him away from Georgiana.

  “I did,” Matt agreed. “Saw him shot stone-cold dead.” Matt wasn’t normally one to gossip, but this was one story he’d been taking care to spread. He was more than happy to tell the tale; the more people heard it, the more people spread the news that the Plague of the West was dead and gone. By the time they rolled out of Independence in a couple of weeks, Deathrider could come along and no one would suspect who he was.