Gambler's Magic Page 11

  They’d traveled about a mile past the outskirts of Rio Hondo by this time. Mac looked around to make sure nobody was in the vicinity.

  It wasn’t quite the wink of an eye, but as Katie nodded off to sleep in Mac’s arms, he flicked his little finger. The horse upon which they rode lifted up from the desert floor and soared through the air toward the O’Fannin ranch. In a very few minutes, little Katie was home again.

  Chapter Seven

  Joy wiped her eyes. She’d just laughed so hard over a passage in The Moonstone that she’d made herself cry. She didn’t pause to consider this phenomenon because she’d experienced so many unusual phenomena lately, this one hardly fazed her

  “Oh, dear! I do love Mr. Betteredge, don’t you, Mr. Perry? The way he phrases things is so droll.”

  “He’s a good old guy, all right.” In truth, Elijah had discovered that this morning he could scarcely make himself concentrate on the narrative Gabriel Betteredge had set forth on the loss of the moonstone. He was too caught up in watching Joy.

  Criminy, when he’d first set eyes on her, she’d looked like an emaciated pickle. She’d looked like the kind of female who’d live and die an old maid. She’d looked as if her sour, single state had already begun to wither her innards and dry her exterior into a forbidding shell of thwarted womanhood. He’d taken one look at her and judged that, in less than ten years, she’d be the kind of female who’d scurry around with a basket of good works slung over her arm, darting glances filled with fear and loathing about her wherever she went. She’d go around doling out her charity mean-spiritedly, not because she wanted to, but because she feared if she didn’t, she’d go to hell.

  When he’d first met Joy Hardesty, she’d given Elijah a sad, empty feeling in his middle. Granted, that was more than he usually felt. Usually, he felt merely empty. But it hadn’t felt good, the impression he got of Joy.

  Since she’d started nursing him, though, she’d changed. Elijah couldn’t put his finger on exactly how, but she’d changed.

  Oh, she was still annoying as hell. And she argued with him about every little thing. But she wasn’t pinched and huddled over any longer, and she didn’t flinch every time she glanced at him, as if she feared his very presence might shatter her morals. She’d also gained a little weight and no longer looked like an animated stick. Her cheeks sported some color, even when she wasn’t blushing over some outrageous thing he’d said, although he did try to say at least three outrageous things a day, to keep her on her toes.

  She’d wiped her eyes and begun to read again, and he attempted to pay attention. He was distracted by her face, though, and his thoughts wandered again. The first time he’d realized she was actually quite pretty had been the day Mac brought Katie here. That was only about a week ago, and Elijah hadn’t recovered yet. He didn’t like thinking of the foul-tempered, dried-up spinster lady, Joy Hardesty, as a pretty woman because her being pretty contradicted so many of the beliefs he’d adopted through the years. But she was pretty. And appealing. And feminine. He couldn’t very well deny those facts, because they were true. Whatever else Elijah Perry was, he wasn’t a liar.

  Now, for instance, her skin looked pale and almost translucent where the sun’s rays kissed it. She had a fine bone structure, and a delicate pink flush delineated her cheeks. Of course, he’d almost had to kill himself to get her to open the curtains and let the sun in so he could see her.

  Elijah pondered whether or not he should tell her how pretty she was. He was sure she had no idea. No; that would be too outrageous. He didn’t want to make her run away yet, because he still needed her.

  Suddenly she shut the book with a clap, and looked straight into his eyes. “Do you think I’m like Miss Clack?”

  Her question came to him out of the blue, as direct as an arrow, and the very nature of it rendered him speechless. Miss Clack, Wilkie Collins’s own Christian spinster lady, had actually reminded Elijah very much of Joy Hardesty. As intolerant and bigoted as Joy herself, Miss Clack spread misery and Christian tracts among her acquaintances like a breeze scattering seeds, but with more calculated menace. The breeze didn’t know what it was doing.

  Miss Clack, however, unlike Joy, evidenced not a whit of uncertainty about her mission in life. One of the qualities that had finally endeared Joy to Elijah was her self-doubt. Not, he amended quickly, that he considered Joy endearing. Endearing was the wrong word. He couldn’t think of the right one at the moment, but he knew what he meant.

