“I suppose you intend to pass yourself off to Fenton as a snow-white virgin. Or has he already sampled your wares?”
“Certainly not! How dare...” She caught herself. Why wouldn’t he think that about Barrett after she had made love to him with such abandon? No doubt he believed that was the way Delilah spent every night of her tour. “Barrett
will
think he has married a virgin.”
Tabor’s mouth crooked up on one side. “Aren’t you afraid he’ll know the truth after his wedding night?”
Her smile was condescending. “I’ll just have to make sure he doesn’t.” The idiot. She
had
fooled him.
Tabor blew out a smoke ring and decided to play along, letting her believe he didn’t know he was the first man to make love with her. “I’ve heard of whores doing that.”
“Doing what?” she asked sharply.
“Using chicken blood and sponges to produce a show of virginal blood. Some of them sell themselves as virgins over and over. Is that what you have planned?”
Lilah became silent. Blood? Was he hinting that he had noticed the blood? Had he? Surely he would have said so.
“Is it?” he asked again. Judging by the sudden paleness in her cheeks, he had her wondering if he had been aware of her scheme to trick him.
“I may do that,” she answered weakly. “Or something else. The important thing is that you not let Sarah or anyone else at the ranch know about our...lovemaking. I don’t want to give Barrett any more reason to be upset with me.”
Tabor had to clench his fists to prevent himself from throttling Lilah. She was the most stubborn, most headstrong woman in California. He planned on giving Barrett plenty of reason to be upset.
“What do I get for keeping
this
secret?” he asked casually.
Lilah’s eyes opened incredulously. “Why should you get anything else?” Wasn’t making her a love slave for a week enough for the man?
Tabor dropped his hand onto Lilah’s thigh. She gasped. “You don’t realize how habit-forming you are, sweetheart. After one time, I know a week with you won’t be enough. Once in a while I’ll want to visit you in San Francisco.”
“Oh, no!” Her eyes blazed at him “Once I’m married, there won’t be any other men sharing my bed. I’ll be true to my husband.”
She sure would. Tabor sensuously slid his hand along her thigh. He figured he had a week to change her mind about who that husband would be.
“Tabor! Lilah!” Sarah’s voice brought Lilah to her feet, but not before Tabor’s wandering hand had rekindled her longing for him.
“Promise me,” she whispered.
Tabor stood. “I promise your reputation will be no worse when you leave here than when I met you.”
“Good,” she whispered, then lifted her brows suspiciously. That didn’t sound like what she meant.
“I got nervous when you and Lilah didn’t come back right away. Am I interrupting something?” Sarah, carrying a bucket, joined them by the pool.
“No!” Lilah said too quickly. “We were just starting back.” She smiled sheepishly. “I think I’m ready for that nap now.”
Tabor took the bucket from Sarah. “You two go ahead,” he said quietly. “I’ll get the water.”
Lilah was asleep when he got back to the camp, her face angelically reposed. He watched her for a while, wondering what drove her in so many directions. He still hadn’t uncovered anything that explained why she had taken up the life of a saloon entertainer. If anything, after discovering her virginal state, he was more confused than before.
Perplexed, he walked back to the wagon and got a cup of coffee. While he sat alone drinking it, something occurred to him that he might have thought about sooner if she hadn’t kept him so rattled. She hadn’t been making love to those other men she invited to her room. It didn’t make sense to go to so much trouble just to fleece a few men out of their money as she had done with him. She wasn’t exactly the man-hater he had thought either, not the way she had responded to him. So why did she feel the need to live that life, then try to keep it a secret? The woman was a paradox. A virgin singing a temptress’s song. An innocent and a fraud.
He strengthened his resolve to find out the truth about her. The socialite Lilah Damon, the shadowy Miss M. Alden, the tempting Delilah, Flame of the West, his woman. She had given herself to him and the little liar thought she had pulled that off without his being the wiser. Tabor rested his head against the spokes of a wagon wheel, a grin wide as the Rio Grande on his face. She burned him up with curiosity, but he was having one hell of a good time learning about her.
“What happened out there?” Sarah dragged her chair up close to him and sat down. “Who’s this Chapman?”
Tabor let his smile go. “I’m not sure about any of it, Sarah. Chapman’s loco. I met him back in San Francisco. He contends a piece of property my father had a claim to by right belongs to him. Trouble is, that’s the same property I handed over to Clement Damon.”
