CHAPTER9

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T he original plan had included a wing extending to the south. The additional space would have added a sunroom, a library, and a family sitting room on the ground floor, a nursery and extra bedrooms above.

Before Max had departed for Piney Creek, he'd decided to wait and see how well Philadelphia adjusted to ranch living before adding the expense of the south wing. He had hoped that eventually she would share his love of the land and the pleasure of not dwelling eaves to porch rail with a neighbor. When that time came, if it did, then he'd construct the wing.

Now he studied the tall, narrow core of the house and conceded that Philadelphia would never have adjusted to an isolated location or to living so far from her father and friends and lady's clubs. Moreover, he'd neglected to provide quarters for a cook or maid, an oversight Max only now recognized as significant.

Absorbed in thinking about mistakes that seemed obvious in retrospect, he was almost to the barn before he saw Louise rise from the kitchen stoop and gather the edges of her shawl close to her breast.

She stood straight and tall, not signaling, not seeming to expect anything, simply waiting and watching.

The barn called to him, but duty and guilt called louder. Swearing softly, he paused, then turned Marva Lee toward the house and rode up to the stoop, wondering what he could possibly say to her. To his relief she broke the silence first.

"Supper's ready whenever you are," she said, shading her eyes to look at him. She didn't castigate him for abandoning her as he'd half expected she might.

"I'd like to look at the barn and sheds, and speak to the boys." None of the hands were strangers, since most had worked for the McCords before Livvy parceled the ranch into fourths. They would expect him to say hello after a long absence.

"There's no hurry. Supper will keep." She dropped her hand and smoothed it across the front of an apron he'd seen his mother wear. "There's a basin of water in the mudroom where you can wash up."

Late sunlight slanted across her face, finding gold in her hazel eyes, coaxing auburn highlights from her hair. "Max?" Color rushed into her cheeks and her voice sounded oddly shy. "This is a wonderful house."

From her perspective he supposed it was. Anything with solid walls and a roof would be an enormous step up from pitching a tent on the bare ground. She wouldn't notice the lack of an informal sitting room and servant's quarters.

Putting her out of his mind, he spent the next hour touring the barn, sheds, bunkhouse, corrals, and stock pond, and talking to Shorty, his foreman.

"Everything seems to be according to the plans," he said with satisfaction. He'd never doubted that it would be, not with Shorty Smith overseeing the barn raising and house building. Shorty had been his man on site, the person he'd trusted to make the day-to-day decisions and see that the job got done.

"I appreciate your diligence on my behalf," he said gruffly, shaking Shorty's hand. Spending the summer in the mountains would have been impossible without Shorty. His brother and Gilly's husband had their own operations to run, and he wouldn't have imposed by asking either to oversee an extensive building project.

"My pleasure, boss," Shorty said, puffing out his chest. "It ain't often a man gets to be part of a ranch right from the get go." He leaned on the top rail of the corral and slid Max a curious look. "I wish you and the missus every happiness on your new place."

Shorty wouldn't ask the questions flickering behind his sidelong glance, but it wasn't difficult to guess what they were. Cowboys were worse gossips than old women, and undoubtedly there was a great deal of bunkhouse speculation about Max coming home with one woman days before he was scheduled to marry another. By suppertime tomorrow the cowboy grapevine would be discussing what it meant that Wally had taken the gig to town wearing his Sunday best and toting a large traveling satchel. And before breakfast of the following day, the hands would notice that Wally wasn't participating in the roundup. By then they might have learned that Wally and Philadelphia had run off to Denver together.

Max bit down hard and faced toward a sunset blaze of red and orange. The days were getting shorter and the nights colder. "Tomorrow I'll bring Mrs. McCord down to show her the barn. You might tell the boys to shave and put on clean bandannas."

Having said all he intended to say, he headed toward the back of the house and the mudroom. The first time he entered his house should rightly have been through the front door so he could experience a first impression as others would. But having admitted the flaws, his impression of the house was soured.

"Is there a towel?" he called after washing up.

"Somewhere. But I don't… here, use this." Coming to the mudroom door, Louise glanced at the water dripping into the opened collar of his shirt, then pushed a dish towel into his hands.

