Silver Lining (26 page)

Raising a hand, she banged her fist down on the piano keys, striking a jarringly discordant sound. After she did it again, Max appeared in the parlor archway, startling her. She hadn't realized he'd come inside.

"What are you doing?"

Her chin came up and she glared. "Everyone in the McCord family can play a stupid piano except me.

Even Sunshine can pick out a tune; she told me so." When Max smiled and pointed out that neither he nor Wally played the piano, she snapped at him. "You know what I mean."

"I'm sure Gilly would be delighted to teach you."

"Well, maybe I'll just ask her about that." After closing the lid over the keys with a bang, she swished her skirts past him and headed for the kitchen. "Or maybe I won't. Maybe I think a person can be decent without knowing how to play a single damned note. What are you doing here anyway?"

"I came up to the house for dinner," he said patiently, following her into the kitchen.

"Oh Lord. Is it dinnertime already? Seems I just finished putting away the breakfast fixings." Her face flamed as she walked across the section of floor where they had lain together, and she didn't dare look at him. They had done… it… on the kitchen floor. If she were still a cussing woman, she would have spun out a string of awed swearing, yes sir.

"Just give me some bread and gravy. That'll be fine."

"A man ought to have more than bread and gravy for his dinner." He was standing too close, and that flustered her. In all her born days, she didn't think she'd ever met a man who smelled as wonderful as Max did. He smelled like lots of good things. Leather and smoke, horseflesh and cowhide. Soap and fresh air, earth and sun. Sometimes he smelled of whiskey, and sometimes he smelled like the apples she kept in a basket near the mudroom door. Sometimes she smelled lamp oil on his hands, sometimes coal or pine resin. If she sniffed him before he washed up at night, occasionally she caught the tang of good honest man sweat.

"Louise …"

They stood gazing into each other's eyes, close enough that her skirt wrapped his legs. And his intense speculative look suggested that he, too, remembered what had happened in this spot a few nights ago.

"Mr. McCord? Max? Are you in there?"

Louise gave him a faint smile and stepped backward, folding her shaking hands in her apron.

"That you, Shorty?" Max called toward the mudroom door. He placed a fingertip at the corner of Louise's lips.

His touch was light, but it shot a spear of fire down to her toes and pinned her to the floor.

"You and me," Max said quietly. "We got some talking to do. I'll be back after I find out what's on Shorty's mind."

Nodding, Louise leaned against the sink and wet her lips. There were a dozen things he might want to discuss. Piano lessons, expenses, the roundup, the weather, his black eye. But the hot tingle in her stomach and the accelerated thump of her heartbeat suggested that she hoped it was none of those things.

When the strength returned to her legs, she stood up straight and blinked at the bacon drippings on the stove shelf, then toward the sideboard where she kept the flour sack. She tried to think about gravy, but her heart and ears listened for Max's voice. Even so, she had the skillet out and on the stove before she realized the voices outside were too loud. Frowning, she hesitated, then moved the skillet off the heat and wiped her hands in her apron. All she had to do was stand in the door to the mudroom and she could hear Max and Shorty.

"I'm sorry, Mr. McCord. You got to know we wouldn't walk out on you if there was any choice."

Louise pressed a hand to her mouth, smothering a gasp.

"I'd appreciate it if you'd give me a few days to work this out." Anger shook Max's voice.

"There's nothing you can do. This ain't going to work out. The boys are cleaning the bunkhouse now.

We'll ride out after we finish the day's chores." A silence ensued, broken by the sound of throat clearing, spitting, and boot scuffing. "I'm sorry. I felt like I was part of this place. Wanted to watch it grow."

"If things change, there'll always be a place for you here."

"I hope they do change, boss. I surely do."

There was time for them to shake hands, time for Shorty to walk away before Max slammed into the house, strode past her, and dropped heavily into a chair at the table.

Louise poured a cup of coffee and placed it in his hand. "What was that? I heard the end of it, but not the beginning."

"The boys went into town last night to spend their wages and let off a little steam."

"And?"

"Nobody in town would take their money. They were either ignored or told to get out. They couldn't buy a drink or a woman, couldn't get a shave or a shine. No restaurant would serve them. The hotel told them to move on and use someone else's hitching rail. One of the sheriff's deputies followed them everywhere they went. Watching them and how they were treated. Smiling when it became apparent that Shorty and the boys couldn't buy the time of day."

