Hell's Belle (17 page)

"Can you
believe it, Sandy?" he snorted now. "Me, the man the local fallen
angels scrambled after, married…to the woman no other fella in town would have.
I can't stop itching to be around her. It's like hives or something. Wherease
she's damned close to indifferent."

He and Sandy were
in a small watering hole in Reno, a place where the walls didn't have ears.
Jordy was across the street in a different establishment. So Del could finally
get some advice from the older foreman. A man whose judgment Del trusted.

"Indifferent?
You mean…at
those times
, when it matters most?" Sandy's voice
dropped to a bare whisper. "You saying you're stuck with a wife who's
frigid?"

Del flushed. Twila
was as far from frigid as a man could want. "No, she warms up real nice
come bedtime. She's downright greedy for it. Adventurous, even." He
squirmed in his seat, questioning whether he really should have launched into
this topic.

"But you've
seen her during the days out at the spread. It's like I'm just another bronco
buster or some fellow come to beat the front-room rug. She's pleasant and all,
but I can't seem to get anything more than that out of her."

"Hmm."
Sandy thought for a moment. "You ever stop to think that maybe she doesn't
know what you expect?"

Del ran his finger
around the rim of his whiskey tumbler. "I told her. Before we got hitched.
I told her I wanted her to be faithful and to trust me. That I'd never let
anyone hurt her or insult her again, the way her kin had done."

"Faithfulness
and trust," Sandy repeated slowly.  He shrugged. "Seems to me she's
keeping her end of the bargain. And if she's…adventuresome when the lamp's out,
I don't see what you're griping about. Unless you want to change the terms of
your deal. That case, you'd best strike a whole new—"

"Change the
terms? No, I still want what I asked for. It's just that—"

"You want her
to love you, Del," Sandy snorted, taking a long pull from his drink.
"Sooner you face that, better off you'll be. You know that saying your pa
was so fond of…Some horses are for saddles, some are for draft. If you wanted a
saddle horse, you shouldn't have set out to buy a draft mare to pull your
wagon."

"Aw, hell! I
might've known you wouldn't understand." Del rose from the rickety chair
and scowled back at Sandy. "I'll go fetch Jordan. We got to be heading
out. Be dark before you know it."

"Yessir, and
you got to rush home to get your wagon yanked," Sandy quipped.

Del resisted the
urge to shove the whiskey tumbler down his foreman's throat. Son of a bitch
thought he knew everything. His arrogance was tough to face, especially because
he was generally right, and life had a way of proving it.

He was wrong this
time.

However, Del
reasoned, it wouldn't be a bad idea to get a second opinion. So Del cornered
Jordy and told him to come have a last drink together before they set out for
home. He waited until Jordan was nice and mellow, then casually let talk drift
in the direction of Twila. "You know, I never did thank you for that last
dare you threw at me. A real humdinger. Look at me now, an old married man
because of it."

Jordy rose to the
bait, belching. "You two settled in together like pretzels and beer."

"Well, for the
most part. But she's a little cool sometimes. Guess it's just her nature."

Jordy jerked his
head back around from ogling a pretty waiter gal and frowned at Del. "Come
on, Delancy. I've seen her with her hair down around her shoulders and you
staring like you're craving to wrap yourself in it. Your eyes get all hot and
intense when she walks by. Seen her get a funny wistful look on her face when
you're not paying attention, too. Ain't no lack of physical chemistry between
you two. Know it's not polite to point out about another man's wife, but her
nature strikes me about as cool as a July afternoon."

Bombs bursting
in air…

Del seized on one
thing Jordan said, something about a funny look…"What wistful look?"
he demanded.

Jordy slapped Del's
shoulder. "If I didn't know exactly when you two took up together, I'd
figure her for giving birth to twins any time now. Hey, how is that? She going
to be knitting them little infant things soon?"

Del couldn't
believe he'd overlooked something that apparently others already saw. Was he as
dense as Sandy around Minerva?

"I got to take
a leak," Del said. "Meet me in front of the livery stable in about
ten minutes. We need to head on homeward."

Only Del didn't go
to the livery. He went to a whorehouse and paid the madam for ten minutes of
her time, clothing on. She took him to a private room and sat on the edge of
the bed.

"Honey, I've
had every sort come through here. You one of those men who wants to think he's
staying decent by keeping his his duds on, fine by me. You looking to tickle my
tonsils?" She motioned toward the buttons on his fly.

He vehemently shook
his head, noting the irony even as he did it. This whore wasn't in her prime
any longer, but she was buxom, undoubtedly knew how to please. Not so long ago,
Del would have had his pecker wearing some of her lip rouge before she'd even
finished asking the question.

"I just want
some female advice."

"Oh?"

"My friends
say my missus has this funny look on her face. They say we both got eyes for
each other and how they can tell we must be taken with each other. But when I
married her, a couple of months back, we were strangers. I mean that. I'd
talked to her twice."

"Twice. You
move fast, huh?"

"She was in a
bad situation. I wasn't going to take her home and have her living under my
roof like a—" He paused just in time, changed his tone. "She was a
nice girl," he stressed. "Pure. Had to marry her."

"All right. So
where's the problem?"

"I can feel so
worn out at the end of a day's work, I just want to eat some grub and go die.
Until she comes sliding onto the mattress, all soft and smelling like powder,
and it's like…Honestly, the damned best coitus I've ever had."

The madam frowned
at him like he'd just grown another nose. "You don't
have
a
problem. Unless you want it and she don't, or she wants it and you won't. But
it sounds like you both do and you both
do
, plenty."

