Forever in My Heart Page 7

  Tonight was no exception as he set his sights on Mary Margaret's happiness.

  Moira moved from Jay Mac's side to greet her guests. Introductions were accomplished smoothly and there was no mention made of Maggie's absence. Indeed, none of the Holidays knew that another daughter had been expected to join them. The extra place setting was whisked aside before they entered the dining room. Connor was seated beside Skye and opposite Beryl and Rushton. Moira and Jay Mac presided at the head and foot of the table.

  She was too young, Connor thought, listening to Skye chatter about some skating party she had recently attended with her friends. She was silly and empty-headed, and perhaps, as he watched her toss her flame-red curls over her shoulder yet again, even more vain about her appearance than Beryl. How could he live with that for the rest of his life? Then he wondered if he'd have to. If she were willing to stay in New York, he would be quite willing to stay in Colorado. It would be the reverse of the arrangement his parents had made years ago—it might even be satisfactory. Then she grinned at him disarmingly, a strand of spinach from the soup lodged between her front teeth, and he knew he couldn't marry anyone so childish that she thought spinach teeth was a good joke.

  Jay Mac's eyes narrowed on Mary Schyler, indicating that she had done quite enough to dissuade Connor Holiday from showing her any flattering attention. Moira managed to muffle her laughter with a cough behind her napkin. Beryl hoped the young woman would keep smiling her great green grin. It was a certainty that Connor was no longer contemplating marriage as a way of securing the land—not that anyone had expected him to make a proposal this very evening. Beryl relaxed as she realized that even courting the Dennehy bastard was going to be out of the question.

  Rushton was disappointed, though he was as careful as his son not to show it. He had hoped for something better. Now there was no choice but to sell. It wasn't a subject to be discussed now, with the women present. The business was better settled after dinner over whiskey and cigars.

  Jay Mac speared a tender bit of roast and held it up a moment, hoping to salvage something from the evening. "Is your beef this good, Connor? I understand you have several hundred head of cattle on your ranch."

  "At the risk of offending your cook, my beef is better."

  "Is that so?"

  "You can't ship it this far east without it losing some of its texture and flavor. My beef goes to market at St. Louis but I think it tastes different at Denver. If you want a good steak then you should spend time at the Double H."

  "Double H?" asked Moira. "Your ranch has a name?"

  "It comes from the brand we use," Connor explained. "H for Hart—my mother's maiden name—and H for Holiday. We brand the cattle to discourage rustling. Markets know my brand. If my cattle shows up without me or my men attached in some way they know the animals have been stolen."

  "Does it happen often?" Skye asked, interested in spite of herself. She took a moment to remove the spinach she had strategically placed between her front teeth.

  "More often than I'd like."

  "Do you catch them?"

  "Sometimes."

  Skye's eyes widened slightly. "And then what?"

  Rushton cleared his throat. "I don't think you really want to know, at least not here, not now."

  "Oh, but my constitution's quite strong," she said. "I can talk about most anything and still manage to eat."

  "I'm sure," Beryl said with quiet sarcasm.

  "Well, I'm certain I don't want to hear," said Moira, "though I find it very interesting that your ranch is in Colorado. Is it possible you've met either of my daughters who live there?"

  Jay Mac smiled indulgently and said quickly, "Colorado is rather larger than you think, Moira. It's unlikely that Connor knows either Michael or Rennie."

  "Michael?" Beryl asked. "I thought you only had daughters."

  "Mary Michael," Moira said.

  "And Mary Renee," Schyler added. "We're all Marys. Mary Francis. Mary Margaret." She dimpled, pointing to herself. "Mary Schyler. I suppose you might think of it as our brand."

  "How charming," Beryl said, her tone conveying just the opposite.

  Skye pretended to be oblivious to the undercurrent of ridicule in Beryl's remark. "Oh, it's very Catholic," she said blithely, smoothing her napkin in her lap. "Mother is, you know. Irish Catholic. Though I imagine you heard that in her accent. The Irish part, I mean. I don't think being Catholic gives one a particular accent." She smiled guilelessly at Connor. "Do you?"

