Notorious in the West

by Lisa Plumley

  “That’s…perverse of you.”

  “So is your zeal to deny your interest in the Book Depot and News Emporium.” Griffin grinned. “We are alike, you and I.”

  “I only ever visit the Book Depot during the women’s ornithology club meetings,” Olivia informed him. “Grace Murphy has wrangled very favorable meeting space terms. She’s quite a force of nature here. She’s the town’s most avowed suffragist.”

  “You’ve tried to distract me, but you haven’t denied my guess outright,” Griffin said. “I’m right. It is your favorite.”

  Blast. Of course he was right. “Stop looking so pleased.”

  “When I’m with you,” Griffin said, “that’s proving to be difficult.” He stood, then politely extended his hand to help her to her feet. “Contentedness is a peculiar feeling.” Briefly, he studied the creek. “But I believe I could get used to it.”

  For a heartbeat, Olivia wanted nothing more than to hold his hand…and assure him that he could. So she did. Then handed him his hat, besides. After which, it felt only correct to say…

  “I don’t only love books, you know.” She felt uncomfortably vulnerable to have been deciphered by Griffin so easily. Fruitlessly, she fixed her skirts. “There is also—”

  “Music,” they said in unison.

  She frowned. Then regrouped. “Inventing,” she declared.

  “Inventing,” he echoed. At her incredulous look, Griffin merely made a funny face. “You left your sketchbook behind. I realized it was yours when I examined its pages as a means to return it to its proper owner. I thought it might be Palmer’s.”

  “No one else even knows I possess a sketchbook!”

  “I reckon that makes me special.”

  It did. “And you haven’t returned it yet!”

  “It’s fascinating,” he said in apparent defense of his keeping it. “Palmer isn’t half as imaginative as you are.”

  Olivia couldn’t stifle a tiny smile. “They are good ideas, aren’t they?” Even though she hadn’t intended to share them, she was proud of them. Proud of herself. “It would be instructive to have a few prototypes produced. I don’t plan to, of course—”

  “Why not? It could readily be arranged.”

  “Not by you!” She didn’t want him to think she’d been fishing for financing, like her father. “I can do it on my own.”

  “I don’t doubt that. If you want to proceed the difficult way, I won’t stop you.” Griffin plunked on his dark hat, then took her hand. “You see? There’s no need for you to hide yourself from me, Olivia. As I said, when I’m not talking, I’m listening. I’m watching.” He smiled. “I like what I’ve learned.”

  “Well.” Another man would have said he liked what he saw. Griffin was unique in that. But he’d never guess her most secret diversion. Olivia felt convinced of it. “That may be true. Thank you for that. But that doesn’t mean you know about my love of—”

  “Baseball,” Griffin said.

  “Pitching,” she declared at the same moment, referring to her cherished position on the emergent Morrow Creek women’s league, created and organized and picketed for by Grace Murphy.

  Olivia actually experienced a momentary sense of triumph—until she realized that she and Griffin were simultaneously describing the same pastime. Again. Suddenly, she understood all too well Jimmy’s consternation when Griffin had addressed him by name this morning. “How did you know that?”

  “Easily.” Griffin squeezed her hand. “You interest me.”

  “You do have a spy. I swear, when I see Mr. Grant—”

  Griffin only chuckled. “Don’t blame him. You and I have conversed over the past two weeks, Olivia. I’ve never talked so much in all my life. Why do you think I sound so raspy?”

  His apparent disgruntlement over that was uproarious. But Olivia didn’t have the heart to needle him. “You were drunk. I didn’t think you’d remember a word of those conversations.”

  “I wasn’t as drunk as you believed I was.”

  “Evidently.” She pulled a frown, remembering her own blithe chitchat during those shared moments. “So all that chatter—”

  “Only endeared you to me more.” He kissed her. “You’re lively, Olivia. When I was in the darkness, you brought the light. Whether I wanted it or not. You were strong and sweet—”

  “Like a cantankerous slice of pumpkin pie?”

  “—and without you, I don’t think I’d have survived.”

