Angel In The Rain (Western Historical Romance) (22 page)

“No. This has nothing to do with money. It’s an old grudge between Lundy and me. To put it very simply, the reason I helped you is because it hurts him.”

The jab penetrated all the way to Angel’s heart. Turning her back on both of them, she hugged her arms beneath her breasts and wandered to the darkened window behind her father’s chair.

A wooden leg beneath the desk creaked when her father shifted. “So, what’re you sayin’? You wantin’ to work for me?”

“No. But you do need help. Where are all your men?”

“There’s a guard with a shotgun outside. The rest are patrollin’ the deadline between here and the Hacienda and the fence. If anybody from down there tries to get across, my men will stop them.”

Rane’s chuckle oozed sarcasm. “I hate to tell you, Clayton, but your guard is sleeping on the job. And as for your men… We came from the Hacienda. No one stopped us. You need more men right here, around the house. If Lundy decides to strike back at you, there’s no way you’ll be able to stop him.”

“You reckon he’d do such a thing?”

“After tonight, he’ll be more desperate than ever.”

Despite the devastation roiling inside her, Angel couldn’t hold silent any longer. She turned from the window. “Rane’s right, Pa. After talking to Horace, I believe he’s capable of anything. He’s not himself.”

Her father came off the desk. “Well, what the hell am I supposed to do? This ain’t no fort, and I ain’t hirin’ a bunch of lowlife gunnies who’ll jump fence at the drop of a hat.”

“I can get you all the men you need,” Rane said.

Roy spun on him quickly. “What men? You mean villagers who don’t even own guns and couldn’t hit the broad side of the barn even if they did!”

“You provide the guns, and I promise you they’ll hit the barn.”

Her father shook his head.

“Your choice,” Rane said. He threw a frowning glance toward the window. Angel followed the movement with a sinking sensation. He was thinking about leaving.

He shifted and tugged his hat lower on his forehead. “Think about what I said, Clayton. You have your daughter in the house now. Do you really want to gamble again with her safety?”

“I take care of what’s mine,” her father retorted.

“Good. Then I leave her in your hands.”

Rane backed toward the door. Just before he slipped into the shadowed hallway, his gaze collided with hers for one brief instant. Banked fire smoldered in the depths of his eyes. His lips quirked. “Miss Clayton, it’s been a pleasure.”

Then he was gone.

Angel clutched her arms against her waist, gripping until her nails bit into her flesh, trying to suppress a wild desire to rush after him. She held her breath, listening for the sound of his retreating footsteps, but heard nothing.

She released her breath, turned...and found her father watching her with speculative, narrowed eyes. “Tell me one good reason why I shouldn’t have that greaser hunted down and shot,” he said with a calm that unnerved her completely.

“Don’t be a fool, Pa. Why would you want to kill someone who’s helped you and saved my skin more than once?”

“Did he mistreat you in any way?”

Somehow, she met his steady gaze without faltering. “No.”

Her father let out a long breath. She realized he’d been holding it.

“This is an ugly business,” he said. “There’ll be talk, you know that.

She dropped her head and merely nodded.

“The sooner this damned fence war is put to rest, the sooner it’ll all be forgotten.”

Forgotten. Maybe the fence war would dim in importance with the passage of days, but Angel knew she’d never forget Rane. Her heart ached with the thought that she might never see him again. It burned like a hot coal in her brain. They’d never really said goodbye.

“I’m glad you’re home, Angel.”

She lifted her eyes to her father’s face as his kindly spoken words took her by surprise.

A sudden grin tilted the drooping gray mustache hiding most of his mouth. “You sound like a Yankee when you talk.”

The out-of-the-blue remark coaxed a weak smile to her lips. “You’ll just have to get used to it.”

Now that they were alone, he stood back and looked at her again. She knew his sharp old eyes missed nothing.

“I hope that dress didn’t fit you when you left New York. You look like you’ve been starved and staked out in the sun to dry.”

Chapter Fourteen

Angel picked up the silverware lying atop the folded, yellowed napkin beside her father’s plate. For the third time, she realigned the pieces so they were precisely spaced. The cloth covering the dining table looked dingy, though not quite as bad as the napkin. All the linens in the house needed a good washing, but that was just one chore on a very long list of things she’d found that needed attention.

After awakening to an empty house, she’d spent the entire morning dusting, sweeping, and clearing out what had to be several weeks’ worth of accumulated trash. It was a wonder the place wasn’t infested with rats.

What had happened to the servants?

Rather than pace the length of the dining room and adjacent parlor again, Angel pulled a chair next to the window and perched on its edge. The sun was going down. Where was her father, or anyone else for that matter? When he didn’t show up at the supper hour, she’d worried, then gotten angry. Now worry had settled permanently in the pit of her stomach.

Had he run into trouble with Lundy’s men? What if something had happened to him? She squeezed her eyes closed and pressed her hands to her forehead.
Damn you, Pa, where are you?

Blowing out a breath, she opened her eyes, grabbed the arms of the chair and launched herself out of it. Gray dusk had settled within the parlor. She crossed to the fireplace for matches and lit the wicks of the two lamps stationed at each end of the sturdy mantle. As she reached to replace the box, her attention caught on the photograph displayed at the mantle’s center.

Her mother’s picture perfect image dredged up a new wave of guilt. Unsmiling, her mother sat ramrod straight with her lace-covered hands folded primly in her lap. Angel moved closer and pressed her fingertips to the sepia-toned image, then quickly pulled them back.

“Ilsa.” She whispered the name almost in dread. If she spoke it too loudly, would her mother’s apparition appear to smite her? No. Her mother’s spirit had never dwelled within these walls. This had always been her father’s domain.

