for the stagecoach? It leaves at the awful hour of six Sunday morning back to Austin. I’ve some business to conduct in New York before I sail home, and I’m to present a bill in the House of Lords.... By the by, Amelia and I wish you could come home for a visit one day, you know.”
“I’d like that, too, someday. Money’s still a bit tight, though we made a handsome profit on the cattle in Abilene, thanks to Raleigh Masterson, the fellow who brought you out here. He was in charge of the trail drive—the ‘trail boss,’ as the others called him.”
“He mentioned something about that,” Edward remarked.
“He knows longhorns,” Nick said, respect in his voice. “They’re the wiliest, most unpredictable and contrary beasts alive, but he knew how to handle them.”
“I believe he found our sister quite captivating,” Edward said then, an edge to his voice. “He looked at her as if she was Venus reborn.”
He had? Violet found herself grinning in the darkness. She’d thought she’d seen admiration in Raleigh Masterson’s eyes, but to hear her brother put it the way he had was even more thrilling. Not that she wanted any man but Gerald, of course, but any girl would be flattered to know a man like Raleigh appreciated her.
“He’d have to be blind not to,” Nick said. “Violet was all eyes and legs, like a spindly filly, when I was last home, but she’s grown quite beautiful. Puts me in mind of that portrait of Mother that hangs on the landing at Greyshaw Hall.”
“She does favor Mother, doesn’t she? But you’re saying I needn’t worry about Masterson pressing...shall we say ‘inappropriate attentions’ on Violet once I leave?” Edward asked.
Again, she heard that edge in his voice.
“Raleigh? Of course not.”
Edward gave an inelegant snort. “He’s not a saint, is he? Any man could be tempted by a lovely female, lady or not, and Violet can be impulsive, you know. She walked directly up to him in the street.”
Again, Violet had to suppress the urge to dash into the parlor and read Edward the riot act, but she checked herself. It was true that an eavesdropper never hears any good about oneself. And she wanted to hear how Nick would respond.
“I might have agreed with you before we went on the cattle drive, Edward,” Nick said. “Drovers are known to be rather a wild lot, especially when they get to town after a long cattle drive. But something happened to Raleigh on the trail...something that’s changed him. For the better.”
“Oh? What’s that?”
“Why don’t you ask him yourself, if you see him again before you leave?”
“Perhaps I shall, if the opportunity presents itself. But for now, I think I’ll seek my bed. Between the stagecoach and that buckboard wagon, I feel jolted into powder.”
Nick chuckled. “I imagine you do. But then you are getting along in years, brother....”
“You always were an impertinent pup.” It was affectionately said.
Violet barely had time to scramble silently back to her room and close the door as quietly as she could before she heard the two men enter the hallway she’d just left. She had to stifle a giggle. How embarrassing it would have been if they’d caught her listening to them talking about her.
She waited till later, after the house had grown quiet again, to go get the glass of water she’d wanted. In the meantime, she entertained herself by wondering what had happened on the trail drive to change Raleigh Masterson “for the better,” as Nick had said. Perhaps she’d ask him about that, if they got a chance to talk again.
Whatever it was, it hadn’t affected Masterson’s ability to know a pretty woman when he saw one, she thought, smiling in the dark.
Later, her thirst quenched, she mentally planned a letter to Gerald. She’d tell him all about their journey, and the exotic flora and fauna she’d seen, and the beautiful blue roan stallion the cowboy had ridden. She’d write nothing at all about the cowboy himself, of course. There was no point in making Gerald fear he had a rival for her affections, after all. Raleigh Masterson would merely be the model for her book’s hero, and what a hero he would make! He would fairly light up the pages of her manuscript.
It wasn’t Gerald who appeared in her dreams that night, though. It was Raleigh Masterson.
* * *
Violet first felt a tentative touch on her cheek, so light a moth’s wing might have made it. She started to brush it away, thinking a moth might well have landed on her in the night, but before she could, she felt a more insistent poke, like that made by a small child’s finger. A sticky finger, at that. She caught the scent of strawberries.
“Mornin’, An’ Vi’let,” a childish voice said by her ear.
Violet opened a tentative eye to see little Nick staring at her, his face only inches from hers. She’d fallen asleep with her arm hanging over the edge of the bed, and now her nephew stood right by her, watching her curiously.
Sunlight streamed through the east-facing window, little hindered by the sheer muslin curtains, illuminating the jam smeared on both of the child’s cheeks. His brown hair was tousled.
“Good morning, little Nick,” she said, amused by the sight of him. “Already had breakfast, have you?”
He scowled. “Not lil’. Big boy,” he informed her.
Just then Milly bustled into the room. “So that’s where you’ve gotten, Nicky! I’m so sorry, Violet. I told Nicky he had to be quiet out in the kitchen because his aunt was sleeping, and when I went to get a cloth to wipe his face, he took that as a hint he was to come wake you.”
“It’s all right,” Violet assured her. “I normally don’t sleep past dawn.”
“You must have been tired after your journey,” Milly said, then chuckled. “The last time I went somewhere in a stagecoach, I thought my brains would rattle right out of my head.”
“An’ Vi’let ’wake!” crowed little Nick.
“Yes, she is, thanks to you,” agreed his mother. “Now come with me and let me wipe off your face and hands, Nicky. I declare, you have more jam on your face than you swallowed. Violet, come out to the kitchen for breakfast when you’re ready. No need to hurry.”
Violet smiled as she watched them go. She quite liked Milly, she’d decided. Her brother had chosen well. Such a romantic story, his coming to this part of Texas to meet the woman who had placed a newspaper advertisement for eligible bachelors, and losing his heart to her. To think she’d been running the ranch with only her sister and a few cowboys before that! She must have had considerable spirit to have coped with it all. The very day Nick had arrived in Simpson Creek, Edward told her, the ranch had suffered a savage Indian attack. It was just as exciting as the novel she planned to write.
Little Nick was appealing, too, she decided. He had his father’s smile and adventurousness, but his dark eyes were shaped just like Milly’s. Hearing him call her “An’ Vi’let” had quite won her heart.
Hearing her brothers’ voices in the kitchen, she decided to get dressed rather than appear in her nightgown and wrapper. She picked the simplest dress she’d brought, a flower-sprigged cotton more suited to the heat of Texas than her traveling ensemble yesterday had been. She twisted her long blond hair into a knot at her nape.
“Good morning,” she wished them all when she entered the kitchen and seated herself at the long, rough-hewn table.
Nick looked up from the newspaper he’d been showing Edward. “Good morning, Violet. I hope you found your room comfortable?”
“Perfectly,” she replied. It was certainly different from her tower room at home with its flocked wallpaper and Aubusson carpet and the ancient, canopied bed. But she rather liked the guest room’s simple whitewashed walls, the