The first thing he noticed after hanging his hat on a peg and stepping into the kitchen was the stove. Iron with nickel trim and wood handles that stayed cool to the touch no matter how hot the firebox became. It burned wood or coal, soft or hard.

"Ain't it the grandest, shiniest stove you ever saw?" Louise said, following his gaze. "And look here. We have an icebox to keep things cool." Opening the icebox lid she removed a dish of butter. "There's no ice in it now, but come winter there will be." A stream of words poured out of her. "Your mother and sister prepared supper." She set the dish of butter on the table and stepped back, frowning. "Do I have to set out spoons even if we won't be using them? Oh, wait. I forgot about stirring sugar into coffee. Well, hell.

I forgot to make fresh coffee."

"It doesn't matter." Remembering that he hadn't eaten since yesterday, he took a seat at the head of the kitchen table. "Louise," he said after watching her bounce from stove to pump handle to icebox as if she couldn't stop moving. "Will you sit down?"

"I dished out the stew, but I thought you'd want to see the rest of the house before you ate. I wasn't sure what to do."

"I'll see the house later." He swallowed a bite of stew, then reached for a fresh loaf of bread. "I'm sorry I disappeared last night and most of today. I knew Ma and Gilly would look after you."

"I don't need looking after," she said, bristling. "A lot happened last night and this morning. Your ma told me most of it." She pulled small pieces off a chunk of bread, rolled them into balls between her thumb and middle finger, and dropped the little balls into her stew bowl. "I guess you went crazy when you learned Philadelphia was pregnant."

Suddenly the food tasted like ashes. "There's nothing to be gained by talking about it." As the shadows deepened outside the windows, the lamp in the center of the table seemed brighter, spreading a soft glow over the tablecloth, smoothing the circles beneath Louise's lashes. He drew a breath. "I'll be gone about a week on the roundup."

Surprise lifted her brows. "I thought I heard Livvy mention the roundup would last longer than that."

"We won't bring in the cattle in one large herd, but in several smaller herds. I'll return with the first group and set up for branding and notching."

"At the main house."

He nodded. "Will you be all right staying here alone for a week? I could leave one of the boys to look after you."

Even the loose tendrils around her face seemed to stiffen with offense. "I don't need a nursemaid, damn it." Tilting her head, she glared at him. "A better idea would be to take me along on the roundup. I could learn how to chase down cows."

"You probably could." He smiled in spite of himself. "But I doubt the boys would appreciate having a greenhorn woman getting in the way."

"I'm no delicate little flower, McCord," she said, narrowing her eyes even farther. "I can do anything a man can do."

He thought again that he liked her best when her dander was up, and pride and bravado rose like mercury shooting up a thermometer "I won't argue the point," he agreed, reaching for more bread. "Ma and Gilly used to ride along before Gilly turned into a young lady. But Ma was never a greenhorn, she could bust mavericks out of the brush as good as any man. And I've seen Gilly hold a small herd together."

"Well, then." Triumph gleamed in her eyes. "I guess I can, too."

"Cow punching is something a person grows up with or grows into. It isn't something you learn in the middle of the fall roundup. You'd be a danger to yourself and others."

Maybe it was the play of lamplight across her features that made her expression so readable tonight. He saw her disappointment but also knew he'd struck the right chord when he explained that she might imperil others.

"You could go up to the main house and stay with Ma," he suggested after he'd finished the stew and she'd served him a slab of rhubarb pie. He wouldn't have left Philadelphia absolutely alone, and he was determined to offer Louise the same courtesies.

"I might visit, but I'll stay here." She continued to roll little bread balls, now dropping them on top of the pie she hadn't touched. "Somebody needs to feed the chickens and milk the cow. I guess that's me. Who knows? Maybe I'll ride out and find some cattle close in and practice driving them toward the barn."

This was what he didn't like. Her independence led to impulsive decisions. Patiently, he explained the foolishness of attempting to chase cattle out of the brush with no instruction and no one along to help if things went wrong.

"Suppose the steer charges your horse and your horse shies and throws you. You could be out there for a week with a broken leg and no water, and no one knowing where you are."

Raising her head, she gave him a long searching look. "I wouldn't think that would concern you overmuch," she said in an expressionless voice. "Nobody would shed a tear if I got thrown and broke my neck."

