Mountain Angel Page 8

  “But I have to do it,” she said. “For him as much as myself. It’s the Murphy name they’re soiling. Don’t you care?”

  “Of course I do. But I don’t want to see you hurt.” Neal sounded timid. “I’ve grown fond of you in the short time we’ve been acquainted.”

  “Thank you.” She patted his arm in passing when he moved to hold open the heavy wooden door for her. “I hope I won’t disappoint you tonight.”

  Outside, Angel took a deep, steadying breath of the cool, crisp air before taking Neal’s arm and letting him walk her to the Triumph Hall, where the ladies’ social was being held. Her legs felt like jelly. Thankfully, it was already dusk; if there were further stares on the street, she couldn’t see them.

  Holt had departed earlier, after the couple had shared a quiet meal with Neal. Angel suspected he had merely crossed the street to avail himself of the nearest saloon, but as long as he was close, she didn’t care. Suddenly they were standing before Triumph Hall and Neal was giving her last-minute bits of advice.

  “Just be yourself. Don’t offer any advice or excuses.” There was a warning beneath his forced cheer, Angel saw.

  “I’ll be fine. Will you walk me back when it’s over?”

  “With pleasure.” Neal opened the door for her with a flourish, ushering Angel into the lion’s den.

  Chapter Six

  AS ONE BODY, CONVERSATION ceased. Heads turned, muslin rustled, bright eyes pierced. Angel faltered, but briefly. With a determined smile wide enough to span the Colorado River itself, she swept into the hall.

  “Good evening, ladies.” Gracefully she removed her black lace shawl and hung it on a peg beside the others. There was a moment of stunned silence in the hall. Angel glanced up from beneath lowered lashes and saw stark outrage, amusement, and various other emotions reflected on the faces around her.

  The ladies had formed a circle with their chairs, so as to better display their Sunday best and make gossip easier. A table bearing a crystal punch bowl and slivers of iced cake stood nearby. Angel glided toward it, to fetch the only chair remaining as yet unoccupied. Her heart was in her throat and she could feel dozens of eyes measuring, appraising, and otherwise gauging her worth and mettle.

  “The nerve,” she overheard one matron whispering to another, “the absolute nerve.”

  “What did you expect?” retorted the other, sotto voce, just loud enough for Angel to hear. “She’s a Murphy, after all.”

  Angel wanted to laugh. The gall of these supposed Christian ladies. It wasn’t enough they criticized her. No, they were holding the entire Murphy family responsible for her “brazenness.”

  “You don’t want any of that cake.” A soft voice at the refreshment table startled Angel. “It’s terribly dry and not particularly tasty.”

  Angel looked into the twinkling hazel eyes belonging to a brown-haired, thin young woman assigned to a straight, hard chair behind the cake. She was garbed in brown calico and blended in so well with the plain wooden decor of the hall that Angel hadn’t seen her sitting there at first.

  “How do you do,” the church mouse said. Her voice was still a whisper. “I’m Rachel Maxwell, Prudence Maxwell’s daughter. You must be Mrs. Murphy.”

  “Was there any doubt in your mind?” Angel murmured, tilting her head back toward the bristling, outraged matrons. Rachel giggled. She sounded like a young girl, but had to be at least as old as Angel.

  “I’ve so wanted to meet you,” Rachel said. “Ever since Pastor Murphy mentioned you married Holt. It makes you a mystery, you know.”

  To stall the inquisition and get to know Rachel better, Angel picked up a crystal plate and pretended to look over the refreshments. “A mystery?”

  “Why, of course. Nobody could believe Holt actually married.”

  “Some still don’t,” Angel said, with another glance at the storm gathering behind her. She wanted to continue her conversation with Rachel, but she realized she had better avert a scene before it began. With a quick wink to Rachel, Angel pivoted around to face her critics. She heard another hiss, this one coming from the huge woman who obviously occupied the proverbial throne in Triumph Hall.

  “Bold as brass, the little thing. I wonder if she dragged Holt Murphy to the altar all by herself.”

  Angel knew the woman intended to be overheard. In a sweet voice, she said, “Actually, I used a lasso. It’s particularly effective on those tougher bachelor types.”

