The house was well lighted, its broad front porch full of costumed people drinking punch and conversing, while inside a small band played gay music.
“You’ll enjoy this,” Enid assured her. “Come. I’ll introduce you to our host and hostess.”
Enid had told Amelia before that the Valverdes were descendants of Spanish settlers who had been granted a huge tract of land here before the war with Mexico. After the Spanish were driven out of the territory, American settlers were invited in by Mexico. Soon afterward, however, the American settlers demanded their independence from Mexico, and war broke out. The Valverde descendants had, by that time, been accepted by American settlers and were part of the independence movement. They retained their huge land grant mainly, Enid said, tongue-in-cheek, because they had enough cowboys to fend off interlopers.
Horace Valverde and his wife, Dora, were short, dark, and rather reserved. Dora welcomed them with more warmth than her husband, motioning for Darcy to come and join them.
“Have you met our daughter, Darcy, Miss Howard?” she asked Amelia.
“Yes,” Amelia said with a quiet smile. “It’s nice to see you again, Miss Valverde.”
“We’re glad that you could come,” Darcy said carelessly. She beamed at Enid. “My, you do look lovely!” she added, toadying to the older woman. “Did you buy that gown?”
“You know that I sew my own clothes.” Enid chuckled, flattered. “Amelia made hers as well. She’s quite accomplished at copying designs she likes.”
“Why, yes, your gown does remind me of one I saw in New York,” Dora agreed, giving Amelia’s gown a second look. “It’s a Charles Worth design, isn’t it, my dear?”
“Yes, it is,” Amelia said, flushing as King joined them, catching the tail end of the conversation.
“King! How dashing you look!” Darcy enthused, taking his arm prisoner with no attempt at formality. “Everyone’s ignoring my lovely Jacques Doucet original from Paris,” she added with pouting lips.
“You know you always look lovely to me, whatever you wear,” King said with a warm, genuine smile.
Amelia felt chilled. Darcy’s gown, while it might have flattered a taller woman, made the short, dark Darcy look like an ice cream sundae. The woman was attractive but hardly a beauty. And expensive designer gowns made little difference. Perhaps King loved her and saw her with the eyes of the heart. Imagine him in love, she thought wildly, and had to force herself not to laugh. He seemed the last man on earth to succumb to a woman’s charm.
“Well, who is this vision?” a pleasant male voice enquired, and a tall, blond man with a mustache came up to stand beside King. But it was Amelia, not Darcy, at whom he was staring appreciatively.
“Miss Amelia Howard,” Dora said, “this is Ted Simpson, our friend from Boston.”
“I’m delighted to meet you, Miss Howard,” he said formally, bowing.
“And I, you, sir,” she returned, making him a slight curtsy. She smiled up at him unreservedly, because he reminded her of her brother, and she liked him immediately. He wasn’t broody or mercurial, and at least he made her feel attractive.
“Would you care to dance?”
“I should be delighted,” she told him, and immediately took the arm he proffered. “If you’ll excuse me,” she said to Enid.
“Certainly, my dear.”
King watched them walk away, chattering animatedly, with silver eyes that were positively grim.
“Don’t they suit?” Dora asked innocently. “She’s very pretty, your houseguest.”
“I suppose she’s stuck-up,” Darcy said cattily. “Most pretty women are. Helpless, too, I imagine, and not much use around the house. Can she ride?”
“I don’t believe she does,” Enid said, taken aback by the criticisms.
“Can you see her on a horse?” King asked with cold sarcasm, shocking his mother even further. “She’s a chocolate box beauty with no spirit and even less imagination.”
“You seem to know her rather well, to make such easy comparisons,” Darcy probed.
King shrugged. “Her brother and I have been best friends for many years. I know Miss Howard only from the vantage point of an infrequent visitor to their home.”
“I see.” Darcy moved closer to him. “You don’t like her, then?”
“Darcy, really, what a question!” Dora laughed nervously.
“No, I don’t like her,” King replied bluntly, one comer of his wide mouth curling up with contempt as he stared at her and Ted on the dance floor. “She won’t last long out here.”
Enid started to speak, her angry eyes eloquent, but King forestalled her.
“Shall we dance?” King asked Darcy, and, nodding to his mother and Darcy’s, he escorted her inside to the living room with the other dancers.
* * *
Amelia found Ted to be as undemanding and kind as she’d first thought. He had a bright personality, uncomplicated. As they danced, they talked of the East, because he was a frequent traveler there on business for his father’s banking firm.
“I know Atlanta very well,” he told her. “It is going to be a major city one day, you know. It has the potential for greatness.”
“I find it maddening to live in,” Amelia replied. “I enjoy the spaciousness of this vast land, although El Paso is no small town either! One can become lost there in no time!”
“I don’t doubt it. Miss Howard, may I call on you?”
“I am staying with the Culhanes at present,” she said reluctantly, “and my father is away on a hunting trip. I do not feel comfortable asking you to call on me there. It would be best if you wait until my father returns. We live in El Paso, in a boardinghouse.”
“I see.” He glanced toward King and Darcy. King was glaring at them openly.
“Mr. Culhane doesn’t like me,” Amelia said abruptly. “My father has decided that I would make a good match for King’s brother, Alan. King does not share this sentiment. He feels that I am unsuitable.”
“Does he really?” Ted, who had known King for many years, had never seen him hostile toward a woman—especially a beautiful woman like this. It was unexpected, to say the least.
“I should not have spoken so openly,” Amelia said quickly, shocked at her own forwardness. She flushed. “Please forgive me. It has been a trying week.”
“There is nothing to forgive,” he chided gently. “You dance divinely, Miss Howard.”
“Thank you. I haven’t danced in many years, and only then with my brother. The band is very good, is it not?”
“It is, indeed. The man playing the violin is my brother, and the flute-player is my sister’s husband.”
“I am impressed!” she said. “Are you musical, Mr. Simpson?”
“No, sadly. Are you?”
“I play the piano, a little,” she confessed. “It is my only real accomplishment.” She wisely kept the rest of them secret. This man knew King. She didn’t want her enemy to know that she was anything but his image of her—dull and not very bright and totally spineless. The last thing in the world she coveted was King’s interest. Let Darcy have him, she thought in panic, feeling his eyes on her even across the room. Why was he always watching her?
“I cannot believe that such a lovely woman has only one accomplishment.”