LITMIR.BIZ

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even as it amused him in some cruel way.

      “What will you have, my dear?” Enid asked as she put a platter of biscuits on the table, fresh from the warming tray in the gas oven.

      “Just eggs and bacon, please,” she replied. “I never eat a large breakfast.”

      “Pass the eggs, dear,” Enid asked her husband. “Coffee, Amelia?”

      “Oh, may I?” Amelia asked with a guilty glance at the doorway. “Papa does not approve….”

      “Papa is asleep,” King replied with faint sarcasm.

      “You have a full day, do you not?” Brant asked his son curtly.

      King shrugged. “When do I not? Enjoy your trip. Mother and I will see that Miss Howard does not become … bored,” he added with an enigmatic look.

      His parents stared after him curiously when he left and exchanged equally enigmatic glances with each other. His hostility toward Amelia had puzzled both of them. Like Alan, they sympathized with her because of her father’s callous treatment. King acted as though he felt she deserved it.

      “Roundup is often difficult for King,” Brant said slowly, smiling at Amelia. “Perhaps he will mellow when it is over.”

      “Of course he will,” Enid added.

      Amelia only smiled. She knew that King’s attitude had nothing to do with his duties around the ranch. They stemmed from a peculiar dislike of herself. She had looked forward to her father’s absence, even while she worried about what might happen to him on the hunt if he were overtaxed. Now she dreaded the certainty of King’s presence over the next week or two.

      At least, she told herself, Marie and the children were here, along with Enid, to provide a buffer. Her heart lightened. It would not be so difficult after all.

      * * *

      The hunting party was provisioned and outfitted and ready to ride by late afternoon.

      “We’ll camp in the hills tonight and set out for the Guadalupe Mountains tomorrow. We’ll be near a telegraph office, so I can cable you of our progress,” Brant told his wife, and bent to kiss her cheek and embrace her tenderly. “Take care. King is here, and he can contact the Ranger post in Alpine if there are any dirty dealings on the border while we’re away.”

      Enid nodded solemnly. There had been a few isolated incidents, and a murder on a nearby ranch in recent years. Border gangs operated. So did Mexican rustlers. Civilization might abound in El Paso, but this far out of town it was sidearms and careful watch that kept the peace. Not to mention the Frontier Division of the Texas Rangers, although there was much talk of disbanding that, since the Rangers had very nearly worked themselves out of a job here.

      “Have you enough ammunition?” Enid asked worriedly.

      “Enough, and still more,” her husband said, smiling. His head lifted at the sound of a horse’s hooves, and his eyes beamed with pride as King bore down on them astride his coal-black Arabian. The horse was a stud sire and a champion in his own right. Only King could, or would, ride him. Nor was he a working horse. King exercised him twice a day. He did, too, usually ride him to the neighboring Valverde estate when he paid court to Miss Darcy.

      For the week that Amelia and her father had been in residence, Miss Darcy had come one evening for dinner. It had been a cold occasion, during which Miss Darcy had been condescending almost to the point of rudeness, while clinging limpetlike to King. She seemed to sense Amelia’s helpless attraction to King, because she deliberately played up to him, making Amelia feel more inadequate than ever. Lovely she might be to an outsider, but Amelia’s surviving parent had convinced her that she had nothing to offer a man save her domestic skills. Not that they were ever quite adequate to suit him these days….

      “Are you off, then?” King asked, leaning over the saddle horn.

      “Off and running, my boy,” Brant said with a smile. “Wish us luck.”

      “I’ll wish that you corner that vicious calf-killer and score a deer or two as well,” King agreed.

      “In the higher altitudes, game may be more plentiful, since the weather there is still quite wintery this early in spring,” Alan put in. “Will you be all right, truly, Amelia?” he asked softly.

      She was touched by his concern. “Certainly I will, Alan. I’ll think of you while you’re away.”

      “See that you stay in the house,” Hartwell Howard told her sharply. “No dillydallying!”

      “Yes, Papa,” she agreed readily.

      “Practice your piano, while you’re about it,” he added indifferently. “You play clumsily.”

      “Yes, Papa,” she said again. She went close to fix his collar with gentle hands and worried eyes. “You will be very careful?” she asked uncertainly.

      He glared at her. “I shall be fine! Stop fussing over me!” He jerked on his gloves and mounted his horse with little concern for the bit in the poor animal’s mouth. It reared, and he brought the quirt down on its flank viciously.

      King swung out of the saddle with blood in his eyes, before his brother or his father could say a word. He jerked the quirt out of Hartwell’s hand and slammed it to the ground.

      His silver eyes met the other man’s with honest dislike. “Our mounts don’t feel the spur or the quirt,” he told the man in soft, dangerous tones. “You can walk to the mountains if that doesn’t suit you.”

      Hartwell eyed the younger man warily, his cheeks red. He wiped at his temple under the hat he was wearing. “Of course, dear boy,” he said with a hollow laugh. “The animal is rather unruly, you must have noticed.”

      “Only when the bit tears at his mouth in clumsy hands,” came the blunt reply.

      Hartwell looked down at the quirt and seemed to be debating his next move. King made it for him. He put his booted foot squarely over the quirt and calmly began to light a cigar.

      The gesture was enough. Hartwell gathered the reins, gingerly this time, muttering under his breath about such consideration for a silly dumb animal as he moved away.

      Amelia’s fingernails had made crescents in her palms. She had looked for her father to go crazy at the rebuke, perhaps to even grab a gun and start shooting. He was unpredictable. But King didn’t know that, and she couldn’t tell him. He probably wouldn’t believe her anyway.

      But Brant saw the anxiety on Amelia’s face and knew that something was amiss. “King,” Brant began warningly.

      The younger man looked up at him without blinking, his silver eyes still flickering dangerously.

      “We should go, Father,” Alan prompted, wary of explosions. The two older men were both rash and hot-tempered. And often they didn’t see eye to eye on issues.

      “Yes, I suppose we should,” Brant said finally, shifting restlessly in the saddle. “Watch your back,” he told King.

      “You watch yours,” came the curt reply.

      Brant smiled at his wife, nodded to Amelia, and turned his mount. Alan followed suit, glancing back until he almost fell from the saddle watching Amelia.

      “Young idiot, he’ll break his neck. Must you encourage him so, Miss Howard, or are you just following Papa’s commandments?”

      She turned, shocked at the vehemence in his voice.

      “Really, King,” Enid clucked, glaring at him. “You were on your way to see the Valverdes, were you not? Pray, don’t let us keep you.”

      “How could you, when such a charming and fashionable young woman sits waiting for me in her parlor?” he asked with a contemptuous glance at Amelia in her simple homespun dress.

      Amelia felt the whip of that comment like a rope burn. The Howards had been a respected

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