Sweetwater Seduction (40 page)

Felton was busy having his own evening of shocks. When he had first seen the woman in the green dress walking toward him, he had thought she was beautiful, but he hadn't recognized her. A moment later, when Darcie Morton said, “Good evening, Felton,” he had gone slack-jawed with astonishment.

“Is that you, Darcie?”

She had smiled demurely and said, “I'm a little different on the outside, but it's me on the inside. What do you think?” She held out her arms and twirled in a circle for him.

Felton swallowed hard. “I never imagined you dressed like a lady.”

“Will I do?”

Felton looked around to see if Darcie was sticking out like a sore thumb, but except for being more beautiful than the other women, she fit in just fine. “You're beautiful, Darcie. You look real—”

“Respectable?”

He smiled. “Yeah. You do. Where'd you get the dress?”

She was looking down, straightening the pouf in back, so she didn't see his face when she answered, “Kerrigan helped me pick it out.”

“Kerrigan?” The word came out sounding kind of strangled.

Blithely, Darcie said, “Wasn't that nice? And he helped me with my manners, too. Told me how I should act and what I should say. He brought me here tonight.”

“Kerrigan brought you?” Felton had never felt the antagonism when Kerrigan treaded on his relationship with Eden Devlin that he felt right now. He had murder on his mind. “Did you . . . did he . . . have you let him . . .”

Felton couldn't even ask, he was so furious. He was afraid of what he would do if he got the wrong answer.

“I didn't think you'd mind if I came tonight, seein' as how I'm with Kerrigan, and Miss Devlin would never have to know.”

Felton felt that heaviness in his chest again. He was about to get engaged to a woman he didn't love, when standing right in front of him was a perfectly good woman he loved very much. And she looked perfectly respectable to him. Everyone who came west left his past behind him. Who was to say that he and Darcie couldn't start over together right here in Sweetwater?

He dragged Darcie over to a corner where they wouldn't be interrupted. “What would you say if I asked you to marry me, Darcie?”

“But you're announcin' your engagement to Miss Devlin tonight.”

“Answer the question!”

She looked up at him with eyes that had seen too many disappointments, and replied. “I would marry you in a heartbeat, Felton Reeves. If you asked.”

He heard from the tone of her voice that she wasn't expecting him to. Which was the goad that made him say, “Well, I'm asking. Will you marry me, Darcie Morton?”

She looked at him steadily, even though her heart was racing, and said as calmly as she could, “When you aren't promised to another woman, you come back and ask me again, and I'll give you my answer.”

Felton started to kiss her, but she put her fingertips against his lips. “When you're free,” she whispered. “Come and find me. I'll be waiting.”

Miss Devlin had been looking everywhere for Felton, but without much success. She thought maybe he had stepped outside on the boardwalk in front of the meetinghouse for a breath of fresh air. It was cold outside, and all she saw was a couple of ranchers at the corner of the building sipping on a tin flask they were passing back and forth. She was on the verge of stepping back inside when she heard her name mentioned along with Kerrigan's. She flattened herself against the wall in the darkness to hear what they said.

“I say he done it,” one rancher argued.

“Hell, nobody coulda seduced Miss Devlin,” another replied, “not even that high-and-mighty gunslinger.”

“He had more at stake than most. A thousand dollars is a pant-load of money. Seems he woulda found the right words to say to get her into bed.”

“Probably took one look at her without her clothes and changed his mind,” one of them said with a guffaw.

“Didn't have to take off her clothes,” another one said with a drunken giggle. “Only had to take a second look at her face.”

“Still, hirin' a man like him to seduce a woman like Miss Devlin, that ain't something I'd want to have to do again.”

There was a moment of sobering silence while they reflected on the desperation that had brought them to offer the gunslinger money to seduce Miss Devlin.

“I got me a wife inside,” one said, “who ain't let me across the bedroom threshold for way too long. I think I'm gonna go get her and head on home.”

“Me, too.”

“Missed that goldang woman more than I ever thought I would,” a third said.

Miss Devlin slid farther into the darkness as they passed by her on the way inside. She pressed herself flat against the meetinghouse wall. She was cold. And she felt a sense of impending disaster, as though an avalanche were sliding toward her, gathering force and speed. In her mind she was running as fast as she could to escape it, but however fast she ran, it wasn't fast enough. The revelations of the past few moments hit her hard and left her feeling overwhelmed and suffocated by the crushing weight of disillusionment.

Miss Devlin bolted back through the lighted door of the meetinghouse, frantically searching for a way to escape her devastating feelings. She saw Kerrigan with a smile on his face walking toward her from one direction. She turned away from him only to encounter Felton walking purposefully toward her from the other direction. She felt as if she was going to perish from the pain if she didn't do something quickly. She turned away from both of them and headed for the platform where the musicians were playing.

Her voice was strident when she spoke. “May I have your attention!” Confused, the musicians stopped playing. “Please, I need quiet!” Concerned, interested, the dancers on the floor turned to look at her. She felt every eye in the room on her.

Kerrigan was still coming toward her.

Felton was coming too.

“I have an announcement to make,” she said.

Kerrigan stopped.

