Maggie And The Maverick
Laurie Grant
You Just Couldn't Count On A Woman That's what Garrick Devlin believed when his wife deserted him after the war. Now he'd been deceived by a woman - again. The man he'd hired for his Texas newspaper had turned out to be a meddlesome female and a Yanker to boot! But her fiery beauty still attracted him, though he knew perfectly well that a woman couldn't be trusted… .Love saw with the heart, not the eyes. And Maggie's heart longed for Garrick Devlin and his young son. But would Garrick ever learn to trust her? Or would a foolish liaison from her past forever destroy their newfound chance at happiness?
Table of Contents
Cover Page (#u981ca51c-d32d-54c3-99a1-7cbdab70dea3)
Excerpt (#u2d4451a5-0382-5f6e-a3df-9672ad414258)
Dear Reader (#ud7f4f8d9-aa2b-5160-8786-0d804cd33696)
Title Page (#ub93c9597-21ee-5366-a514-13cca3c66eb2)
Books by Laurie Grant (#uc7c0236c-d486-58cb-a1d8-8675898affbd)
About the Author (#u9b48f6e6-b119-5fec-8bd6-8b07d0d44a0b)
Dedication (#uc936f7a4-2f33-5bb8-bfdb-46650fcb6c32)
Acknowledgment (#ud6db530c-9331-568c-b819-7baf5082de84)
Prologue (#uee839d89-b70d-55e6-b858-6ef4206a7ab4)
Chapter One (#u473e1c86-64f1-5654-b419-a182ff49afe5)
Chapter Two (#u0a163811-7fd7-5ad7-bff7-d27bf2c78b8c)
Chapter Three (#u8bd5758a-8c57-5a5e-a090-3e77b77a0b25)
Chapter Four (#ud26c65da-2f05-5835-8d4d-e0e010c5f07d)
Chapter Five (#u46d4a5e7-b181-5b61-972e-de00616b065e)
Chapter Six (#u417f867a-e12b-5c8e-9f1e-a446dbc655eb)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
“You can’t care for a man who isn’t whole.
“I won’t let you throw yourself away like that.”
Maggie blinked at the vehemence of Garrick’s words.
“You’ve seen me. You’ve seen my leg,” he went on, before she could deny his self-description. “I’ll be blunt, Maggie—can you really bear to think of that in your bed? Because that’s what it would mean, sooner or later, if we go on kissing and touching. I’m not a boy to be fobbed off with a few kisses and caresses in the moonlight, Maggie—I’m a man. And I’ll be damned if I’ll open my heart to another woman who’s going to run screaming from my bed.”
“I’m far from perfect myself, Garrick. And you are not your leg, Garrick. That is a part of you, yes, but when one loves, one loves the whole person. And there is much in you to love….”
Dear Reader,
Entertainment. Escape. Fantasy. These three words describe the heart of Harlequin Historical novels. If you want compelling, emotional stories by some of the best writers in the field, look no further.
Award-winning author and native Texan Laurie Grant has really hit her stride with Maggie and the Maverick, the last of her DEVLIN BROTHERS books. Garrick Devlin mistrusts women—with good reason: his wife left him when he came home wounded from the Civil War and she never told him she was pregnant. Now, trying to put a life together for his threeyear-old boy, he hires a newsman to help him start a paper. Only, M. L. Harper is really Maggie—a dainty Texas Yankee!—who wins his respect and shows him how to love again.
The Unlikely Wife by Cassandra Austin is a sparkling Western about a flirty, truly unlikely wife and the officer and gentleman who shows her what the love of a good man can do. Margaret Moore returns with The Welshman’s Bride, part of her WARRIOR SERIES, about a roguish nobleman and the shy lady he takes to wife, who prove that opposites do attract!
Be sure to look for Hunter of My Heart by talented newcomer Janet Kendall. In this fascinating, multilayered Regency, two Scottish nobles are bribed into marrying in an effort to protect their past secrets. Intrigue and passion abound from start to finish!
Whatever your tastes in reading, you’ll be sure to find a romantic journey back to the past between the covers of a Harlequin Historical
novel.
Sincerely,
Tracy Farrell
Senior Editor
Please address questions and book requests to:
Harlequin Reader Service U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269
Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3
Maggie and the Maverick
Laurie Grant
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Books by Laurie Grant
Harlequin Historicals
Beloved Deceiver #170
The Raven and the Swan #205
Lord Liar #257
Devil’s Dare #300
My Lady Midnight #340
Lawman #367
The Duchess and the Desperado #421
Maggie and the Maverick #461
LAURIE GRANT
combines a career as a trauma center emergency room nurse with that of historical romance author, she says living in two worlds keeps her sane. Passionately enthusiastic about the history of both England and Texas, she divides her travel time between these two spots. She is married to her own real-life hero, and has two teenage daughters, two dogs and a cat.
Laurie loves to hear from her readers. You can write to her at P.O. Box 307272, Gahana, OH 43230.
To Ann Bouricius and Carol McFarland, who between them coerced me into writing this book,
To Deborah Simmons, fellow Harlequin Hussy, who gave me the title,
To the determined and inspiring folk who make up the Amputee Coalition of America,
And to my own personal curmudgeon and hero, Michael.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT (#ulink_dcb9c1e5-28fb-55d4-8d3d-75b4a35d4b1b)
I would like to thank Dale Starr, who works in the Print Shop at the Ohio Village, Ohio Historical Society, for his guidance in researching the newspaper industry in general and printing presses as they existed in frontier
America in the 1800s.
I would also like to thank Alvin C. Pike, certified prosthetist, President and Clinical Director of Amputee
Rehabilitation Services in Hopkins, Minn., and Ian Gregson, editor of Amputation Online Magazine, for their invaluable assistance in researching the history of leg prosthetics and in understanding the adjustments, both physical and psychological, that amputees must make.
Prologue
“It’s been very enjoyable, Maggie mine,” Captain Richard Burke told her, smiling regretfully as he rose from the horsehair sofa in front of the hearth. “But I’m afraid marriage is out of the question. You see…I have a wife back East.”
Even as her mind tried to process the words, Margaret Harper automatically noticed how handsome he looked in his uniform, his captain’s bars gleaming against the crisp dark blue. Richard Burke was an attractive man. And even now, as she began to comprehend the full horror of what he had just said, she still couldn’t rid her mind of the thought that he looked the very picture of a soldier.
“Y-you’re married?” Her lips, which still felt the taste of his passionate kiss, grew numb, and she could hardly form the words. “But you…but we’ve been courting-we’ve been lovers! How could you make me think. How could you say you loved me—when you…belonged to another?”
Richard sighed, smiled at her again and started to cup her chin in his hand, a gesture she had always found charming. Now she shrank from his touch. He had betrayed her! How could he think she would let him put his hands on her now?
“Ah, Maggie, who wouldn’t love you? Who could resist you? You’re an unusual woman, you know. Why, I’ve never met a female like you—a reporter, no less! And I wasn’t lying when I said I loved you. I do—in a way I’ll never love Beatrice, my wife. You understand me as she never could. And you’re so honest—”
“That’s certainly a virtue you can’t claim, isn’t it, Richard?” she snapped, ignoring the pain that sliced through her like a cavalry saber. She slapped his still-extended hand away and jumped to her feet. “Don’t you dare touch me, you—you cur! Get out!”
But Richard Burke gave her another of his coaxing smiles. “Now, Maggie, let’s not be so hasty. Boston is hundreds of miles away, and what you and I found together was very…special to me. I believe it was to you, too. Surely we can just go on as we’ve been? You’d miss my loving, wouldn’t you? I know I’d miss touching you, kissing you—”
“You bastard,” she hissed. “I’d feel contaminated if your shadow ever again so much as crossed mine. I told you once to leave, and I meant it. Now get out, or I’ll call my father.”
“Margaret, I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Burke retorted silkily. “Would you really like him to know why you’re upset? Do you really want your dear papa to know his innocent daughter is innocent no more? You know, I never expected you to be a…to be untouched, the way you smiled at me.”
“Damn you, Richard Burke,” she said between clenched teeth, feeling her hands curl into claws and fighting the urge to launch herself at him and rake that handsome face. “Damn you to hell!”
“Now, now, I’ve always admired your fiery temperament, m’dear—it goes with that red hair—but a lady doesn’t curse. But then, a lady doesn’t soil her hands in printer’s ink, either, does she? Can you wonder that I thought you a woman of the world?”
She wasn’t aware of her hand closing around the delicate little figurine on the end table beside the couch; she didn’t know she had picked it up until it shattered against the wall just an inch or two above Burke’s head.
He flinched as shards of porcelain rained around him, and after one last reproachful look, beat a hasty retreat out the door.
From above, Maggie heard her father call, “Is anything amiss, Margaret? I thought I heard a noise. Did something break?”
“Everything’s all right, Papa,” she called back, hoping he did not hear the shakiness of her voice. “Mr. Burke was just leaving, and I’m afraid I accidentally knocked the little china ballerina to the floor and broke it.”
“Oh, is that all? Too bad, but I thought you were hurt. Tell Mr. Burke goodbye for me—and why not invite him to Sunday dinner?”
The only place I’ll invite him to go is straight to hell, Papa. Then she realized she’d better clean up the damage before she had to explain why the remains of the figurine were lying scattered on the braided rug next to the parlor door rather than next to the end table. She knelt and, holding up her skirt to form a pocket, began dropping the broken pieces into it.
How could she have been so foolish? she wondered, as tears began to blind her eyes to the task. How could she have trusted Richard Burke so completely when he said he loved her, in spite of the still, small voice inside her that said it was too soon, that words of admiration and love came too easily to the Yankee captain’s mouth? This is what you get for ignoring that warning, whether you callit conscience or an angel’s voice, she told herself fiercely. You deserve this heartache, because your instincts told you Richard Burke was too good to be true, and you didn’t believe them.
He’d sworn they’d be married just as soon as they could arrange it, but he’d begged to be allowed to make love to her sooner. He was on fire for her, he’d claimed that night about a month ago, when he’d come calling. Her father had been working late at the newspaper office, and she’d known better than to let Richard in, but he’d coaxed her and teased her until she’d done so.
He’d begun his seduction as soon as the door had closed behind him. She’d surrendered to him that night, and he’d kissed away her tears from the pain of losing her virginity. He’d told her she was magnificent, that he loved her, and he’d renewed his promise that they’d soon be married.
She had passed the next weeks in a sensual haze, stealing out to meet him several times a week. She’d neglected her duties as one of her father’s chief reporters for the newspaper that served both the occupying troops and the horde of profiteers that had descended on conquered Texas.
Richard had tutored her in the ways of sexual pleasure-always calling it love, of course. He hadn’t mentioned marriage again, and whenever she tried to, he’d adroitly distracted her.
Tonight she’d been determined that they should settle on a date and, after a few kisses, had told him smilingly but firmly that she wanted to plan their wedding.
Then he had told her about the wife in Boston. He had never meant to marry Maggie, of course. She had just been a pleasurable distraction to him while he served with the federal occupation troops in Austin.
And now she was ruined. It was entirely possible she could be carrying his child. And even if she escaped that disastrous consequence, there was nothing to stop Richard from boasting of his conquest to the entire regiment.
Fool! her brain screamed as tears began to flood down her cheeks. Blindly, she reached for a piece of the porcelain ballerina’s arm and gasped as a needle-sharp sliver of china slid into the tender flesh of her fingertip.
The pain was the last straw. Collapsing against the wall, the pieces of porcelain still cradled in her skirt, she began to sob in earnest.
Chapter One (#ulink_fc035b82-bf13-5aa8-a0f6-e76b2b5c42c5)
Bryan, Texas, January 1869
The stage was late. That was nothing new—it was always late—so the fact that it hadn’t arrived by noon, as scheduled, wasn’t what had Garrick Devlin fidgeting on the bench seat outside the Bryan Hotel, where the stagecoach always unloaded its passengers and their baggage. No, it was the thought of who was on the stage that had him checking his pocket watch every few minutes, raking a hand through his hair, then reaching into his pocket for his comb to repair the damage his fingers had done.
