Lady X's Cowboy (6 page)

The threat of George Pryce seemed very far away at that moment.  She felt herself exhale for the first time in several months.

“Shall we go down to dinner?” she asked.

“Surely, ma’am.”  He stuck out his elbow and she rested her fingers as lightly as she could on the hard muscle of his arm.  She did not think her etiquette books would endorse running her hands up and down Will Coffin’s tough, lean arms, even though that was what she wanted to do very badly.

“This is the dining room,” she said, as Mordon, the butler, ushered them inside.  She watched Will Coffin look at the long mahogany table surrounded by twelve chairs.  Despite the place settings, it seemed empty and unused, and even though it was well-maintained, there was something derelict about the table, down to the enormous silver epergne squatting in the middle.  “We used to eat in this room quite a lot when we entertained, but after David died, I mostly take my meals in the morning room, which is much less formal.”

“I don’t blame you,” Coffin said.  “It could get awful lonely in a big room like this.”

Which was true.  She had tried valiantly to eat alone with nothing but the company of the servants and eleven other chairs, but she’d grown so uncomfortable that she lost weight.  The doctors had feared for her health, but once she switched to the morning room, her appetite returned.

She now took the seat the footman pulled out for her.  Will eyed the footman with distrust as he offered him the same service.

“It’s all right, Mr. Coffin,” she assured him.  “That’s Lawrence’s job.”

Once Coffin had settled himself, he looked down the length of the table.  He sat at one end, Olivia the other.  “Are we expectin’ any other company?”

“No, it’s just us.”  She felt a peculiar shiver at the word
us
.  She hadn’t used it in a long time.

“Then how come I’m sittin’ all the way in East Jesus, and you’re all the way out there?”

“I...”  She gazed up and down the expanse of the table, where five large mahogany chairs separated her from Will Coffin.  It did seem ridiculous, the space between them.  “This is how we normally took our meals.”

“Hang on a minute.”  With a clatter, Coffin collected his plate, silverware and napkin and relocated himself at her elbow.  She resisted looking at the servants, even though they were too well-trained to show shock or disapproval.  But she was certain the kitchen would be full of talk later tonight.

“Ain’t that better?” Coffin asked, settling in and grinning.  She smiled right back at him. 

“Much,” she answered.

Let them talk, she thought to herself.  She hadn’t enjoyed a meal so much in years, and it hadn’t even begun.

“I read some of that book of yours,” Will said.

“Which book?” Lady Xavier asked, laying her soup spoon to the side of her bowl.  She’d only taken a few sips, while he’d had to fight the urge to tip the rim right up to his lips and drain the damned thing.  If he ate this good every night, he’d wind up as fat as a heifer ready to calf.

“The book with the cowboys and the dumb girl, Liza June.”

She laughed.  “Lorna Jane.  Yes, she often reminds me of a less intelligent vole, poor thing.  She never quite thinks things through.”

Some servants quietly removed their soup bowls.  He had never been waited on before—at least, not with this much ceremony as though everything he’d touched had turned into a milagro—but the servants came and went with such silent reverence it made him wonder if he
had
performed some miracle without knowing it.  Did they save his bathwater, too?

“Whoever writes those books doesn’t know a thing about cowboyin’,” he said.

“I don’t read them for their verisimilitude,” she said with a smile.

“All the same, they give people the wrong idea about pushin’ cows.  Stampedes in the mornin’, Indians on the warpath at noon, and wildfires at night.  Plus lunk-headed Lorna Jane runnin’ around without a lick of sense, gettin’ kidnapped, tied up, and lost regular as Old Faithful.”  He shook his head.  “If I’d had to contend with half the stuff those books write about, I’d be too tired to herd cattle.  I’d just lie under a cottonwood tree and wait for someone to tell me the Comanche are diggin’ up the tomahawk, and by the way, Lorna Jane’s lashed to the train tracks again.”

“I’m a little disappointed,” Lady Xavier admitted, though her face was cheerful.  “I had hoped that some of those stories were true.  Especially the Buffalo Bill novels.”

He snorted.  “Bill Cody is a big blowhard.”

“You’ve met him?”  Her eyebrows rose.

“He wanted me to ride in some rodeo, what’d he call it?  A Wild West Show in Omaha.”

“Sounds exciting.”

