Fool for Love (Montana Romance) (19 page)

“No, he didn’t,” Eric said.  He swiped his h
at off and scratched his head.

“I wasn’t aware they had.”  Michael shrugged, turning to Christian and Phineas.  They each shook their heads and shrugged as if it was news to them too.

Eric huffed out a breath and began twirling his hat.  Amelia’s frown deepened.

“They ended up leaving because I couldn’t offer them the raise they wanted,” Curtis said.  “On your behalf, of course.  Lucky for us, there was a group of Irishmen that showed up at about the same time.”

“Yeah, Michael mentioned them.”  Eric’s hat was spinning faster than train wheels in no time.

Amelia felt as though she might crawl out of her skin.  Nothing was right, but she was hard-pressed to tell if that was the end of a long journey talking or the unfamiliarity of Cold Springs or her frustration
and disappointment with Eric.

“Bless my soul, if this isn’t a party waiting to happen, I don’t know what is!”

A handsome woman in a fashionable dress of deep purple, her thick, silver curls piled high on her head, approached them from the hotel lobby’s front desk.  She threw her arms wide as though she would embrace them all.  Physically, she fit the description Eric had given Amelia of Mrs. Delilah Reynolds, but in person the woman was a thousand times more vibrant.

“Eric!  I’ve missed you so much!”  She swept right up to Eric, hugging him like he was her son and kissing him like he was not.

“Delilah.”  Eric laughed when she let him go, darting a sheepish glance to Amelia.  “I missed you too.”

“And Michael and Charlie!  Home at last!”  Delilah blew over to her other friends, kissing Michael on both cheeks and hugging Charlie.  “Honey, you’re ready to pop that little one out any day here, I can feel it.  You need to set yourself down where I can bring you something to eat and drink.”

“Thank you!” Charlie sighed.

“I got a group of miners taking up space in my dining room who think they’re better than the saloon because they’ve got pockets full of gold nuggets,” Delilah said, “but I’ll tell them to scoot so you can all sit together.  I’m just so happy to see you all back!  I’ve been left with no one but these two sticks in the mud for entertainment for too long.”  She gestured to Christian and Phineas, stepping back to kiss each of their cheeks.

“Delilah, there’s someone I need you to meet.”  Eric stepped apart from their group, taking Amelia out of Curtis’s grasp.  “This is Amelia.  We, uh, we got married.”

He lowered his head, a faint blush coming to his face.  Amelia caught it as though he’d dropped to his knees and confessed everything.

She put on her most polite smile, ready to dive into the deception.  Delilah’s kohl-rimmed eyes narrowed for an instant only before she smiled and moved to stand in front of Amelia.

“Well!  I n
ever thought I’d see the day!”

She swept Amelia with a glance that took in the fashionable style of her hair, the care she’d taken with her complexion, the cut of her dress, and especially the mound of her stomach.  Three seconds and Amelia was certain beyond a shadow of a doubt that Mrs. Delilah Reynolds knew everything. 
Everything
.

Delilah held out her hand.  “I don’t believe Cold Springs has ever welcomed so fine a lady to our company.”

“You’re too kind,” Amelia said.  She reached for Delilah’s hand.  Delilah clasped closed both of her hands over Amelia’s one.  Their eyes met.

“Honey, I’m always far too kind.”  Her eyebrow twitched even as she smiled.  “It’s what I’m known for.”  Her hands were warm and soft around Amelia’s.  “We have a lot to talk about, I think.”

“I’m sure we do,” Amelia answered.  Every instinct told her not to meet Delilah’s eyes for fear of spilling all her secrets.

“Eric, where did you find this lovely English lass?”  Delilah let Amelia’s hands drop, skating over the moment.

“She was the governess in the house where I was staying,” Eric said, smiling without a clue of the exchange that had just happened between the two women.  “It was love at first sight.”

“I’m sure it was.”  Delilah’s grin was as good as an off-color joke.  “Does Jacinta know?”

Eric’s color peaked.  “We ran into her in the street.  She wasn’t happy.”