She had given him that carved-ivory comb, he remembered, for their first Christmas together as husband and wife. It was during the middle of the war, when finding money to spare for gifts and celebrations had been difficult. He had been home on leave from his regiment, so glad to be away from the sounds of shelling and the constant threat of death that he was sure his little corner of Texas was heaven itself. Of course, that leave had been two years before the minié ball had shattered his right leg just below the knee. When he had awakened in the field hospital to find out the army surgeon had amputated what was left of his lower leg, Garrick knew that heaven was just a fable. It didn’t exist.
And now she was coming back, according to the letter she’d sent. Cecilia, the wife who had once loved him enough to save her scarce pennies to buy him that comb for Christmas. The same woman who had fled in horror the morning after he had come home from the war, hobbling on crutches, his right trouser leg pinned up so it wouldn’t flap in the breeze.
Hell, he wished he was a whole man so he could get up and pace. But he was damned if he’d give the old graybeards loitering across the street in front of the saloon a show. He despised his awkward, dragging gait, even now that he’d gotten the wooden leg made by the Hanger Company and he’d been able to abandon the hated crutches in favor of a cane.
It seemed he was not to escape their attentions, however, for a moment later one of them came shuffling across the street and hailed him.
“Howdy, Garrick. Mighty fine day fer January, ain’t it?”
“I suppose so,” he muttered, wishing the old man would take the hint and go away.
“Yore gittin’ around mighty fine, mighty fine indeed, yessir,” the old man said approvingly, nodding in the direction of Garrick’s wooden leg. “Y’kin be right proud.”
Right proud that a seventy-year-old man walked with more grace than he did? Garrick purposely leveled a look at the old man that would have frozen a Texas lake in midJuly. “I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse me, sir,” he said. Maybe if he disappeared into the hotel for a few minutes the old man would go back across the street to rejoin his cronies.
However, just then the distant sound of galloping horses and creaking wheels announced the coming of the stage.
“Yore meetin’ the stage?” inquired the old man, apparently unaffected by Garrick’s glare. “Who’s comin’ t’visit? Anyone I know?”
There was no way Garrick wanted the likes of this elderly busybody present in the first moments of his reunion with Cecilia. He prayed for the ground to open up and swallow the garrulous old fool, but it seemed God wasn’t listening to such mundane requests today.
He shoved a hand in his pocket and came out with a coin. “Here’s two bits,” he growled. “Go and buy yourself a drink, okay?”
The old man cackled, acknowledging that he was being bought off, then retreated to other side of the street just before the stagecoach rounded the corner.
This was it, Garrick thought, as the stagecoach driver reined in his team in a cloud of dust in front of the hotel. In a moment or two he’d be face-to-face with his wife, the woman who had once fled his home and his bed. What had caused her to write him and say she was coming home again now, after being gone more than three years?
Lord, he wanted to believe it was because Cecilia had discovered she loved him—loved him enough to realize she’d done wrong by running away, loved him enough to come back and be a wife to him. He knew it was hard to look at him—a man who, was not whole anymore, whose right leg ended in a clumsily closed stump right above the knee—but if they truly loved one another, they could work their way past that, couldn’t they?
Then the stagecoach door was being thrown open and Garrick’s heart seemed to surge into his throat, choking him with its runaway rhythm. A man stepped out and turned to assist a lady behind him.
Cecilia? No, the woman was black haired, not blond like Cecilia, and from the tender look she and the man exchanged, it was probable they were married. Then another man exited, a drummer by the looks of him, and then, finally, a woman appeared.
It was not Cecilia. The woman was elderly, with gray hair and a lined, pinched face, and she was holding the hand of a small boy.
Alarmed, Garrick looked behind her, hoping that the cramped, shadowy interior of the coach miraculously held one more passenger. There was no one there. Had Cecilia missed the stage? Would there be a telegram coming, explaining that circumstances had held her up for a day or two?
The woman had stepped down into the street, and was now picking up the boy and assisting him to the ground. Then she turned around and squinted at the crowd. Garrick saw her fasten her eyes on his cane and then step decisively forward.
“You must be Garrick Devlin,” the woman informed him, her gaze piercing as it rose to his face.
Apprehension had turned his spine into a rod of ice, and the foot that was no longer there throbbed like a toothache. “Yes,” he admitted uneasily. “Who might you be? And where’s Cecilia, my wife?”
The old woman shielded her eyes against the bright winter sunlight. “I’m Martha Purdy, Cecilia’s neighbor. She couldn’t come. She sent this little feller instead.”
Garrick’s eyes lowered to the boy, who was standing in the street gazing up to where Garrick stood on the plank walkway in front of the hotel. The boy looked absolutely terrified and was clinging to the old woman with both hands.
“I—I don’t understand…” Garrick felt a cold sweat breaking out on his forehead. “Why couldn’t Cecilia come? And who’s the boy?”
The woman snorted again, then shrugged her shoulders. “It’s kind of a long story, mister. Better if you read it in this here letter she sent,” she added, pulling a wrinkled and much-folded piece of paper from her reticule and holding it out to him. “You can read, cain’t ya?” she asked, squinting up at him.
“Of course I can read,” Garrick snapped.
“No need to take offense, mister—I cain’t read,” she said equitably, then looked about her as if searching for something. “Johnny, lookit that puppy over yonder,” she said, pointing to where a small mongrel dog lounged in the shade of the bank awning several yards away. The dog had spotted the boy and was thumping its tail against the wood planking. “He looks like he likes little boys. Why don’t you go say howdy to him for a minute?”
She waited, hands on her hips, until the boy had gone over to pat the dog and was out of earshot, then she turned back to Garrick. “I dunno what Cecilia wrote, exactly, but I kin tell ya this here boy is yore son—yores and Cecilia’s.”
Her last sentence hit Garrick like an blow to his gut.
“My.s-son? But that’s impossible! He couldn’t be!” He felt his face burning as the woman stared at him while he sputtered. “It’s one of her tricks! That boy is no son of mine! Whose bastard is she trying to pass off as mine?”
The old woman drew herself up. “Mr. Devlin, I’ll thank ya to soften yore tongue a bit. Don’t you call that sweet little innocent boy no nasty names.”
He lowered his voice. “I mean to say, she left—we didn’t.” He stopped, thunderstruck. “Oh, Lord, there was just that one time.it isn’t possible, is it?”
He didn’t know he had spoken aloud until the old woman chuckled at his discomfiture. “Well, sir, I’m a widow, so I guess I’m qualified t’tell you it only takes the once.”
Garrick froze, remembering the day he’d come home from the war, just before Lee surrendered at the Appomattox courthouse. His brothers weren’t home yet, but his mother and his sister had put together a family celebration out of the meager food supplies they had. Cecilia just kept staring at him—at his pinned-up trouser leg—her eyes wide with fright in her pale face.
Later that night, when they’d gone up to the bedroom they shared in the Devlin family home, he’d tried to tell her how much he had missed her, how hers had been the name on his lips when the doctor, after giving him a little whiskey for an anesthetic, had hacked off the shattered lower portion of his leg. Shyly, he’d kissed her and asked if he could make love to her.
He had never had to ask before. She’d always been eager to participate in the marital act—almost too much so by Victorian standards, but he’d always loved her for it.
She’d told him to blow out the lamp—she who had always been excited to see the passion in his face. And then she’d just lain there, still as a marble statue and just as cold, and let him exercise his husbandly rights.
He’d been careful to be gentle and had tried not to touch her leg with the bandaged stump, but as he was withdrawing from her and preparing to lie on his back, the foreshortened leg had brushed her shin.
Cecilia had gasped as if revolted, and had then begun to cry, turning away from him and hugging the far side of the bed. He’d tried to comfort her, to apologize, but she’d just ordered him, in a tight little whisper, not to touch her again.
Garrick hadn’t slept until dawn was paling the skies, and he was pretty sure Cecilia hadn’t, either. When he’d finally awoke midmorning, Cecilia had gone. Later he learned she had not only left the farm, but had taken a stage heading south.
And over there, petting the friendly dog, was the result of that night, he realized. He stared at the boy, whose face he could see in profile.
His son. But suspicion remained. “When was he born?”
“I dunno the exact date,” the woman admitted with a shrug. “You read this here letter. She probably told you in it.”
He accepted the wrinkled, folded piece of paper as one might accept a dozing rattlesnake. But before he unfolded it, he paused. “All right, supposing he is my son…why now? He’s what—three years old? Why is she sendin’ him to me now?”
“Read the letter,” the old woman said. “There’s more to this here tale, but she said ya was to read it first.”
Realizing that the old woman wasn’t going to make it any easier, he gave up and unfolded the letter, holding it so that the bright noon sunlight made it easier to read.
Dear Garrick, I know I hurt you when I ran away. It was awful of me to treat you that way, after all you had been through in the war, but I just couldn’t help it. I guess I wasn’t strong enough and good enough to be the wife you deserved, and I’m sorry about that, but I just couldn’t be someone I’m not. I’m trying to make it up to you now by sending our boy. I know you won’t believe he’s yours, and I don’t reckon I blame you, but his birthday is New Year’s Day, 1866—which, if you count back, is nine months after you came home. I named him John Garrick. I know you hate me now, Garrick, and you have a right. But if you ever loved me, I hope you’ll be good to our son. I know he’ll be better off with you.
Cecilia
He read it through twice before lifting his eyes from the paper.
“It tells me his name and his birthdate, but it doesn’t tell me what I asked you. Why now? She’s had him for three years. Why is she sending him to me now? What’s she up to?”
The woman looked uneasily at the boy, then back at Garrick. “Bigamy, that’s what. I’m sorry to be the one t’tell ya that, but it’s the truth.”
“Bigamy? She’s married to someone else?”
“That’s what bigamy means, don’t it?” the old woman responded, adding a regretful tsk, tsk. “Yup, she’s Miz Cecilia Prentice—has been ever since soon after she showed up in Houston in ‘65 and started workin’ at the hotel. Pretty as a picture, she was. Men flocked ‘round her like flies around a picnic. It warn’t a week afore Will. Prentice up and married her and cut out the competition.”
“But she was—is,” Garrick corrected, “my wife! We were never divorced! How did she explain, uh, being in the family way to her new ‘husband’?” He felt his face flush; one didn’t discuss such delicate issues as pregnancy with a lady, even one who had brought him the news that his wife had committed bigamy.
The old woman chuckled again, a sound Garrick was growing to heartily detest. Nothing they were talking about was funny.
“Who knows? It’s the oldest trick in the book, fobbin’ off some other man’s child on a husband, ain’t it? You’d think a feller wouldn’t be dumb enough to think that big healthy baby was his, come early, but I reckon he was, ‘cause he used to be proud as a banty rooster of him,” she said, nodding toward the boy.
“’Used to be?”’ Garrick echoed. “What happened?”
“There was an accident…they was comin’ home from a barbecue one night. I was keepin’ the child for ‘em. A storm blew up and lightnin’ was flashin’, and the horse got skeered and run away with them. The shay overturned and Mr. Prentice was thrown clear, but Miz Cecilia, she was trapped under a wheel. She was hurt bad, and it looked like she might die on the spot. Anyway, I reckon she was afeered for her immortal soul, ‘cause she confessed to will Prentice that that boy wasn’t his.”
“Did she.did she.?” Garrick couldn’t bring himself to say the words.
“Did she die?” Martha Purdy finished the question for him. “No, but she’s been bedridden ever since. I take care o’her every day, her an’ the boy. Prentice told her he wouldn’t keep the boy under his roof any longer, not now that he knew the brat wasn’t his.”
Garrick felt his jaw drop as nausea churned in his stomach. He could no longer feel the burning hostility that had flamed up only moments ago toward Cecilia. Now he could only think of the cruelty Prentice had shown to the boy and his injured mother.
“I’ll keep the boy until his mother—” he couldn’t bring himself to name Cecilia just now “—recovers. Then I imagine she’s going to want to leave that sorry excuse for a husband, who won’t even keep the child he thought was his ever since he was born. And you can tell her that if she’s willing—” He was about to say that he’d take her back.
