Nan Ryan (15 page)

Now there was Lew, and Lew could hold his own with the learned professor when it came to poetry and literature. And that was saying a lot. Mollie smiled, fondly recalling the second evening Lew had come to call. She, wearing a pastel pink frock, was waiting when the professor ushered Lew into the drawing room.

Lew had looked at her and said, “Would I were a poet, I might offer proper homage to your beauty.”

The professor had smiled and quoted,

“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate.”

He had paused then and his eyes had widened in surprise when Lew, in that deep-timbered voice, had continued,

“But thy eternal summer shall not fade
,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st …

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see
,

So long lives this, and this give life to thee.”

Now, as Mollie lay on her bed on this hot June afternoon, she flopped over onto her back and sighed dreamily. A month had passed since then, and Lew had not missed a single night coming to call.

Clean and suntanned and handsome, he arrived each evening at twilight, a ready smile for the professor and a devilish wink for her. Then the three of them either enjoyed a superbly cooked supper at the mansion or they strolled down to the Nueva Sol in the gathering dusk to the hotel’s dining room. And as they walked, Lew took her hand possessively in his, lacing his long tapered fingers through hers. It always sent a shiver of excitement up her spine.

On Thursdays, when she and the professor taught the three Rs to the Indian and Mexican children, Lew would meet them at the schoolhouse. He stayed outside, smoking in the twilight, until classes were dismissed.

Suddenly Mollie sat up on the bed, her smile broadening, a satin strap of her chemise slipping down a bare shoulder.

Today was Thursday, but the professor was not going to the little schoolhouse this evening. He had to attend a bank board meeting. She was to teach the children their lessons and afterward … afterward … Mollie drew in a quick breath and tumbled over backward on the bed. She slid her hands over the silky coverlet beneath her and felt her heart begin to pound and pound.

Lew was to meet her at the schoolhouse and drive her home. It would be the very first time that she had been alone with him! Just the two of them, riding through the summer darkness, arriving back at the mansion well before the professor was due home. She would invite Lew in and the two of them, sitting side by side on the velvet sofa, would share coffee and cake.

Envisioning the romantic ride from the schoolhouse, Mollie tingled with sweet anticipation. Would tonight be the night Lew …

“Mollie,” came the professor’s voice from just beyond the door, “are you ready? I’m due at the bank in half an hour. If I’m to drive you to the schoolhouse, we’d better be on our way.”

“Ready!” Mollie called and flew into her dressing room. Scant minutes later she skipped down the stairs to find the professor waiting patiently in the foyer. She smiled and said, “Go on out, Professor. I’ll be right behind you.”

Before he could respond, Mollie hurried toward the back of the house and Louise’s kitchen. She found the housekeeper sitting on a tall stool, beating batter in a crockery bowl. She looked up when Mollie dashed in.

“My goodness, you look pretty this afternoon,” Louise said, her spoon pausing in midstroke. Then, “You better go, you’re keeping the professor waiting.”

“I know, but I had to see if you—”

“Yes,” Louise replied, anticipating the question. “The pound cake will be sliced and topped with my best orange glaze. There will be fresh strawberries with warm honey for dipping. I have polished the silver tea service, and I’ll—”

“You’re wonderful!” Mollie exclaimed, then spontaneously dipped a forefinger into the crockery bowl, licked it, and nodded approvingly. Backing away, she said, “Now, don’t feel like you must wait up.”

Louise Emerson’s eyebrows lifted. “Young lady, I’ll be wide awake when you get back and the door to my room with be open. If it gets too quiet in the drawing room …” She clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “I guarantee you it’ll scare that young broncobuster to death if Louise Emerson storms in with a rolling pin.”

Mollie smiled. She knew Louise was teasing. The older woman had warmed to Lew from the beginning and was as pleased as a proud parent that such a mannerly, handsome gentleman came calling every evening.

Out at the big Willard ranch, Lew was an easygoing fellow who took his share of good-natured razzing when he was thrown from a particularly mean bronc or drew costly, second-best hands in the bunkhouse poker games. Or when he dressed up in what the cowhands called his “dandy dudes” and went into Maya each evening.

