“Your grandfather didn’t like the fact that I took you away without telling him where I was going, so he sent Mr. Hammond to find out where you were. Which he did. However, because Mr. Hammond suffered several injuries yesterday, it didn’t seem right to just shoo him off without giving him the chance to recuperate. Especially since he very likely saved Stephen’s life. So we discussed matters, and I agreed to let him stay with us for a while.”
Lily pulled away from Charlotte’s arms and tilted her face until she could look her teacher in the eye. “So he’s not going to take me away? Back to Dorchester Hall? Because Mama told me to stay with you.”
Not knowing how to answer that question since Stone hadn’t yet made that determination, Charlotte decided to do a bit of gentle probing on her own. “Do you want to go back to Dorchester Hall?”
The girl shrugged. “Visiting once in a while would be okay. See how my cat is doing. Eat some of Mrs. Johnson’s chocolate cake.” A grin curved the girl’s lips. “It’s my favorite.”
“Mmm. That does sound delicious.” Unfortunately, chocolate was a luxury Charlotte could no longer afford. At least not until she secured another teaching position.
She wished she could go to the cupboard right now and bake the most decadent chocolate cake Lily had ever tasted, but other things took precedence. Like ensuring Lily and the others were safe.
“Would you want to see your grandfather?”
Lily dipped her head and shrugged. Charlotte had been around children long enough to recognize the look of someone who wanted to say no but didn’t think she should. “He’s always so busy,” Lily blurted. She slumped a bit, leaning back into Charlotte’s hold. “The only time he ever played with me was when his business friends invited us over for dinner.”
“He took you with him to dinner parties?” That seemed odd. Usually children were excluded from such adult activities.
Lily’s chin brushed across Charlotte’s chest as she nodded. “I used to really like those parties. Grandfather would buy me a pretty new dress and tell all his friends about how smart I was and how I would grow up to be just as good at investing as he was. He would hold my hand and take me around the house, introducing me to everyone and showing me all the different rooms filled with interesting things. Especially the libraries and studies because he knew I liked books.” Lily grew quiet for a moment, as if she were reliving the occasion. “I felt special,” she said at last, her voice soft. “Grandfather didn’t forget about me during those dinners. He wasn’t too busy. He was proud of me. Wanted me with him.”
Charlotte ached at the longing in the little girl’s voice. She recognized it far too well. The longing to be loved and appreciated by the people who mattered. How many times had she practiced until her fingers cramped in an effort to please her father? Pandered to his pride with extravagant compliments when he fell into bouts of melancholy? Organized his music folders, arranged his tutoring sessions, even kept his financial records updated, all in an effort to prove herself important to him. Only to discover she wasn’t important enough.
Men like her father, like Randolph Dorchester, stole energy from those around them for their own purposes. So what had Dorchester’s purpose been in taking Lily to those dinners? Perhaps he thought to impress his associates with his warm, familial nature by parading Lily around and visibly doting on her. Or maybe he thought to impress another way.
“Lily, did your grandfather ask you to show off your talent to his friends?” Heaven knew her own father had loved making her play to an audience when she’d been a child. She’d submitted but hated every moment of it. All the eyes on her. The fear that she’d make a mistake and embarrass him. Then watching him accept all the congratulations and accolades for himself as if she’d been nothing more than a puppet and he the one holding the strings.
But Lily was shaking her head. “No. He told me to keep it a secret. He said it was part of the game, and if I told anyone, I’d lose, and he wouldn’t get me new books anymore.”
What kind of game would Dorchester play with a child at a dinner party? And why the need for bribery and secrecy? Those two ingredients rarely came together to make anything good.
“What kind of game did you play with your grandfather, Lily?”
The question was the one that had formed on Charlotte’s tongue, but the deep male tones definitely did not originate in her throat. She jerked her head around, knowing what she would find even before her eyes confirmed it—Stone Hammond lounging in the doorway.
