Susan Johnson (3 page)

Trey had heard of the sales before but never had seen one. Immune to the motive inspiring acquisition of another human being, he’d by choice never attended an auction.

Tonight, by chance, he’d see his first.

T
en minutes later the paneled double doors opened, and Trey, with no more than simple interest, turned his head to survey two young Oriental women entering the warm, perfumed room. They were small, fragile, dressed in bright quilted silk jackets and black silk trousers. Their eyes were demurely downcast, servitude as inbred as ancestor worship.

The bidding was immediate, rapid, and spirited.

Trey’s stomach tightened momentarily, even though his pleasant alcoholic haze mitigated the sharper edges of reality. He shrugged then, to brush away the brief unease, telling himself that life at Jess Alveen’s palatial ranch or Stuart Langly’s mansion on the hill might be an improvement over a China Alley existence.

But when it was over and the actual exchange of currency was taking place, he suddenly lifted Flo from his lap and, rising from the damask settee, softly said, “Be back in a minute.” Skirting the table behind them with a short nod of greeting to the two men his father’s age seated there, he walked into the adjoining dining room.

When Trey rose to leave, both his companions followed him with their gaze. But seeing him stop before the broad bay windows, they quickly perused the empty dining room with sharp-eyed glances and, assured of his safety, turned back to their lady friends. The men with Trey were bodyguards in addition to being relatives and friends. Hazard Black had his share of enemies, and his son had inherited them. There were a score or more of influential men who resented Hazard’s power and influence in his corner of Montana, and most of those wouldn’t be adverse to Trey’s demise. If it was properly accomplished, of course, with no witnesses. So Trey often rode out with bodyguards. A nuisance, he complained. Practicality, his father responded. A necessity, his mother insisted, her own memory long, and four small graves in the family cemetery mute testimony to her insistence. Trey was her only child to outlive childhood, and she protected him as only a mother can her last surviving child.

Standing before the large beveled-glass window, Trey watched the heavy snowflakes fall from the dark sky and heard with vague displeasure Chu and Alveen and Langly conclude their business transactions. When it was over, he felt himself breathe more naturally again, and shaking his head slightly to clear away the brandy, he turned from the blustery landscape outside to return to the parlor.

He heard her voice before he saw her.

She spoke in short, swift phrases with a slight accent. And it wasn’t Chinese.

“I want it understood. Only three weeks are for sale. An indenture, so to speak, for three weeks. No more.”

Trey was in the archway dividing the two rooms when she finished speaking, and he saw her cast a direct, unflinching glance around the crowded room. Their eyes met for a brief moment, but her heavily lashed gaze was sweeping the room and didn’t linger.

She was as slender as a willow, dressed unwomanly in worsted trousers, worn boots, and a faded flannel shirt. Her heavy hair was wild like a tawny, turbulent waterfall, and her eyes, in the brief time they’d held his glance, were as green as springtime. Her skin was golden, not pale; she’d been outside
under the sun, and it suited her proud, straight-backed stance and splendid, fine-boned face.

But she looked very young with her long, tumbled hair, and if it had been tied back with a pink silk ribbon instead of half falling over her forehead, she would have passed for fourteen. A very luscious fourteen despite the camouflage of rough men’s clothing.

“Is it understood?” she added, lifting her chin a fraction, an indomitable, small fury in the midst of heated, scented wealth.

Trey could almost see the flare of excitement ripple across the room at her words. She didn’t realize the three weeks she insisted on made it much easier for anyone to bid for her. A white woman had never been auctioned before. It would have been unethical even in this frontier society where
ethical
was loosely interpreted as personal expediency. But to set up a sweet, pretty young thing in a discreetly selected hotel for three weeks—hell, that would soothe anyone’s transient fit of conscience.

His cousin, Blue, came up to Trey as he stood in the doorway. “What do you think of that?” His straight, fine chin lifted an inch in her direction.

