McCrory's Lady (11 page)

      
“Edward. He's your fiancé?”

      
“He was. Once the scandal about me gets out, Mrs. Stanley will make him break the engagement. His mother's a real tyrant. I always resented the fact that she controlled him so. I guess it made me lose respect for him in spite of the fact he's a successful attorney and territorial legislator.”

      
“But he isn't a strong, independent man like your father?” Maggie knew the answer. “I imagine Colin McCrory will be a pretty difficult man for any suitor to emulate, Eden.”

      
“I suppose my expectations were unrealistic,” Eden said quietly. Regret for all she had foolishly thrown away washed over her. “Now, no gentleman will ever look at me again.”

      
Maggie wished she could say it was not true, but she feared it was and damned the hypocritical cruelty of polite society. “No man worth having would blame you for what happened. Just remember that if your fancy lawyer turns away.”

      
Eden shook her head, wishing she had the courage to tell Maggie the truth. “My father blames you for your past, but he's still worth having—don't give up on him, Maggie.”

      
“My past is a great deal more besmirched than yours. I was a fool to try and blackmail Colin into marrying me. I hope you don't think too badly of me because of it?”

      
“You risked your life riding into that canyon with my father. I don't know what I would've done if you hadn't been there. Anyway, I know you would've shown him the way even if he'd said no.”

      
Maggie smiled warmly. “Thank you for understanding. Your trust means a great deal to me.”

      
Eden paused. Then, seeing that none of the men were riding near enough to overhear, she asked hesitantly, “I—I know it's none of my business, but you're so beautiful and bright and really well educated…”

      
“How did a woman like me end up in a place like the Silver Eagle?” Maggie supplied the rest of the unspoken question. She had a hunch about Eden McCrory. Maybe telling about her mistake would lead the girl to share her story as well. “I was born and raised in Boston. I came from a good family and had a dutiful father who sent me and my sisters to the best boarding schools. That was the fashionable thing to do in Boston in those days. Then, when I was about your age I met a man named Whalen Price...”

      
Her eyes took on a faraway look as she began her story. She could see it all replaying in her mind, every painful scene, beginning back in Boston in 1863.

      
“But this just isn’t right, Whalen, ” Margaret Leanna Worthington protested, leaning away from her young swain's most persuasive lips.

      
“Aw, Maggie darlin', you know it's the only way. We’ll have to elope. Your father will never let us marry, what with him bein' such a rabid Union man and me bein' from Maryland.” Whalen Price’s voice betrayed the soft cadence of his border state birth, although he had lived in Boston since he was twelve years old. “I can't join the Federals and shoot at my own relatives. The only solution is for me to leave, and I can't bear to be separated from you, Maggie.”

      
The earnest entreaty in his voice melted her heart. “If only Papa weren't so unreasonable.” She sighed, gazing into his warm hazel eyes. Maggie already had dozens of suitors, even before she had finished her education at the Pruitt Institute for Young Ladies. But none of them held a candle to the dashingly handsome blond Southerner who came to clerk for her father's big mercantile firm. It had been love at first sight. But her father, a rabid Republican and decorated campaigner from the Mexican War, was zealous in his insistence that his daughters not only marry wealthy Yankees but that his sons-in-law be staunch Federal supporters. Whalen Price was Southern, impoverished and unwilling to join the Federal Army.

      
Matters had come to a head the past month when Congress finally enacted a conscription bill which made it mandatory for all able-bodied men to either be inducted into the Union Army or pay a 300-dollar exemption fee. On his poor clerk's wages, Whalen could not do that.

      
“I still don't see how we can elope. You'll have no job. Papa will discharge you for certain once we wed without his consent. How will we survive?”

      
“You just let me worry about that. I’ll find work out West, Maggie. With all the young men flocking to the war, there are jobs just crying to be filled.” His fingers toyed with one long auburn curl falling over her shoulder.

      
When he leaned over and kissed her bare skin where the curl had rested, she quickly looked around the garden in back of the Hershfelds' house. Soft music floated on the spring air, coming from the orchestra inside. She had come to Amelia Hershfield’s birthday party with her two sisters. Whalen had sneaked in uninvited to dance with her on the patio when she slipped away from the press of the celebration. Her reputation would be in shambles if anyone caught her alone with Whalen Price, but she loved him and refused to consider the consequences. Closing her eyes, she let his warm, persuasive lips set fire to her.

      
A hot rush of pleasure sang along her nerves, sizzling her senses as Whalen s mouth trespassed lower, skimming over her collarbone, then dipping to brush the swell of her breasts. How much longer could she deny him? Her untutored seventeen-year-old body cried out for his touch. Other girls her age were already married with children on the way. His words broke into her jumbled thoughts.

      
“Say you 'll elope. Please. I'm mad for you, Maggie, simply mad with wanting you. I have a plan.” He punctuated his words with drugging kisses, feeling her virginal ardor flare.

      
“Oh, yes, Whalen, yes!”

* * * *

      
Eight months later they were in Omaha. Now, it seemed like a lifetime ago since she had been that vapid, stupid girl in the Hirschfields' garden. Maggie surveyed the shabby hotel room, like a hundred others she'd seen, with its lumpy mattress and splintering bare floorboards. A cracked pitcher and basin stood on a rickety table in one corner and a chair sat across from it, strewn with Whalen's clothes.

      
Whalen. Her lover but not her husband. Knowing what she did now, she should be grateful for that.

      
“Gullible fool, I believed him and his story about waiting until we got settled and could plan a fancy wedding—just the kind I deserved. Well, I got just what I deserved, all right.” She bit back a sob as she climbed out of the bed and fought the usual crushing ache in her back that always greeted her upon rising these days.

