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Missy turned in the saddle. She gazed up at him with blue eyes gone wide.
“Is this a bawdy town?” she asked.
He had been a fool to bring her here, even though it was the most likely place that Wage would have run to. He ought to have put her on a train headed east, tied her to the bench with his own hands if it came to that.
“It’s as bawdy as can be.” In truth, there wasn’t a place much worse. Funny, it hadn’t bothered him until now.
A door squeaked open on a second-story balcony. The aroma of freshly brewed coffee filtered down and mingled with the dusty odor of the street. With the day half gone, Luminary was just beginning to stir. A dog barked in the distance. Muff leaped to his feet in Missy’s lap. He stretched as tall as his ten inches would allow.
“Zane Coldridge, where have you been?” A woman’s sleep-tumbled voice drifted down from the balcony. “We figured you were dead.”
He looked up, past the front door of Maybelle’s Place to the sign that declared in bold red letters, Spirits, Gaming, and Dancing Women. On the balcony just over the sign the speaker leaned against the railing with a cup of steaming coffee cupped in her palms.
It was as though he saw her for the first time. The way Missy must be seeing her.
Red hair that he knew was not natural fell in messy curls over bare shoulders. Pale breasts propped up by her forearms seemed ready to spill over the top of her crimson corset. Whatever she had used to make her lashes black had slid while she slept and given her under-eyes a coal shadow. A white feather, limp from a night of hard work, flopped over one eye.
Missy sagged backward against him.
“Is that …?” she whispered. “Is she …?”
“Miss Emily Perkins.”
Muff whined. His dirty tail whipped up a cloud of dust.
“Is Miss Perkins a dancing woman?” Missy settled Muff on her lap with quiet fuss and scolding. She must be trying hard not to stare at Emily.
“She knows a step or two.”
“You’ve … danced with her?” It was a bold question from someone who had suddenly blushed the same shade of red as Emily’s sleep-smudged rouge.
“We grew up together. Emily is like a sister to me.” And she was, but she hadn’t always been. There had been that long-ago summer, just before Emily’s folks had died of the cholera, when the pair of them had been green sixteen-year-olds. Emily hadn’t been like a sister then.
“She’s beautiful.”
Missy Devlin was a woman of neverending surprise. “You aren’t offended by her?”
“Mercy, no! If all the women in Luminary dress like your friend, I can give you back your coat.”
He ought to feel relieved by her attitude. Now he wouldn’t lose time trailing Wage while he took Missy to a more appropriate town. But he didn’t feel relieved, he felt worried. Her eyes shone too brightly. Her smile curved with anticipation. No doubt by sundown she would get a new journal and write to her sister, describing every step that she saw the dancing women of Luminary take.
Zane slid backward off Ace then led him to the hitching post outside Maybelle’s.
“Let’s go in, I’ll introduce you to Maybelle.”
He reached up. She leaned down, keeping both arms around Muff. She didn’t tense when his fingers closed about her ribs. She fell into his hands with perfect trust. Unease shivered up his spine. A fearless innocent in Luminary equaled a victim.
He’d have to pay Maybelle extra to keep Missy out of trouble until he arranged her way home.
Missy’s hands itched. Words trembled at her fingertips, eager to pop out. Everything she had written before would pale against the description of this cherry-red room.
Enchantment in the form of red velvet curtains covered whole walls. Purple couches sat boldly on a gold carpet. Not a finger of daylight strayed through the windows, so six crystal chandeliers were lit, casting fairy lights on ceiling, walls and floor. On the right side of the room was a marble-topped bar that ran the length of the wall. Behind the bar was an endlessly long mirror framed in polished wood. Above that hung a huge painting of a woman lying bare on a couch that looked very much like the couches in this marvelous parlor.
She had been warned often enough that it was rude to stare, but she had never seen a woman so seductively nude. It was difficult to draw her gaze away from the honey-brown eyes and the moist red mouth that seemed to smile with a great secret. Surely, with her arms sprawled languidly over her head and her breasts pointing at the viewer, with her hips turned so that the black shadow between her thighs was right there for all to see, the woman could have no secrets.
The grand room was empty, quiet except for the swish of Muff’s tail stirring the air.
“Maybelle?” Zane called out.
A gray bun streaked with brown popped up from behind the polished bar. The woman’s head turned, revealing a round face. Laughter spun in honey-brown eyes. Missy glanced at the painting then at the smiling woman. Her eyes still held a secret.
“Welcome home, sugar.” The woman, dressed in plain brown wool, swished out from behind the bar. She hopped, sparrow-like, toward him with her arms flapping in welcome. “Where have you been gone to for so long?”
Zane took half a dozen steps across the room, caught the woman’s plump embrace and spun her about. Crisp petticoats swished through the air. Crinkling lace flashed past a piano that gleamed like a mirror.
