Romancing the West

by Beth Ciotta

  He turned away, poured water from a large-mouthed pitcher into a matching chipped basin, and splashed his face to clear the mental cobwebs. His brain was full of Emily. Her shaky relationship with her mother. Her passionate views on hypocrites and intolerance. Her obsession with adventurous literature.

  Her infatuation with Rome Garrett.

  He’d worked every angle and still he couldn’t work out her secret.

  AS LONG AS YOU REAP BENEFITS, YOU WILL PAY THE PRICE.

  What benefits? Not financial. Her property was falling apart and the furnishings in this house, though dust-free from Mrs. Dunlap’s incessant cleaning, were cheaply made and old to boot. Preacher McBride’s earnings had been meager. Or maybe he’d been a miser. Emily had said the blackmailer had depleted her savings. To his knowledge, librarians earned paltry salaries. The blackmailer wasn’t getting rich off of this scheme. He had an ulterior motive. His signature line had religious connotations. Was her Savior a member of her father’s congregation? Someone who’d discovered something tawdry in Emily’s background? Or perhaps her parents’ background? Protecting someone else fit the woman’s profile. Had her ma or pa been drinkers? How had she accumulated the wine bottles she used as targets? Her neighbor did run a winery and, according to Emily, Bellamont had been a close friend of her father’s. Maybe the winemaker had simply offered used or flawed bottles as ready targets.

  Dammit. There were too many missing pieces to this puzzle and the pieces he had didn’t fit together in a way that made a lick of sense.

  It would make his investigation easier if the shooter and the blackmailer were one in the same. Only the letters had originated in San Francisco. Emily claimed she’d never been out of Napa Valley, yet the blackmailer knew she worked at the library. He knew an intimate secret. Either he was acquainted with Emily or with someone close to her. Like the Garretts.

  Seth reached for a bar of soap and continued his morning ablutions as his mind traversed new and unsettling territory. Could the Garrett brothers somehow be connected with Emily’s troubles, whether by accident or design? London owned an opera house in San Francisco. Rome and Boston worked for Wells Fargo. Home office: San Francisco. Seth had only met them once. They’d struck him as arrogant, but not ruthless. Certainly not the sort to terrorize a woman. Although he had witnessed Rome shooting a defenseless man. Granted, the cur had manhandled his sister. He’d also committed arson and murder. Still, there’d been no need to shatter the man’s kneecap after Josh had nearly choked the life out of him.

  Seth had recognized a dangerous edge to Rome Garrett that day. Now he wondered what he’d done to earn Wells Fargo’s censure. Apparently, the offense was noted in an I. M. Wilde tale. But which one?

  His gut told him the Garretts weren’t directly responsible for Emily’s troubles, but he suspected they figured in somehow and the niggling thought had him itching to read the newspaper article. That meant a visit to Thompson’s Mercantile. A trip into town. Then he remembered it was Sunday. Maybe he could talk Thompson into opening the store after church--he assumed Emily and Mrs. Dunlap would want to attend service. At the least, he’d engage the shopkeeper in conversation, encouraging him to relay the details behind the Garretts’ suspension. Any clue to shed light on the mystery revolving around Emily would be welcome. He needed to deal with her current dilemma before addressing her future.

  His chest tightened as he plucked Athens’s sealed letter from his valise. He wondered at the manner in which the proposal of marriage was penned. Had his boss asked Emily reasonably or had he waxed poetic? In Seth’s vast experience, women preferred flowery declarations of adoration as opposed to direct, logical statements.

  My children need a mother and you need a protector, marry me didn’t pack the same punch as I’m bewitched by your sad blue eyes and sensitive heart, put me out of my misery and say you’ll be mine.

  Athens struck Seth as direct and logical. That wouldn’t cut it with Emily. Emily who equated an arranged marriage with sacrificing one’s dreams. He didn’t figure a marriage of convenience would rate much better in her eyes. A hopeful romantic likened practicality and convention with shackles. A hopeful romantic married for love, not duty or protection.

  He considered his arguments.

  There are all kinds of love.

  Trust and respect are a strong seed. In time love will blossom.

  He could quote Ralph Waldo Emerson, a fellow--ahem--poet. Love and you shall be loved. If nothing else it would verify his knowledge of his--cough--contemporaries.

