Speak My Love Read online

  Ian's lips curved into a devastatingly sensuous smile. "I prefer Prissy, it seem to fit your personality better."

  Those words would have seemed an affront from any other man. From Ian they seemed, not only proper, but also thoughtful and sweet. Priscilla's curiosity overrode her reticence. "Why do you think Prissy fits me better than Priscilla?"

  Ian swallowed a bite of chicken and wiped his mouth with a linen napkin he'd taken from Priscilla's ornately decorated box. "Perhaps you should have two names since it seems you have two distinct personalities."

  His words were spoken with such overt honesty that Priscilla never thought to question their veracity. She was flattered that he would take such detailed notice of her personal attributes. "Mr. Alwin, are you trying to flatter me?"

  "I am speaking the truth as my heart perceives it," Ian answered as he laid his napkin aside. "Your public personality seems reserved and a little cold. Your private personality is warm and witty and altogether delightful." He stopped suddenly, seemingly embarrassed by his own words. "Forgive me. I don't have the right to speak to you in such intimate terms." Dropping his head, he mumbled something under his breath that Priscilla didn't understand.

  Leaning across the table, she turned her head to one side. "I didn't quite catch your last comment."

  Ian straightened in his chair. "It's just as well." He took another piece of chicken from the box. In an obvious attempt to move the conversation in another direction, he asked, "So, Prissy, what do you think about the proposals your father will soon be presenting to the City Council?"

  For the second time since she'd met him, Ian was asking her opinion. Priscilla couldn't bring herself to admit that she hadn't the faintest idea what her father was set to propose to the City Council. "I approve of them generally." She decided that her answer was vague enough to be classified as a fib rather than being categorized as an outright lie.

  "You agree?" Ian's winged eyebrows shot up.

  "You don't?" Priscilla asked. It had not occurred to her that anyone would disagree with her father about anything.

  "I do," Ian admitted reluctantly, "But most respectfully, of course."

  She must either admit to having no knowledge of what her father's proposals were about or steer this conversation in yet another direction and fast. Priscilla decided on the latter. "Rawhide is my father. Maybe I'm biased."

  Color licked along Ian's high cheekbones. "But even you must see that although the suggestions are not inherently bad, legislating morals is difficult if not impossible."

  Again Priscilla argued with her conscience and again she decided to ignore that still small voice that told her to admit to her ignorance and be done with it. "Maybe that's a matter of opinion." She was saying too much but her tongue seemed to have acquired a mind of its own. "Father is from the old school. He was born in Alabama and reared as a southern gentleman. He believes in honor and duty above all else. Although he was past the age for military service when the war came along, Father enlisted in the Confederate Army. During the war he was a colonel in the Confederate Calvary. When the war was over he was paroled by the Union and allowed to come home, or at least to what was left of our home." She wiped her fingers on her napkin as she reminisced. "I was very young but I wasn't too young to see that the war changed Father. In 1865 when he was told that he must apply for a pardon for fighting to preserve his home and his country, he refused and instead changed his name from Beauguard Johnson to Rawhide Murray and left Alabama and his old life for good. He could have left me behind, I was only eight years old and, I'm sure, a burden. But he didn't, he took me with him. We stole away in the dark of the night and came to Texas."

  Clearly uncomfortable by Priscilla's revelation, Ian began, "Miss Murray, I...."

  Priscilla interrupted. "It's Priscilla, remember?" She was telling things she shouldn't to a virtual stranger and all because she couldn't bear to have Ian think of her as cold and remote. "I'm Prissy to my friends and I hope you are my friend."

  Ian sighed and stared down at the chicken leg he held in his hand. "Priscilla, Prissy, you know nothing about me and if you did, you might not want me for a friend."

  Priscilla smiled her sweetest, most beguiling smile. "Why don't you tell me about yourself and let me make up my own mind?"

  Ian laid the chicken leg in his napkin and stared into space, apparently lost in his own thoughts. After a while he sighed and shook his head. "It's hardly worth the telling."

  Priscilla reached across the table and laid her hand over his. It was a gesture that she would later remember with a touch of embarrassment. At this moment her only concern was for the obviously distraught man sitting across from her. "Let me be the judge of that too."