  "No," he said, careful not to choke.

  "I didn't think so," she went on. "Father, on the other hand, is quite the Protestant. Presbyterian, specifically. But then you probably knew that. Catholics do not get nearly so far in business as my father has, though why religion should play such a role has never been satisfactorily explained to me. I think it also helps that his family was here before the revolution."

  Jay Mac's complexion has taken on a mottled cast that could not be completely hidden by either his ample side-whiskers or his thick mustache. "That's quite enough, Mary Schyler."

  When Skye heard the particular tone and inflection in her father's voice, coupled with her full name, she bent her head, suitably chastened.

  "Oh, it sounds terribly fascinating," Beryl said, deliberating provoking Skye to further conversational indiscretions. She ignored her husband's warning glance and Connor's angry one, smiling serenely and continuing to eat without missing a beat. Jay Mac, she thought happily, would never find a husband for his daughter unless he gagged her.

  "Mary Michael lives in Denver," Moira said with a touch of urgency, eager to have something else to discuss.

  Connor rescued her immediately. "Denver's a booming town. Have you visited her there?"

  "Only once, and I confess to having enjoyed myself immensely. It was lovely to be with Michael and Ethan, of course, and my granddaughter, but the town had a charm I found very exciting."

  Connor grinned. "I've never heard anyone from the east refer to Denver as charming."

  Moira blinked, stunned momentarily by her guest's rare and roguish smile. It didn't matter that she was in love with her husband or that she had five daughters or that she was Connor Holiday's senior by a quarter of a century; she felt the full force of his boyish grin all the way to her toes. She was quite afraid she was blushing. "Well," she said somewhat defiantly, "I found it charming. It's loud and boisterous and colorful."

  "So's the Bowery," Jay Mac said, "and you don't have to leave New York to get there."

  Moira dismissed her husband's comment out of hand. "You love Denver, so it's no good pretending you don't." She turned back to Connor. "Michael's husband is a federal marshal assigned to the Denver area."

  "You said Ethan," Connor said. "Do you mean Ethan Stone?"

  "Why, yes," she said, pleased. "So you see, Jay Mac, Connor knows Ethan. It wasn't so silly to suppose that he might."

  Connor shook his head before his hostess got carried away. "I know Marshal Stone by reputation. I've never had cause to seek him out."

  Skye broke a dinner roll in half and began buttering it. "Not even about the cattle thieves?"

  "Most especially not about them." He turned to Moira. "And your other daughter who lives in Colorado?"

  "That would be Rennie. It's Rennie Sullivan now. She and Jarret—he's her husband—move around quite a bit. Rennie and Jarret work for Jay Mac's company, Northeast Rail. Our daughter is an engineer; she designs trestles and bridges and rail right of ways. Jarret builds them."

  The last traces of Connor's smile vanished. His expression had become remote again, polite but cold. "I didn't realize that Mr. and Mrs. Sullivan were more than employees with Northeast."

  "My," Beryl said, "Colorado does seem to be shrinking. Do you know everybody, Connor?"

  "It's beginning to appear that way, isn't it?" And with his cool, distant tone he managed to convey that further mention of Rennie and Jarret Sullivan would be unwelcome.

  Jay Mac picked at his desser
t. Normally Mrs. Cavanaugh's cherry pie would have brought a request for seconds, but tonight his appetite had abandoned him somewhere between the soup and salad. Nothing he had planned for this evening was unfolding in quite the way he had envisioned.

  Mary Margaret had led the mutiny by refusing to attend. Skye charged in where her sister feared to tread. Rushton seemed eager to have the business put behind him while Connor appeared not to want to discuss it at all. Moira's graciousness had been taxed by Beryl's thinly disguised contempt for Skye and her outrageous behavior. Had Jay Mac been forced to choose the person who was finding the dinner party the most entertaining, he would have picked Mrs. Cavanaugh. If her facial expressions were any indication, then she found most of what she heard while serving and removing courses to be vastly amusing.

  Moira motioned to Beryl and Skye. "Why don't we leave the gentlemen to their after-dinner drinks?" she said. "We'll have coffee in the parlor."

