Cowboys 08 - Luke (33 page)

Valeria didn't know what Luke had done to make Mrs. Brightman think he liked her, but she could see no sign of it. He sat directly across from her at the table, but he hardly glanced in her direction. Nor did he take part in the conversation. Since Mrs. Brightman and her daughters served the meal, it was left to her boarders and the men who paid for the privilege of taking their meals at her table to carry on the discussion.

"Are you certain there's no immediate danger of war in Europe?" Bill Tierney asked. He sat at the head of the table and had been grilling Valeria about European politics ever since he discovered she came from Belgravia. She had begged Mrs. Brightman to introduce her as Valeria Badenberg. Mr. Tierney didn't appear to know it was the name of the exiled royal family.

"You can never be certain about war," Valeria told him, "especially in the Balkans. Some of these people have hated each other for hundreds of years."

She'd been subjected to endless political talk her entire life. There wasn't much about European politics in the last ten years she didn't know.

"No one could hate you. You're much too pretty."

That was Fred Dample, the man on her right. Valeria had been told he sold harnesses, but she wouldn't have bought anything from a man so given to flattery. She'd been subjected to it her entire life but hadn't realized until now just how much she disliked it.

"Looks don't affect political decisions," she said.

"You could have a real powerful influence on me."

"Have some more stew, Fred," Mrs. Brightman said, forcing herself between Valeria and Fred Dample.

"I have an acquaintance in Germany," Bill Tierney said. "He tells me Queen Victoria won't let anybody start a war."

"Wars are most often started by a single person hungry for power," Valeria said, "or some madman willing to sacrifice his life for an ideal."

"I wouldn't sacrifice my life for you," Fred said, laying his hand on Valeria's arm, "but you sure do make me hungry."

"Then I suggest you get your hand off Miss Badenberg and eat your stew," Luke said.

"It ain't a food kind of hunger," Fred said, glaring at Luke.

"Food's a hell of a lot safer," Luke replied. "Now get your hand off the lady before I take it off for you." Valeria moved away from Fred. She didn't like him, she especially didn't like his touching her, but she hadn't expected Luke to threaten the man. It was nice to be on the right side of his temper for a change.

"What's your interest here?" Fred demanded of Luke. "The lady is trying to discuss politics," Luke said, "and

you're interrupting her."

"Who cares about Europe?" Fred asked.

A man down from Luke spoke up. "I do. I have family

back in Poland. Every time there is a war in Europe, somebody attacks Poland."

"Where the hell is Poland?" Fred demanded.

"It used to be between Prussia and Russia," Valeria said. "But a hundred years ago Prussia, Russia, and Austria divided it up among themselves."

"Then we don't have to talk about it anymore."

"But that's exactly the kind of thing that can lead to war," Bill Tierney said. "People like the Poles will do a lot to get their own country back. I'm surprised the Austro-Hungarian Empire hasn't collapsed."

"Nobody gives a damn about any of that," Fred said, "not in this country, anyway. We're worried about free silver."

"It won't do you any good to worry about it," Luke said. "It'll be decided in Washington, not the Arizona Territory."

"Why is free silver so important?" Valeria asked. If this was going to be her country, she needed to know about the important issues.

"It's about whether the price of silver will stay high enough to keep the mines open," Fred said.

Valeria soon lost interest in Fred's explanation of the problems with the gold and silver standard. She looked at Luke. When he smiled at her, her heart nearly turned over in her chest. She didn't know what she'd done to please him, but she was determined to find out so she could do it again. She made up her mind that if women in America were allowed to choose their husbands, she was going to choose Luke. She just didn't know how she was going to go about convincing him to choose her. He was the most hardheaded, stubborn, iron-willed man she'd ever met, absolutely determined to keep his distance.

She would have to ask Mrs. Brightman how to attract a man like Luke. He wasn't like the men she'd known in Belgravia. She also had to learn how to be an independent woman. She had only one more day. She was certain Luke wouldn't stay here a minute after the doctor said she could travel.

"A pretty girl like you has got to be bored by all this political talk," Fred said.

"Not at all," Valeria said, ashamed she'd paid so little attention to their argument. "I want to learn everything I can about America."

Fred's smile turned to a leer. "You've come to the right man, baby. I can teach you anything you want to know."

"I don't think Miss Badenberg has
come to you
at all," Luke said, his voice low and deliberate. "And if you were half the gentleman you think yourself to be, you wouldn't refer to a lady as
baby."

"What are you, some sort of guard dog?" Fred burst out.

"I'm.."

"Well she don't need you baring your teeth as long as she's got me around. You hang with me, baby. I'll teach you things you never dreamed about."

"You mean you'll take me inside a silver mine?" Valeria asked.

Fred's laugh was positively lecherous. "The little lady has a liking for the dark. We can fix that right after dinner. There'll soon be plenty of dark outside."

Valeria's eyes widened in disbelief, but there could be no question about it. Fred had put his hand on her leg.

"What's wrong?" Luke asked, his body suddenly tense.

Valeria was embarrassed and angry. She tried to push Fred's hand aside without letting anyone know, but she couldn't.

"I thought you said you liked the dark," Fred said, a teasing tone in his voice.

"You misunderstood me."

"Valeria, what's wrong?" Luke said.

"He has his hand on my leg," she said, still unable to push it aside.

Suddenly glasses and dishes went flying across the room, spilling their contents on diners, the carpet, and the wall before crashing to the floor.

