his eggs around his plate, his appetite not its usual hearty self. Sleep had eluded him for several hours last night, as it had after Cynthia’s betrayal two months earlier. He kept thinking of Delsie’s soulful eyes filled with disappointment and grief when he’d conveyed the impossibility of her plans. She was clearly disheartened, but she hadn’t raged at him or laid blame at his feet as he might’ve been tempted to do.
Her quiet acceptance of defeat wasn’t the only thing that had kept him awake. He’d had a difficult time erasing the image of her unbound hair and cream-colored skin from his memory, too.
So she’s pretty, Myles thought, scowling at his half-eaten breakfast. Any man would say the same.
Not for the first time since meeting Delsie the day before, he felt some relief at the knowledge that they would be parting company very, very soon. She kept surprising him, acting in ways that contradicted his opinions about rich folk, and he didn’t like it one bit. He liked routine, consistency and taking risks only when he knew for certain what the outcome would be.
Funny that she’d all but admitted to being the same way on the boat yesterday. Except this harebrained scheme of hers clearly meant she’d thrown her normal caution out the window.
“Thank you for the breakfast, Mrs. Guittard.” He stood, hoping she didn’t take offense to him not finishing everything.
The woman smiled. “You’re welcome, Mr. Patton.”
Myles glanced at the kitchen doorway. “Should I let Miss Radford know it’s time to eat?”
“She’s already had her breakfast.”
“Oh.” He’d suspected she would sleep in, especially knowing how sore she’d be today.
“I believe she’s in the stables,” Mrs. Guittard added over her shoulder from where she was working over a pot of something at the stove.
Myles put on his hat and let himself out the back door. Apparently Delsie was as anxious to get back to Saint Joseph as he was. The thought erased some of his guilt over frustrating her plans, however unintentionally.
Good thing he hadn’t let Amos in on her notion to reach California before the twenty-second—the man would have tried to make it work, no matter the foolhardiness of the venture. Amos hated to see a woman in distress. Myles suspected it was the fatherly nature in him, one he hadn’t been able to practice on with his own children. Amos and his wife, who had passed away seven years earlier, had remained childless, despite a strong desire for a family.
The lightening sky overhead promised to be as clear and blue as the day before. The sight brought a whistle to Myles’s lips, a tune he’d heard Amos play plenty of times on the harmonica. Elijah swooped down over the stable roof and landed on his shoulder.
“You get breakfast, boy?” He ran his hand over the bird’s head, his gaze on the western horizon.
For one brief moment, he considered what it would’ve been like to travel farther than he’d ever been, all the way to California. His stepfather used to tell him a place like that, so far west, would have enough room for a horse ranch.
Someday.
Myles turned toward the stables. It was time to return to Saint Joseph and his current life. The longer he stayed with the Pony Express, the more money he’d make—money he could use to purchase that sprawling horse ranch in the future. Now that Cynthia no longer wanted to marry him, the ranch was his only dream and focus. It was the reason he’d considered Delsie’s proposal to take her to California in the first place. But he’d just have to be content with earning the money slow and steady instead.
The whistle returned to his lips as he entered the nearest stable. Inside Delsie stood talking quietly to Amos, but she closed her mouth the moment Myles walked up. She had on a different dress than yesterday, her hair pinned up again beneath her ridiculous flowered hat. He looked past them and spied one, two...three?...saddled horses. His merry tune ended on a sour note. Something was afoot.
“You planning a trip to Saint Joe?” he asked Amos with an attitude of nonchalance, despite the wariness churning inside him. Delsie avoided his gaze.
“Nope,” Amos answered. The glitter in the man’s blue-gray eyes only heightened Myles’s suspicion.
“What’s with the third horse, then?”
“Can’t very well walk to California, can we?”
We? Myles scowled at Delsie’s bent head. Sure enough she’d convinced Amos to go along with her wild scheme, just as he’d feared last night. Well, he’d put a stop to all this nonsense right now. “Miss Radford, we talked about this last night. It can’t be done.”
“But you said if we had our own horses—”
Myles tightened his jaw in exasperation. Had the woman heard the rest of his explanation? “I said even if we had our own horses, it still wouldn’t work. They can’t go fast enough.”
“Not necessarily. I’ve figured out—”
“The supplies you’d need to travel that far will weigh them down. At that slow pace you wouldn’t reach California until—”
“Myles?” Amos said, quietly but firmly.
“What?” he growled. Elijah ruffled his wings as if startled.
“Let the lady finish. She’s come up with a plan that might work.”
Myles took a moment to swallow back his irritation, then through ground teeth he managed to ask, “What do you propose, Miss Radford?”
Delsie glanced between him and Amos and back to him before her chin rose a notch. “I calculated everything out last night.” She lifted her hand and showed him a piece of paper with numbers scrawled all over the back of it. “We can average a hundred miles a day, if we rest the horses for an hour about every fifteen miles. If we start at six in the morning, we could reach one of the Express stations, at that pace, by eight o’clock that evening.”
“And supplies?” he countered, mostly in an attempt to hide how impressed he was with her calculations. Clearly Delsie Radford was more than a pretty face with a sudden penchant for adventure. She’d managed to come up with a fairly logical plan...so far.
“Instead of paying to use the stations’ horses, I’ll pay them for room and board and feed for the animals for the single night we stay there.”
Myles scrubbed a hand over the stubble on his face. He hadn’t bothered to trim his beard this morning in his anticipation of getting Delsie back to Missouri. “What about water or feed for the horses during breaks?”
Delsie slid a glance at Amos. “That’s where Mr....I mean, Amos comes in. He’s familiar with the route. He knows most of the rivers and creeks along the way, as well as the Express stations.”
A sardonic laugh nearly escaped Myles’s lips. She’d clearly thought of everything, the little conspirator. While he’d lain in his bed awake last night, feeling guilty as he’d imagined her heartbroken and weeping in her room upstairs, Delsie had actually been scheming behind his back. And doing a decent job of it as evidenced by her clever equations and her solicitation of Amos’s help as a guide.
“What
