Betina Krahn Read online

  Evelyn Stanhope Vassar, always an unparalleled hostess, had truly outdone herself tonight. When the doors to the mirrored dining hall were thrown open, she led her guests among long dining tables draped with snowy linen and adorned with cleverly crafted islands of fresh-cut flowers, silver candelabra, and sparkling crystal. Liveried waiters lined the walls, waiting patiently for the guests to file in and find their seats, and in the background, a string trio provided spirited baroque music to set a lively mood. It was enough to make everyone forget the talk of the evening and her tall, dark rescuer …

  … until Morgan escorted Diamond to her seat and she looked up from the script on her place card to find a pair of tawny gold eyes staring at her from across the table. Word of their pairing flew, and every guest filing into the dining room strained for a glimpse of Diamond Wingate and the big Westerner together.

  Diamond scarcely noticed Morgan’s annoyance that he was not seated by her or that he located his place across the dining room, beside doe-eyed Clarice Vassar. She was too busy being utterly disinterested in the sun-bronzed face and broad-shouldered form that would be her unavoidable scenery throughout dinner.

  “Diamond dear, I believe you’ve already met Mr. McQuaid,” Evelyn Vassar crooned as she swept by on her rounds as hostess. “He is from the Montana Territory, you know. A railroad man … a close business acquaintance of Philip’s.”

  “Yes.” Diamond felt betraying heat flooding her face. “We’ve met.”

  “We have, indeed.” Barton McQuaid responded with a knowing smile and a deep rumble that set her fingertips vibrating. “Glad to see you’re none the worse for wear, Miss Wingate.”

  “There you are,” Hardwell broke in as he located his place, just down the table from them. “Nothin’ short of remarkable … the way you handled that lunatic, Mr. McQuaid.” He declared to the other guests around him: “Picked him right up and shook him like a dog does a bone—never seen anything like it!”

  Diamond, on the other hand, had seen something appallingly like it, only three days ago.

  “Habit, I guess,” McQuaid said, reddening genially under the scrutiny aimed at him. “One of the first things you learn, out in Montana, is to stick up for women and children.”

  “Well, you certainly seem to have mastered half of that lesson,” Diamond said with a pleasantness that cloaked the barb in it for everyone but him. When the comment struck a spark in his eyes, she smiled.

  As their hostess took her place and the serving began, Diamond was acutely aware of the many pairs of eyes turned in their direction. Annoying as that scrutiny was, it didn’t begin to compare with the irritation she felt at the knowledge that his eyes were on her, roaming her with impunity. What on earth was Evelyn Vassar thinking, putting them opposite each other for dinner?

  Minutes later, as the guests turned their attention to Evelyn’s marvelous menu, she was able to make distracting conversation with Mason Purnell and Mrs. Orville Lancombe, who were seated on either side of her. Barton McQuaid was mostly silent, answering politely when questioned, but volunteering nothing. After a time, however, even his silence began to grate on her.

  Had the man no social graces at all? Not that she wasn’t grateful to be spared that unnerving vibration that occurred in her fingertips whenever he spoke … but honestly, one would think he could manage to put forth a comment here or there as a social obligation.

  Then, halfway through the braised pheasant, Philip Vassar raised his voice to include everyone seated at the long table. “My friend Mr. McQuaid is a railroad man, you know. He’s currently working to build a railroad line in the Montana Territory. A most promising venture. Tell us about your valley in Montana, McQuaid. The one you intend to open to wheat farming.”

  The Westerner looked less than thrilled to be quizzed on his business involvements in so public a forum.

  “I hold the rights to a little valley containing some of the best wheat land in the territory. Good soil. Plenty of water. Right now it’s short-grass prairie and range land, but someday it will make farmers and ranchers a healthy living.”

  “And you a healthy profit,” she said, not realizing she had spoken aloud until he responded.

  “Profit is the usual goal of business ventures, I believe,” he murmured, so quietly as to be meant primarily for her.

  “And the sky … tell them about the sky,” Vassar prodded.