"No one would be happy about it, either," he snapped, returning her steady gaze. "What you do now doesn't alter a damned thing. Live or die. Stay or go. Wally will still be married to Philadelphia ."

Realizing he'd raised his voice, he leaned back in his chair and pulled a hand down his jaw, feeling the small pox pits beneath his fingertips. "Do you still want a baby?" he asked bluntly.

"Yes."

"Then stop feeling sorry for yourself, if that's what you're doing. I agree it wasn't much of a welcome, with Ma talking divorce before you even went inside the house, but the family's trying to do right, trying not to blame you for everything that's happened." He ignored the hissing sound of her breath and the way her spine went rigid. "But the truth is, a lot of lives have been changed or affected because you want a baby."

"Or because you wanted a summer in the mountains. Or because fate put a marble in your hand. Or—"

He raised his hand. "You're right. But the fact is Wally wouldn't have married Philadelphia today if you had wanted a piano or a house or something else. You and I are married because you wanted a baby.

And so are Wally and Philadelphia ."

"What are you trying to say?" she asked coldly.

"I guess I'm saying that I don't blame you, but you do bear some responsibility. I'm also saying that you can run off if you want to. You can risk your life on foolish, dangerous pursuits if you need to prove a point." He stared into her eyes. "Then nobody wins. Nobody in this whole mess gets what they want.

Believe it or not, and I've told you this before, I don't want to see that happen. I'd like to think that at least one person finds something good in all of this. But I'm through begging you to stay, Louise. If you truly want to cut and run, then go. Nothing's holding you here, you're not a prisoner."

"I'm staying," she said, pushing up from the table. "I ain't changed my mind about a baby." Spinning in a swirl of skirts, she stormed toward the pump and worked the handle so vigorously that water gushed into the dishpan like a geyser. "I never said I expected a big welcome, and I never even hinted that your family hasn't treated me right! They've been polite, thoughtful, and nice as pie." She threw him a burning look. "They're treating me squarely, not for my sake, but for yours, and that's all right. But it's true that I could die right now standing here about to wash up the supper dishes, and no one would weep a single tear. That's how it's always been, and that's a fact!"

Abruptly Max realized that he had no idea what they were arguing about. Not an inkling. Standing, he decided now was a good time to inspect the rest of the house. For a moment he watched Louise furiously scraping the bowls and pie plates into the slop bucket, then decided he didn't have to explain why he was leaving the table. But he felt the need to say something.

"I've said all I'm going to on this subject, and don't you forget it." Hell, he didn't even know what the subject was.

"Oh, you can count on that!" she shouted as he left the kitchen and entered the hallway leading to the foyer.

He lit the lamps in the dining room and parlor and discovered that his instructions had been followed to the letter. The wallpaper reflected Philadelphia 's favorite shade of crimson and the parlor sofa was upholstered in an offsetting dark blue. The colors were repeated in a flowered carpet and again in the fringe on the lampshades. Everything had turned out exactly as he had imagined when he'd designed these rooms. Except…

Frowning, he walked to the mantelpiece over the parlor fireplace. He'd pictured the heirloom candlesticks bequeathed to Philadelphia by her mother framing both ends of the mantelpiece, perhaps flanking an artful arrangement of figurines and velvet and silk flowers.

Instead, a solitary silver spoon stood against the wallpaper in the center of the mantel, propped against a scratched pewter watch case.

His impulse was to tuck the items into a drawer rather than give such shabby pieces a place of prominence. Displaying them was ludicrous. Embarrassing. Then he remembered Louise showing him the spoon at the campsite, something he'd forgotten. He covered his eyes and sighed.

For a while at least, this was her home, too. She had as much right to display her treasures as he had to display his collection of first editions in the glass-fronted bookcase. And that's what she had done.

Now he spotted a short stack of what turned out to be songbooks piled on top of the bookcase.

Curious, he opened the bench seat in front of the piano and found more songbooks there. She'd placed a few with the piano and a few with his books as if unable to decide whether the songbooks were music or reading material.

Swearing, he thrust his hands deep into his pockets and found the green marble. Damn it. That's what he hated. About the time he was angry and feeling self-righteous and put upon, she said or did something that knocked the wind out of him.