  So how did he convince her that Athens, and not Rome, was her knight in shining armor?

  Rumor has it you can talk any woman into anything.

  When his heart was in it, hell, yeah. Manipulating Emily and her feelings brought him no joy.

  Frustrated, he slipped the letter back into his traveling bag. He donned his best suit, blocking graphic thoughts of Emily washing and dressing two doors down.

  “Don’t think about your boss’s lady naked,” he mumbled as he slipped into a clean white shirt. “You’re a government agent, Wright. This is a mission.” The sooner he delivered Emily from her troubles and into Athens’s safe haven, the sooner he could kick miscreant ass.

  Oddly, the prospect didn’t hold the same thrill as it did before.

  He contemplated the matter while stepping into his socks and boots.

  Emily’s talk of a grand adventure coupled with a tale of a man attempting to circumvent the world in eighty days had infected Seth with an irksome bug. Last night he’d entertained the ladies by reading aloud from Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days. He’d recited Phileas Fogg’s escapades with dramatic inflection, glancing up now and again to revel in the sparkle in Emily’s sky-blue eyes. His own life had been far from boring, but after experiencing her infectious anticipation and imagining Fogg’s excitement as he raced across exotic foreign lands, suddenly Seth felt as if he hadn’t lived at all.

  He’d never second guessed his career. Wrangling criminals came as naturally as romancing the ladies. Like his pa, he excelled at both. He’d never yearned for more because he felt like he had it all. Sensing otherwise was annoying.

  Emily had winged him like that renegade bullet with her sad blue eyes and sorrowful talk of her mother. Clearly, she’d bewitched him. Why else had he fallen in love? How else to account for this burst of discontent? He had to shake this, her. He had to suppress the affectionate and desirous feelings mangling his heart and good sense.

  Today. He’d start singing Athens’s praises today.

  CHAPTER 14

  Emily spent the night alternating between insomnia, inappropriate dreams, and anguished nightmares. Awakening predawn in a tangle of sheets, her chemise plastered to her sweat drenched body, had been the final straw. A nightmare was not to blame for her frenzied heart rate, but a passionate dream. Intent on weaving intimate aspects into the swashbuckling tale she’d been toiling over for months, she lit the kerosene lamp sitting on the table next to her bed and reached for her spectacles.

  Only her spectacles weren’t there. They’d died an ugly death under the heel of Mrs. Thompson’s boot.

  She penned her thoughts all the same. She couldn’t read the scribbled pages, but at least she’d gotten the scenes out of her head and onto paper. Maybe it would help her to remember what she felt in the dream, for surely she’d never experienced such sweet torture. And she never would.

  The shirtless hero in her dream had been Pinkerton.

  She stood less of a chance with him than with Rome. At least Rome fancied girls.

  Maybe she had an unconscious desire to be a spinster. At least she’d be assured her independence. Her Grand Design wouldn’t be at risk. Unfortunately, her Savior had robbed her of her means to finance that adventure. If he had his way, she’d never utilize that talent to earn another penny.

  “You’re in a heck of a pickle, Emily McBride. You’re also talking to yourself. Again.” Sighing, she shoved out of bed and squinted at
the clock on her bedside table. It was later than she thought.

  She padded to her window, pushed open the curtains. Storm clouds blotted out the morning sun. Thunder rumbled in the distance. Thankfully, last night after unhitching and brushing down Guinevere, Pinkerton had fed and stowed the horse in the stall instead of turning her out in the pasture. Guinevere hated thunderstorms. Emily loved them. Rainy days meant extended time for reading and writing.

  She needed her spectacles for that.

  Drat.

  Mrs. Dunlap would spend the day knitting. Pinkerton could tinker with his poems and short story. What was she supposed to do? Mood worsening, she hurriedly washed and dressed. The least she could do was make breakfast. She could see well enough to hustle up some eggs. Anything of substantial size was simply fuzzy around the edges. Mostly she was farsighted. So long as she didn’t have to consult a recipe she’d do fine.

  A few minutes later, she tiptoed down the stairs so as not to disturb anyone, locked away her journal in her desk, and commenced to preparing a hearty morning meal. Her own appetite was still weak, but she refused to succumb to more swooning. Doc Kellogg had been right about one thing. She needed to get on with her life. She couldn’t let her Savior rob her of her health as well as her money and peace of mind. Mostly it was Pinkerton’s heartfelt concern and the possibility he might alarm Paris that prompted her to take more care.

