Betina Krahn Read online

  “Only imagine,” Louis said woefully, “having to constantly abide in this foul and corrupting atmosphere.”

  They didn’t have to imagine for long. The coach stopped on Hale Street, a broad thoroughfare created by the merging of several narrower streets. They disembarked in front of a large brick building, before a pair of neatly painted white doors. Above the entrance hung a signboard proclaiming the name of the mission and the biblical quote: “The poor you will have with you always.”

  Extending from the open door and well along the fronts of the neighboring buildings was a line of ragged and ill-kempt men, many in knitted caps and battered seamen’s clothes. They watched with scowls and mutters as Louis led Diamond and the others to the head of the line and inside. The austere hall was whitewashed and hung with sayings meant to inspire the mission’s clientele to remedy their dismal situations. At one end of the hall were rows of planking tables and benches and a long window counter through which food was being served. The other end was set with chairs facing a small wooden podium beneath a banner stating: “The Lord helps those who help themselves.”

  Deadly aware of her buttercup-yellow dress and elaborately feathered hat, Diamond was ready to head straight back to the coach when Louis took her by the arm and pulled her toward a lean, imperious-looking matron in a black dress and a severely sensible hair net. He introduced the woman to Diamond and Mrs. Shoregrove as the head of the kitchens and a cornerstone of the mission’s program. The woman looked Diamond over with a sniff, folded her hands over her waist, and announced that she hadn’t planned dinner for more than the mission’s “regular trade.”

  “We didn’t intend to stay for a meal,” Diamond said in clipped tones. She swept the room with a look. “Well, Louis, I believe I have seen all I need—”

  Her gaze snagged on a figure in the food line. It was his hat that caught her eye. Big and black with a tall, neatly creased crown … it looked as though it came straight off the front of one of her penny dreadfuls … or off the head of a certain heart-stopping Westerner. Her eyes widened as they traveled down a familiar pair of broad shoulders, a lean, muscular body, and long, powerful legs. Their owner looked up and met her gaze with a jolt of recognition.

  Behind her, Hardwell gave a grunt of surprise, raised his arm and called out: “McQuaid! As I live and breathe—what the devil are you doing here?”

  Standing in line, smelling like a sweated-up steer, and waiting for a turn at the trough. Bear answered as he stared across the room. He wanted to run for his life but could only stand frozen, trapped in two shocked beacons of memorable blue. Every muscle in his work-sore body tensed and contracted with embarrassment at the sight of her … standing there in her perfect yellow lady dress and feathered hat … looking like a daisy in a damned hog wallow.

  What in hell was she doing here? It took a moment for him to pull his gaze from her and register the sight of Hardwell Humphrey striding along through the rows of tables with a hand extended to him. He glanced down at his chambray shirt, work pants, and worn boots, then stifled a groan and stepped out of line to meet that handshake.

  “What are you doing here?” Bear parroted his question, while shaking his hand and scrambling for an explanation for his presence in the soup kitchen.

  “Came down with Diamond,” Hardwell said, gesturing to her with one hand while adding in a mutter, “and that damned fool Pierpont.” Then he looked Bear up and down and seemed a little puzzled. “Blame me, if you aren’t the veriest cowboy I’ve ever seen.” He turned to Diamond. “Look here, missy … your friend McQuaid, in his out-West gear.”

  “Hello, Mr. McQuaid,” she said joining them, offering him her hand, and reddening noticeably. “I confess, you’re the last person I expected to find here,”

  “Here?” He reddened under her shocked regard, thinking fast as he looked around. “Why, this is the perfect place for me.”

  “It is?” She blinked.

  “You bet it is.” As he looked around at the mission, his gaze fell on the row of stringy, hardened male faces watching them and a mercifully plausible explanation popped into his head. He jerked a nod at the men shuffling forward in line. “Where better to find workers eager for a fresh start out West?”

  Even after he’d said it aloud, it still sounded fairly plausible and he plunged ahead, turning to Halt … who was standing by with narrowed eyes, taking in his familiarity with these nattily dressed society folk and drawing who knew what conclusions. What mattered most, however, was convincing Diamond and her party that he was doing what he had just claimed.