After staring at the silver spoon for a full minute, he reluctantly returned to the kitchen and leaned in the doorway, watching her stack bowls on the drain board. A dish towel was draped over her shoulder. "I'm not going to dry the dishes."

"I didn't ask you to."

"But I'll empty the dishwater in the yard."

"No, thank you. I'll do it myself," she said in a tight, clipped voice.

"I don't mind emptying the pan," he said, striving for patience.

"Well, I don't want you to do one damned thing for me!"

Max didn't understand why an angry woman refused to allow a man to do something helpful. Just as his mother had done when his father was alive, Louise bustled around the kitchen, wiping this, drying that, creating enough noise and commotion to make him feel that he was an idle lump of wood standing in her way.

"All right, what are you sore about?"

"Why would I feel sorry for myself?" She waved the dish towel and looked around with flashing eyes. "I never even knew a stove like that existed, and now I'll be cooking on it! And this house is the most beautiful place I ever saw. It will be a privilege to care for it and all the wonderful things in it. So don't you go accusing me—me!—of feeling sorry for myself, because I ain't! If it wasn't for you, I'd be as happy as a horse in high clover! You ask me, it's you who're feeling sorry for yourself!"

He saw it now. He'd insulted her or stung her feelings or maybe both when he said she was feeling sorry for herself. That's what the slamming and banging was all about.

"You think I'm feeling sorry for myself?" He didn't like hearing it either.

She leaned against the sink and crossed her arms over her chest. "There are going to be a lot of unhappy days for you, Max. When Wally and Philadelphia return to the ranch and the main house. The first time you see her as your brother's wife. The first Sunday dinner with everyone present. As you see her belly get bigger. The day she delivers."

"What's your point?"

"Making me feel bad isn't going to make you feel better."

Anger tightened his chest, and he pushed away from the doorjamb. Wives didn't speak to husbands that bluntly or critically. She had just given him one more reason to resent having married her.

"If you'll excuse me," he said coldly, "I'm going up to bed."

"You're excused!" She rolled her eyes and drew out the words. Then she picked up the dishpan and carried the dirty water toward the mudroom door. "I'll be up when I finish here."

He'd forgotten that only one bedroom had been finished. As Philadelphia had hinted that she would like rooms to furnish and decorate, he'd purposely left two of the three bedrooms empty. Like it or not, he and Louise would have to share a bed.

After lighting the lamps, he gazed unhappily at what was definitely a woman's bedroom. Rose paisley wallpaper. Ruffles and lace, lots of lace. A skirted vanity. Fringed tiebacks on the draperies. The decor had amused him when he'd planned it to surprise and indulge Philadelphia . Now it stifled and smothered.

Pressing his lips together, he glanced inside the dressing room, noting a row of his clothing on one side, and Louise's bought and borrowed items hanging on the other side.

By the time his unwanted wife came upstairs, he was in bed reading, and wearing a nightshirt, which was not his habit. Pretending to be engrossed in his book, he watched her enter the dressing room, then emerge a few minutes later completely covered by the voluminous tent-like nightgown. She'd taken down her hair and plaited it into a long braid that swung over her shoulder as she pulled back the blanket and sheet on her side then tucked herself and yards and yards of nightgown into bed.

Having arranged nightgown and covers, she pushed her pillow against the headboard and sat propped up as he was, her arms again crossed over her chest. A signal if he'd ever seen one.

"Is the light bothering you?" he inquired irritably. If she answered yes, as he expected she would, his choice would be to abandon the pleasure of reading before slumber or to ignore her wishes and be inconsiderate.

"Maybe I was feeling a little bit sorry for myself," she admitted in a low voice. "Your family's being nice, but I know they blame me for all the trouble." She cast him a quick hazel glance. "Then I start blaming myself and feeling bad and thinking that everything would have worked out a lot better, just like you said, if I'd picked a piano or something else. But I didn't want a piano, and everyone including you said I should pick what I wanted. It's just not fair, and I don't see an end to it. How long are we going to be fighting blame? That's what I want to know. A few weeks? Months? A year from Sunday?"

He closed the book with a snap and laid it on the bedside table. Concentration had been impossible; he doubted that he'd read two pages in the last forty minutes. He studied the wallpaper, trying to pick out the seams.

