A Fire in the Blood (40 page)

      
When they arrived at the corner of 17th and Hill streets, they saw a press of elegant carriages with passengers disembarking, ladies bedecked in brilliant silks, and gentlemen in handsomely cut dark suits. Jess had hired a small buggy for the short ride from the Metropolitan. He assisted Lissa down, and they approached the three-story brick monstrosity that had opened amid great hoopla the past May.

      
The opera house proper boasted seating for one thousand patrons, but the elite Association gala was being held in a posh ballroom on the second floor called the Library Hall. They had no more than walked through the main entrance on 17th Street when the subde whispers and insulting silences began. Gushed greetings were being exchanged between expensively jeweled ladies, while hard-eyed stockmen clasped one another's callused hands. But no one approached Jess and Lissa. Everyone knew who they were. Some averted their eyes or turned their backs. Many stared openly as the couple ascended the fanning stairs to the ballroom.

      
"Are you sure you want to go through with this?" he asked her, sotto voce.

      
"Leave—and give those vipers the satisfaction?" She snorted indignantly, then smiled up at him.

      
He scowled as one matron in a garish paisley silk gown stared at him through a lorgnette. The old harridan was scalded by eyes the color of boiling mercury and almost dropped her pretentious glasses.

      
The orchestra played a sweeping waltz when they entered the crowded room. "Quite a bit more elegant than the fiddles and guitars at J Bar shindigs, isn't it?" Lissa asked, seemingly unconcerned by the thinly veiled hostility surrounding them.

      
"There's Evers," Jess said after scanning the room quickly. As they crossed the polished maple floor, men and women stood aside as if reenacting the parting of the Red Sea.

      
He nodded to Cy Evers and Jamie MacFerson. A third man, Noble Winthrop, stood with them. All three acknowledged Jess and made self-conscious bows to Lissa. If not friendly, they were at least polite. Then the dour Scot cut through the preliminary courtesies, addressing Jess.

      
"Cy tells me you want to send reps to the fall roundups."

      
"Yes. And we'll expect all the other district reps to attend J Bar's as well," Jess replied. "Any problems with that?"

      
MacFerson shrugged. "One to ask is Lem Mathis."

      
"Mathis'll do what the big cattlemen tell him to," Jess said flatly.

      
MacFerson tugged at the tight neckband of his starched shirt where the reddish flesh was puddling over. "Empire Land and Cattle will go along."

      
Jess's eyes moved to Cy.

      
"You're in with Diamond E." Evers turned to Winthrop. "Noble here runs the Circle W down on the territorial line."

      
"I'll agree to go along," Winthrop said to Jess.

      
A crafty look passed over Evers's weathered face. "I reckon you can pass that along to Lem 'n see what he says."

      
Jess nodded. "I'll do that. Obliged."

      
Cy Evers raised the glass in his hand and gestured toward the elaborately festooned tables along the far wall where drinks were being served. "Last I seen of Lem, he was greasin' his elbow over thataway."

      
The Robbinses bade the trio good evening and headed toward Mathis, who was engaged in conversation with a group of men and women.

      
"Poor Dellia. I imagine she's beside herself missing the ball," Lissa whispered to Jess.

      
"She's lucky her pa caught her when he did," was all Jess felt like saying on that subject. "It might be better if I went to see Mathis in the morning, now that the roundup is settled."

      
"Quit trying to protect me, Jess. I had to face down Lemuel Mathis alone before Papa died." She remembered Mathis's gloating face when she had been forced to sign the hateful divorce petition.

      
He felt her tremble. "Then there's no—"

      
"Yes, there is. I want to tell him, Jess." Her voice was tinged with iron and her chin was pugnaciously out.

      
As they neared the small group, Mathis caught sight of them and gave a false smile that more closely resembled a sneer.
      
"Well, the new owner of J Bar and his lady."

      
"Married women hold their own property in Wyoming, Mathis. J Bar is still Lissa's," Jess replied.