  “As a matter of fact … I was just talking with a fellow I found here the other night.” He beckoned to Halt. “Come on over, Finnegan.”

  With a rueful glance at the serving window, Halt abandoned his place in line and strode over to join them. Bear now was forced to introduce Halt to a much younger and prettier Diamond Wingate than he had been led to expect.

  “Miss Wingate, may I present Halt Finnegan, formerly of Boston … a railroader from way back.” Halt gave him an ominously restrained smile, wiped his hand on his shirt and extended it to meet hers. In the introductions that followed, Bear found himself called upon to elaborate. “A real stroke of luck, finding Finnegan here. He worked on the Union Pacific when they were racing across the country, back in sixty-seven. Since then, he’s been all over the West laying down steel.”

  “I am not at all certain it is proper for you to use these premises for recruiting railroad laborers,” Louis Pierpont said to Bear, inserting himself determinedly between Diamond and Bear.

  “Not proper?” Bear shifted his weight back onto one leg and leveled a controlled look on the pasty little wretch. “What could be more proper than offering these men a chance for decent work?”

  Pierpont reddened. “Decent work? On the railroads? I have long been of the opinion that railroads have bred an unseemly impatience in the populace … everything moves so quickly, they come to expect that everything should move so quickly. And the workers themselves”—he leveled a quick, faintly judgmental look on Halt—“are widely considered to be rowdy and undisciplined and given to a number of unsavory vices.”

  “Vices?” Bear said with a sardonic laugh, watching Louis’s hand move possessively to the small of Diamond’s back. “I’ll grant that railroaders do like a bit of drink now and then. But you’ll not find a harder-working or more charitable bunch of men than a railroad crew. Right, Mr. Finnegan?”

  “Right as rain, Mis-s-ster McQuaid,” Halt replied.

  He was going to hear about this, Bear realized.

  “Come, my dear.” Louis took Diamond by the elbow and turned her toward the kitchen doors. “You must see the rest of our mission.”

  Diamond was so overwhelmed by her reaction to seeing Bear that it took a moment for her to recover her self-possession. Never in her life had she felt such joy at the sight of someone … not even her father, when he came home after one of his long business trips. Pleasure had welled up in her, carrying with it a flush of heat and an unladylike urge to rush to him … to touch him … to absorb every line and angle of him.

  When Louis grabbed her elbow to usher her along, she was too absorbed in containing those startling impulses to protest. And unless she was mistaken, the sight of her had produced a strong reaction in him, as well. She could feel it on the air between them; a resonance, a special tension, a palpable sense of connection.

  It was only as they stood in the middle of the smelly, bustling kitchen that she tore her attention from Bear long enough to realize that she was someplace she didn’t want to be. And that Louis was crowding her such that he was practically standing on her feet.

  “… piped-in gas, to run the stoves and ovens …” He was droning on.

  Hardwell was leaning down to old Mrs. Shoregrove, repeating everything Louis said at a slightly higher volume: “Gas … he says he has gas!” The kitchen matron was watching from nearby with her hands propped at her waist. Bear stood with his legs brac
ed apart and his arms folded, watching Louis hover over her. And Bear’s find, Mr. Finnegan, had tagged along and was grinning rather effectively at the woman serving the soup of the day, while she provided him with samples of fresh-baked bread.

  Diamond let her gaze and her mind wander toward Bear and he caught her gaze, looked at Louis, and rolled his eyes. It was hard to be too indignant on Louis’s behalf when she was an inch away from slapping him silly, herself. To her credit, she did manage to bite her lip to keep from smiling back.

  When Louis had made a sufficient virtue of peeled cabbages, donated potatoes, and greasy ham bones, he led them through the odoriferous storage rooms and up a back set of steps to the dormitory on the second floor. Louis instructed Bear and Halt Finnegan to go first, it being considered ungentlemanly to climb stairs behind a lady. Diamond had never quite appreciated that custom until she watched Bear’s long, muscular legs working just ahead of her.

