Linda Castle (6 page)

Anger flashed through Temple. He had the overpowering urge to shake some sense into her silly little head. She had no idea how rough this dig could become. This was the West, not some well-clipped and tended park. How could C.H. let his only child put herself in this kind of danger? The more he thought about it, the more anger and frustration boiled up inside him.

“Fine—I’ll take this side. This side looks just dandy. Is that all right with you?” Temple slapped his hat against his thigh. Dust rose from his pants in a little puff. Then he muttered a curse and stalked away.

“There is no need to become peevish, Temple. The opposite side will do fine.” Constance turned to see Mr. Hughes watching her. He was wearing a tightlipped expression, so unlike his usual habit of being on the verge of laughter. Men were so difficult to understand.

“Mr. Hughes, if you would be so kind as to deliver the remainder of the supplies and my three trunks to the other side, of the canyon after Mr. Parish has removed his half.”

“Yes, miss, I would be happy to do that, miss.” Peter hopped into the wagon seat and picked up the reins. Temple was already hefting crates and boxes from the back of the wagon. Each time he dropped
one onto the earth, he muttered a different expletive. He paused once to glare at Constance. For a moment she thought he was going to say something to her, but he shook his head and went back to unloading the wagon.

“Mr. Hughes, I need to stretch my legs after that long ride.” Constance allowed her eyes to scan the ravine once again. “I will take my sketching box, for I might see something of interest along the way. I will meet you on the other side—and erect my own tent later.” The last, few words were more for Temple’s benefit than for Mr. Hughes’s. She expected to hear a disparaging remark from her rival but he kept his lips clamped tight and ignored her.

Peter grinned and nodded his graying head. “Yes, miss, that sounds like a fine idea. I will have to take the team back the way we came and come around the end of the canyon. The sides slope down kind of gentle here, so just watch your step. It shouldn’t take me more than a couple of hours to reach the other side. Will you be needing anything else to take with you?”

Temple snapped his head up and stared at Peter. His scowl was darker than a thunderhead. “Of course she doesn’t
need anything,
Hughes. Haven’t you been listening? She is more than competent. She is a bloody wonder,” Temple snapped. “If she meets up with a grizzly she can explain to him that she is a most accomplished anatomist, or she can sketch him.” He put his arms akimbo while he spoke. “I am sure the bear will be most impressed by Miss Cadwallender’s long list of accomplishments.” Temple clasped his wide hands at his waist. “He will be so awed that he will forget all about wanting to
eat her.”
He was practically
bellowing by the time he spit out the last two words.

“Really, Temple, you are astonishing.” Constance had no idea what Temple was going on about, or why Mr. Hughes had doubled over in the seat with laughter at this latest outburst. She didn’t understand what possessed either one of them, but she had grown tired of trying to figure them out. She tucked her sketching box beneath her arm and starting walking.

Temple hammered his tent stake deep into the earth with the mallet. He stood up and surveyed his work with a critical eye. The canvas was taut, the lines pegged securely into the Montana dirt. He had placed the opening to the east so the morning sun would warm and wake him, or so he told himself.

When he looked up from the mouth of his tent it was Connie’s camp that greeted his eyes on the other side of the gorge. And just as he expected, Peter Hughes was busy erecting Connie’s tent while she was meandering through the bottom of the canyon.

A wave of some emotion swept through Temple, but he couldn’t quite define it. It might have been irritation that the old goat went out of his way to pamper Connie, but it just as easily might have been something else.

“I am not jealous,” Temple muttered aloud while he hit the last stake with the mallet. “The idea is preposterous.”

But he glanced back at the neat camp growing on the other side of the hollow and found unexpected emotions flooding through him.

“I couldn’t care any less. She is on her own.” He
kicked a tent stake with the toe of his boot. The rope twanged in response.

After he came to live with C.H., Temple had always been the one who fixed things or solved problems that were beyond Connie’s ability. He had been her hero.

Now he stared at the tent poles and struggled to deny he was disappointed that he was not the one she would come to when she needed help here in Montana.