“Mr. Devlin,” the old woman interrupted, “you don’t understand. Cecilia ain’t gonna recover. Her back was crushed in the accident. She’s paralyzed—cain’t move from her waist down. She don’t hardly eat, and she gets weaker every day. She ain’t gonna make old bones, Mr. Devlin. The only way she’s gonna leave Prentice—” she glanced around, to make sure the boy was still entranced with the dog “—is by dyin’. And I don’t reckon it’s gonna be too long. She jest seemed t’lose what little will to live she had left when Prentice said the boy had to go.”
Garrick felt as if he were in the middle of a nightmare. This couldn’t be happening!
“But she wrote me that she was coming herself!” he protested. “She didn’t say anything about a child!”
The old woman sighed. “Mebbe she thought you wouldn’t take the boy iffen you’d knowed he was comin’, an’ mebbe she thought you wouldn’t turn him away once you seen your son’s face.”
Just this morning Garrick had been full of nervous but happy anticipation at seeing Cecilia again—and now she was dying?
“I—I’ve got to go to her—see her,” he mumbled, looking wildly about for the stagecoach driver, hoping the stage was going directly back to Houston. He’d be on it if it was, never mind that he’d be leaving without a word to his family and with nothing more than the shirt on his back.
Martha Purdy reached out a hand, as if she knew he wanted to go find the driver.
“She don’t want you to come, Mr. Devlin. She told me to tell you that, iffen you was to say somethin’ about comin’. She don’t want you to see her like that”
He stared at her, and she looked him right in the eye. “I’m tellin’ the truth, Mr. Devlin. Please don’t go all that way fer nothin’.”
He nodded, feeling cold all over despite the bright sunlight. “You’ll stay…for a while? Just till the boy gets. accustomed to me?”
“I can stay for a coupla days, and that’s only ‘cos the stage won’t be back this way till then,” the old woman told him. “Sooner I get back, the better. Prentice said he’d take care a’ Cecilia till I got back, but that man don’t know nothin’ about nursin’. He’ll forget to turn her, to make her eat.”
The image her words engendered, of Cecilia lying helpless on her bed, made Garrick close his eyes in horror. And she didn’t even want him to help her. “All right. I—I’ll get the wagon.”
Again the woman laid a restraining hand on his wrist, studying Garrick. “Ya know, he does kinda favor you, Mr. Devlin. His hair’s lighter’n yourn, but the eyes—oh, yes, he’s your boy, all right. Just look at him.”
She bent over and called, “Johnny, tell the doggie byebye and come say hello to Mr. Devlin.”
Garrick watched as the boy gave the dog a last caress and obediently came back to the old woman. He was thin as smoke. Garrick knew his mother would say he needed “feedin’ up.”
“Johnny, this is Mr. Devlin. Turns out he’s yore real papa, and he wants to meet you. Don’t worry, he don’t bite.”
The child jerked around, visibly trembling. “How kin he be my papa if my papa’s at home?” he piped in a childish treble.
It was possible. The boy could be his son, Garrick realized, staring at eyes that were as blue as his own. The lad’s hair was lighter, but then, his mother was a blonde, so maybe that affected such things. But it was the mouth that made Garrick think maybe the letter hadn’t been a pack of lies, after all. The boy had sensed he couldn’t be sure of his welcome, and to Garrick, the stubborn set of his lips was like looking at his own mouth in the mirror.
Garrick knew he should kneel down, so that he wasn’t staring at the child from such an intimidating height, but although kneeling was possible with his Hanger leg, it was awkward at best. And he’d just as soon not frighten the boy any more than he already was.
“There was a mistake, Johnny. Everyone thought William Prentice was your papa, but this letter tells me I am,” he said slowly, nodding toward the refolded paper. “Your mama wrote it, and in it she asks me to look after you for a while, till she’s feelin’ better. I didn’t know I had a little boy till I read that letter, you know.”
“You didn’t?” The boy’s eyes grew rounder. “Why?”
Lord, what was he to say to that? “I don’t know, Johnny,” he said. “But I’m happy to meet you, and I’ll take good care of you, all right?”
Transferring his cane to his other hand, he extended his right hand to the boy.
The boy seemed to see the cane for the first time. He stared at it, then up into Garrick’s face, and seemed to come to a decision.
He dived into the old woman’s skirts. “I want my mama!”
Garrick felt his face flame. He hadn’t yet decided if he believed the boy was his son, but it was clear Johnny wanted nothing to do with him. Yet he could hardly turn away and leave him and the old woman to their own devices!
“Aw, don’t pay that no mind,” the old woman said calmly. “He’ll get over it. He’s plumb wore out from th’ long trip in that rattletrap box,” she added, nodding her head toward the stagecoach. “We’ve had our bones about shook outa our body. A good meal and a good night’s sleep and he’ll be right as rain in th’ mornin’.”
Garrick sighed. “We’d best be getting on out to the farm, then. My wagon’s just down the street.”
But the old woman wasn’t moving. “Mister, that little boy is hungry and thirsty. He’d do a lot better if he had some dinner now,” she added, with a meaningful glance at the hotel. “It’s been a long time since we et breakfast.”
Garrick lifted his eyes from the child’s back, suspecting Martha Purdy was thinking of her own stomach rather than the boy’s. Fortunately, he had been planning to take Cecilia into the hotel for dinner, so he had some money with him. He hoped he had enough left to pay for the woman’s ticket home, if Prentice hadn’t given her return fare.
“All right, ma’am, we’ll eat in there,” he said, gesturing toward the hotel door.
Chapter Two (#ulink_eeb9fe7f-cba8-55f0-ba48-8be2bbd1147e)
“She sent your son all the way from Houston with that woman, instead of coming herself?” Sarah Devlin cried. She watched out the window as the boy, accompanied by Garrick’s sister, Annie, his sister-in-law Mercy and Martha Purdy, discovered the cat’s latest litter of kittens. “Why, the nerve of that.that—”
“Hold on, Mother. I haven’t told you everything yet,” Garrick said, rubbing his eyes wearily. He hadn’t slept well last night, tormented by phantom pains from his leg and the buzzing questions that refused to leave his brain. Then, just as he’d finally dropped off, the boy had awoken screaming in his room down the hall. Garrick had heard the old woman soothe him, and in a few moments, the crying had stopped.
Quickly he told Sarah Devlin about Cecilia’s bigamous marriage in Houston, and the carriage accident that had left her paralyzed and likely to die of her injuries soon. He also told her about Cecilia’s wish that he not come to see her.
“Lord Jesus, have mercy,” Sarah Devlin breathed, her hand to her mouth. “That poor, misguided girl…your poor little boy…”
“Mama, I’m not at all sure he’s my son,” Garrick warned.
Sarah Devlin’s jaw dropped. “Why, Garrick, of course he is—anyone with eyes can see he is. He looks just like you when you were his age. Are you saying that you and Cecilia.that night you came home…” She turned away in a flurry of embarrassment.
Garrick was no less embarrassed. “Well…yes, Mama. But she ran off the very next day and married the first man who’d have her, apparently. How am I to trust the word of a woman like that?”
“He’s yours, I’m tellin’ you. And you can’t turn your own son away,” Sarah Devlin said.
Garrick sighed. His suspicion that Cecilia had lied to him about Johnny’s paternity had already begun to waver as he’d observed the boy closely over the past twenty-four hours. It wasn’t just the color of his eyes, but things he did—little things, like the way he walked, or the way he slept with the pillow turned lengthwise against his face and chest—that convinced Garrick; they were pure Devlin, and nothing like Cecilia. And now, in the face of his mother’s certainty, he began to think that Johnny was indeed his.
He sighed. “No, I didn’t intend to. But the boy’s scared of me. I can’t get him to come within three feet. And who could blame him?” he added, glaring down at his artificial leg, which, covered by his trousers and shoe, looked identical to the other. “I walk like a drunken sailor.”
“Son, just give it some time,” suggested his mother. “He’ll warm up to you. He won’t think about your wooden leg if you act as if it’s nothing unusual.”
Easy for you to say, Garrick thought, but just then his mother, standing by the window, said, “Look yonder. Here comes little Johnny carryin’ a kitten. You tell him he can keep it if he wants to—it’s old enough to be weaned.”
Sure enough, flanked by Mercy, Annie and Martha, Johnny was coming toward the house, carrying a black ball of fur with all the care a three-year-old was capable of. As the trio came through the door, Garrick could plainly hear the kitten’s mews.
He saw the child look uncertainly at Annie and then at Mercy.
“Johnny, remember, you have something to ask your papa,” Mercy murmured, nodding toward Garrick.
Johnny looked pale but determined. “P-Papa, I want this kitty. Please?”
Garrick found he had been holding his breath and had to catch it again before replying. The boy—his son—had called him Papa. He felt as if the sun had just come out from behind the clouds after years of gloomy days. He felt tears sting his eyes, and blinked, sure it would only confuse the boy to see him cry. He certainly didn’t want the other adults to see it.
“I reckon so, Johnny,” he said. The boy smiled shyly. Moved even more by the gift of that smile, Garrick felt his own lips curve upward. Smiling felt almost foreign to him, as if it had been years since he’d last done it. He added, “What’re you gonna name it?”
“I don’t know how those Conservative Republicans can even claim to be Southerners,” Garrick muttered, crumpling the week-old Austin newspaper in disgust. Then, belatedly remembering the presence of his son, he looked around, but Johnny had just chased his kitten out of the room. “They’re Unionists and always have been, even during the war! Tarnation, they might as well burn Texas to the ground now, ‘cause there’s not going to be anything left to bury once the carpetbaggers and scalawags are done plundering.”
“If we elect a Republican government, maybe Texas will get readmitted to the Union that much quicker,” his brother Cal remarked. It was a week after little Johnny had arrived, and Cal and his bride, Olivia, had come for an overnight visit before leaving on a delayed wedding trip to Galveston. Garrick, Cal and the youngest Devlin brother, Sam, were arranged on chairs in the parlor while the women talked and did dishes in the kitchen.
“Good! Maybe that’ll mean all those bluebellies occupying us like we were a conquered foreign country can go back to the rocks they crawled out from under,” Garrick growled. “Ahem! Beggin’ your pardon, brother,” he said, turning to Cal. “I imagine you’ll be sorry to see them go.”
Cal raised an eyebrow. “Even those of us who served with the Union army aren’t happy when we see federal troops helpin’ Northern swindlers get by with wholesale robbery,” he said mildly.
Garrick realized he’d gone a little far, and looked back at the crumpled newspaper, saying nothing for a moment. Then he changed the subject. “So there’s nothing much going on in Gillespie Springs?” he asked, looking at Cal again. “It must be pretty calm if you’re fixin’ to go away for a while.”
Cal tipped his chair back until it rested against the wall. “Yeah, my deputy’s going to watch over things while I’m gone. I’m happy to leave that tin star at home—I’ve been looking forward to a little time at the seashore with my bride.”
“Well, I hope you two have a fine time,” Garrick said, still feeling awkward about the way he’d talked to Cal a moment ago.
“Whoa! Can this be our brother, Garrick the cantankerous, speaking?” teased Sam, who was sitting just beyond Cal, his long, booted legs stretched out before him. “Sounds like the little feller’s been good for you, Garrick,” he added, nodding toward Johnny, who was now trotting from room to room, pulling a strand of yarn for his kitten to chase.
Sam always knew just how to rile him. “If ‘the little feller’ weren’t within earshot,” Garrick growled, “I’d tell you what particularly hot place you could go to, little brother. I’ve never been without family feeling.”
Sam just grinned.
“He’s a good-looking boy, that Johnny,” Cal said, before Sam could tease any more. “I believe he favors you, Garrick.”
Garrick couldn’t help his pleased smile. “You think so?” Then he grew more serious, and noting the boy had followed the kitten into the kitchen, out of earshot, added, “He’s a good boy. I wish I hadn’t missed his first three years. I—I want to make it up to him, somehow. You know what I mean?”
His brothers nodded. “You’ll do a fine job bein’ a father, Garrick,” Cal assured him, and Sam murmured in agreement.