  After several seconds, during which he scrambled to get his thoughts to congeal into a coherent phrase of denial, Joy announced, “You do, don’t you? You think I’m just like Miss Clack.” She bowed her head. “I hate Miss Clack.”

  “You do?”

  She nodded. “She’s an awful person.”

  Well, this was interesting. Curious, he asked, “Does she remind you of anyone you knew back in Boston?”

  She glared at him. “Auburn.”

  He knew she was from Auburn. He’d taken to saying Boston because it riled her. He wished he’d not done it today, because he didn’t want to get off track here. He sensed this might be an important discussion. “Sorry. But does she? Remind you of anybody?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who?”

  She glanced away from him and gazed out the window. Elijah looked, too. The spring morning sky was as clear as crystal. Clouds mounded up in the west like shorn woolen fleeces. He wondered if they’d have a thunderstorm tonight. His glance returned to Joy, and he was sorry to see her lips pinched up tight, like they’d been when he’d first met her. His heart, an organ he paid little attention to on an every-day basis, gave an odd little pitch—it was almost painful—and he cocked his head, unsettled, and wanting to make Joy feel better.

  “You can tell me, Miss Hardesty. I won’t tease you. Honest, I won’t.”

  She turned and squinted at him again. He could tell she didn’t believe him. “Truly,” he said, trying to encourage her to spill her guts. “You may not think much of my morals, but believe it or not, I’m honest. I may gamble for a living, but I don’t lie.”

  That was the truth. Elijah wasn’t honest out of any inner sense of scrupulous rectitude. It’s only that he’d discovered years before that honesty made his life easier. He’d seen scads of people get into trouble because they couldn’t keep their lies straight. Most folks told lies so as not to hurt people or make themselves look bad, he’d realized. Since he didn’t give a damn what anybody thought of him, and didn’t care about anyone else, he found honesty an easy course to follow.

  “Then you’ll tell me the truth?”

  “Yes.”

  “Am I like Miss Clack?”

  He hesitated. He wouldn’t lie to her, but he discovered he’d suddenly developed a strange, unexpected reluctance to hurt her feelings. Odd. This had never happened to him before. Must because she’d nursed him so well that he felt this alien compunction.

  “First tell me who Miss Clack reminds you of.”

  She turned her head again and mumbled something.

  “I didn’t hear you, Joy. Who does she remind you of?”

  Her head jerked around, and she goggled at him. He realized he’d called her by her Christian name. With a grin, he amended, “I mean, Miss Hardesty.”

  He saw her swallow and nod, as if she were forgiving him the familiarity.

  “Go on,” he urged softly. “You can tell me.”

  “My mother.”

  She swallowed again. Elijah couldn’t tell if she was swallowing tears or terror.

  “Your mother is like Miss Clack?”

  She nodded. Elijah suspected she didn’t dare speak for fear she’d cry. Good God, if that was true, it was small wonder the poor girl was such a nervous bundle of reticence and rectitude.

  He probed some more, gently, surprised he was bothering. What the hell did he care about this girl or her mother? Yet he probed. “She was as sure of her own righteousness as Miss Clack?”

  Another no
d.

  “She thought everyone was going to hell but her?”

  A quick glance up. A hesitation, as if she found his assessment somewhat harsh. Another glance away, and an expression telling Elijah that, harsh or not, his evaluation was on the money. Another nod.

  He wasn’t sure what to say. Wasn’t sure he wanted to say anything at all. Yet she’d nursed him. In spite of her dislike of him and her obvious uneasiness around him, she’d nursed him. Hell, she’d even started reading a novel for his sake.

  “Did she make you feel as though you weren’t good enough for her, Miss Hardesty?”

  Another nod. Sadder. Slower. Joy peered into her lap and fingered the pages of The Moonstone. “Yes. Always.”

  Curious—which was curious in itself, since he hadn’t been curious about anything for years—Elijah asked, “Are your parents still living, Miss Hardesty?”

