Morrow Creek Runaway. Lisa Plumley

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СКАЧАТЬ all the questions about Mrs. Dancy and her establishment.”

      Mrs. Dancy. Miles still couldn’t get used to that.

      He knew Rosamond had married. But how? Why?

      Had she really, as Genevieve Bouchard had insisted, become smitten with Elijah Dancy and run away with him in the night?

      He couldn’t believe the woman he’d known would do that.

      Even if she had, she would have written to someone. To him.

      Knowing there had to be more to this situation, Miles nodded calmly at his interrogator. “I am. You know Mrs. Dancy?”

      Another, more curt nod. “Yep. But I don’t know you.”

      With new respect, Miles eyed the man. He had the burly build of a stevedore, the jovial demeanor of a gambler who always won big and the jaded gaze of someone who knew better than to trust an outsider.

      “Miles Callaway.” Miles offered his hand to the man. “I’m new in town. I couldn’t help hearing about Mrs. Dancy’s place. I don’t mind saying, it’s got me mighty intrigued.”

      The man laughed, then accepted Miles’s handshake. “Daniel McCabe. I wouldn’t get yourself all het up about Mrs. Dancy’s society, if I were you. It sounds scandalous, but it’s not.”

      With a genial nod for the barman, McCabe accepted what appeared to be a midday meal of beans, bacon and bread. All around them both, the business of the saloon continued apace, full of low conversations, clinking gambling chips and quickly dealt cards. More whiskey flowed. Clouds of cigarillo smoke drifted toward the ceiling, almost obscuring Jack Murphy’s painted image of a cavorting water nymph behind the bar.

      “The Morrow Creek Marriage Bureau?” Miles repeated the name he’d heard used. “Sounds scandalous to me—and to every other man who doesn’t want to get hitched in the next week.”

      Another laugh. “Officially, it’s called the Morrow Creek Mutual Society,” McCabe informed him. “But around these parts, we took to calling it the marriage bureau pretty quickly.” He aimed a speculative glance at Miles. “If you don’t want to step into a wedding noose, what’s your interest in Mrs. Dancy?”

      “I’m an old friend of hers.”

      “You don’t say?” McCabe sized him up. “Such an old friend that you don’t know where she lives or what she’s been up to?”

      McCabe’s genially voiced question belied his sharp demeanor. Despite his easy ways, this was no country bumpkin. This was a man who would fiercely protect the people he cared about. Reevaluating his initial opinion of him, Miles regrouped. Usually, folks overlooked whatever logical inconsistencies arose during his questioning of them. Especially when they were knocking back ales. Daniel McCabe was different.

      “We didn’t part willingly.” With real mournfulness, Miles stared into his ale. “I aim to make up for that when I see her.”

      “Aha. You poor lovelorn fool. You need another drink!”

      Generously, McCabe ordered him one. Somehow, Miles had stumbled onto the best tactic for use with the big man—love.

      After glimpsing the wedding band on McCabe’s hand, Miles understood where the man’s good-natured resignation toward romance came from. Possibly his guardedness, too.

      After all, true love didn’t always run smoothly. Miles knew that for himself. He’d waited too long with Rosamond. Now she—

      “We become damn fools when some woman turns our heads, don’t we?” McCabe proposed, offering a toast. “Here’s to you.”

      Miles raised his glass, then quaffed. The moment he and Daniel McCabe sealed their newfound camaraderie, other saloon patrons began drifting nearer. If Miles had been fortunate in sniffing out information before, he was doubly lucky now.

      Everyone, it seemed, wanted to help McCabe’s buddy.

      In very short order, Miles learned where Rosamond Dancy lived—and with whom. He learned what her mutual society did and how popular and sought-after an admission to it was among the local menfolk. He also learned, discouragingly, that gaining a personal interview with Mrs. Dancy was next to impossible.

      “She’s practically a ghost,” Hofer, the mercantile owner, confided in a dour tone. “She hardly comes out. Not ever.”

      “She just keeps things running, quite efficiently, behind the scenes,” added Thomas Walsh, editor of the Pioneer Press newspaper. “I find her ingenuity very admirable, myself.”

      “You ain’t getting no place near her,” opined Mr. Nickerson, who ran the Book Depot and News Emporium. “’Specially as a stranger to town. If Mrs. Dancy doesn’t want to see you, her two bruisers make darn sure you stay away.”

      That put Miles on alert. “She has guards?”

      “Two of ’em. Seth Durant and Judah Foster. Head-knockers, they are.” The barman, Harry, raised his arms high over his head. “Big as apes, both of ’em, and twice as mean, too.”

      That was a complication Miles hadn’t counted on.

      “I would advise you to stay away,” old Doc Finney put in, sipping his sarsaparilla. “A woman who is both secretive and uppity is dangerous to a man’s well-being. A man only gets so many heartbeats per ticker, you know. A woman like that’ll use them all up, faster than you can say ‘Bob’s your uncle.’”

      The men surrounding him appeared intrigued by that.

      “Exactly how,” McCabe wondered with a twinkle in his eye, “would all those heartbeats get used up extra quickly, Doc? Because some of us are hog-tied to uppity women ourselves.” Here, he aimed a meaningful glance at Jack Murphy. “We might need to consider protecting ourselves from overexertion.”

      All the saloongoers guffawed at that, but Miles was too busy contemplating Doc Finney’s description of Rose to wonder about the salacious possibilities inherent in his warning.

      Most likely, secretive would describe Rosamond these days. So would uppity, if an opinionated old coot like Finney was doing the describing. Back home, Rosamond had certainly known her own mind. Miles had definitely found her this time.

      “Just don’t try getting into that society by fibbin’ that you know Mrs. Dancy ‘from back east,’” a lumberman warned him. “I tried that, and her hired men dumped me in a ditch.”

      Miles had expected Rosamond to be wary. Given everything he knew about her entanglements with Arvid Bouchard, she had reason to be. Still, he’d been counting on her being eager to see him.

      So, if the truth were known, had the Bouchards.

      After all, Miles was the stableman who’d helped Rosamond feed apples to the Bouchard household’s horses. He was the stableman who’d carried heavy loads of coal for his favorite housemaid. He was the stableman who’d pined for his Rosamond from afar...and now found his best chance at being near her again thwarted by two hired thugs and a whole town’s worth of gossipy, intrusive menfolk.

      Well, Miles hadn’t gotten this СКАЧАТЬ