Fool for Love (Montana Romance) (24 page)

“In that case, honey, it looks like you’ve done a mighty fine job of it.”  Delilah winked at her.

She stood, Amelia following her, and retrieved their paintbrushes from the table.

“So when are you and Eric gonna make it official?” she asked as she resumed painting.

Amelia swallowed, staring at her paintbrush.  “We’re not.”

Delilah
stopped dead, all mirth gone.

“I can’t do that to him,” Amelia rushed on.

“Excuse me?”

“Eric is indeed a wonderful man.  That is why I couldn’t in good conscience saddle him with a wretch of a wife.  He deserves someone more honorable, someone more stable.”

“What, like Jacinta?”

“No!”  Amelia balked.  “I mean, perhaps.  Someone of Miss Archer’s character at least.”

Delilah sighed.  “Here I was all set to like you, and now you go and imply that Jacinta Archer has character.”

“Perhaps not Miss Archer specifically,” Amelia rushed on, moving to the wall to paint, “but surely you must agree that Eric deserves better.”

“I will agree that Eric deserves better than Jacinta Archer,” Delilah conceded.  “What I will not agree to, yet, is that that woman isn’t you.  And since I’m not in the least convinced you’re a big enough fool to pull a runner on him-”

Amelia opened her mouth to protest but Delilah rode over her.

“What do you make of Curtis Quinlan?”  She turned to the wall, focused on painting.

The argument on Amelia’s lips crumbled.  She shut her mouth, blinking over the question and crouching to paint low on the wall.

“Well… I… I don’t know him that well.  I may not trust him, but I can’t base that on anything other than impressions.  We have never talked.”

“Talked or not, I want to hear your take.”  Delilah lifted onto her tiptoes to paint with wide strokes. 

Amelia cleared her throat and focused on the task at hand.

“Eric speaks very highly of his cousin,” she said slowly.

“Eric would speak highly of the Devil if he wore a smile and called himself his kin,” Delilah countered her.  “Come on, honey.  Tell me what you really think.”

Amelia took a deep breath.  She straightened.  “I suspect that Curtis is taking advantage of Eric.”

“Me too,” Delilah declared as if Amelia had answered the question correctly.

It gave Amelia courage.  She stopped painting and rested a hand over her belly.  “Without knowing much about the situation, I would say that he wants to see Eric’s ranch fail.”

“But why would he do that?” Delilah asked as if she already knew the answer.

Amelia shrugged.  “It seems incomprehensible.  They both own the ranch, don’t they?”

“Apparently.”

“So it doesn’t follow that Curtis would want it to go under.”  She turned back to the wall, moving to an unpainted space and frowning as she considered.  “Eric told me several times that he believes he is a bad businessman, mostly because Curtis told him so.”

“Well, Eric may be a kind and generous soul, but those are two traits that don’t get you very far in business.”  Delilah figured right along with her.

“He is quite good with people though,” Amelia went on.  “And he made a fine business deal on the ship.”

“I’m proud of him for it.  Does Curtis know about that yet?”

“I don’t know.”  Amelia chewed her lip.  “What does Curtis have to gain by putting Eric down and letting the ranch fail?”

“Now you’re talking, honey.”  Delilah grinned from ear to ear.  “That’s exactly what we need to find out.”

“But how?”  Amelia blew out a frustrated sigh.  How indeed.

She was startled to find Delilah watching her with sparkling eyes.

“I’ll tell you what,” Delilah said.  “As much as you say you want to strike out and start your own life, you’re still here.”

“I … I have to make sure that Eric will be all right before I go.”

“Exactly.”  Delilah pointed her paintbrush at Amelia.  “So here’s how we’re going to d
o it.”

Amelia’s brow flew up.

“You’re going to make nice with Curtis Quinlan.”

“I … am?”

“Yes.  Painful though I know it will be, if he likes you he might just let something slip.  That’s where you’ll start.”