  His simple declaration touched her like nothing else. Olivia sighed. She smiled. Then she gave up all her resistance.

  Griffin Turner knew her. As incomprehensible as it was, he did. For as long as it lasted, she might as well enjoy that.

  Lord knew, this feeling would not come round again.

  “I’m happy you know about my fondness for baseball, then,” Olivia said, setting them both straight on the footpath to town. “Because that’s what we’ll be undertaking later next week.”

  Griffin gulped. He looked adorably fretful. “Next week?”

  “Yes. After the additional visitations I’ve planned for us, and the upcoming handcrafts show, and the town musicale,” Olivia told him briskly. She paused, feeling duly proud of her plans to bring Griffin out of his hermit’s suite and into the sunshine. He would enjoy the neighborliness and conviviality she showed him. She was sure of it. She was sure it might convince him to give up The Lorndorff, as well. “I’ve even finagled an invitation for you from the infamous Morrow Creek Men’s Club. It’s secret. It’s only for the gentlemen of town, so I won’t be attending with you. But I have an intuition that you’ll be quite—”

  “Up to my ears in Levin’s ale, ribald jokes and faro?”

  “Most likely.” Clambering nimbly up the rocks with Griffin’s hand to steady her, Olivia nodded. “If that doesn’t make you feel lucky to be alive, I don’t know what will.”

  “I do.” Griffin stopped at the top of the ridge. He pulled her nearer, then kissed her. Reverently, he stroked her cheek. “I know what would make us both feel lucky to be alive.” For an instant, his gaze turned smoldering again. Then he blinked. “But if I ever give in to it…heaven help us both.” A smile. “Let’s go.”

  Chapter Eleven

  The only person more implacable than Olivia Mouton with a mission to roust a man from his bed, steal away his whiskey and bring him into the sunshine, Griffin realized four days after his creek-side outing with Olivia, was Olivia Mouton with a mission to introduce a man wholesale to Morrow Creek—and to all its many residents in a nearly nonstop parade of faces, names and backslapping bonhomie.

  By the end of the first day, Griffin’s jaw ached from rare, unaccustomed smiling. By the end of the second day, his ears rang with half-remembered conversations and bellowed spontaneous greetings. By the end of the third day, his hand shot out at the least provocation, permanently in a state of readiness for a handshake. His throat felt sore from interminable chatting with the townspeople and with Olivia herself.

  If he was honest, Griffin would have had to admit that he liked it. He liked knowing people who—true to Olivia’s example—did not care who he was, or did not know who he was, and bluntly accepted that, in the West, it was a man’s right to start over.

  Griffin wanted to start over, he discovered as he accompanied Olivia to the millinery shop, to the livery stable and to the cooper’s yard. Maybe that was what had pushed him to come to the territory, he reckoned—a desire for change that he hadn’t been able to acknowledge, even to himself. He wanted to forge a simpler life. He wanted to be free of the Turner legacy. He wanted to follow the straightforward example of Morrow Creek’s residents and live according to his own rules. He wanted to awaken in the morning to birdsong—MacGillivray’s Warbler, Olivia informed him—instead of carriage traffic. He wanted to spend his days with honest folk—the cobbler, the railway men and the hardworking staff of The Lorndorff—instead of with scheming industrialists. He wanted to smell roses and spice cake and buttermilk toast inste
ad of factory smoke and coal fires.

  He wanted to be with Olivia.

  The more time Griffin spent with her, the more he believed it to be true. Their creek-side outing had been…miraculous.

  Holding Olivia in his arms had shown Griffin that there was goodness and pleasure and sweetness in the world. Feeling her touch him—feeling her stroking him without shirking or steeling herself to do so—had been revelatory. So had Olivia’s insistence—so unlike Mary’s—that she didn’t believe a word of his vaunted, ever-formidable “legend.” For the first time in his life, Griffin felt improbably at peace. He wanted to share that.

  He wanted to share it with Olivia, if she’d let him.

