Tainted Gold

Dedication

For Chris and Paul, who sacrificed their summer vacations.

Chapter One

Almost as much as she loved the money the Renaissance Committee paid her to lease the twelve wooded acres she owned outside Cassil Springs, Colorado, Quillen McCain loved performing in the festival every autumn. She never said so, though. To anyone who’d listen, she’d complain about the time she lost away from her drawing board. When asked why, then, did she troop through the crowds every fall in the guise of a roving tale teller, she answered that as landlord she felt duty-bound to keep an eye on things.

The truth, however—which she’d sooner die on the rack than admit—was that the six weekends of the Cassil Springs Renaissance Festival were the high point in her otherwise colorless life.

Sitting behind the wheel of her bronze, scaled-down Chevy Blazer, munching on an Egg McMuffin as she stared through the windshield at the ticket seller’s booth near the rough-hewn, wooden front gates of the festival grounds, she thought how ironic it was—an artist with a colorless life. Yet, she reflected, wasn’t all irony based on truth—or was it that all truth was based on irony?

Oh, well, who cared. The simple fact of the matter was that her life was about as exciting as a stale peanut butter sandwich. She truly loved her work; she’d just never been able to figure out how to find time to illustrate science fiction and fantasy book covers and have a life, too. But someday, she promised herself for the zillionth time, someday my work will be famous and I won’t have to slave over my drawing board eighteen hours a day.

And then what? asked the morose little voice which occasionally made itself heard from the deeper recesses of her psyche. Who are you going to find to share your fame and wealth with in Cassil Springs, for heaven’s sake?

“Fear not,” she replied with cheerfully forced confidence. “Someday my prince will come—I hope,” she added under her breath as she wiped her mouth with a paper napkin, crumpled it, then cranked the rearview mirror toward her.

She brushed English muffin crumbs from the white linen front of her hand-sewn blouse, then turned her head from side to side to make sure the mauve and lavender velvet ribbons she’d French-braided into her shoulder-length ash blond hair hadn’t worked loose. As she smoothed the amethyst-tinted shadow highlighting her green eyes and fluffed the lace jabot at her throat, she made a mental note to steer clear of the Society for Creative Anachronism. Last year they’d given her hell about her jabot. It’s seventeenth century, not fifteenth, they’d scolded. Artistic license, she’d replied loftily, and though this year she’d armed herself with memorized, anachronistic passages from Shakespeare to defend her costume if necessary, she wasn’t anxious to repeat the scene.

She tugged her keys out of the ignition and tucked them inside the magenta velvet pouch knotted into the braided belt that matched her hair ribbons. She picked up her cloak from the passenger seat, slid out of the truck, and locked the door. The autumn-dried grass crackled beneath the soles of her fawn-colored suede boots as she flung her green velvet cloak over her shoulders and started toward the gates. She’d need the cape until midmorning when the sun would finally clear the ring of encircling mountains and burn through the shroud of mist enveloping their blue-gray shapes. Then she’d roll it and tie it into a bundle by the strings presently securing it at her throat, and for the rest of the day use it as a pillow to cushion her back whenever she settled down beside a tree to tell a tale.

About twenty yards shy of the shaggy-barked, wooden stockade enclosing the grounds, Quillen joined the thin trickle of early-arriving performers making their way toward the gates. This was the first morning of the festival, and she said hello to those she knew and waved to the others as she tugged her open-laced, black velvet vest over the waistband of her skirt.

“Hey, Quill!” a familiar, deep bass voice called behind her.

Turning around, she saw Cal Wilson trotting toward her, his brown leather over-the-knee boots stirring plumes of dun-colored dust in the brittle, half-dead grass. All six feet and four brawny inches of him were clad in hunter green tights and jerkin, and he slung his bow and quiver over opposite shoulders as he came up beside her.

Alas, he was not a potential prince. Good-looking enough, yes, with his chiseled features and brown eyes, but they’d known each other too long to ever be anything but friends. Familiarity, Quillen often thought, bred apathy.

“Glad I caught you,” he said, tugging his peaked, long-feathered cap over his blond head. “I tried to call you last night, but you weren’t home.”

“Yes, I was,” she confessed, lengthening her strides to keep up with him as they turned toward the gates. “But I unplugged the phone.”

“That’s what I figured,” he replied with a frown, “and so did my crafty old boss. He said in the office yesterday that he’s coming out here today to talk to you, that you’ve hung up on him and slammed the door in his face for the last time.”

“He told you that?” Quillen asked, her heavy, multicolored brocade skirts sweeping around her knees as she pivoted sharply to face him.

“No,” Cal admitted with a grin. “I overheard him talking to some guy on the phone. He said he wasn’t going to take no for an answer.”

“Well, he’d better,” she said staunchly, wheeling away from him and marching purposefully toward the gates, “because I am
not
selling this property to Desmond Cassil
—ever—no
matter how much money he offers me.”

“Why not, Quill?” Cal asked as he caught up with her. “All you’ve talked about for years is moving to New York. If you’d sell, you’d have enough money to go.”

Quillen came to an abrupt halt. “Whose side are you on, anyway?” she demanded, her hands on her hips as she half-turned and glared up at his boyish face.

“Yours, of course,” he assured her, his thick, fair eyebrows knotting over the bridge of
his nose. “I just don’t understand you, that’s all. Since high school all you’ve talked about is New York, New York, New York—”

“Listen, Cal,” she interrupted firmly. “At this point in my career, I’d starve to death in New York. I prefer to stay here and starve among friends rather than among strangers in the Big Apple.”

