Lady X's Cowboy (34 page)

Mr. Huntworth was still waiting for an answer.

“I am most persistent, too, Mr. Huntworth,” she replied.  “And I will not speak to the gentlemen of the press.  We have already prepared an official statement.  They will have to be satisfied with that.”

Nodding, the manager hurried off to convey her refusal to the men clustered at the brewery gates.  Olivia glanced at the clock.  It was after ten.  Was Will booking passage back home?  Could he have already sailed?  She leaned her hot eyes into her fists to keep the tears at bay.

Gone, gone.  He was almost gone, or gone already.  She had to keep moving, keep herself busy or she would easily collapse, just as she had done when Will had moved out of Princes Square.  She abruptly stood, pushing her chair back and startling some of the clerks in the office, and walked into the brewery itself.

This was all hers.  She had fought for it.  Every tank, tun, keg and bin.  Three years ago, she had shocked society by taking active control over the business, but she made damned sure that Greywell’s would thrive, and eventually won some public opinion for herself.  She had been so proud of herself.  She had made real progress with Greywell’s, and loved seeing her work come to fruition.  But beneath it all, she knew something wasn’t quite right.  She was a businesswoman and a member of society, existing in two worlds that were not particularly compatible.  She’d felt that disparity, but accepted it as a natural consequence of being a woman living on the cusp.

She went into the room that held the mashing tuns.  Out of habit, she checked the temperature of the steam-heated jackets.  They were at a consistent 145 degrees—excellent.  Uniformity was vital in brewing, the ability to produce a dependable and unvarying product.  Beer drinkers did not like change.

Nor did England, she realized.  It was a land that craved fixity, stability, and woe betide anyone who tried to change that.  Ever since she was a child, she had been made aware that there were certain people who did and did not belong together.  Rich and poor.  Men and women.  The leisured and the workers.  In school, and as a young bride, she had not examined this.  Yet once David died, she had begun to question these divisions.  And since she had known Will...everything had become very different.

Peering out a window, she saw Mr. Huntworth speaking to the journalists, and the men’s disappointed faces as they were turned away.  The reporters would return, though.  Their readership would relish the story of Lady Xavier, George Pryce, and rumors of a wild American.  Everything in the public eye.

But, curse it, what was the public to her?  She thought about the values everyone struggled to uphold—class consciousness, excruciating decorum, smothering etiquette—and understood that those things had no value.  The one man she loved was leaving England, and all because it might upset someone’s delicate sensibilities.

“Oh, God,” she said aloud.  She leaned against the window and stared out into the gray sky.  “I love him.”

When she was with Will, she no longer felt that horrible split within herself.  She was whole, united through the generous warmth of his heart.  And he accepted every part of her.  She didn’t care what he did for a living, or who his parents were.  All she knew was that he had become her friend, her lover, the one person she could not possibly live without.  And she had let him slip away, because of her own fear, because she was still too dependent on the good opinion of people who didn’t matter.

But he did.  And she might lose him forever, if she didn’t act quickly.

Olivia grabbed her skirts and ran back to the office. 

“Mr. Huntworth,” she said breathlessly, finding him returning from his errand.

“Yes, Lady Xavier?”

“I want your best clerks to check all the ships departing for America today.  I want to know who is on those ships and when they are leaving.  And if Mr. Coffin has already sailed,” she added, “then book me passage to America immediately.”

Mr. Huntworth stared for a moment, then nodded.  “Yes, Lady Xavier.”

Olivia watched her clerks hurry to do her bidding.  She hoped, if she did catch up to Will, he could forgive her.  And if she didn’t, she would never forgive herself.

The fancy suit Will gave to one of the Donleveigh’s footmen.  He reckoned he didn’t have a use for it anymore, and there was a cut across the front that he hadn’t the skill to mend.  The cut on Will’s front was bandaged up by the housekeeper, who gave Ben many baleful looks.  In the two nights Will had stayed with his granddad, he’d returned to the house bruised and bloodied. 

“I don’t know why you have to leave so soon,” Ben said, sitting on the bed and watching Will pack.

“You could come with me to Colorado.”  He folded a shirt and threw it into the open bag on his cot.

Ben shook his head.  “Me home’s here, in England.  I’m too old to start over.”

