Eyes of Silver, Eyes of Gold (8 page)

Everyone in Mason knew of Lathrum, who raised quality blood horses but was reputed to be a cruel man. Anne nodded.

Cord continued, “He cheated me by selling me a dead colt is all. And you cheated him by keeping the colt alive.” He then rose unsteadily to his feet and headed back for the house.

He knew perfectly well that Anne felt he had broken their tit for tat bargain and was angry. This was a cold fury very different from the fast passing little displays of temperament. Worst of all, he knew he had made her think seriously about leaving. Over lunch he asked her, “When will you leave?”

Her voice was cool. “As soon as you can take care of the animals yourself.”

“Money?”

“None of your business.” After that she was pleasant, considerate, and too polite.

By the next morning he wanted to shake her until she begged for mercy, but he had certainly seen that that didn’t work. Over polite protests, he walked with her to the barn for morning chores. He made no effort to try to pitch hay, carry grain or water, but quietly milked the cows, now named Daisy and Rose. When everything was taken care of in the barn, he said, “All right, sit down. I’ll tell you.”

He was not used to story-telling and spoke slowly with many long pauses.

“You know I was gone from here some of the same years you were.”

Anne nodded. She was leaning towards him, lips parted, wide-eyed and eager to hear it all. Maybe telling this wasn’t going to be so bad after all.

“I had some extra cash when I first got back and thought to use it for a young stallion bred some better than the stock I’ve got, so I went to see Lathrum.”

Anne tried to hurry him. “So you bought a horse from him?”

“Nope. He wasn’t too keen on competition. Got downright nasty. I heard later he was even making buyers promise not to resell to me.”

Cord shrugged, but it pleased him that Anne’s mouth tightened. There was no doubt whose side she was on already.

“Not too long after that word got around he’d had a fancy palomino foal born over there. You know the color?”

“Golden. They really are pretty.”

“Mm. Unusual color out of his stock. He was offered a lot of money for it right from the start, but being a greedy bastard he figured he’d get more when it was grown and broke.”

A few weeks ago Anne would have had a ladylike fit over his language, but her attitudes had toughened some in the past weeks. Now she only rarely tried to rebuke him by wrinkling her nose or frowning. Hurrying him with his tale was obviously her only interest at the moment. “So?”

“So when the colt got old enough Raoul started working with him and couldn’t get a thing done.”

“Who’s Raoul?”

“Raoul Zamora, Lathrum’s head horseman. He’s good with a horse, but he uses Spanish methods - harsh - and Lathrum pushes him to where some of it gets pretty ugly. Hate to think what they probably did to that yellow horse, but that stud beat them - they couldn’t get him broke. So they asked around and tried some of the men known for horse taming and that kind of thing. Horse almost killed a man last fall. It was still winning.”

“Didn’t they consider a surgical solution?”

Her delicate way of alluding to castration amused him, and her blush said she knew it, but she was still leaning toward him, eager to hear the rest of the story.

“Gelding might be worth two hundred dollars. He was offered thousands for that yellow horse, entire and broke.”

“I see.”

“So when he’d exhausted all reasonable possibilities, Lathrum came to me. Offered to let me have the pick of his next crop of foals if I could get the horse broke. He’s every kind of mean I’ve ever heard about, but he has a reputation for keeping his word, so I said I’d give it a try.”

Anne leaned back a little and tilted her head at him, understanding at last how Fortune came into this.

“That horse was one useless son of a bitch. If he’d been any other color nobody would have even gelded him - they’d have shot him. Took all fall and winter, but he was broke enough for a careful man who knew what he was doing by spring, so I took him back and looked over Lathrum’s foals and picked this one.” He nodded toward Fortune’s stall.

“It surprised me a little Lathrum didn’t try to hide one that good. Seemed like he really was keeping his word. Said he weaned all the foals in late September, to come back in October, to let them know and they’d have the colt caught up. What they gave me was what you saw in the barn a month ago. I got back with him the afternoon before you got here. A day earlier and you’d have been meeting one of Frank’s hands over here to take care of the stock.”

Their eyes met, both knowing how very different their lives might be if that had happened.

Anne couldn’t understand or accept it. “You mean they did it on purpose? What did they do?”

“Lathrum left Raoul to face me, and he was so damned embarrassed he didn’t say much. Probably weaned him too early and kept him half-starved right up till I sent word I was coming for him, then stopped feeding him at all. Felt sure I should have shot him right there out of kindness but it seemed wrong to even leave them the body, so I nursed him home. Took three days to come thirty miles. The light was gone from his eyes.”

“I don’t understand. What does that mean?”

“It’s a dead look in the eyes they get when the will to live is gone. They don’t eat even with food in front of them then. So, you see, Lathrum tried to cheat me, and you cheated him.”

“Will Fortune be all right now?”

“Might never be as good a horse as he would have. Stunted, crooked legs, something like that, but it won’t make any difference in what he’ll be as a sire, and that’s what I wanted him for.”

Anne sat frowning into space, and Cord wondered if he had capitulated too late and she would not let go of her anger. She reassured him with a smile after a moment, and said, “It’s strange, isn’t it. I’m having trouble believing a man could be so cruel to a horse, and yet look what men did to us.”

To us. He hadn’t thought of it that way before. “Will you tell me now what you’re going to do when you leave here?”

She stood, brushing her skirt. “Yes, but inside. It’s too cold to sit here any longer,” and then she threw him a quick grin and added, “if you’ll tell me how you were going to get through the winter if I’d taken your hundred and fifty dollars.”