“But if you sell—”

“To Desmond Cassil!” she cried, her eyes widening and flashing angrily. “And have my father and my grandfather come back from their graves to haunt me? No, thanks!”

“Okay, okay,” he said, backing away from her. “Just thought I’d warn you, that’s all.”

“Well, thanks for that,” she answered, regretting her temper flare and sidling away from him almost sheepishly. “See you later, maybe.”

“Sure, Quill.” He sighed with an offhand shrug and strode past her.

That’s one reason he’s never made prince material, Quillen thought, lagging behind and watching him shake his head. At the first glimpse of her notoriously Irish temper, he made a quick exit. Too bad Cassil isn’t so easily deterred, she thought, frowning, as she trailed her friend through the open gates and into the hay-strewn festival grounds. She’d thrown enough angry tantrums in the last two weeks to drive away a dozen Cals, but still his employer persisted.

The early morning shadows beneath the soaring blue spruce and autumn-flamed deciduous trees were deep and chilly, and Quillen hugged her cloak tighter as she passed craft booths and clusters of performers in the Guildmaster’s Glen and made her way toward the sunny and warmer Thieves’ Market. She shivered a little, not from cold, but from dread at the thought of another scene with Desmond Cassil who, in addition to owning Cassil Construction, the company Cal worked for, was president of Cassil Springs National Bank and mayor of the town his family had founded a little over a hundred years ago. She tramped angrily across the wooden footbridge that spanned the creek that bisected her land, and she bowed her head as she balled her fists inside the folds of her cloak.

“What do I have to do?” she wondered out loud. “Paint Cassil a twenty-by-twenty-foot sign that says NO in giant black letters?”

“You could try that,” he answered, “but I’d probably ignore it just as I have your refusals so far.”

Instantly Quillen’s chin came up and she stopped a scant three feet from the far side of the bridge and Desmond Cassil. His smile, as artificial and ever-present as his year-round tan and expertly styled steel gray toupee, made her grit her teeth and whirl around to retrace her steps.

“Oh, come now, Quillen,” he chided smoothly, “let’s have our little scene and get it over with.”

“I have only one thing to say to you,” she responded, pausing and shooting him an icy glare over her shoulder. “No.”

His smile widened and she clenched her teeth tighter. Once, just once, she wished she could say or do something that would wipe that perpetual smile off his face. It irritated her as much as the impeccably tailored tweed sport coats, designer slacks, and monogrammed turtlenecks he always wore. She stamped her right foot on the dusty planks of the bridge to quell the urge she felt to kick dirt in his face.

“How can you say no,” he said, tucking his hand inside his jacket as he came toward her, “when you have yet to see my latest offer?”

“I don’t care how many zeros you’ve added to the check,” she told him coldly. “My answer is still no.”

As she’d anticipated, he produced a check, written in his broad, scrawled hand, from his inside pocket. He held it out to her and she retreated two steps.

“It’s for one hundred thousand dollars, Quillen.”

“I can read,” she snapped. “And this is the last time I’ll tell you what you can do with your money.”

“But think what
you
can do with it,” he replied, waving the check slowly from side to side. “No more tenants in your Grandmother Elliot’s house, no more painting into the wee hours—”

“And no more Renaissance Festival,” she finished acidly. “Just a cheap, trashy amusement park that wouldn’t raise cent one for the pediatric burn unit at the Cassil Springs Hospital, that would just line your pockets with money you don’t need.”

“That’s progress, Quillen.”

“That’s greed,” she countered bluntly. “And as far as I’m concerned, you’ve made your last buck off the McCain family.”

“Still grinding that ax, are you?” he asked, his smile dipping sympathetically. “I had no choice, my dear. As president of the bank, I was forced to bow to the wishes of the other officers, who felt I’d been too lenient too long. Your father hadn’t made a payment on the second mortgages he took out on his lumber business and your Grandfather McCain’s mansion in three months—”

“Oh, yes, tell me what a great humanitarian you are, Mr. Trying-to-Be-Reelected Mayor,” she retorted sarcastically. “I wonder what the townspeople would say if I showed up at your rally Wednesday night and told them you’re trying to jerk this property out from under the Renaissance Committee.”

“I’m sure they’d agree with me that you’re blocking what would be a very lucrative step forward for our community. The jobs my proposed Gold Rush Days theme park will provide will last for six months every year, Quillen, not just six weeks. Please.” His smile curved slyly. “Attend the rally as my special guest and let’s bring it before the people.”

“Get off my land,” she told him tightly, her clenched jaws beginning to ache from the effort of keeping her anger in check.

“A hundred thousand dollars,” he repeated, waving the check closer.

That was it. Her temper erupted and she snatched the check away from him. With quick, furious tears, she shredded it in little pieces and tossed a handful of confetti into the air. A scrap or two caught on his brown tweed lapels and she smiled, immensely satisfied, as she watched his smug smile change to a tight-lipped glower.

“Money isn’t my only resource,” he told her, his voice no longer smooth but rough with anger. “There are other methods of persuasion available.”

“Such as?” she taunted, drawing her cloak tighter. “My grandmother’s house is mine free and clear. So is this land, and as long as I live, you’ll never get your hands on either one of them.”

“All right, if that’s the way you want it,” he said curtly, flicking shreds of paper off his jacket as he turned sharply on his heel.

Her knees trembling, Quillen watched him stride up the bank. A halfhearted breath of wind rustled the pine boughs overhanging the bridge and lifted a section of his toupee. She had a brief glimpse of his pale, freckled scalp before he batted it down and turned right onto a path that led back to the gates.