A certain amount of ragging was standard fare on any big spread where dozens of men lived and worked closely together. Lew had grown up around it and took it in stride. He had never been a man who was easily rankled.

So he smiled when one of the ranch hands, Dusty Caprock, nudging his buddy, big Sonny Bullock, said, “Hey, Lew, how long you gonna be content to hold that pretty blond girl’s hand?”

Lew, naked to the waist, a towel draped around his shoulders, stood before a mirror in the crowded bunkhouse with a straight-edged razor in his right hand. Shrugging negligently, he said, “Don’t know, Dusty. How you gonna be content just holding onto yourself?”

Big Sonny Bullock exploded with laughter and slapped his buddy on the back. Sonny and Lew laughed even louder when a flustered, red-faced Dusty sputtered and defended himself. “Why, I don’t … that ain’t true! I ain’t never done … I wouldn’t … hell, I got me plenty of women!”

“Yeah, well, a hit dog always howls,” Sonny accused him.

Then he went into more fits of laughter, as did the dozen or so cowpokes straddling their chairs and lying on bunks in the big room. Dusty, muttering to himself, stalked out of the bunkhouse, his face aflame.

It was the kind of talk and ribbing that went on all the time. So Lew took no offense when one of the cowboys, a leanly built, cat-eyed man they called Puma, said in low, suggestive tones, “Come on, Taylor, ain’t you man enough to find out what’s under that Fontaine Gayerre’s petticoats?”

Lew’s razor continued its flashing movement, the sharp blade cleanly sliding down the smooth brown skin of his left jaw. He didn’t reward the waiting Puma with a reply. Just kept on shaving. And smiling.

“Puma, just ‘cause she would never in a million years let you under ’em,” said Sonny, “don’t mean Lew won’t get there one of these nights. Right, Lew?”

Puma’s cat eyes narrowed and he said, “That haughty little piece thinks she’s too good for—”

“—any of us,” Lew interrupted him, lowering the blade. He turned about, looked directly at Puma, and said, “And you know what? She’s probably right.”

Puma finally grinned grudgingly and nodded. Continuing to smile, Lew wiped the residue of lather from his face, set his blue shaving mug back on the shelf, and went for a shirt.

At the little adobe schoolhouse, Mollie recruited one of the students to pass out paper and pencils. She chose John Distant Star, the tall, shy Hopi who had become like a younger brother since she’d begun helping the professor teach the children.

In the beginning it had been mostly pity that had so drawn her to the proud seventeen-year-old. John was very poor, but he worked very hard, hammering and sweating his days away at the blacksmith’s shop. He received only a pittance for his labor, but was allowed to sleep there on a bed of straw at night.

The blacksmith’s shop was the only home John Distant Star had. John was an orphan, and nobody in Maya could recall where he had come from or when. Since Indians were looked down on by the gentry, John had few friends, but he hardly noticed. He had been alone for as long as he could remember. Loneliness was, as far as John was concerned, a condition of living.

John did have a good friend in the professor. And now he had one in Mollie as well.

Mollie liked John Distant Star and no longer felt any pity for him. He was, she had learned, highly intelligent, well-mannered, proud, dependable, and generous. From that first time they had met and she had thrust out her hand and introduced herself, she had sensed how desperately he wanted her to like him. His expressive dark eyes almost begged for her approval and friendship.

She could look right into John’s innocent heart, and it made her own swell with affection for him. As the weeks had passed, she had managed to draw him out. Then she had thoroughly shocked him—and the rest of Maya—when one day she walked right into the blacksmith’s shop and asked John if he would like to join her for lunch.

His mouth dropping open in surprise, he looked down at his bare, blackened, sweat-slick torso, then at his scowling boss. Unruffled, Mollie had laughed and said, “I didn’t mean that we’d go to the Nueva Sol. Louise packed me the most delicious picnic, and there’s way too much food for just one person.” She looked over at the frowning smithy. “John is allowed a half hour to eat his lunch, is he not, Mr. Bledsoe?”

“Well, yes, but—”

“Good. Why don’t you take a quick wash-up, John, and I’ll meet you outside.”

