Schulze, Dallas (39 page)

“Bishop.” Lila set her hand on his sleeve, her voice pleading.

The light touch reminded him that his main concern was her peace
of mind. And, much as he hated to admit it, it probably wouldn’t make her feel
any better to have him punch her brother in the mouth. A pity, really, he
thought wistfully. Reluctantly he sat back in his seat. Lila’s hand still
rested on his sleeve and he set his own fingers over it.

It was hard to say just where the evening might have gone from
there, had the four of them been left to their own devices. It was perhaps
fortunate that Sara Smythe chose that moment to sail up to the table. Wearing a
deep-blue dress adorned with ivory lace and a four-inch ruffle at the hem, she
looked every inch the successful matron. Her husband trailed behind her, with
his usual look of vague surprise, as if, even after all these years, he wasn’t
sure how he’d come to find himself married to the forceful woman at his side.

“Good evening, Sheriff McKenzie. Mrs. McKenzie." She nodded
at both of them, like a queen acknowledging her subjects, Bishop thought as he
pushed back his chair and rose courteously.

“Mrs. Smythe. Franklin.” He made the introductions, amused to see
Sara’s reaction to meeting Douglas and Susan, two people obviously and
comfortably ensconced in the level of society to which Sara so blatantly
aspired. Some women might have treated them with deference but not Sara.
Typically, she reacted by becoming even more overbearing.

“I do hope you’ll forgive me for interrupting your family dinner,”
Sara said, looking as if she didn’t particularly care whether they forgave her
or not. “But I felt I should take this opportunity to express my concern about
your son, Sheriff.”

“Gavin?” Bishop raised one brow in question. “What about him?”

“I’m afraid he’s encouraging my son, William, in this ridiculous
fantasy of his.”

“What fantasy?”

“This idea that he’s going to grow up to be a ... a shootist such
as yourself.” Sara made the word an accusation. There was a moment of silence,
broken by Lila.

“William is very young, Sara. He’ll change his mind half a dozen
times before he’s grown.”

“That’s easy for you to say.” Sara waved one hand in a gesture
that dismissed Lila’s opinion as being of absolutely no importance. “But
your
stepson is the one who’s encouraged William in these ridiculous notions. Not
that I blame the boy. When his own father seeks out gunfights in broad daylight
in the middle of the street, it’s not unexpected that he should admire such
behavior.”

And now they got to the real point of the conversation. Bishop
wondered idly what had taken her so long to get to him. From the moment Dobe
Lang hit the dirt yesterday, a visit from Sara had been inevitable. She’d never
made any secret that she disapproved of the town hiring him. Her contention
from the start had been that a man of his reputation would bring trouble with
him. In this case, she’d been dead right.

“From what we were told, the gentleman who was killed brought the
fight to Bishop, rather than the other way around.” Surprisingly, it was
Douglas who spoke.

“Conflict can always be avoided if one is sufficiently motivated
to do so,” Sara said, speaking with the complete confidence of someone who’d
never done anything to avoid conflict in her life. “But that’s neither here nor
there. I’m not concerned with that poor, unfortunate man who perished in the
street yesterday.” Her tone made Dobe Lang sound like an innocent bystander.
“I’d like to know what you plan to do about your son, Sheriff.”

“I’m not sure I follow you, ma’am.” Bishop raised both brows in
inquiry. “Just what is it Gavin has done?”

“I told you. He’s encouraging William in this ridiculous notion
that you’re some sort of hero.”

Despite his annoyance at her bullying attitude, Bishop couldn’t
suppress a twinge of amusement. His mustache twitched as he suppressed a smile.
“That
is
a ridiculous notion,” he murmured.

“I seem to recall that William was the one who’d been cutting out
newspaper clippings about my husband long before he met Gavin,” Lila said
sharply, not sharing Bishop’s appreciation of the moment. “From what I’ve heard
of their conversations, William doesn’t need any encouragement.”