“Clement Damon,” Sarah mused. “That’s Lilah’s father?”
“Do you know the name?”
“Seems like I’ve heard it.” Sarah searched her mind but came up with nothing clear. “Must have been a long time ago. What was his business with Stan?”
Tabor shook his head. He hadn’t been interested in his father’s business. Now he wished he had been. “I don’t know,” he answered. “It went back a long time. Damon didn’t say much about it. I think he was more than a little surprised when I showed up and presented him with that claim.”
“The one Chapman says is his?”
“Right. Chapman confronted me about the claim after I had given it to Damon. I told him he needed legal proof he had any right to it. We wound up fighting. I thought that settled it and I’d seen the last of him. I sure didn’t think he’d try anything as crazy as kidnapping Lilah.”
“Was he planning to kill her?”
“Worse than that,” Tabor said sourly.
Sarah nodded slowly. “He’ll be back, won’t he?”
Tabor’s guess was that he would be as soon as that bullet wound healed. But as loco as Chapman was, he wouldn’t give up. He’d keep trying to even the score. Tabor wished he could assure Sarah otherwise. His voice was bitter. “Yes. But not soon. And he won’t surprise me the next time.”
“And I take it you won’t miss when you draw on him.”
“Not likely.”
Sarah got up and threw a couple of pieces of wood on the cook fire. “You had better warn Damon. Chapman might show up there.”
Tabor got to his feet and brushed the dust off his pants. “I’ll stop by Sandy Flats tomorrow and send a telegram.”
Together they walked to the tether line to check on the horses and mules. “Can Damon handle a man like Chapman?”
“Not alone,” he said. “Clement is crippled, confined to an invalid’s chair. But he has men to protect him. He’ll be safe.” Tabor’s brow wrinkled as he thought of the break-in at Damon House. “Thinking back,” he said, “it may be Chapman’s already paid him a visit—in a way. I caught a Chinese fellow breaking in while I was there. He talked about a partner. That could have been Chapman.”
Sarah’s eyes lit up. “Now I remember about Damon,” she said. “Back ten or fifteen years ago he took the part of some coolies who had been driven out of a town. Put them to work in his mine. The Chinese resentment was high then. People didn’t appreciate Damon helping those Chinese. I don’t remember all the talk, but a short time later there was an accident. Damon got trampled by a herd of horses stampeding through his mining camp.”
Tabor shook his head. “Somewhere I got the idea he was crippled by a fall from a horse.” Though what Sarah had said explained why Clement’s Chinese employees were devoted to him.
“No,” Sarah said thoughtfully. “I’m sure Clement Damon is the one. It was in the papers back then. But that was years ago. I guess I remember because it was about the same time you and your mother came to live with us.”
And about the same time my father deserted us, Tabor thought. Sarah was too kind to put it that way.
“Damon’s a fine man,” he told Sarah. “He seems to have done well for himself since then.”
“Just the same, you keep a close watch on that girl. Damon’s had enough loss in his life. Besides, I’ve got a feeling Lilah Damon is mighty special to you too.” She gave him a contemplative look. “You planning on getting hitched?”
Tabor’s grin returned. “Sarah, you’re too nosy for your own good.”
Sarah laughed loudly. “I don’t have to be nosy to see you looking like a moonstruck calf.”
* * *
Hours later the stars shone down on the quiet camp. Tabor had awakened Lilah and the two of them sat a little way apart from the others, balancing bowls of Sarah’s soup in their laps. As he finished a slab of cornbread, Tabor watched Lilah nibble at hers.
“Sarah told me about how your father got hurt.”
Lilah clumsily dropped her cornbread on the ground. “Sarah knows my father?”
“No.” Tabor tossed the dropped bread away and gave Lilah his remaining slice. “She remembers reading about his accident a long time ago. Your father was a brave man to have taken a stand for the Chinese back then. I admired him already, and even more now. Clement handles himself well. You must be proud of him.”
“I am,” Lilah said, unabashed. “Papa’s the most important person in the world to me.”
“You must have been quite young when that accident happened.”
