Authors: Robin Lee Hatcher
“No,” the older woman said. “You two young folks go along. I’ll just sit right here and close my eyes for a short rest. I’m feeling the weariness in my bones.”
Tyson wondered what his mother-in-law thought of him. Had Diana told her about their six-month bargain? Did Mrs. Fisher hope Diana would leave or stay? The woman had liked him once. Back when he’d come courting her daughter and had been all smiles and charm. Back before he’d hurt Diana, back before he’d proven himself the worst kind of scoundrel. If Gloria Fisher disliked him, he’d given her plenty of reasons for it.
He didn’t have to wonder how Diana felt about him, and he knew better than to offer her his arm. Instead he indicated they should head out of the parlor. Together they made their way down the hall, passed the main staircase, and out onto the rear porch.
It was a beautiful day, the sky a cloudless blue, the air smelling of spring. Diana seemed a perfect fit for her surroundings—fresh, sweet, vibrant. She wore a dress of pale green that flattered her coloring. Although he supposed when a woman was as beautiful as his wife, even a flour sack would be made lovely on her.
The walkway ended at the back fence that separated the lawn from the pathway to the stables, arena, and paddocks. The wealthy merchant who’d built the home a decade before had raised Thoroughbreds for his four daughters. While Tyson hadn’t purchased the property because of the large, modern stables, he was glad for it all the same. It pleased him because he knew it would please Diana.
They stopped in the wide doorway to the airy building. A row of closed stalls lined the eastern and western walls, and as if in welcome, horses thrust their heads over the gates. Diana made a soft sound of delight.
“That’s a fine mare there.” He pointed to the first stall to their right where a sleek bay bobbed her head and nickered.
Diana moved toward the horse, but Tyson stayed where he was, watching as she stopped outside the stall and stroked the mare’s head, speaking to her, staring into her eyes. After a few minutes, Diana opened the gate and stepped inside.
In those first weeks after Tyson and Diana’s wedding, they’d ridden together often. They’d both been happiest away from the Applegate mansion, riding through the forests that surrounded it. He supposed she’d liked spending time with her new husband, but his reasons had been less admirable. He’d wanted to avoid seeing or talking to his father. If that meant taking Diana along with him …
Regret stung his conscience. She’d loved him once. Perhaps it had been the immature, untested love of a teenage girl with her head in the clouds, but it could have become something more if he’d been a man of integrity. If he’d stuck around to nurture it. If he’d treated his wife with the care and tenderness she deserved. But he hadn’t stayed.
He wanted to make it up to her. Would she let him?
“She’s beautiful, Tyson. Exquisite lines. She must ride like a dream.” Diana looked over the stall door at him.
“Glad you like her. She’s yours.”
“Mine?”
It felt good, giving something to her for no other reason than to bring her pleasure. “Yours.” He moved to stand outside the stall. He’d known the Arabian mare—with the faint white star on
her forehead and the short white stocking on her right hind leg—would appeal to Diana. That much had been easy to foretell. But he hoped he would learn many more things that appealed to her in the coming weeks. If he could, he would give those to her as well.
As she returned his gaze, her expression changed from happy to wary. “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why are you giving her to me?”
“Do I need a reason to give my wife a horse?”
“It won’t change anything between us, Tyson.” Suspicion narrowed her eyes. Her chin lifted. “My affections cannot be bought so easily. Not this time.”
“I’m not trying to buy your affections. I’m just … It isn’t … I only thought …” His own sputtering response left him irritated and made his voice gruff when he continued. “You’ll need a horse, Diana, and now you have one. Just say thank you and let it go at that.”
She glared at him. “Thank you.” The two words seemed to freeze the air around them.
Females! Maybe this was the real reason he’d spent so many years climbing mountains and tramping through forests with other men. Men were easy to understand. At least for another man.
But women? Heaven help him.
“What?” Jeremiah Applegate shot up from his desk chair. “What did you say?”
His clerk could hardly look him in the eye. “Your son was not declared dead, sir.” The man cleared his throat. “Your son is alive, Mr. Applegate.”