  In her eagerness to quit the room, Skye nearly toppled her chair as she leapt to her feet. She apologized clumsily, flushing to the roots of her flame-red hair, and left the table quickly. Moira and Beryl followed at a more sedate pace.

  Connor waited until the door to the dining room closed before he rounded on Jay Mac and his father. "You've both blindsided me," he said.

  John MacKenzie Worth rose from the table and went to the sideboard. He was not as tall as either Holiday, but he wore power and authority like a mantle. His carriage was straight with his shoulders set as firmly as his mouth. He began pouring drinks. "How is that?" he asked. "Since you and I have never met before today I fail to understand how I was able to... how did you put it?... blindside you."

  "Oh, you didn't do it alone." His gaze fell hard on his father. "You were helped immensely."

  Jay Mac set a tumbler of whiskey in front of Connor. "Would you like a cigar?"

  "I don't smoke," he said tersely.

  "Neither do I," Jay Mac said. "At least not any longer. Gave it up when Michael was brought back to me alive and well." He offered Rushton the cigars and was pleased when one was taken. He might not smoke, but he enjoyed the peculiarly sweet and pungent fragrance. "But I don't suppose you want to hear about that now," he said, lighting Rushton's cigar.

  "No," Connor said dryly, "at the risk of being impolite, I can't say that I do." He knocked back his drink, and without waiting to be offered more, he went to the sideboard and poured his own refill.

  Watching Connor, Jay Mac returned to his seat. "You don't drink to excess, do you?" he asked. "Your father never mentioned that might be a problem."

  "My father doesn't know me well enough to say one way or the other," Connor said. It was difficult to keep bitterness out of his voice. "But it's never been a problem, at least not until I arrived in New York two months ago." He leaned back against the sideboard and crossed his long legs at the ankles. "I didn't know that Mrs. Sullivan was your daughter."

  "I can't think how that matters."

  "It matters. It's the reason you tried to stop your wife from talking about your family in Colorado. You knew very well that I had more than a passing acquaintance with both your daughter and son-in-law."

  "Rennie and Jarret are both valued employees of Northeast Rail. It's incidental that they're related to me."

  Connor doubted that Jay Mac really thought that way. John MacKenzie Worth was one of the richest and most powerful men in the country. Nothing about his influence was incidental. Connor directed his next question to his father. "You knew about Mr. and Mrs. Sullivan, didn't you?"

  Rushton nodded. "Of course. But I agree with Jay Mac. It hardly matters. If they hadn't come across the land and seen its value someone else would have."

  "It's enough that I know the value of that land. I don't need railroad surveyors and engineers to tell me what I have."

  "You could hardly expect to keep your valley a secret forever."

  The tips of Connor's fingers pressed whitely against the tumbler. "But it isn't my valley, is it?"

  "That's true," Rushton said. "It's mine."

  Jay Mac rolled his tumbler between his hands thoughtfully. "When my daughter telegraphed that she had found an excellent location for the line from Cannon Mills to Denver I was interested. Cannon Mills has untapped resources in silver and gold because until now there's been no way to ship out the ore. Northeast Rail has made a name for itself in the territory by giving rail access to miners and mining consortiums at fair cost. We did it first at Queen's Point and later in Madison. The people in Cannon Mills want the rail line."

  "I told your daughter when she and the others came to do the survey that no part of the land was for sale. She asked to complete her survey anyway and I let her."

  "Rennie's very persuasive."

  Connor recalled the heated discussion that had swayed his judgment. "A gross understatement." He took a short swallow of his drink. "When she left with her team from Northeast I thought that was the end of it. Mrs. Sullivan, it seems, is not only persuasive, but persistent as well. She went to the land office in Denver and discovered that I didn't hold the deed. I suppose that changed everything in her mind. She recognized my father's name and had you call on him. I don't know when the conversation turned from land to heirs, or even who first broached the idea, but somewhere along the way the two of you stopped talking about railroad accesses and started talking dynasties."