“Ítsikyà-te batsá-tsk,”
Trey replied quietly, “Very nice,” his pale, light eyes intent on the small woman.

“Unheard of, apparently.”

“But damned profitable, I expect,” Trey said, his gaze taking in the covetous expression on every male face in the room.

She was desperate, and that’s why she was standing here in this gilded brothel, the cynosure of men’s eyes, her heart beating like a drum. The food had lasted six months after her parents died, but it was almost gone, and she had to provide for her young brothers and sisters. Three days ago she’d left them with enough food to last a month and promised she’d be back then with supplies and money. The oldest and their provider, she’d come to terms with the circumstances and had come to Helena to sell the only thing of value left—herself.

So here she stood, hoping she’d make enough money to feed her brothers and sisters until the summer crops were in. That was seven long months away. Her fingers curled into
fists to still the desperate fear. Please, God, let them want me.…

Jess Alveen, evidently in an amorous mood that night, began the bidding with five thousand dollars—twice what he’d just paid for the Oriental woman.

The young tawny-haired girl’s eyes widened momentarily as she stood center stage, but the surprise was so quickly shuttered, Trey wondered a second later if he’d imagined it.

The offers went up in increments of a thousand until only Jess Alveen and Jake Poltrain were left bidding, and then, finally, only Jake Poltrain. A hush had settled on the room when Jess dropped out, an uneasy, restless silence, for everyone had heard of Jake’s unsavory excesses with women. Rumor had it that alcohol and bouts with opium had unmanned him, and cruelty was his transient cure.

Chu’s keen eyes surveyed the room. “Twenty-five thousand once, gentlemen.” His glance swept the crowd inquiringly. “Twice.” He had already formed the word
sold
with his lips and Jake Poltrain had taken one step forward when Trey pushed away from the doorjamb dividing the parlor from the dining room and said, “Fifty thousand.”

The shocked gasp that exploded in the small room was a reflexive combination of relief and thunderstruck awe. All eyes swiveled in fascination toward Hazard Black’s audacious son. Trey had a reputation for extravagance, but this far exceeded any of his previous prodigality.

Standing at ease from the sheen of his hair to the toes of his exquisite boots, he stood calmly waiting. And all the men who had known him since childhood recognized the familiar composure. And the pleasant half smile. And the arrogance.

“I have a fifty-thousand-dollar bid,” Chu said, allowing his avarice to show in the faintest of smiles on his normally inscrutable face. “Would you care to remain in the bidding, Mr. Poltrain?” he politely asked.

Jake Poltrain’s face turned a livid magenta, and if corrosive looks were lethal, Trey would have been measured for a pine box. The heavyset man directed a look of pure hatred at Hazard Black’s only child. It was a naked loathing, furiously nurtured
by several unprosperous disputes over grazing rights on Indian land. He had never won against Hazard.

For a moment the silence was thick with challenge.

Poltrain was keeping the fury under control only with great effort, the tension evident in the grim slash of his mouth and the flare of his nostrils. But he had no intention of taking on Hazard’s son, who, he very well understood, could outbid a banker. There’d be another time for his revenge and he’d choose it. Jake’s bull-like shoulders lifted in a shrug, and expelling the held air in his lungs, he breathed a malevolent, brusque, “No.”

“Very well,” Chu continued, as if he auctioned off fifty-thousand-dollar women every day of his iniquitous life. “The girl is yours, Mr. Braddock-Black, for fifty thousand dollars.”

The disquietude was instantly dissipated now that Jake Poltrain had been blocked. No one would have cared to see the young girl fall into his hands for even three weeks, but twenty-five thousand dollars was a lot of money, and no one had felt Christian charity demanded that much of a sacrifice. For Hazard Black’s young cub, though, even fifty thousand wouldn’t cause any hardship. His mother alone had brought twenty-two million dollars into her marriage, and those were 1865 dollars, which were worth considerably more than the current federal notes after two national financial panics in six years. And his father’s gold mines and the copper and the cattle and the high-priced horses they bred. Hell, his father’s business agent wouldn’t bat an eyelash when he audited the check.