13
Stone stayed where he was, leaning his shoulder against the wall. He should’ve kept his mouth shut. But when Charlotte had hesitated over asking the question burning a hole through his brain, he hadn’t been able to help himself. Something told him the answer to that question would determine which course he followed.
“D-did my grandfather put a bounty on my head, Mr. Hammond?” The hero worship had disappeared from Lily’s gaze. Worry, if not outright fear, shone in her blue eyes now when she looked at him. “Is that why you’re here?”
A sledgehammer to the gut would have hurt less.
“Not a chance, squirt.” He wanted to go to her, to squat down in front of her and reassure her. But he held his ground, afraid any movement would scare her. “I gave up bounty huntin’ years ago, remember?”
“Like Dead-Eye Dan?”
“That’s right. Dan took up ranching, and I took up—” He was about to say “retrieving,” but that sounded too much like bringing in bounties. So he opted for the language her teacher had used. “Hiring myself out to people who need help findin’ things.”
“And you found me.” She didn’t look completely reassured. Smart kid.
He dipped his chin. “That I did. And let me say that you are much prettier than the stud bull Mr. Haymaker paid me to find last year. Whew! That beast was ug-ly. Stinky, too.” Stone made a face and fanned his hand under his nose. When Lily giggled, the vise constricting his chest finally eased.
Straightening slowly away from the doorjamb, Stone shoved his hands into his trouser pockets and ducked his head slightly, trying to make himself look as harmless as possible. “Would it be all right if I joined you ladies at the table?”
For the first time since he’d alerted them to his presence, he focused his attention on Charlotte. Her face gave away little, that serene mask of hers firmly in place. But he sensed outrage simmering beneath the surface. Yes, he’d butted in where she didn’t want him, but he needed to be a part of this conversation, and she was intelligent enough to recognize that fact and not try to stop him. Even as he watched, she nodded slightly, granting him permission to join them. Yet her blue-green eyes clearly threatened violence upon his person if he did anything to hurt the girl in her lap.
Stone chose an arcing path, careful to give the females plenty of space as he made his way to the table. He grabbed hold of the ladder-back chair Lily had vacated, scooted it a couple feet farther away to give them a buffer, then flipped it around and straddled the seat. Draping one elbow over the top of the chair back, he glanced at Lily. “Tell me about this game you and your granddad used to play.”
The girl looked to her teacher before answering. Charlotte nodded her approval.
“He called it a treasure hunt,” Lily said. “When everyone was standing around talking before dinner, I was supposed to slip away and search for treasure. Grandfather said he and his friends liked to hide secrets from each other, and whoever uncovered the other’s secret first won. If I helped him win the game, he’d order me whichever book I wanted from the Montgomery Ward catalog.”
Stone worked to keep his expression bland even as tension crept up his back and into his neck and shoulders. He didn’t like the direction this story was heading.
“The hard part was finding the right treasure since I didn’t know what it looked like. Grandfather said the best treasure was usually hidden in the study, in desk drawers. The more buried, the better. If I could wiggle a locked drawer open, that wou
ld be worth the most points, but I was never to break anything. That was against the rules. So I was always careful. I only ever got one locked drawer open. I found a paper with lots of signatures on it that looked important. It was about a new railroad line going to a place called Seymour. A bunch of people from the town had written a letter about how they were raising money to get the Wichita Valley line to go there. I didn’t understand the rest, but there was a map under the letter, too. When I drew it later that night for Grandfather, he was so proud of me, he let me pick two books out of the catalog.”
Stone met Charlotte’s shocked gaze above Lily’s head. Yep, she understood, too. Randolph Dorchester had made his fortune in land speculation. For a man like him, being able to predict where the railroad planned to build would be money in the bank. Stone didn’t doubt for a second that if he went to the land office in Seymour, Texas, he’d find records of Dorchester’s company purchasing tracts of land all along the proposed rail line that Lily had so innocently drawn for him. Shoot, the man probably even helped the townsfolk raise the money they needed to entice the railroad to build there. All out of the goodness of his heart, of course.