Garrick frowned, feeling the old familiar despair. “What kind of an example can I be, a cripple? How can he learn what a man is from watchin’ me clump around this farm? Oh, I can teach him to cipher and spell and read, but so could Annie or Mama. How’s he gonna ever look up to me, unless I make somethin’ of myself?” Despite the difficulty of moving around, he grabbed for his cane and hobbled over to the window, then stood staring out into the darkness.
Behind him, his brothers were silent, waiting.
“I think maybe it’s time I did somethin’ more than clump around the farm,” Garrick mused, then raised his hand when Sam started to interrupt. “Now don’t tell me that what I’m doin’ here keeps this household runnin’. You know very well Mama leaves writin’ and figurin’ chores to me so I’ll feel useful,” he said. “Cal, didn’t you tell me that banker fellow Gillespie that used to run Gillespie Springs had been just about to start a newspaper before he got put in jail?”
“Yep, sure did,” Caleb said. “In fact, the printing press was delivered by freight wagon just the other day. It’s just sittin’ there in that vacant building across from the hotel, where Gillespie was gonna have the newspaper office. Mayor Long sure was disappointed. He was lookin’ forward to havin’ a newspaper to read. He said he reckoned that printing press belonged to the town by rights, after all that swindler Gillespie had done, so he said he’d donate it to anyone who’d start up a paper in Gillespie Springs.”
“Any reason I couldn’t be the one?” Garrick said, still staring out the window so that he wouldn’t see the expressions of doubt he was sure were painted all over his brothers’ faces.
Now Sam spoke up. “You? You talkin’ about bein’ the editor? I don’t know why not, big brother. You’re smart as a treeful of owls. You can argue circles around me about politics and such.”
“Shucks, Sam, anyone can talk circles around you,” joked Cal, but he grinned to show it was all in fun. “But Sam’s right, Garrick. You’ve got a fine mind and you don’t use it for much but keepin’ the farm’s accounts paid up and writin’ letters to the editor of that paper about how the carpetbaggers are ruinin’ Texas.” His voice trailed off for a moment. “And you could come home on the weekends and see your son, of course. Mama and Annie’d keep him taken care of during the week.”
“Why would I leave the boy here? I’m his papa, by thunder, and the boy belongs with me.”
His brothers exchanged glances, saying nothing.
“Mama isn’t gonna be happy about lettin’ Johnny go away,” Sam said at last. “She’s awful fond a’ the little feller already.”
“So am I,” Garrick said, and realized it was true. “But I’ll bring him home to visit often enough. Once Mercy has her baby, Ma won’t mind so much.”
“Sure, why not? If you can write those fiery letters to the editor, you can write newspaper articles,” Cal said, obviously warming to the idea. “And just think, every week you could write an editorial and criticize—or praise—any ol’ thing you wanted.”
Garrick thought getting to express his opinion in print, in his official capacity as editor, sounded very fine indeed. Then he had a disturbing thought. “But I don’t know anything about running a printing press.”
“Well, you could learn, I reckon,” Caleb assured him. “You could hire someone who’s worked on a paper, and get ‘em to teach you. You’d be the editor and write the articles, and he’d run the press.”
“But what about Johnny? I have a responsibility now,” Garrick reminded himself aloud.
“Shoot, I imagine Livy’d be willing to lend you her housekeeper,” Cal said. “Senora Mendez is always complaining we don’t give her enough to do, and asking us to have a baby real quick so she’ll have somethin’ to keep her busy.”
“You are tryin’ to comply with that command, aren’t you, brother?” Sam inquired, his face the picture of innocence.
Cal grinned. “Maybe.”
Garrick watched his brothers, suddenly envious of their happiness. Both of them had found a good woman to marry. That avenue seemed closed to him, however. Even if Cecilia had entered a bigamous marriage, he wasn’t free to marry again—and even if he were, what woman would marry a man with a wooden leg?
Resolutely he shut his mind to the idea of a woman’s love and focused on the rising excitement he felt about the idea of starting a newspaper. He was ready for a change. He’d been sitting around the farm for too long as it was. If he didn’t try something new, he’d just become an old man before his time, and Johnny would grow up smothered by his grandmother and his aunt, who, with the best intentions in the world, cossetted the boy too much.
“All right, ask that Mendez woman if she’ll be my housekeeper. I’m going to do it, boys. I’m going to start a newspaper in Gillespie Springs. You reckon you could find a house for me there?”
Sam let out a rebel yell that had the women running from the kitchen to see what was the matter, and Cal clapped him on the back. “I’m sure of it, brother,” Cal said.
“Gillespie Springs!” the stagecoach driver sang out, as he reined in his team in front of the Gillespie Springs Hotel.
Maggie Harper sighed with relief. The jolting, swaying ride, which was supposed to have taken only a couple of days, had taken three and a half, thanks to the spring rains. The roads between Austin and Gillespie Springs were a quagmire. Torrential downpours had delayed their start two mornings out of the three, and at least twice each day the driver and the men in the coach had had to push the coach out of muddy ruts.
Once, a flash of lightning had struck a nearby tree, which terrified the team and caused them to gallop on in a runaway panic. They had gone a full two miles before the driver could rein them in, and Maggie had been sure that at any moment the coach would hit a bump, tilt and crash onto its side, crushing its hapless occupants.
Afterward, to amuse herself as the tedious, muddy miles rolled by, she’d composed a newspaper article in her head as if the worst had happened. The headline read: Stagecoach Overturns—Famous Female Journalist Tragically Perishes Before Her Time.
The red-faced woman in black bombazine sitting across from her glared in her direction. Belatedly, Maggie realized she had been smiling. The journey hadn’t been enjoyable, but the rain had finally stopped, the sun was shining and they had at last arrived in Gillespie Springs.
Mrs. Red Face was just one of the fellow travelers Maggie wouldn’t be sorry to bid farewell to. The coach was filled to capacity with two rotund drummers who had a fondness for foul-smelling cigars, an anxious mother holding a teething, fretful baby, and Maggie—and of course Mrs. Red Face, who had surely uttered a complaint for every mile that passed.
Every fifteen miles the coach had stopped to change teams, but it was usually raining too hard for Maggie to get out and stretch her legs. Every fifty miles they’d halted for a longer time, so the passengers could eat, drink and relieve themselves, but the stations were crude and dirty and the food was hardly fit for consumption.
The coach creaked to a stop, and after Maggie descended, the driver lifted her bag down to her.
“Thank you, sir. I hope the last leg of your trip goes smoothly,” Maggie said.
“You’re welcome, Miz Harper. You’d better get up on the boardwalk yonder before those boots’re soaked through,” the driver said, pointing to the mud that squished up to her ankles. “Ain’t ya got someone meeting ya here?” “Oh, someone’s expecting me, sir, don’t worry. I just have to find my way to the newspaper office.”
A small town, Gillespie Springs nevertheless had a prosperous look on this sunny April morning. Next to the hotel on her right, Maggie could see signs announcing a millinery and a barbershop. When she turned to look to her left, she saw a bank, a doctor’s office, a general store, and across the street from those buildings, the saloon, the jail, a telegraph office and the livery. So where was the newspaper office? Then she noticed the small, new-looking building right across the street.
She narrowed her eyes to read the sign swinging in the breeze beneath the new building’s overhanging roof. “The Gillespie Springs Gazette, Established 1869,” she read aloud. Yes, this was it. The ad in the newspaper seeking an experienced pressman, or printing press operator, had mentioned that the venture was a new one. When she had written offering her services, Garrick Devlin, the editor, had responded with flattering speed.
Of course, Devlin might not have done so had she signed her letter with “Margaret Louise Harper” rather than “M. L. Harper.” Pangs of guilt had assailed her all the way from Austin, but she knew she had to find a way to leave there, and if misleading a prospective employer about her sex would secure her a job in another town more quickly, then mislead she would. Surely once she told Mr. Devlin why she was every bit as qualified as a male printer, he’d give her the chance to prove herself.
Garrick Devlin. She’d formed a picture of him in her mind. With a name like that, he must be an older man, probably in his fifties, with a balding head and spectacles perched on his nose. He’d have a plump, comfortable wife and a brood of grown or nearly grown children. Perhaps he’d already be a grandfather, and if so, no doubt he’d be a doting one. He might be skeptical of hiring a woman, but she’d tell him about her experience. Why, she’d started as a printer’s devil for her father, a veteran newspaperman, back in Ohio, and progressed to the point that when they got to Austin she’d been John Harper’s most-relied-upon reporter.
Devlin had to accept her! She just couldn’t go back to Austin! She’d rather die than face the knowing looks, the sneers, or the attentions of the officers and officials of the Freedmen’s Bureau, who suddenly seemed to find her irresistible—ever since Richard Burke had left her house that night.
Of course he had boasted of his conquest. She’d known it the very next week, when she’d gone with her father to a New Year’s Eve ball put on by the army for its staff and the rest of the Northeners who now lived in Texas. She’d seen the ladies whispering behind gloved hands in corners, staring in her direction, only to fall silent when she approached. They were distant and vague when she tried to converse with them, and some even looked right through her and walked away with an angry swish of skirts—as if she were a saloon girl who’d dared to trespass where only ladies were welcome!
Her dance card had been full that night, though, a fact that only seemed to make the officers’ wives and daughters hate her more. But she could take no joy in being the belle of the ball, for it was achingly clear that the men who danced with her were only looking to sample the delights Captain Burke had told them about.
Of course her sudden change in popularity—a belle on the dance floor, a pariah among women—could not escape her father’s attention, even as absentminded and preoccupied as James Harper could be at the best of times. She’d had to tell him what had happened between herself and Captain Burke. It was only the second time she’d ever seen her father cry; the first time had been when her mother had died. He hadn’t condemned Maggie, though. He’d been so kind and loving that she’d felt worse than ever.
She didn’t have to worry about him doing any violence to Burke—though he’d expressed a fervent desire to hurt him—because the captain had suddenly and conveniently been “called to Washington” two days after his last meeting with Maggie.
Maggie knew she’d been fortunate beyond measure when her “monthly visitor” came as usual two weeks after Burke’s departure, for she could imagine no hell worse than having to carry the fruit of her foolish liaison. Now they could put this unfortunate happening behind them, her father had told her, and things could go back to normal.
James Harper had protested when she’d told him she had to leave Austin. Things would blow over, he’d said—but she knew they would not. Her position there was untenable. Even though she was willing to forgo what social life there was for Yankees in Texas, and just live for her work, she could no longer endure her father’s pitying kindness in the midst of her disgrace.
Maggie couldn’t tell him that, of course. She’d told him she needed a change of scene, to try her wings. He’d been adamantly against her going off alone to take a position, but she had reminded him she was an adult with some limited funds of her own, and in the end he had given her his reluctant blessing.
Now she took a deep breath and began to wade through the ankle-deep mud that separated the newspaper office from the hotel.
Chapter Three (#ulink_bba5a30a-c3ff-510b-ba70-6f0e3082c212)
Garrick leaned over the shiny black Washington handpress that held pride of place in the middle of the office of the Gazette, holding on to the sides of the machinery as if it were a raft in the midst of a stormy sea.
Perhaps it was a mistake to have come in today, one day after his solemn-faced brother Sam had brought over the letter from Houston. Full of misspelled words and barely legible writing, the letter had been written by a semiliterate friend of Martha Purdy, the woman who had brought little Johnny to him. She thought he ought to know, she wrote, that Cecilia Prentice had passed away in the third week of March. She had died in her sleep, and her “husband” had barely waited through the brief funeral service before he’d started seeking another wife.
Sam had urged Garrick to stay home today, to take it easy while his mind absorbed the shock of his faithless wife’s death. Hiding at home didn’t make sense to Garrick. Cecilia had been as good as dead to him ever since she’d left him, he’d told Sam sourly, though deep inside, Garrick had known that wasn’t true. Some small voice inside of him had never stopped hoping that a miracle would take place and she’d recover and come home so they could learn to be a family.
And now it would never happen, and there was no point in staying in the new house that hardly felt like home yet, mourning for a woman who’d already been dead for a fortnight. Johnny didn’t really understand what Garrick had tried to tell him about his mother, so there was nothing he could do for his son.
