Silver Lining (6 page)

Dropping her head, she rubbed her forehead. How had she jumped from refusing to pour his coffee to wanting to impress his mother and sister? This was getting complicated.

"I'll cook our supper," she announced abruptly. She had intended to open a can of beans for herself and leave him to fend for himself. A small slap back for his refusal to share her trout last night. But this news about his family changed things. "It won't be anything fancy, just beans and bacon and biscuits."

"There's something else we need to discuss." This time there was no doubting the color rising in his face.

He ran a glance over her, starting at the crown of her new hat and traveling down to her scarred, old riding boots. "I think we should stop for a day in Denver ." Tilting his head, he studied the stars starting to poke holes in the sky. "I think we should buy you some dresses and hats. And give you a chance to have a bath and clean up a little."

Pride scratched her ribs, and her cheeks flamed. He was ashamed of her. Well, what did he expect? He hadn't plucked her out of some sweet-smelling parlor, after all. A mining camp didn't exactly offer the best facilities for cleanliness, and no one cared anyway.

More to the point, she thought suddenly, what would his mother and sister expect? She was beginning to form two definite impressions about her new family. First, their opinion mattered greatly to Max. And second, her newly acquired mother and sister were probably cultured ladies with fancy dresses, fancier manners, and high standards that Low Down couldn't possibly reach up to.

Her heart sank. If there was one thing worse than having no family at all, she suspected it would be having a family that was ashamed of her. A glimpse of the future flashed across the back of her mind, and it didn't feel good.

Well. Time flies. His fancy family wouldn't have to put up with her for long.

Silently she fetched her skillet and a slab of bacon and the biscuit fixings. She didn't say anything while she worked on supper. But she peeked at him, wondering if his family resembled him.

If so, the McCords were a handsome bunch. If she'd been the type of woman to swoon over a good-looking man, Max McCord would have been the man. She guessed she'd never shared a campfire with one who was better-looking. The summer sun had tanned his skin to a golden bronze that made his eyes seem bluer by contrast. His nose was thin above a wide stubborn mouth with sharply defined contours.

As she'd always thought of wrinkles as the punctuation marks of life, she studied his face carefully. The dashes radiating from the corners of his eyes suggested that he was a serious man, but the broad commas framing his mouth also told her that he could laugh.

The next thing of interest was his hands. Max's hands were hard and square, work hands, she noticed with satisfaction. She had work hands, too.

Finally she considered his overall impression, recalling the first time she'd noticed him. She hadn't been surprised to find him in a gold camp. He was tough enough to hold his own, not afraid of hard work. But there was also a hint of the dreamer about him, a man who could imagine gold in rushing water, who might see pictures in a puffy sky. A man who could describe a house to a woman and make it sound like a poem.

"I ain't worn a dress in years," she said, lowering her gaze to the balls of biscuit dough she was forming between her palms. "But I'll do it to please your ma. Is there any other damned thing you want to change about me, or are we finished with this?"

Standing, he placed his hands in the middle of his back and stretched. "You could stop swearing and saying ain't."

Oh she could, could she? She could also give him a demonstration of some real cussing, climb on Rebecca, and head south. Marriage wasn't something she'd asked for or wanted. Already she hated having a husband.

But she did want a baby.

And having a family was the best gift she could imagine. Even if the McCords turned out as she suspected they would, lofty and judgmental, still it would be wonderful to be able to say: "My family."

"You know, I just knew it would come to this." She jabbed a fork into the bacon slab and turned it over in the skillet, not caring that grease splattered into the flames. "You want to change how I look and how I talk and I don't know what all else. And I'll do all that, to get what I want. But maybe there's a few things about you that I don't like either."

"I imagine there's plenty of things you don't like about me," he said, walking into the deepening shadows to fetch their bedrolls. He flipped hers out on one side of the fire, and unrolled his on the other side. "I'm willing to make accommodations where I can, if I can. We should both remember that we only have to put up with each other for a short while."

"Well you can start by not behaving like this situation is all my fault." She dumped a large can of beans on top of the bacon. "I didn't make you pick the green marble. I wasn't even hoping that you would."

