Lady X's Cowboy (30 page)

Chapter Seventeen

“Is that you, Pryce, old man?”

George Pryce put down his newspaper and looked up at the well-groomed face of Graham Lawford.  As usual, Lawford dressed as somberly as an undertaker—nothing but black and gray.  It was a little maddening, since Pryce knew that Lawford had scads of money and could afford some of Bond Street’s more lively garments.  Well, if Lawford wanted to be dark and gloomy, that was his business.  

“Lawford, good to see you,” Pryce said without much enthusiasm as he rose just enough to shake his hand, then sat back down again.  He reached for his paper, but Lawford did not pick up the dismissal.

“Haven’t seen you at the club in ages,” he said cheerfully.  “Too busy gadding about town, eh?”

“Mm,” was all Pryce answered.  He was too annoyed to notice that Lawford, who hardly exchanged nods with him on normal occasions and had the grim mien of judge, was practically brimming with cheerful bonhomie.  Pryce blamed himself for the interruption.  If he wanted to be alone with the paper, he should have stayed home.  But ever since Maddox had contaminated the Greywell’s water supply, his mood had been especially light, and he had fancied he wanted company from men of his own circle.  Now he was beginning to regret it. 

“I can see you’re busy,” Lawford said, finally understanding.  “And I have to be off.  Business, you understand.”

Didn’t he just?  With a curt nod, Pryce picked up his newspaper again, but then damned Lawford’s voice speared through the paper.  “I say, Pryce, will I be seeing you tomorrow night?”

“What’s that?”  If there was a social event of any consequence, Pryce was always invited.  This was the first he’d heard of anything for the next evening, and it rankled.

“Lady Xavier’s little gala,” Lawford said.  “She’s celebrating her third year in business at that brewery of hers, and having loads of people over to her home for some tasting.  She said she just brewed fresh beer for the occasion.”  He frowned.  “I’m surprised you didn’t know about it.  I recall that you were once interested in getting into brewing.”

Pryce made himself shrug indolently.  “I lost interest in that venture.  Too plebian.”

“Ah well.  My tastes must run to the baseborn, since I told her I’d come.  I’m sure you’d find the whole thing a dead bore. 
A bientôt
.”

Once Lawford had gone, Pryce allowed himself to smirk.  He looked out at the reading room of the club, filled with large, comfortable chairs, men pouring over their newspapers and puffing contentedly on cigars, safely away from annoying female company.  He did love this club, loved its exclusivity, its staunch adherence to masculine decorum.  In two days, the club would be filled with furious talk of how Lady Olivia Xavier had served poisoned beer to the best of high society.

Several men glanced over when a giggle escaped from Pryce.  He clamped down hard on his wild impulse to laugh.  But it was simply too rich.

She didn’t know.  Maddox had done his job perfectly, and Lady Xavier had no idea that her well had been corrupted.  Pryce supposed that he ought to be concerned that many people he knew would likely drink the beer and be sickened by it, but they were wealthy, and could afford prompt and effective medical care.  They were in no real danger.

The only person in danger was Lady Xavier.  Her ruin would be spectacular.  And George Pryce had to be there to see it.

Olivia stood in the doorway to Will’s room, watching him pack his few belongings into a battered duffle.  He owned very little, and it took much less time than she would have liked for him to completely clear out his possessions.  She wished he owned mountains of things, just to keep him here a bit longer, but in all too short a time, the Vetiver Chamber was merely another empty bedroom.

“That’s it,” Will said, closing his bag.  He glanced around the room as though trying to take it all in, imprint it in his mind. 

She stepped to one side as two footmen came in and carried out the duffle, and the Winchester rifle.  One was about to pick up Will’s saddle, at the foot of the bed, but stopped and looked at him first.

“Go ahead,” Will said.  “It doesn’t matter.”

She covered her mouth with her hand as the footman tucked his arms underneath the rig and carried it out.  Will didn’t let anyone touch his saddle, his most prized possession, but it was a measure of how much he was hurting that even the saddle meant little to him.

Then they were alone in the room.  She leaned against the doorframe, bracing her hands on the jamb, as she stared at him.  His face was starkly handsome in the harsh morning light, his jaw taut and his eyes blue ice.  Will’s mouth, usually grinning or offering untold pleasure, was hard and set.  He seemed so tall and broad, unmovable.  There wasn’t much about him that recalled the easygoing cowboy who had strolled into her life with fists swinging a few weeks earlier.  He seemed like a man who had taken several hard blows and was that much stronger, more tough because of it.