"Acknowledging your responsibility isn't the same as blaming you," he said finally. "If anyone's to blame, it's me. I should never have gone to Piney Creek."

"That occurred to me, too. So why did you?"

The answer wasn't simple. He'd failed to make Philadelphia understand his reasons; he doubted Louise would. But he told her about Jason McCord anyway, needing to remind himself what had driven him into the mountains despite Philadelphia 's pleas that he stay here.

"I was born in Mexico ," he said finally. "Wally was born in California . Gilly arrived in a mining camp near Central City. What those places have in common is gold or silver."

"Your father was a prospector?" Surprise caused her to shift on the pillow, and he felt her gaze on the side of his face. "I thought your pa was a rancher."

"No, it was Ma who grew up on a ranch down south. She met my father when he was working in a nearby town to earn enough to stake his next prospecting venture." Why two people with such different backgrounds, dreams, and personalities had fallen in love and married remained a mystery to Max.

Maybe it had been a mystery to his parents, too.

"You remember the men in Piney Creek who brought their families to the diggings? My father did the same. In the early years maybe my mother enjoyed traveling to places she wouldn't have seen otherwise.

Maybe living in mining camps felt romantic and adventurous. My father would have been content to chase the dream forever, but one day Ma realized she had three children growing up in rough camps. No house, no security. Only a hand-to-mouth existence and no future."

"Go on," Louise said. She'd propped her elbow on the pillow and rested her head in one hand while stroking the end of her braid across her cheek with the other hand. If he hadn't been focused on his parent's story, he might have laughed as the stubby end of her braid reminded him of a shaving brush.

"Ma started selling bread and pies out of the tent we lived in. She earned enough to buy a boardinghouse on Central City's main street. Three years later, she bought this land. A year after that she sold the boardinghouse and the four of us left Central City and came here to the ranch. We lived in a tent by the creek while the main house was being built."

"The four of you?" He heard a frown in her voice.

"My father stayed in Central City," he said, the words coming hard even now. "The dream was so strong that he let his family leave the mountains without him." And Max had been old enough to read the pain in his mother's eyes, old enough to feel himself abandoned and rejected.

"By the time he decided that being with his family was more important than searching for gold, the house was built and the range stocked. He came home hat in hand. But he never forgave my mother for finding riches in the mountains when he couldn't. Never let her or himself forget that she had bought the ranch with her earnings and he was living off the fruits of a woman's labor."

"Nothing costs so much as what is given us," Louise murmured with a sigh, and he looked at her, startled by her understanding.

"When Ma left the mountains and camps, she found stability and security in the land. But my father lost some vital spark. He never went into the mountains again, but he was never fully here, either. He left the better part of himself up there. And during the time they were apart, their marriage changed. Maybe Ma couldn't forgive him for choosing a sluice and a pan instead of her. Maybe she'd discovered she didn't need him after all. Maybe he blamed her for the loss of his dreams. Or maybe they were never suited in the first place."

"And you?" Louise inquired softly, her steady hazel gaze fixed on his face. "Did you forgive him for choosing a dream instead of you?"

"Good God," he whispered, staring at her in shock. When he looked down, he saw that his hands were clenched into fists. "I thought I needed this summer to understand him," he said slowly, his thoughts racing ahead of his words. "But you're right. That was only part of it."

Yawning, Louise plumped her pillow, then slid under the covers as if she hadn't just delivered a stunning insight. "I think you needed to go to Piney Creek. And this summer was your only chance to do it," she said in a sleepy voice, turning her back to him and the lamp. "Good night."

"Piney Greek was like Central City used to be, before the boom, before shaft mining," he said, speaking to her braid.

Long after he'd extinguished the lamp and Louise slept beside him, he sat in the dark remembering his childhood. Camping in a series of tents beside a series of creeks and streams. Helping his mother knead bread dough or roll out piecrusts. And later, emptying slop buckets in the boardinghouse, washing the stairs every morning before he gathered eggs for breakfast.

And then the ranch and his joy in the land—knowing the wandering had ended and he'd come home to a place where he belonged. Eventually the pain of missing his father knotted into anger so deep that he resented it when Jason McCord finally did rejoin his family.

Had he forgiven his father for letting them leave? For joining them eventually but leaving his heart beside a mountain creek? Not when he stood dry-eyed at the grave site, holding his mother's arm while the Reverend Dawson prayed.