“I’m sure William would never have come up with this ridiculous
idea on his own,” Sara said, her face flushing with annoyance. “I’ve forbidden
him to talk about it anymore yet I overheard him speaking to your son about
guns just this morning. William has never disobeyed me before.”

“I don’t know your son, Mrs. Smythe, so I can only speak in the
most general terms, but, as a teacher, it often seems to me that the brightest
children have the most active imaginations.” Susan’s smile was filled with
sympathy and understanding. “And often, the most intelligent among them are the
most high-spirited. I’ve always thought it was the Lord’s way of offsetting the
blessings of having a gifted child. Blind obedience is only for the slow of
wit, don’t you think?”

Sara stared at her a moment. From her expression, it was clear
that she saw the trap yawning in front of her. If she agreed with Susan, she
was admitting that William’s fantasy might not be Gavin’s fault. If she
disagreed, it was going to imply that her son was slow-witted, which was most
certainly
not
the case. The silence stretched as everyone waited for her
response.

She settled for a noncommittal and not entirely ladylike “Humpf.”
Which, Bishop guessed could be interpreted anyway you pleased. “I must be
going,” she announced, as if she’d just remembered a terribly important
appointment. She departed on a wave of rustling blue silk, Franklin trailing
somewhat apologetically in her wake.

She left behind a thick silence that lasted until Bishop and
Douglas had both taken their seats. It was left to Douglas to sum up the
encounter. “What a thoroughly unpleasant woman.”

“She reminds me of that governess I had when I was eight,” Lila
said. “The one Father fired after you put a snake in her bed. I’ll never forget
the way she screamed.”

“Lord, I thought the house was going to come down around our ears
before she shut up.” Douglas grinned reminiscently. “I think old Thomas threw a
pitcher of water in her face finally.”

“And then she stood there, soaking wet, and cursed us both up one
side and down the other, using language that would have made a sailor blush.
And Father fired her on the spot.”

“Why did you put a snake in the poor woman’s bed?” Susan asked,
looking less than amused by the thought that the childish prank had resulted in
the woman losing her job.

“Douglas found out she’d been taking a belt to me,” Lila said.
“Not that I could blame her, I guess. I was, on occasion, a bit willful.”

Douglas snorted. “You were impossible.” But there was affection
rather than condemnation in his voice.

“Willful,” she insisted. “Miss Gillyflower had come so highly
recommended that Douglas wasn’t sure Father would believe him if he told him what
was happening so he decided to force her to quit.”

“I thought it might take weeks.” Douglas picked up the story. “But
it turned out she was terrified of snakes and that she had a shocking
vocabulary, so we were rid of her the next morning. Father was so upset over
her language that he never even questioned how the snake had come to be in her
bed.”

The silence this time held a different quality. The anger was gone
and in its place was the warmth of shared memory.

“I could always count on you,” Lila told her brother softly.

Douglas’s eyes shifted from her to Bishop and abruptly his
expression became shuttered and cold. “Not always.”

Beside him, Bishop felt Lila sag back in her chair as if her
brother’s rejection had been a physical blow. He knew what Lila wanted—to make
peace with Douglas and repair some of the damage that had been done to their
relationship. He only wished he could be sure that Douglas wanted the same
thing.

***

If idle hands were the devil’s playground, then Satan must
certainly be playing somewhere else today, Lila thought the next morning as she
stirred together the ingredients for a batch of bread. Her hands hadn’t known
an idle moment all morning. From the moment she got up, she’d been cleaning or
cooking. She couldn’t fool herself about the origins of this sudden burst of
domestic energy. It had nothing to do with wanting to get ahead on her chores
and everything to do with Douglas’s sudden arrival in Paris.

It had been such a shock to open the door and see him and Susan
standing on the porch. For a moment, she’d half believed they were an illusion
conjured up by her talk with Bishop. Hard on the heels of the realization that
they weren’t a figment of her imagination had come the realization that,
whatever their reason for being there, it wasn’t to tell her all was forgiven.
Douglas’s cool greeting had made that abundantly clear.