  Feeling all too mindful of his missteps with Mary, Griffin was careful to be courteous, yet interested, when in Olivia’s company. He did his utmost to behave honorably, yet passionately, toward her. When he held her hand, he made it plain that he was in command of their togetherness. When he kissed her, he did so not as a platonic friend, but as a man…a man who wanted more than he could reasonably expect or should practically allow himself to take.

  Still, he wanted…and day by day, his hopes grew.

  To him, Griffin realized as their time together lengthened, Olivia’s beauty lay more in her heart than in her appearance. Her appeal resided more in her intelligence and vigor than in her feminine figure and her innocently seductive movements. Griffin knew he ought to have cherished her for the same reasons every other man did, lest he disappoint Olivia by not raving about her obvious beauty. But he simply could not.

  To him, Olivia was…more than beautiful. She was kind. She was considerate. She was funny and spirited. She was genuine.

  At least she was, Griffin recognized, when they were alone together. When they were in polite society, though, his Olivia seemed to vanish. His spunky, determined, onetime chambermaid disappeared, replaced by an insipidly pretty automaton with perfect posture, vapid interests and a senselessly loquacious manner. In polite society, Olivia lived down to the commonplace expectations her friends and neighbors held of her. She laughed over their jibing that she was “too choosy” for a husband—when Griffin knew she simply refused to settle for a man who couldn’t appreciate her. She took in stride their remarks that she was “too mercurial” or “too frivolous.” She showed off her needlework to her friends with apparent zest—when Griffin had seen her abandon that sedate hobby with absurd haste every time he proposed another philosophy discussion.

  Prompted by those observations and countless more, Griffin resolved to help Olivia break free from the constraining box she’d placed herself in. He knew she wasn’t happy there. He could glimpse it in her eyes when she launched another round of dizzy gossip or professed her undying pride in her mending abilities. Not that she was rude, or even that her feelings were apparent to anyone except him. Griffin didn’t think they were. But once he’d seen the signs of unhappiness in her, he could not ignore them. Olivia had saved him. Now he meant to save her.

  Unlike him, Olivia didn’t need sunshine. She needed quiet rooms and books to read and sketchbooks to sketch in. She didn’t need introductions. She needed understanding and tolerance and a populace who would embrace her for who she was. She didn’t even need a rescuer in the form of a beastly industrialist with more determination, money and power than good sense.

  Olivia needed courage. She needed love.

  And because Griffin could not give her courage—not the way he could, and did, give her gifts and flowers and even the surprise of an enormous book delivery sent from his publishing house to her hotel—he had to make do with giving her love.

  His love. He’d never offered it in such a wholehearted way before. Not even to Mary, who’d long since meandered from his thoughts. But to Olivia, Griffin did offer his love. He had to. He was so full to bursting with affection for her that he thought he might not be able to survive without expressing it.

  So on a day when Griffin would have otherwise, in his old life, been brokering a contract or examining a property or upbraiding a colleague for behaving in a less-than-cutthroat fashion, instead he was holding open the door to the Morrow Creek meetinghouse for Olivia. He was ushering her inside with a sweep of his arm and an unreserved smile, feeling as proud as a peacock with a new set of tail feathers, ready to make a fool of himself if it made her smile. He was, on a temperate and peaceful territorial evening, racking his brain for new and impressive and heartfelt ways to make Olivia feel brave.

  Brave enough to show herself. Brave enough to love him.

  When he said, “Here is a seat for you,” he meant I love you. When he said, “I’ll fetch us refreshments,” he meant I love you. When he said, “Don’t become engaged to any of the dozens of men who propose while I’m gone,” he meant I love you.

  He also meant you’re mine…and longed for it to be true. Because Olivia did receive ludicrously frequent marriage proposals. As Miss Milky White, she’d firmly established her desirability. Griffin did sometimes fear that she’d accept another man’s offer of matrimony and be done with dillydallying.

  He feared that she’d come to her senses, realize she’d been gallivanting about town with The Boston Beast and scamper into the arms of the first stultifyingly dull rancher who asked.