  She cracked an egg into a bowl, her mind flashing on the way he had held her in his arms after she’d fainted in the mercantile. If he were Rome, he would’ve pressed his lips against hers and breathed life into her. If she were Miss Sarah Smith she would’ve thanked him by pressing her breasts against him and thrusting her tongue into his mouth. Rome had described it as a goddamned hot and wet, boner-inducing kiss. She wasn’t sure what that was. But he’d been smiling like a cat that ate the mouse when he relayed specifics to Boston. She assumed a kiss like that brought immense pleasure.

  He’d gone on to describe a few of the things he’d like to do to the lush-figured woman, using words that made Emily’s cheeks burn. She’d quickly slinked away, not that they knew she was within earshot to begin with. Without Paris around, where the Garrett brothers were concerned, Emily was as good as invisible.

  She wondered if Pinkerton knew anything about hot and wet, boner-inducing kisses.

  “You’re thinking about him, aren’t you?”

  Emily jumped at the sound of Mrs. Dunlap’s voice. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

  The woman sidled in beside her, filling a copper kettle with Arbuckle’s and water. “That’s because you were daydreaming about him.”

  She cracked another egg into the bowl, refusing to look Mrs. Dunlap in the eye. How could she possibly know someone else’s mind when she barely knew her own?

  “I know a woman in love when I see one,” she continued. “I still get that dreamy feeling whenever I think about my Harold. Doesn’t matter he’s been dead and gone for five years, or is it six? True love is forever.”

  Emily dabbed the cuff of her shirt to her perspiring brow. The incoming storm had pumped the summer air full of humidity. “Part of me believes that. Part of me hopes it’s romanticized cow flop,” she said in a quiet voice. “If true love is forever, then I’m doomed to live life alone. Rome doesn’t care two figs for me.”

  “Rome Garrett?” Mrs. Dunlap snorted. “You don’t love him.”

  “I don’t?”

  “Not in a grown woman way, no. You’re in love with Mr. Pinkerton.”

  Emily’s mouth fell open. Thunder shook the panes like an unsubtle foreshadow.

  Mrs. Dunlap smiled while setting the kettle on the stove to boil.

  Shaking off her daze, Emily cracked open another egg, and lowered her voice to a self-conscious whisper. “I am not in love with Phineas Pinkerton. Even if I were, which I’m not, I would be just as doomed. He doesn’t like . . . that is to say . . . I’m not his type.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “You don’t know the particulars.”

  “You don’t know your own heart.”

  “What are you lovely ladies arguing about?”

  Pinkerton stepped into the kitchen, sucking up all the air. Emily couldn’t breathe. Even blurred around the edges, he looked dashing and handsome, just like in her dream, only he was wearing clothes.

  Mrs. Dunlap eyed him up and down while forking bacon into a cast-iron skillet. “My, aren’t you dapper this morning?”

  Emily thought he dressed impeccably every day. He’d probably look stylish wearing a potato sack. She concentrated on the eggs.

  “You’re fetching as always, Mrs. Dunlap.”

  “You’re kind to say so, Mr. Pinkerton. You removed the bandage from your forehead, I see. Barely a scratch, as you said. You fared much better than poor Emily.”

  “I’m fine.” But she knew she looked a fright. The bump on her noggin was swollen and discolored. She hadn’t bled like Pinkerton, yet her head wound looked five times worse.

  “How’s your arm?” she asked. Even though the bullet had grazed, he’d still been shot.

  “I’ll live.”

  She heard the smile in his voice, looked over her shoulder and caught him staring at her. He did that a lot. Her heart constricted along with her lungs. She squirmed under his appraisal. She hadn’t dressed in her Sunday best. She’d dressed hastily and in honor of Calamity Jane. She’d dressed, not for vanity or propriety, but confidence. “Didn’t figure you for a practicing Christian, Mr. Pinkerton.”

  “I’m not, but I assumed you and Mrs. Dunlap were.”

  The older woman busied herself setting the table. “I keep faith in my own way.”

  “As do I,” Pinkerton said, pulling three mugs from the cupboard.