Jeremiah felt his eyes widen and his heart quicken. Tyson was alive? Impossible! Alive? How could that be? But if it was … If it
was true … Overwhelming emotions surged through him—including fear that his hopes would be raised only to be dashed again.
Sounding doubtful, his clerk continued, “Your son is in Boise. With his wife.”
“Tyson’s in Boise City? With Diana? For how long?”
“I don’t know, sir. Not long or I’m sure you would have heard of it before now.”
Jeremiah turned toward the window. He’d spent a great deal of time and money keeping tabs on his son in the early years after he got his inheritance. He’d known what countries the boy visited and whom he kept company with. He’d known most everything of importance right up to the time Tyson went to Cuba to fight in the blasted war. And then had come word that his son was presumed dead.
It was like the sun had been extinguished from the sky.
Tyson’s body had never been recovered, but other soldiers had reported him killed on the battlefield in a massive explosion. Everyone believed that to be true. Jeremiah’s grief had been compounded by the inability to lay his son to rest beside Tyson’s mother and grandmother. He’d lived with that grief for almost two years. Grief and regret.
Was it true? Was Tyson alive? And if so, how had he kept his father from hearing of it? How had he kept it from his wife? Jeremiah hadn’t been looking for him, of course, but still …
The clerk cleared his throat again. “There’s more, sir.”
“Well? Speak up, man. What is it?”
“Tyson is planning a run for the Senate.”
“In a few years.”
“No, sir. In this election. I’m told he will announce his write-in candidacy soon.”
“Write-in? Why would he do anything that foolish?” Waving
away the clerk, Jeremiah sank onto his chair, his thoughts a blur. From the moment Tyson was born, Jeremiah had had big plans for him. College. A law practice. Election to public office. Maybe even one day becoming president. But Tyson had struggled against his father’s wishes from an early age. There had been many battles of will between father and son before Jeremiah saw Tyson graduate from college and become a lawyer.
But then the boy’s grandmother had left him a fortune, and Tyson had married that Fisher girl. An Irish orphan from Chicago. No kind of wife for a politician, in Jeremiah’s mind. Oh, she was pretty enough and not without the proper social graces. But if a man wanted to get ahead in this world, he needed to marry into a family of both influence and affluence. The Fishers had been neither, and, to his shame—a feeling he despised but had felt all too often of late—Jeremiah hadn’t let Diana forget what he thought of her.
He swiveled toward the window that overlooked one of the Applegate silver mines.
In one of their last arguments, Tyson had sworn he would never run for any political office. What had changed the boy’s mind? Why had he kept his whereabouts a secret? Hadn’t he known he was presumed dead? And what had made him return to the wife he’d left so long ago?
“I’d best get down there and see for myself.” He stood again and strode out of his office.
August 1892
Diana hated to admit it, but she was homesick. She was almost eighteen—too old to feel that way. But she was homesick all the same. Her parents’ friends, Mr. and Mrs. Stewart, and their
daughters, Jane and Ophelia, had been kind to her throughout her stay at their northern Idaho home. But she was eager for her parents to return from New York so she could go back to Montana with them. She felt so out of place here, especially tonight.
Standing near a tall pine tree on the edge of the yard, Diana fought tears of loneliness as she watched the festivities. Torches burned all around, bathing the grounds in flickering golden light. The party guests of the two Stewart girls stood in small groups visiting and laughing, sharing the kind of stories that only longtime friends with common pasts could tell. The young women wore pretty pastel frocks in the latest designs. The young men wore light-colored summer suits.
“Why are you hiding, Miss Fisher?”
Diana sucked in a breath, surprised by the deep, male voice that came out of the shadows behind her.
He stepped into the light, and she recognized him. Tyson Applegate. Ophelia had pointed him out earlier in the evening, providing every detail she could think of. He was an attorney, recently returned to Idaho from Missouri. At twenty-five, he was older than most of the other guests. The only son of a mining tycoon, his family was the wealthiest and most important in the entire Silver Valley. Perhaps in the entire Northwest. According to Ophelia, every girl from sixteen to twenty-five and from Seattle to Missoula had set her cap for him. Understandable. He was handsome beyond description, self-assured, and very, very rich.
And he’d called Diana by name. He knew who she was too.