  There was a moment of breathless silence while all the other ladies anxiously watched Prudence Maxwell for her reaction. Then, seeing the lines around her eyes crinkle with amusement, they tittered in quiet accompaniment.

  “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure,” Prudence said after a brief, grudging smile. She introduced herself and waited regally for her latest petitioner to respond.

  Angel complied with grace and saw a growing respect in Prudence’s eyes. While the matron of Oro City was enough to frighten any newcomer, Angel had cut her teeth on social etiquette. She enjoyed surprising those who had expected her to prattle on like an uneducated tart.

  Before she knew it, Angel was invited to sit on Prudence’s right, displacing a weasel-faced woman named Justine Garrett who was obviously displeased by the turn of events. Angel didn’t pay much attention to Mrs. Garrett’s pinched expression before the woman stiffly moved off to the refreshment table. She had to concentrate on Prudence’s nosy questions instead.

  “What a delightful accent you have, Mrs. Murphy. Are you from the South?”

  Angel nodded cautiously. “Missouri.”

  “Of course. I should have recognized it. I myself have a cousin in St. Louis. Do you know the Harpers?”

  Angel started to explain St. Louis was on the other side of Missouri from Independence, but Prudence wasn’t listening anyway. Her sharp eyes had fixed on someone else entering the Hall.

  “Harlot,” she hissed under her breath.

  Angel felt a wave of relief when she realized the word wasn’t meant for her. She looked over and stared with the other ladies as a particularly striking redhead in pale blue silk breached the unwritten law of Triumph Hall and entered without invitation.

  “Why, it’s Miss Valentine,” the church lady on Angel’s right gasped.

  Everyone looked to Prudence for a cue. Rachel’s mother drew herself up like a rattlesnake prepared to strike. Angel watched with silent fascination, feeling pity for the unsuspecting Miss Valentine and a mixture of shock and amusement over Prudence’s reaction.

  Why, everyone’s acting like I’m a regular saint now, and poor Miss Valentine’s the harlot, Angel thought. Then she reddened when she remembered it was exactly the word Prudence had used. Mrs. Maxwell came to her feet with another hiss of righteous indignation, and regally swept forward to confront the intruder.

  Angel did a quick reevaluation of “poor Miss Valentine” in the next few moments. Not only did the woman refuse to meet Prudence halfway, but a mischievous smile teased at her dark red lips. Her throat and wrists sparkled with a vulgar display of diamonds, or more likely excellent paste fakes. Angel saw the woman’s silk dress was so thin as to lend credit to every sleek curve beneath. Her cat-green eyes roamed leisurely and insolently over the assembled ladies, lingering on Angel.

  Like everyone else, Angel waited with baited breath to see what Prudence would do. Rachel glided up behind Angel’s chair and placed a tense hand on the backrest.

  “Who is she?” Angel murmured.

  “You don’t know who Lily Valentine is? Oh, she’s the most infamous singer in these parts. Or, as some maintain, she really makes her living in another trade — ”

  Rachel’s whisper brought disapproving looks from the other ladies. They all wanted to overhear what Prudence had to say to the most notorious woman in Oro City.

  “Jezebel!” Prudence dramatically leveled a plump finger at an obviously amused Lily. “How dare you enter a House of God where decent ladies reside.”

  Lily inclined her head, and
her bright auburn hair glittered beneath the gas lamps in the hall. “I apologize for disrupting your evening, ladies,” she said in a polite, throaty voice, as if Prudence had never implied she was a whore. “But I’m looking for Holt’s wife. It’s important.”

  Angel came to her feet, surprised by Miss Valentine’s casual use of her husband’s first name. “I’m Mrs. Murphy. What is it?”

  The green eyes inspected Angel from head to toe and betrayed a flicker of surprise. Then Lily’s voice echoed through the hall. “You and I have something urgent to settle between us, Mrs. Murphy. May I suggest we step outside?”

  “YOU DON’T HAVE TO go anywhere with her, my dear,” Prudence Maxwell told Angel indignantly. Her bristling outrage echoed the consensus in the room.

  Though Angel was chagrined by the other woman’s announcement, she was also curious. She answered the challenge in Lily’s bold green gaze.

