A Touch of Camelot (10 page)

She sat forward in her seat and craned her neck to see to the rear of the car where a long line had formed by the ladies' washroom. It hadn't budged an inch in the last ten minutes. She sat back and shifted the carpetbag on her lap from one knee to the other. Along with her bag, she clutched a new cake of soap wrapped in a clean towel, the latter two items purchased by Shepherd this morning from the newsboy.

He had also bought a new deck of cards. At the moment, he was using his tally book to keep a running score of the rummy game he and Arthur had been engaged in since earlier this morning. Arthur, of course, was trouncing Cole.

Knowing Shepherd's suspicious turn of mind, Gwin thought he probably suspected Arthur of cheating, but that wasn't the case. Arthur didn't need to cheat. Gwin wondered how long it would take this clever Pinkerton detective to figure out that Arthur memorized every card as it was played, that he could recalculate his odds of obtaining any given combination at each new turn, and tailor his strategy accordingly.

"Oh, yes! Perfect." Cole grinned as he pulled a card from the deck and laid out three sixes. Despite the fact that he couldn’t have gotten much more sleep than Gwin had, he seemed in good spirits.

Gwin turned back to the window, idly biting at her nails. They were in Colorado now. The flat featureless prairies of Kansas were left behind. The lay of the land had taken on an almost desert-like character, but Gwin's restless mind couldn't focus on appreciating the change in scenery.

Gwin stopped biting her nails and rested her head back. How could she expect Cole to understand anything of her life? To him, everything was right or wrong, black or white, good or bad. Appearances were all. Why, last night he had come close to accusing her of trying to seduce Mr. Monroe for money. And that had hurt, maybe more than she was willing to admit. She might be a liar and a thief, but she certainly wasn't a...

Gwin closed her eyes. It stung all the more because she'd tried to convince herself for so many years that she wasn't like her mother. She could remember the night she had discovered the bitter truth about Emmaline. Perhaps it had been obvious before, but Gwin had been a child, capable of seeing Emmaline only through a daughter's eyes, eyes blinded by love and adoration.

Emmaline Pierce had been beautiful. Her singing voice had been ambrosia to the ears and she’d had a flair for telling stories that Gwin had never seen matched. If her mother had been a trifle irresponsible, it had certainly never mattered to Gwin. She was daring and buoyant and fun to be around. She was happy most of the time—in the beginning, that was—before Arthur was born. By that time, it must have become apparent that she was growing older and her life with Silas was not going the way of fairy tales. That was when she started to change. Gwin remembered it well.

That winter their home had been a drafty, two-room flat above a dance-hall saloon in Kansas City. Gwin was eleven. Silas was out late, as usual, earning the bulk of their precarious livelihood in the wee hours of the morning.

At the sound of Emmaline's approach on the floorboards outside her room, Gwin quickly doused the stubby candle on the nightstand and slipped beneath her blanket to feign sleep. It wasn't difficult to fool her mother, who was lately preoccupied with her own concerns. Indeed, laboring under the strain of caring for a new baby and with her singing career at a standstill, Emmaline had not been acting like herself. Gwin was therefore not surprised that her mother failed to notice the lingering aroma of burning wax in the dark room this night.

As soon as Emmaline put the sleeping baby Arthur in his fleece-lined cradle and slipped from the room, Gwin was up like a shot, striking another match to the candle. From beneath her blanket, she withdrew a deck of playing cards. For weeks, she had been practicing the one-handed shift, a feat that the smugly superior Clell had informed her was impossible for a female to master.

"A woman's hands are too small," he had explained one day, displaying the deck in his left hand and then deftly releasing the lower half to fall into his palm. "And it takes a certain dexterity that a woman could never hope to master as well as a man."

Gwin had watched solemnly as he extended his second and third fingers so that the upper portion of the deck passed the upturned side of the lower portion before dropping down neatly beneath to square the deck once again. It was done in the blink of an eye.

Clell handed the cards back to her. He grinned as he walked away with a swagger. "Why, if you pull that one off, Gwinnie, I'll eat my hat."

"I'll do it, all right," Gwin had muttered, "and when the time comes, I'll darn well pick the hat."