Besides, the man he’d hired to be his pressman was a couple of days late in arriving—probably due to the recent spate of rainy weather—and Garrick didn’t want the fellow looking high and low for him all over Gillespie Springs when he didn’t find him in the Gazette office. So Garrick had kissed his son goodbye, told Jovita Mendez he probably wouldn’t be back until suppertime, and left his house on South Street. He’d made a brief stop at the general store to purchase a black mourning band to put on his upper arm, but had dodged questions about whom he was wearing it for.
Garrick had been at the office now for three hours and had written several stories about local goings-on. He had no idea, though, if his new employee would arrive before he was forced to discard the longhand copy as old news.
If only he knew how to run the damned press! Garrick stared down at the bewildering, monstrous contraption.
But what if “M. L. Harper” had changed his mind about coming, and was not even on his way?
The damp weather had made Garrick’s missing lower leg throb like a toothache. Lord, but he’d swear that he could feel each toe curling with the punishing pain. And the bandaged stump felt red and raw from rubbing against the harness that anchored his wooden limb to his body.
All at once the bell over the door jingled, and he looked up to see a woman letting herself in. He’d never seen her before, and in the two months he’d been residing in the small town, he thought he’d met everyone. She wore a traveling costume of coppery brown trimmed with black velvet at the hem and neckline. Perched on her head was a charming little confection of a hat trimmed with a wide band of copper ribbon, over which was a narrower one of black velvet
It was not her hat that held his attention, however, but the mass of flaming, auburn-red hair beneath it. He’d never seen hair that color. When she turned slightly, he could see it was confined in a demure black snood at the nape of her neck, but within the netting, curls coiled in fiery profusion, lit by the sun coming through his window.
He saw green eyes staring at him with wide-eyed astonishment, and wondered what she found so surprising. He hadn’t moved yet, so it could not be that she was shocked by his awkward gait,
“May I help you, ma’am?” She must be lost, though how anyone could get lost in a town the size of Gillespie Springs was a mystery to him. She was probably looking for the millinery, he decided, taking in her fashionable appearance. Well, he wished Phoebe Stone joy in her new customer. Perhaps she was a relative of the mayor, come for a visit?
“I believe I’m here to help you, if you’re Mr. Devlin,” she said, smiling a little as she held out her gloved hand.
Her clipped Northern voice raised his hackles immediately. The Yankee who had shot him in the leg had had just such an accent; Garrick still heard that harsh voice in his nightmares calling to his comrades, “Well, I was aimin’ for his heart, but I winged him, at least—either way, he won’t be killin’ Yankees no more!”
Garrick straightened, and taking his cane from where it leaned against the press, approached the woman who stood at his counter. He saw her eyes fasten on the cane and then fly back to his face. He saw the color heighten as she realized he’d caught her staring.
He was used to that reaction from women. “I’m Garrick Devlin,” he said, his voice cool. Then he added, with a deliberate lack of courtesy, “Who’re you?”
She blinked at his tone, and her smile faded, but her eyes were steady. He saw her straighten her backbone as if preparing to fend off a blow. “I’m M. L. Harper, your new pressman. I’m sorry to have arrived later than I told you to expect me, but the roads between this town and Austin are a river of mud, as I’m sure you can imagine.” Her voice trailed off for a moment, then began again. “But in any case, I’m here now and eager to go to work, if you’ll just show me where to put my bag? Ah, I see you have a Washington handpress! It’s not the latest in presses, but I have had vast experience using it.”
Her words went on, but he was still focusing on the first thing she’d said. “You aren’t M. L. Harper. You’re a female.”
The smile returned to her face, this time with a teasing quality. “I don’t like to argue with a new employer, but I am M. L. Harper—that’s Margaret Louise Harper, sir. And I assure you that while I am indeed female, I have had the experience I wrote you about. I was an only child, and my father, frustrated at not having a son to pass on his newspapering knowledge to, trained me in every aspect of journalistic endeavor—pressman, compositor and writer of editorials. I can do much more than the paper folding and coloring in of prints that are all a woman usually is allowed to do on a newspaper. Look, Mr. Devlin,” she said, holding up her long, slender fingers. “My hands are small, which makes them more nimble than a man’s. I can set more ems a minute than any man.”
“The hell you say,” Garrick retorted bluntly, not having any idea what an em was, and for the moment, not caring. He was too furious at the realization that he’d been tricked—and by a female again.
She raised an expressive eyebrow at his rough language, but he was damned if he’d apologize—not when she’d lied to him as she had.
“Indeed I have. Most recently I served as my father’s righthand reporter in Austin—”
“You’ve worked on the Democratic Statesman?” he demanded. “I don’t believe it.”
“No,” she said evenly, “for Freedom’s Voice.”
He let his lip curl with all the contempt he felt. “Oh, that carpetbagger paper. I should’ve known.”
“In our circle, the Statesman was known as ‘that rebel rag,’ sir,” she retorted sweetly. “Nevertheless, as a journalist I respect newspapers of any political persuasion, as our country was founded on freedom of the press, isn’t that so? And you did send for me to help you with yours.”
“I didn’t send for a Yankee, or a woman,” he growled between clenched teeth. “And you’re both.” He could feel the throbbing in his leg rise to a pain-filled crescendo. “You lied to me, and I don’t like being lied to,” he told her. “So you can just take the stage on back to Austin, Miz Harper. I don’t like your kind, descending on Texas like a plague of locusts.”
“Is it just my geographic origin you object to, or my sex, too? Would you let me work for you if I came in drawling and fluttering like a Southern woman? ‘Please, suh, may ah work for y’all?’“ the woman mocked in an exaggerated Southern falsetto.
He could feel the rage flooding his system, rage that this lying female should dare to mock him! “Miz Harper,” he said, allowing his own natural drawl to pour out like acidtinged honey, “Southern ladies stay at home and mind their own business, so I just can’t picture that happening. The fact that you’re not home tending your knitting tells me that either the Yankees have different standards for ladylike behavior or you’re no lady. Why else would you have left your cozy place with your father? And yes, there’re two things I won’t stomach in any employee of mine, Miz Harper—bein’ a Yankee and bein’ a female. So you can just tote that carpetbag on out of here. I lost my leg to your kind, and I won’t tolerate you here, do you understand?”
He saw her blink back the tears his tirade had caused, and for a moment he felt ashamed. Then he saw her chin rise defiantly.
“In your inexperience, Mr. Devlin, you don’t know that most men in my line of work have an unfortunate tendency to drink on the job, and get the urge to go on to the next job as soon as you’ve learned to depend on them. My reasons for leaving my father’s newspaper are none of your concern, sir. Suffice it to say that I have reached my majority and am free to look out for my own interests. You said you needed someone to help you operate the Washington there,” she said, nodding toward the machine in back of him. “I can do that. You obviously do not know how to do so yourself. Do you want to cling to your hidebound ideas, sir, or do you want to run a newspaper?”
He had to admire her for standing her ground. She hadn’t said anything about his nasty insinuation that she could not possibly be a lady—she’d just coolly reasserted her abilities. Nevertheless, he wasn’t going to have a Yankee carpetbagger woman running his press!
Just then their duel of words was interrupted by the breathless arrival of Hank Sweeney, the telegraph operator, who’d obviously run clear down the street from the telegraph office past the bathhouse. “Read this, Devlin! This is just in off the wire from Austin!” he said, slamming a piece of paper down on the counter between Garrick and the Yankee woman.
“’Radical Republicans chooses E. J. Davis as candidate for governor.’“ Garrick read Sweeney’s transcription of the dots and dashes aloud. “’Their ally General Reynolds has ear of President Grant.’ Why, this is a disgrace! No respectable man in Texas would vote for this scalawag—yet he’s as good as elected since he’s got that Yankee general on his side!”
“Wouldn’t you like to print that news, Mr. Devlin?” challenged the Yankee woman behind him. “Can’t you just picture it as a banner headline of the first edition of the Gillespie Springs Gazette? You’ve got other stories ready, haven’t you?” she said, pointing toward the pile of papers filled with his scrawling script. “Say the word, Mr. Devlin, and that edition can be done by morning—maybe sooner! I won’t sleep until the press has run off the story. Do you want to stand on your pride, and watch me walk away, or do you want to be the editor of a real working newspaper today?”
Hellfire, but she had him there, and she knew it, damn her knowing green eyes. If he told her to leave now, it might be weeks before he managed to hire a man knowledgeable in the operation of a printing press. By that time Davis’s candidacy would be worse than old news, and how many more exciting stories would remain unreported? The town council had also been eager for him to start operation so they could publicize their community far and wide.
“How many others have you told, Sweeney?” he asked the telegraph operator, turning away from Margaret Harper.
“Why, no one, Mr. Devlin,” the man answered, his face earnest.
“See? Your paper’s inaugural issue would sell like hot cakes,” Margaret Harper said in her pushy way. “Why not give me a chance, Mr. Devlin? Let me put out this first edition for you, and you’ll see how well I can work. If you don’t think I’m as good as I say I am, I’ll take the next stage out of Gillespie Springs with no hard feelings, I promise. Please, Mr. Devlin?”
He looked at her, sensing she hated begging, and momentarily savored being in the position of having her plead to him to take her on. And then he saw the pain and the fear deep within those green eyes, and he was ashamed of himself.
“All right, Miss Harper, I’d be willing to employ you for a trial issue, and after that we’ll see, is that understood? If I find I can’t get along with you, you’ll leave?” He didn’t believe for a moment her claim that she would depart without any hard feelings, not with that red hair and those fiery green eyes, or the way she had of raising her chin in the air. There’d be hard feelings, all right, if he told her he couldn’t work with her. If she stayed, he knew as sure as he was standing there he’d be apt to spend a good deal of his time clashing with this opinionated, bold woman who was surely no lady. He’d have to make certain she knew who was boss. But he wanted to start up his paper and report this story, and if that meant putting up with this Yankee woman at least temporarily, then that was the sacrifice he’d have to make.
“Sweeney, can I count on you not to blab this story all over town, at least until the paper comes out tomorrow morning?”
“Why sure, Mr. Devlin,” the telegrapher said, goggleeyed. “It’s a deal, as long as you’ll give me one of the first papers, hot off the press!”
“Does that mean you’ll give me a chance, Mr. Devlin?” Margaret Harper asked in an excited voice. She extended her hand, evidently expecting him to shake it to seal the deal. “You won’t be sorry, sir, I promise you.”
Garrick was sure he would be sorry, but it was too late now. Bemused, he had just taken her hand in his when the bell over the door tinkled and a familiar voice cried, “Papa, look! We brung your dinner!”
Chapter Four (#ulink_5d840817-5628-5474-9862-6d8dedf3db56)
Maggie whirled around and beheld a little boy dragging a covered basket through the door. Behind him followed a sturdily built Mexican woman with salt-and-pepper hair, her face amused at the child’s efforts.
The boy was beautiful, his blue eyes—the same piercing blue as Devlin’s, she noted absently—shining as he brought the basket to the man he’d called “Papa.” So Garrick Devlin was a father. Who was the mother of this beautiful child? Surely not the Mexican woman?
“You said you would not be back teel supper, Senor Devlin, and Johnny, he worries that you weel get hungry,” the Mexican woman said with a smile. “We pack you a peekneek, yes?”
Maggie saw Devlin’s face, set in harshly suspicious and disapproving lines when he looked at her, transform as if by magic as he gazed at his son. He took a couple of awkward steps forward, leaning on the cane, and clumsily knelt down in front of the boy as if he had totally forgotten Maggie’s presence.
“Thank you very much, Johnny, that was extremely kind of you,” she heard him say. “But I’m afraid dinner is going to have to wait awhile. Right now, I need to follow Mr. Sweeney down to the telegraph office so I can find out some more things about a big story I need to write for the newspaper.”
The boy’s face fell. “But I wanted to eat with you, Papa! Jovita packed a lot of food…”
Devlin looked distressed, but said, “Johnny, I just can’t eat right now. I know you don’t understand, but I need to do something else. Perhaps we could have a picnic tomorrow?”