The sound of paper fluttering in the canyon drew Temple’s attention. He walked to the edge of the cut and looked down. There, about thirty feet below him was Connie. She was sitting on the dirt with her sketching pad in her lap. Her dark chestnut hair had tumbled free along her back and the sunlight skipped over her delicate cheek and deposited tiny diamonds on her smooth skin. The scene could have been from a watercolor study, such a bucolic picture she made.

Temple shook his head and steeled himself against the wayward thoughts and feelings.

She was his enemy—his competitor. Temple Parish had survived the past ten years by never forgetting the most important thing in his life was winning.

He never gave an edge to those who were against him and Constance Honoria was very much against him as long as she was aligned with C.H. and Dandridge University. He had never forgotten what happened ten years ago. With the exception of the death of his mother on that freezing January night, his departure from C.H.’s house had been the most traumatic and painful event in his life. He couldn’t allow himself to hurt like that again, he thought as he took a step closer to the edge.

Constance was concentrating on an interesting stony outcrop when a scatter of gravel rained down on her
hat. She shielded her eyes against the sun with the side of her hand and scanned the ridge above her.

Much to her surprise, Temple was standing on the edge, about three stories above her. She pushed her spectacles up on her nose and met his unmoving gaze. A strange thing happened to her insides while they stared silently at each other. She couldn’t identify the odd emotion that gripped her. It was very curious that looking at him could cause physical reactions—but it did nonetheless.

Her breath caught in her throat and her mouth dried out. It was most extraordinary. Constance swallowed hard and managed a thin smile but Temple did not return it. In fact, she could have sworn his dour expression darkened before he spun on his heel and disappeared from her view beyond the rim of the canyon.

“Remarkable,” she muttered. She did not remember Temple having such a sulky and prickly personality. Her ten-year-old memories of him all involved playful teasing and capricious pranks. It saddened her to think the years had hardened the laughing boy he had once been into the scowling man who now challenged her.

Constance looked up at the opposite side of the gorge and saw the top of a tent come into view. “Oh dear, this will not do.” She stood and gathered her sketching supplies and tucked the box under her arm. By the time she had managed to climb the natural stairs of the rock path to her side of the canyon she was winded and covered with dust. “Mr. Hughes, you must not do this. Temple will never take me seriously as a competitor if you continue to treat me like a helpless child.”

Mr. Hughes looked at her with his brows arched high. And then, true to form, he burst out laughing.

By nightfall Constance was settled at her new camp. She dipped the last bite from one of the tins Mr. Montague had sent. Her dinner had been passable, the smoky attar of the open fire soothing. She sighed and allowed her eyes to linger on the lavender-dusted terrain. With Mr. Hughes gone and Temple across the gorge, she had complete solitude. It was wonderful. Constance closed her eyes and pretended that she was the only human at the gorge.

Temple stared at the amber glow of Connie’s campfire across the canyon and grew more restless with each passing minute. He wrapped his fingers tighter around the hot cup of coffee.

It was quiet—the kind of quiet that rattled his nerves and leached away his patience. He hated the silence. When calm descended upon him he was no longer able to push aside his painful memories. Silence was what came with a killing New York blizzard—quiet brought death to poverty-weakened women like his dear mother.

He swallowed hard and forced himself to sip the hot brew. Control was a thing Temple cherished and worked hard to maintain, but as he sat in the unforgiving hush of the Montana night he could not help but wish he had hired a small crew. Then at least he would have had someone to talk to during the hard hours between dusk and bedtime.

“But Connie probably wouldn’t like that—she’d say it was unfair, not ethical.” He shook his head and realized he was talking to himself. “I better find those bones in a hurry or I’ll be a babbling fool.”

Temple stood up and tossed the contents of the cup
into the dying fire. It sputtered for a moment, then a dying hiss accompanied the last stubborn flame as it flickered out. He went into his tent and yanked off his boots. He was not really tired, but he could not bear to sit in the dark and watch Connie’s campfire. At least sleep would block out his memories and if he rose early he would get a jump on Connie. The sooner he found those damned bones, the sooner he could get out of this forlorn place. It never ceased to amaze him that he had fallen in love with a profession that ensured he would spend time alone.