Missy’s fingers itched again. What a surprise to find such a fine instrument in this prairie-weathered town. She could hardly think over the words crowding her mind. She would need them all to describe Maybelle and her decadent, opulent and oh-so-delightful establishment.
“Earning a living.” Zane set Maybelle on the floor then pecked her cheek with a quick kiss.
The worldly-wise yet down-to-earth-looking woman blushed and touched her cheek.
“You always were a sweet boy. The girls have missed you.”
Sweet boy? Missy looked him over with narrowed eyes. His hair glinted midnight-blue in the light of the chandelier, his thighs swelled beneath his jeans, his feet would be long and lean under his well-worn boots. Possibly Maybelle hadn’t seen the way his shoulders filled his flannel shirt. Evidently she hadn’t taken note of the way his eyes could melt a woman in her shoes. Certainly, the woman could never have felt the scrape of his beard stubble under her fingertips.
It had been some time since Zane Coldridge was a sweet boy.
Throaty giggles erupted at the top of the stairs. Like a swarm of multicolored butterflies, women fluttered down the steps. Bare arms reached, bosoms jiggled over corsets, red mouths puckered for kisses.
Maybelle had been dead-on about the girls missing Zane.
“Have you brought me a new girl, dear?” Maybelle called out over the brightly colored heads of the women surrounding Zane. She wrapped Missy in a soft, quick hug that Muff didn’t seem to mind. Then she took a step back, smiling all the while. “Turn around, dear. Let me get a good look at you.”
Missy made a pretty pirouette with one hand out, palm up. Muff, wedged against her side, wiggled in apparent delight.
“Very nice,” Maybelle crooned. “Take off that old coat, dearie, and let me see if you will appeal to our gentlemen.”
The coat hadn’t slipped to her waist before Zane had extricated himself from the flock of soiled doves and yanked the lapels back over her bosom.
“I’d like you to meet Missy Devlin.” He fastened the top button and tugged to make sure it held. “She’s not a professional lady.”
The professional ladies made a colorful circle, gazing at her with interest.
“Why, then, is she in her underwear?” Emily asked. Curly heads of red, black and blond nodded all about.
“Yes, dear, what has happened to your clothing?” Maybelle asked, her voice soft with concern. “Zane?” This time her voice had a bite to it.
“I started off yesterday with a lovely dress, white and red with pretty bows and brass buttons shaped like roses, but it was eaten.” A multivoiced gasp came from the circle. Six pairs of eyes stared at Zane with disapproval.
“By a cow!” Zane rushed to clarify.
“Ohhh!” The women sighed as one.
Emily nodded her head in apparent understanding, as though gowns were a regular part of bovine diet in the West.
“Missy is trying to get home to her family in Boston,” Zane said to Maybelle. “She lost everything that she had in the flood that took out Green Island.”
Maybelle touched Missy’s elbow. “Oh, you poor lamb. I heard about that. What a mercy that Zane found you. He’s brought me many a stray over the years. Not many women, you understand, but puppies and kittens, even a sick old man once. Our Zane just has a knack for bringing home castoffs.”
“Can you put Missy up for a while?” Zane asked.
“She can have your old room.” To Missy, she said, “It’s lovely and quiet at the top of the house so nothing will disturb you.”
If only she could stay for a while. Why, the stories she would be able to tell! But first she had to get her journal back and return poor Mr. Goodwin’s rental horse. Very likely, the stolen animal would be the only part of his business to have survived the flood.
“Thank you for your kindness, Maybelle, but I can’t stay a moment longer. I have business to take care of.”
“In that pretty shift?” A blonde with a scar on her chin asked. “I thought you wasn’t a whore?”
“Janie, you know we don’t use that word here,” Maybelle admonished. She smoothed her hands on the front of her modest dress. “We are professional ladies, purveyors of pleasure to discriminating gentlemen.”
“Janie didn’t begin her career at Maybelle’s. She came from outside.” Emily inclined her head toward the closed door. “She started at Pete’s Palace. Life out there is different.”
“It’s mean,” said a woman who touched her shoulder, appearing to rub away some old pain.
“And dirty,” added a brunette with shiny curls.
Maybelle scratched Muff behind his mud-crusted ear. “You and your pup will stay with us until you can find your way home, but I have to warn you, Luminary isn’t the place for a lady like you.”
“You are a prize, Maybelle.” Zane kissed her cheek. “I’ll be on my way.”
“You chasing some outlaw?” Emily asked.
“Hot on his heels, darlin’.”
Missy’s heart gave a kick when he called the woman darlin’. It had been naive to think that he’d meant something personal when he’d called Missy that.
Zane passed quick kisses all around. Except for Missy. He wished her luck then strode out the front door.
“I sure do hope it’s not another year before we see that man.” Emily took Muff from Missy’s arms. “What a sweet little poochie.”