  He shifted and turned a taut smile to Vassar and his end of the table. “The sky. A mere telling can’t do it justice. It’s so big and so close … you feel like you’re about to be swallowed up in it. In the winter, when the snow covers the ground, the blue is so intense it makes your eyes ache. And on the hills at night, when you look up, the moon seems so close that you could just pick it from the sky and put it in your pocket.”

  “An ambitious bit of larceny,” she murmured. He flicked another taut look her way and she took a certain satisfaction in the way his jaw flexed.

  “Well, as a friend of mine always says,” he responded, “a man should always make the sin worth the penance.”

  “And the wind,” Vassar persisted. “What is it they say about the wind?”

  McQuaid gave a wry smile. “The Indians and the old-timers say the wind talks. They say it whispers through the hills and canyons, speaking wisdom and warnings to all who will listen. I don’t know if that’s true, but I do know there are nights out under the stars, on the wide-open range, when a man surely can believe the wind is talkin’ to him.”

  The temptation was just too great.

  “And when the wind talks to you, Mr. McQuaid, what does it warn you against?” she asked with excessive politeness.

  There was instant silence up and down the table.

  He leveled that molten copper gaze on her, picked up his goblet, and downed the rest of his wine before responding. “I get the same message the wind gives every other man willing to listen: beware of watered whiskey, horses with blankets on, and”—he smiled as he delivered the thrust—“women who talk too much.”

  Laughter broke out along the table and she straightened, meeting his gaze squarely and refusing to look away. A battle, she sensed, had just been joined. Very well. She wasted no time in launching an offensive.

  “Tell us about this railroad you are building, Mr. McQuaid,” she said. “Is your right-of-way through the mountains? What gauge of track will you use? How do you intend to deal with the labor problem? Who is building your engines—or are you buying older ones to start? What natural obstacles do you face? How many trestles and tunnels will you have to build? Who have you hired to do your engineering work?”

  “You’re in for it now, McQuaid,” Vassar said with a wicked laugh. “I must warn you, Miss Wingate has a keen interest in railroads.”

  McQuaid seemed surprised and leveled a penetrating look on her.

  “The terrain is mostly moderate,” he said evenly. “No tunnels or trestles will be necessary … though blasting will be required in some quarters to level and widen the track bed. I intend to use I rails, and since we have plenty of space there is no need to consider a narrow gauge. The railroad industry has to work toward using standard track and cars wherever possible. Labor won’t be a problem … there are plenty of men between here and Montana willing to do hard work for a decent wage. And as for obstacles”—his voice lowered a step—“I don’t intend to let any develop.”

  He was so utterly, insufferably sure of himself, she couldn’t resist.

  “Then I take it you don’t anticipate any difficulty from James J. Hill and his Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad.”

  Bear McQuaid saw a smile curling the corners of those satiny lips and fought the surprise that threatened to derail his determination.

  “I intend to leave Mr. Hill to his business and expect that he will have the good sense to leave me to mine,” he said matter-of-factly.

  Her laughter was downright deflating.

  “I’m certain he would be relieved to hear that.”

&
nbsp; He deserved a horselaugh, Bear told himself later as he retired with a group of gentlemen to Vassar’s library for cigars, brandy, and ruminations on the latest business news. He had acted like a pure jackass, declaring that the immensely wealthy and powerful James J. Hill—the man who had single-handedly opened much of the Northwest to transportation and settlement—would do well to avoid any trouble with him.

  He had brazened through the rest of the meal with grit and a smile. A decade of facing down bunkhouse bullies and cocky young kids with guns strapped to their hips had taught him the value of a good bluff. And there was no better bluff than smiling as if you knew something somebody else didn’t.

  As the men spread out across the library, loosened vest buttons, and reached for goblets of brandy, Bear found himself scrambling for mental footing.

