Amelia (6 page)

"My, how handsome you look," his mother said warmly.

His eyebrow jerked at the flattery. His silver eyes went to Amelia and slid over her with something approximating distaste. He made her feel inadequate and dowdy, unusual feelings for a woman whose beauty had not gone unnoticed despite her lack of a social life.

She moved a step away from him, pretending interest in smoothing her dark cloak. The cloak would be needed, because it was still cool at night.

"I'll bring the surrey around," he said curtly and went off to fetch it.

"I prefer the buggy, but these dresses won't ride comfortably if we're packed in like sardines," Enid said, laughing. "We'll let King sit in front, and we'll ride behind."

Amelia smiled, but secretly she was relieved. It didn't make her feel particularly secure to have to sit beside King and try to make conversation. Especially when he made his dislike of her so evident.

"Come along, my dear." Enid motioned to Amelia. There was an ominous rumbling outside, and the older woman grimaced. "Oh, dear, I do hope the rain holds off until we arrive. I don't want to get my skirt muddy before the first dance!" A sentiment which Amelia echoed fervently.

 

It didn't rain the whole long, bumpy way to the Valverde estate, several miles down the winding dirt road. The sandy trail was firmly packed, but Amelia didn't like to consider how treacherous it would be when rained upon. She and Quinn had once been in a buggy that mired down in Georgia when rains badly muddied the road to church. Even the strong horse Quinn had hitched to the buggy couldn't pull it out. They were forced to ride the horse home, pillion, and Amanda's dignity and her legs felt the strain of it that night. Fortunately in the dark, she hadn't been seen.

King pulled up in front of the porch and helped the women out before he went down to the stable to leave the horse and surrey with the stable hand.

The house was well lighted, its broad front porch full of costumed people drinking punch and conversing, while inside a small band played gay music.

"You'll enjoy this," Enid assured her. "Come. I'll introduce you to our host and hostess."

Enid had told Amelia before that the Valverdes were descendants of Spanish settlers who had been granted a huge tract of land here before the war with Mexico. After the Spanish were driven out of the territory, American settlers were invited in by Mexico. Soon afterward however, the American settlers demanded their independence from Mexico, and war broke out. The Valverde descendants had, by that time, been accepted by American settlers and were part of the independence movement. They retained their huge land grant mainly, Enid said, tongue-in-cheek, because they had enough cowboys to fend off interlopers.

Horace Valverde and his wife Dora were short, dark, and rather reserved. Dora welcomed them with more warmth than her husband, motioning for Darcy to come and join them.

"Have you met our daughter, Darcy, Miss Howard?" she asked Amelia.

"Yes," Amelia said with a quiet smile. "It's nice to see you again, Miss Valverde."

"We're glad that you could come," Darcy said carelessly. She beamed at Enid. "My, you do look lovely!" she added, toadying to the older woman. "Did you buy that gown?"

"You know that I sew my own clothes." Enid chuckled, flattered. "Amelia made hers as well. She's quite accomplished at copying designs she likes."

"Why, yes, your gown does remind me of one I saw in New York," Dora agreed, giving Amelia's gown a second look. "It's a Charles Worth design, isn't it, my dear?"

"Yes, it is," Amelia said, flushing as King joined them, catching the tail end of the conversation.

"King! How dashing you look!" Darcy enthused, taking his arm prisoner with no attempt at formality. "Everyone's ignoring my lovely Jacques Doucet original from Paris," she added with pouting lips.

"You know you always look lovely to me, whatever you wear," King said with a warm, genuine smile.

Amelia felt chilled. Darcy's gown, while it might have flattered a taller woman, made the short, dark Darcy look like an ice cream sundae. The woman was attractive but hardly a beauty. And expensive designer gowns made little difference. Perhaps King loved her and saw her with the eyes of the heart. Imagine him in love, she thought wildly, and had to force herself not to laugh. He seemed the last man on earth to succumb to a woman's charm.

"Well, who is this vision?" a pleasant male voice enquired, and a tall, blond man with a mustache came up to stand beside King. But it was Amelia, not Darcy, at whom he was staring appreciatively.