  He couldn’t let that happen. But more important, he couldn’t allow Olivia to go on the way she had been…denying her true nature, stifling her curiosity and berating herself for her cleverness and wit and overall uniqueness. To him, she was inimitable. She was priceless. She deserved to be completely happy. For that to happen, she needed to first be herself.

  Olivia believed they were there that evening—at the town musicale—to further her notions of making Griffin more sociable and less prone to shutting himself off with closed curtains and too much whiskey. But he knew better. He knew he’d quit drinking days ago. He knew he’d mastered his tendency to brood, with her help. He also knew they were really there to begin making Olivia behave more honestly…with herself, with her friends and with her neighbors. To that end, Griffin watched her closely.

  Excitedly, limned by the hall’s lamplight, she nudged him. “Look! The musicians are already tuning their instruments.”

  “So they are.” He followed her eager pointing gesture to the dais. “What kind of music do you like best?”

  “Oh…” Airily, she waved. “A symphony is always nice.”

  “Mmm.” It seemed unlikely to Griffin that a symphony was in the offing, given the musicians and their number. They fit better with the town hall’s homemade decor—rafters strung with crepe streamers and walls decorated with cut paper flowers—than they did with the works of Schubert or Brahms. “What else?”

  “I’m…not entirely familiar with all musical works,” Olivia confessed. “Unlike you, we can’t avail ourselves of orchestras.”

  “I’m sure the musicians here are talented, all the same.” Griffin was delighted to notice Olivia tapping her toes. Her vivaciousness was already showing. “Will there be dancing?”

  She appeared astonished. Also, tempted. “No! That would hardly be the done thing, would it? That’s not sophisticated.”

  Griffin stifled a grin, knowing that Morrow Creek was not known for its “sophisticated” diversions. According to Daniel McCabe, there had recently been busty dance-hall girls added to the entertainment roster at Jack Murphy’s saloon. During Griffin’s indoctrination into the Morrow Creek Men’s Club—for they’d insisted he join, even if temporarily—he’d further learned of the annual faro tournament the town hosted, luring in notorious gamblers from around the world, and of the gaudy, outlandish medicine shows that drew crowds when they visited.

  Olivia might pretend to want sophistication, but her tapping toes suggested she wanted rowdy fun, first and last.

  “Well,” he said, lightly covering her hand with his as the crowd quieted, “if you feel like dancing, I’ll join you.”

  Tellingly, her eyes brightened. Then she scoffed, “Don’t be ridiculous.” She
patted her upswept hair. “I’ll behave myself.”

  “Perhaps,” Griffin suggested as he leaned nearer, close enough to touch her cheek with his own, “I don’t want you to.”

  Olivia’s cheeks turned pink. She opened her mouth, doubtless to object. But then the music began…and so did the fun. Griffin couldn’t wait for the moment when Olivia cut loose.

  *

  If only she could gain authority over her traitorous toes, Olivia knew she could present a positive, encouraging example to Griffin of the wholesome activities a person could enjoy if they liberated themselves from their hotel suite on occasion.

  Instead, while listening to the raucous fiddles and solitary banjo played by the musicale’s musicians, she found herself tapping her toes. Time and again, her feet attempted to dance their way out of the town hall while her body remained staunchly, sedately, effortfully in her seat beside Griffin.

  He appeared to recognize her dilemma, too. A time or two, while Olivia was battling her own unladylike propensity for jigging to the music, she caught him grinning at her.

  “Remember,” he said, “I will dance with you, if you like.”

  “No!” she cried in an undertone, glancing around in the hope that no one else had glimpsed her undignified behavior. Her father wasn’t there, but that didn’t mean she could abandon all decorum. If she misbehaved, Henry Mouton—everyone—would know. “There is no dancing at the musicale! Not even to the fiddles!”

  She dearly loved the fiddles. As a girl, there’d been nothing she’d enjoyed more than listening to a bow dancing across the strings—except dancing to the resulting tunes. She’d even taken up the instrument herself once, tutored by a long since departed saloonkeeper, only to abandon it for the more appropriate practice of learning to play an upright piano.

  Just then, Olivia regretted every instant of scales she’d played on a keyboard. Fiddle music was just so much more…fun.