  “All right,” she said. “Let me get my shawl.”

  Angel was immune to further whispers and stares as she moved to drape the black lace over her shoulders. Rachel would have willingly accompanied her, but Angel shook her head at her new friend as she reached the door.

  “What is this all about?” she asked.

  Lily shook her head, unwilling or unable to explain. “So you’re Mrs. Murphy,” she murmured. “Funny, but I expected something a little different.”

  Angel didn’t know how to take the dry remark, and she was surprised when Lily took her impatiently by the arm. “Come on. I haven’t got all night.”

  Just outside the hall, Lily paused before the windows, where the church ladies were now rushing to get a firsthand view of what would surely be the fight of the season. Lily waited a moment to let them all get settled, then released Angel’s arm and turned to face her.

  “Hit me, honey.”

  “What?” Angel stared at the woman.

  “You heard me right,” Lily said in a low, quick voice. “Right now, while they’re still watching.” She gave Angel a mocking smile for the benefit of their eager audience. “But not too hard. I just had my teeth fixed,” she added under her breath.

  “You’re crazy. Why, I’d no more hit you than — “

  “I’ve slept with Holt, you know.”

  Crack! Before she could stop herself, Angel saw the palm of her hand leave a bright red imprint on Lily’s rouged and powdered face. She gasped.

  “Perfect. You’d make a damned good actress yourself,” Lily said ruefully as she touched her burning cheek. “Now listen hard and fast, chick. Holt’d want me to protect your reputation, so on the count of three I’m going to turn and run down the street like all the proverbial hounds of hell are at my heels. You follow. Yell out some bad words to make it look good. But don’t stop for anything. Holt’s life is at stake.”

  Angel stared at the redhead, feeling apprehension jolt through her. Whatever this was all about, it didn’t sound good. The mere mention of Holt’s name made her go stiff and wary.

  “What happened?”

  “Holt was ambushed,” Lily said tersely. “He was shot outside of Jake’s tonight.”

  Angel’s outcry and anxious questions went unanswered.

  “Just chase me,” Lily said before she turned and sprinted down the street, “and make it good.”

  Angel remembered little of the cold or the dark or the stares as she thundered across the town on the skirts of the town tart, shouting lively words for the benefit of any passersby.

  Lily rounded a corner around the town barber shop and stopped at the back door of a narrow two-story building that looked vaguely familiar. Angel was too worried about Holt to be shocked when she realized it was Oro’s cathouse.

  “This was the one place I knew he’d be safe,” Lily said briskly in answer to any unspoken criticism. She pushed open the door and steered Angel inside.

  The muted sound of spunky piano music came through velvet-padded doors to their right, and husky feminine laughter rippled from somewhere high above. Lily ignored both as she pulled Angel after her up a narrow set of stairs. She knocked at a closed chamber draped with red tassels before she opened it. Then she stepped out of the way so Angel saw the man in the bed.

  “Holt,” she cried, as if the words ripped from her heart. Angel went to the bed and felt herself falter at the sight of him so pale and unmoving in the velvet-draped canopy bed. She whirled on Lily. “Where in heaven’s name is the doctor?”

  “Doc’s come and gone,” the redhead said with a shrug. “Nothing he could do once he got Holt patched up.”

  Angel’s eyes flew back to the blood-soaked bandages wrapped around Holt’s upper left arm and shoulder. He moaned and shifted in the bed, and she felt a flood of relief to know he was alive. But also a keen frustration at being unable to help him herself.

  “If it’s any comfort,” Lily put in, “I knew a man who was hit by a stray bullet once and bounced right back.”

  “But this wasn’t a stray bullet, was it?” Angel looked to Lily for the answers. “You told me he was ‘ambushed.’”

  “Did I?” Lily mused. “Poor choice of words. Let’s just say it was a lively night at Jake’s.”

  The saloon where Holt must have gone. Angel bit her lip and turned back to the man in the bed. She wanted to hover over him but was uncomfortable with Lily watching.

  “Go on,” Lily urged her. “He needs you.”

  Angel moved to obey. She felt desperate when she took his limp hand in her own. “Oh, Holt,” she whispered.

