Mail Order Cowboy (Love Inspired Historical) (16 page)

V
isiting the sheriff—and telling Sarah, who had been waiting in the wagon outside, about it—had been hard for Milly, but walking into church and finding Blakely Harvey sitting in the back row next to Ada Spencer nearly put Milly over the edge.

Milly saw Nick tense beside her at the sight of the man, and guessed he would have liked to turn on his heel and walk back out, but he took Milly's arm as if nothing were wrong and headed toward their usual pew. He gave no acknowledgment of Harvey's smirking nod, but Milly could see Ada waving animatedly at her, obviously pleased as punch with the new acquaintance she had made. Milly forced a smile onto her face and waved back. If they'd been earlier, she knew Ada would have beckoned her over to introduce Harvey, but since they had arrived just as church was about to begin, Milly and Nick took their places quickly, while Sarah hurried forward to sit at the piano.

“Of all the blasted cheek,” Nick muttered, his voice pitched low so as to reach only Milly's ears.

Milly sent him a sympathetic glance as she sang the
first line of the hymn. There would be no escaping Ada and her new friend after the service, of course—and no way to warn Sarah that Nick's fellow Englishman was not cut from the same cloth as Nick.

Sure enough, Ada, with Blakely Harvey in tow, practically ran up to Milly before she and Nick had even descended the church steps.

“Milly, can you imagine? What are the odds that I'd meet
another
Englishman, just walking along our streets, taking his constitutional?”

Just as she said these words, Mrs. Detwiler passed by. She gave the foursome a hard stare. As she stalked by, she muttered, “Blasted foreigners are taking over this town. You'd think they never heard of the Revolutionary War!”

In spite of himself, Nick began to chuckle, and Harvey joined in. For a moment Milly had hopes the scene would be carried off without open hostility.

“Why, Mr. Brookfield, Mr. Harvey says he knows you!” Ada exclaimed. “Did you know he was here in town?”

Nick gave a rigid nod at Harvey, who hadn't lost his smirk, before replying to the excited Ada. “Yes, we discovered his presence at the hotel restaurant last night.”

The spareness of his reply ought to have given Ada a hint, but just then Harvey squeezed her arm and bestowed on the dazzled woman a smile of distracting charm.

“And I just know you're tickled that he's here to visit, aren't you?” Ada gushed. “It'll be wonderful for you, won't it, having another Englishman here in town, and
not only that, but he tells me you and he were in the army together!”

“Ah, but alas, since he can't stay very long, it'll be a transient pleasure,” Nick murmured.

“Well, I'm already trying to change his mind about
that,
” Ada admitted with a coy wink. “Simpson Creek is a wonderful place to live, isn't it, Milly? Wouldn't it be nice for your Nick if there was another Englishman living here?”

Milly could see Ada thought she had a good chance of persuading Harvey to stay.

“Ah, but what would I
do
here, dear lady?” Harvey said with a fond smile that virtually begged for Ada to find him a reason to stay. “I'm a diplomat, not a cowboy, and my uncle, the ambassador in Austin, declares he would be lost without me. I merely came to catch up on old times with M—with Nick, here.”

He had so nearly said Mad Nick, and not by mistake. Milly knew he was toying with Nick like a cat does with a mouse trapped between its paws. Only Nick was no mouse, she thought with rising irritation.

“Sarah, hello! Let me present my new friend to you, who's also Nick's old friend,” Ada bubbled, as Sarah joined them. And so Milly and Nick had to hear the whole story over again and to watch in silence as Harvey trained his dazzling smile on her sister.

And Sarah agreed that it was wonderful that Nick had a fellow countryman here, and how pleased she was to meet him.

“Mr. Harvey, you must—” Sarah began.

Milly knew her sister, so she knew what Sarah was about to say—“come have dinner with us, for I know
you'll want to spend more time with Nick. Bring Ada, too, of course”—and she knew she had to act quickly and decisively.

Standing next to her sister, Milly moved her foot discreetly and quickly, and under the cover of their long skirts, brought it down on Sarah's foot—not sharply or painfully, just firmly, so that Sarah could not mistake it as an accident.

Sarah faltered.