And so it was that on that particular night, by candlelight and at ten past one in the morning, Gwin was still struggling to master the one-handed shift. And she was finally getting close.

She had just released the lower portion of the deck with her thumb to fall into her palm when she heard it. A woman's laugh coming from the alley below her open window.

This alone would not have normally caught her attention. Gwin usually kept her window cracked open, even on cold nights, preferring fresh air to the acrid tobacco smoke and kerosene fumes that permeated the building. An occasional giggle was hardly out of the ordinary. This woman's laugh, however, caught Gwin's ear and froze her fingers on the deck. It was Emmaline. And she wasn't alone. Gwin caught the deep murmur of a man's voice.

Gwin tiptoed to the window, pushed the curtain back, and peered outside. The air that poured in through the window was icy, biting at Gwin's thin body through two layers of flannels and her nightdress, but she didn't shy away from it. A distant street lamp illuminated the narrow alley enough for Gwin to make out two featureless figures below. It was her mother and a man she didn't recognize. Their words came out in little gray puffs that swirled and evaporated above their heads.

Emmaline sounded eager. "Did you—?"

"Yes," the man said. "I spoke to Gallagher and he's interested. The singer he has now is a drunk, and he's looking to get rid of her."

"Oh, Frank! That's wonderful news!" Emmaline threw her arms around the man's neck. "When would I start?"

"Soon. Next week." Gwin could see that the man's hands settled comfortably around her mother's waist; too comfortably, as if they had been there before.

"Next week! Oh, dear, I'll have to wean the baby. I've been trying, but—"

"Gallagher doesn't care much about babies, honey." The man pressed his lips to her neck.

"Oh, well, I guess what he doesn't know won't hurt him. Besides, if I can wean Arthur, Gwinnie will be glad to take care of him. She fawns all over him as it is."

"Fine, it's settled. That is, as long as your husband doesn't make a fuss."

"He wouldn't dare. He knows I'd leave him." Emmaline threw her head back, giving the strange man free access to her neck. Even from where Gwin stood, she saw that her mother's eyes were closed. If they hadn't been, Emmaline Pierce might have seen her own daughter gazing down at her in numb disbelief.

"Oh, Frank, how can I ever thank you?"

The man lifted his head and Gwin caught the flash of a grin. "I can think of a few ways. It's been a long time for you and me, too long."

"Too long, yes, but we can't," Emmaline said.

"Your husband won't be back for hours."

"No, but the baby will wake and want fed again."

"Then we'll just get reacquainted right here."

The man slipped Emmaline's woolen cloak down from one shoulder to nibble eagerly at bared flesh.

"Here?" Emmaline sounded surprised. "Now?"

The man laughed as he pushed her back up against the wall. Alarmed, Gwin's heart started to pound. The playing cards slipped from her fingers, scattering to the floor. She opened her mouth to shout at the man who was attacking her mother, but her mouth clamped shut again as she saw her mother's arms wind tighter around the man's neck.

Emmaline giggled like a school girl at a cotillion. "Oh, Frank, we can't! Not here!"

"We damn well can try, honey. Lift your skirts and belly up to the bar."

Gwin dropped the curtain and scrambled back to bed, yanking the blanket up to her chin and pulling the pillow around to cover her face. She could still hear her mother's giggles, faded and faraway, mingling with the muffled laughter and melodeon music that drifted up from the dance hall below.

I hate her
, Gwin had thought fiercely, hot tears stinging her eyes.
I hate her, hate her, hate
—

"Ooooh yeah! Lady Luck is smiling on me now!"

It was Cole Shepherd's voice that shattered Gwin's reverie, snapping her back to the here and now. She opened her eyes.

The featureless landscape moving by outside her window hadn't changed from a few moments ago, and Cole and Arthur were still embroiled in their rummy game. Judging by his latest outcry, Gwin thought Cole must be under the mistaken impression that he had a snowball's chance in hell of winning this hand.

Gwin looked to the rear of the coach. The line to the ladies' washroom appeared even longer. Disappointed, she sank back with a sigh. This was only their second day on board and already she was sick to death of dust and smoke and cinders. What she really needed to soothe her raw nerves was a hot bath. Unfortunately, a bath was out of the question. The best she could hope for was a rushed toilette in the washroom of this cramped rail coach.