“Of course not.”  Delilah leaned closer to Amelia and said, “That crazy woman set her cap for Eric years ago and nothing anyone could say would get her to see common sense.”  She straightened and chuckled at herself.  “Let’s get you all settled and fed.”

Delilah swept past them all, heading for the dining room.  Amelia wasn’t entirely sure what had happened, but she knew she’d just met a force to be reckoned with.

It was almost an afterthought of the scene when Delilah tilted her head over her shoulder and said, “Hello, Curtis,” to Eric’s cousin.

Before Curtis could come out with, “Morning, Delilah,” Mrs. Delilah Reynolds had brushed on, not bothering to give him the time of day.

Chapter Eleven

Leaning back in his chair at the largest table in Delilah’s fine restaurant, electric lights sparkling overhead, full belly and the company of friends he’d sorely missed, Eric should have been happier than a rooster on a roof.  Instead he was weighted down by the sense that everything was about to go to pot.

“The electricity is what I find most fascinating,” Curtis said to Amelia.  He’d made a point to seat himself on her other side when Eric had held a chair out for her at the start of dinner.  “The whole town’s been steadily lighting up, house after house, store after store, and all within the year.  Of course, Delilah made sure the hotel was wired up years ago.  I think that says quite a bit, don’t you?”

He sent Delilah a teasing wink across the table, one Delilah didn’t return.  But then, Delilah was probably distracted by the noisy bunch of half-drunk miners at a table closer to the bar.  They laughed and shouted at each other as though they were in a saloon.

“What that says is that I know how to get what I need to run a business,” Delilah answered Curtis.

“And says it in style,” Curtis agreed.

Christian leaned back in his chair and sent his best Justice of the Peace glare across the room to the miners.  The miners roundly ignored him.

Curtis shifted his attention back to Amelia.  “Everyone’s been niggling their neighbors, trying to figure out where the money came from.  Near as we can figure, Father Christmas started bringing his presents to Cold Springs around December and hasn’t stopped since then.”

“How curious,” Charlie said.  She swapped a look with Michael that left no doubt in Eric’s mind of who Father Christmas was.

“One doesn’t often hear of a town growing without any idea where the financial means came from,” Amelia said.

“No indeed,” Curtis laughed a little too loud.  “One doesn’t.”

If Eric didn’t know any better, he would say Curtis was making fun of Amelia’s way of talking.  But he knew better.

He was more unsettled by the unusual quiet that had fallen over Amelia since they stepped off the train.  She couldn’t really think he would take up with Gertie and the girls now that he was home, could she?  He may have been a fool, but he wasn’t stupid.  More likely it was the root of all evil herself.  Amelia had been waspish since meeting the queen bee, Jacinta.

“My theory is that the town’s good luck is being doled out by a miner who cashed in on the sly,” Curtis went on.

“A miner?” Amelia asked.

“A miner,” Eric scoffed.  He huffed and took a long swig of beer.

“And why not?” Curtis answered.  “The hills and mountains around here are rich with gold and silver.  Why, half the town’s population, the half that aren’t ranchers and farmers, mind you, are miners o
r ex-miners or wannabe miners.”

“Mining is a fool’s game,” Eric told him.  “It makes men crazy, turns them into liars and drunks and cheats.”

“It can make a man wealthy beyond his wildest imaginings,” Curtis argued.

“Yeah, if he buries himself in a hole and claws at the innards of a mountain ‘til he’s old and gray before his time.”

Curtis laughed and leaned closer to Amelia.  “Eric and I have been having this argument since we were kids, Cousin Amelia.  For some strange reason he’s got an aversion to dreams and wealth.”

“I got an aversion to get rich quick schemes that make men too good for honest work,” Eric corrected him.  “Besides, I’d rather ride out in the sunshine and spend my time and effort dealing with living things than rocks.”

“Cattle are big, dirty, dumb animals,” Curtis smirked.  “But I suppose if you feel akin to them.”