“Playin’ cowboy ain’t for me.  I have my fair share of the real thing.”

“And no ‘lunk-headed’ girls to rescue, either.”  She added with a pointed smile, “Unless you count me.”

“You ain’t lunk-headed,” he said.  “You’re a fine woman with good sense.”

He thought he saw a little flush creep up her cheek, but the gaslight flickered. 

“What brings you to England, Mr. Coffin?” she asked suddenly.  He watched carefully as she helped herself to some chicken from a dish a servant held out to her.  He knew that there was no way he could manage all the rules needed for a fancy dinner, but he was determined not to show himself too much of a greenhorn where high society was concerned. 

“I’m lookin’ for some people.”  The servant came around with the dish and Will did his best to follow Lady Xavier’s lead.

Her face lit up.  “Are you tracking down the men who did you wrong?” she asked.  “Are you out for justice?”

“You’ve read too many of those dime novels, ma’am.” He laughed.  “I ain’t no vigilante.”

She struggled to keep the disappointment from her voice.  “That’s good.”  After taking a sip of wine, she asked, “If I may ask, who are you looking for?”

He was so hungry he wanted to cram the whole chicken right into his mouth, but he reminded himself that he wasn’t in the bunkhouse any more, and he didn’t have to worry about rotten bastards like Omaha Dave or Frank Bell getting to all the food before he had the chance.  Forcing himself to cut a genteel bite, he said, “My family.”

“You don’t know your family?” Her pretty eyes widened in horrified surprise.  Starved as he was, he thought Lady Xavier was a damned sight more appetizing than the roast bird he was chewing, and that was saying a lot because he’d never tasted anything finer.

“No, ma’am.  Never have.  When I was little, my folks were killed by a dynamite blast.”

She placed her soft, tapered fingers on his sleeve.  “I am very sorry.”

Damn it, was he blushing?  “Thanks, ma’am, but it was a long time ago.  I don’t even remember it.”  He regretted when she took her hand away, but at least it allowed his heart to stop racing like a runaway train.  “They were just poor ignorant sodbusters—farmers—tryin’ to make a go of it in the Rockies.  They had some dynamite and nobody told them that they shouldn’t bring it inside.  Near the fire.”

“Oh, no.”

He nodded ruefully.  “Yeah.  The whole cabin went up.  Only reason I wasn’t killed, too, was on account of me playin’ out by the woodpile.”

“How did you survive?”

“A miner heard the noise and could tell the difference between a planned blast and an accidental one.  When he got to the homestead, he found me buck naked, covered in ash, and messin’ around with a coffin-handled bowie knife.  Since my folks were dead and there wasn’t anything to show who I was or what my name might be, he named me.”

Her food was now completely untouched as she stared at him.  He couldn’t decide if he liked having her look at him, or if it was like staring right at the sun.  “I was wondering how a man could be named Coffin.”

“I’ve gotten a few jokes over the years, but once folks get to know me, the undertaker gags stop.”

“And what did the miner do with you after he found you?”

“He raised me.”  He smiled sadly, thinking about his old friend.  “He called himself Jake Gold, but his real name was Ya’akov Goldberg.”

“That sounds Jewish,” she observed.

He immediately tensed.  “You got a problem with that?”

Her eyes rounded again.  “My grandmother was Jewish, my father’s mother.  Sarah Speigelman.”  Her expression darkened, a surprisingly fierce thing.  “Some people stopped speaking to my grandfather after he married her, but he said they were fools.”  She looked down at her plate, toying with her food.  “I was sorry when she died.  She was a beautiful woman.”

He said, “
Punkt vi ir
,”
Like you
, surprising himself, both at the compliment and his language choice.

But she was more surprised.  “
Ir redt yidish
?” 

“
A kleyn bisl
.” 
A little
.

The expression on her face was comically astounded but very pleased.  He’d completely ambushed her, a thought which gave him no small pleasure.  They were both a little different from expectations, and he liked it.  It gave him, for the first time in a long while, the feeling of belonging, but belonging to a small, select group—their separate club apart from everyone else. 

“A cowboy raised by a Jewish miner,” she marveled, her eyes warm as her fingertips touched the rim of her glass.  “What a marvelous story.”