Her expression turned serious. Accident? What had happened to her father had been no accident. His father had been there that terrible night. But she couldn’t let him know that. It would start him asking questions about the other men involved. Too much interest on his part might cost her the chance to bring justice to the last two of those six.
“I was,” she said hesitantly, trying to force the memory out of her mind. “Very young. I...I hardly remember it.” It didn’t set easy with her either that her justice had been misguided where he was concerned. But surely she was making it up to him now.
Tabor took her hand gently. “I’m sorry,” he said, looking into her stricken face. “I’m upsetting you. Sarah will take a stick to me for that.”
God! She could pull the strings of his heart, looking that way. He found it gratifying, though, that as skillful an actress as she was, there were some emotions she couldn’t hide. Lilah Damon had many soft spots in her heart. He had just hit one of them.
He could wait to ask her why she needed to be Delilah part of the time. Another day or two of wondering wouldn’t hurt him. Talking about it might unlock painful secrets. Out here in the wilderness she was his responsibility and he didn’t want her going to sleep with unhappy thoughts on her mind.
Smiling, he kissed her softly on the cheek and was happy to see her face brighten. Near the campfire one of the cowhands started picking a guitar and singing. Tabor pulled Lilah to her feet and led her over to join in the fun.
Shortly after the party stopped to eat the noon meal, Tabor rode into Sandy Flats to send a telegram to Clement and to report the incident to the sheriff. Sarah told Lilah they weren’t far from the ranch and that by the time Tabor got home, she could have had that bath she’d been talking about and be sitting on the front porch drinking lemonade.
With the possibility of a real bath and a real bed to sleep in at hand, the Cooke ranch sounded like the promised land. A surge of energy rose in Lilah’s tired body. And though the bumpy ride in the chuck wagon rattled her almost as much as being in the saddle, she knew she could hold out a few more miles. At last the trip was nearly over and soon she could change her soiled riding clothes and boots for one of her luxurious gowns. Lilah rubbed her arms, thinking how good silk would feel on her skin. Never in her life had she worn the same grimy outfit two days in a row. Thank goodness there wasn’t a mirror around. Her face must look as if she had traveled the entire Overland Trail.
While she was daydreaming, Sarah nudged her arm. “Of course if Tabor runs into Sally Ann Caufield in town, he may be late getting home.”
Jiggling the reins, Sarah shouted to the mules to get moving while Lilah pondered what she had said. Sarah wasn’t much for chitchat, so Lilah supposed she wouldn’t have mentioned that name if it wasn’t important. Suddenly she was wide awake.
“Is Sally Ann Caufield a friend of Tabor’s?”
Sarah grinned. “Sally Ann’s had her fishing hook set for Tabor since she was old enough to notice the difference in girls and boys. Well, maybe before then—she’s still just a kid. She lives over on the next ranch. It’s closer to town than we are, so she’s there in the tearoom almost every day.”
“I see.”
Lilah wasn’t prepared to feel jealous of Tabor but she couldn’t account for the sudden agitation she felt any other way. She couldn’t imagine why she should feel the prick of jealousy’s sharp barbs. Why should it matter to her if Tabor was pursued by another woman? She determined not to let it bother her. Her mind was made up that this week was one to be enjoyed.
Oh, she knew sharing a man’s bed wasn’t moral, but plenty of things in her life had taught her there were times you had to adapt to a different set of standards. And there was no doubt that once this week was over, she would be through with Tabor for good. Maybe some people would think she was decadent. But what did she care? This week she wasn’t truly Lilah Damon. She was Delilah and she meant to get the most out of it.
She had meant what she said about being a faithful wife. A woman owed that to her husband. But since she didn’t love Barrett in the romantic way, she deserved her fling first. Tabor excited her in a way Barrett never would. Certainly she and Barrett cared for each other, but that didn’t discount the fact that their marriage was primarily a business arrangement. Oh, she knew Barrett would never put that in words. It was true, though. She was his assurance of getting his hands on the Damon empire. He knew her father had been grooming him for the job. She doubted Barrett was even very worried about what her decision on the marriage would be when he returned from London.
She mulled that over. He knew she would put her father’s concerns above her own and that she would never marry a man who wasn’t prepared to do the same. That wasn’t terribly flattering, was it? Barrett had gone away to save face, but he must have considered that if Lilah chose someone else he would lose all he had worked for. He must be awfully sure of himself.