Mountain Laurel

  After a moment he spoke to her gruffly. “Here, lean back.”

  She hesitated, but she was so tired that she couldn’t help leaning back against him. Her head fit exactly under his chin.

  “Who was with you during all these years of travel?” His voice was still full of anger.

  “John. John Fairlie, my manager, was with me.”

  She could feel the front of him against her back, feel the anger that still raged in him.

  “Where’s all the money you’ve earned? For that matter, who takes care of the money you’ve earned in the gold camps?”

  “I don’t know,” she said sleepily. “John took care of money. Frank does now or maybe Sam does. I don’t think Edith does.”

  “How much do you know about the three of them?”

  “Could you please stop asking me questions?”

  He didn’t answer her, and his silence gave her peace to close her eyes and relax against him.

  She was asleep in his arms within minutes, but she jolted awake when he stopped. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing, but Butter’s tired, you’re exhausted, and I wouldn’t mind some sleep too.”

  She was more tired than she wanted to admit, and when he put up his arms for her she slid into them. He stood close to her for a moment and removed a leaf from her hair. “You are a damned infuriating woman. You know that?”

  She was too tired to argue. “I knew you’d find me. You are the most persistent man I have ever encountered.”

  “I guess you’re used to men losing sleep to find you. I guess your manager came after you when the Russian students took you?”

  “No, he didn’t. He had a nice dinner and went to bed. John always thought I was able to take care of myself. Which I am. They would have returned me before long.”

  “Maybe,” he snapped. “But who knows what could have happened?”

  She felt herself swaying toward him. Maybe it was the moonlight. “I am not your responsibility.”

  “Yes you are. I have orders from the army.” Supporting her, he put his arm around her shoulders and led her to a little clearing. When he told her to sit down and be quiet, she didn’t bother to protest, but leaned against a tree, hugged her arms about her, and closed her eyes.

  She wasn’t about to tell him so, but the miners’ abduction of her had frightened her. It was some time after they’d burst into her tent before she realized that they’d only wanted her to sing. Had she known they were merely drunks looking for someone to entertain them, she might have protested, but she had been afraid they were from Laurel’s captors.

  When she’d realized they’d merely wanted her to sing, she’d been furious and had then just sat and waited, waited for Captain Montgomery to find her.

  She sat up with a start when he touched her shoulder and handed her a cup of coffee.

  “I didn’t bring much to eat. I left in a bit of a hurry.”

  She watched him as he tended to the fire and his horse, then spread blankets on the ground for a bed. He gave her a couple of the horrible dried army crackers called hardtack to eat, and when she’d finished, he took her by the hand and led her to the blankets.

  “Where will you sleep?”

  “Don’t worry about me. I’m not the one who gets into trouble every five minutes.”

  “I wasn’t in trouble. I was perfectly safe. I—”

  “But none of us knew that, did we? Sam had blood running down his neck, and you ought to feel the size of the lump on my head. My head still hurts so bad I can hardly see straight, while you just say that you weren’t in danger. You—”

  “Let me see,” she said, interrupting him. Anything to make him shut up. She sat down on the blanket and motioned for him to bend to her. She put her hands in his thick, dark hair and immediately felt an awful lump and she also felt somewhat guilty. She hadn’t meant for anyone to get hurt because of her.

  On impulse, she leaned forward and kissed the lump. “There, does that make it feel better?”

  “Not much,” he said, and when she looked at him he was still frowning.

  “Really, Captain, don’t you have any sense of humor at all? I apologize for causing you so much trouble, but, may I remind you that I never have yet asked for your help or your interference. I’ve never wanted, or felt I needed, an army escort. You are free to return to your post at any time you want.”

  He turned toward the fire, sitting not a foot from the blankets. “And who would protect you?” he asked softly.

  “Sam and—”

  “Ha! You’re better at protecting yourself than they are.”

  “Was that a compliment? If it was, I want to mark it down in my diary.”

  “I’ve complimented you. I told you I like your singing.”

  She frowned into the fire. “True, you like my singing but you’ve said nothing but dreadful things about me as a person. You call me a liar and—”

  “As far as I can tell, most of what you say to me is lies.”

  “Don’t you understand that there are sometimes reasons why a person must lie? Or has your life always been so easy that you’ve never found a lie necessary? Are you perfect, Captain Montgomery, utterly perfect?”

  He was quiet so long that she turned to look at him, and by his face she knew she’d hit some chord in him.

  “No, I’m not perfect,” he said. “I have fears just like everyone else.”

  “Such as?” she whispered. At the moment they didn’t seem like an army officer and his captive, but just two people, alone, sitting by a campfire, surrounded by darkness. “What do you fear?”

  He opened his mouth to speak but closed it again. “When you’re ready to tell me your secrets, I’ll tell you mine. Until then, let’s keep this on a different plane. Now, Miss Whatever-your-true-name-is, get between those blankets and sleep.”