The morning air was crisp and slightly damp when Constance stretched herself awake. She opened one eye and saw that full dawn was still a half hour away.

She took off her thin cotton gown while chills danced up her thighs and arms. Shivering against the cold, she slipped into her chemise and sturdy mustardcolored dress. She thrust her stocking-covered feet into her boots and laced them tight around her ankles. Then she quickly piled her hair on top of her head and stuck a few pins in to hold it.

She got her fire started rapidly, but when she started making coffee she discovered all the water barrels had accidentally been unloaded on Temple’s side of the gorge. If she had done any real cooking last evening, instead of eating from tins, she would have noticed it then and could have trudged over for a canteen full, but she had been so enamored of the stark lonely prairie that she had not even noticed.

Now she stared at Temple’s camp across the wide chasm that separated one side of the canyon from the other. There was a natural gentle staircase of boulders on each side, and the distance between them was no
more than half a mile. It was an easy walk but she saw nothing to indicate he was awake yet.

Pink ribbons were beginning to unfurl in the eastern sky behind her as she stood there, with the empty coffeepot in her hand. She wondered if she should hike to his camp and wake him. Or should she wait until she saw him moving about? His disposition had been volatile; the thought of rousing him early did not inspire much enthusiasm in her.

Constance glanced around. She found herself wondering how far the lake Mr. Hughes had spoken of was from her camp.

“Surely not too far, or else he would not have mentioned it,” she muttered.

Constance sighed and shoved her spectacles up on her nose. Temple had been testy enough lately. She didn’t want to set him off on the first morning of the dig.

“No, not on our first morning.” With one final glance at Temple’s silent camp, she set off in the general direction Mr. Hughes had indicated.

The morning sun arced over the horizon before Constance had even lost sight of her tent. The terrain was a bit rocky but walking was not difficult. She was amazed at the diverse fauna that grew in the somewhat harsh landscape. Sagebrush, greasewood and alderwood were scattered on the craggy hills and in the deepest ravines or shaded areas, small patches of snow remained as if to remind her that nature maintained a tight grip on this austere land.

By the time she found the lake, a long shimmering finger of water between two craggy knolls, the sun had burned off the morning dew and taken most of the chill from the thin air. The day promised to be clear,
perfect for her to sketch the strata of the canyon walls for Dandridge’s archives.

Constance hiked up her skirt and squatted beside the pebble-strewed shore. She dipped the edge of the coffeepot in the gently lapping water and watched the water flow into the speckled blue-gray cavern. When she looked up, a fish silently jumped out in the middle of the placid lake. Sunlight turned the trout’s slippery scales to an iridescent rainbow. A smiled tugged at her mouth. She would much prefer a fresh fish dinner to eating from the tins. Surely she could sketch for a few hours and then return to the lake for an afternoon of angling.

Papa had drilled her since childhood about being prepared for anything, so as usual she had packed her fishing gear and a few other items she would probably never use. It would be nice, this time, to put some of that cumbersome gear to use.

She was lost in her own world, standing on the shore, watching the watery silver ribbons, when strong fingers bit into her shoulders. She was roughly spun around and found herself staring into a furious face.

“Where in God’s name have you been?” Temple leaned close enough to fog her glasses with his angry breath. She was taken aback by the hard polished gleam in his agate eyes.

“I came to the lake for water. Temple, you are hurting me.” Constance glanced at his white-knuckled hands biting into her upper arms.

Temple blinked and removed his hands. “Sorry.” He managed to stop glowering at her but his body remained rigid and his eyes blazed. “What do you think you are doing—going off—so early?”

“Was there something you needed?” Constance
pushed her spectacles up and peered at Temple. His hair was disheveled, and his shirttail flapped loose beneath his suspenders as if he had jerked his clothes on hurriedly. “Did you come looking for me?”

He glanced at Constance and the gleam in his eye intensified. “No. Yes. I mean to say that is… “ His mouth compressed into a tight uncompromising line before he turned and stalked away, leaving her standing by the lake.