No Place for a Lady

  No Place for a Lady

  Vivian Vaughan

  Copyright

  Diversion Books

  A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.

  443 Park Avenue South, Suite 1008

  New York, NY 10016

  www.DiversionBooks.com

  Copyright © 1996 by Jane Vaughan

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For more information, email info@diversionbooks.com

  First Diversion Books edition June 2015

  ISBN: 978-1-62681-849- 1

  Also by Vivian Vaughan

  A Wish to Build a Dream On

  Storms Never Last

  Sweetheart of the Rodeo

  Branded

  Reluctant Enemies

  The Texas Star Trilogy

  Texas Gamble

  Texas Dawn

  Texas Gold

  Silver Creek Stories

  Heart’s Desire

  Texas Twilight

  Runaway Passion

  Sweet Texas Nights

  Jarrett Family Sagas

  Sweet Autumn Surrender

  Silver Surrender

  Sunrise Surrender

  Secret Surrender

  Tremaynes of Apache Wells Series

  Chance of a Lifetime

  Catch a Wild Heart

  To Arnette Lamb

  A gifted writer

  A true and generous friend

  One

  Buckhorn, Texas

  1880

  Eagerness swelled Madolyn Sinclair’s properly confined bosom. Unfamiliar as the feeling was, she recognized it. Accompanied by something soft and wonderful, it bubbled to life deep inside her and mushroomed into an impossible-to-subdue sense of anticipation.

  She pressed her nose against the window of the slowing passenger car. In wonder, she peered out at the weathered depot, at the similarly weathered people, who blended with the grays and tans of the adobe buildings, the hues of dirt and dust. This was a land of no color. Even the sky seemed to have been sucked clean by the relentless wind, leaving in place of the familiar blue, an eye-piercing dome of white light.

  She recognized none of the half-dozen or so booted, Stetsoned men who clustered around one end of the platform, waiting for the train to come to a halt. But then she would not recognize him right off. She knew that. She wondered whether he would recognize her.

  When Madolyn realized what she was doing, she pulled her face from the window and sat properly erect in her seat. But the thrill, the joy, of finally arriving in Buckhorn, Texas, would not be restrained.

  She was about to see Morley. For the first time in twenty years, she was about to see her brother.

  Memories, which had augmented her anxiety on the long trip from Boston, had changed in nature. No longer were they unpleasant. As quickly as rainwater evaporated in the dry heat of this arid land, the bad times she experienced after Morley left home without so much as a word of explanation vanished beneath her tremulous sense of anticipation.

  Madolyn poked a wayward curl beneath her black straw bonnet and gripped her parasol in a tight fist. She was about to see Morley, and the eagerness that flowed like a tonic through her veins was impossible to contain, even for one as strictly controlled as she. The moment the coach came to a halt, she sprang from her seat and was the first person down the aisle.

  “Wonderin’ ’bout that little filly yonder?”

  Tyler Grant glared across the railroad tracks to the opposite depot, a mirror-image of the one from which he had watched the unloading of a fancy-stepping, honey-colored two-year-old filly named ’Pache Prancer.

  The high-pitched voice of Ol’ Cryer shot through his anger, as though to reinforce it. The only thing Tyler wanted to know about ’Pache Prancer was why the hell she hadn’t been unloaded on his side of the tracks. But, of course, he already knew the answer to that. Absently, he pitched a quarter to the wiry little man.

  Ol’ Cryer hooked a thumb in each suspender. “She’s Morley’s sister.”

  A joke from Ol’ Cryer? The habitually down-and-out loafer hung around the Buck side of the tracks selling news gleaned from the Horn side of town. Generally he didn’t resort to charging for sarcasm; Tyler wouldn’t have supposed the old codger knew what it was.

  “You call that news? Everyone on both sides of the tracks knows Morley Sinclair’s a horse’s ass.”

