Texas Lily (2 page)

"Lily, it's too early to start playing. Why don't you have Bessie do something with your hair? It looks like it hasn't been touched in weeks." Elizabeth turned away from the mirror long enough to scrutinize her youngest sister.

Since Bessie had just spent half an hour trying to arrange the slippery golden-brown tresses thus disparaged, Lily merely shrugged and lovingly stroked the keys. The pink flowers Alicia had insisted that she wear in the elaborately curled and braided coiffure were already listing to one side, tugging loose one of the painfully curled locks of baby-fine hair. More strands would come loose before the night was over. Lily really didn't think it would matter, although somewhere deep down inside of her, she wished it would.

"No one will notice, Beth. Leave her alone." Alicia's words echoed Lily's thoughts enough to make the younger girl wince as she bent over the piano keys.

"She's sixteen. It's about time she started making someone notice," Beth answered with a sniff. "I've taken my time in making my choice, but Lily will have to start looking right away if she's to find anyone at all. What about young Robert Paul? Surely he must be tall enough."

The young man in question was of the same age as Lily, with a pockmarked face and a way of stuttering that sent spittle all over the person with whom he was speaking. Besides that, he had once tried to put a toad down Lily's back. The idea of setting up a courtship with Robert Paul made her wince even more than the disparagement of her hair. Stoically, Lily crashed into a rousing chord of Beethoven.

Ephraim Porter appeared in the hallway as the first guests arrived. A tall man with unruly wavy hair that perpetually fell in his face, he managed to maneuver the rosewood stairs with some degree of grace as he descended amid the apprehensive gazes of his two eldest daughters. Lily, the one who took after him, was nowhere in sight. Elizabeth and Alicia frowned, but he managed the last stair with great aplomb and held out his hand to greet the first arrivals.

"Glad you could come, Harper. Welcome. Have a nip of France's finest with me while the womenfolk talk." To the relief of his daughters, Ephraim steered their first male guest to the study, where others could join them while the women safely entered the parlor, undisturbed by the telltale smell of brandy on their host's breath. Before the evening was over, all the men would smell of the liquors that Porter's Emporium carried with spectacular success.

When Elizabeth drifted by to whisper to Lily that their father had safely installed himself in the study, Lily nodded and continued playing, hiding her disappointment. She would have liked some reassurance from her father, some kind words that would give her confidence for the evening ahead, but she was accustomed to disappointment.

She used to be his favorite, but since her mother's death, Ephraim had drifted into a world of his own, seldom noticing any of his daughters. Lily felt it the most, but she had more experience in hiding her feelings than her sisters. Already taller than her schoolmates when her mother died, she had learned to hide her hurt at their taunts long ago.

These days, she added hiding her fear and anguish, first at the loss of her mother and then at the gradual loss of her beloved father. Her sisters were already grown and mature enough to deal with their losses. Lily was not and probably never would be. Her feelings poured into the music as the guests arrived to fill the parlor with their chatter.

When the room was filled to bursting and the gentlemen sufficiently "under the influence" to begin the dancing, Lily launched into a Virginia reel at a signal from her sister. The music came effortlessly, and she watched as the figures formed, Elizabeth triumphant on the arm of Artemis Cole, Alicia pouting prettily at the handsome Randolph Brewster.

The elder Porter sisters were the belles of two states, despite their rather plebeian origins. Every eligible bachelor within sixty miles fell under their spell, just as those of an older generation had bowed to their mother a quarter of a century ago. The only difference was that Alicia and Elizabeth were determined to correct their mother's mistakes. They would marry wealthy men with names from old, established families, not hapless farmers who would have to sell their land before they could make enough to live on—not men like their father.

As the dancers laughed and twirled and worked their way through the reel, Lily turned away. She was accustomed to spending the evening at the piano rather than among the guests. It amused her to listen to the gossip whispered around her when the speakers thought her too engrossed in her music to hear. She had learned a great deal about life that way and knew perfectly well what their neighbors thought of them.

"Well, I can see there will be wedding bells soon for those two," one elderly matron sniffed from somewhere behind Lily.

"Elizabeth and Artemis?"

"Elizabeth and Alicia. It's quite obvious they've both made up their minds. One can't blame them for taking the first chance to escape this household. Just like their mother, they are, and a more gently bred, refined woman this world has never seen. What she saw in Ephraim Porter is beyond my comprehension. He's turned out just like her mother warned her he would."

Lily scowled and sent the reel into a faster pace, leaving the dancers breathless and in serious disarray.

The whisper lowered, but she could still hear pieces of the conversation. "Pity... gawky, like her father.... Old maid.... Someone has to look after him."

Lily knew without a doubt that they were talking about her. She had heard it all before. She was taller than most men and had a face plainer than the side of a barn. Even her father's well-known charm had escaped her. But she could play any instrument anyone handed her, and play it well. Music was her solace, her consolation, her life.

Lily continued to tell herself that later in the evening when both her sisters announced their engagements. And she continued lying to herself the next day when the house filled with congratulatory visitors and her father hied himself to the store where he could tipple in peace. Music was all she needed. She didn't need handsome men courting her.

But she couldn't play in a house full of excited women. Wandering into the garden that had once been her mother's delight, Lily inspected the roses for the first bud and then strolled to the back gate, looking over the picket fence to the dirt road that meandered out of town. To her interest, a peddler's wagon was wending its way down the hillside. Maybe he would have a new book or some sheet music she could purchase.