  “No. They’ve both passed on.”

  Passed on. Elijah wasn’t surprised she’d used the euphemism. He’d noticed before that the relatives of people who cared about things generally didn’t just up and die. They passed on, or passed away. Not that he cared. He’d merely noticed. He also spared her his sympathy, judging she didn’t need pity today, but was struggling with other problems.

  He narrowed his eyes in thought. “What about your father? Was he the same as your mother? Was he, ah, very sure of himself?” He’d been going to ask her if her father was a self-righteous, overbearing bigot too, but softened the question for Joy’s sake.

  “Oh, no.” The response came in a staccato burst. It sounded to him as though she were glad to have something to talk about other than her mother. He hardly blamed her. “My father wasn’t at all like my mother. In fact, he was terribly misguided.” She stopped speaking suddenly and frowned, as if she’d listened to herself and heard her judgment for the first time.

  “Misguided?” Elijah shook his head. Poor thing. She must have had a hard time of it when she was a little girl. Not that it was any skin off his teeth. “Did your father drink or something?”

  A gape of her mouth. An widening of her eyes. Damn, they were pretty eyes. A cock of her head. Now that the sunlight had been allowed into his room, Elijah could clearly see the red and gold highlights in her hair. Pretty hair. Thick hair. Hair that deserved better than those two tightly coiled braids.

  “Good heavens, no! My father was a minister, Mr. Perry.”

  Elijah’s shock drove Joy’s physical attributes out of his brain. “A minister? But—”

  “He was frivolous,” Joy interrupted. “Mother used to say he’d never get anywhere because he lacked ambition and he was too fond of his little jokes.”

  “His little jokes?” If he’d taught his daughter any jokes, Elijah sure hadn’t seen any evidence of it. “Did he, ah, shirk his flock or something?”

  She frowned as she contemplated his question. “No—at least, I don’t believe he did. Not in the way you mean.”

  Elijah tried to recall what he could of his Baltimore boyhood. “Did he pay calls on sick folks and preach sermons and so forth?”

  “Oh, yes. I believe he was conscientious in his duties.” She sucked in a deep breath and amended, “He was as conscientious as his capricious nature allowed, at any rate.”

  “His capricious nature? Was he irrational? Did he suffer crazy spells or attack his parishioners with sticks or something? Did his congregation dislike him?”

  “Oh, no. Everyone seemed very fond of him.” Her frown turned into a scowl. “They liked him because he was so easy going, you see. He was permissive. He didn’t take things seriously enough. He was much too eager to forgive and pardon people who strayed.”

  “He forgave people who strayed?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “That doesn’t sound like a bad thing. He sounds like a good Christian fellow to me.” Not that Elijah knew anything about Christian fellows, good or otherwise.

  She appeared to be confused for a moment. “Well, but . . . He was too easy. I mean, for instance, when one of the young women in town—ah . . .” She blushed a bright pink.

  Elijah was charmed. “When she strayed from the straight-and-narrow and got into trouble?” he suggested, using the time-honored affectation for pregnancy in an unwed female.

  She shot him a grateful glance. Her blush remained hot. “Yes. When she, er, strayed, and brought her baby back to Auburn to live in her parents’ home—they said it was an orphaned child they’d adopted, but everyone knew better—my father allowed her to remain in church as if she’d done nothing wrong.”

  “I presume your mother wanted him to kick her out?”

  Joy cleared her throat. “Yes. That is, I don’t know if she wanted him to expel her from the congregation, but she believed he should have made her pay for her misdeed. Somehow. Made her do some kind of penance or something.” Her blush was gone, and her expression clearly conveyed her perplexity.

  Elijah said, “Your mother, I presume, didn’t think the poor girl had suffered enough humiliation and heartache already?”

  “Um, no. I, ah, guess she didn’t.”

  “She wanted her to pay in public? Maybe be locked in the stocks and have eggs thrown at her for a day or two. Or maybe wear a scarlet A, like Hester What’s Her Name?”

  “Heavens, no!”

