Only 05 - Autumn Lover

queasiness that had plagued her for several weeks. She smoothed her hands over thefaded calico of her dress and looked at her work-scuffed boots.
    “That tonic tasted like boot blacking,” Penny said.
    “Truly? Since when have you been sampling Hunter’s army boots?”
    Penny giggled and shook her head.
    “Honestly, Sassy, you’re as unsquelchable as a puppy.”
    “If Ah had been the squelching kind of child,” Elyssa drawled, imitating the slow rhythms of Morgan’s speech, “my sainted cousins would have squelched me so thin you could read newsprint through me.”
    “Watch out, or Hunter will do it for them,” Penny said absently.
    Elyssa shot the other woman a quick glance, but Penny didn’t notice. The lines of strain around her mouth and eyes became more pronounced each day.
    Waiting to be driven from your home by bankruptcy or raiders wore away at a person’s soul.
    “Oh, Hunter is more bark than bite,” Elyssa said.
    “Don’t you believe it. That’s one hard man.”
    “Maybe. Yet he smiles more now than when he first came here. Have you noticed?”
    “No.”
    “Well, I have,” Elyssa said.
    Penny’s hands smoothed over her skirt and apron again.
    Frowning, Elyssa watched the haunted, grieving expression settle onto Penny’s face once more.
    “It’s not the ague wearing you down,” Elyssa said softly. “It’s waiting for the Culpeppers to attack, isn’t it?”
    A shake of Penny’s head was her only answer.
    “Then it must be Bill,” Elyssa said.
    A sheen of tears appeared in Penny’s soft brown eyes.
    “He hasn’t been here but once since you camehome,” Penny said. “He took one look at you, saw Gloria, and could hardly bear to sit down and visit for more than two minutes.”
    “He wasn’t seeing my mother,” Elyssa said dryly. “He was seeing red. He was furious that I wouldn’t sell him the Ladder S.”
    Penny said nothing.
    “Hasn’t Bill come here when I was out on the range?” Elyssa asked.
    “No.”
    “Odd.”
    “Is it? There’s nothing for him here.”
    The bitterness in Penny’s voice scraped Elyssa’s already too taut nerves.
    “Bill had no right to expect me to sell my home, even to him,” Elyssa said flatly.
    A shake of Penny’s head was her only answer. It wasn’t so much disagreement with Elyssa’s words as it was a gesture of hopelessness.
    “Are you sure Bill hasn’t been here while I’m gone?” Elyssa said.
    Penny’s hands clenched in her apron for the space of two heartbeats, then relaxed.
    “I’m sure,” Penny said tonelessly. “Why?”
    “Nearly every time I go past Wind Gap, I see fresh tracks heading between Ladder S and B Bar land.”
    “You must be mistaken.”
    The tightness of Penny’s voice and the slight trembling of her hands told Elyssa that the subject was painful for the older woman. Elyssa started to pursue it anyway, then sighed. No good would come of causing Penny more pain.
    “Ah, well, it hardly matters,” Elyssa said gently. “The kitchen is clean, the lamps are full of golden light, and I feel like dancing.”
    Elyssa held out her hands and smiled.
    “Come on,” she coaxed. “Dancing makes the world lighter, didn’t you know?”
    After a moment of hesitation, Penny smiled in return and took Elyssa’s hands.
    Elyssa curtsied amid a sigh of pale green silk and golden petticoats. Then she began singing a sprightly waltz. Soon both women were swirling around the kitchen, laughing, until Elyssa’s pure contralto became husky and breathless. Penny became breathless, period.
    “Enough,” Penny gasped, laughing. “It’s all I can do to stand upright!”
    “Are you certain? Dancing alone isn’t as much fun.”
    “I’m certain.”
    Shaking her head, laughing, Penny lowered herself into one of the wooden chairs that ran along the kitchen table where they ate every day. Then she looked beyond Elyssa and saw Hunter standing in the doorway, watching with no expression on his face and quicksilver eyes that burned.
    “You might try Hunter,” Penny said. “I doubt that he would get breathless after a few turns around the kitchen.”
    Elyssa spun around so quickly that her skirt lifted and fluttered like an exotic butterfly. Then she whirled completely around once, twice, and waltzed up to Hunter. She curtsied deeply, rose as gracefully as a dancer, and held out her hands to Hunter.
    “No,” he said.
    “Why not?” she challenged. “Surely a man as co-ordinated as you are can’t be intimidated by