  Ol’ Cryer snorted; his shaggy white eyebrows pinched together over a wrinkled face, giving one the impression of a caterpillar that couldn’t make up its mind which way to crawl. “You’ve been spendin’ too much time with your cows, Grant. I’m talkin’ ’bout that little lady standin’ direc’ly in front of you yonder.”

  Still smarting from his betrayal by his erstwhile partner, Morley Sinclair, Tyler turned his attention to a woman who, indeed, stood directly in front of him, separated by a pair of railroad tracks. Morley’s sister? Could be. Even from the rear and at the distance, he could make out a family resemblance—height and weight, leastways.

  She was tall for a woman, and skinny. Definitely of waspish temperament, he decided, noting her ramrod carriage and the way one foot tapped out an impatient staccato. Another trait of Morley Sinclair’s—cantankerousness.

  “What burr’s she got under her saddleblanket?” Even as he asked, Tyler’s attention shifted from the growing mound of baggage the roustabouts continued to stack around Morley’s obviously agitated sister. He turned to the original object of his consternation, the root of his petulance, the reason he had ridden into Buck today.

  He watched Jed, Morley’s foreman, lead ’Pache Prancer down Horn’s dusty main street. The redheaded foreman and the honey-colored horse collected a crowd. Tyler pulled out a pristine white handkerchief, removed his Stetson, and mopped his damp forehead. Absently, still watching the horse and its admirers, he dried the inside band of his hat before stationing it back on his head.

  It wasn’t hot, yet. A month from now it would be. Today was cool. A spring breeze blew down from the Chisos. It stirred dust between the railroad ties and kicked up a dust devil here and there in the wake of the retreating horse.

  Tyler was hot, but not from the weather. His agitation was caused by his irascible partner. Morley Sinclair, damn his hide, had stolen that filly right out from under Tyler’s nose. And Tyler didn’t intend to stand still and let him get away with it. Morley had taken enough from him already. Although the exact method by which he could right the situation evaded Tyler for the moment, he knew there was a way to get even. He just had to come up with it.

  “Morley wouldn’t even meet the train,” Ol’ Cryer was saying. “Jed there brung her word.”

  “What’re you mumblin’ about?” Tyler’s attention was trained on one thing: his partner’s latest offense. He had put up with Morley’s low-down, nasty behavior for close to twenty years; he had drunk and caroused with him like a brother. But all that was over. Finished. Terminado.

  In the last six months, their relationship had deteriorated to that of enemies. If they were brothers now, it was in the vein of Cain and Abel. Tyler wasn’t out to kill Morley, he admitted reluctantly, but he sure had a hankerin’—if not for murder, at least for revenge.

  “Jed there brung her word,” Cryer repeated.

  “What word?”

  “That she weren’t welcome. Morley sent word by Jed for her to climb aboard that train and head on back to Boston. Said, ‘Buckhorn, Texas, ain’t no place for a
lady.’”

  “That’s for sure.” Tyler scrutinized Miss Sinclair, if that’s what she was—a miss. He grinned. The woman standing before him was undoubtedly a spinster. No man in his right mind would have shackled himself to a toe-tapper like that. Even viewed from the rear, she gave no hint of softness. Those clothes—somber black, unrelieved by any sort of decoration he could see; hair in a tight black bun, topped by a no-nonsense black hat; parasol hoisted rigidly above her head, as though she expected it to aid her escape.

  Tyler grunted. A broomstick would likely be a more fitting mode of travel for a lady with that much starch in her spine.

  But the severe cut of her dress nipped her waist to a nice turn, he acknowledged. Like from the neck of an hourglass, her skirt flared gracefully into a modest bustle.

  “Maddie,” he mused. Yes, that was her name. Morley had spoken of her often, the little sister he left behind in Boston. She’d been what…ten? That would make her thirty. Definitely a spinster.

  Tyler pushed his hat back on his head. The term old maid probably would fit her better. “What’s she waitin’ for?”

  “She ain’t goin’.”

  Tyler squinted as if to get a better look. “Not goin’?”