Then all thoughts turned to the pleasant diversions Trey’s fifty-thousand-dollar pretty would confer for such a benevolent sum. Damn if they all couldn’t think of a thing or two
they’d
like for fifty thousand dollars, was the universal masculine reflection, and several ribaldly vocalized their sentiments.

“Looks like you’re going to be busy, Trey, in the next three weeks,” Judge Renquist declared jocularly.

“If you need any help, let me know,” another older wag asserted.

“Remember to sleep once in a while, son; otherwise, you’ll never last out the time,” a third voice suggested wolfishly.

“She looks a mite scrawny.”

“Looks like an angel, more like,” Jess Alveen emphatically stated, and most in the room unanimously, if silently, agreed.

Trey had bid against Jake Poltrain intuitively, with no overt intention of making the tawny-haired girl his mistress. It had been an impulsive act of charity or courtesy, perhaps; or retaliation against an old enemy. But as he stood there watching her and listening to the men’s graphic comments, the image of the slender girl began to entice him. Her tumbled hair was silky and long, halfway down her back … long enough, he thought with a warm surge of pleasure, to cover her breasts. Would she be experienced, he wondered, or more aptly, how experienced? he mused with kindling anticipation. Anyone selling themselves at Lily’s was, by definition, “experienced.” Trey saw her small hands clench again at a particularly vivid suggestion and decided that unlike the Oriental women, perhaps self-deprecating humility wasn’t in her nature. Abruptly he broke into the bawdy repartee, his rich voice putting an end to the lively discussion. “Thank you, gentlemen,” he smilingly acknowledged, “but I think I’ll manage without your assistance.” And then his gaze traveled over the heads of Lily’s guests and met stormy green eyes. “Maybe …” he added very softly, under his breath, but his light, silvery eyes were full of amusement. With a record of unremitting success in the boudoir, Trey Braddock-Black never seriously doubted his ability to charm women. Even women dressed like men.

Chu had taken the girl with the honey hair by the shoulder and was pushing her ahead of him in Trey’s direction. As they approached, Chu said, “Should we go into the dining room to settle?”

“Fine,” Trey replied, and, glancing quickly at Blue, smiled a swift, boyish smile prompted by his besting of Poltrain, his brandy-induced cheer, and the prospect, suddenly fascinating, of seeing the unusual young woman at close range. Very close range, the brandy-heated blood coursing through his veins suggested.

After they were seated at one of the small tables, Chu spoke first. “This isn’t one of my customary sales. The woman asked me to serve as her agent. My percentage is twenty-five percent. The rest of the money is hers.”

Trey called for pen and ink, and Empress watched him write the bank draft for Chu. It was her first opportunity to
see Trey Braddock-Black in person. He was far too handsome, was her first assessment. Staggeringly beautiful when so near, with glinting silvery eyes that seemed to have a life of their own, restless and alive, like windows into a secret paradise. His long woman’s lashes swept up for a moment when he asked Chu a short question, and he caught her staring at him. He smiled, and the uncommon warmth was a tangible thing.

Not only too handsome but too charming. The world had been kind to him, she thought, hastily dropping her gaze. He was very much at ease—familiar, no doubt—with women staring at his good looks. She should have smiled back at him, she realized an instant later, but tonight was too intensely emotional for her polite reflexes to be operating properly. Tonight was her Armageddon of sorts. An ending. And a beginning … a future for her family.

When her gaze dropped precipitously before that devastating smile, she found herself looking at the fine wool of his shirt. It was a delicate merino in a soft wine tone. She had had a dress in that fabric once, long ago in France. It seemed like another world away … her life before Grandmère had died, before the duel, before the hard times had begun. She shook away the melancholy with an effort, reminding herself that only the future mattered. Only the next three weeks were a priority now, and the extravagant sum of money she’d be bringing home.