      
Clutching her rounded belly, she whispered, “Oh, little one, what kind of a world am I bringing you into?”

      
Maggie was determined it would be a world without Whalen Price in it. As soon as she had begun to grow heavy and shapeless in pregnancy, he voiced his disgust with her body. Then, when she became sick and the doctor told her she could not do the heavy laundress work any longer without risking the life of her unborn child, he had become physically abusive. She would not let him ever again strike her and endanger her baby. Yesterday had been enough!

      
Maggie washed up as best she could, then brushed her hair and put it up in a smooth bun. Having only one dress left that fit her with its seams let out, her choice of wardrobe was a far simpler one than the other decisions she had to make. By the time she finished dressing and packed one pitiful carpetbag with her meager belongings, Whalen's footfalls sounded on the boardinghouse stairs.

      
He opened the door and stared broodingly at her with bloodshot eyes, not even noticing her packed bag. “You look like hell.”

      
“I should. I've certainly been there,” she replied as he shut the door and slumped onto the chair. “I suppose you've lost at cards again.”

      
‘You've become an incredible nag, Maggie. I have to do something to recoup our losses since you can't work, ” he said bitterly.

      
“Our losses—yes, the money you stole from my father's mercantile, then gambled away from Massachusetts to Nebraska. You took thousands.”

      
“The old man was filthy rich. He could afford that and a whole lot more! A pity he didn't care enough about his beloved daughter to provide for her in her hour of need, ” he sneered, watching her blanch.

      
“You dared write to Papa—after all you've done?”

      
He shrugged in disgust as he pulled off his shoes and began to undress. “It was worth a try since you were too stubborn to do it. ”

      
“I knew he was through with me and I can't blame him. I was a fool to fall for your smooth talk, but I won't let an innocent baby pay for my sins.”

      
“What's that supposed to mean?” he asked without interest. Yawning, he headed toward the bed, but Maggie's words stopped him.

      
“I'm leaving, Whalen. Mrs. Birkhauser at the Gilded Lily Saloon has offered me a room and a job keeping her books. She understands about the baby.”

      
“The baby! The damn baby! That's all you've thought of ever since you started breeding. Well, go ahead. See if I care. You're no good to me the way you are now—too fat to bed and too sick to earn any money.”

      
If any small part of Maggie Worthington had ever prayed that he would beg her forgiveness and promise to take care of her and their child, that hope died. So did all her faith and trust in men.

      
“Good-bye, Whalen,” she said tonelessly. Picking up her bag, she headed for the door.

* * * *

      
“You’ll have to start earning yer keep now, dearie. I know it's hard, what with you still grievin’ ‘n all.” Velda Birkhauser's voice was oily with solicitude as she looked at Maggie.

      
Maggie flushed and put down her cup. “I've been keeping up with the bookwork, Mrs. B. Ever since…” She swallowed the hard lump in her throat and resumed. “Ever since the week after my daughter died, I've balanced the ledgers and—”

      
Mrs. B, as her girls called her, laughed heartily, interrupting Maggie. “Dearie, I don't mean just a leetle addin’ ‘n subtractin’. I mean really earnin' yer keep. Why'd you think I took you in—fer charity? I ain't in the charity business,” she stated flatly, letting the words sink in.

      
Maggie's heart froze in her chest. “You m-mean become one of your girls?” Her voice broke.

      
“It ain't exactly like you was a blushin' innocent, now is it? You been with men before.”

      
Maggie's face flamed with mortification and guilt, but her eyes flashed blue flames as she stared at the round doughy face of the madam. How could she ever have thought those cold, dark eyes kind?
I must be the world's poorest judge of character.
“I've only been with one man. ”

      
“But he warn't yer husband, now was he? And he deserted you without a cent when I took you in. ”

      
“He didn't desert me. I left him,” Maggie replied with a stubborn lift of her chin.

      
The old madam snorted. “Same difference. You got any kin that'll take you back?” Her puffy little eyes studied Maggie shrewdly. “I didn't think so.”

      
“You planned this all along, didn't you? The first encounter at the laundry? The offer of a respectable job when the doctor told me I couldn't do heavy work...you led me on. ” Her fists clenched in helpless fury as she realized how she had been duped.

      
“Look at it this way. I paid fer yer keep these past two months. Even paid the doc to save your life when yer little girl died. I been real patient, waitin' fer you to heal up, but you gotta quit yer grievin' someday—‘n it might as well be today.”

      
“Today!” Maggie shot up so abruptly the china on the table rattled.

      
“Well, ” Velda chuckled indulgently, “I reckon tonight would be more the thing. Margie and LaVeryle are about your size. Try on some of their dresses and pick a few. Tomorrow I’ll have our seamstress come in and make up some prettier fer you, ” she added, almost wheedling now.

      
Maggie sank back into the chair and stared at the half eaten wedge of bread and pile of scrambled eggs on her plate. Here at least she would have food and shelter—and no man would ever raise his fist to her again. She had seen firsthand what happened when a customer at the Gilded Lily tried to get rough. A huge black man named Audie threw the offender into the street.

      
Her daughter had died, stillborn after two days of agonizing labor. She had nearly died herself.
My body has survived even if I have no soul left.

      
Maggie looked up and met Velda's eyes levelly. “All right. I'll start tonight. And by the end of the month I'll be the best paid whore in Omaha. ”

      
Maggie finished her tale of foolish infatuation and its terrible consequences, recounting her struggle to survive after leaving Omaha and finally ending by explaining how she met Bart Fletcher and how he changed her life. When she had finished the long narration, she looked over at Eden, who stared at her, riveted, with tears brimming in her eyes.