  “Tole Jed to tell Morley she come all the way from Boston to see him, and she’ll do it ’fore she leaves this godforsaken land, even if she has to walk out to his place.”

  “Walk?” Tyler chuckled at the idea. “I suppose she aims to carry that heap o’ baggage on her stiff spine.” The mound of trunks, bandboxes, hatboxes, valises and other traveling paraphernalia continued to grow as the roustabouts stacked one piece of baggage after another around toe-tapping Maddie Sinclair. Pretty soon, she wouldn’t be able to see the road she appeared to be staring down so intently.

  The same road Tyler had been staring down. He returned his attention to the street where Jed had led ’Pache Prancer off toward Morley’s side of the ranch. The horse and foreman were nowhere to be seen. Damn Morley Sinclair!

  Fury seethed inside Tyler. He had coveted ’Pache Prancer for better than a year. But try as he had to convince Morley of the wisdom of such an investment, Morley had decried the notion of raising thoroughbred racehorses on their Texas range.

  At the time, Tyler had been in no position to take the horse across the river into Old Mexico. Then six months back, when the Mexican government began in earnest to run Tyler off the partners’ land south of the border, Morley refused to allow him to move a single head of their livestock to the Texas range. That was the first volley fired in the war between the partners.

  The next skirmish followed soon after, when Tyler arrived in Buckhorn one day to find the town divided into two parts. Separated by the rails, Horn belonged to Morley and his supporters; Buck was left for Tyler. He was mad enough to eat railroad ties at that.

  But mad wasn’t the word when Raúl Ybarra, Tyler’s tophand, brought word the day before yesterday that Morley had purchased ’Pache Prancer and that the now two-year-old filly was due to arrive on the train today.

  Like the proverbial straw, Morley’s purchase of ’Pache Prancer purged Tyler of every last trace of remorse over their lost friendship, steeling him for revenge.

  Revenge. He would get that damned horse if he had to go out there and steal it right out from under Morley’s nose.

  He would—

  Inspiration struck like a bolt of lightning. Digging into his pocket, Tyler produced another quarter, which he offered Ol’ Cryer. “Tell me all you know about this sister of Morley’s.”

  Ol’ Cryer snapped a suspender against his frail, gray-shirted chest, a gesture that always caused Tyler to cringe. One day the bony old man was going to crack a rib doing that. “Ain’t much to it,” Cryer was saying. “Nothin’ more’n I said. Minute she stepped off the train, Jed give her the word from Morley—to go back where she come from.”

  “What’s she doing out here?”

  “Didn’t say. Figured to visit her kin, I reckon.”

  Tyler surveyed the heap of baggage that threatened to rival El Capitán’s eight-thousand-foot elevation any minute now. From the look of things, waspish Maddie Sinclair had come for more than a visit, unless it was an extended one.

  Tyler strove to keep from laughing out loud. He could see Morley’s reaction now! He could see it, feel it, taste it. Who said revenge wasn’t sweet? He dug into his pocket once again. This time he tossed two quarters to the astonished Ol’ Cryer.

  “You and Rolly get together. Tell Miss Sinclair she’s found a ride out to the ranch.”

  “No kiddin’?”

  “No kiddin’.”

  “You can’t take yourself out there, Grant. Those kids of Morley’s have orders to shoot you on sight.”

  “Hell, Cryer, those kids won’t shoot me. I’m a damned sight better to ’em than Morley is. Besides, I’ll be transportin’ their auntie. Right neighborly of me, under the circumstances.”

  “Right stupid of you under the circumstances.” But Ol’ Cryer accepted payment in advance. Shuffling to the middle of the railroad tracks, he stopped and called to a round little man of equally advanced years.

  “Hey, Rolly, git yerself over here. You ain’t gonna believe this.”

  Madolyn stood on the platform, swamped by a sickening haze of disappointment and indecision. What to do? What to do? The relentless, buffeting wind only added to her distress, to her sense of betrayal and abandonment. As with human fingers, it continued to strip curls from her tight bun; when a gust threatened to lift her parasol to the high heavens, she slid it closed and tucked it under her arm. Groping inside her reticule, she withdrew a gold pocket watch, which she snapped open with a practiced motion of her fingers.