      
"Of course, of course." He looked expansively around the assemblage as if they were all sharing a private dirty joke. "Horace Wattson and Mrs. Wattson, their daughter Miss Emmaline, Jake Moorhead and Mrs. Moorhead, you all know Miss—" He corrected himself a little too pointedly, "Mrs. Robbins and her husband Jesse."

      
The men nodded politely enough, but Louella Wattson drew herself up as if a muddy pup had just shaken himself on her taffeta gown. Emmaline looked about ready to faint. "I think we need some fresh air," Louella huffed.

      
Lucy Moorhead stared at Jess in amazement, unable to keep the frank sexual interest from her eyes. "Yes, air, that's just the thing." She turned reluctantly away, but the Wattson girl stood rooted to the floor.

      
"Come along, Emmaline," Louella added, fairly dragging the fluttering little wren by one matchstick arm.

      
The men quickly excused themselves and escorted the ladies away. Tension between Mathis and Robbins crackled.

"I saw you talking to Cy and Jamie."

      
Jess smiled. "With you being the president of the Association, as a courtesy I wanted to let you know J Bar will participate in the district roundup."

      
A frown creased his broad forehead, but Mathis quickly erased it and smiled glibly. "Really, I understood you were so short-handed you wouldn't be able to send any reps."

      
"That's all changed since Jess is back," Lissa interjected. "J Bar will be well represented."

      
Mathis's expression changed subtly as he looked from Lissa's defiant face to the unreadable mask of his dark rival. "You planning to stay around this time, Robbins?"

      
Jess felt Lissa stiffen, but before she could say anything, he exerted a bit of pressure on her arm and replied, "That's for me to settle with my wife." Without another word he turned, guiding Lissa along with him, his hand possessively against the small of her back.

      
They walked toward the opposite end of the refreshment tables that groaned with champagne punch and an assortment of delicacies, including the cattlemen's perennial favorite, fresh oysters. When they reached the huge punch bowl, the other revelers stepped away. Jess looked at the black man serving the drinks, indicating that he and his lady wished a libation. With a broad smile lighting his face, the man filled two crystal cups to the brim and handed them over.

      
"Our business here is over, Lissa. We should leave," he said, swallowing the bubbly sweet liquid with a grimace of distaste.

      
"What, and deprive Lucy Moorhead of her fantasies?" she whispered. "She's been devouring you with her eyes ever since we stepped into the room."

      
He chuckled mirthlessly. In fact, any number of the women, some quite handsome younger matrons and a bevy of unmarried girls, had been covertly casting admiring glances his way. He was used to sly lust from proper white ladies. "It's only the thrill of the forbidden. If I were to approach any one of them, they'd drop through the floor in outraged indignity."

      
She could see the way his jaw hardened and his eyes narrowed, subtle signs of agitation. Lissa now realized that social rejection hurt him a great deal more than he let on. That was why he felt he was harming her by staying.
I'm learning to read him.
She set her half-empty cup down on a table and said, "The least we can do is show them how well we can dance. . . ."

      
A bitter smile touched his lips. "You mean show them that a breed gunman can dance at all."

      
"I already know how well you dance. Remember our moonlight waltz at the ranch? Now I want to dance with you in public—to show everyone how proud I am to be your wife."

      
She looked so desirable and stubborn, standing expectantly with her upraised palms open to him, that he could not resist.

"I think this is a big mistake, Lissa." Setting down his cup, he took her in his arms just as the orchestra struck up another waltz.

      
As they swept around the floor in perfect rhythm, every eye in the crowded room seemed to be fastened on them.

      
"I'm the envy of every woman in the place," she breathed against his shoulder.

      
"Only in the night, Lissa. None of them would be caught dead with me in daylight—least of all right here, dancing."

      
"You just might be surprised—but don't put it to the test. I'm a very jealous woman." He tightened his possessive hold on her a fraction, and she smiled to herself.