"Miss Amelia Howard," Dora said, "this is Ted Simpson, our friend from Boston."

"I'm delighted to meet you, Miss Howard," he said formally, bowing.

"And I, you, sir," she returned, making him a slight curtsy. She smiled up at him unreservedly, because he reminded her of her brother, and she liked him immediately. He wasn't broody or mercurial, and at least he made her feel attractive.

"Would you care to dance?"

"I should be delighted," she told him, and immediately took the arm he preferred. "If you'll excuse me," she said to Enid.

"Certainly, my dear."

King watched them walk away, chattering animatedly, with silver eyes that were positively grim.

"Don't they suit?" Dora asked innocently. "She's very pretty, your houseguest."

"I suppose she's stuck up," Darcy said cattily. "Most pretty women are. Helpless, too, I imagine, and not much use around the house. Can she ride?"

"I don't believe she does," Enid said, taken aback by the criticisms.

"Can you see her on a horse?" King asked with cold sarcasm, shocking his mother even further. "She's a chocolate box beauty with no spirit and even less imagination."

"You seem to know her rather well, to make such easy comparisons," Darcy probed.

King shrugged. "Her brother and I have been best friends for many years. I know Miss Howard only from the vantage point of an infrequent visitor to their home."

"I see." Darcy moved closer to him. "You don't like her, then?"

"Darcy, really, what a question!" Dora laughed nervously.

"No, I don't like her," King replied bluntly, one corner of his wide mouth curling up with contempt as he stared at her and Ted on the dance floor. "She won't last long out here."

Enid started to speak, her angry eyes eloquent, but King forestalled her.

"Shall we dance?" King asked Darcy, and, nodding to his mother and Darcy's, he escorted her inside to the living room with the other dancers.

 

Amelia found Ted to be as undemanding and kind as she'd first thought. He had a bright personality, uncomplicated. As they danced, they talked of the East, because he was a frequent traveler there on business for his father's banking firm.

"I know Atlanta very well," he told her. "It is going to be a major city one day, you know. It has the potential for greatness."

"I find it maddening to live in," Amelia replied. "I enjoy the spaciousness of this vast land, although El Paso is no small town either! One can become lost there in no time!"

"I don't doubt it. Miss Howard, may I call on you?"

"I am staying with the Culhanes at present," she said reluctantly, "and my father is away on a hunting trip. I do not feel comfortable asking you to call on me there. It would be best if you wait until my father returns. We live in El Paso, in a boardinghouse."

"I see." He glanced toward King and Darcy. King was glaring at them openly.

"Mr. Culhane doesn't like me," Amelia said abruptly. "My father has decided that I would make a good match for King's brother, Alan. King does not share this sentiment. He feels that I am unsuitable."

"Does he really?" Ted, who had known King for many years, had never seen him hostile toward a woman—especially a beautiful woman like this. It was unexpected, to say the least.

"I should not have spoken so openly," Amelia said quickly, shocked at her own forwardness. She flushed. "Please forgive me. It has been a trying week."

"There is nothing to forgive," he chided gently. "You dance divinely, Miss Howard."

"Thank you. I haven't danced in many years, and only then with my brother. The band is very good, is it not?"

"It is, indeed. The man playing the violin is my brother, and the flute-player is my sister's husband."

"I am impressed!" she said. "Are you musical, Mr. Simpson?"

"No, sadly. Are you?"

"I play the piano, a little," she confessed. "It is my only real accomplishment." She wisely kept the rest of them secret. This man knew King. She didn't want her enemy to know that she was anything but his image of her—dull and not very bright and totally spineless. The last thing in the world she coveted was King's interest. Let Darcy have him, she thought in panic, feeling his eyes on her even across the room. Why was he always watching her?

"I cannot believe that such a lovely woman has only one accomplishment." Ted chuckled. "I must get to know you, Miss Howard, and see what others you possess."

"If my father agrees, I should enjoy receiving you," she said demurely.

His hand around her waist contracted and pulled her almost imperceptibly closer. "No more than I shall, Miss Howard," he replied. He smiled down at her, and across the room, a tall, silver-eyed man had to fight down a sudden murderous impulse.