Maybe that wasn't quite the unvarnished truth. Maybe she'd passed a thought that if she had to sleep with someone to get a baby, it would be nice to sleep with a man like him who was easy on the eyes.

"I'm not saying you're completely to blame, but no one ever imagined that you'd want a baby."

She glared through the darkness, unable to distinguish his tall frame from the surrounding pines. "You could have swallowed your pride and refused to draw from the hat." The others would have scorned him and made him feel like a welsher and about as tall as a cork but he could have done it. Of course, no man worthy of the name would have.

He stopped at the edge of the firelight and his shoulders stiffened with offense. She noticed he clenched his fist around something in his pocket.

"Without honor and integrity, a man has nothing."

A long breath raised her chest. "All right, I guess you couldn't refuse. But that's not my fault."

"No it isn't," he agreed, surprising her. But his tone plainly stated it was her fault for wanting a baby in the first place.

"Look," she said, sounding and feeling defensive, "I'm sorry things worked out that you can't marry Miss Houser." Leaning to the fire, she spooned out beans and bacon and thrust a plate in his direction. And then she said something she hadn't planned, hadn't even known she was wondering about. "Do you love her a lot?"

"I would prefer not to discuss Miss Houser." He sat on the log and balanced the plate on his knees.

"I've never loved anybody, so I don't know much about that kind of thing." And it was none of her business. But to her irritation, she couldn't back off the subject. "Did you write a letter to Miss Houser, too?"

She didn't think he would answer, but he finally said, "That would be cowardly. I need to tell her about this in person." As if he'd lost his appetite, he pushed the beans around on his plate.

Low Down pushed the beans around on her plate, too. "I guess Miss Houser is going to be mighty upset."

Then, surprising her again, he told her about the bank position that would be withdrawn now. Privately, she thought that was probably a good thing. He didn't have a banker's hands.

"There will be a scandal. You and my family will suffer for it," he said, lifting his gaze to her. "I've jilted the daughter of Fort Houser 's leading citizen less than two weeks before the wedding. I'm going to be labeled a son of a bitch, and you're going to be seen as an unscrupulous temptress. At least in the beginning."

Her eyebrows soared."Me? A temptress?" It was the most thrilling thing she'd ever heard. And the most ridiculous. When she stopped laughing, she gave him a grin and a shrug. "Hell, I don't care what people think about me."

"I care. A man spends a lifetime building a reputation he can be proud of. Then, just like that, it's gone."

He snapped his fingers. "That's a hard thing."

Tilting her head to one side, Low Down examined him across the campfire. The part of her that responded to people in need wanted to reassure him and make things right, but she didn't know how.

"The job at the bank… was it something you always wanted?" She tried to imagine him fancied up in a banker's frock coat and tall hat and couldn't pull the picture into her mind. But the way he sat on a horse and the tall lanky look of him fit her image of a rancher. She could easily visualize him bucking hay, riding fence lines, tending his land and stock.

He didn't answer, and she didn't push. "The beans are good enough," she commented after a period of silence. "But the bacon could have cooked a little longer."

They finished eating without speaking, then Max washed up the dishes in the stream beside their camp.

He did it in a way that made Low Down think his mind had traveled miles into the distance. She thought hard; then, while his back was to her, she reached up under her shirt and vest and slipped the silver spoon out of the pouch.

When he returned to the fire, she glanced up at him and offered in a hesitant voice, "Would you like to see something pretty? It might make you feel better."

"What?" Frowning, he blinked down at her as if he'd forgotten about her until she spoke.

"Look." Holding out the spoon, she turned it between her fingers, delighted by the way the firelight reflected in the bowl as if she held a spoonful of fire. "Isn't it lovely?"

"It's just a spoon," he said without interest. Continuing past the campfire, he sat down on his bedroll and tugged at his boots.

Face flaming, Low Down hastily shoved the spoon into her pocket, then busied herself setting up the coffeepot for morning. How could she have been so stupid? He'd probably grown up eating off silver spoons. A silly old spoon wouldn't be anything pretty or wonderful to him.

