I heard he commandeered the train that brung him. Forced ’em to turn off their track and go his way to Morrow Creek.”
At that, the bellman whistled, apparently impressed. “Do you reckon he’s really him? I know Mr. Mouton got that telegram yesterday, but I thought Griffin Turner was practically a ghost.”
“Nobody’s ever seen him,” the clerk agreed, “so I’d say—”
Olivia cleared her throat. “Gentlemen,” she said gently, “you know we’re not supposed to gossip about our guests. This is a guest of the hotel you’re discussing, I assume?”
Both men met her inquiry with disbelieving stares.
“You haven’t heard?” the bellman asked. “I heard about him even afore I got to the hotel for work! The whole town’s abuzz.”
This did not enlighten Olivia as much as she would have liked. Patiently, she said, “Well, the whole town’s not been here, in the hotel where I live,” she said with a good-natured smile—one that the bellman, who’d proposed to her just last month, returned readily. “Not yet. So I haven’t heard a thing.”
“It’s The Boston Beast,” the clerk confided, leaning on his desk. He nearly smudged his guest register and upset his inkwell in the process. “The Tycoon Terror. The Business Brute!”
The bellman nodded vigorously. “It’s him! Plain as day! Or night, at least. He didn’t even take his own private train car. He just showed up, lickety-split, in the middle of the night!”
“Hmm. The Boston Beast, eh? You’ve been reading those tabloid journals from the states again, haven’t you?” Olivia guessed, shifting her gaze from one talkative employee to the next. She shook her head. “I’m going to have to ask the O’Malley & Sons book agent to stop bringing them with her.”
“It ain’t the press. It’s the truth.” Wide-eyed, the desk clerk turned his guest register. He pointed at the aggressive scrawl penned on the very last line. “See? There’s his name!”
“His name?” Olivia stifled a grin. She raised her brows. “Would that be The Tycoon Terror or The Business Brute?”
“Just look!” The clerk waggled his finger at the scribble.
Dubiously, Olivia peered at it. “That could be anything. It looks as if an especially tetchy chicken got a hold of a pen.”
The bellman guffawed. He traded glances with the clerk, then returned his attention to her. “You’re funny, Miss Mouton.” He hitched up his suspenders, then nervously wet his lips. “I don’t s’pose you’ve given any more thought to my proposal?”
Uh-oh. That was Olivia’s cue to skedaddle. No good could come of it when men talked about marrying her. She’d spent the past several years dodging proposals, having learned long ago that finding what she truly wanted—a man who’d value her for her genuine self—was as likely as finding gold in a guppy bowl.
“I can think of little else,” she assured the bellman with a kindly touch to his forearm. She smiled. “I promise.”
“I know you’ve got other offers.” The bellman stared at her hand as though transfixed. “I know that. Everyone does. But I would surely be honored, Miss Mouton, if you would choose me.”
The clerk only chortled. “Now, hold on, there. You know Miss Mouton is famously picky. She ain’t gonna be choosing you.”
“Well, she’s got a right to be picky!” The bellman gulped. Chivalrously, he came to Olivia’s defense. “She’s a famous beauty. She’s recognized in every single state and territory.”
He gestured helpfully—and unnecessarily—at the rows of bottled patent elixir lining the shelf behind the hotel’s front desk. Every last one poked at Olivia’s guilty conscience. She’d traded her hopes for the future for a lithographed likeness of herself staring out from those bottles of Milky White Complexion Beautifier and Youthful Enhancement Tonic. Now she was stuck.
Her father, finally and evidently as proud as punch, had purchased a whole case for himself. He’d used it to decorate the entire hotel—and to distribute to the other businesses in town, as well. No place she went was free of that blasted bottle.
She only wished her father had been proud of her, not her face. She wished he’d recognized what was special about her.
On the other hand, maybe there wasn’t anything special about her, Olivia reasoned. Maybe she was just as useless and as needlessly celebrated as those bottles of elixir were.
After all, she’d looked into that peddler’s remedy shortly after it had debuted. Its ingredients were scientifically ineffective at best. All Milky White Complexion Beautifier and Youthful Enhancement Tonic had going for it was the unreasonable hope it could engender in otherwise rational people.
That bestselling remedy was just like her in that regard, Olivia realized as she caught another besotted look from the bellman. Somehow, she made people believe she had something they needed...when she knew she didn’t have anything tangible to give. She knew she was a fraud. She’d been hiding her nonbeautiful, less than prim, intellectual-stimulation-craving qualities for so long that she wasn’t even sure they existed anymore.
In truth, that was why Olivia had turned down so many marriage proposals. That was why she dallied with answering them, the way she’d done with the poor bellman. She didn’t want to disappoint anyone...but she did want to be more than an ornamental wife to a beauty-loving husband. She wanted everyone to see her as more than a beauty on a bottle first...and a person last.
The trouble was, Olivia didn’t know how. She didn’t know where to begin, or even if she could begin. And as she glanced from the bellman to the desk clerk, registering their expectant faces and alert postures, she understood that trying to change her life now was a fool’s errand. It was set already.
“I’m sure this—” she peered at the scrawl in the guest register again, could not decrypt it and decided against using the heinous nicknames the hotel employees had used “—guest will be no trouble at all. In fact, he’s probably quite a gentleman.”
With that, Olivia said her goodbyes and sailed upstairs to The Lorndorff’s seldom-used top floor, mentally preparing herself for another busy, stultifying day of needlework, ladies’ group meetings, afternoon teas and outings to perform good works. On the staircase landing, she sighed.
Her dutiful daily routine was almost enough to make a lady wish for a dark, dangerous, seven-foot-tall, gun belt–wearing, train-commandeering, masculine mystery guest to come into her life and cause a stir—and a few pulse-pounding moments, too. But since that fanciful line of thinking would certainly go nowhere, Olivia would simply have to go on with living her own ordinary life...no matter how straitlaced and unsatisfying it might be.
Chapter Four
Olivia had stepped onto the hotel’s top-floor landing, headed for her living quarters in The Lorndorff’s cozy garret, when a rough male voice roared down the hallway.
“I told you to get out!”
Olivia froze, staring in the direction of that unexpected sound. Ordinarily, no one stayed in either of The Lorndorff’s optimistically named “luxury suites,” which were located