“All rig
ht,” Amelia agreed hesitantly.

“Saturday night there’s an ice cream social down at the church,” Delilah went on.  “If I know Cold Springs the way I do, everyone who’s anyone will be there.  It’ll be the perfect opportunity for you to meet people and ask innocent questions, like how a ranch partnership works and what happened to the men who suddenly stopped working for Eric and what do people think of Curtis Quinlan.”

“So, you want me to investigate Curtis?”

“Eric too.”  Delilah nodded.  “There’s things people will tell you that they won’t tell me and questions you can ask that I’d seem like a damn fool if I tried to ask.”

“Oh.”

“And you can come help the Ladies’ Auxiliary set up.  In fact, I think it’s about time we made you an official member of the Ladies’ Auxiliary.  All of the wives of Cold Springs’s most prominent citizens are members.”

“Oh, Delilah, I’m not so sure…,” Amelia protested, eyelashes fluttering as she glanced down to her paintbrush.  She realized her hand was on her belly and moved it.

“The Ladies’ Auxiliary has a place for you, sweetheart,” Delilah said.  “One way or another.  But first things first.  You help me figure out what the hell Curtis Quinlan is up to and help me stop him from doing Eric any harm, and there might just be something I can do for you.”

Chapter Fourteen

Eric wasted no time in giving Amelia an excuse to put Delilah’s plan in motion.  By the next morning, Amelia found herself on the front seat of a borrowed wagon as Eric drove across the miles to the ranch.

“The hole in the fence was pitiful,” Eric vented.  “It’s the kind of thing Garrett Price woulda had fixed before I even noticed.  And it wasn’t the only thing that needed fixing neither.  You should see the barn.”

Amelia nodded, rubbing her belly and wondering how she was supposed to make a man like Curtis Quinlan confide in her.

“And the poor cattle were all underfed.  Jed Archer doesn’t know shit about how much or how often to feed cattle,” Eric went on, too worked up to apologize for his language.

Not that she was listening enough to notice.  She frowned over the conundrum of Curtis and lif
ted her eyes to the landscape.

Montana was breathtaking.  Amelia had never seen mountains so high or majestic.  She had been able to see them from the town, but completing the view with wide fields of green, hills that stretched as far as she could see, and only scattered indications of human habitation was a wonder.  She felt dwarfed against the might of the mountains.  They reached to impossible heights, their tips disappearing into puffs of cloud.  Montana was bigger than the sky itself.

It was a vastly different world from the cramped streets and shattered dreams of London.  It remained to be seen which world she belonged to.

“I’ve been yammering away and you haven’t said anything for an hour,” Eric interrupted her thoughts.  He reached out to brush a strand of hair away from her face, letting his hand trail down her arm and rub her belly before holding the reins again.  A lazy smile replaced the frustration on his face.

“How can one speak when there is such a view to admire?” she mumbled an answer.

Eric chuckled.  “Yeah, it’s pretty, ain’t it.”

‘Pretty’ did as little justice to the sight as ‘bothersome’ did to describe the situation she’d fallen into.  And yet, underneath all the shame and guilt that she’d fostered for so long, Amelia couldn’t help but feel the stirrings of something new.

She drew in a breath and turned away from those thoughts, moving her hands from the baby growing inside her to grip the edge of the seat.  It would be madness to let her guard down and stay in a position where her shame could destroy innocent lives.  Eric was home now and it was only a matter of time before he saw the reality of the situation.  He had far better women to choose from in Cold Springs.  She would follow Delilah’s plan,
help Eric, then set him free.

“Is that Mrs. Twitchel I see in that yard?” she asked, nodding to the farm on their left.

“Yep,” Eric answered.  “Ike and Mabel Twitchel are our closest neighbors.  Well, and their kids.  Seems there’s a new one crawling out of the woodwork every time I turn around.”

“I believe I met five of them the other day.  Mabel hinted that there was another one coming as well.”