"But why?" Louise's eyes widened and she spread her hands. "Why would any establishment turn away business?"

He stared at her. "Because the owners were told to."

"But who… ?"Then it came to her. "Oh." Silently she returned to the stove and poured another cup of coffee for herself.

"As long as Shorty and the boys work for me, they're pariahs in town."

Louise sat at the table and shoved back the hair falling across her forehead. "Surely Howard Houser doesn't hold the mortgage on every business in Fort Houser ," she said angrily.

"There's one bank in town, and Houser owns it. I've seen the file room. Hundreds and hundreds of folders. Mortgages, loans, investment accounts, savings, you name it. If someone makes a financial transaction, you can bet that Howard had something to do with it. If he doesn't hold the mortgage directly, he probably has dealings with the establishment's suppliers, and so on."

"The hell with him. We'll hire new hands."

"Who's going to sign on? The word will get out, if it hasn't already, that working for Max McCord is like working for free because no one in town will accept money from one of my hands. I might as well pay their wages in dried peas for all the good my money does them."

The ripples continued to widen, rolling outward from a moment on a mountainside above Piney Creek.

Swearing softly, Louise watched Max drag his fingers over the pits marking his jaw.

"Would it do any good to speak to Houser?" Even as she asked the question, she knew any appeal would be futile.

"Rouser knows what he's doing. The ostracism will continue until he decides I've been punished enough."

"This isn't fair," Louise said furiously. "If you won't believe me, then believe your ma. Livvy said you did the right thing. She knows what happened wasn't your fault."

"That was before anyone knew about Philadelphia 's pregnancy. The pregnancy is my fault. That's what Howard can't move past." He pushed a hand through his hair. "I'd feel the same if I had a daughter and some bastard got her pregnant."

Maybe Max did have a daughter, Louise thought, looking away from him. Maybe the child Philadelphia carried was a girl.

"Well," he said after a full minute. "I can't feed a herd by myself. And I know Howard Houser. If I spread my herd among Dave, Ma, and Wally's herds, their hands won't be able to buy so much as a plug of tobacco, either." He stared at a point in space, his face hard and resigned. "There's nothing to do but sell out. I'd rather sell the herd now than watch them starve over the winter."

"You're talking about giving up your ranch?"

What more did Max McCord have to lose before the reverberations ended from that day on the mountainside? He'd lost his bride, his child, a future in banking. Before it was over, he might lose his brother and now his ranch. She'd be damned before she let that happen. It ended here, now. Max was not going to lose anything more.

"Like hell," Louise said, leaning forward. Her eyes glittered. "You got me. And I'm worth three hands any day. You and me, we can get those beeves through the winter."

He stared at her. "You don't know what you're saying. Getting a herd through the winter is hard work.

The cattle don'tstop eating when a blizzard blows. We'll have to keep the stock ponds from freezing over. I can't ask this of you."

"You ain't asking. I'm volunteering. We're not giving up without a fight."

«^»

"
I
'm sorry, but I never interfere in Papa's business." How many miserable hours had she now spent staring out of her bedroom window? She hated living here, loathed it. The daily monotony and idleness were driving her mad.

"I'll ride into town tomorrow and speak to your father myself." Bending at the hearth, Wally banked the logs in her bedroom fireplace. "Trying to ruin Max is small-minded and serves no purpose. This has to stop."

Small-minded? She certainly hoped he displayed more tact when he spoke to her father.

"Did Max ask you to intercede on his behalf?" Ironically, if Max lost his ranch, he'd have to move into town as she had wanted him to do in the first place.

"No. Would you like to come to town with me?" Wally asked. He looked quite handsome today, dressed and groomed for Sunday dinner. If she had her way—and eventually she would—he'd never wear flannel and everyday denims again. "You said something about wanting to stop by Mrs. Dame's."

The at-home dresses and wrappers Mrs. Dame was sewing for her were shapeless sacklike things that she could not imagine wearing. On the other hand, her regular clothing was beginning to fit snugly at the waist. Every day she checked her stomach in the mirror, detesting the roundness she saw reflected.