"Max?" she called none too quietly once she was settled inside her own bedroll. "Are you asleep yet?"

His name felt awkward on her tongue and entirely too familiar. But calling him Mr. McCord wouldn't have felt right, either.

"What is it?"

"I don't want to do this," she said, peering up at the stars. They were too different, too far apart in every way. "I think we should part company right now and go our separate ways. I don't want to meet your family; they won't like me. I don't want to live in another woman's house. I don't want to be married to you, and you don't want to be married to me."

"Don't you understand? It's too late."

"What if I just rode away? You could tell your family that I ran out on you."

"We'd still be married. Miss Houser and her father would still detest me. I'd be a shirker in the eyes of the men who trust me to repay you for saving our lives. They expect one good thing to result from this disaster." A long silence ensued. "If you really want to run off, I can't stop you. But when I step back from the personal consequences, I can say that you deserve the baby you want."

He'd surprised her again. On the other hand, considering his prickly feelings about duty and honor, she supposed she could understand why giving her a baby was important to him. He had said he would, and he'd made a commitment to the other men to see this through no matter what.

"You were right about me blaming you," he added, talking to the black sky the same as she was doing.

"I agree that has to stop. While we're married we should at least treat each other cordially."

"I'm not a very cordial type," she admitted, thinking it over. A person who strewed roses usually stepped on thorns. She'd learned that lesson years ago. It was better to let people know right fast that she gave as good as she got. This wasn't exactly a cordial attitude.

"I've noticed. And right now you have no reason to believe that I'm cordial, either. But I think we'll get through this easier if we treat each other politely."

"What I know about polite wouldn't stuff a thimble."

His silhouette was just visible on the far side of the embers, arms crossed behind his head, his nose pointed toward the stars.

Low Down didn't speak again. Neither did she fall immediately asleep. Lying on her side, she watched the embers fade from orange to ashy and castigated herself for being so fricking wishy-washy. It was disgusting.

How many times had she insisted that it wasn't a real marriage or that she didn't want to be married, or suggested that he ride away or she ride away? And then at a word from him, she spun herself around and was suddenly willing to give this stupid tragic marriage a try? He must think her convictions lasted all of two minutes. She was beginning to think so, too.

Wrenching over on her stomach, she yanked the blanket up to her shoulders and squeezed her eyes shut. But her thoughts wouldn't settle down.

Just once in her life, she wished a man's voice would soften toward her as Max's voice softened when he spoke Philadelphia Houser's name. Well, it didn't matter. A person couldn't really miss what she'd never had.

She focused her restless thoughts on the baby. That's what kept her from riding away as everything sensible urged her to do. A baby. Her very own family to love. To have a baby, she'd put up with almost anything. Even a husband.

«^»

M
ax's state of mind dropped as rapidly as the altitude. All the way down the mountains, he rehearsed what he would say to Philadelphia and her father, testing one approach after another. No matter how he arranged the words, the end result was mortifying.

He had ruined Philadelphia and discarded her. That's what she would hear. Howard Houser would hear that his daughter had been humiliated and shamed at the brink of the altar, and further that Max had spit on the job at Houser's bank. Houser might not shoot him on the spot, but there would be retribution.

Until today, Max hadn't allowed himself to accept that he had ruined Philadelphia . Now a beautiful memory ate at his mind like acid, and what had seemed so right at the time was unforgivable.

He hadn't planned to take advantage, had later been shocked that emotions had escalated to such a high peak during the last night before he departed for Piney Creek. Neither he nor Philadelphia were the type of people to disregard honor or convention, yet it had happened.

If he had behaved with more restraint and less urgency, if they hadn't been alone in the gazebo, if Philadelphia's hands and lips had echoed her soft murmurs of protest. If he hadn't wanted to reassure her about his leaving, if she hadn't wanted to persuade him to stay. Afterward, she had lain in his arms and wept and worried aloud about whether he could ever respect her again. And he'd silently flogged himself for acting the cad and stealing her wedding night from her.