  He stood and walked away into the darkness, allowing her some privacy as she made herself ready to sleep. When the miners had burst into her tent she’d asked to please be allowed time to change out of her nightgown. She’d dressed as hurriedly as possible, not bothering with her corset, but without it she couldn’t fasten her skirt and was glad for the concealing tail of the jacket she’d slipped over her blouse.

  It was cold in the mountains at night so she snuggled under the top blanket fully clothed, put her head on Captain Montgomery’s saddlebag, and went to sleep. As a child, she’d slept this way often, with a campfire crackling and stars overhead.

  During the night she was awakened by a voice and, startled, she sat up abruptly.

  Captain Montgomery came to her and pushed her back down on the blanket.

  “I was dreaming,” she murmured. “I was with my father.”

  “He’s not here now, so go back to sleep.”

  He started to move away, but Maddie caught his hand. “Worth,” she whispered.

  “Worth what?”

  “My last name is Worth. Madelyn Worth.”

  “Ah, yes, the M.W. on the trunks.”

  She yawned and turned on her side away from him. “Thank you, Captain, for coming to my rescue even if I didn’t need you.”

  “I just hope I don’t have to do it again.”

  “Me too,” she murmured, and went to sleep.

  ’Ring went back to his place against the tree. He was cold and since he’d given her the last of his hardtack he was hungry, so what sleeping he did was very light. For the most part he spent the night watching her and trying to put together all the pieces.

  His head and back still ached in the morning and his mood felt worse. “Get up,” he snapped. “This isn’t the Paris opera house, where you can sleep late.”

  She stretched and yawned. “You certainly got up on the wrong side of the bed.”

  “I wasn’t in any bed to get out of.”

  He didn’t know it, of course, but Maddie had spent a great deal of her life around men and knew when one was in a sulk. “What’s the matter, Captain? Angry because a woman won’t do what you wan
t?”

  He lifted one eyebrow as he looked over the coffeepot at her.

  “I guess you haven’t had much trouble with women, have you? I’m sure that your fabulous good looks have enabled you to get what you want from women.”

  He perked up at “fabulous good looks.”

  “I can just hear all your young ladies.” She cast her eyes skyward and put on a simpering look. “Oh, ’Ring,” she said in a honeyed voice while batting her lashes. “You dance so beautifully and it’s so good to have such a strong man to lean on. Do you like my dress?” She glanced back at him and continued. “Oh, Captain, I find it’s awfully hot in here. Couldn’t we walk outside? Just the two of us? Alone? In the moonlight?”

  She looked back at him and grinned. “Your life story?”

  He had to bite his lips to keep from laughing because what she’d said was so close to reality. At the fort Toby had had to warn ’Ring whenever the colonel’s daughter, or even his wife, was approaching, or else ’Ring would have spent half of his time carrying things or giving his opinion on ribbon colors, or just commenting on the heat or cold or dust or state of the world in general.

  “Not even close,” he said, handing her a cup of coffee.

  “Now who’s lying? You’ll never make a good liar. Your cheeks are almost pink under your manly tan.” She laughed when the pink deepened.

  He quit scowling and smiled at her. “Actually, my problem with women has been the opposite, which is why my father hired Toby. Are you ready to go? We need to leave soon if we’re—”

  “I thought Toby was in the army with you.”

  “He is. He joined because I did.” He looked at her in reproach. “He told you that, remember? I’m glad I’m a better detective than you are. You’d better fasten your skirt, or have you put on weight?”

  “I haven’t put on weight. I left my corset—” She broke off, annoyed that he’d made her mention her undergarment. “Tell me about Toby.”

  “Here, can you clean a coffeepot or can you only sing?”

  “I can do a great deal that you don’t know about. What about breakfast?”

  “It’ll have to wait. You ate all the hardtack and we don’t have time to go hunting.”

  “I could snare a rabbit, or shoot one, for that matter.”

  He looked directly at her. “Oh? And where did you learn to do that?”

  “My father,” she said as she took the coffeepot to the stream and scoured it with sand. When she returned, the fire was out and his bedding rerolled and put on the back of his horse. Maddie rubbed Buttercup’s soft nose. “Why did your father hire Toby?” She didn’t want to ask him, but her curiosity was eating at her. From the moment she’d seen him she’d felt as though she knew all there was to know about him. It had been her unfortunate experience that big, good-looking men were very much alike. They had never had much denied them in their lives and always expected more to be given to them. But Captain Montgomery had surprised her from the first. Come to think of it, where had he learned to wear a breech cloth and sneak about so quietly?

  He helped her onto his horse, then mounted behind her. “Why do you think a father would hire a man like Toby for his son?”

  She smiled. “Easy. To keep you out of trouble. For all his complaining, Toby takes care of you like a mother. He worries about you. No doubt he’s had to pull you out of scrapes with daughters whose fathers were after you with shotguns. Did you join the army to perhaps escape marriage to some poor innocent girl?”

  She twisted to look at his face, sure she was right, but he was smiling.

  “I have no idea what has given you such a low opinion of me. Have I ever said or done anything to you that could be considered unseemly?”

  “Other than threatening me with having to go to bed with you to make you give me freedom that is mine by right?”

  “Yes, other than that.” His eyes sparkled.

