Noelle. Diana Palmer

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СКАЧАТЬ looked at the auburn-haired woman across from him as he spoke to his grandmother. “Oh, I’ve come home,” he said, watching the expression change in the younger woman’s green eyes. “I decided that I needed a change of scene.”

      “Well, I’m delighted to have you,” Mrs. Dunn said. “And I’m sure Andrew will be. He’s away for the week, on business, you know. He does sales work for a local brickmaking concern. He’s been in Galveston lately to take orders. That’s where he found our lovely Noelle.”

      He glanced at the young woman. She was younger than he’d thought at first—probably not yet out of her teens.

      “This is my grandson Jared, Noelle. And Jared, this is Andrew’s young cousin, Noelle Brown.”

      Jared looked at her without speaking. “How did he chance to discover the relationship?” he asked finally.

      “A mutual acquaintance pointed it out,” Noelle said. She clasped her hands together tightly at her waist.

      “An observant one, no doubt, as you certainly share no surface traits with my stepbrother, who is blond and dark-eyed.”

      “His mother was auburn-haired,” Mrs. Dunn pointed out, “and his mother’s people were Browns from Galveston. Naturally when he made mention of it, an acquaintance there told him of Noelle’s existence, and her sad plight.”

      “I see.”

      “Dear boy, what has happened to you?” she asked, nodding toward the cane.

      He leaned on the cane a little heavily. “A slight accident.”

      “Only that?” Noelle asked sweetly. “What a relief to know that you weren’t slammed in the leg with a fence post, sir.”

      He cocked his head and stared at her pointedly. “You’re very plainspoken, Miss Brown.”

      “I’ve had to be,” she replied. “I had four brothers, sir—none of whom ever made allowances for my lack of muscle.”

      “Don’t expect me to make allowances for your youth,” he countered in a dangerously soft tone.

      Her eyes went to the gray hair at his temples. “You may also expect that I’ll make none for your age.”

      One dark eyebrow lifted. “My age?”

      “Well, you’re quite old.”

      He had to choke back a retort. Probably to a girl in her teens, he did seem elderly. He ignored her latest sally and turned back to his grandmother. “How have you been?” he asked, and his tone changed so drastically that Noelle was surprised.

      Mrs. Dunn smiled warmly at him. “Quite well, my boy, for a lady of my years. And you look prosperous as well.”

      “New York has been good to me.”

      She looked at the leg. “Not altogether, apparently.”

      He smiled. “This happened in New Mexico Territory. An accident.”

      “Surely you weren’t thrown from a horse,” she began, such an accident being the first sort to occur to her.

      Noelle looked at him as if she expected that a man in such an expensive suit, an attorney, moreover, who lived in a huge eastern city, wouldn’t know which end of a horse to get on.

      “Horses are dangerous,” Jared replied, deliberately evasive. He was enjoying their young houseguest’s evident opinion of him. He could almost see the words in her green eyes: milksop; dude; layabout; dandy…

      Her eyes met his and she cleared her throat, as if she’d spoken the words aloud. “Would you care for some refreshment, Mr. uh, Mr. Dunn?”

      “Coffee would be welcome. I find travel by train so exhausting,” he said, with a mock yawn, deliberately assuming the facade of a tame city man.

      Noelle turned quickly and left the room before she burst out laughing. If that was Andrew’s formidable stepbrother, she was in no immediate danger of being thrown out. Although, just at first, there had been something in those steely eyes, in the set of his head, in his stance, that had made her very uneasy. Probably she was being fanciful, she thought, and continued on to the kitchen.

      “Now,” Mrs. Dunn said, when Noelle had closed the door and her footsteps could be heard going down the hall, “what happened?”

      “I had a disagreement with an armed cowboy in a small community called Terrell,” he said, sitting down across from her. “My shot broke his arm, but a wild bullet got me in the leg. It still pains me a bit, but in a few weeks, I’ll be as good as new. So will he, fortunately,” he added grimly. “Maybe he’ll be more careful about who he pulls a gun on from now on.”

      “Gunfights, in such a civilized age,” his grandmother said coolly. “For heaven’s sake, this is just what Edith wanted to avoid! It’s why she begged you to go East to school in the first place.”

      “I have avoided it—mostly,” he said, dropping the cane idly by his side. “There are still uncivilized places…and men who reach for a gun before they look for a man with a badge. In court cases, tempers run hot.”

      “That’s probably why you chose law as a profession,” Mrs. Dunn said curtly. “It’s a dangerous job.”

      He smiled. “So it is, from time to time. I’m going to open an office here in Fort Worth. New York has lost its appeal for me.”

      Her blue eyes, so like his own, softened. “Are you, truly, Jared? It would be such a joy to have you home all the time.”

      “I’ve missed you, too,” he confessed.

      She bit her lower lip. “No one knows about your past here,” she said gently. “I’ve never told anyone, least of all Andrew. But these scrapes you get into…What if any of your adversaries turn up in town?”

      He chuckled. “What if they do? Gunplay is a thing of the past, except in saloons and during robberies. I’m hardly likely to find myself a target for young gunmen, except in dime novels,” he added dryly.

      “Don’t remind me,” she muttered, recalling that he’d been featured in one with a lurid cover and six guns in both his hands—ridiculous, since he’d only ever worn one gun, even in his young and wild days.

      “I’m a respectable attorney.”

      “You’re a hard case,” Mrs. Dunn said shortly. “And neither of us is as respectable as we want people to think we are. Why, I was working in a saloon in Dodge when your mama had you. And now I belong to the Women’s Benevolent Society and the Temperance Union and the Ladies’ Sewing Circle and the prayer group. However would people look at me if they knew my real past?”

      “The same as they look at you now, except with more fascination, you naughty woman,” he murmured dryly.

      She laughed. “I hardly think so.” She shook her head. “Oh, Jared, how hard are the lessons we learn in youth. And all our indiscretions follow us like shadows into old age.”

      He СКАЧАТЬ