Chapter 14
CHAPTER 14
Max had raced outside from the infirmary at the sound of Miss Calliope’s shouted ‘ Stop ,’ his heart pounding at the urgency and anger and sheer command in her voice.
Livia, who’d asked him to carry a tray of food to the injured but improving Robert Porter, had followed.
At the sight of Mr. Perth swinging his leg over Apollo’s back, Max had started forward, his heart as angry as Miss Calliope seemed to be, when Livia caught his arm. “Wait,” Livia said. “She needs to fight this battle on her own.”
The thought of waiting chafed at him, his heart beating fast—he’d never liked Mr. Perth for an instant—but in another moment, the young bully was on his butt on the ground, and Miss Calliope had possession of her horse.
Max started forward with clenched fists when Mr. Perth turned his anger on Miss Calliope, but Livia grasped his arm tighter, and he watched with tension, then with admiration, as Miss Calliope threatened to shoot the suitor, and ordered him off the ranch. There was no pretense with her, not when she wasn’t playing the refined lady. What you saw was what you got, and what you got was adorable, exciting, and so damned full of vitality that Max felt more alive just thinking about her. “That makes three suitors she’s crossed off her list just this morning,” he said, watching her ride away with her horse and her dignity.
Watching her ride away in full possession of his heart. The realization struck hard. The irony did not escape him. For two days, he’d witnessed her suitors trying to woo her, all while he’d been falling for her himself.
“Three?” Livia said, raising her eyebrows.
“Yardley and Vann fell off the list over a proposed checker game.” Max had been inside the house, near an open window, helping Mrs. Zandt with a heavy chair she wanted moved—Max carrying, Mrs. Zandt directing—when the fated conversation over checkers had occurred. “Right before I helped you with Robert’s tray. This guy’s stunt with Apollo” —Mr. Perth was stalking past them toward the guest cabin— “makes three.”
A big sneeze crossed the hot air from over by the small shed between the barn and the dog kennels. Mr. Anderson, the resident dandy who was now dressed in new-looking cowboy gear, stepped outside with Luke Wade. Carrying a fishing rod, Mr. Anderson squinted at the bright sun from beneath his pristine white cowboy hat and sneezed again.
“I wish I could do something for him ,” Livia said. “Give him an antihistamine or allergy shots. He’s a nice young man, dignified, with a strong sense of himself, despite his fixation on his clothes, but he’s not cut out for ranch life, not with that hay fever. It really is too bad. He seems to like Cally for herself.”
“Perhaps the allergies are seasonal,” Max said, glancing around at all the buffalo grass between the buildings, at all the wildflowers on the sloping riverbanks.
At all the trees on the wooded mountainsides.
“Perhaps they’re not,” Livia said.
“At least he’s trying,” Max said, watching Luke and Mr. Anderson cross to the high bank of the river behind the buildings, the two in friendly conversation. “He’s putting a lot more effort into winning Miss Calliope’s affections than the others. Even more than Finn.”
“I think Finn is here more to give Cally a buddy to go through this ordeal with than as a potential husband. Neither of them, as far as I know, have ever had more than friendship in mind.”
“A shame,” Max said. “He’s the most worthy of the bunch.”
“Not you?” Livia said.
Max turned to her, surprise in his heart. “Me?”
“I told you last night, I’ve seen how you look at her.”
He gave her a wry smile, thinking of his telling Miss Calliope earlier that morning, against all his common sense, that yes, he was flirting with her, words she’d only responded to with a smile. “She treats me the same way she treats Finn—like a brother.”
“Now, that doesn’t sound like the man of the world I read about on the Internet.”
Max narrowed his eyes. “What happened to your worries last night, about what happens to her when I leave?”
Livia gave a small half-laugh. “After an evening and a morning spent with the cream of the crop of her suitors, I’m starting to change my mind.”
He shook his head, as much to remind himself of his vow as to tell her no. “I’m not going to even try, Livia. She’s supposed to be looking for a husband, not someone who’ll be leaving here in a flash of lightning or a rush of floodwater at some unexpected moment in the near future. Besides, I don’t want to abuse your family’s hospitality. I’ll watch over her, to protect her from suitors like Mr. Perth, and I’ll do what I can to keep her amused. But my feelings I’ll keep to myself.”
Cally was brushing Apollo down in the barn with swift, firm strokes after a long ride across the ranch, Apollo soothed, but not Cally’s rage at Mr. Perth, when Max walked up quietly to Apollo’s stall.