  His eyelashes flickered. Then the familiar steel-gray eyes opened and he made a wry, pained face up at her.

  “Should’ve gone to the ladies’ social instead,” he muttered.

  Lily chuckled, but Angel could find no humor in his words. “What happened, Holt? Please tell me.”

  “Jumped.” He licked his dry lips and tried again. “Some yellow-livered coward jumped me outside of Jake’s.”

  “But why?”

  “Why, indeed?” Lily interposed sarcastically, and in that moment Angel truly disliked the woman. “When a man has a gold mine on the verge of a strike what more reason does there need to be?”

  Angel couldn’t bite her tongue any longer. She turned on Lily. “He only owns part of the mine. The other half belongs to me. They could have shot me just as easily.”

  The other woman looked surprised, and Angel felt a brief flare of satisfaction before she turned back to Holt. He was trying to grin up at her but looked for all the world like he’d tasted something nasty.

  “My scrappy little wife,” he said, wincing when his arm moved inadvertently. “The best of claim-jumpers couldn’t get a jump on you.”

  Angel wasn’t sure if it was a compliment or not, but she could sense unspoken questions in the air. Before Lily could get bossy again she told Holt, “I’m going back to the parsonage. I’ve got to tell Neal what happened.”

  It was as if she’d dashed saltwater on his wound.

  “No!”

  Holt sat halfway up in bed, and she had to grab his uninjured arm to keep him there.

  “Neal mustn’t know,” he hissed through clenched teeth.

  “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. Of course Neal needs to know what happened to you and where I am now. Holt, when will you let go of that silly grudge?”

  He was mutinously silent and Angel sighed. “All right. But how do I explain to him how I ended up in a fancy house like this?”

  “You leave that to me,” Lily interrupted briskly. “I’ll escort you back to Preacher Murphy’s place. Don’t worry; Holt and I already figured out a story about how he got shot.”

  Holt and I? Angel’s eyebrows raised while the beautiful redhead exchanged a sly wink with her bedridden husband. It was obvious they knew each other from somewhere — not that it was any of her business.

  “Thanks, Lil,” Holt said wearily before the two women left. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  “Don’t mention it. You know I’d
do anything for you.”

  Which left Angel wondering what anything might include.

  “YOU MIGHT AS WELL wipe those thoughts right out of your mind, honey,” Lily said before she accompanied a silent Angel back to the parsonage. The two women faced each other in a downstairs receiving parlor, decorated in lush claret-red velvet and gold brocade.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Angel said defensively. But she heard the censuring note in Lily’s low voice.

  “You know perfectly well. If you married Holt, it was for better or worse. If you expect it to be better most of the time, you’re going to be sorely disappointed.”

  Angel glanced at the singer’s profile as Lily moved to pour herself a shot of warm golden liquor at the leather-padded bar. She was surprised by the ring of familiarity in the words. Hadn’t Elsa Loring also warned her not to expect too much from men? But the stout German woman had meant something entirely different than Lily did now.

  “Holt lives dangerously,” Lily added, “and sooner or later you’re going to get caught in the cross fire. If he’s busy looking after you, too, he’s not going to be as alert as he needs to be.”

  Angel heard a definite note of disapproval in Lily’s smooth dialogue. She bristled. Just who was this Valentine woman, anyway, to be making judgments about her? No better than a doxy, according to Prudence Maxwell.

  “I’d like to know why you’re so concerned about Holt,” Angel said.

  Lily arched an eyebrow. “I was wondering when you would get around to asking. You’re certainly more patient than most wives I know.” She shrugged and said, “Holt and I go back a long way. Met him when I was coming west on a wagon train with my parents. They were poor Irish immigrants looking for a better life. But the tickets they bought were one way, to a couple of unmarked graves high in the Rockies.”

  When Lily sighed Angel felt confused. Her emotions warred between sympathy for the woman and jealousy for what Lily meant to Holt.

  “Didn’t plan to stay here,” Lily said. “Fact is, I was looking for a way out of these backwoods, to someplace fancy like New York or San Francisco. But that takes money. A lot of it. So when someone offered to pay me for singing in a saloon I said why not. Didn’t realize one job would label me from there on out.”