“Mr. Devlin, if I may suggest…” Maggie began. She saw him frown at her, but rushed right on. “Why not go down to the telegraph office and wire for the details you need, and we can get your picnic ready for you? Then, while you’re waiting for a reply, you can come back and eat with your son. Isn’t that a good idea?” she said with an encouraging smile.
His glare told her in no uncertain terms what he thought of her volunteering her opinion the way she had, but just then Johnny piped up. “Papa, who’s the pretty lady? She talks funny, don’t she, Papa?”
“Doesn’t she,” Devlin corrected. “But it’s not polite to say so. This is Miss Margaret Harper, Johnny and Jovita. She—” Maggie saw him struggle to appear calm as he made the announcement “—is about to begin a probationary period as my printer.”
Maggie saw a flicker of surprise light the onyx depths of the Mexican woman’s eyes, to be replaced by a twinkle of amusement. “Welcome, Senorita Harper. And you are right—Senor Devlin should do as you say about the peekneek. Andele, Senor Devlin,” she said, making shooing motions. “We will have the dinner all ready by the time you come back. Do not worry, there is plenty for your new employee, too.”
Johnny stared at his father anxiously.
Maggie could tell Garrick Devlin liked nothing less than to be told what to do by a woman, any woman, but for some reason he did not reprove Jovita.
“All right,” he said in a deceptively agreeable voice, smiling at his son as the boy crowed with glee. Then Devlin’s eyes fixed on Maggie, promising trouble, as he spoke to the telegraph operator. “Sweeney, go on ahead and I’ll join you in a moment.” He paused, waiting for the man to walk out of earshot before saying, “Miss Harper, come outside with me for a moment, will you? I have some instructions to give you before I go down to the telegraph office.”
She nodded and followed him out the door.
He did not pause until he was several yards away from the newspaper office, and did not even look behind him to see if she was following. She could only watch the awkward, stiff-legged gait his artificial limb forced on him until he turned around and faced her.
“Miss Harper, if you’re going to work for me, there had better never be a repetition of what you just did,” he growled.
“What I just did?” she echoed, trying to think of how best to defend herself, without losing either her job or her self-respect.
“Don’t play the fool with me, woman—I don’t employ fools. You know exactly what I’m referring to,” he snarled. “I’m talking about your meddling back there. I know meddling comes as natural to you Yankees as breathing, but if you wish to remain here you’ll keep your Northern nose out of my business, is that clear?”
“Yes, sir.” She ground out the words, and watched as he mumbled something and kept walking.
Damn the man! He hadn’t even allowed her the courtesy of presenting her side! She had wanted to explain to him, to say, “I’m sorry, but I just couldn’t bear to see the boy disappointed, and you would have to wait for a reply in any case, so why not sit down and eat with your child?”
Clenching her gloved fists at her sides in frustration, she turned and stalked back to the newspaper office.
Jovita was just spreading out a tablecloth on the large table at the back of the office when Maggie returned. The boy was capering about, and when Maggie entered, he jumped up and down and crowed, “We’re gonna have a picnic! Me an’ Papa an’ Jovita an’ the pretty lady!”
“Yes, you are, niño,” Jovita said, smiling at him. “Why don’t you watch at the window for your papa and let us know if he comes while Senorita Harper and I spread out the food?”
It was a good way to keep the child from dropping any of the dishes or the jar of lemonade, Maggie thought, as Johnny went obediently to the window to watch down the street in the direction his father had gone.
“Please, call me Maggie,” she told the Mexican woman as she went forward to assist her at the table. She saw fried chicken, biscuits, a bowl of black-eyed peas and a peach pie.
“All right, Maggie,” Jovita said, her smile warming.
“So the señor who writes to Meester Devlin is really a senorita,” she said. “Eet is a good joke, no?”
“No,” Maggie said ruefully. “That is, I didn’t mean it as a joke, but I knew he wouldn’t consider me if he knew I was a woman. I…I’m afraid he’s rather angry—not only because I’m a woman, but also because I’m from the North.”
“He weel get over eet,” Jovita told her, her black eyes twinkling, “when he sees you do a good job.”
“Oh, I intend to,” Maggie assured her, buoyed by the woman’s vote of confidence. Then she darted a glance at Johnny, but the boy was staring at a grasshopper making its way over the glass, just out of his reach, and he was paying no attention to them.
Maggie lowered her voice and said, “I’d like to ask while Mr. Devlin is gone—why is he wearing a black armband? And is that why he’s so…so cross?”
A shadow passed over the older woman’s face, and she, too, checked to see if Johnny was paying any attention to them before she whispered back, “Eet ees for hees wife. She die some days ago, but he just learn of eet yesterday, you see? She was a silly woman, hees wife. She ran away from heem.”
Margaret felt her mouth drop open in shock. “She deserted him? And their child?” Now she understood the undercurrent of rage in his voice when he had spoken to her. His grief was still fresh, and mixed with that grief was an anger he was entitled to feel at his wife’s betrayal.
Ah, Maggie, you’re so perceptive all of a sudden, a voice within her mocked. You, who didn’t see what kind of man Richard Burke was until it was too late? Maybe Garrick Devlin made his wife’s life a hell on earth, as he may very well make yours as his employee. Somehow, though, her heart was sure that whatever had happened between him and his wife, Garrick had not been at fault, despite his sour temperament.
“Oh, dear,” she said aloud. She could hardly have come at a worse time.
“I do not theenk he means to be so cross,” Jovita said, laying a consoling hand on Maggie’s shoulder. “Eet ees not you. Eet ees hees wife, the war.he lost hees leg in the war, did you know that?”
“Yes, he told me,” Maggie said hastily. Actually, he had flung the words at her, hadn’t he? As if they were jagged stones.
The Mexican woman shrugged. “Eet ees many things. He has not had the boy a long time. They still get to know each other, you see.”
“I see,” Maggie murmured, but of course she didn’t.
“Hees brother Cal, the sheriff, he tell me much about thees woman who was hees wife,” Jovita informed her. “You ask heem sometime, st?”
“Oh, I’m sure it’s none of my business,” Maggie told the woman uncomfortably, but for some reason Jovita didn’t look at all convinced.
“You have never been married, señorita?” Jovita inquired.
The change of subject startled Maggie. “No,” she said, but she felt the betraying flush creep up her cheeks. Once, she had expected to be Mrs. Richard Burke by this time.
“Ah, but you have a sweetheart, no? He ees back where you came from?” Jovita asked, her face puzzled.
“No,” Maggie said, too quickly. “That is…there was someone.but we’re no longer, uh, courting.”
“Ah…” the woman murmured, and Maggie saw in her eyes that she had guessed much about Maggie’s former sweetheart.
She was afraid Jovita was going to probe further, and was wondering how she could politely evade the questions, when Johnny began jumping up and down and shouting that his father was coming down the street. And then Garrick Devlin was silhouetted by the sun in the entranceway.
“Everything ees ready, Senor Devlin,” Jovita said, motioning to the food and dishes spread out on the table. “Sit down and eat, you and Senorita Maggie and Johnny. You sent your wire, st?”
“Yes,” he murmured, but his eyes were on Maggie, who felt like a jackrabbit must feel when cornered by a cougar. A wounded, irritable cougar.
“Oh, but I wouldn’t dream of intruding on your dinner with your son, sir,” Maggie assured him, and wasn’t surprised to see her remark make his face relax a little. “Perhaps you could tell me if the hotel serves luncheon?”
“Of course you weel not eat at the hotel! There ees more than enough food for all three of you, Senorita Maggie. You weel eat here,” Jovita informed her. “Señor, I have theengs to buy for your household at the general store,” she said. “I weel leave Johnny weeth you while he eats and then come back for heem, sí? You can enjoy your son and get to know your new employee,” she said with a twinkle in her eye as she started walking to the door.
“You’re not staying?” Garrick protested. “But Jovita—” But the bell over the door was already tinkling as the Mexican woman exited.
“Let’s eat, Papa! The pretty lady can sit by me!” the boy cried, his eyes moving from his father to Maggie and back again. “Come sit here, pretty lady!”
Maggie bent to speak to the little boy. “Johnny, you may call me Miss Maggie,” she said with a smile, then turned to speak to his father. “Mr. Devlin, it’s not necessary,” she began. “I’ll just walk down to the hotel—”
“You’ll do no such thing, Miss Harper,” Garrick Devlin informed her, his eyes warning her not to protest further in front of his son, who was watching everything that passed between them. “Have a seat next to Johnny, there. I’ll need to discuss with you how I intend to run this newspaper in any case, so you might as well sit down and eat dinner with us.” He gestured toward the table, his invitation the very antithesis of the famous Southern hospitality.
That hospitality must be reserved for other Southerners, she thought ruefully, for as a Yankee she’d never received it.
Ah, well, he was just her employer. And if he didn’t like her, little Johnny seemed perfectly thrilled that she was going to eat with him and his papa, Maggie thought as the little boy settled himself on the chair between them and grabbed at a drumstick.
“Not yet, Johnny. Haven’t I taught you we must give thanks for our food before we eat?”
Before she bowed her own head, Maggie saw the little boy dutifully bow his and squeeze his eyes shut. Then she listened as Devlin briefly drawled grace.
The man had a beautiful voice, even if he was testy in the extreme, Maggie thought. Then she opened her eyes, to find him looking at her.
“Go ahead and help yourself to some chicken now, Johnny, Miss Harper,” he said, without looking away from her. “You’ll have to forgive my lack of eloquence in prayer, ma’am,” he said, irony dripping in the twangy, molasses-coated vowels. “My brother Cal’s the preacher in the family.”
“But…isn’t he the sheriff? At least, I thought that’s what Jovita said,” Maggie replied, then knew when he raised an eyebrow that she’d managed to say the wrong thing. She ducked her head and pretended to ponder her own selection of chicken.
“Oh, so my housekeeper’s already given you my complete family history,” he commented. “No doubt you’d have solved all my problems if I’d been gone five minutes more.”
“No, Mr. Devlin, I—”
He held up a hand to hush her. “No matter. I’m sure it’s just as well that you know my estimable brother Caleb is the sheriff of this little town, after having been a preacher before the war. In fact, you’d probably get along famously with him, as he fought alongside the Yankees rather than our own Southern boys.” There was bitterness in his voice as he divulged this surprising news.
She felt him watching her again, but she refused to give him the satisfaction of showing her curiosity.
Johnny’s interruption made that easier. “I like Uncle Cal—Aunt Livy, too!” he announced, waving his alreadybare drumstick like a baton. “And I like Grammy and Aunt Annie, and Uncle Sam and Aunt Mercy—she’s gonna have a baby! And I like my kitty cat!”
“You have a lot of family to like, Johnny,” Maggie said, feeling envious. Since her mother had died, she’d had only her absentminded father, and she sometimes thought James Harper forgot her existence except when they worked together at the newspaper.
She turned to Devlin after the boy started attacking a second drumstick. “So how did you decide you wanted to run a newspaper, Mr. Devlin?”
“I just got tired of beating all the men and boys of Brazos County at footraces, Miss Harper,” he said with a sardonic nod toward his wooden leg, which was extended stiffly out to the side of his chair.
Chapter Five (#ulink_a3e99ed0-777c-580c-8ffd-e9c8596f2299)
His sarcasm left Maggie feeling as if she’d just been slapped. For a moment she couldn’t get her breath, and then she was angry—so angry that she wished little Johnny wasn’t there so she could tell Garrick Devlin off before she quit and went to inquire about the next stage back to Austin. But little Johnny was there, and his presence stiffened her resolve. She’d be damned if she was going to let the man bait her into leaving before she’d even started.
“You have a.unique way of informing me it’s none of my concern, haven’t you, Mr. Devlin?” she replied in a voice that was as unruffled as she could possibly make it, so that the little boy wouldn’t notice the tension that thrummed between the adults. “Very well. Perhaps you should tell me what your goals and philosophy are in regards to your newspaper.”
He blinked at her composed response. Point for me, thought Maggie, but don’t expect me to be so restrained when your child is elsewhere. I haven’t got red hair for nothing.