“Young men can be real dummies sometimes,” Max said from the other side of the stall door in that nice, quiet voice he used around horses—and her. He was in his butler uniform, smellin’ of the orange-and-clove scented soap he’d had Kit buy in town. “Stupid, dumb, unthinkingly cruel dummies, too full of themselves to pay attention to the feelings of others.”
“You ain’t much older than Mr. Perth,” she said, unwilling to forgive the suitor for his youth. Beneath her hand, Apollo’s warm, sweat-stained shoulder eased, as hers did, at Max’s presence. “You’d never do what he did today.”
The truth of her words hung in the hay-scented air.
“I’m not excusing him,” Max said. “His behavior was deplorable. I’m just helping you realize it wasn’t personal to you.”
“Did he go willingly?” she asked.
“He had no choice. Bart escorted him from the ranch personally. Two ranch hands took it from there, guiding him to town. His luggage will follow tomorrow by wagon. I packed a saddlebag of his essentials for him, along with a cow pie to remember us by.”
She felt a giggle rise in her throat. She’d watch Mr. Perth leave from the high West Meadow, the man and his horse tiny figures as they’d crossed the Long Meadow toward the trail to Mule Stop. “I wish I’d seen his face when Bart told him to skedaddle.” But she hadn’t trusted herself to not strike that face if she got anywhere near him.
“Mr. Perth was nearly as angry as you,” Max said. He caught her gaze, a grin in his handsome eyes. “I saw you tell him he could be shot for taking someone else’s horse. You were magnificent.”
Magnificent. The word filled her with joy. A lightness filled her heart, shoving aside the rage.
“How is Apollo?” Prince Max asked.
“He’s fine,” she said. “He galloped out his anger.” But there were still five more suitors to deal with—four, if she didn’t count Finn. She didn’t care what the other young men would think when they heard about Mr. Perth’s departure, but Ma would care. And Mr. Yardley and Mr. Vann had been witness to her rage. She sent Max a concerned gaze. “But what will the other suitors say?”
“No worries, Miss Calico,” he said. “If they don’t like the real you, they can follow Mr. Perth to town.”
That afternoon, Miss Calliope’s brother Kit, who looked a great deal like a younger Bart, took all the remaining suitors but Finn up the slopes of the nearest Sky Top mountain to a pristine lake for some trout fishing—more, Max thought, to get the suitors out of Miss Calliope’s sight than for the suitors’ entertainment, though no one, of course, had mentioned that to the suitors.
Their absence gave Max a much needed respite from his butler duties. Changing clothes, he dressed in the new cowboy gear Kit had been kind enough to buy when he’d gone into town the day before, the clothes purchased with the advance Bart had given Max on his salary. Kit had done a good job with the sizes, and though Max’s London tailor would weep, Max felt right at home at the ranch. Stepping outside, he paused on the ranch house’s front porch, automatically surveying the outbuildings on the other side of the sweep for Miss Calliope.
His gaze needed a nearly full half circle before it found her off to his right with Finn, beyond the flower garden and down the gentle, tree-studded slope to the river, where the two—dressed in Western riding clothes and looking like the old friends that they were—laughed as they hopped from one flat rock to another, despite the tumbling water around them.
Something clenched in Max’s heart. He wasn’t sure what it was. Jealousy, perhaps, that Finn had such an easy relationship with her. Respect at her unassuming fearlessness, though he was sure that what many mothers would consider a dangerous spot for young people to be laughing and challenging each other was likely for Miss Calliope just another part of her home. Not something to fear, but to be a part of.
The dogs in the kennels beside the barn began to bark.
Visitors, Max thought. The thud of horse hooves across the hot afternoon air drew his attention away from the river.
Through the cottonwood trees that lined the front drive, Doc, Sam, and Roy came into view, riding fast toward the house.
Max’s heart started to race. Hugo. It must be about Prince Hugo. What else would put those grim expressions on their faces?
A thin film of trail dust covered the three riders’ cowboy clothes. Sweat beaded their skin.
“You’re a long way from town,” Max said as their impressive horses—one black with white stockings, one chestnut, one pure white—came to a stop, kicking up dust beneath their hooves.
“That damned Prince Hugo,” Creede said atop the black horse, “tried to kidnap Matthew and Marilee’s youngest child.”