  She told herself it was the surprise of seeing him in such worn and simple clothing that caused her to stare so intently at him. In truth, it was more the fit of those clothes than the condition of them that absorbed her. His trousers were molded to his big frame, shaped by long wear and numerous washings into a glovelike fit. And his boots, slightly worn at the substantial heels and scuffed at the toes, lent a fascinating air of rough history to his lower half … not to mention a sensual roll to his gait.

  By the time they reached the top of the stairs she had made a thorough inventory of his buttocks, thighs, and calves and experienced—curiously—not one drop of shame in the process. Proof that she was corrupted beyond repair. If Louis, clutching her arm so tightly against him, had the faintest notion of what was going on inside her, he would be disillusioned in the extreme.

  When they all arrived on the second floor, Louis’s hovering became intolerable. “Diamond, my dearest …” He planted himself directly before her as if trying to harness her wandering attention. It didn’t work.

  She saw Bear’s head move and glanced at him.

  “My dearest?” He mouthed silently.

  “Here”—Louis gestured grandly to a sea of wood and canvas cots—“we permit those with no shelter to sleep … providing they adhere to our rules. We permit no smoking, no chewing, no profanity or vulgarity, no liquor—not even the scent of it—and absolutely no talking after lights out. I monitor conduct here myself, most nights … in there.” He indicated a small room a few feet away, furnished in Spartan style, with a bed, a table and straight chair, and a shelf of books.

  “You sleep here?” she asked, tearing her gaze from Bear to look at Louis in dismay.

  “I do now.” He sacrificed a smile for her. “You know, of course, that I sold the family house some time ago. The apartments I have occupied since seemed such an extravagance, when I spend several nights a week here. I thought the money could best be used for more charitable purposes.” He seized both of her hands, his passion for philanthropy now aflame.

  “This is the first such shelter here in Baltimore. I plan several more in the indigent parts of the city. And if things go well, before the year is out I shall have a splendid, big house to make into an orphanage, along with gardens and stables and orchards.” His eyes gleamed with visionary delight. “It will be out in the healthful countryside, north of the city. I am learning a great deal from this work, which will be put to good use after—”

  She tensed, sensing what was coming and unable to stop it.

  “—our vows.”

  God in Heaven! Whatever possessed him to blurt it out in front of Hardwell and Mrs. Shoregrove and—she moaned privately—Bear McQuaid?

  “Our vows?” Bear’s casual posture changed instantly. He leveled a look on Diamond that made her want to sink through the cracks between the floorboards. “Congratulations, Pierpont. I had no idea you were engaged.” He sounded anything but felicitous. “And who is the lucky lady?”

  Diamond squeezed Louis’s hands savagely, causing him to start and stare at her. She hoped her expression conveyed even one quarter of the fury she felt at the moment. It must have had some impact, for Louis stopped short of a direct announcement and settled instead for a cryptic:

  “I should think that would be obvious.”

  “Not to most of us,” Diamond said through clenched teeth.

  She jerked her hands from Louis’s and the depth of her irritation finally began to penetrate his rashly possessive frame of mind. Her face was crimson as old Mrs. Shoregrove yanked on Hardwell’s arm and demanded to know what was being said. Hardwell closed his sagging jaw and responded.

  “That’s where Pierpont sleeps,” Hardwell said loudly, pointing. And something made him add: “Alone.”

  “I believe I’ve seen quite enough,” Diamond said angrily, avoiding Bear’s gaze. “We really must be going. Mrs. Shoregrove, we shall be happy to see you home.” As they all headed for the stairs, Bear caught her eye.

  With eyes like molten copper, he held up three sun-bronzed fingers.

  Three, he knew there were three.

  Her face flamed as she hurried down the stairs. By the time she reached the dining hall below, the others were hard-pressed to keep up … except Bear, who strode determinedly around the others to reach her.

  “Well, Miss Wingate,” he declared tautly, pushing open one of the front doors for her, “you certainly are a busy woman.”

