Only 05 - Autumn Lover

hat.”
    “Not very often,” Elyssa said. “Too much sun makes me look like one of Lord Harry’s boiled lobsters.”
    “Such beautiful skin you have.”
    Penny looked at the younger woman enviously.
    “All cream and pink,” Penny continued. “Like your mother’s. Hair like spun flax and eyes like blue-green gems. Just like hers.”
    “So you say. Personally, I think you’re quite wrong. Mother was an unusually beautiful woman. I’m not.”
    “That’s not what all the men think.”
    “Tell it to the English lords. They thought I was about as comely as a wart.”
    Penny shook her head in disagreement.
    “I know the kind of woman who attracts men,” Penny said emphatically. Then she added sadly, “And I know the kind who doesn’t.”
    The tone of Penny’s voice said that she considered herself one of the unattractive women.
    Frowning, Elyssa turned to kneading a second batch of dough. While she worked, she thought of what it must have been like for Penny to grow up in the shade cast by Gloria Sutton’s sun.
    “A man who looks only at the outside of a woman isn’t worth having,” Elyssa said after a time.
    “That’s the only kind of men there are.”
    “For heaven’s sake, Penny. You’ve turned down half the hands who ever worked on the Ladder S!”
    “They only looked at me after they gave up mooning over your mother. If they gave up.”
    Tight-lipped, Penny ground harder on the coffee beans. The combination of sadness and acceptance in her expression told Elyssa more than words.
    “Who was he?” Elyssa asked.
    “What?”
    “Who was the man who couldn’t see past Mother to you?”
    Penny went very still for an instant. Then she poured the last measure of ground coffee into the pot on top of the stove and added more wood to the firebox. Soon the water went from simmering to a hearty boil.
    “What was it about this new ramrod—what is his name again?” Penny asked.
    The crisp, no-nonsense voice was the old Penny.
    Elyssa let out a breath she hadn’t been aware of holding. If Penny came apart under the strain of outlaws and an old friend who drank too much…
    It didn’t bear thinking of.
    We’ve lost too much to lose each other, too , Elyssa thought. Father. Mother. Mac. Uncle Bill, in all the ways that matter .
    I can’t lose Penny .
    “Hunter,” Elyssa said quickly, accepting the change of subject. “No mister. No last name. Or maybe no first name. He didn’t make it clear.”
    “Is that why he struck you as rude? You know it’s the western way to be informal.”
    Elyssa’s cheeks pinked with more than the heat of the stove. She could hardly explain about the snagged skirt and Hunter’s forearm under her breasts and his eyes watching her nipples stand so hard against the soft cloth.
    Just thinking about it was unsettling. Talking about it would embarrass both her and Penny.
    “Sassy?” Penny asked, using the old childhood nickname.
    “Hunter accused me of flirting with Mickey.”
    “Don’t you?”
    “Of course not! In the time that I’ve been home, have you ever seen me so much as smile at that bullheaded wretch?”
    “No, but from what Mickey said, I assumed you did a lot more than smile.”
    “What? When was he talking about me?”
    “Every time he goes for supplies to the settlement or visits the Dugout Saloon up north.”
    Is that why Hunter is so scornful of me ? Elyssa asked silently. Has he heard all the talk ?
    The answer was obvious. Hunter had heard the gossip. And he had believed it.
    “Mickey has no right to talk about me,” Elyssa said, her face pale. “I can’t help what his lusts are. I want no part of them, or of him.”
    Penny looked over at the girl, caught by the emotion in Elyssa’s voice.
    “Don’t worry,” Penny said gently. “There used to be a lot of talk about your mother, too. Just talk. It didn’t hurt her.”
    “She was married to the man she loved,” Elyssa pointed out. “What if she had been single and a man who interested her wouldn’t come close because he wanted nothing to do with a little flirt?”
    Penny looked into the oven and pulled the biscuits out to cool.
    “Is that why you’re wearing silk and lace?” Penny asked. “To catch the new man’s eye, even though he’s rude?”
    “I beg your pardon?”
    “That dress makes you look like an angel freshly fallen from heaven.”
    “Bother.” Elyssa’s cheeks flushed. “I’ve been wearing my foolish English clothes because I don’t fit into the clothes I