Knowing it would get worse, knowing she would bloat up like a frog and lose her figure was a dismal fact she refused to contemplate.

"The garments Mrs. Dame is making don't require much fitting." Outside, a cold wind plucked at browning leaves then chased the leaves toward the barn. Philadelphia wished herself a thousand miles from this window.

"I know how bored you've been. I could drop you at Mrs. Dame's, then maybe you'd like to do some shopping at the Ladies' Emporium or visit friends. There's no hurry to get back."

She wasn't about to put herself through another trip to the emporium. Last week she had wheedled Wally into taking her to town and she'd received one nasty shock after another. Women she had known all of her life had cut her in the emporium. And when she called on ladies she considered friends, their doors had been closed to her. Even the Grayson sisters had instructed their housekeeper to say they were out, as if Philadelphia didn't know they received every Wednesday afternoon.

The injustice of it made her shrivel inside. Apparently the scandalmongers believed she had been seeing both the McCord brothers, playing them one against the other. This is what came of her father and Mrs.

McCord deciding on the story to be put about and not involving her in the process. They hadn't spared her from scandal; they had, in fact, made her a social persona non grata and had given her one more cross to bear. The same humiliation would have resulted if the full truth were known, but in that case at least a few of her friends and acquaintances would surely have pitied her and understood she was a victim, not a villainess.

"No," she decided, hating it that she was truly a prisoner here. "I'll stay at the ranch. I cannot endure it that I—I!—have been smeared in this affair." Angry tears welled in her eyes and she stamped her foot.

"It isn't fair!"

"No, it isn't." Wally came to her and clasped her hands in his, stroking her fingers. "It might take your mind off things and make time pass a little quicker if you gave Ma a hand in the kitchen…"

Cats would bark before she turned herself into a household drudge. "Did Livvy ask you to say that? Has she complained about me?"

"Not at all," Wally hastily assured her. "But Ma's doing all the cooking, cleaning, washing, and ironing."

"Are you implying that because your mother won't tolerate servants in her house, I should become a housemaid? I'm a guest here!" Offended, she tried to withdraw her hands, but he held on.

"I'm only suggesting that keeping busy might relieve the boredom for you, and Ma would undoubtedly appreciate the help." A certain timidity crept into his voice when he wanted her to do something that he sensed she didn't wish to do. The signal gave her a moment to prepare her response.

"Oh Wally. Is that the next humiliation, the next punishment? That I should sink to the level of a servant?"

Tears spilled beautifully over her lashes, and she accepted the handkerchief he pushed into her hand.

Blotting her cheeks, she prevented teardrops from spotting the bosom of her Sunday taffeta. "If you insist, I'll debase myself but… how much must I bear?"

"Of course I'm not insisting. I was merely offering a suggestion, that's all." Gently, he guided her into his arms and caressed her back. "My poor brave darling."

"It never ends," she whispered against his throat. Her breath on his freshly shaven skin caused his body to tighten. In a week or two she might allow him to kiss her cheek. She knew he wanted to. After the baby arrived, she would consider kissing him back as a reward if he did something to please her. "I suppose my eyes are red and I'm a mess now," she said, pulling away to dab her lashes.

"You're beautiful."

"Do you know ifshe's coming to dinner this week?"

Of course she was. Last Sunday Philadelphia had feigned illness and Wally had brought dinner to her room. She hadn't enjoyed a single bite knowing the creature was at the table with the rest of the family, undoubtedly gloating and telling herself that Philadelphia feared to face her. Which was a lie. No respectable woman had anything to fear from a fallen woman who knew nothing of decency.

"I'll stay by your side every moment," Wally promised gruffly. "In time, family gatherings will get easier.

Until they do, just ignore Louise."

He could count on that. As far as she was concerned, the creature did not exist.

Once they had their own house in town, she would begin to wean Wally away from the McCords and the intolerable family gatherings. Unfortunately, a house in town was not yet a real consideration, but it would be. Her father had grudgingly promised that the next time he spoke privately to Wally, he would discuss a position at the bank. Moving Wally away from ranching was the first step on the road to molding him into what she wanted. But nothing would happen until after the baby was born. Her ordeal would continue for months yet.