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  But his look was enough for her to know that Cole had seen no one.

  With a sigh, Kady turned back toward the road.

  Chapter 12

  KADY RELUCTANTLY AWOKE TO THE SOUND OF VOICES, SPECIFICALLY, the angry voices of women. For a moment she thought she might still be asleep, because she seemed to be buried in a cocoon of warmth.

  “Señora Jordan,” she heard a man’s voice saying. “Señora Jordan, they have come to see you.”

  As Kady fought her way out of the cocoon, she realized she was surrounded by an incredibly deep feather mattress, and it was enveloping her as though it meant to swallow her. After tossing two pillows from over her head and noting that they were so light they made no sound when they hit the floor, she did her best to sit up. But that wasn’t easy when every movement made her sink farther into the cloudlike softness.

  “I’m on my way,” she called up to whoever was summoning her, then grabbed the side of the heavily carved mahogany headboard and pulled herself up. But even when she was sitting up, what with being barely over five feet tall, she could hardly see over the down comforter, which had to be at least three feet thick. “An entire species of geese must have given their lives for this bed,” she mumbled, then looked around to see who was speaking.

  An old man stood there, his face lined with years and weather, and he was watching Kady with eyes twinkling with amusement.

  “Yes?” she said. “What is it?” Between the two sentences, she’d had to use her fist to beat the comforter down, as the thing was rising like bread in a hot oven.

  The old man chuckled as he watched her fight the demon feathers. “The ladies of the town have come to tell you all about the boy.”

  “The—?” The effort of speech had made Kady slide down into the mattress, so she had to right herself, then try to regain her dignity. Truthfully, she didn’t remember much about last night. Cole had promised her a bath and bed, and she vaguely remembered warm water, then falling into this soft mattress. “The boy?” she asked.

  “Cole Jordan,” the man said. “You are Señora Jordan?”

  “Yes, I guess I am,” she said, smiling at the way this man called Cole “the boy.” “And I take it that you are Manuel?” Kady gave the growing comforter a couple of hard licks with her fists, then looked around her at the bedroom. This was not the house of a poor man. This one room was as big as her whole apartment, and the heavy mahogany furniture must have cost a bundle. The walls were covered with pale blue damask that, unless Kady missed her guess, was silk, and over the dresser was a framed mirror that looked like something from the Paris Opera House.

  Just as Kady opened her mouth to try to reply to Manuel, the open door behind him filled with chattering women who all pushed and shoved to be the first into the room.

  They were talking, but for a moment Kady couldn’t hear them, for she was looking at their clothes. Having come from a time period when women seemed to wear nothing but black and their only embellishment was a small, tasteful necklace and earrings, these women were dazzling. They had fringe on their dresses, sparkling trims, rhinestone buttons, hats with feathers curling around their faces. There were plaids and prints and solids of the most outrageous colors. Blinking, Kady could do nothing but stare at all five of them.

  “And we thought you should know what kind of man you have married,” one of the women was concluding.

  Kady knew she’d missed the entire lecture and was sorry for it, for she would have liked to hear what kind of man Cole Jordan was. “I seem to be a bit disoriented,” she said. “Maybe you could start again and tell me everything in detail.”

  The women, all of them young and attractive, a couple of them beautiful, smiled at Kady, then lifted their long, heavy skirts and pretty much climbed into bed with her. This had the effect of lifting her somewhat higher, but the feathers seemed to absorb the extra bodies, and soon the mattress and coverlet were creeping over the brightly colored skirts.

  “Perhaps we should introduce ourselves. I’m Martha,” the prettiest one said, then held out a kidskin-clad hand for Kady to shake by the fingertips.

  Kady tried not to think about the oddity of receiving guests while still in bed, but these young women seemed to think nothing of it. The other women introduced themselves as Mable, Margaret, Myrtle, and Mavis. Kady was lost by the third M.

  “We think it is our Christian duty to tell you about the man you have married,” Martha said, making Kady smile. Were they going to tell her that Cole Jordan was a liar and a manipulator? She already knew that. She also knew how charming he could be and how sweet and—

  “You are never going to believe what he made the whole town do to you,” M-Three said and got Kady’s attention.

  It took nearly an hour to get the entire story straight, what with all five Ms talking at once, then Manuel interrupting to bring coffee and some divine sopapillas dripping honey. Kady sat in bed, eating and listening, and becoming more angry and disgusted by the moment.

  It seemed that Legend, Colorado, wasn’t actually a mining town; it was a town that belonged to one man, and that man was Cole Jordan. He owned every mine, every house, every shop, every inch of land in the town. And every person in the town worked for Cole, or, according to the Ms, was his “bounden slave.”

  “Everyone does just what he says. We have to or he sends us away.”

  “My father has operated Reeve’s Mercantile for ten years, but he doesn’t own a penny of it,” M-Two said. “Cole owns everything. All of it. So you can see why we had to do what we did to you.”

  What they had done, based on Cole’s orders, was to refuse to give Kady a job or even a meal on those two horrible days when she’d been searching for both. Thinking back, she remembered that Cole had given something to some boys playing by the side of the road. It seems that he’d paid them nickels to run all over town and tell everyone that anyone who fed Kady or helped her in any way was going to be thrown out of town.

  “And he did this while he was arranging his—your—wedding. He had the whole church decorated and made all the choir show up to sing for his wedding. Betty’s mother was ill that day, but she knew better than to cross Cole, since every bite her family eats depends on him.”

  “He trapped you into marrying him, that’s what he did,” M-One said, her handkerchief to her eyes. “And we hate to see someone of our own sex so mistreated by a man like Cole Jordan.”

  “Do you know what the man you have married is really like?” Martha said, the only one of the Ms Kady could fit with a proper name.

  “I don’t think I know nearly enough,” Kady answered. “Perhaps you should tell me more. Maybe you can tell me why someone was trying to hang him.”

  “Oh, that,” M-Four said. “Half the country wants to murder Cole. He won’t sell anything to anybody. Once he decides something belongs to him, he keeps it, no matter what he has to do, and that includes keeping money. Why, even with the thirty million he now has—Are you all right?” she asked when Kady nearly choked on a mouthful of sopapilla.

  “Thirty million what?” Kady asked when she had recovered.

  “Dollars, of course. Most of it in gold and silver. Haven’t you been listening? He owns three very lucrative silver mines, plus every business in town, so of course people are always trying to take that money away from him. They get so frustrated when he won’t sell anything to them that they just decide to kill him instead.”

  “I can understand their reasoning,” Kady said. “So why doesn’t he hire bodyguards, men with guns who can protect him?” At that statement all the women drew back as though she’d said something shocking. “Did I say something wrong?”

  In the next second Kady realized they had drawn back merely to fill their lungs with oxygen so they could let loose a string of descriptive phrases.

  “Protect Cole Jordan?!” they gasped, then proceeded to tell Kady what she’d already seen. Cole carried so many knives on his person, concealed in every piece of clothing he wore, that once w