Felton kept coming, and stepped up onto the platform beside her. But as he grasped her arm she took a deep breath and said, “There's going to be another marriage in Sweetwater. Felton Reeves and I want to take this opportunity to announce our engagement.”

There was a stunned silence and then a general hubbub of excited laughter and genuine pleasure that the spinster schoolteacher was going to be married at last.

All Miss Devlin saw was Kerrigan's pale cheeks, and the hurt and anger of her betrayal in his dark eyes.

Only she was the one who had been betrayed! Struggling awkwardly, she finally got the ring out of her pocket. “Here, Felton. Would you like to put the ring on my finger now to make it official?”

Felton was trapped. He took one quick look and saw that all the blood had drained from Darcie's face. There was nothing he could do right now to fix things without humiliating both Miss Devlin and himself. “Certainly.”

He had trouble getting the ring on her finger because both her hands and his were shaking.

“A kiss!” someone shouted from the crowd. “Give her a kiss.”

The crowd wasn't going to leave them alone, so Felton kissed her on the che

“Not like that. Give her a real kiss!” someone yelled.

The crowd started clapping, and shouting and whistling and stomping, until neither Felton nor Miss Devlin had a choice. Felton took her in his arms, and feeling wounded and sick at heart, he placed his lips on Miss Devlin's and gave her a kiss that pleased the crowd.

After that Miss Devlin was surrounded by couples offering their best wishes and help for planning the wedding.

“Why, you sly miss,” Regina said. “Keeping us out of our husbands' bedrooms, and all the while you were being courted by the sheriff!”

Miss Devlin heard everything, listened to nothing. She was only aware of Kerrigan standing on the fringes, his anger a palpable thing. She kept her chin up and refused to let him see her humiliation at what she had heard outside on the boardwalk. He had been
paid
to seduce her. How could she have believed his lies? Their entire relationship had been dishonest. A man who could agree to do something as despicable as seduce an innocent woman was incapable of love.

At the first opportunity, Felton took Miss Devlin aside and said, “I need to speak with you alone.”

“Can't it wait, Felton?”

He glanced at Darcie's devastated expression and said, “No. This can't wait. Let's get out of here.”

“All right. Let's go.”

Felton walked her home in silence. He came inside, but he wouldn't take off his coat. “This won't take long,” he said, sitting on the edge of the sofa.

Miss Devlin took off her coat and settled herself on the sofa beside him, but as soon as she did he popped up and moved over to sit in the reception chair across from her. “What is it, Felton?”

“I've . . . uh . . . changed my mind.”

“About what?”

“Getting married.”

“Oh.”

“That is, I ain't—haven't—changed my mind about getting married. I decided I'd rather marry somebody else,” he rushed to say.

“Then why in the world did you let me announce our engagement tonight?” she demanded.

Felton let his anger show for the first time. “Goddammit, woman, you never gave me a chance to stop you! I couldn't get a word in edgewise. I should have been the one to speak, and if you'd have waited for me, I'd have told you I changed my mind before things got out of hand like they did.”

“Oh.”

Felton was feeling bad, but not bad enough to back off from his stand. “I'm real sorry, Miss Devlin. We can wait a little while if you like, and you can say you changed your mind—”

“The girl you want to marry . . . do I know her?”

“She ain't—isn't—from Sweetwater.”

“Is she pretty?”

“Well, sure,” he said, her apparently calm acceptance of his pronouncement making this discussion easier than he had dared to hope and free of the stomach-wrenching tears he had been dreading.

“Is she tall?”

He gestured with a flat hand. “Comes about shoulder high on me.”

“Is she smart?”

He grinned, in relief more than anything else that Miss Devlin was being such a good sport about all this, and showing such an interest in Darcie. “Not hardly. But she's real nice, and she loves me and . . . I love her.”

“What's her name?”

“Darcie Morton.”

Miss Devlin pictured the stunning woman with the black hair and green eyes that Kerrigan had introduced to her. She found a smile somewhere and pasted it on her face. “I'm happy for you, Felton. I hope you'll both be happy. When is the wedding?”

“I ain't exactly proposed to Darcie yet. I wanted to settle things between us first before I—”

“Well, we've settled things now, so maybe you should go find her.”

Felton recalled the stunned look on Darcie's face at Miss Devlin's announcement of their engagement. “Yeah, I'd sure better at that.”

“Oh. Wait. You'd better take your ring back now.”

“Are you sure? I can—”

“Take it now.” She tugged the ring off and handed it to him.

Felton left Miss Devlin's parlor with all the relief and excitement of a kid breaking free at the end of the school term.

When Felton was gone, Miss Devlin walked into her bedroom and opened the Wish Box on her dresser. Staring back at her were the teething ring and the baby ribbon and the barber snips and the badger shaving brush—and the silver baby spoon. She gritted her teeth to still the quiver in her chin. Then she picked up box and threw it as hard as she could against the bedroom wall.

Eden didn't know how long she had been sitting in the dark when she heard the knock on the front door. She ignored it, thinking that whoever it was would go away. But the knocking became more insistent, a pounding that threatened to drive her mad. She opened the front door ready to give whoever was standing there a good piece of her mind.