  Why did his best hope for an investor have to be a woman? He never did well with women. Recalling the vision she made across the table, at dinner, he amended his thoughts; she wasn’t just a woman, she was a bona fide beauty. She had spun-gold hair that glowed in the candlelight. Glowed. Her skin was damn near flawless, her eyes were wide and blue as the Montana sky, and her dewy lips looked downright edible—until she opened them and reminded him that while he might have changed his approach to her, she certainly hadn’t changed her opinion of him.

  He took a deep breath, hoping to force some air to his brain. When the steam in his senses cleared, his thoughts had worked their way down his memory to her liberally bared shoulders and lusciously displayed—

  Cleavage. Diamond Wingate had cleavage.

  Loan or no loan, he had to get the hell out of here.

  He headed for the door, only to have Philip Vassar intercept him and thrust a cigar into his hands. “Treat her with respect, boy,” the banker cautioned. “Acquiring her took more damned effort than acquiring my wife.”

  “Beg pardon?” Bear blinked at him.

  “The cigar.” Vassar laughed and gestured to the tobacco Bear held. “It’s a Caruba Imperial. Come on. Light her up and I’ll introduce you around.”

  As Bear finished all he could stand of Vassar’s fancy cigar, he listened to the men he had just met talk about their business ventures. At some point or other, nearly every one of them mentioned the name Wingate in connection with a business dealing. When he had a chance to ask about it, Philip Vassar pulled him aside.

  “Oh, she’s that Wingate, all right. Provides the venture capital for half of what gets done in Baltimore these days.” Vassar chuckled. “She held a lottery at her quarterly board meeting and gave away a hundred thousand dollars to inventors and business people.” He leaned in and gave Bear a conspiratorial thump on the chest. “A real soft touch.”

  Bear tried to reconcile Vassar’s assessment with the woman who had jousted verbally with him during dinner. Soft? He thought of the determined glint in her eyes as she bombarded him with questions about his railroad.

  About as “soft” as a Baldwin Ten Wheeler.

  “What about railroads? Does she honestly know something about them?”

  Vassar took a puff from his cigar and blew a ring of blue smoke. “About as much as any man I know. And not just balance sheets and operations … she knows construction, too. She owns a smart piece of both the B and O and the New York Central, and votes her own shares. She was one of the ones who set up that fund to give railroad workers a pension when they get too old to work.” Vassar gave a huff of a laugh. “I told you … a regular soft touch.”

  As he strode from the library with the rest of Vassar’s inner circle, Bear found his thoughts in turmoil yet again. Diamond Wingate was not merely a headstrong beauty with a troublesome abundance of charms; she was a smart, opinionated woman who knew just too damn much about railroads to suit him.

  Imagine having her constantly looking over his shoulder … constantly … He spotted the pale peach silk of her dress across the drawing room, and realized she was being squired about by a tall, aristocratic-looking gent with a faintly proprietary air. As he watched her move and realized he was following the irresistible sway of her bustle, he caught himself and forced himself to imagine it full of cash. She wasn’t going to do anything with that wad of cash, he told himself, but sit on it. Whereas he and Halt could put it—and with it, a lot of good men—to work.

  Whatever her irritating personal quirks, Diamond Wingate knew about railroads, believed in them, and under the right circumstances, invested in them.

  Vassar was right. She was his best hope. He had to find a way to deal with Diamond Wingate as if she were an investor, pure and simple. He had to take his proposal to her and make her a clean, aboveboard proposition. Strictly business. Because, after all, it was business. He would be offering her a profitable opportunity. And if all went as planned, she stood to gain handsomely from her investment in his rail line.

  There was the truth of it, he told himself, rolling his shoulders, and missing the widened eyes and fluttering fans that his casual movement caused in the matrons’ corner. By soliciting her participation in his venture, he was actually doing her a favor.

  Get in, sell your idea, and get the hell out.

  With his new outlook firmly in place, he took a deep breath while tugging his vest into place—sending an audible sigh through that same appreciative population—and began to stroll around the drawing room, working his way toward her.