“My goals and philosophy?” He leaned back in his chair and made a tent of his fingers. “Well, I reckon my goal is to start a newspaper worthy of the name, a paper that will expose the villainy of the carpetbaggers who have polluted our fair Texas soil, and the cancer of the scalawags who would sell Texas itself for the right price.”
She felt herself flushing as she realized he was again attempting to goad her.
“In other words, Texas right or wrong, is that your creed?” she retorted sweetly.
“Precisely, Miss Harper. Johnny, you may not have pie until you have some peas,” Devlin commanded his son, who’d taken advantage of his father’s inattention to try and cut an enormous slice of peach pie for himself.
Johnny looked sulky. “Does Miss Maggie have to eat ‘em, too?”
“Why, yes of course, Johnny,” Maggie told him with a smile. “That’s one vegetable we don’t have where I come from, and I find I quite like them.”
The boy appeared intrigued. “You don’t have no black-eyed peas?” he asked, looking as if he thought she must come from the moon for that to be true.
“Johnny, finish your dinner and let Miss Harper and your papa talk, please,” Devlin said. “Miss Harper, I intend for the motto on the Gazette’s masthead to be Forever The Truth For Texas. What do you think of that?”
Didn’t he ever give up? “Indeed, I think that the truth is all any newspaper should print, sir. And I’m curiouswhat did you use for start-up capital, if you don’t mind my asking?”
She watched as a guarded look swept over his face, and then a sardonic smile. “Do you mean how did I ever manage to find two bits to rub together after the Yankees moved in and the taxes went through the roof? It wasn’t easy, Miss Harper, in the face of that, but like all sneaky rebels, we had some silver buried in the backyard.”
She couldn’t be sure, but she thought he was being sarcastic again. “All right, but if I may ask, what are you using for operating capital?”
He blinked. “I beg your pardon, Miss Harper?”
“Operating capital,” she repeated. “You know, the cost of running your newspaper? The money that buys your ink and paper and pays for any needed repairs to that printing press over there? I see you have enough supplies to start.” She nodded toward the Washington handpress, sitting behind the counter in all its shiny black glory, toward a cabinet full of rows of type cases, cylinders of paper and bottles of ink behind it. Devlin had paid a pretty penny for that press, she imagined, and wondered where the money had come from. None of the former rebels seemed to have any money left after the war, and his clothes, though neat and clean, were far from new or fancy.
“Why, the sale of my paper will supply the operating capital,” he said, as if surprised. “I suppose it might occasionally be necessary to sell an ad to the general store, or print a Wanted poster for my brother the sheriff, or a handbill when Mayor Long is up for reelection, but I wish to keep my paper above the influence of those who would purchase space in it, Miss Harper. It’s far more important to devote the columns to exposing the evils presently existing in Texas—”
“Lofty ideals, Mr. Devlin, but as an experienced newspaperwoman, I can tell you that your paper will starve for lack of cash nourishment if you think you can run it on nothing more than what the townspeople will pay for it. What did you plan on charging, sir? A nickel? This is a small town, and even if everyone subscribes, you won’t make enough to keep it going. No sir, in my opinion, you will have to plan on selling advertisement space regularly. Most papers run each ad for at least six weeks, which is very easy with stereotypes, the woodcut-and-type blocks patent medicine makers furnish. And you will have to do away with job printing during the day if you hope to survive—the paper can always be printed at night.”
He looked momentarily dazed by all the information she had just thrown at him, but then he recovered, and Maggie could see he was restraining himself with some difficulty.
“Opinions are one thing you don’t seem to lack, Miss Harper,” he said at last. “Very well, I shall sell advertisement space. I imagine the proprietor of the general store will be happy to buy an ad on a regular basis. And then there’s the milliner, and the barber—and of course Doc Broughton is always peddling some nostrum or other. Yes, Johnny, you may have a piece of pie now that you’ve eaten your peas. Here, I’ll cut you a slice.”
Maggie decided she wouldn’t smash all his optimism in one sitting. She hadn’t met the businessmen of Gillespie Springs, of course, but from what she’d seen, a small-town merchant was notoriously reluctant to see the need to advertise when he had the only store of its kind for miles.
She was about to ask another question when Devlin began to speak again.
“Today is Tuesday,” he said, as if thinking aloud. “If we succeed in putting out our first edition tomorrow, we’ll plan on putting the paper out every Wednesday.”
She nodded, pleased that they were now on a more businesslike footing. “In your letter, you mentioned that there was a room upstairs that would be my living quarters-does that staircase in the corner of the room lead to it?”
“Yes, but I didn’t know you were a female then,” Devlin reminded her. “It’s out of the question for you to live upstairs now, of course. But you can rent a room at the boardinghouse over on North Street.”
Now it was Maggie’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “Why ever shouldn’t I live here? My board was part of the deal you offered, Mr. Devlin, and I doubt I can afford to pay board on the salary we agreed upon,” she informed him frankly. “As it is, I will have to buy my meals. And while you are not paying me the fifty cents an hour a male pressman could earn at any newspaper back East, I would like to be able to save some of my money. All Yankees are not born rich, despite what you may think.”
“But you can’t stay up there, a woman alone!” he sputtered. “It wouldn’t be proper!”
“Nonsense, sir. The door can be locked, can’t it? Having upstairs quarters will be very handy when we put the paper to bed late at night, as we will probably be doing tonight,” she said, then was amused to see him blush at the phrase.
“Miss Harper, perhaps all Yankee women speak as you do, but I’ll remind you to keep a civil tongue around my son,” he snapped, though Johnny had finished his pie and was once more pursuing a fly on the window glass.
She couldn’t help but laugh. “Mr. Devlin, that’s a perfectly usual term in the newspaper business,” she said, “not a lewd phrase at all. It means finishing that particular edition, and shutting down the press, and—”
“I can guess that,” he interrupted. “Just watch how you talk, if you please. Ah, there you are, Sweeney,” he said, as the telegrapher rushed in. “Were you able to get an answer from your source in Austin?”
“Yeah, I got lots a’ details for ya, Mr. Devlin,” said Sweeney, beaming with importance. “It’s sure ‘nough gonna set the folks in town on the boil, that’s fer dang sure!” Then he realized Maggie and the child were sitting there, and he clapped his bony hand over his mouth. “Oh, pardon me, miss.”
Maggie could tell her employer longed to inform Sweeney that her language could be much coarser than his “dang,” but he restrained himself. “Think nothing of it,” she murmured, and then the bell over the door tinkled again, announcing Jovita’s return.
“Eet ees time to come weeth me, niño,” the Mexican woman told Johnny as she entered, holding out her hand to the boy. “After your nap you can help me figure out what to make for supper for your papa, yes?”
“That won’t be necessary, Jovita. I won’t be home for supper tonight In fact, I may be very late.”
“But you must eat, señor, you and the señorita.”
“You fuss like a mother hen, Jovita, but I promise I won’t forget to feed Miss Harper. I’ll fetch us sandwiches from the hotel or something. Now go on home with Johnny. I have a paper to get out”
Maggie could see he was fairly fidgeting with impatience to get started. Well, for all his faults, at least Garrick Devlin was an eager newspaperman, and she could forgive a lot in the face of that. She remembered when the stories she’d been writing for her father’s newspaper had been allimportant to her, too. That had been before Richard, of course. Could she possibly regain her enthusiasm, working for a man who obviously hadn’t yet finished fighting the Civil War?
“All right, señor,” Jovita said. “Well, if Papa must be late tonight, Johnny, what would you theenk of going to visit your tio Cal and tia Livy?”
“Sí Jovita! See, Papa, she’s teachin’ me Mexican!” Johnny boasted.
“So I hear,” Garrick said approvingly. “I’ll see you later, son,” he added, but his wave was distracted as he snatched the paper, with its dots and dashes and the telegrapher’s transcription above it, from Sweeney. “Thanks, Sweeney. Remember to keep this quiet, will you?”
“You bet, Mr. Devlin. Nice meeting you, Miss Harper,” said the telegrapher as he backed out the door.
“Nice meeting you, too, Mr. Sweeney. Thank you for your quick work,” she added, and saw the man’s face light up as he exited.
And then she was alone with Devlin.
“Well, now you have two males in your thrall, my son and Sweeney,” commented Devlin sourly behind her. “Stop batting your eyelashes and take your bags on upstairs, if you’re still determined to room there. Change into something you won’t be afraid to get ink on, Miss Harper.”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, Mr. Devlin,” she retorted with some spirit. “But never mind—I promise never to bat my eyelashes in your direction. Give me five minutes to change my clothes and I’ll be back, ready to work,” she said. Picking up her two heavy carpetbags, she headed for the stairs. She hoped five minutes would be long enough to cool both their tempers so that they could get some work done!
The room was small, and sparsely furnished with a bedstead, a chest of drawers, holding a washbasin and pitcher, and a table with a single, rickety-legged chair. A cloudy mirror hung above the chest. There was one window, which looked out over a back street lined with small houses, some of which were little more than rude shacks. Not exactly a scenic view, she thought. She would need to fashion some curtains for privacy at night. And no doubt the room, which was now delightfully airy with the spring breeze blowing through the open window, would be hot as Hades come summer, but at least it was hers alone.
Latching the door behind her, Maggie set her bags down on the bed and pulled out her workday clothes, a skirt and waist of a navy blue so dark it looked black except in bright sunlight. It had been washed and re-dyed many times, but ink stains hardly showed on it. Then, staying away from the window, she stripped off her traveling clothes and hung them on pegs on the back of the door. There would be time later to arrange her garments in the chest of drawers.
Some thoughtful soul—impossible to think it could have been Devlin—had put water into the pitcher, and she poured some onto a towel and used it to wash her face. Feeling refreshed, she combed out her hair and braided the fiery, curly strands.
Garrick Devlin could hardly be more different from the kindly, middle-aged man she had imagined, Maggie thought as she coiled the braid at the nape of her neck with a few hairpins. She had been expecting someone like her father, she realized, someone with James Harper’s gentle mien if not his looks.
She estimated Garrick Devlin to be anywhere from his mid-thirties to forty years of age, judging by the lines engraved around his eyes and mouth and the silver mixed into his dark hair. But his cynical, touchy disposition might make him seem older than he truly was. His face was a lean, hawkish one, with high cheekbones, a long, wellshaped nose and narrow eyes of that piercing blue that seemed an echo of the Texas skies. There was an impossibly arrogant set to his mouth that belied the weakness suggested by the cane he kept at his side.
All told, it was a stubborn, disagreeable face, at least when he looked at her—and yet she had seen that face change when he talked to Johnny. She had seen that he could smile, and that his smile transformed the rest of his tense features, relaxing them and making him look years younger and much more approachable—even handsome! she was surprised to realize.
Well, she had no further use for handsome, that was cer tain. All she hoped for was to be able to work with this difficult man to produce a newspaper they could both be proud of. She could teach him much, if he would let her. If only his stiff-necked pride didn’t get in the way! It wouldn’t be easy, since he despised what she was and everything she stood for, but she could at least try.
Goodness, she’d better stop pondering over her employer and get back downstairs! It was surely more like ten or fifteen minutes since she’d come up here!
“Took you long enough,” groused Devlin, barely glancing up as she reached the bottom of the stairs. He was hunched over the table, a stubby pencil grasped in his right hand, and as she approached, she saw that he’d already covered nearly a full page with his untidy scrawl. She saw him stop and glance at the telegraph transcription, and then his pencil began to race over the paper again.
“I’m sorry, sir, I—”
“Here,” he said, thrusting the now-filled sheet of paper at her. “You can start setting the type for this page.”
The first thing she was going to have to learn how to do was read his writing, Maggie thought with dismay as she peered at the slanting scrawl. It was nothing like the neat copperplate of his letter to “M. L. Harper.” Had he gotten the local schoolmarm to write that letter for him?
“What’s wrong?” he demanded, peering at her and letting the pencil fall with a soft clatter to the desk. “Are you disagreeing with my headline story already? I didn’t employ you to pass judgment on my opinions, Miss Harper, I pay you to run the press,” he growled.