Angel had often wondered why a woman such as her mother, a lady of gentle rearing, had married a man as coarse and tempestuous as Roy Clayton. An unlikely match. A fine blooded mare and a common workhorse. She was the result, neither completely coarse nor fine, but something in between, and both sides pulled at her.

From outside, the hoof beats of an approaching horse grew steadily louder. Her heart leaped. Rushing to a window, she saw her father headed for the barn on a big gray.
Thank God.

On her way out of the parlor, she snatched the box of matches down from the mantle and hurried into the dining room. Six ivory tapers occupied the candelabrum standing in the center of the table. One by one, she lit them. Pinpoints of light reflected from the silver and the rims of the two ordinary china plates she’d set out. Standing back, she realized the yellowed lighting made even the sullied linens appear almost elegant. Perhaps the day’s work wouldn’t be a total loss.

Out in the kitchen, the back door whined open, and then closed forcefully, sending a shudder throughout the house.

Expectantly, Angel turned and straightened her spine. Her palms were sweaty. She started to scrub them against the skirt of her dress and thought better of it. Calm and poise, she reminded herself.
A lady is always calm and poised in any situation
.
That was the first rule she’d learned at Miss Marvel’s Academy.

At the very last instant, she remembered to put a smile on her lips.

Her father stepped through the door and stopped. More accurately, he froze. He’d removed his hat and the flattened hair ringing his head was damp with sweat. Fine dust coated his worn denims and his boots. He looked like an old cowhand who’d wandered into the wrong place, and he stared at her as if he’d seen a ghost.

As the seconds passed, Angel felt the smile slipping from her lips. Despite the possible damage to delicate fabric, she gripped handfuls of rustling silk in her sweaty palms. She glanced down, at the peacock blue dress gleaming in the candlelight. The gown was nothing too elaborate, just something she’d worn on occasion for the evening meal at her aunt’s back in New York.

Her father continued to stare at her.

“Pa, is something wrong?”

He blinked, and then seemed to come back to himself. He cleared his throat. “No. Why would anything be wrong?”

In the renewed silenced, the big Regulator in the hallway ticked off several seconds.

Her father lifted his hand and motioned toward her dress. “I see you found your belongings.”

The smile returned to her lips. “Yes. Thank you.”

“They came in on the stage without you. I had everything put up in your room.” He cleared his throat again. “So. I guess you found them.”

“Yes,” she repeated. She tried to smooth the frown she felt pulling at her brows. Why did he seem so ill at ease?

As if he’d read her mind, he chuckled softly and waved a hand through the air. “You know, when I walked in, for a minute there...”

“What?” she prompted.

“Well, you look just like your mother.”

So, he
had
thought he’d seen a ghost. Disconcerted, Angel nervously smoothed the side of her upswept hair. He followed the movement. She dropped her hand quickly, realizing she’d unconsciously imitated the style her mother wore in the photograph.

She forced another smile. “Well, then,” she said with a serenity she was far from feeling. “I have supper prepared. If you’ll take a seat, I’ll serve.”

He shifted his feet. “I didn’t know you’d be cookin’, so I ate some beans and pone with the boys over at the line shack.”

He must have seen her disappointment because he swept a quick glance at the table and hastily added, “But since you’ve gone to so much trouble, I guess I could eat a little more.”

Bless his old heart. He was trying to meet her half way. The knowledge warmed her.

She carried a plate of fried ham, a bowl of mashed potatoes, and a basket of biscuits from the kitchen and placed them on the table. Her father sat at the head of it, in his usual spot.

“Looks good.” He waited until she’d taken her seat at the opposite end of the table, and then reached for his napkin and unceremoniously dumped his silverware. Angel bit her lip as she watched him stuff one end of the napkin inside the dusty, sweaty collar of his shirt. Plucking up his fork, he stretched forward and speared a thick slice of ham.

Angel picked up her napkin and carefully placed it across her lap. “Everything may be a little...dry,” she warned. “It’s been sitting in the warmer for quite some time.”

He tossed her a grin. “Looks good to me. Sorry I left you alone so long today.”

He picked up the potato bowl and spooned a huge lump onto his plate. Just as she’d feared, they’d congealed to a solid mass.

“What happened to the help?’ she asked.

“Lit out.” He took a biscuit from the top of the pile and bit into it. With a sinking heart, she realized he took a long time chewing it before he swallowed. “When Horace’s boys started aimin’ bullets across the fence, they were too scared to stick around.” He shook his head. “Gutless.”

He still appeared to be working some of the biscuit around inside his mouth. She’d forgotten drinks.

“I made coffee,” she offered.

He nodded. “That’d be good.”

After returning with steaming cups of black coffee and sitting his in front of him, she returned to her seat. “So, what have you been doing all day?”

He eschewed the delicate china handle and wrapped his hand around the body of the cup. After blowing back the steam, he took a long drink. “Been keepin’ an eye out for what’s goin’ on down at the Hacienda.”

“What’s been going on?”

“Horace’s men are pullin’ out on him. Been ridin’ out of there all day, like rats desertin’ a sinkin’ ship.”

Rats deserting a sinking ship, an apt description. A hopeful sign. Perhaps this senseless fighting would end without more bloodshed. “Do you think it’s over?”

Her father shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. Too soon to tell.”

“What do you plan on doing now?” she asked.

“Wait.” He expelled a heavy breath. “All we can do now is wait and see what happens.”

Waiting was the hardest thing of all. Angel felt as if she’d been waiting for one thing or another for most of her life. Her thoughts veered to Rane. He, too, had been waiting. For the opportunity to get to Lundy. Was that time near at hand? Had he also been out there somewhere today watching Horace’s men ride away?

When her father had eaten his fill, Angel carried the dishes to the kitchen. After blowing out the candles on the dining table, she followed him into the parlor.