      
Across the room, Emmaline Wattson fanned herself in extreme agitation as she watched the striking couple dance. "I cannot believe Mr. Mathis and the other gentlemen in the Association countenance this," she said in a quavering voice to her mother, Louella.

      
Geraldine Cameron, a young rancher's wife from Albany County, overheard them and chuckled. "J Bar is the biggest spread around. The Association can't keep him out even if he is a Mex-Injun. Anyway, he sure cleans up real purty."

      
Mrs. Wattson took in a hissed breath. "For shame, Geraldine. Better not let your husband hear any such thing!"

      
Geraldine just smiled and rolled her eyes. "I can look without my man bein' any the wiser."

      
Louella squinted at the pair gliding across the polished maple floor with such grace and flair. Everyone was watching the disgraceful spectacle. "Come along, Emmaline. This time I do feel a need for fresh air."

      
As the mother and daughter wended their way through the arched doorway into the less crowded hall, Julia Creed joined them.

      
When the music stopped, Jess bowed to Lissa and escorted her from the floor. "Satisfied?" he asked her, noting the hostile expressions around the room. He did not want an open confrontation that would humiliate Lissa.

      
She smiled rather wistfully, wanting to dance all night with her handsome husband, but realizing that he was right. "I suppose it would be wise for us to leave," she said in a subdued voice.

      
They walked through one of the smaller side doors and began to cross the long hall toward the front stairway. "Wait here, Lissa. I'll get your wrap from the clerk," Jess said, walking quickly across the hall to where he had deposited her silk shawl when they entered the building.

      
She began to stroll slowly toward the turn in the hall. Around the corner, voices drifted above the low murmur of noise from inside the ballroom.

      
Julia Creed, the town's worst gossip, was speaking. "I tell you it was some scandal. Cy Evers is hushing it up, but everyone knows."

      
"Or will when you're through," her husband said drily.

      
Undeterred, she continued, "That foolish Cridellia was actually eloping with that drunken Yancy Brewster. Cy caught them just in time at the train station. Dragged her away in tears."

      
"Imagine the upstart, him without a cent to his name, no social position, trying to marry that girl just so he could get his worthless hands on Diamond E," Horace Wattson said indignantly.

      
"Well, if you ask me, it wasn't half so bad as the spectacle we've all been subjected to this evening—that Jacobson hussy parading her savage around dressed up like a respectable rancher," Louella Wattson said snidely.

      
"Yes," Julia chimed in quickly, "whatever else his faults, Brewster is white!"

      
"Not to mention that mongrel brat Lissa Jacobson dropped—as if everyone can't count the months! Dellia may be foolish, but she is a decent, God-fearing woman with morals," Louella added righteously.

      
"White or whatever, I don't cotton to a no-account takin' advantage of a female just to get his hands on her daddy's land." This from the stentorian voice of Judge Sprague.

      
Jess, who had returned with Lissa's wrap, stood silently behind his wife, overhearing the vicious conversation that had frozen her against the wall. Wordlessly, he enveloped her in the folds of soft silk and held her as if he could protect her from the cruelty. But he could not.

      
Guns and the violent men who used them he understood, but how could he deal with acid-tongued harridans and puffed-up old men? "Respectable society is an enemy I never could fight, Lissa. Not for me, not even for you," he murmured against her neck.

      
She swallowed and held her head up high. "Give me your arm, Jess. Let's show those nasty old hypocrites the stuff we're made of and snub them cold." Please don't let them drive you away from me.”

      
He did as she asked, and they rounded the corner. The small group of gossipmongers were dispersing as others entered the hall. A few revelers, like the Robbinses, were preparing to depart. Lissa let her contemptuous glance sweep from the Wattsons to the Creeds and then to old Judge Sprague, whose face mottled red with embarrassment. Horace Wattson looked decidedly nervous as the gunman with the glittering silver eyes neared him, but Jess gave him scarcely a glance as he steered Lissa toward the wide staircase.