LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

and met with the same shattered fate.

      Then, suddenly, it was raining. Peas and carrots! Saints preserve us! Forks and spoons! Bridget ducked just as the big silver tray sailed over her head, skimmed the length of the Oriental carpet, and came to rest at the black hem of Honoria Grenville’s dress.

      “That will be quite enough, Amanda.” The old woman’s cane came down, denting the tray. “Bridget, did she hear me? Tell my granddaughter I won’t tolerate this behavior any longer.”

      A muffled shout came from behind the curtains. “Tell my grandmother I heard her, Bridget. And tell her the minute she stops keeping me prisoner and lets me go back to Denver to marry Angus McCray, she won’t have to tolerate my bad behavior anymore. I’m going to marry him, Grandmother. Did you hear me? Did she hear me, Bridget?”

      One look at Mrs. Grenville’s livid face proved to the maid that she had, indeed, heard the threat. “I believe she did, miss,” Bridget said, her gaze flick-ing nervously now from her irate employer to the brocade curtains, which were rippling and waving, as if from Miss Amanda’s hot breath.

      It was a continual surprise to the young Irish-woman that rich people argued. And so vehemently. too. If she had money, she thought, and especially a fortune like the Grenvilles’, she’d be as dreamy and contented as a cow in clover, as blissful as a sow in springtime mud. Of course, like Miss Amanda, she’d want to marry the man of her choice, and she’d be furious, too, she supposed, if she’d been snatched from the altar just as she was about to speak her vows, the way Miss Amanda had been yesterday.

      “Angus McCray is a fortune hunter and a scoundrel,” Mrs. Grenville said in a booming voice.

      “I’m still going to marry him, Grandmother.”

      “What did she say, Bridget?”

      “She said…”

      “I said—” Amanda’s voice rose from the depths of the sleeping compartment “—that I’m still going to marry him. I said you can’t keep me under lock and key forever, Grandmother, and the minute your back is turned, I’m going back to Denver. You wait and see.”

      “What did she say, Bridget?” The ebony cane stabbed the tray again and again. Honoria Grenville’s knuckles were fierce white knobs on the handle. With her other hand, she waved her lace hankie again. “Come here, Bridget,” she demanded. “Tell me what she said.”

      “Well, ma’am…” The little maid edged away from the sleeping compartment, picked her way through peas and carrots and flatware as daintily as her brogans would allow, until she stood directly in front of her employer. She curtsied again—out of habit, or from nerves—thinking she’d rather stand between the armies of blue and gray than between these two women. She swallowed hard before she spoke.

      “Well, ma’am, putting it in a nutshell, Miss Amanda said she’s bound and determined to marry the rogue.”

      With the hankie, Mrs. Grenville motioned her even closer. The light in the old woman’s pale blue eyes struck Bridget now as more like a glimmer of hope than the earlier spark of anger. “And did she say she loves him?” Mrs. Grenville whispered. “Did my granddaughter say anything about love?”

      “Love?” Bridget gulped the word, and then frowned. Had she? Had Miss Amanda, in all her righteous fury, shouted a single word about love?

      “No, ma’am. No, she didn’t. Not as I recall.”

      The old woman closed her eyes for a moment and sagged into the upholstery. The hankie drifted from her hand. She sighed. “Precisely what I thought.”

      Bridget felt an unaccustomed tug of pity for her wealthy employer just then, but before she could offer so much as a comforting cluck of her tongue, the old woman stiffened her spine, rammed her cane into the floor once more, just missing Bridget’s foot, and bellowed, “Over my dead body, Amanda Grenville.”

       Chapter One

       North Platte, Nebraska 1874

      “Shine your boots, mister?”

      “Scat.”

      “Aw, come on. Them boots of yours could do with a little spit and polish, and I sure could do with a nickel. What do you say, mister?”

      “You’re a pest.”

      “I’m enterprising.”

      “Same thing.” Marcus Quicksilver thumbed up the hat that was shading his face in order to get a look at the kid who’d been buzzing around him like a gnat for the past five minutes. He expected to see a chubby, apple-cheeked tycoon, but instead his eyes lit on a skinny boy with smallpox scars and a single suspender that was failing miserably at holding up a pair of too-big pants.

      “How old are you, kid?”

      “None of your beeswax.” The boy aimed his pitted chin into Marcus’s face as if it were the barrel of a nicked and battered derringer. “Nine, if you have to know. How old’re you?”

      “Ninety.” Marcus grinned, then quit when his forehead felt as if it were splitting down the middle. He muttered a soft curse, offered up another promise never to touch bar whiskey again, and closed his eyes. “Make that ninety-five.”

      “You could sure use a shave, mister.”

      Marcus traced his fingers along his jaw, where the three-day growth was old enough now to feel soft, rather than bristly. “Wait. Don’t tell me. You’re an enterprising barber, too. Right?”

      The boy laughed. “Naw. But for a nickel, I’ll set you up with the best danged barber in town.”

      “No time.”

      “You waiting for the train?”

      “Yep.”

      The boy fished a gold watch from his pocket, clicked it open and studied its face. “Aw, you got a good twenty minutes before the westbound’s due. That ain’t enough time for a haircut, maybe, but it’s plenty for a shoeshine.” He dropped the watch back in his pocket and peered at his potential customer. “Well? How about it?”

      Shifting in his chair, Marcus unwound his legs and stretched them across the planking. He stared at his boots a moment, wondering when it had ceased being important to him to have shined boots, a shaved face or well-pressed clothes. Wondering if he was as unkempt inside as he was outside. If his heart and soul were as disreputable as the rest of him. Wondering if he cared.

      “You win,” he said at last, with a sigh of resignation. “Have at it, kid.”

      “Yessir!” The boy snapped his soiled chamois rag, knelt, then promptly spat on Marcus’s left boot and got to work.

      “Mighty nice timepiece for a bootblack,” Marcus said casually, looking down at the top of the boy’s head. The hair there was yellow and wild as fresh pitched hay, and probably hadn’t seen a comb all month. “Did you lift that watch from a fella heading east or west?”

      “Neither.” He stopped working the shine rag long enough to pat his pocket. “This here watch is a legacy from my pappy. He was rich.”

      “Uh-huh,” Marcus drawled. “What was your rich pappy’s name?”

      “Joe. Joe Tate.”

      “Mighty poor speller for a rich man.”

      The boy glanced up now, his eyes big and quizzical. “What…what do you mean?”

      “The initials on your watch, son.” Marcus winked. “Somebody named N.F.R. is walking around somewhere right now, scratching his head and wondering whether it’s ten minutes till or ten minutes after, I expect.”

      The pockmarked

Скачать книгу