“No, Mr. Devlin,” she began, “that is, I don’t know if I disagree. I—I’m not used to your writing as yet. But just give me a minute or two, and let me study it. I’ll ask you if I can’t decipher a particular word,” she promised, evad ing the hand that would have snatched the paper back from her.
Sure enough, once read in the light of the window, the individual letters began to sort themselves out and form into words and phrases, though it was particularly tough to tell one vowel from another, for they all appeared to be the same indistinct near-loop shape. Hopefully the arrangement of his flamboyantly slanted consonants would give her the clues she needed.
She turned her attention to the California type cases, the trays of metal letters of various sizes and fonts. At least the standard nine-point type she’d need for the newspaper was arranged alphabetically, she discovered. When she had more time she would arrange it the way compositors traditionally did—capital letters alphabetically in cases on the right, and small-case letters on the left, with the most frequently used ones in the handiest spaces.
She began setting up the rows of type that would become the opening lines of the infant newspaper: the masthead, with the large Gothic capitals proudly proclaiming the name of the paper as the Gillespie Springs Gazette; the motto Forever The Truth For Texas right underneath; and then the date April 4, 1869, followed by the words Premier Edition and Garrick Devlin, Editor And Owner.
That portion completed, she laid out the very first headline: Radical Republicans Choose E. J. Davis As Their Gubernatorial Candidate, Former Union Brigadier General Is Certain Victor With General Reynolds As Ally.
Afternoon drifted into evening as she painstakingly set in rows of metal and wood type the words Garrick Devlin was feverishly scribbling at his desk. Every so often he would hand her another page and ask her how she was coming, and if she thought she was going to be able to finish tonight. Naturally, she could not lay out the pages as fast as he could write, but she kept working, ignoring the ache in her back and the throbbing of her head.
“Well, are you going to tell me we shall have to put off publication for another day?” Garrick Devlin inquired some time much later, coming to stand next to where she was working on the second page.
Maggie looked up in surprise. “Why, no, sir,” she said, glancing at the watch she’d pinned to her bodice. Seven o’clock, and she was only half done! “No, I promised you this would be ready by morning, and it will be, even if I have to stay up all night, just as I said.”
Was that approval that had flashed so briefly in those cold blue eyes? No, surely she had imagined it!
“Well, Miss Harper, I am all done with the writing, and my stomach is growling.”
“Go ahead, go have something to eat,” she said without looking up. “I’m not hungry after that big midday dinner,” she lied. And then, to her mortification, her own stomach protested, too, loudly enough that Garrick Devlin heard it.
“Why, Miss Harper, I believe you are prevaricating,” Devlin mocked, a small smile playing about that arrogant mouth.
“Well, perhaps a little,” she admitted, “but I really am eager to get this done, just as I promised. Perhaps I will eat something before we start running off copies.” She’d need some nourishment before lifting those heavy trays of type and repeatedly pulling back the devil’s tail—the lever that rolled the bed of type under the platen.
“Then I shall have to go over to the hotel and purchase something for both of us to eat, or no doubt I’d return to find you swooned on top of the press,” he taunted her in that molasses drawl of his.
“It’s not necessary.”
“Certainly it is. I promised Jovita I would feed you, and so I shall. I, Miss Harper, do not prevaricate. I’ll return in a few minutes.” With that, he made his way to the door and went out.
Chapter Six (#ulink_d2e6ca63-6318-5874-a46e-b8a719ab4e53)
Garrick peered at his pocket watch, willed to him as the eldest Devlin son by his father. It was 3:00 a.m.
“One hundred copies,” he murmured as Margaret Harper pulled the last one off of the press. “I believe that will be enough for our first edition, Miss Harper, so I’ll bid you good-night.”
She stared back at him as if dazed, her green eyes dull with fatigue, her shoulders slumping slightly, and he knew a moment’s shame for having worked her so hard on the same day she had arrived on the stage. As soon as he’d finished writing the copy, he’d helped with as much of the work as he could, and bad been shocked by how heavy the typeset pages were once the tin letters were locked together. Why, they must weigh a good thirty pounds each, and Miss Harper hadn’t even mentioned it, let alone batted her eyelashes at him and praised his manly strength the way Cecilia used to do when she wanted something heavy toted for her.
Then, after some quick instruction by Miss Harper, he’d done the tedious “pulling of the devil’s tail” and run off copies of the Gazette while she belatedly ate her supper. His right shoulder throbbed as a result, and he marveled that she, of much slighter build, had yet to utter a first complaint.
Perhaps the Yankees were built of sterner stuff than he’d imagined. “You’ve worked very hard today, Miss Harper. That is to be commended,” he said. “If it hadn’t been for that story, of course, we needn’t have been in such a hurry, but this information can’t wait. Naturally I shan’t expect such a frantic pace out of you normally.”
He saw her chin go up again, the shoulders straighten and the light of battle rekindle those green eyes.
“Nonsense, Mr. Devlin,” she said briskly. “Every good newspaperman—or woman—thrives on the excitement of getting such a big story to its readers. Don’t fear you have to spare me just because I’m a woman. I’m used to working as hard as any man.”
He knew a grudging admiration for her stubbornness. Fine—if she wouldn’t complain, he’d be damned if he’d let on how much he hurt.
“Well and good, Miss Harper, but surely you had better retire for the night. It will be morning before you know it, and we’ll need to start planning the next edition.”
“Oh…oh, of course,” she murmured, as she turned and walked toward the stairs. “Good night, sir.”
She hesitated as she passed the remains of their hurried supper lying on the table, the grease-stained brown paper wrapping and a piece of crust from a steak sandwich. “I-I’ll just clean this up before I go upstairs, Mr. Devlin.”
“Never mind, Miss Harper, I’ll dispose of it,” he said firmly.
“Very well. Good night, then, Mr. Devlin.” He heard her trudge up the stairs, pull the creaky door open—he’d have to oil that hinge, he thought—and shut the door quietly behind her. A moment later an audible click announced that she’d locked the door from the inside.
He turned and surveyed the pristine black-and-white stack of papers. The ink still gleamed wetly on the top copy. Each one was a big sheet of paper folded in half, forming four pages filled top to bottom with his eloquent reporting of the story from Austin and his opinions about it. In just hours the townspeople would eagerly snatch copies from that stack, and his career as the respected editor of the Gillespie Springs Gazette would officially begin.
The moment seemed incomplete to Garrick. If his new employee had been a man, as he’d been expecting, he would have invited him to share in a celebratory glass of whiskey. He’d stashed a bottle in his desk for just such an occasion as this, the completion of the very first issue of the town’s first newspaper. But of course one did not invite a lady—or even a presumptuous Yankee woman such as Margaret Harper—to share a drink.
The only sort of female who drank liquor was a sporting woman, and he did not associate with those, even when his long-frustrated sexual needs clamored for satisfaction. No, he wouldn’t pay for what passed as loving, knowing that if he did find a woman who would provide such services to a cripple, she’d either charge him double or do it out of pity, then laugh about it later with her sisters in the oldest profession.
There was no help for it—he’d have to drink alone, he mused, retrieving the whiskey bottle and a glass from the desk drawer and pouring himself a two-finger measure. The amber liquid burned a fiery path down his throat and hit his stomach like a glowing ember.
The sole of his right foot and his lower calf had begun to throb hours ago, just as they always did when he’d done too much. Now he was exhausted and could no longer ignore the pain to his shoulder throbbing in counterpoint, even with the whiskey warming his stomach. Absentminded with fatigue, he reached down with his fingers to massage his leg, only to recoil when his hand met the hardness of wood instead of the softness of flesh and bone.
Damn it all to hell, when was he going to stop having pain in a limb that hadn’t been there for over three years? His eyes darted to the top of the stairs, afraid that Miss Harper had managed to silently creep back out onto the stairway and witness the way the phantom pains had made a fool of him again, but his eyes found only lamplit shadows up there.
Relieved, he gulped the rest of the whiskey, and after placing the glass and bottle back into the desk drawer, he grabbed four Gazettes off the top of the stack to take home. He’d give one to Jovita, one to Johnny—he smiled as he pictured his son pretending to “read” it—send one to his mother and keep one for posterity. He set another one aside, knowing Cal would come directly here for his copy.
Garrick let himself out into the cool spring night. Suddenly he couldn’t wait to reach his rented house, which stood over on South Street behind the bank. In the privacy of his own room, he could pull off the damned wooden leg that daily rubbed the flesh of what was left of his upper leg until the end of stump was irritated raw, sometimes even streaked with dried blood. Tonight would be one of those times, he guessed, for he’d been on his feet far too long today. When he sponged away the dark, dried blood, the stump would burn as if the cloth were made of nettles instead of cotton, and he’d have to set his teeth against the pain so that he wouldn’t wake Johnny and Jovita, sleeping in the other rooms.
Sometimes removing his wooden leg and washing the stump was not enough to soothe the pain, and he’d have to reach to the bottom of the brass-bound trunk in which he kept his old uniform and firearms for the bottle of laudanum he kept hidden there. But he hated the sense of weakness he felt after drinking from that bottle. And he knew that once he slept after sipping the liquid tincture of opium, his dreams would be nightmares, full of horrifying sounds and the faces of the dead. He’d be even more afraid to use the drug now that he knew of Cecilia’s death. He didn’t want to see the ghost of his dead wife floating toward him as he slept, her golden tresses dull with mold.
He remembered seeing what laudanum had done to other men, too, turning them into helpless, sniveling addicts for the rest of their miserable lives. Maybe he was better off not using it, and just putting up with the pain, he decided, even as every step that brought him closer to home became an agony in itself.
“Here’s my nickel, Garrick. Sell me a paper,” the tall fellow wearing a star on the left side of his vest and a patch over his right eye said with a grin, leaning on the counter in the Gazette’s office the next morning.
This must be Garrick’s brother Caleb, the sheriff, Maggie thought as she looked up from where she was doing the layout of a rate card for advertising in the Gazette. She saw the same lean, high-cheekboned features, though Caleb Devlin’s upper lip was graced with a dashing mustache, where Garrick’s was austerely bare. Caleb’s one good eye was of a paler hue than Garrick’s, almost a gray-blue, but both brothers possessed faces that reflected the presence of pain, past or present.
“Cal, I can’t take your money,” protested Garrick, returning the grin. “You’re my brother! I saved you a copy, gratis.”
“Aw, brother, you’re never gonna be a rich newspaperman if you keep refusing money—” the tall lawman began, and then Maggie saw him notice her.
In an instant, he swept off his broad-brimmed hat and smiled at her. “Sweeney told me about your new pressman—um, lady,” he said, speaking to his brother, a teasing glint in his eye.
“Yes…M. L. Harper was not quite as I expected him to be,” Garrick replied dryly. “Miss Harper, this is my brother, Cal Devlin.”
Maggie stepped forward, encouraged by the sheriffs warm smile, and offered her hand.
“Mr. Devlin, I’m Margaret Harper.”
He took her hand and shook it. “Miss Harper,” he murmured in that molasses-and-honey drawl that flowed from Southerners so effortlessly. “Call me Cal. Welcome to Gillespie Springs. I see you still have your head, so my big brother must not have bitten it off yet—good! Don’t let him. His bark is worse than his bite, anyway. I hear you have lots of newspaper experience, so my brother’s lucky you answered his ad. Don’t let him forget it.”
“Cal, if you’re quite finished subverting my authority over my employee,” Garrick said with heavy irony, “we have work to do here, and—”
The bell over the door tinkled again, and a dark-haired woman stepped inside, a joyous smile lighting her attractive features.
“Garrick, I just heard the newspaper was out!” she announced, coming forward to stand by Caleb’s side. “Congratulations on the start of your business!” She planted a kiss on Garrick Devlin’s cheek.
“Why, thank you, Olivia…” Garrick murmured, reddening slightly.
Maggie, still standing near her employer, felt her jaw drop for a second. Wasn’t Garrick Devlin wearing a black armband as a sign of mourning for his wife? Who was this woman?
Then Maggie saw Cal Devlin place his arm around the woman’s waist and smile down at her momentarily before turning back to Maggie.
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