  She made herself meet his glower and felt as if she’d been punched in the chest. “I am, indeed,” she said, sounding winded. “Not too busy, however, to see my poor young cousin diverted from his illness.” She halted at the carriage. “Will you come and visit him? Now.”

  “Now?” He glanced at Halt Finnegan, who was leaning a shoulder against the door frame, scowling darkly at him. “Now would be fine.”

  Diamond refused Louis a farewell handclasp as she turned to the coach step and lifted her skirts. Bear helped her inside, then stood aside as Hardwell assisted old Mrs. Shoregrove and climbed in himself. When it was Bear’s turn, he gave a glance back over his shoulder at Louis, who was babbling on about calling on Diamond tomorrow, and then at Halt, whose narrow-eyed smile promised retribution.

  By the time they delivered Mrs. Shoregrove to her house, the atmosphere in the coach was icy enough to threaten frostbite. Bear self-consciously shifted his long legs and tried to make room for his hat … which he stubbornly refused to remove; Diamond’s lips, like her folded arms, were tightly clamped; and all of Hardwell’s attempts at conversation met a quick and nasty end.

  Eventually, Diamond stole a look at Bear. He caught the slight motion of her head and looked at her in the same instant. Their gazes met in a glancing blow that caused each to recoil sharply and stare out opposite sides of the coach.

  Hardwell scratched his head, blew on his hands, and turned up his coat collar against the chill for the rest of the ride home.

  When they arrived at Gracemont, Diamond strode briskly past Jeffreys in the main hall, dropped her gloves and hat on the center table, and headed for the stairs with a curt: “This way, Mr. McQuaid.”

  Halfway down the upstairs corridor, well out of hearing, Bear gave in to the anger he had been nursing for the better part of an hour, grabbed her by the arm, and pulled her to a stop.

  She whirled, her eyes flashing and her chin raised. An instinct for self-preservation made him choke back some of the anger in his opening volley.

  “Do you know what they call a woman who marries three men?”

  ELEVEN

  “No,” she said furiously, refusing to be intimidated by his size and proximity. She tucked her arms into a defensive knot. “Suppose you tell me.”

  He searched her simmering blue gaze, seeing in it turbulent swirls of humiliation and an expanding roil of anxiety. But in her jutting, fiercely set chin he read nothing but combat readiness.

  “Greedy,” he declared.

  Clearly that was not what she expected to hear. She drew her chin back.

  “I am not greed—”

&n
bsp; “Ambitious,” he added, watching closely the shifting weather in her eyes.

  “I have never been ambitious!”

  “Or just damned optimistic.”

  She blinked, drew a hot breath to rebut that, as well, then closed her mouth without speaking. A moment later, she jerked her arm from his grasp.

  “What do you mean optimistic?”

  “Most women have enough trouble riding herd on one man,” he declared, propping his hands on his waist as he leaned over her. “Imagine the effort that would be involved in wrangling three.”

  “I don’t intend to ‘wrangle’ anybody,” she said, taking a step backward.

  “Yeah? Then how come there are three men out there panting in expectation of enjoying nuptial bliss with you?” There was a bit too much heat in that to suit him. He reined back, but only for a second. “Or is it just three?” He shoved his face down into hers and she took another step back. “Maybe there are four or five—hell, there could be half a dozen!”

  “Three,” she said furiously. “There are only three.”

  “Congratulations on your restraint.”

  She scrambled for footing and found it in righteous anger.

  “For your information, it could have been dozens!”

  That set him back a moment. He experienced a swift, unexpected stab of jealousy.

  Dozens, hell—he thought—it could have been thousands. Every man in Baltimore, married or single, had probably asked himself at one time or other what it would be like to have a wife as rich as Croesus … or Diamond Wingate. And even the most amicably wedded of men, upon seeing her sparkling blue eyes and striking figure, had probably gone home to their beds imagining what it would be like to have Diamond Wingate sharing their pillows with them. She could have had any man she wanted. Why the devil had she picked those three?

  In the lengthening silence, her shoulders sagged.

  “You don’t understand,” she said tightly.

  “Damned straight, I don’t.”