The man had turned his own granddaughter into a criminal, having her steal company secrets. And now he’d hired Stone to get his little spy back.
“When the books came in the mail, Mama asked where I’d gotten them. When I told her about the game, she got really mad. She told me Grandfather was wrong to ask me to play that kind of game and that I wouldn’t be allowed to go to any more parties with him.” Lily twisted in Charlotte’s lap to face her teacher. “I told her I was sorry, that I didn’t know it was wrong.”
Charlotte stroked Lily’s hair. “She knew that, honey. She wasn’t mad at you.”
“I know. She told me. She even let me keep the books. But she did make me promise never to play that game again.” Lily fell silent for a moment, her head down. When she finally looked up, her chin was wobbling. “But I did play it again. Twice.”
“Why—?” Before the teacher could finish her question, tears started rolling down Lily’s face.
The child wagged her head back and forth as if trying to deny her own admission. “I didn’t want to, Miss Lottie. I swear! I told Grandfather no, that Mama told me I couldn’t play anymore, and at first, he agreed. But then something changed. He got a telegram that must have been terrible news ’cause he started yelling and cursing and slamming doors. Me and Mama stayed out of his way all week until he calmed down.”
She glanced at Stone, her tear-streaked cheeks raising a violent need inside him to hit someone or something. Preferably Randolph Dorchester’s pointy nose.
“He seemed to be doing better,” Lily explained, her voice still high-pitched and shaky, though she gulped in a few breaths to try to calm herself, “but then he came to my room one afternoon and told me we were going for a drive. He smiled at me, but there was something wrong with the smile. It didn’t seem happy at all. I told him I needed to check with Mama. He said he already had, and that it was all right for me to go.”
“Where did he take you, sweetheart?” Miss Atherton’s carefully modulated tones revealed no shock or disapproval, only compassion. Lily relaxed back into her teacher’s arms.
“To a big house I didn’t recognize. Grandfather didn’t take me to the front door, though. He took me around the side of the house where a window was open a little bit. He told me the man who lived there was mean, that he’d threatened to ruin Grandfather’s business just because a storm sank his boat. It wasn’t Grandfather’s fault there’d been a storm. I felt bad for Grandfather, so I let him boost me up to the window and went in. I searched for papers, books, maps, anything I thought Grandfather might like. Every time I came back to the window, Grandfather would make me recite what I’d found. It was never good enough. So he made me stay inside and look longer. I got so scared. What if the mean man found me?”
Stone’s teeth ground together at the back of his mouth. How could a man do that to his own grandchild? Force her to steal for him, placing her in danger?
And how could Stone have accepted a job from a man like that? Had his instincts failed him, or had he been so eager for the fat payout that he’d ignored the warning signs?
“But you did get out,” the teacher soothed, rubbing the girl’s arm. “You’re here now. Safe.”
Lily nodded. “I found a stack of bills on the man’s desk. I’d not paid any attention to them earlier because they weren’t hidden away in a drawer, but when I recited their contents to Grandfather, he got excited when I told him about the one from someplace called The Red Palace. After I recited that one, he finally let me climb back out the window.”
Miss Atherton shot Stone a questioning look. She obviously didn’t understand the significance of that find, but Stone did. The Red Palace was an exclusive brothel in Houston that catered to wealthy gentlemen. Perfect blackmail material.
“I thought we were going home then,” Lily said, “but he took me to a second house.”
Another house? Was one not enough? Of all the heartless, greedy . . .
“He wanted me to do the same thing there. Said we still had an hour before the second man would get home. He’d given one of the servants some money earlier in the day to make sure the window was left open, so I had nothing to worry about.” Lily shifted and grabbed her teacher around the waist and hugged her tight. “I didn’t want to go in. I begged Grandfather not to make me. He got so mad, Miss Lottie.” Her voice fell to a whisper. “His face got all red. He grabbed my arms and shook me so hard my head started to hurt. Then he told me that if I didn’t obey him, he would take my kitty, tie her up in a sack, and toss her in the river. I c-couldn’t let that happen, Miss Lottie. I just couldn’t!”
