“Not them, just one,” Garrett clarified. “Do I need more than the fact that you rarely drink?”
On the point of refilling his goblet, Deegan halted. Garrett blew a series of smoke rings while his friend struggled silently within himself.
Deegan set the decanter down and pushed his empty glass away. “It’s the situation, not the woman. Besides.” he insisted lightly, “you know I love money more than I could ever love any woman.”
It was interesting how a man could lie to himself, Garrett mused as he drew on his cigarette. Interesting how he could believe the lie. “Tell me about her anyway, Dig,” he urged.
Deegan slumped deep into the cushions of his chair, stretched his legs out and grinned. “Not believin’ me, are ye, laddie,” he said. “The lady’s not for me. Knew it the moment I set eyes on her. She’s so beautiful, so graceful.” The artificial lilt dropped from Deegan’s voice, replaced by a quality that could only be described, Garrett felt, as dreamy. “It was like seeing an angel to watch her dance,” Deegan continued. “She glides, my friend. Glides. And when a man waltzes with her it’s akin to floating right in the clouds.”
Garrett smiled faintly. “Sounds to me as if Cupid’s sunk his arrow deep.” He drew a final lungful of smoke and leaned forward to toss the butt of his cigarette into the fire.
“Hmm,” Deegan murmured thoughtfully. “Doubtful, my lad. How could I be when she deserves someone like you?”
Caught exhaling the smoke, Garrett choked. “Bloody hell, Dig,” he gasped when he could breathe once more. “You don’t have to kill me to get into my wallet.”
“My point exactly. I get by on my wits…”
“Such as they are,” Garrett grumbled, uneasy at the turn the conversation had taken.
“But you, my friend,” Deegan insisted with a wry grin, “have the magic touch. You seem to make money by merely thinking about it Little did I know when I rescued you from that strumpet in Sonora…”
Garrett got to his feet with languorous grace. “I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit here and listen to your insults,” he said, leaning toward the mirror that hung over the mantelpiece and turning his attention to the involved process of fixing his tie. “You rescued me? That isn’t how I re-member the event. If memory serves, there was a lynch mob after you when you barged into my bedroom.”
“All in your perception, my friend. As I was saying…”
“And loving the sound of your own voice,” Garrett dded under his breath. It had been a decidedly nasty hock to have Deegan turn the conversation on him. If here was something he didn’t need in his life right now t was a beauty with ethereal habits. That kind of woman welonged to the life he abhorred, the life that would claim him once more in the distant future.
Gliding and floating. Garrett fumed silently as he looped the narrow band of black silk into a crisp bow. Deegan may claim he wasn’t in love with the woman, but he wouldn’t convince anyone else with talk like that.
Deegan was listing the physical attributes of his goddess now. Garrett wished he hadn’t drawn the man out. If only he’d turned Dig away earlier instead of welcoming him as a savior. If only he’d made a stir when the telegram had arrived, the whole mess would have—
Telegram.
“You remember where I put that blasted wire?” Garrett demanded, interrupting Deegan in midsentence. Something about hair of spun gold.
“In your pocket,” Deegan supplied. “Now her eyes are…
Garrett stopped listening again. “Why do I have such cursedly abominable taste in friends?” he asked.
“You mean me,” Deegan said, far from insulted. “It’s your money, laddie. It attracts rogues like myself.”
“Meaning if I had my wits about me, I’d stop finding ways to make more of it,” Blackhawk growled. The paper he’d received from the bellboy was creased from his own careless handling. Absently Garrett smoothed it out. “You might be interested in this, Dig. I’ve been waiting to hear from a man in Cheyenne. I’m thinking of investing in a cattle ranch in Wyoming Territory.”
“Spare me,” Deegan pleaded. He reached for the cigarette materials and was soon tapping tobacco along the length of the small square of paper in his hand. “No doubt a week from now you’ll be camped in some forsaken spot staring deeply into a complacent cow’s brown eyes. Cattle.” He signed in resignation. “Who would ever have believed a civilized Englishman would prefer the face of a longhorn to that of a beautiful woman?”
“I don’t,” Garrett said, at last opening his message. “Beautiful women always rank ahead of a cow, although the cow will give me less trouble.” He scanned the telegram quickly, then read it again more slowly before crumpling it in his hand.
“The bloody hell.” Barely audible, the words were rough to the ear. Garrett followed them with a few well chosen curses from three other languages. The crushed telegram shot into the fireplace, caught flame among the coals and was soon reduced to curling black ash.
Deegan halted in the act of lighting his cigarette. “Trouble?”
Garrett’s jaw was stiff with suppressed fury. The future had galloped in on fleeter hooves than he had expected. Mentally he called himself every kind of fool. Had he really believed the burdens he’d carried for so long would remain at bay even for a few more months?
Well, he’d had two years of hard-won freedom. They would have to suffice him a lifetime. A cold, bleak lifetime.
It took a moment for Deegan’s quiet question to register. Garrett remained standing, staring down at the hearth, at the smouldering black remains of the telegram. “My father is dead.”
Silence stretched between them, and the sounds of the hotel around them seemed to magnify. Garrett was conscious of the rattle of a wheeled trolley cart in the hallway, of the sound of running water through the plumbing, the footfalls of a guest in the room above. Outside on the street, a man yelled an obscenity at another driver, wheels rumbled, a horse whinnied.
“Your father. I’m sorry,” Deegan said.
“Not half as sorry as I,” Garrett noted wearily. “It means I have to go back, take on the responsibility of being head of the family.”
More importantly, he knew, it meant facing the accusations again. Dear Lord, it was more than any man should be pressed to endure.
Garrett forced a wan smile. “Why don’t you return at one tomorrow, Dig? I’ll arrange something with my bank for you, but I don’t think I’ll be a very companionable bloke tonight.”
The facade of the carefree adventurer was no longer present on Deegan’s face. “If there’s anything I can do, you have only to ask,” he said. “I’m not quite as shallow as I’m made out to be. I stand by my friends when they need me, Garrett.”
“I know, Dig. I know.”
Although the day had been sun filled, around midnight the damp chill turned into a cold rivulet of rain that coursed down the back of Garrett’s neck. He had been walking the city streets ever since Deegan left. It had taken but a moment to scribble his regrets to his host of the evening, sending a bellboy off with the message. He hadn’t bothered changing clothes, but had shrugged on, over his evening attire, the long vaquero’s duster he’d worn in Mexico, and added a battered, broad-brimmed slouch hat. His outward appearance blending with a thousand other men in San Francisco, Garrett trudged through the muddy streets, his mind far