Luke had thrown himself across the table at Fred, his hands around the man's throat.

Chapter Twenty

Valeria was too shocked to scream, but Mrs. Brightman's daughters filled the gap. Squealing and jumping about like they were perched atop a hot stove, they gleefully pointed fingers at the two men pummeling each other on the floor of their mother's normally quiet, always clean and neat dining room. If Valeria hadn't been too stunned to be aware of any but her own feelings, she'd have realized they were delighted with the fight.

It didn't last long. In a short and brutal exchange, Luke pounded Fred's head against the floor until the man's eyes glazed over. Then he dragged Fred's limp, unprotesting body out of the room, down the hallway, through the doorway, and across the front porch. Luke tossed him into the street, closed the front door, and returned to the dining room.

"Are you all right?" he asked Valeria.

She was unable to utter a sound, so she nodded her head. She still couldn't get over the shock that he'd fought for her. She'd been surrounded by an army of men her whole life, but this wasn't a paid employee doing a job. Luke could have ordered Fred to remove his hand, could have pulled a gun on him. Instead his rage had caused him to fling himself across the table. Maybe Mrs. Brightman was right. Maybe Luke really did care for her.

"Sorry for the ruckus, ma'am," Luke said to Mrs. Brightman, "but some men don't know how to behave around a lady. The food was mighty good. I'll be back in the morning to check on Valeria's progress." He paused briefly, seeming to become aware for the first time of the damage to Mrs. Brightman's table and crockery. "Add everything up, and I'll pay for it in the morning."

He stood there, totally unmoved by the dozen pairs of eyes staring intently at him. He didn't look ruffled or out of breath. Except for the gravy that streaked his clothes from vest to pantleg and the blond hair falling over his forehead, it would have been difficult to tell he'd just been in a fight.

He didn't look the least bit like the men in the portraits that lined the walls of the royal palace in Belgravia. He didn't have a military uniform. He wasn't in court dress, and he hadn't decorated his chest with dozens of medals to prove his heroism. He wore a pair of plain gray pants, a white shirt, string tie, black vest, and black coat. He looked like any one of a dozen Western men she'd seen.

Valeria thought he looked more magnificent than any hero in her family's long history.

"You can't destroy my dining room, then offer to pay for it like it's an everyday occurrence," Mrs. Brightman exclaimed, finally able to regain her speech.

"Since I can't put it back the way it was, what else do you want me to do?" he asked.

Despite her shock, Valeria nearly laughed. How like Luke to dismiss the emotional and focus on the practical.

He had no concept of the emotional shock he'd just caused to Mrs. Brightman or Valeria.

"You'll ruin the reputation of my boardinghouse," Mrs. Brightman sputtered, unable to counter Luke's commonsense reply.

"You'll have more customers than you can serve, at least for a few weeks. They'll all be anxious to see where the fight took place."

Luke's reply outraged Mrs. Brightman. "If you think I want a reputation as a woman who allows fights to take place in her dining room, you're sadly mistaken."

"I'll be sure to let everyone know you threw me out right behind Fred Dample."

"You needn't bother.
I'll
make certain everyone knows it."

"If you need anything, send one of the girls for me," Luke said to Valeria. "I'll be staying at the Golden Horse."

"I'm not in the habit of sending for men in the middle of the night," Mrs. Brightman said, clearly incensed, "nor of letting my daughters go anywhere near the Golden Horse."

"I'll see you in the morning."

"You're crazy," Mrs. Brightman said as she followed Luke out of the dining room and down the hall. "You're not to come to my house ever again."

"Night, ma'am," Luke said as he opened the front door. "That stew was especially good this evening." He glanced down at the gravy on his clothes. "I'm glad I got the chance to take some of it with me."

Mrs. Brightman slammed the door behind him and turned back toward the dining room with
a harrumph
that seemed to say, "good riddance to bad rubbish." An arrested expression indicated that a new thought had occurred to her. She smiled, chuckled to herself, then reverted to her angry frown.

"I don't like to hurry you, gentlemen," she said when she returned to the room, "but eat up. It'll take me half the night to clean up this mess, and I want to get started."

The men wolfed down the remainder of their meals. Mrs. Brightman shooed them out of the dining room with food practically still on their forks.

"I told you that man was sweet on you," she said to Valeria the minute she closed the door behind her last guest. "My guess is he's dotty."

"Dotty?" Valeria wished these Americans would use ordinary words. She couldn't understand them half the time.

"Crazy about you," Mrs. Brightman said.

"Crazy?" This conversation was getting more and more difficult to follow.

"You been speaking English long?" Mrs. Brightman asked.

"All my life."

"Who'd you learn it from?"

"I had an English nurse who-"

"That explains it," Mrs. Brightman said. "Them people don't know how to talk like normal folks. I'm saying Luke likes you a lot, so much he might even want to marry you."

Valeria could only repeat what she'd said so many times before. "He hates me and everything I represent."

"Nonsense. It's just his way of not letting you know he can't think about anybody but you."

"If that's true, why wouldn't he want me to know?"

"Men are like that," Mrs. Brightman said as she started to sweep up the mess on the floor while her daughters cleared the table. "They think loving a woman makes them seem weak."

"Why?"

"I don't know. Well, actually I do. Men are peculiar beasts. They've got to appear strong enough to handle any situation, no matter how tough. If other men think they're weak, they'll try to take advantage of them. Luke's got a reputation for being ruthless. He shoots first, and if he worries about the consequences at all, he does it later."