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K
ing didn't ask Amelia to dance. His mother approached him just as the party was winding down and bluntly asked why.

He was sipping punch, watching her dance again with Ted Simpson. "I have no desire to dance with Miss Howard," he said. "Isn't it obvious?"

"You make it so obvious that the other guests are speculating about the cause," Enid said shortly. Her dark eyes narrowed. "You might bow to tradition long enough to give the appearance of civility toward her."

He cocked an eyebrow. "Do I strike you as a man who gives a damn about tradition?" he asked with some of her own bluntness. "I have no affection for or interest in your guest," he added coldly. "I came here to spend some time with Darcy, whom I shall most likely marry one day soon."

Enid had to bite her tongue not to say anything. "She will be a match for you," she said finally.

"Indeed she will. She has spirit, and she is fearless. "

"She is also cold-hearted and an utter… witch!" she added fiercely. "And you are blind."

She turned and walked back to the other side of the room to renew an acquaintance with some of the other women present.

King glared after her. He wasn't about to be swayed by his mother. Perhaps she liked that docility that clung to Amelia. He did not. In fact, it infuriated him. So did the look of her, radiant in Ted's arms, laughing up at him as she danced.

A picture of her in a green gingham dress, dancing under the mesquite trees with a bouquet of wildflowers, flashed unwelcome into his mind. Amelia, her blond hair flying in the wind, her brown eyes laughing, as they were now…

His hand contracted in his pocket, and he felt his anger grow as he watched the way Ted handled her. She should not allow such familiarity to a man whom she had only met, he told himself. She was silly and stupid to let his flattery affect her so!

He almost walked over and took her away from the other man. It was an impulse so unlike him that he deliberately turned away from the temptation and went back to dance with Darcy.

She walked out onto the shadowed end of the moonlit porch with him, noticing his preoccupation.

"What troubles you, King?" she asked.

"Roundup," he muttered. He lit a cigar without asking her permission and hooked his boot on the lower rail of the porch to smoke it.

"I hate the taste of cigars," she said haughtily.

He glanced down at her with an amused smile. "Shouldn't I kiss you, then?" he chided.

She moved closer, almost purring. "If you like."

He threw the cigar down with little appreciation for its age and cost and drew Darcy roughly against him. He noticed the flicker of her eyelids and her fixed smile, and he wanted to curse her. Darcy pretended to be enslaved by him, but her distaste of intimacy with him was all too visible. Darcy's people had been well-to-do, but that was no longer the case. Darcy liked high living, and with her father facing bankruptcy, King was her best bet. How he hated knowing that she barely tolerated his embraces for the security marriage to him would offer!

He kissed her roughly and felt her hands go against his chest, pushing, almost at once.

"King!" she laughed, drawing back. "How impetuous! We aren't even engaged," she added suggestively.

He let her go and calmly lit another cigar. She wasn't the first woman who suffered him for gain. He could only remember one woman in his life who'd welcomed him in intimacy. But she'd only been hoping to marry him for his fortune. When she thought he was at risk of losing it, she'd run away with a tinker. Ironically, the two of them had been killed by a band of renegades led by a Mexican devil who made a habit of raiding up into Texas. The Rangers were after him even now, although he was like a will-o'-the-wisp to catch. One day, he promised himself, he'd see Rodriguez swing from a rope or stand in front of a firing squad. He was sure that Alice would have come back to him, that she had truly loved him. She had panicked at the thought of being poor, that was all. She would have married him. But Rodriguez had killed her before she could see her mistake in running away. Alice had welcomed him into her bed time and time again, and he still woke sweating, remembering her quicksilver response. He had mourned her deeply, just after her death. But over the years, the sting had faded somewhat. Not that he forgave Rodriguez. Oh, no.

He smoked his cigar quietly, lost in his thoughts, and decided that Darcy's reluctance didn't affect him. Perhaps if he had cared about her as he had cared about Alice it would have.

 

Quinn Howard had settled himself down for the night in a small canyon of the Guadalupe Mountains in New Mexico. He had a smokeless fire and over it he was roasting a rabbit. The critter was mostly skin and bones, but it would fill empty space. He was sick to death of hardtack and jerky.