Laurie Grant - Maggie And The Maverick

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.

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!”