  Connor put down his drink. "Frankly, gentlemen, I'm just not interested." Not waiting for any response, he left the room.

  Rushton and Jay Mac both listened for the sound of the front door being opened and closed. It never came.

  "Where would he go?" Rushton asked.

  "He's probably cooling his heels in the library. It's just down the hallway and I remember seeing the door was open earlier."

  A cloud of blue-gray smoke circled Rushton's head as he exhaled slowly. "That didn't go well at all."

  "No, it didn't," Jay Mac conceded. "I like your son though. He's not easily intimidated."

  "He was insolent and insulting."

  Jay Mac shrugged. "His back's to the wall and he knows it. I admire him for wanting to hold onto the land." He sipped his drink. "I apologize for my daughter's behavior this evening. I had hoped things would proceed along a different course."

  "I confess that I thought your daughter would be older. I'm not certain that she and Connor would suit at all."

  "Older?" Jay Mac frowned. "She's twenty-three. Surely that's old enough. Your son's what?... thirty? They're of an age where they would suit admirably."

  "Twenty-three?" mused Rushton. "I wouldn't have guessed more than sixteen."

  "How would you have guessed at all? She wasn't even here this evening."

  Rushton looked at Jay Mac in some confusion. "Not here? But—"

  "Oh, you thought Schyler was... heavens no... of course they wouldn't suit." He chuckled with genuine amusement. "Skye's nineteen though, not sixteen. I'm afraid she put on quite a show for your son tonight. It was really meant as a warning to me."

  "A warning?"

  "Yes, indeed," Jay Mac said. "She was telling me to..."

  * * *

  "Stay out of my life, thank you very much," Skye said, plopping down on the overstuffed chair in her sister's bedchamber.

  "Did you actually say that?" Maggie asked, suspicious of her sister's bravado.

  "I may as well have. Oh, Mag, you should have seen me! You would have been so proud!"

  Maggie was also proud that she had had the courage to defy her father and not show up at all. Now, next to her younger sister's resourcefulness, it didn't seem so very much. "Proud or embarrassed?" she asked.

  "Oh, both, I'm sure," Skye went on happily. Complaining that she didn't feel well, she had asked to be excused from the after dinner conversation and her mother had barely been able to contain her relief. "No one knew quite what to do with me. I almost felt sorry for poor Mr. Holiday."

  "Father or son?"

  Skye shrugged. Her bright hair spilled over
her shoulders. "Both, I suppose. Does it matter?"

  "I think it's harder to feel sorry for the father. He's in this up to his neck with Jay Mac." She sighed and closed the book she'd been reading, keeping her finger in place to mark her page. "What's got into Jay Mac? I mean, why now? He's never mentioned marriage for me. He knows I want to be a doctor. I have an excellent chance of being accepted by that women's college in Philadelphia."

  "Who knows why Jay Mac does the things he does? Besides the fact that he loves us and thinks he knows very well what's best for us. Michael stood up to him and so did Rennie."

  "Rennie ended up marrying the man he picked out for her."

  "True, but it was her choice. And Mary Francis did what she wanted."

  "Mary Francis became a nun," Maggie said dryly. "Even Jay Mac has to realize there are limits to his influence."

  Skye laughed. "Well, my point is that she did what she wanted. You'll have to do the same, Mag."

  Maggie's lower lip was sucked in under her teeth. She worried it gently, her wide, green eyes uncertain. "I don't know. I'm not like the rest of you. It's not so easy for me."

  "Easy? Who said it was easy? Do you think my heart wasn't thumping near out of my chest? I pushed that spinach between my teeth and smiled for all I was worth and prayed I had the courage to keep it there. I simpered and chatted and pretended I'd never completed a sentence, let alone a complete thought, in my entire life. Jay Mac was glaring at me, especially when I went on about religion, and Mama looked as if she wished herself anywhere but where she was. Rushton Holiday felt sorry for me, sorrier for Jay Mac and Mama. Beryl Holiday—who I do not like one bit, I can tell you, though she's astonishingly beautiful—was looking rather pleased because I was so clearly unsuitable for her stepson."

  "And Connor?"