"You might as well give it up now, Arthur, my boy! It'll go easier on you!"

Gwin froze.
What had Cole said?
Her heart thumped, keeping a heady beat with the metallic click of the locomotive's wheels on the tracks beneath them.
"Give it up! Give it up now and it'll go easier on you! "

Gwin's mouth dropped open. She knew where she’d met him before.

Chapter Six

"Holy Moses!"

Gwin didn't realize she'd spoken aloud until Cole glanced at her. "What's the matter, Gwin? Not feeling so good? Doesn't sneaking around at all hours of the night agree with you?"

Gwin swallowed hard, unable to formulate even a weak retort. Luckily, Cole was too involved in his game to notice.

Abilene
. The memory, the one that had eluded her all this time, finally broke the surface. It swam up swiftly from the deep and burst into sunlight so bright, it was blinding.

Gwin remembered it vividly. She didn't just see it in her mind, she felt it, smelled it, the underlying stench of cow flesh, the dust, the summer heat rising up from the dry prairie. She even thought she could hear Silas pitching his miracle elixir from somewhere in the distance.

Oh, she had run like the dickens from Cole Shepherd, had tried her darnedest to shake him, but he had refused to be shaken. She remembered wondering why in tarnation this fella was so hell-bent on bringing her down when it hadn't even been his watch she'd filched in the first place.

She had gotten only two quick looks at his face—first, when she had spotted him eyeing her in the crowd and then when he had cornered her for the last time in the stock pen—but it wasn't until he had pulled her down from the fence and flipped her onto her back that it had really smacked into her. She had been trapped beneath him, staring deep into his shocked brown eyes when, despite the mud smears on his nose and cheeks, she had thought to herself,
Sure as eggs are eggs, he’s about the handsomest boy I have ever seen in my life!

"What's the matter, Gwin? You look like you just swallowed a beetle."

"A what? A b-beetle?"

For a moment, it appeared as if Cole might say something, but he didn't. He merely gave her a bemused look and then turned back to his game.

Thank heavens. Gwin doubted she was capable of carrying on a conversation right now. She had to get her bearings. She stood, clutching her valise and towel to her stomach. She thought maybe she'd had just about all the remembering she could take for one day.

"Could you let me through?" she said breathlessly. "I'm going back."

Cole stood to let her pass. "Remember, Miss Pierce, five minutes."

His tone was such that if Gwin had had her wits about her, she would have tossed back a retort, but her wits seemed to be nowhere in the vicinity. Without looking back, she edged her way along the center aisle of the moving rail car.

*

Cole watched Gwin's behind as she made her way toward the ladies' washroom.

"You're still mad at her, aren't you?"

Cole didn’t answer. The alluring memory of Gwin's lush feminine curves pressed up against him in the baggage car was still all-too-fresh and immediate.

Arthur raised his voice. "I said, you're still mad at her from last night, aren't you?"

Gwin's posterior passed out of sight as another passenger stepped out into the aisle behind her. Disappointed, Cole looked at Arthur. "Why do you say that?"

"The way you're looking at her."

Cole tried not to smile. "How am I looking at her?"

"Real hard-like."

Smart-aleck kid.
It was difficult, but Cole managed to keep his expression serious. "I have no choice but to keep an eye on her, Arthur. Your sister has already demonstrated that she can't be trusted."

A companionable silence settled between them as Cole picked a card from the deck and laid out three aces. Gwin's scent, lilacs, still hung in the air to haunt Cole's concentration. Even when she wasn't sitting beside him, her presence lingered.

Arthur pulled a card and gave Cole a sneaky little smile. His own expression fell as Arthur laid off an ace, a three, three nines, and a discard, the remainder of his hand.

"I can't believe it!" Cole threw down his cards in disgust.

"Add thirty-six to my score. That gives me sixty-one."

Cole pulled out his tally book. That had to be the fourth or fifth time the kid had done it—calculating his points and adding them to the running total before Cole even had a chance to put pencil to paper. The kid was bright, real bright. And Cole was beginning to think this might be only a small sample of Arthur's capabilities.