Thanks to her.

“Will—”

“Don’t.”  His jaw worked.  “We know there ain’t anything to say.”

“I didn’t want it to turn out this way.”  She took a few steps forward.  “I wanted—”

“The impossible.  We both did.”  He shook his head.  “But we didn’t have a snowball’s chance in Texas.”

She let her eyes move without seeing through the room.  She never spent much time in the Vetiver Chamber, especially since David had died and the number of guests staying with her had dwindled to almost none.  She hadn’t been particularly lonely, but Will had changed all that.  She had never felt more alone than she did at that moment.

“I understand if you hate me,” she said at last.  “Right now, I hate myself.”

He sighed heavily, then came to stand in front of her.  “I don’t hate you, Liv.  It’s this place I can’t stomach.  Tellin’ a body who they can and can’t love.”

She looked up at him sharply, and he smiled ruefully.  “Yeah,” he said, “I love you, Liv.  It caught me by surprise, but it’s the truth.”

Olivia felt herself stabbed through with a hot blade.  She had always longed to hear those words, and she realized she had been wanting to hear them from Will for almost as long as she had known him.  Joy flared inside her, ruthlessly cut by circumstance.

“Don’t go,” she said desperately.  “You can’t say that and go.”

“That’s why I have to.  I can’t watch you get torn apart just ’cause I got feelin’s for you.  It ain’t worth it.”

“Let me decide that.”

He shook his head.  “Nope.  This is somethin’ that’s out of your hands.”  He started to move past her, then stopped.  “Liv, I’m doin’ the right thing.  Everythin’ you told me about how you’d be shunned if you didn’t mourn your husband long enough—that’d be a hundred times worse if you took up with a no-name cowboy with nothin’ but a saddle, and a coachman for a granddad.  And all that pain it’d cause you, it’d be on account of me, and I just won’t let that happen.”

“But—”  He silenced her by bending down and pressing a soft, sweet kiss on her mouth that was over much too quickly.

“I’ll be back tomorrow, Liv,” he promised, “to finish Pryce.  Then it’s adios.”

She couldn’t move as Will left the room.  She stared at the spot where he used to be, his afterimage.  She listened for the front door opening and closing, and strained to hear the carriage pull away.  Uncaring that the bedroom door was wide open and anyone could walk by and see her, she sank to the floor.  For the first time since David had died, she began to cry, and once she started, she could not stop.

Ben took him in, after getting permission from the butler, housekeeper, and finally the lord and lady of the house.  So, after a few weeks of sleeping in a bed that could hold four grown men, Will lay down that night in a narrow cot in a narrow room.  There was one little window that looked out onto the street—or rather, the boots and horses’ hooves going back and forth on the street.  Aside from Ben’s bed and the one hastily put in for Will’s use, the room held a washstand, a small cracked mirror, Will’s saddle, and two daguerreotypes, browning with age.

“That’s Emma, me wife,” Ben had explained, pointing to one of a sturdy woman in a neat, plain dress.  “She died ’bout four years after Luke disappeared.”  His grandmother.

“And is this—?” Will had asked about the other photograph.

“Your parents.  On their wedding day.” 

Will had stared hard at the picture for a long time, finally seeing the faces of his mother and father.  They didn’t look quite comfortable in their fine wedding clothes, and they seemed very young.  Will’s father, Luke Bradshaw, resembled Will so much that he almost thought it was himself in the daguerreotype.      

Now he lay in bed, Ben gently snoring, and kept staring at the picture.  Light from the street fell through the high window, bathing the room in a soft glow.  The shadowy ghosts of his family gazed out with unaging eyes.  He tried to find some connection with them, outside of resemblance, but even now, after talking with Ben all day, Will felt as removed from Luke, Hetty and Emma as he did from the characters on the traveling stage.  Ben was a good old man, and Will was growing to care for him, but there were few people who had a place in his heart.  Jake, for one.  And Olivia.