She lifted her chin in a show of confidence and hoped he hadn’t seen how sorry she’d been feeling for herself. “I’m not hiding.” A bald-faced lie.
“No?” He grinned. “Well, I am.”
“You are?”
“Absolutely. I was on my way down to the dock. Care to go with me? We can take off our shoes and dip our feet in the lake.”
“I-I …” She shouldn’t go, of course. Alone, in the dark, with a man who was a stranger. But she found she couldn’t refuse. “All right.”
Tyson took her hand and led her down the path.
By the evening’s end, he’d led her heart down a path straight to love.
Brook Calhoun poured himself another brandy before settling into his favorite chair in the library, his thoughts as dark and cold as the fireless hearth.
Five days. Five days had passed since the night of the disastrous dinner party. Five days since Diana’s husband’s return had destroyed his carefully laid plans. Curse Tyson Applegate! Brook had done everything right. He’d befriended Diana soon after she moved from Nampa to Boise with her mother. He’d been kind and consoling. He’d been the soul of discretion these many months. He’d never let her see how desperate he was to get his hands on the great wealth she would inherit once her missing husband was declared dead.
He lifted the brandy snifter and threw the liquid to the back of his throat, enjoying the burn on the way down.
Diana was supposed to have been his. Her money was supposed to have been his. He’d had plans for it. Diana and her wealth would have been his ticket into the upper echelons of Boise society—and beyond Boise too. He wasn’t meant to remain one of the middle class. He was born for greater things.
And now?
He’d had no choice but to call off their unofficial engagement.
To do otherwise would have been to endanger his reputation. And since he’d been living beyond his means while courting the lovely Mrs. Applegate, he couldn’t afford to offend his more affluent and influential friends.
Anger surged inside him, and he swore as he slammed the snifter onto the side table, so hard he snapped its stem. He cursed again. He cursed God. He cursed Diana. And above all, he cursed Tyson Applegate.
Heads turned as Diana and Tyson followed the maître d’ to their table. Tyson couldn’t blame the men for craning their necks for a better look at his wife. She seemed to grow more beautiful by the hour. One would not believe she’d moved to a new home this very day, with scarcely enough time to unpack her trunks, and had prepared for this evening without benefit of a maid.
The gown she wore was the color of the sea off a tropical island he’d spent a number of months on early in his adventures. Although he suspected it wasn’t the latest fashion—due to his father’s miserly control over her income—she made it look new. Not to mention that the design accented her curves in the way it was supposed to. The square décolleté revealed the pale skin across her breastbone and the long stretch of her neck. Her hair was done up on her head with fiery ringlets curling at her nape. The music from a string ensemble—playing somewhere out of his view—kept time to the sway of her hips. Mesmerizing. Too bad they weren’t attending a ball somewhere. Dancing would have allowed him to take her into his arms, hold her close, breathe in that earthy cologne she favored.
The maître d’ held out a chair for her, and with a practiced sweep of one arm, she held the train of her skirt out of the way as she settled onto the seat. Tyson sat across from her.
“I’ve never dined in this restaurant before.” Diana looked around the room with its high ceilings and sumptuous decor.
Tyson wondered why Brook Calhoun hadn’t brought her here. From what he’d been able to learn about the man in a short period of time, Calhoun was all about moving in the right circles. Chez Les Bois was just the sort of place in which that man would want to be seen with a beautiful woman. But he already knew the answer to his own question: Brook Calhoun, it had been reported to Tyson, was short on income and had probably failed to pay his bill at Chez Les Bois one time too many.
Hadn’t Diana ever suspected her erstwhile fiancé wanted to marry a
wealthy
widow? Or had she been so in love with Calhoun she hadn’t cared about his motives?
Loathing rose in Tyson’s throat. He disliked the idea that Diana might love Brook Calhoun. Loathed it more than he cared to admit.
“Is something wrong, Tyson?”
He met her gaze. “No. Why?”
“You were frowning at me.”
“Must be the dim lighting.”
She gave him a little smile that said she didn’t believe him.
Thankfully, the waiter arrived at that moment. Dinner was ordered and an appropriate wine selected, and soon they were alone at the table once again.