  Three o’clock. The train had arrived in Buckhorn two hours behind schedule, although she was beginning to suspect that might be considered punctual in this backward part of the world. Especially when one was required to reset one’s timepiece at every depot. The train was due to depart for civilization after taking on a load of cattle, in a couple more hours, if she could believe the stationmaster. Two hours. With luck she could secure Morley’s signature by then and be on her way home.

  She flipped the watch closed and replaced it in her reticule, swiping unruly curls off her face. The pocket watch had belonged to her father. She carried it for a practical reason: She needed a timepiece. She carried it for a less practical, but infinitely more important reason, as well: to remind her that men were no damned good.

  Her brother’s startling response to her arrival in this godforsaken land testified to that dismal fact.

  She ran a forefinger inside her high, wedding-ring collar, separating it from her irritated skin. In the heat, layers of dirt and perspiration had reacted with heavy starch to blister a ring around her neck. And they claimed the worst was yet to come. Three different people on the train had said virtually the same thing.

  “If you think May’s hot, wait till July.”

  She had worried about that, briefly. Until Morley sent word for her to return to Boston. For some reason she doubted the approaching summer had anything to do with his decision to send her home, sight unseen.

  She had known he might not be overjoyed to receive the telegram announcing her arrival. He had contacted the family but once in twenty years—she took that to mean he had created a new life for himself. Which was all well and good.

  Madolyn wanted a new life for herself, too, but in order to have one, she needed Morley’s help. Desperation clawed its way up her chest and lodged in her throat. It took gritty control to suppress tears, but she did. Madolyn prided herself on being the kind of woman who never gave in to hysteria.

  “A woman must dig deep to find the strength to survive in this man’s world,” Miss Abigail taught. Madolyn peered down the long, dusty road. She considered the walk ahead. She could use a good dose of that strength right now, physical and mental.

  She had no idea how far it was to Morley’s. Whatever the distance, though, it was too
far on feet that were so swollen they threatened to pop the laces on her sensible walking shoes.

  “Ma’am?”

  Madolyn started when someone tapped her shoulder. Turning, she looked her assailant squarely in the eye. Before she could berate the pudgy-faced old man who gazed up at her with the disquieting manner of a mole squinting at the sight of daylight, he removed his floppy-brimmed brown hat and held it respectfully over his heart. His bare dome rose above a fringe of untrimmed gray hair.

  “Yes, Mr.—”

  “Call me Rolly, ma’am. Guess you could consider me a messenger.” Returning his hat to his head, Rolly swiped the back of a hand across his lips. “That gentleman yonder says he’ll drive you out to Morley’s.”

  Madolyn eyed the plump little messenger.

  “Turn around, ma’am. You’ll see.”

  Inured to things never being what they were touted, Madolyn nevertheless followed Rolly’s pointing arm to a depot on the opposite side of the railroad tracks, where the imposing figure of a man lounged indolently against a post. He blended into the weathered wood and adobe as though he were part and parcel with the depot. Indeed, with one leg bent at the knee and his booted foot propped against the post, he looked for all the world as if he were trying to hold up the building. And he was certainly large enough. She had never seen a man so large.

  When she caught his eye, he tipped his Stetson, nodded a silent greeting, and grinned. Embarrassed to be caught staring, Madolyn swirled away.

  “Don’t’cha want his help, ma’am?”

  “It’s miss, and no, I do not want his help.”

  “Then what’d you aim to do?”

  “I shall find a way. Kindly direct me to the livery.”

  “Livery’s on the other side of town, miss.”

  Madolyn frowned, wondering what difference that could possibly make. Everything else out here was spaced miles apart. Why should the livery be an exception? With her reticule swinging from her arm by drawn cords, she slid open her parasol, hoisted her skirts in a mitted hand, and started to walk away.