“Must what, Miss Sarah?” prompted Harvey. He may have been aware some message had just been conveyed between the two sisters, though he couldn't know how, for they weren't looking at each other and their hands weren't touching.

“Ah…continue to enjoy your time here in Simpson Creek,” Sarah finished, a slight flush appearing on her cheeks. “Hadn't we better be getting home, Milly? I've got to get dinner in the oven. Nice to meet you, Mr. Harvey. We'll see you later, Ada,” she said, and headed toward the wagon without another word.

“She's right, we do need to be getting home,” Milly said. “Ada, don't forget about the meeting on Tuesday afternoon at the church.”

“I won't. Blakely, why don't you come for dinner at my house. Ma and Pa would be thrilled to meet you,” Ada said. “They didn't come to church today because Pa's rheumatism was acting up.”

“I'd be delighted, Miss Ada,” Harvey said, giving her a courtly bow. “Nick, old boy, why don't you join me for supper again tonight at the hotel? We can catch up on old times then,” said Harvey.

Milly saw Nick hesitate, then nod. “That would be most…agreeable,” he said, and it was as if the word agreeable was a polite euphemism for something else. “Shall we say seven o'clock?”

“Perfect. Very well, then. Miss Milly, Miss Sarah, it was a pleasure meeting you. I'm sure our paths will cross again while I'm here.”

“Nick, why did you agree to meet with him?” Milly asked, after they had left the church and Nick had explained to Sarah that Harvey was not someone whose acquaintance she should cultivate.

“I'm hoping to persuade the cur to leave town without further ado,” Nick said darkly, and from the way he clenched the reins, Milly was rather afraid he meant to use his fists, if necessary. Blakely Harvey must be a villain, indeed.

As it happened, however, Nick returned from town before Milly had even left the porch to retire for the night.

“How was your supper with Mr. Harvey?” she called, as he dismounted his horse. From the tension on his face, it didn't appear to have gone well, but she couldn't see any scrapes or bruises to indicate Nick had had to resort to fisticuffs.

Even in the deepening twilight, she could see his face darken. “It didn't happen. He failed to appear. The hotel proprietor said he returned to the hotel in late afternoon, then left again a short while later.”

“Do you think he's avoiding you?”

“Possibly. Perhaps the wisest thing he's ever done,” Nick said, but she could see he was frustrated.

“Well, come inside when you've unsaddled your horse and I'll fix you something to eat, then,” Milly said.

“Wait, there's something else,” he said, when she would have turned and gone inside. “This was sticking in the dirt at the bend in the road,” he said, pulling something out of his pocket and holding it out to her.

It was a crude doll made of straw tied to a straight stick by means of some twine. The doll's body had been painted black.

“There was straw stacked around the stick like a pyre,” Nick said. And there had evidently been a circle of fire lit around it, then stamped out. “I was meant to find it, I think.”

They stared at each other.

 

Milly looked around the group of women Tuesday when the Spinsters' Club—as everyone in town insisted on calling it, rather than by its proper name—reconvened. She couldn't help but wonder if any of the ladies' fathers or brothers were part of the Circle that had left the threatening symbol near her house Sunday night. None of them mentioned Milly's new cowhands, or seemed as if they were uncomfortable in Milly's presence, but perhaps they didn't know of their relatives' participation in the hateful group.

She had to stop being so paranoid, she told herself. The group had formed for the purpose of finding husbands, and she needed to concentrate on running the meeting.

“These candidates sound very promising,” Milly announced. “I'm going to pass around the three letters
so you can all read them. There's a rancher from Bastrop, a bootmaker from Grange and a physician from Brazos County. Only one of them, the rancher, enclosed his picture…”

There was a pleased sigh as Prissy Gilmore, sitting beside Milly, received the picture and studied it. “Why, he's a handsome fellow and no mistake. I'll bet those eyes are blue as bluebonnets, too…”

“None of the others sent pictures,” mused Sarah. “I wonder what that means?”

Caroline shrugged. “It worked out well enough without a picture for you, Milly, and for me and Emily.”

“Maybe the men can't afford to have them taken,” Jane Jeffries suggested in her tentative way.