He nodded, sighing.
"Other times. In the day time…ordinary encounters, like supper and such.
It's like she barely knows I'm alive. "

"She raised
proper and genteel?" He nodded. "She the shy sort?" He nodded
again.

The madam burst out
laughing, slapped him on the back harder than Jordy had, and told him to get
out. "Go home, loverboy. Just give her a little more time. There ain't
nothing wrong except you fret too much."

So everyone else
seemed to believe, Del brooded on the ride home. He seemed to be the only
person capable of looking at the situation objectively and seeing there was
some kind of void in his life with Twila. Something was missing. He just
couldn't figure out what it was.

But he felt it
again when Twila merely smiled and said she was glad they'd all shown up in
time for supper. She noted the lining that dangled from the back of Del's heavy
winter coat and promised to sew it before the snows came. Then she proceeded to
take her meal along with everyone else, barely glancing in Del's direction
other than to pass the salt.

She'd adjusted. The
wranglers had adjusted. Talk in town no longer included whispers about hexes or
spells. His business was running along…Things had actually worked out better
than he had any right to expect when he'd brashly eloped with her.

Yet he was restless.
There was something amiss. No matter what anyone else said, Del knew it. And
just as soon as he figured out what the problem was, he'd work on a way to
correct it.

* * *

Twila nervously
read over the letter again. She couldn't believe she'd actually received it,
after all this time. Henry had come to the house after going to collect the
mail that day. At long last, an answer came to one of their advertisements. The
Vogels, it turned out, were not in San Francisco at all. They'd settled in
Sacramento.

Now all Twila had
to do was figure out how to broach the subject of a visit there to her husband.
She'd be tremendously relieved to get the necklace back to its owners, and
wasn't taking any chances. She'd quickly written out a brief reply to Hilde Vogel,
couching her phrases about the confused satchels and their respective contents.
Especially after the incident at the Bell Emporium, she worried that divulging
too much information could be risky.

Del had gone into
town one day last week and come back with a strange report of a suspected
robbery at the new store. He said both Fletcher and Lucius were safe and
unharmed, even though they'd probably been present, upstairs asleep, during a
break-in of some kind. The oddest part was that neither seemed to be able to
give the sheriff solid information as to what might have been taken. Nothing
was obviously missing.

Despite evidence
that someone had wanted access badly enough to break in to the place, what
little cash had been in the till was still there when the Bells arose the
following morning. Their merchandise had been disturbed, but seemed intact.

What sort of
thieves broke into a store and then took neither goods nor money? The Washoe
sheriff had no answer. Neither did anyone else in town. Everyone was a bit
nervous, but since nothing of value had been taken, the sheriff merely called
the incident a prank of some sort and didn't spend time investigating. He
seemed to think it had been kids on a lark.

Twila couldn't
resist a wicked little smile as she signed her letter and went out to find
Henry. The robbery incident was indeed peculiar, but it had occurred after
she'd moved out to Del's ranch, as everyone well knew. Uncle Fletcher must be
spitting buttons, she told herself. Aggravated by the disturbance, but even
more furious that he was unable to blame this bit of ill luck on his niece. His
scapegoat was gone.

She found Henry and
asked if it would be an imposition for him to take her reply to the post
office. As it happened, he planned to have supper in a saloon and spend his
evening playing poker, so he doubted it would be a problem to depart a little
earlier than usual. He should just be able to catch Postmaster Stanislaus
before he closed up for the evening.

Twila watched Henry
ride off a short while later, then headed back to the ranch house, surprised to
find Del waiting on the porch. "What was that all about?"

"Henry agreed
to mail a letter, since he was heading into town. I didn't think you were
planning to go any time soon, and why make a special trip?"

"You and Henry
still cozy, eh?" This was asked with a scowl.

Twila couldn't
believe the implication of that question. Considering what they did together in
his big bed…She blushed at the thought. Of what Del did. What she asked him to
do. What she did to him, without hesitation or embarrassment. How could he
possibly resent her friendly association with any other man?

Then she remembered
that Del had worked late on his books the night before, and she'd been tired. The
evening before that Del had spent the whole night in the barn, overseeing one
of his mares who'd given birth to a new foal a couple of hours before dawn. Maybe
he was grouchy because they hadn't been so intimate recently. She decided to
overlook his cross tone.

"Yes, we're
friends. And the whole town is being nicer to me. I owe you gratitude for that,
Del. I'm happier than I've ever been. Here," she stressed.

He pulled her
forward, studying her eyes. "You mean that?"

"Of course I
do."

He scooped her into
his arms and began striding for their bedroom. "Reckon we might be a
little late for dinner tonight, Mrs. Mitchell."

"Oh,
Del," she laughed, allowing him to deposit her in their room and start
undressing her. She never balked when he wanted to get physical. She enjoyed it
thoroughly herself. But she kept her eyes closed or her face turned away from
his when it was still light in the room. She didn't want him to see how being
so naked and honest about lusty desires was also painful for her.

She'd heard of
marriages arranged for the sake of bloodlines or property, or for the sake of
noble titles in France or England. This was America. There was nobility here,
too, of a different kind. The kind where a man who'd always been known for
courting disaster actually married one. Because he'd felt sorry for her.

Del must never know
how she felt, what she yearned for. She was careful to be civil, congenial, and
keep her darker emotions to herself. So far it had worked. Things were
peaceable and predictable. Nobody noticed a few more tears in a river.

* * *

Lucius Bell
cautiously glanced around the saloon, scanning the card tables and the dark
stairs leading to the tiny cribs where the fallen angels plied their trade.
He'd become convinced the two Englishmen from the train were here in Wadsworth.
He could have sworn one was following him one day last week as he came back
from a delivery.