“Good,” Eric said.  “That’ll give this one a playmate.”

He reached across to rub her stomach again.  It was a habit he had to break, the sooner the better.  She rested her own hands over her baby when he pulled his back to keep driving.  It may have been her imagination, but she thought she felt the little one stir.

“Here’s the turn-off to the ranch,” Eric announced, swinging the horses that drew the wagon around.

The vista that spread out in front of Amelia was not what she had expected.  In her mind she’d envisioned Eric’s ranch as a paddock full of cows and a crude house in desperate need of repair.  What she found was a series of enclosed fields stretching for miles.  The lane they drove up was far longer than the approach to any of the country estates she’d visited as a young woman.  At the end stood a huge barn in reasonable condition.  Beyond that was a small village of tiny houses, none of them that different from the tenant’s co
ttages on her father’s estate.

Set apart from the barn on one side and the cottages on the other was a lovely three-story house with blue shutters and a porch that stretched around all four sides.  She could see curtains in the windows and a cat perched on the porch railing near the stairs as they approached, but the house had the feeling of emptiness, like it needed someone to fill it with life.  It was a house that demanded children.

“Well at least Jed’s got the herd where they’re supposed to be this afternoon.”

Eric’s comment pulled her attention from the house.  She raised a hand to her forehead to shelter her eyes from the sun and glanced across the field to where Eric was pointing.  The far hill was dotted with black cows.  There must have been dozens of them, a hundred or more.  They were too far away to hear or smell, but something about them instantly made Amelia think of the happy, pastoral sounds of her childhood home.

“There are so many!” she said.

“That’s about half of what there were when I left,” he explained.  “But at least the bulls are still alive.  You and Mabel Twitchel won’t be the only ones popping out babies this summer.”

Amelia should have been scandalized.  She should have blushed and scolded him.  Instead she laughed.

She covered her mouth with her hand to make herself stop.  Everything she knew to be true was no longer
certain.

“Come on.”

Eric hopped down from the wagon, jostling it on its springs, and came around to give Amelia a hand down.  She found her footing as he rested her hand in the crook of his arm.  He escorted her across the dirt patch in front of the house and up a small lane to the porch steps.  The porch was well-stocked with white wicker furniture.  A ceramic mug and several bottles sat on a table, waiting to be cleaned up.

“I told Curtis he has to stop being such a slob, but since I’m not out here all the time to keep on him….”

Amelia’s sense of elation flattened and nerves took over.  “Curtis lives here?”

“Yeah.  It’s his ranch too, remember?”

“Yes, yes I suppose so.”  Prickles raced along Amelia’s skin.  She rubbed her arm.  “Will Curtis continue to live here if … if I do?”

Eric’s face dropped.  “I hadn’t thought of that.”  He took his hat off and scratched his head.  “I guess it wouldn’t be exactly comfortable.”

As if to underscore the mood, a shout of, “Jed!  Jed!  Who’s wagon is that out front!” rumbled from the corner of the house.

A moment later Curtis appeared from the bend in the porch, face dark with anger.  A scrawny man with the same carrot-red hair as Jacinta Archer stumbled out of the barn at the same time.  He staggered, turning from the house to the wagon and back again.  Amelia was certain she heard him mutter a curse.

The sharp fury surrounding Curtis crumbled as he spotted Eric and Amelia standing at the top of the stairs.

“Eric!” he said, beaming like a cat.  “You’re back.  And you’ve brought your lovely wife.”

Curtis  skirted around the porch furniture and approached Amelia with a grin that set her teeth on edge.  Like an American imitation of a British lord, he reached for her hand and brought it to his lips.  And like most of the British lords she knew, his sweet smile did little to conceal the wolf in his eyes.

“It’s so good to see you here, Cousin Amelia.”  His wink made Amelia want to run.

“Good morning, Curtis,” she greeted him.  Play nice, she heard Delilah’s voice in her mind.  Get close.  Find out what he’s up to.