“And I’m too old to start livin’ like an Englishman,” Will answered.  He buckled on his gun and laid the Winchester next to his luggage.  “America’s got its share of troubles, but there’s freedom to be had.”

“That’s why they went, too,” Ben said softly.

Will turned and looked at his grandpa, a questioning frown on his face.

“‘I can’t breathe,’ Luke said to me,” Ben continued.  “‘We’ve got to go.’  It could be stifling for a young man trying to make his way in the world.  He didn’t want to be in service any more, and didn’t want his children to be anyone’s servants.  He said, ‘There’s fair land for the taking, and nobody to tell me or Hetty what we can and can’t do, how high we can rise.’  And he wanted to go as high as he could.”  Ben smiled sadly.  “I suppose that’s why he picked Colorado.”

“It touches the sky,” Will said with his own smile.  He was about to close his bag, when Ben got up and put the daguerreotype of his parents into the duffel. 

“Take them with you,” he said.  “I’ve spent nearly thirty years staring at them, wishing they could come back, and in a way I guess they have.  In you.”

“Thanks,” Will said, humbled.

Ben put his old, broad hand on Will’s shoulder.  His bright blue eyes glimmered.  “They would have been proud of you, Will.  I know I am.  You turned out straight and strong, and you fight for what you believe in.”

Will stared at the browned picture of his father and mother.  Luke Bradshaw’s hand rested on his wife’s shoulder, protective.  “Not everything.”

Ben peered up at his grandson with a frown Will recognized from his own face.  “You love that woman, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I do,” Will said, without pause.

“And how does she feel about you?”

“I...I don’t rightly know.  Guess I never asked her.”  Will realized that he hadn’t given her much of a chance to say one way or the other.  He was always so dead certain that they didn’t have a chance, he just plowed on ahead. 

“Maybe now is the time to ask,” Ben suggested gently.

Will ran a hand along his jaw, still tender from the working over it got the other night.  “She didn’t try to stop me when I left,” he began.

But Ben gave Will’s shoulder a little shake.  “That’s foolish.  Do you love her?”

“Hell, yeah.”

“She loves you.  Don’t argue with me.  I saw it the night she came over with you.  I just couldn’t believe that someone of her class could really feel that way, and tried to convince myself her feelings weren’t true.  But I was wrong.  Servants’ gossip tells me she’s been wretched since you left.”

Will felt stabbed right through.  “I can’t help her, Grandpa.  That’s what kills me.”

“Like hell,” Ben snorted, shocking Will.  He’d never heard the soft-spoken old man to speak so plainly.  “Think about what your father died for—the freedom to do as he pleased for no one but himself.  And think about that miner that raised you.  They wouldn’t want their boy to lose out on his chance at love because society tells him no.”

“Goddamn it.”  Will paced around the room.  He cursed again.  He’d spent his whole life fighting to survive, struggling to take the herd from Texas to Colorado, doing whatever it took to get by.  He thought about all the dangers he’d faced down: snowstorms, floods, Indians, fools with guns looking to kill.  None of it stopped him.  But the most important thing in his life, the woman he loved, he’d let go without so much as a peep.  “I’ve been a jackass.” 

“Well, yes,” Ben answered with a smile.  “What do you intend to do about it?”

Will stopped his pacing and stared at his granddad.  “I need a horse.”

Not content to sit idly while her clerks labored, Olivia had joined in on the search.  Some of the ships would not release their passenger manifests right away, but she soon discovered that notoriety had its benefits.  As soon as the name
Lady Xavier
was mentioned, the packet firms were eager to help.  They wanted to be a part of the public drama of her life, titillated by her infamy.

Still, it took an agonizingly long time to get any real information.  By the time one of the junior clerks stood up and announced, “I found him!” it was already after noon.

“Where is he?” Olivia demanded.

“Leaving on the Cunard ship
Gloriana
at two this afternoon.”

“Mr. Huntworth—” she began.

“Your carriage is waiting in the loading dock, Lady Xavier,” her manager said with an enigmatic smile.

She was already running, and didn’t have time to thank him properly. 
Please
don’t let me be too late
.

“She’s at the brewery, Mr. Coffin,” Mordon said.  “And if I may say,” he added as Will bounded down the front steps to his waiting horse, “it’s good to see you at Princes Square.”

