Twin of Ice Read online

  She could hardly wait to tell her friends about the meeting, and how he’d asked if she knew which house was his. Perhaps she should have volunteered to measure his windows and order his curtains. That way she’d get to see the inside of his house.

  She was smiling to herself when a hand suddenly caught her upper arm and roughly pulled her into the shadowy alleyway behind the Chandler Opera House. Before she could scream, a hand clamped down on her mouth, and she was pushed against the stone wall. With frightened eyes, she looked up at Kane Taggert.

  “I ain’t gonna hurt you. I just wanted to talk to you, and I could see you wasn’t gonna say nothin’ in front of them others. You ain’t gonna scream?”

  Houston shook her head, and he dropped his hand but he stayed close to her. She wanted to be calm, but she was breathing quite hard.

  “You’re prettier up close.” He didn’t move but glanced down over her snug green wool suit. “And you look like a lady.”

  “Mr. Taggert,” she said with all the calmness she could muster, “I very much resent being pulled into an alley and held against a wall. If you have something to say to me, please do so.”

  He didn’t move away from her but put one hand on the wall beside her head. There were little lines beside his eyes, his nose was small, and the lower lip visible under his mass of beard was full.

  “How come you stood up for me in that store? How come you reminded that woman about when she fainted in front of me?”

  “I . . . ” Houston hesitated. “I guess I don’t like anyone hurting another person. Mary Alice was embarrassed because she’d made a fool of herself in front of you and you hadn’t noticed.”

  “I noticed all right,” he said, and Houston saw that lower lip stretch into a smile. “Me and Edan laughed at all of ’em.”

  Houston stiffened. “That wasn’t very polite of you. A gentleman should not laugh at a lady.”

  He gave a little snort into her face and Houston found herself thinking that he had especially sweet-smelling breath, and wondered what he looked like when he wasn’t under so much hair.

  “The way I figure it, all them women was carryin’ on so because I’m rich. In other words, they was makin’ whores of themselves, so they wasn’t ladies, so I didn’t have to act like no gentleman and pick ’em up.”

  Houston blinked at his vocabulary. No man had ever used such a word in front of her.

  “How come you didn’t try to get my attention? Ain’t you wantin’ my money?”

  That snapped Houston out of her lethargy. She came to attention and realized she’d been almost lounging against the wall. “No, sir, I do not want your money. Now, I have places to go. Do not ever accost me like this again.” With that she turned on her heel and, as she left him in the alley, she heard him chuckling behind her.

  She realized she was angry when she crossed the wide, dusty street and narrowly missed being run down by a smelly wagon loaded with hides. No doubt Mr. Taggert thought her action this morning was another play for his money.

  Lee said something to her as a greeting but she was too distracted to hear him.

  “I beg your pardon,” Houston said.

  Lee took her elbow and escorted her to the carriage. “I said that you’d better get home now so you can start getting ready for the governor’s reception tonight.”

  “Yes, of course,” she said absently as he led her to his waiting buggy.

  Houston was almost glad when Blair and Lee started arguing again because it gave her time to think about her encounter this morning. It sometimes seemed that all her life she’d been Miss Blair-Houston. Even when Blair was away, out of habit, the name stayed. Yet today someone’d told her she wasn’t at all like her sister. Of course, surely, he was just bragging. He couldn’t actually tell them apart.

  As they were driving west, out of town, she found herself straightening her spine as she saw Mr. Taggert and Edan about to pass them in their dilapidated old wagon.

  Kane pulled the horses to a halt and shouted, “Westfield!” at the same time.

  Startled, Lee halted his horse.

  “I wanted to say good mornin’ to the ladies. Miss Blair,” he said to Blair on the far side. “And Miss Houston,” he said, his voice softening as he looked at her directly. “Mornin’ to you,” he said, then cracked a whip over the heads of his four horses to set them into motion.

  “What in the world was that about?” Leander asked. “I didn’t know you knew Taggert.”

  Before Houston could answer, Blair said, “That was the man who built that house? No wonder he doesn’t ask anyone to it. He knows they’d turn him down. By the way, how could he tell us apart?”

  “Our clothes,” Houston answered too quickly. “I saw him in the mercantile store.”

  Blair and Leander continued talking, but Houston didn’t hear a word that was said. She was thinking about her encounter that morning.

  Chapter 3

  The Chandler house was set on one-half acre of land, with a brick carriage house in back and a latticed grape arbor just off the deep porch that surrounded three sides of the house. Over the years, Opal’d turned the land into a jewel of a garden. Elm trees that she’d planted when the house was new were now mature and shaded the lush lawns and flowers from the moisture-stealing Colorado sun. There were narrow brick pathways, stone statues and birdbaths hidden in the orderly tangle of flowers. Between the house and coach house was a cutting garden, and Opal always kept every room in her house filled with fresh, lovely flowers.

  “All right,” Blair said as Houston bent over a rosebush in the garden at the northwest corner of their property. “I want to know what’s going on.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Kane Taggert.”

  Houston paused for a moment, her hand on a rose. “I saw him in Wilson’s Mercantile and later he said good morning to us.”

  “You’re not telling me everything.”

  Houston turned to her sister. “I probably shouldn’t have involved myself, but Mr. Taggert looked as if he were getting angry and I wanted to prevent a quarrel. Unfortunately, it was at Mary Alice’s expense.” She told Blair about Miss Pendergast’s nasty remarks.

  “I don’t like your getting mixed up with him.”

  “You sound like Leander.”

  “For once, he’s right!”

  Houston laughed. “Perhaps we should mark this day in the family Bible. Blair, after tonight I swear I’ll never even mention Mr. Taggert’s name.”

  “Tonight?”

  Houston pulled a piece of paper from inside her sleeve. “Look at this,” she said eagerly. “A messenger brought it. He’s invited me to dinner at his house.”

  “So? You’re supposed to go somewhere with Leander tonight, aren’t you?”

  Houston ignored the remark. “Blair, you don’t seem to realize what a stir that house has caused in this town. Everyone has tried to get an invitation to see the inside of it. People have come from all over the state to see it, but no one has been invited in. Once, it was even put to Mr. Taggert that an English duke who was passing through should be allowed to stay in the house, but Mr. Taggert wouldn’t even listen to the committee. And now I’ve been invited.”

  “But you have to go somewhere else. The governor will be there. Surely he’s more important than the inside of any old house.”

  “You couldn’t understand what it was like,” Houston said with a faraway look in her eyes. “Year after year we watched the train unload its goods. Mr. Gates said the owner didn’t build a spur line to the house site because he wanted everyone to see everything going all the way through town. There were crates of goods from all over the world. Oh, Blair, I know they must have been filled with furniture. And tapestries! Tapestries from Brussels.”

  “Houston, you cannot be in two places at once. You promised to go to the reception and you must go.”

  Idly, Houston toyed with a rose. “When we were children, we could be in two places at once.�€