“Let me have that dirty old coat, dearie.” Maybelle slid it off her, held the coat at arm’s length and wrinkled her nose. “Who knows when this was last laundered?”
“I can’t stay, really.” Missy sprinted toward the door.
Maybe if she offered Zane a huge sum of money he would take her along.
She yanked open the door then remembered that she didn’t have a huge amount of money. She had no money. The only way she had to get money was to wire Edwin and beg him for some.
Missy stepped onto the boardwalk. Bright sunlight nearly blinded her. She shaded her eyes with her hand and watched Zane trot away in a haze of dust.
“Hey, chuckie!”
Missy turned to see a man, greasy hair hanging past his shoulders and black spittle oozing from the corner of his mouth, crossing the street. He reached in his pocket and pulled out a small coin. “This’ll be all your’n if you let me taste your—”
Whatever revolting thing the man had intended to say was cut short by a gunshot. The coin vanished from between his fingers. He let out a yelp of profanity and chewing tobacco.
Missy spun toward the sound of the shot. Zane sat tall in his saddle with a gun sitting easy as a heartbeat in his steady hand. Wisps of smoke twirled out of the gun barrel. The fury in his eyes made her shiver. It made the greasy man run for cover.
Half a dozen hands from behind grabbed her shift and yanked her back through Maybelle’s front door.
An hour before sundown, Zane settled Ace into the Dereton livery. He gave the liveryman an additional coin to make sure the horse had an extra bag of oats and the best stall. At the stable door he paused and glanced back. The extras he had purchased were bare payment for a couple of hard days. He whistled softly in good-bye and got a whickered reply.
Reassured that Ace was well-tended, Zane walked two blocks to the marshal’s office.
The marshal, Joseph Tuner, was a family man who would likely be home for supper with his wife and younglings. Unless he had a tenant in a jail cell, his habit was to leave his office unlocked. That would suit Zane fine. If he could skip a drawn-out conversation, he would be able to search the establishments where Wage might be before he had the relief of checking in to the hotel for a dry night’s sleep.
As he had expected, the door was unlocked; it swung open with a rusty groan. The last hour of daylight shot across the floor and cast an orange glow on the wanted posters pinned to the wall behind the marshal’s desk. Outside, a dog barked, footsteps passed behind Zane, thumping down the boardwalk. A handbill with the ink barely dry stared back at him.
“Blue eyes,” he said out loud then rounded the desk. He tapped the likeness of Missy Lenore Devlin on the nose with his finger. He traced the curls winding pertly on top of her head.
He ought to have known who she was from the first. The clothing on the sketch, particularly the collar, standing stiff and prim, must have thrown him off. The tidy loops of hair marked in pen didn’t reflect the sun’s gleam the way the true tresses did. But strike him silly, he should have recognized those eyes. The artist had captured the spark of whimsy and lurking mischief that he had struggled to put out of his mind on the short ride from Luminary to Dereton.
Damn, he might never forget the look on her face when he shot the coin from the derelict’s fingers. She hadn’t uttered a word, but her round eyes and sagging jaw had shown her astonishment.
She looked pretty when she was astonished. He shook his head to dispel the image.
There was the poster of Wage. The poster, as usual, had been pinned under another one, newer with a higher reward.
The sum on Missy’s poster nearly blinded him. He ought to turn back to Luminary, collect Missy and deliver her to her mother’s doorstep. Two thousand dollars would sit pretty in his bank account. Life would be a good deal more comfortable with that sum behind him.
The reward tempted him, to be sure, but it couldn’t sway him from his purpose. Catching Wage, and others like him, made him get up in the morning. It made him saddle up Ace, head out to dangerous, ugly places and do dangerous, ugly things.
Maybe when he quit hearing his mother’s dying breath in his ear, if the day came when he didn’t feel her blood sticky on his young hands, then he would follow a bounty of sky-blue eyes.
Not today, though. For now, he was after Wage, even at only five hundred dollars.
Zane plucked Missy’s flyer from the wall, folded it up and put it in his pocket. For an instant, he thought that her eyes flashed with humor. Of course, if he tried to take her back to Boston it would not be humor that flashed in her eyes.
Pity the bounty hunter who tried to bring Miss Devlin home.
Missy followed Maybelle’s swaying skirts up a narrow stairway to the only room on the third floor of the brothel.
“Every great while, we have a guest who only wants to sleep.” Maybelle jingled a set of keys attached to a chain looped about her waist. She selected a polished brass key and opened the door. “It’s mostly quiet up here, if you keep the windows closed. You will do that, won’t you, dearie?”
Missy glanced at the window. It was a small dormer with lace curtains tied back with white satin sashes. It looked tasteful, ladylike even.
Maybelle spun about, giving the room a critical glance. Apparently not expecting an answer to the window question, she didn’t catch the negative shake of Missy’s head. Who knew what mysteries the night would reveal through an open window?