  “No, but then, you don’t like me much.”

  “I don’t think like has much to do with ah…what we’re talking about, does it? I may not like you, but you’re not exactly painful to look at.”

  “Thank you,” she said softly. “I think.” What an odd conversation to have, especially when she was riding so close to him and they were so alone in the mountains. “Why was Toby hired?”

  “To get me into trouble.”

  She turned and looked at him.

  “My father worried that I thought of duty before anything else in life.” ’Ring grimaced. “My father was also concerned that I lacked a sense of humor, so when I was sixteen he hired Toby to introduce me to, ah…life.”

  “Life?”

  “Girls.”

  “You didn’t—don’t—like girls?”

  “I thought you wanted to know about Toby.”

  She was a little confused as to what she did want to know about. “Did he? Did he introduce you to girls?”

  “More or less.”

  She had to try to figure out what that meant. “I’ve never heard of a father hiring someone to show his son about…life.”

  “He was worried that I spent too much time involved in our family business, that’s all. So he chose the man who knew more about living than anyone else he’d ever met.”

  “Toby?”

  “Toby.”

  She was quiet a moment. “So, I suppose he probably succeeded. I don’t guess with your face and—” She refused to give him the satisfaction of saying physique. “I would imagine you were an apt pupil.”

  “I did what was required of me.”

  What in the world did he mean by that, Maddie wondered.

  “But I joined the army at eighteen, and here I am.”

  “No doubt leaving a wake of bereaved females behind you,” she said, laughing.

  “No,” he answered.

  “But surely—”

  “Enough about me. Let’s talk about you.”

  But she didn’t want to talk about herself. “Captain, I don’t understand any of this.”

  “Nor do I understand much about you.”

  For the most part he’d been polite to her over the few days she’d known him. Save for the few moments when she’d thought he meant to force her to lie with him, she’d felt in no danger, but now it seemed rather odd that he’d never so much as kissed her hand. And that now with her sitting so close to him, his hand had never strayed. “Your father had to hire someone to introduce you to women because by inclination you are not interested in them?”

  “My father didn’t have to hire Toby.”

  “All right, then. He chose to hire Toby. That’s not the point. The point is whether you’re interested in women or not.”

  “Whose point?”

  “My point!” she snapped at him. “Are you or are you not?”

  “Not what?”

  “Interested in women, you idiot.”

  “Interested in women as opposed to what?”

  She started to speak, then stopped. “You’re not going to answer me, are you?”

  “Who was the man in your tent after your first performance? Who hired Sam and Frank and the delightful Miss Honey?”

  “Is she the type of woman you like?”

  “Do all the men you like smoke cigars and hide in tents? What makes you so violently opposed to having an army escort? Why do you pretend to be a duchess? What happened to your brooch? Where does your family live? Who—”

  “All right!” She laughed. “You win. How about if I teach you a little about singing?”

  “I would like you to sing for me,” he said softly.

  “No, not sing for you. Teach you. Now, listen.” She sang a single note. “That’s B flat.” She sang another note. “C. This is F sharp.”

  “The one Patti can’t sing?”

  “What an annoyingly good memory you have. Now, listen while I put them together. See if you can hear the difference.”

  “C, F sharp, B flat,” he said.

  “Very, very good. I’ll add more notes.” She sang
more notes for him, put them together, and each time he could tell her what she’d sung. “Perfect pitch,” she said. “You can identify the notes perfectly. You have perfect pitch. Did you know this?”

  “Never gave it a thought. No one in my family knows anything about music.”

  “Sing me a song,” Maddie demanded.

  “You’ve slain no dragons for me.”

  “I highly doubt that your untrained singing is worth even the smallest dragon. Sing, or I’ll ask more about Toby.”

  He sang “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” and she waited until the end before speaking. “Amazing, Captain. Really amazing.”

  “Not bad, huh?”

  “It is amazing that someone could have as pleasant a speaking voice as you, an ear so refined as to be able to hear slight sound variations in notes, and yet…”

  “And yet what?”

  “Be such a bad singer.”

  “Watch out,” he said, and pushed her nearly off the horse, but caught her before she fell. She threw her arms around him to keep from falling, then looked up at him, laughing. He, too, was laughing, and quite suddenly she wanted him to kiss her. Maybe it was all their talk of girls and his “doing what was required.”

  She moved her face closer to his and she saw him move toward her. She closed her eyes—but the kiss never came. When she opened her eyes he was looking down at her with an expression she didn’t understand. Embarrassed, she removed her arms from around his neck, straightened, and turned around.

  “How long before we get to camp?”

  “I figure you know as well as I do.”

  She did. She could think of nothing else to say to him. Their good mood was broken and she had no idea why, but she didn’t ponder the question. She snuggled back against him and enjoyed the ride down the mountain.

  Chapter 7

  At the camp the others were waiting for them, only Toby showing concern at their absence. Maddie allowed Sam to help her off Captain Montgomery’s horse, and the captain rode away to the place where he stayed, on the ridge overlooking the camp.

  She went inside the tent and Edith followed her.