  Diamond watched tall, broad-shouldered Barton McQuaid prowling around the drawing room and felt roundly irritated that she couldn’t take her eyes from him. Annoying man. It was little comfort that her difficulty seemed to be shared by virtually every other woman present, or that he was oblivious to the fact that they were staring at him. He was preoccupied and appeared to be less than pleased to be here.

  That insight spawned another. His garments—no doubt the very ones she had been forced to pay for—were tailored to perfection. There wasn’t an erratic seam or an excess inch of goods anywhere on his striking frame, and yet he still seemed to be stuffed into his clothes. Or trapped in them. His visible discomfort and pensive manner presented a stark contrast to the ease and pleasure he had displayed at dinner when he spoke of Montana. It was suddenly as clear as if he had said it aloud: he would give anything to be there instead of—

  “Join me for a turn about the garden,” came a whisper at her ear. She looked up to find Morgan Kenwood leaning close with a wine-induced glow of warmth on his patrician face. “I’ll be waiting.”

  His hand slid deliberately up the inside of her bare upper arm. Her stomach contracted and didn’t relax, even after he released her and casually made his way toward the terrace doors. Passing a pair of admiring females on his way out, he gave them a regal nod, as if their admiration were his due. She knew if she joined him on the darkened terrace, he would alternately pressure and cajole her to announce their engagement and set a wedding date.

  She would rather have a tooth pulled.

  Several teeth.

  The next moment, however, dealing with Morgan-in-the-dark became the least of her worries. She spotted a slender male form, dressed in an oversized frock coat and white neck band that mimicked a cleric’s collar, standing in the drawing room doorway. The unrelenting black of his clothing posed a stark contrast to the pale hair that hung to his shoulders and had been caught back in an old-fashioned queue. She would know that dark clothing and pale hair anywhere. Her breath caught as his fair head turned this way and that, searching the guests.

  Her first impulse was to hide … to find a curtain, a planter, a sofa, anything. But, unaccustomed to such cowardly urges, she waffled and hesitated a moment too long to make a successful escape.

  “Diamond!” Louis Pierpont bore down on her with a look of such rapture on his delicate features that she groaned silently.

  “Louis!” She had to make the best of it. “What are you doing here?”

  He seized her gloved hands, held them up reverently before his gaze, and gave a dramatic sigh. “I could not bear to be away from you an
other day, my dearest jewel. I took the fleetest packet from Barbados and flew straight to Gracemont the moment we docked. I was devastated to find you not at home. Your Mrs. Humphrey said you had come here.”

  He glanced around at the people eyeing him and developed a slightly pained expression. But it was not chagrin at his lack of proper dress or embarrassment at the disapproving stares of Baltimore’s elite that caused him such discomfort. Louis Pierpont, the sole survivor of what was once one of Baltimore’s most influential families, cared little for such things.

  “I simply had to come to you. I knew the Vassars would not mind if I arrived uninvited. They are good and charitable people.” He tossed a glance around them at the grandeur of Pennyworth’s drawing room. “Despite their regrettable materialism.”

  Clearly, it was finding her in such a worldly setting that caused the aggrieved expression he wore. She knew full well his attitudes toward elegant society and lavish entertaining. He had long ago forsworn accepting invitations to such events, as a witness to the world that he pursued a higher, “nobler” path.

  “But you said in your letter you wouldn’t be home for weeks,” she said, hoping her distress wasn’t visible. “What about the new mission?”

  “The mission staff arrived from Boston earlier than expected, and things went so well with the new doctor and reverend that I decided the mission could get along without me.” He smiled as if indulging her. “You didn’t think I would miss your birthday, did you?”

  “No, of course not.” It was all she could do to return even a portion of his smile; her face felt frozen.

  The flicker of longing in his eyes was painful to witness … until his gaze dipped lower and slid down her fashionably bared shoulders. The pallor of his cheeks disappeared as he flushed and dragged his wandering attention under control. Conscious of his dismay—she also knew his views on the decadence of clothing from “heathen” Paris—she glanced down at the neckline of her gown.