  Emily bristled. What? Because she was a preacher’s daughter she was expected to act more traditionally? She stabbed the yolks, whipping up scrambled eggs as her scrambled brain whipped up her defense. Surely he understood that she couldn’t, in good conscience, enter the house of the Lord with this blackmail issue hanging over her head. Not only that, but her faith had been sorely tested this past year.

  “I’ve read the bible front to back, not once, but several times,” she said, pouring the eggs into a second frying pan. “I suspect my father’s sermons will ring in my mind for eternity. I know what’s expected of a decent soul. I’ve done my best to abide. Attending church for the sake of attending is not going to make me a better person.” There. That sounded logical. Didn’t it?

  “You’re fine just the way you are, dear,” said Mrs. Dunlap. “They don’t come any finer.”

  “I’m inclined to agree,” Pinkerton said, moving in, hovering.

  Her skin sizzled. Or maybe that was the bacon. Her senses whirled.

  He placed one hand on her hip as if sensing a dizzy spell, reached around her with a fork, and flipped over the strips of frying meat.

  She stood frozen, her mind replaying that sensual dream. She imagined him kissing her neck, her shoulder . . .

  “Are we expecting company?” he asked, breaking in on her thoughts.

  “No.” She cleared the gruffness from her voice.

  “Why?

  “That’s an almighty serving of eggs, Em.”

  She squinted at the griddle, then at the counter littered with, was it, yes, twelve shells. My, but she’d been distracted.

  “Thanks to you,” Mrs. Dunlap said, “our girl’s got her appetite back.”

  A knock at the door saved Emily from having to comment. “Who could that be?”

  “I suspect it’s Mr. Bellamont,” said Mrs. Dunlap. “He mentioned he’d be stopping by.”

  She sidestepped the poet and whirled to face her boarder. “When?”

  “Now, obviously. On his way to church.”

  “No. I mean when did he tell you he’d be stopping?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “Yesterday, when?” Pinkerton asked in a voice much calmer than Emily’s.

  “Just after you
two went off for target practice.”

  “Did you tell him where we were?” This again from Pinkerton.

  “I believe I did, yes.” The woman, who’d been polishing the silverware, scrunched her nose. “What’s all the fuss?”

  Emily refrained from looking over her shoulder at Pinkerton. She knew what he was thinking and it was ludicrous. Still, she was painfully uncomfortable with a visit from Mr. Bellamont. “I wish you would have told me.” She could’ve figured out a reason not to be here.

  “I did,” the woman said, then frowned. “Didn’t I?”

  Another knock, louder this time.

  “You go ahead, dear. See what he wants.” Mrs. Dunlap nabbed the spatula from Emily and shooed her toward the hall. “I’ll mind the bacon and eggs. If he wants to stay for breakfast, we have plenty.”

  She didn’t aim on inviting him, although he had a way of inviting himself now and then. It’s not that she didn’t like Mr. Bellamont. He always seemed to have her best interests at heart, even going so far as to offering marriage when she’d been abandoned so abruptly in this world. He’d been a good, if not misguided, friend to her father. He’d seen her through a horrific night and for that she was grateful. Except it meant he was privy to her darkest secret. In her mind it was far worse than what her Savior held over her head. Though he’d sworn to carry the secret to his grave, and though she believed him, each time she saw Mr. Bellamont she felt panic and shame.

  “I’ll only be a moment,” she said to Pinkerton, adding a silent stay here with her eyes.

  She skedaddled before the man could counter, walked briskly down the hall. With any luck she wouldn’t have to invite her father’s friend inside. Hopefully, he’d say his piece and hurry toward town in an effort to beat the storm. She smoothed her sweaty palms down her trousers and opened the door. “Mr. Bellamont.”

  “Emily.”

  He swept off his bowler revealing a full head of silver hair. In contrast, his moustache was black with only a sprinkling of grey. He wore a tailor-made suit, dove-grey, expensive. He’d tucked the ends of his black silk cravat under the tips of his turned-down collar. Gold cufflinks glittered from the cuffs of his starched white shirt. A watch fob dangled from his vest pocket. Whenever on business and always on Sundays, Claude Bellamont dressed like the wealthy wine baron he was. He reminded Emily of a rendering she’d seen in one of the dime novels of dandy lawman, Bat Masterson. Only Mr. Bellamont was shorter and older. Maybe it was the cool, sophisticated air more than an actual likeness. Maybe it was her blurry vision.