But now? After his summer at Piney Creek?

After a time he stretched a hand to Louise's side of the bed and adjusted the blankets over her shoulder.

It puzzled him that she understood so readily why he had needed a summer in the mountains, yet Philadelphia never had.

Philadelphia . Impossible as it seemed, he had forgotten for a while that tonight was Philadelphia 's wedding night. He raised a hand to his eyes, and pain exploded behind his ribs.

*

She was Mrs. Wallace McCord.

By four o'clock , they were climbing the steps of the Denver County Courthouse. Within half an hour Wally had found a justice of the peace who married them in a dingy office that smelled of stale cigar smoke, glue, and ink. Minutes later they were again on the outside steps, dazed and awkward with each other, amazed that their lives could be forever altered in so short a time.

From there, they went to the telegraph office and dispatched announcements to Livvy McCord and Howard Houser. The carefully worded telegrams were targeted to Mr. Graham who managed the Fort Houser telegraph office and who was not known to respect the privacy of the telegrams that passed through his hands. By tomorrow the official story would be racing through Fort Houser like a prairie fire.

Wally then asked if she was hungry, and feeling confused and adrift, she had nodded yes although she felt sick inside and doubted she could swallow a bite.

He'd taken her to the dining room at the hotel where they had registered earlier, and they must have eaten although she couldn't remember what they had ordered. After coffee, they hailed a cab and attended the theater, where everyone wore evening dress except them, or so it had seemed. She couldn't recall one scene of the production.

Now they were back in the suite Wally had taken at the Denver City Hotel. He sat across from her holding his hat on his knees, looking younger than she knew he was and uncomfortable and very manageable.

She had already removed the fashionable wool cape that matched the smart blue-and-crimson-trimmed suit she'd chosen for the brief marriage ceremony. No, she absolutely would not think about the sugary confection of a gown hanging in her closet at home, the gown she would never wear.

Lifting her arms, she removed long pins, then placed her hat beside her on the settee. "I thank you from the bottom of my heart," she said in a low voice, smoothing the net and feathers and silk flowers trimming the brim of her hat. She cast him a quick peek, then lowered her eyelids. "I'm so ashamed." Tears welled in her eyes, sparkled on her lashes, then spilled to her cheeks.

The ability to weep at will was such a useful talent. Some women turned red and blotchy when they cried, but she did not. She knew she cried beautifully because she had perfected the art by practicing before a mirror.

Clasping her hands in her lap, she dropped her head and shoulders, creating a tableau of abject misery.

"You must hate me," she whispered, letting tears fall on her hands. "You must hate it that you're stuck with a person of such low character."

In an instant he was kneeling in front of her, pushing his handkerchief into her hands. "Don't cry. I don't hate you, not at all." His hands lifted as if he wished to clasp her fingers, but he didn't yet claim the right to such intimacy. "You're not a low character." He drew a breath. "And I'm not stuck with you."

Now she covered her face with her hands and let her shoulders shake with sobs. "How kind you are.

Oh how can I ever repay you for rescuing me from abandonment and scandal?"

" Philadelphia ." It was the first time he had addressed her as anything other than Miss Houser. "Please look at me."

After patting her eyes with his handkerchief, she allowed herself to be coaxed into a sad gaze. He looked so earnest. So upset and eager to soothe.

"It's a bad beginning, yes," he said, trying to peer past her misery. "But others have made good marriages from bad beginnings. I intend to be a devoted husband and a caring father. You have my word on this." A wave of scarlet swelled up from his collar. "I hope someday you'll care for me as much as you—" Halting, he swallowed and knots ran up his jawline. "What happened before today doesn't matter. What happens from here on is what's important."

"Thank you," she murmured through the tears. Then she leaned forward and rested her head on Wally's shoulder, inviting him to offer comfort. After a moment, his arms came around her and he clumsily patted her back, whispering soft words and promises for the future.

Oh yes, he was manageable. Every man she had ever met was manageable. Except Max. Max was the only man who had ever said no to her. The only man who had not placed her desires before his own. She hated and loved him for that very reason.

Oh Max, she thought, and suddenly her tears were angry and genuine. It should have been you here tonight.