When the handsome young peddler stopped the wagon at the gate and gave Lily a slow smile from beneath a tangled mop of dark curls, her heart nearly stopped beating. When he spoke, she was certain she had fallen asleep and was dreaming.

"I knew fate drew me to this place, and now here's my lucky charm to prove me right. The name's Travis Bolton, my fair lady, and I've come to sell you the things that dreams are made of. Do I dare ask that I make your lovely acquaintance?"

Lily could tell the traveling salesman was not much older than she, but his silver tongue and mellow voice spoke of a world of experience well beyond her own, and his dancing eyes and charming smile were the answer to all her wishes. Here was the chance to make a memory to look back upon when she was old and lonely.

She made a mock curtsy and introduced herself, and the peddler eagerly leapt from the wagon to open the garden gate.

* * *

From the perspective of nine years, Lily looked at her tall, dark-haired son and shook her head at her youthful folly. The peddler had certainly given her a memory to last a lifetime.

Chapter 1

Texas, August 1835

Lily looked away from the eight-year-old studying at the table and glanced out the beautifully glazed window Jim had just installed this spring. She clenched her hands into fists as one of the farmhands outside shook his head in response to something another of them said, scuffed his moccasins in the dust, then turned determinedly toward the house. Hastily donning the apron she seldom wore, Lily opened the back door as if she were on the way to the outdoor kitchen.

She had known this confrontation was coming, but she had hoped to postpone it a little longer. Just a little longer. Anything could happen in a few hours' time, a few days. Jim would be coming back. He had to. But a shiver down Lily's spine reminded her that it had been a month already. It didn't take a month to look for a lost calf.

She stepped down to the ground quickly so the man standing on the wide step didn't have to look up at her any more than necessary. He twisted his hat in his hands and didn't quite meet her eyes.

"Beggin' your pardon, ma'am, Miz Brown, but I thought I orter let you know I'll be packin' my bags and movin' on this evenin'. I got a offer from that Reynolds fella, and I reckon I can't turn it down."

"I'll match the offer, Jack. You know we hate to lose you. You're one of the best men Jim has."

Jack looked as if he would rather eat his hat than answer, but he managed to say what needed to be said. "Ma'am, Miz Brown, we reckon Jim ain't comin' back. We've scoured them prairies high and low. There's been signs of Indians up along the river. A man like Jim don't disappear without word less'n somethin' happened to him. I'm sorry to say this, ma'am, but we reckon Jim's dead, and we can't be workin' for no woman. It don't pay in the long run. Some of the other fellas are lookin' 'round to leave, too."

Had she been at her home in Mississippi, there would have been a dozen chairs scattered along the verandah for Lily to collapse into while sobbing with ladylike grace, but as it was, there was nothing but an acre of trampled grass and dust between the house and the stable and the barn. She wanted to sit on the back step and bury her head in her hands and pretend this would all go away, but she had come a long way in these last years. She held her chin up and straightened her shoulders, even though that made her a head taller than the bowlegged farmhand.

"Tell them to give me a little more time. Jim has been meaning to hire a foreman, someone to take some of the work off him. If I go and talk to the man now, would you work for him?"

Jack knew she was lying through her teeth, but she stood there so proud and tall, her braid glistening gold in the sunlight, her woman's figure hidden behind the shirt and vest and trousers she had adopted for working beside her husband, that he couldn't resist her appeal. Gnashing his teeth at the extent of his foolishness, Jack pounded his hat back on his head.

"All right, ma'am. If you're bringin' a man in here to run things, we'd be willin' to stay a while. Jim was a good man. We don't want no harm to come to his widow."

"Widow." The word ground into Lily's soul as she threw off her apron and walked toward the paddock. She didn't feel like a widow. Would she feel like a widow if she saw Jim's body laid out in his coffin? He was dead. Everyone knew he was dead. His horse had come back with his provisions and his rifle still strapped to the saddle. That had been right after he'd left to look for that calf. The men had searched night and day for a week, but as Jack had implied, there was too much territory out there to find one man, or his body. He was dead, and she would have to start facing it.

She should be feeling grief. She should be weeping and donning mourning and asking for some memorial service and feeling sorry for herself. Instead, she saddled the horse and swung up, without assistance.

She had learned a long time ago that men needed her more than she needed them. She didn't make a production of it. She let them think they were being considerate when they told her to do the cooking while they handled the roundup. She let them think that all she did at the ranch was supply their meals and keep Jim's cabin clean and his bed warm.

Jim knew better and hadn't minded. Texas was a rough country and he had appreciated all the help she could give. It wasn't as if theirs was a romantic marriage. It had been a partnership. And although she missed her partner, she knew she could carry on without him.

Except in this one thing. The men wouldn't take orders from a woman. Texas was a man's country. She could ride a horse and lasso a cow, but they would never take orders from her. Only if they thought the orders came from Jim would they listen to her at all.

Lily would be furious with the stubborn asses if it would do any good, but she had been out here too long to expect anything else. Women were few and far between, and they had to work like dogs to make a living just like the men, but there was still that memory of how things had been "back home," before they'd "gone to Texas." Women were supposed to be too frail and delicate to think for themselves.