was touched by his concern. “Certainly I will, Alan. I’ll think of you while you’re away.”
“See that you stay in the house,” Hartwell Howard told her sharply. “No dillydallying!”
“Yes, Papa,” she agreed readily.
“Practice your piano, while you’re about it,” he added indifferently. “You play clumsily.”
“Yes, Papa,” she said again. She went close to fix his collar with gentle hands and worried eyes. “You will be very careful?” she asked uncertainly.
He glared at her. “I shall be fine! Stop fussing over me!” He jerked on his gloves and mounted his horse with little concern for the bit in the poor animal’s mouth. It reared, and he brought the quirt down on its flank viciously.
King swung out of the saddle with blood in his eyes, before his brother or his father could say a word. He jerked the quirt out of Hartwell’s hand and slammed it to the ground.
His silver eyes met the other man’s with honest dislike. “Our mounts don’t feel the spur or the quirt,” he told the man in soft, dangerous tones. “You can walk to the mountains if that doesn’t suit you.”
Hartwell eyed the younger man warily, his cheeks red. He wiped at his temple under the hat he was wearing. “Of course, dear boy,” he said with a hollow laugh. “The animal is rather unruly, you must have noticed.”
“Only when the bit tears at his mouth in clumsy hands,” came the blunt reply.
Hartwell looked down at the quirt and seemed to be debating his next move. King made it for him. He put his booted foot squarely over the quirt and calmly began to light a cigar.
The gesture was enough. Hartwell gathered the reins, gingerly this time, muttering under his breath about such consideration for a silly dumb animal as he moved away.
Amelia’s fingernails had made crescents in her palms. She had looked for her father to go crazy at the rebuke, perhaps to even grab a gun and start shooting. He was unpredictable. But King didn’t know that, and she couldn’t tell him. He probably wouldn’t believe her anyway.
But Brant saw the anxiety on Amelia’s face and knew that something was amiss. “King,” Brant began warningly.
The younger man looked up at him without blinking, his silver eyes still flickering dangerously.
“We should go, Father,” Alan prompted, wary of explosions. The two older men were both rash and hot-tempered. And often they didn’t see eye to eye on issues.
“Yes, I suppose we should,” Brant said finally, shifting restlessly in the saddle. “Watch your back,” he told King.
“You watch yours,” came the curt reply.
Brant smiled at his wife, nodded to Amelia, and turned his mount. Alan followed suit, glancing back until he almost fell from the saddle watching Amelia.
“Young idiot, he’ll break his neck. Must you encourage him so, Miss Howard, or are you just following Papa’s commandments?”
She turned, shocked at the vehemence in his voice.
“Really, King,” Enid clucked, glaring at him. “You were on your way to see the Valverdes, were you not? Pray, don’t let us keep you.”
“How could you, when such a charming and fashionable young woman sits waiting for me in her parlor?” he asked with a contemptuous glance at Amelia in her simple homespun dress.
Amelia felt the whip of that comment like a rope burn. The Howards had been a respected family in Atlanta but not a very wealthy one. Amelia had never had elegant clothes or a rich life. Neither did she covet it, but King seemed unconvinced.
“Shall I help Marie with the girls, Mrs. Culhane?” Amelia asked her hostess with a pale smile. “She likes to bathe them about this time, I notice.”
“Certainly, if you like, my dear. Marie will be leaving in the morning for home, so I’m certain she’ll appreciate your help with the packing as well.”
“She’s leaving?” Amelia couldn’t know how upset she sounded.
King arched an eyebrow. “You sound as if you feel she is deserting you in the face of doom, Miss Howard,” he mused.
“I don’t feel that way at all, Mr. Culhane,” she assured him. “I’ll just get back to the house,” she added quickly and, sidestepping King, lifted her skirts and ran toward the house.
He watched her with cold, narrow eyes.
“What is wrong with you?” his mother demanded icily. “Why are you so cruel to her?”
He shrugged and moved to swing into the saddle, pausing to relight his cigar. “I won’t be away long,” he said carelessly.
“What you see in that Valverde woman is beyond me,” she told him. “She’s cold and calculating and the most mercenary human being I’ve ever known.”
He leaned over the pommel. “You left out honest. She has the virtue of being exactly as she appears. She wants me for the ranch and my lineage, just as every other woman has,” he added with a cold smile. “I admire her cold-blooded approach. It appeals to my sense of irony.”
“I know what caused this cynicism, but you were very young when it happened,” Enid said softly, “and even such a deep scar should fade in time. It is not her death you can’t forget, anyway, it is the fact that she had deserted you.” He didn’t speak. He looked explosive. “King, there are many women who look for qualities in men that bear no relevance to wealth.”
“Indeed? Women such as our fleeing guest?” he asked, watching Amelia’s dash onto the porch. “She’s still little more than a child; a rough hand would destroy her,” he said, almost to himself. “She is drawn to Alan’s smooth profile and parlor manners. Her father,” he added, glancing at her, “is much more drawn to the possibility of a partnership through marriage, don’t you think?”
“Alan should marry,” she returned curtly. “And Amelia is a lovely, sweet girl.”
“A spineless jellyfish with no spunk and no grit,” he said shortly. “She lacks the nerve to speak back even to her father, despite his deplorable treatment of her. You ask me to admire such spinelessness? The girl may have a pretty face, but she is a coward. I had rather marry an ugly wild mustang than a broken pretty filly.”
“Women are not horses,” Enid reminded him.
“They yield to the same treatment,” King said carelessly, with a last glance at Amelia’s retreating figure. “A sugar cube and a soft word, and the wildest of them will submit,” he added as he gathered the reins.
Enid still stared up at him quietly. “She fears her father. It is not the sort of fear that is engendered by a loud voice, King.”
“And how would you know?”
“I am a woman,” Enid replied simply. “There is an unspoken language that we share.”
“And