  Elijah could tell she’d only denied it out of habit. “Hmmm.” He began to experience an intense dislike of Joy Hardesty’s mother, and an equally intense sympathy for Joy’s father. “Did your mother object to anything else your father did?”

  “Um, well, yes. I think so. I mean, he used to visit the men in jail and speak to them, but Mother used to say he was too easy on them.”

  “Too easy on them?”

  “I mean, she thought Father should . . . should condemn them for their actions. I mean . . . I don’t mean condemn them, exactly, but denounce their actions. Or something. I mean . . .”

  “I think I know what you mean.”

  She took another deep breath and straightened in her chair. Elijah had the strangest feeling she was gathering her mother’s principles around her like a shield of righteousness. “He should have taken the opportunity to offer the Lord’s Word as salvation to those men whose lives had diverged from the path of goodness and right. Instead, he offered sympathy and kindness.”

  “Merciful heavens, what an evil man, to be sure.”

  Joy frowned at him, but offered no rebuttal to his sarcasm.

  “And Mother didn’t approve of that?”

  She hesitated for a moment. “No.”

  “And she took him to task for his failure to live up to her firm principles, I suppose.”

  He sounded sarcastic again, and Joy appeared bewildered. “Well . . . yes.”

  “I see.”

  “Do you?”

  Joy Hardesty’s mother had been Miss Clack personified. The very idea made Elijah want to run away and hide. “So your dad possessed a sense of humor and some human compassion in his heart and your mother didn’t?”

  She opened and shut her mouth. “Well . . .”

  “He was forgiving of his fellows and she sent ‘em all to hell without remorse?”

  “Well . . .”

  “He liked to relax and be pleasant to people and she thought being pleasant was a symptom of moral weakness?”

  “Actually, she said it was one’s Christian duty to be pleasant to people, even sinners.”

  “How charitable of her. So, it wasn’t so much the pleasantness, it was the relaxation part she considered sinful?”

  “Well. . .”

  “In other words, your father was a nice man whose wife expected greater—or different—things from him than he expected from himself. Then, when he didn’t turn out to be what she wanted him to be, she hated him for it? She belittled him?”

  “Well . . .”

  “I suppose she did it in public.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t put it that way.”

  “I’m sure you wouldn’t.” Elija
h had seen similar situations often enough. He had a feeling, however, that Joy’s mother had been a more forceful example of the bullying female than most of the other tyrannical women he’d known.

  “My mother was a saint, Mr. Perry. Everybody said so.”

  “I’ll bet they did. They wouldn’t dare not say so.”

  “That’s not kind. My mother tried very, very hard to live up to what the Lord expected of her.”

  “You mean she tried to live up to what she’d decided the Lord expected of her.”

  Joy frowned slightly. “I believe that amounts to the same thing.”

  “Do you? Did He come to Auburn, sit down to supper with her, and tell her so Himself?”

  “My mother read the Bible every day. She prayed about it!” Joy was getting miffy. Elijah wasn’t sure he gave a rap. He wished he had Joy’s mother here. She wouldn’t dare bully him. He wouldn’t let her.

  “I supposed it’s your mother talking through you when you say your father was frivolous and unambitious.”

  “I . . . well . . .”

  “Come on now, admit it. You didn’t think that one up all by yourself now, did you?”

  “Well . . .”

  “And I suppose she used to look down her nose at people who laughed at amusing things and had a good time when they weren’t working, because she didn’t have an ounce of amusement or restfulness in her.”

  “Um, she didn’t approve of senseless amusements or frivolity. Japes and jests and so forth are tools of the devil, after all.”

  “According to your mother.”

  “I . . . well . . . yes.”

  “So in other words, your father liked to laugh, and your mother considered laughter sinful. Probably because she didn’t know how.”

  Her brow furrowed, and Elijah imagined she was trying to figure out the flaw in his reasoning. He wasn’t surprised when she couldn’t do it.

  “I suppose so.”

  “And I suppose she terrified any hint of a sense of humor out of you before you knew what it was, so you’ve always thought laughter was an act of evil.”