“Or they're not only not handsome, but are fat, bald and homely!” chuckled Maude Harkey, a little nervously.

“You know, that man could have had that picture taken years ago,” pointed out Caroline Wallace. “He might be considerably older now.”

“Perhaps some men just don't want to be judged by a picture,” Milly suggested.

“That might not even be
his
picture,” opined Ada Spencer, pointing to the daguerreotype of the rancher. “We only have his word for it, after all.” A smug smile spread over her face. “I'm glad I found Blakely on my own.”

“Oooh!” crowed Prissy. “So things are going well with you two, then?”

Ada blushed and grinned. “So far, yes. He has such refined manners! And that accent! Why, he could charm
the doves out of the trees when he talks!” Her blush deepened.

Ada wouldn't think so highly of her visiting Englishman if she'd heard Nick's opinion of him. Ought she to try to warn Ada? She doubted the woman would listen.

“But what will you do when he goes back to Austin? He's only visiting, isn't he?” Maude Harkey asked.

“We'll see,” Ada said mysteriously. “He went out riding with Bill Waters the other day to see some ranch land that was for sale. He's thinking about buying up quite a bit of land and becoming a cattle baron, he says.”

Milly could barely stifle a groan. Even with as little as she knew about Harvey, she didn't relish the idea of having him around permanently—and especially not as a friend of Bill Waters. Even if Nick hadn't said anything negative about the other Englishman, there had been something about Harvey that was too slick, too polished to be real. She hadn't liked his overbold manner, or the way his gaze wandered where it shouldn't. She hoped Ada wasn't being too trusting in the Englishman's company.

Milly gently steered the club back to its agenda.

“Ladies, if we might go back to the subject of what we're going to do about the men who wrote these letters—would we like to pick one of us to start writing each of them, or should we invite them to Simpson Creek to meet us all at some social event?”

“Why don't we do both?” suggested Jane Jeffries. “One of us could write to each of the men and tell him
a little about us, and invite him to whatever event we plan—with the understanding that he'd be free to pick any of us once we've all met—those who don't have any one yet, I mean.”

“Let's see, how many of us haven't met anyone yet?” Prissy said. “Jane, Maude, Sarah, Hannah, Bess, Polly, Faith and me. Are we not to count you, Ada?”

Ada shook her head. “You can leave me out. I'm sure I've found
my
Prince Charming,” she said.

Milly was equally sure she hadn't. She
had
to warn her, she decided, before the other woman lost more than her heart.

Maude said, “Let's draw straws, and the short straw holders don't write the letters—though they might be the ones picked when the men actually come, right?”

“True,” Prissy agreed, and went to find the church broom to pull some straws. When the drawing was over, Sarah was one of the winners.

“Slowly but surely, we're putting the Spinsters' Club out of business,” crowed Maude.

“Not really,” Bess Lassiter said. “My sister's going to be eighteen this fall, and she says she wants to participate, too.”

“And my cousin's coming to live with us from San Antonio,” Faith Bennett put in. “Her fiancé died at Palmito Hill,” she said, referring to the last pitched battle of the war, which had taken place on Texas soil. “And while she's not in a mood to think about courting again just yet, I know she will be one day.”

“And my friend over in Lampasas heard what we
were doing and wants to come for a visit so she can take part,” put in Hannah Kennedy.

“Our success is perpetuating the club,” Prissy re marked, as each of the three winners blindly selected a letter. Sarah picked the letter written by the doctor.

“Well, we have yet to celebrate our first wedding,” Milly pointed out, “but it seems likely we will be soon.”

Which of them would be married first? Would it be her?

“I have a suggestion,” Prissy said. “We wouldn't have to plan anything on our own if we invite them to the Founders' Day Celebration.”

“Perfect!” Maude cried. “It's not 'til October, which is far enough away that we can expect at least one reply letter from each, and possibly more, and each will have time to travel here.”

“And it should have cooled off a little by then,” Jane added, fanning herself. The intense heat was typical for August in Texas.

“And there are activities all day, from the speeches in the morning, the box lunches at noon, games in the afternoon and the square dance at night,” Sarah said. “Sounds perfect to me.”