A flash of irritation had Eric reaching for another gulp of beer.  Curtis always did think he could jab at him the way he and Christian poked at each ot
her, only Curtis’s jabs stung.

“Cattle are not dirty,” he mumbled and tu
rned his attention to his beer.

The pack of miners at the other end of the dining room burst into song, all well beyond drunk.  Christian huffed and threw down his napkin as if he would get up and deal with it.  Delilah put a hand on his forearm and shook her head.

“You think that one of them generously donated a portion of their lode to the town of Cold Springs?” Phin asked, shaking his head.

“Yes.”  Curtis answered without looking at him and quickly went on with, “One way or another, it’s quite a mystery, don’t you think, Cousin Amelia?”

The hair on the back of Eric’s neck bristled at the way Curtis dismissed Phin and cozied up to his wife.

Except that Amelia wasn’t really his wife.  Nothing he had been able to say to her during their whole aching train ride from New York to Cold Springs had gotten him any closer to changing her mind on that score.  He needed to step up and put some effort into things.

“Well now, I think it’s about time I found a sturdy wagon and drove Amelia out to the ranch,” he said.  The company around the table stretched and rippled with movement as though they were ready to get up and go about their business too.  “I’d like to show Amelia her new home.”

Eric’s hopeful smile was met by Amelia’s frosty January.  His heart sank.  He pushed back his chair and stood, offering her a hand.

“I don’t rightly know where I’ll be able to find a wagon, but if worse comes to worst I’ll ride out to the ranch to get my own and come back for you,” Eric said.

Amelia opened her mouth to reply, but Curtis jumped to his feet and cut her off.

“Maybe it’s best that you stay here in town for a little, so that your new English wife can find her feet and make some friends.”

Amelia closed her mouth and stared at Curtis as if he’d grown another head.

Eric rolled his itching shoulders and scratched his head.  “I hadn’t thought of things like that.”

Now Amelia whipped to glare at him as if he’d done something else wrong.  He’d been doing just about everything wrong since the second they stepped off the ship.

“It makes all the sense in the world,” Curtis went on, smiling at his idea.  “Stay here at the hotel.  I’m sure Delilah has a room for you.  And it seems that your wife and Mrs. West have become fast friends.  Surely Amelia should stick around, since Mrs. West’s time is close at hand.”

Charlie, who was being helped out of her chair by Michael, turned to the conversation with a blink on hearing her name.  She looked from Curtis to Eric to Amelia.  When Charlie and Amelia’s eyes met Eric had the notion that women could communicate with each other entirely through their eyes.

“Well if you don’t mind,” Charlie said once she was fully upright, “you may choose to stay in town instead of going home, but my home is in town and more than anything I just want to sit on my own sofa for a while.”

“By all means, Mrs. West,” Curtis said before Eric could get his mouth half open to thank Charlie for everything that she’d done for him on the trip.

“I should be going too,” Phin added as their party broke up and wandered back toward the lobby.  “It may be Sunday, but I still have quite a lot of work to get done.”

He glanced to Michael, who nodded in return, looking mighty suspicious.  Women weren’t the only ones who talked without words.  Eric was baffled by the whole thing.  He wrestled against the feeling that his friends were deserting him.

“I need to get to the bottom of that racket over there,” Christian said.  “It was a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Quinlan,” he added with a sly look at Eric before stomping back into the far corner of the restaurant to deal with the rowdy miners.

That left Eric to continue on to the lobby with only Amelia, Curtis, and Delilah.

“If you want a room for a couple of nights I can set you up with something, no problem,” Delilah said, “But that should be your decision, not his.”  She barely nodded toward Curtis.

For some reason Eric had the feeling she was lecturing him like a schoolboy.  He twirled his hat in his hands.  “What do you want to do?” he asked Amelia.

Amelia opened her mouth but it was Curtis who said, “She’d like to stay here, of course!  What fine Englishwoman wouldn’t want to be a guest under Mrs. Reynolds’s roof?”

Delilah crossed her arms, jaw hard as she stared at Curtis.