That day had been the first of many lunches they shared. The fact that the good folk of Maya nodded to one another and whispered when the tall Indian youth and the slender blond girl strolled down the wooden sidewalk to the plaza worried John Distant Star. It bothered Mollie none at all.

She had the professor’s blessing. She did not need theirs.

Lew drove the ranch-owned gig into town as the sun was slipping behind the blue-tinted mountains. When he reached the adobe schoolhouse and climbed down, he began to smile. He stood, arms crossed over his chest, leaning back against the gig. He could hear, through the schoolhouse’s open windows, young voices responding to questions asked by their beautiful blond teacher.

Lew liked the kids, all of them. But there was one in particular who had quickly captured his attention, a tall, slim youth with soulful eyes and a shy manner. John Distant Star had the firm handshake of a man, the quiet temperament of an Indian, the trusting nature of a child, and a pair of eyes that truly were windows of the soul. In their dark depths, Lew could clearly read John’s adolescent worship of the young woman calling herself Fontaine Gayerre.

Giving the devil her due, Lew had to admit that Mollie Rogers did not intentionally encourage the young Hopi. She was naturally outgoing and friendly, and she treated John as though he were a kid brother. Apparently she had no idea what was really in John’s heart.

But Lew knew.

From the time he was five years old, he had spent his days with Dan Nighthorse. He had learned to read the stoic Dan as no one else could. This slender Indian boy reminded Lew of Dan, and he recalled, vividly, the same look in Dan’s dark eyes one summer when a pretty blond girl had moved to Santa Fe and stolen Dan’s heart. She had flirted, teased, and led him on, then cruelly rebuffed the naive Dan when he asked if he could call on her. She had acidly reminded Dan that he was a savage—barely out of a breechcloth—while she was a highborn young lady.

Lew smiled ruefully.

The roles were reversed in this case, but John didn’t know it. He assumed that the beautiful Fontaine Gayerre was far, far above him. Too bad he couldn’t be told the truth: that the blond angel he yearned for was actually far beneath him. A desperado in a dress. A hardened, world-wise woman who had ridden, robbed, and slept with a gang of outlaws.

Lew ground his teeth. He couldn’t tell John Distant Star about Mollie. But he would do the sensitive Indian lad the favor of getting her out of Maya—and out of John’s life—as quickly as possible.

Lew was abruptly shaken from his thoughts when the schoolhouse door burst open and the shouting, laughing children streamed out and ran toward him. He crouched down on his heels and swept a couple of little girls up into his arms as the others swarmed about him like bees around the sweetest blossom.

The children had quickly learned that this tall, laughing man always carried a paper sack filled with the most tempting candies they had ever eaten. They knew that he intended the sweets for them. Polite, even when excitedly anticipating their first taste of the treats, the children hastily lined up, youngest to oldest, to take their turn at reaching into the bag. The two little girls Lew held were the youngest. Giggling happily, one stuck her tiny fingers down into the sack’s depths and drew out a tart lemon drop. The other girl asked if she too might have a lemon drop.

“Help yourself, sweetheart,” Lew said and watched, smiling, as she searched until she found what she was looking for, then popped it into her mouth.

Lew lowered the little girls to their feet and rose as the other children stepped forward to take a turn. Over their heads he saw Mollie descending the steps. The sun’s lingering afterglow made a golden halo of her hair as she looked up at the tall youth beside her.

John Distant Star.

John laughed at whatever it was she had said. Mollie turned back, paused on the step, and looked directly at Lew. Her lovely face immediately broke into a wide, winsome smile meant especially for him. Lew didn’t have to force his response. She was, standing there in the fading twilight, a vision to bring a smile to any man’s lips, a tightness to his chest.

“Lew.” She silently formed his name with those soft, luscious lips, and he felt the troublesome tingling of joy that claimed him every time she spoke his name.

Mentally shaking himself, Lew focused his attention back on the chattering children. When he saw John Distant Star at the end of the line, he grinned at the boy. John had a real sweet tooth. He loved candy even more than the little ones did.

When John reached him, Lew put a hand on his shoulder and said, “Take the rest, John. There are several pieces left, and—”

The Hopi shook his head firmly. “I will take only my share.” He chose a licorice stick, thanked Lew, and turned away to herd the younger students into a group for the walk home.