That day without her had been one of the worst of his life, tempered only by Ben’s constant joy at seeing his lost grandson.  Every goddamned minute apart from her felt like the longest, coldest winter, and he actually checked his fingers once to see if he’d gotten frostbite.  So while Will helped Ben out in the stable and listened to stories about his father, his mind kept rambling back to her.

He tried to picture where she would be throughout the day.  At noon, she probably went to Greywell’s.  There was still a lot of work to be done before the gala the next night.  Will would have gone, but she had sent a note saying that he needed to spend time with his grandpa, and that everything was under control for the meantime.  She would see him tomorrow evening.

It had helped to work in the stable, helped blow off the steam that had been building all day.  He had mucked stalls, groomed horses and polished tack, building up a fine sweat as though he could somehow burn Olivia off like a fever.  He kept telling himself he was doing the right thing by ending their affair, but if it was the right thing, why did it hurt like a son of a bitch?

Now, lying in bed, physically beat but mind hopping like a jackrabbit, he saw her clearly at home.  It might be late, but she would be up.  Maybe reading one of the dime novels she fancied.  Or maybe she was fed up with cowboys and would turn to something a little more enriching.  That library she had held hundreds of fine-looking books.  Surely one of them had to be better than two-bit tales of cowpunchers.

The next night, they would finish the business with Pryce.  Olivia had downplayed the risk she was taking, but Will knew that there was a lot at stake.  If her gamble didn’t pay off, she could lose Greywell’s and a whole lot more.  He knew that she’d eaten up a sizeable amount of her money just setting things up for tomorrow.  Once everything had played out, and if Pryce got what was coming to him, Will and Olivia wouldn’t have any reason to see each other again. 

“Jesus,” Will muttered, sitting up.  He put his head in his hands and stared at the floor.  He felt like he’d been sucker punched.  Now he knew what the boys in the bunkhouse felt when they got those letters giving them the mitten.  If it was anything like what ripped through him now, it was a wonder anybody managed to get back in the saddle.  He’d thought losing Jake was hard, but there was some sense in the
alter bocher
’s death.  Will was ready for it.  Giving up Olivia, though, blindsided him.

He wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight.  As quietly as he could, he got dressed in the dark and slipped out of the room.  Ben had told him to use the servants’ entrance, and it wasn’t long before he was back out on the street.  There, he took huge gulps of air.  To keep himself from running towards Princes Square, he started walked quickly east, along a path he’d taken almost a week earlier.

“Tex!” Portbury shouted when Will appeared at the bar of McNeil’s.  “Didn’t think I’d be seeing you again.”  The policeman slapped Will heartily on the back.  “What can I buy you?”

“Whiskey,” Will said.  Portbury signaled the barkeep for two glasses, but after the drinks were poured, Will added, “Leave the bottle.”

As Will downed his whiskey in a single shot, Portbury eyed him uneasily.  “Blimey, Tex, you look like a mourner at your own funeral.”

Steadily, Will refilled his glass.  He offered more to Portbury, but the other man held up his hand.  “Just as long as mourners get drunk,” Will said, “I’ve got no problem with that.”  The whiskey still blazed as it went down, telling him that he had a ways to go before he was good and numb. 

“Well, mate,” Portbury said with a shake of his head, “I can tell when a bloke wants nobody but the bottom of his glass.  If you want me, I’ll be over in the back.” 

He barely noticed the other man’s leaving.  Will hunched over the bar and steadily poured whiskey down his throat, and as the night went on, the berth around him grew wider and wider.  It seemed no one wanted anything to do with the big, angry American, and everyone wisely left him alone.

Until someone grew drunk and bold.

“Oi, Yankee Doodle,” a slurred voice said behind him.  When Will didn’t turn around, the man said again, louder, “Oi,” and jabbed Will in the shoulder.  He sniggered to himself.

Will smiled darkly down into his shot glass resting on the bar.  He silently prayed that the drunk fool behind him would go just a little bit further. 

“Nice ’at,” the man continued.  To get Will’s attention, he reached up to flick at the brim of Will’s Stetson, but Will was faster.

He whirled around and grabbed the man’s wrist.  “Don’t touch my hat,” he growled.

The man, ruddy with drink, still managed to turn pale.  He moved to shrink back, but then saw that everyone in the pub was watching.  “Your ’at’s as ludicrous as you are ’omely,” he challenged.  For good measure, he added, “An’ your country’s a bleedin’ joke.”