He shrugged.  “It makes a good tale, but the life was hard.  Jake mined his whole life, waitin’ for the big score, but it never came.”  He took a deep drink, and marveled at the feel of wine on his tongue.  “This is great stuff.”  He admired the dark red liquid, holding it up to the light.  “I ain’t used to such a fine vintage.  Usually what passes for wine in Colorado could take rust off a wagon wheel.”

She laughed.  “We’re much more refined here.  We use our wine for cleaning tarnished silver.”  Will laughed, too.  After playing with her food a bit more, she asked, “When did Mr. Gold die?”

“Six months ago.”  He looked down at his plate.  “I’ve seen a lot of death in my years, and I’d grown almost used to it, but sometimes it catches a body hard.  That’s what happened when Jake died.”  He looked up and saw not pity in her eyes, but empathy.  He’d never told anyone how he felt about Jake dying, but he knew that Lady Xavier was exactly the person who would understand and not poke fun. 

“I felt as though a horse had kicked me in the chest, and even now I can’t quite catch my breath, thinkin’ about old Jake.”

“You loved him.”

Those were words Will didn’t speak, but he felt it just the same.  “The
alter bocher
loved America but missed his home in Krakow.  He told me he’d been squirrelin’ his catch away and gave me the key to a safety deposit box at a bank in Denver.  I found ten thousand dollars there.”

She looked impressed, but Will knew that money like that didn’t mean much to her.  He figured the furniture and gewgaws in this dining room alone cost over ten thousand dollars, what with the silver monster sitting in the middle of the table and the heaps of silver knives, forks and spoons that glinted everywhere like the Comstock lode.   

“What did you do with the money?”

“Nothin’...yet.”

This news caused her more astonishment than anything.  “I know what you’re thinkin’,” he said ruefully.  “Some beat-up, dusty cowboy would piss away his windfall on whores and rotgut inside of a few months.”

“No!” she said immediately, then added, a little shamefaced, “Well, possibly.” 

“Jake told me, just before he died, that I was different from a lot of the cattle-punchers.”  He shrugged.  “Maybe I am.  Haven’t quite figured it out yet.”

“I’m glad you haven’t spent the money,” Lady Xavier said, her voice quiet but warm.  She looked at him, open admiration in her face.  “I’m very glad, indeed.  Now, let’s finish our dinner before Cook gets insulted and threatens to quit again.  You must be very hungry.”

More than you know
, Will thought.

She had never seen her home with someone else’s eyes.  As she and Will Coffin moved through the rooms and halls where she had lived for the past eleven years, the configuration, size, shape, and even smell became foreign to her, so that as she entered a different chamber in the house, she could anticipate what he would feel, sense his reaction even before he spoke.

It was curiously intimate, and also unsettling.  Not unlike finding a stray animal in the woods and having it follow you home warily, nosing under the furniture and disrupting order and stability with its undomesticated energy.

That was Will Coffin, padding cautiously into the apartments of her house and taking everything in with a feral, perceptive gaze.  When they had settled back in the drawing room, she felt strangely awkward.  From an early age, she had been trained in the proper forms of what a hostess should do with her guests, but all that seemed like empty, ridiculous ceremony now.  Why on earth would Will Coffin, a rough, orphaned man of the Colorado Rockies, want to drink sherry and play euchre?  It seemed frivolous, a means to waste time, and from the sound of things, time was short for men like him.

Lately, her own life had been so exhausting, so enervating.  Running Greywell’s had always taken her time and energy, and now George Pryce was making things incredibly difficult.  It was a lot for one woman to shoulder by herself, almost overwhelming.  But having Will Coffin in her home helped all this fade to the back of her mind, if only for a little while.

“Whiskey?” she asked, standing by the decanter.

“Yes, ma’am.”  He hunkered down by the fire and stirred the smoldering logs with the poker, his gestures practiced and experienced.  He was so focused on his task that she actually caught him off guard when she came to stand next to him, bearing two glasses of single-malt scotch.

“You joinin’ me?”  He straightened to his impressive height.

“My late husband used to drink this after dinner, but it was only after his death that I thought to give it a try.  It’s not a drink for ladies, but I like it.”

He took a glass from her and winked.  “I promise not to tell.”

No one had flirted with her in so long.  And certainly not in such a bold fashion.  What an incredible feeling, as though she were ten, fifteen years younger.