watched him canter away with impotent rage. Sometimes he and his father maddened her with their arrogant manners. She knew all too well how brutal a man could be, and how overpowering, when he took to drink. Amelia’s fear the night before had not been of her father’s voice, she knew it. There had been something more there, and this afternoon she was certain of it when she saw the girl’s look of relief mingled with anxiety as her father left the ranch. Perhaps during his absence she could draw her out and discover what the problem was. If she could help, she decided, she would, men or no men.
* * *
Amelia helped bathe the girls and then sat in the parlor with Marie and Enid, chatting, while she worked the intricate crochet pattern Enid had taught the women.
“Did your mother not do handwork, Amelia?” Enid asked curiously.
“Mama was much too busy trying to watch the children and keep house and cook,” Amelia said gently. “As I was.”
“King mentioned that you never seemed to rest when he visited Quinn those few times,” she added.
“I wonder that your eldest son even noticed,” she replied colorlessly. “He never looked at me.”
Enid lifted a quick eyebrow, but she didn’t say anything. Alan had gone with King on one visit to the Howards while the youngest boys were still alive. King had come home brooding and austere for days. He seemed to find nothing to relate about Amelia, but Alan must have seen a different side of her. He let slip little glimpses of Amelia’s life. A particular one came to mind, that of Amelia playing Indian with two little boys in the backyard late in the afternoon, laughing and radiant in the sunset. Alan had told King about it, and King had made the cold remark that Amelia was hardly the type to roughhouse with children.
Enid recalled that the little boys had died only a few months later of a vicious bout of typhoid. The family had grieved and grieved. Alan had gone back with Quinn for the funeral. King had told his mother, and no one else, that he refused flatly to stay in the same house with Amelia. So Alan had gone instead to represent the family. He had noticed a change in Hartwell Howard, a violence in his manner and a building affinity for hard liquor that seemed to grow by the day. His wife, Amelia’s mother, had quickly begun to fail.
“How is your brother?” Enid asked.
“Very well. Quinn writes to us,” she said with a smile as she finished a row and turned the piece she was working on. “Isn’t that unusual, for a man? But he writes a very elegant and literate letter. He is in New Mexico, searching for a man who killed a banker in El Paso. Imagine, my brother, a Texas Ranger.”
“And a very good one, for all we hear,” Enid replied.
“Your brother is a Ranger?” Marie asked, aghast. “Oh, but how delightful! And I will not get to meet him. My father was employed with the police in Paris. I am certain that they would have had so much to discuss, if they met!”
“Indeed they would,” Amelia said, smiling. “Perhaps you will come to visit again and Quinn will be in town.”
“Certainement,” Marie agreed. “But for now, alas, I must return home, must I not, Enid?”
“As you say, my dear,” Enid replied with a twinkle in her brown eyes, “certainement!”
* * *
The women said good night to Marie, and she went to settle down with her children.
“I will lock up before I come to bed,” Enid told Amelia. “Good night, my dear.”
“Do wake me before Marie leaves,” Amelia pleaded. “I wouldn’t want to miss seeing her off.”
“Of course you don’t. Sleep well.”
“And you.”
Amelia closed the door of her bedroom and changed into her long, cotton gown. It had a pretty row of pink lace around the high collar and lace at the wrists as well. She took down her long, blond hair and sat before the vanity mirror, combing it with long, lazy strokes.
She was twenty. As she watched her arm lift and fall, watched the brush pull through the silken skeins of hair, she wondered if she would ever marry and have children, like those of Marie. It would be nice to have a husband. The brush poised in midair, and her brown eyes grew cold and fearful. Or would it?
What if she chose badly? Her father had seemed so kind and good, and then he had changed. What if Amelia unknowingly chose a man who liked to drink or gamble or had no control over his temper? What if she married a brutal man who thought of her as a piece of property and proceeded to use and abuse her. Marriage now seemed to Amelia like a very real threat, not a promise of happiness. Downplaying her assets kept men from being attracted to her, and she was glad of it. She was certain that she never wanted to marry, even if children would have been a delight. Besides, there was her father to consider. He might yet live a long time. There was no one else to be responsible for him, except perhaps Quinn. But Quinn had to work. That left Amelia. And Hartwell wasn’t going to rest in his efforts to get her married to Alan.
She put the brush down slowly and felt her body grow cold. She really must speak to Quinn when he came home again, she decided. Surely he would come back by the time her father’s hunting trip was over.
She felt her arms break out in goose bumps. Silly, she thought, to worry so. She was a God-fearing woman. She had to believe that she had the hope of a settled, less terrifying life than she had enjoyed so far. She was no coward, even if she had been forced to act like one in her father’s best interests.
Her hand lifted the brush, and she forced it through her long, soft hair once more. You must have courage, she told her reflection. You will be free one day, and Papa will be, too, from the pain that makes a savage of him. If only he would see a doctor. But he would not even admit the need.
Meanwhile, she thought ruefully, she had a more immediate problem. Marie was leaving. Now Amelia would have only Enid’s company for protection against the thorn in her flesh. How would she cope with King without the buffer of other people? It seemed she was trading one rough man for another.
But Enid would be her buffer, she told herself. It would be all right.
Finally, she put down the brush and climbed in between the thick white sheets and covering quilt. It was late March, but the nights were cool here on the fringe of the desert. The cover felt nice.
She closed her eyes and soon fell asleep.
* * *
King was already gone when she went to see Marie and the girls off the next morning. She had said more good-byes in two days than in the past two years, she thought as she waved them off at the train station in El Paso.
It was, she thought, a good thing that Enid had asked old Mr. Singleton down the road for a lift to town that morning and a ride back as well. There had been no explanation or apology for King’s absence, and Amelia reasoned that there might be something about it that Enid didn’t feel comfortable telling her.
Mr. Singleton took her arm and Enid’s, shaking his head. “Those trains,” he complained. “They lay more track and more track. The blessed things set fires, don’t you know?”
“Progress, Mr. Singleton, is to everyone’s advantage,” Enid chided the