Then, before she’d had a chance to do more than absorb the reality
of having her brother here, in Paris, in her home, Bishop had arrived and the
atmosphere—not exactly cozy to start with—had taken a decided turn for the
worse. And then Susan had insisted that they all have dinner together at the
hotel where she and Douglas were staying. Lila had jumped at the invitation,
thinking that nothing could be worse than having them all sit down to stew and
bad biscuits in the kitchen. Not that her brother would turn his nose up at
eating in the kitchen. Snobbery was not one of Douglas’s flaws. But she thought
the hotel might lighten the atmosphere a bit.

“If that was a lighter atmosphere, I shudder to think what it
would have been like if we’d stayed here,” she muttered to the mound of dough
into which she was working flour. And, as if the evening hadn’t already had
more than its share of unpleasantness, Sara Smythe had to show up, worried that
Gavin might be corrupting her precious son. “As if having a mother like that
wouldn’t be enough to drive the poor boy to a life of crime all on his own.”

Before she could finish mulling over the list of the evening’s
disasters for the fiftieth time, someone knocked on the front door. Douglas.
The fact that he’d used the front door told her who it was. Everyone else knew
to come around to the back of the house. Besides, Bridget was the only one
likely to come calling, and when Lila had taken Angel to visit Mary not more
than half an hour ago, Bridget had settled the little girls at the kitchen
table so they could “help” her bake cookies. Just the thought of the mess that
was sure to result was enough to make Lila shudder with sympathy.

Her hands immersed in the sticky dough, she drew a deep breath and
then yelled for her visitors to let themselves in. “I’m in the kitchen,” she
called when she heard the door open. Moments later Douglas and Susan appeared
in the doorway.

“I’m sorry to greet you so informally,” she said, forcing a bright
smile. “But as you can see, I’m up to my elbows in bread dough. If you don’t
mind waiting a few minutes, I’ll put some water on for tea.”

“I can put the water on if you’ll just tell me where everything
is,” Susan said as she reached up to unpin her hat.

“What are you doing?” Douglas asked by way of greeting.

“I’m making bread.” Lila dusted more flour over the end of the
table where she was working and rolled the dough into it. The dough was
starting to get that smooth, satiny feel that made kneading one of her favorite
things to do. She leaned her weight into the task, pushing on the heels of her
hands as she rolled the dough away from her.

“I recognize the task,” he said irritably. “What I don’t
understand is why you’re doing it. Shouldn’t you be resting?”

Lila glanced up from her task. “We weren’t out all that late last
night,” she said, surprised by the question.

“That’s not what I meant.” Douglas glanced at Susan, but she was
busy getting cups off the shelf and didn’t meet his gaze. “Is it wise to be
doing things like this in your condition?” he clarified, his eyes touching
momentarily on her stomach. It was the first time he’d referred to her
condition, which was certainly not something one could overlook.

“I’m fine, Douglas.” Lila lifted the dough and slapped it back
down on the table before continuing to knead.

“Don’t you have someone who can do this sort of thing for you?” he
asked. “A maid or housekeeper perhaps?”

“Maids and housekeepers aren’t exactly a common item around here,”
Lila told him. “Besides, I don’t really need one. The house isn’t that big and
there’s only the four of us. Gavin is good about helping out, and even Angel
does what she can.”

Glancing at her brother’s face, she saw that he looked less than
convinced. He was clearly uncomfortable with the idea of her doing manual
labor. A few months ago she might have felt much the same way Lila thought, but
she’d changed a great deal since her marriage to Bishop. She’d discovered that
she enjoyed doing things for herself. She enjoyed the feeling of accomplishment
that came with pulling a golden loaf of bread from the oven or making the bed
with sheets she’d just taken down off the line.

She couldn’t deny that she missed some of the creature comforts
she used to take for granted. Most especially she missed being able to take a
hot bath whenever she wanted with no more effort needed than requesting that it
be prepared. Just thinking about it was enough to make her feel wistful. But
she was, she realized with some surprise, happier than she’d ever thought
possible in this new life.