Then he was watching her back for a change as she carried the pail of milk to the house. It galled him to let her do it, but he knew better than to even think about lifting anything yet. How, he wondered, was he going to get her to stay for a while, and how was he going to deal with the emptiness when she left, no matter when it was?

In the house, Anne said, “This time you first.”

She had him, and he knew it. “I just borrow enough from Frank to get by when things get tight. I’ve done it a couple of times over the years.”

Her feelings were in her voice. “From your
brother
Frank?”

“Mm, hm. Really impressed you didn’t he? After he stops yelling he’s a good man, you know. Best thing for you would be to ask Frank and Eph for help. They could see you live decently while you work things out.”

She sat down across from him at the kitchen table and said, harking back to that long ago conversation, “I’d rather whore for strangers.”

Cord knew it was not a good opening, but it was time to get it out. “Would you stay?”

“You mean would I whore for you?”

“No, damn it, I seem to remember we’re married.”

“That farce of a ceremony didn’t mean a thing, and you know it.”

“What it means is up to us. If we mean to keep those vows, we’re married.”

“That’s easy to say, but nobody else would feel that way. I would be just a whore as far as the rest of the world is concerned, and I’d feel like one.”

“We could talk to Pratt.”

“I don’t want to talk to that yellow-bellied holy coward.”

“Bet I could get a marriage certificate out of him.”

Her narrow-eyed look said she wouldn’t take that bet and she didn’t think much of a marriage certificate obtained at gun point.

He hadn’t really expected her to say yes. He backed off. “All right then, what are you going to do, you and your twenty dollars?”

“Well, I can’t go to Aunt Clara now, so I’ll just find employment. I’m a very good seamstress, and an excellent cook, and most people think I’m way too educated for a woman. I could teach.”

“Great. When you’re almost out of money and about to get to the whoring, save enough to send me a telegram. I’d like to be your first customer.”

“That’s what I thought you had in mind. It’s not exactly the same thing as marriage.”

“It’s probably a bigger part of marriage than you’d like.”

Anne ignored that. “Can I think about this romantic proposal for a while, or do I have to answer now?”

She could think about it forever if it kept her from leaving. “Think all you like,” he said, and took his aching belly off for a nap. Sleep didn’t come easily.

* * *

Chapter 9

ANNE DID THINK ABOUT IT.
Thought about little else for the next several days until her head ached and she felt dizzy following her own thoughts in circles. She gave no consideration to the social stigma that had only weeks ago kept her from even considering Cord as marriageable. The pressures of the opinion of polite society were responsible for almost forcing her into marriage to a man she found repulsive. She had been condemned for a sin she had not committed and was surprised to realize it only set her free.

In spite of how difficult he could be, she liked Cord far more than she ever had either Elroy or Richard. He was in many ways easier to be around than anyone she had ever known. If she wanted help or advice, he gave it, but he saw no need to force her to do things his way or to dominate her every action and word. More than ever before she realized how much Richard and his friends had patronized her.

Yet Cord was disturbing in a way no other had ever been. The sound of his voice, the sight of him, the way he looked at her, sometimes any of these things would cause an unsettling thump in her chest, a strange flutter in her stomach. She would find herself admiring the skill in his hands as they performed some ordinary task, the long, strong fingers unusually quick and dexterous, or watching him walk, even still slightly favoring his ribs, exhibiting a sensuous, cat-like grace.

She had been engaged to Richard Tyler, an extremely good-looking man, for four years, but could not remember ever noticing how he walked, could not remember anything about his hands. Recalling Richard at all was difficult, but the picture in her mind was a pale, bland, even featured image, lacking the ferocity but also the strength, confidence, and character of the distinctive bone structure and planes of Cord’s face.

Anne accepted that his reason for asking her to stay was exactly what he stated. Under ordinary circumstances, there were no decent women a man like Cord Bennett could marry. Then again, Anne thought ruefully, no one who knew the turns her life had taken these last weeks would consider her a decent woman.

She worried particularly about the physical part of marriage. Anne’s knowledge had all been obtained from her married friend, Rachel Miles Ross. Neither her mother nor her Aunt Clara had ever been willing to say much on the subject. What they did say tended to be heavy on words like duty and obligation.

Rachel had described the marital act to Anne in minute detail. According to Rachel, the first time had been so terrible she was at first afraid she would die and then afraid she wouldn’t. After that, Rachel said, it was merely like being torn apart.

Anne watched Rachel change from a girl so in love she couldn’t talk about anything except her beloved Randal to an unhappy woman who almost hated her husband and wanted to become pregnant because, “Then he’ll have to leave me alone.”

Rachel’s experiences had made Anne understand why women whispered about a woman’s burden. Most wives, of course, seemed to manage much better than Rachel did. Anne had been confident that that part of marriage to Richard would be distasteful, but not so dreadful as what her friend endured.

Still, Randal Ross was a gentleman. If he subjected his wife to such agonizing misery regularly, what on earth would marriage to a man of such raw power as Cord be like? The thought of him touching her like that gave her an unsettling hollow feeling in her stomach.

What would it be like being married to a man who had to be bribed into saying more than a few laconic sentences? He would not try to rule her or control her, but he wouldn’t be affectionate or caring either. What would it be like to live a whole lifetime with a man so withdrawn? A man whose own family believed he was a criminal?

There was also what she had overheard Dr. Craig say about children. She had never envisioned marriage without children. If she never married, there would be none, but to be in a loveless marriage and not even have children to fuss over and love?

But there was no escaping the fact she wanted to stay. She loved it here and loved the life. Would that all change too if they were married?