Will took the horse at full gallop through Hyde Park, startling the genteel ladies and men taking polite equestrian exercise.  They reined their horses in and stared as a cowboy, in full Western dress, hurtled at breakneck speed down Rotten Row.  To jaded Londoners, even this was a novelty.

But he didn’t bother with their gaping.  He had to get to Greywell’s across the river as soon as he could.  It had taken him from Mayfair to Bayswater to get his horse used to the strange saddle.  He’d had his chase with Maddox back in Kent to get himself familiar with the English reins.  So it was a lifetime of practice that had him pounding down the streets of London, heading south.  Thank the Lord that Ben knew horseflesh, since he’d picked a fine distance runner that ate up the ground like sugar lumps.

Will crossed the Battersea Bridge, the gray Thames beneath him.  He’d come to know London and recognized the landmarks.  Maybe he’d wind up making it his home.  He wasn’t much for city life, but it didn’t matter where he hung his spurs, so long as Olivia was with him.

If she’d have him.

He almost slowed his horse as this doubt darted through his mind, but he shook it off.  He’d had his share of uncertainty; now it was time to act.

He didn’t allow himself to breathe easy when he saw the gates of Greywell’s.  Will urged his horse to the loading docks in the back.  He had the crazy idea of riding the horse right into the brewery through the large loading doors.  As a cowboy, he trusted the speed of a horse’s hooves far greater than his own feet, and he didn’t want to waste a minute getting to Olivia.

But as the horse clattered over the cobbled loading yard, stacked high with kegs, he almost rode straight past Olivia’s carriage pulling away.

“Liv!”

The carriage slowed and Olivia jumped out before it could stop completely.  Her feet tangled slightly in her skirts, causing her to stumble a bit as she started towards him.  But she pushed against the ground with the heels of her palms, righting herself, uncaring about the mud that stained her expensive lambskin gloves.

“I was coming to find you,” she called to him. 

His heart knocking inside his chest, he swung down from the horse.  He wasn’t too late.  He’d been blessed.  “And I was comin’ for you.”  He strode towards her.

“I couldn’t let you go, Will.  I won’t.”  She smiled, so full and beautiful.  She started to reach for him across the few yards that separated them.

“Have you no shame, Lady Xavier?”

Olivia’s arms dropped as the voice of old, shrill Prudence Culpepper rang out.  The
kibitzer
was staring at them across the courtyard, in a snit.

“I will not tolerate any further outrageousness from you,” Mrs. Culpepper sniped, “including such public displays of immorality.”

“There is nothing immoral in loving someone,” Olivia answered.  “Especially a man as wonderful as Will.  And I would pity you for having such a cold, bovine heart if I cared a little about you.  But I don’t.  So go bugger yourself, Prudence.”

With a squeal of impotent outrage, Prudence Culpepper stalked off.  Will knew that was the last he’d see or hear of the old hen.  But he barely spared the battle-ax another thought.  His heart nearly shot to the moon with happiness, hearing Olivia’s words.  She loved him.  And that smile of hers glowed with it.

He couldn’t stand not having her in his arms.  They were only three feet apart, yet it was three too many.

But he had to freeze when he heard the unmistakable sound of a gun’s hammer being cocked.  Seeing him halt, Olivia did likewise, a puzzled frown on her face.  He turned and saw Maddox, bruised and filthy, step out from behind a stack of kegs.  Every part of Will went numb as he saw Maddox’s gun trained at Olivia.

“What the hell are you doin’, Maddox?” Will demanded.  His hand hovered near his gun, but he wasn’t willing to take the chance that Maddox could beat him to the draw.  “It’s over.”

Maddox took a few steps forward, closer to Olivia.  “I’ve got a reputation, Yank,” he snarled.  “I always get my job done.”

“But Pryce is finished,” Olivia said, and Will was amazed by the steadiness of her voice, considering she had a big Webley revolver aimed right at her head.

“Doesn’t matter,” Maddox said.  “If I say I’m going to do something, I do it.  And that includes killing you, Yank.”

“Then quit pointin’ that thing at the lady,” Will commanded.

Maddox shook his head.  He reached into his pocket and pulled out a battered book, then threw it on the ground near Will’s feet.  It was a Wild West dime novel, and on the cover were two men facing each other in the middle of the street, guns drawn.  At that moment, Will wanted to burn down all publishing houses that produced such claptrap.