“Of course not, sweetie.”
Now the teacher was crying, too.
Stone squirmed in his seat, his hands gripping the ladder-back chair so tightly he was surprised the thing didn’t snap in two.
“I crawled through the window and walked toward the desk. It was dark in the room, though, and I knocked into the edge of a little table. Something fell. It woke the dog.”
Stone jerked upright in the chair. “There was a dog?” He nearly roared the question. Lily shrank deeper into the teacher’s arms. Miss Atherton shot a glare at him. “Sorry, squirt. I didn’t mean to holler.”
“That’s all right,” she said in a small voice. “The dog scared me, too.”
He imagined so.
Lily gave a little sniff then continued with her tale. “He’d been sleeping under the desk. He growled at me first, then he jumped up and started barking. It scared me so bad, I screamed. I ran for the window. This one wasn’t quite so high off the ground, so I didn’t wait for Grandfather to help me down, I just jumped. My ankle hurt when I landed, and I worried that Grandfather would be angry, but he seemed scared by the dog, too. He helped me up and hurried me back out to the coach.
“On the way home, he said he was sorry about making me go into the house. He didn’t shake me or yell or anything. Just sat there looking worried. He promised to buy me a whole shelf of books, but only if I didn’t tell Mama. Said Mama would get mad at me and think I was a bad girl.”
Miss Atherton gently pushed Lily away from her, just enough to look directly in her eyes. “Your mama would never think you were a bad girl.”
Lily nodded. “I know. She’d told me to tell her right away if Grandfather ever tried to make me play his game again, so I did. She let me sleep in her bed with her that night, and we left the next day to visit a friend of hers in Austin. That’s when we found your school.”
Lily wrapped her arms around Charlotte’s neck and pressed their two cheeks together. “I’m so glad that Mama sent me to live with you, Miss Lottie. I’m never gonna leave. Never.”
Charlotte closed her eyes and returned the girl’s hug, but Stone noticed she made no response to Lily’s dramatic declaration. Probably didn’t want to make a promise she wasn’t sure she could k
eep. Thanks to him.
Stone unwrapped himself from the chair and stood, wishing with all his being that he’d never taken this job. Miss Atherton rose as well, setting Lily on her feet.
“Would you set the table for me, please, Lily? The boys will be in with the cider soon. Have them fill the glasses. John can do the napkins. I need to have a quick word with Mr. Hammond, then I’ll be back to carve the roast.”
“Yes, Miss Lottie.” Lily nodded and rubbed the remains of her tears from her cheeks with her sleeve. Then she looked at Stone. “Now that you found me, you can tell Grandfather that I’m all right. He doesn’t have to worry. Miss Lottie’s taking good care of me.”
Stone swallowed. “Yes, she is, squirt. I can see that real clear.”
She smiled at him then. Heaven help him. He couldn’t take her back. Not to a man who would willingly place her in danger to fuel his own greed.
“Mr. Hammond?” The teacher caught his attention and gestured toward the back door.
Stone dipped his head. “After you, ma’am.”
Expecting her to turn and confront him the moment he pulled the door shut behind them, he was surprised when she kept walking. Past the outhouse. Past the garden. She didn’t stop until she reached the clothesline. She scanned the yard, her head swiveling from side to side before she finally pivoted to face him. “What are you going to do?”
Well, at least the woman didn’t beat around the bush.
“I’m going to wait for that letter from Austin, just like we talked about.”
Sparks flew from her eyes. “After what that child just told you, you still have to wait for written proof before deciding that you’re working for the wrong side?” She trembled from the force of her outrage. “I should have known. You and your kind words, your heroic deeds. You almost had me fooled. But you don’t care about Lily. All you care about is the money Dorchester’s dangling in front of you.” She spun away from him and started marching back toward the house.