  Moisture filled Ian's eyes. Was that moisture tears? Well of course it wasn't--grown men didn't cry. Tenderness filled Priscilla's heart. Maybe men were not the emotionally austere and sexually aggressive creatures that she had always believed them to be, not all men anyway. "Please, Ian, tell me."

  Ian nodded and began to speak. Softly and slowly at first, "I was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, thirty-three years ago." As he continued his voice gained speed and volume. "I am the second son of Thaddeus Alwin, a prominent Philadelphia lawyer and Clarissa Alcott Alwin, a woman from an old and wealthy Pennsylvania family."

  Priscilla had not expected to hear his life's story. She murmured a detached, "I see."

  Ian smiled. It was the saddest smile Priscilla had ever seen. "No, you don't but I hope you will." He ran his long slim fingers through his hair. "I too grew up in the shadow of war. I also grew up in the shadow of my older brother, Malcolm. He was the one with the charm and personality. I was more reticent and shy. There was always a certain amount of sibling rivalry between us but it intensified when I went away to the university the year after Malcolm had applied for admittance to that same school and been rejected."

  Priscilla watched as Ian's facial features hardened. She wanted to offer sympathy but she didn't dare speak for fear of interrupting Ian's personal and obviously painful narrative. If he stopped he might never start again and by now Priscilla's interest was piqued.

  Ian sighed and continued. "Malcolm accepted the position of legal clerk in Father's law firm." He wiped his fingers on the linen napkin. "I graduated from the university four years later and came home to accept a junior partnership in Father's firm. After that it seemed that I could do nothing to please Malcolm. We quarreled often. God only knows where it all would have ended if misfortune had not struck."

  This time Priscilla forgot her resolve to remain silent and asked, "What happened?"

  "Something so dreadful that it still haunts me," Ian's voice caught in his throat. He swallowed and continued, "I had been at the firm only a few months when a large amount of money disappeared from Father's office safe. Since he and I were the only two people who knew the combination, he naturally assumed that I had taken the money."

  "But you didn't, I know you didn't," Priscilla declared vehemently.

  "You are very kind." Ian smiled and wiped his napkin across his eyes. "No, I didn't, but Father thought that I did. The more I declared my innocence, the more he believed me to be guilty. He brought charges of grand theft against me. I couldn't face the thought of years in prison so I took every penny I had in the world and posted my bail. And then I jumped that bail and came to Texas."

  "You could have stayed and tried to prove your innocence." Priscilla questioned, "Why didn't you?"

  Ian's eyes were blue mirrors of pain. "I could have and maybe I would have won my case but Father would have lost again if I had. You see, I am sure Malcolm stole the combination and took the money knowing that I would be blamed." He leaned across the table and looked directly into Priscilla's eyes. "I am a wanted man. Is that the kind of person that you would choose for a friend?"

  Priscilla declared stoutly, "You are no more a criminal than Father is for refusing to beg for a pardon because he had served in the Confederate Army. I am pleased
and proud to have you for a friend."

  "Priscilla--Prissy, I thank you."

  Priscilla lifted the apple pie from the box. "You're welcome, would you like a slice of apple pie, my friend?"

  Ian picked up his chicken leg. "First I must do justice to the other delicious food that my new friend has prepared." He took a bite of the chicken leg and chewed contentedly before swallowing and then commenting, "This food is superb."

  Priscilla reveled in his words of praise. She felt comfortable enough in his presence to ask a personal question. "Is it true that you are now living in Milo Stanton's home?"

  Ian laid his chicken leg on his napkin and grimaced. "Milo, oh God I forgot all about Milo." He studied Priscilla's face. His expression was one of solemn contemplation. "Prissy my friend, after dinner I have some things to tell you and I hope that you will accept what I have to say in the spirit that it's offered."

  Chapter Five

  The Council Meeting or Which Way Did They Go?

  Ian sat to the Mayor's right. The two men were stationed, along with various other dignitaries and city officials, behind a prominently positioned table that had been placed on a raised dais at one end of the Cactus Gulch City Council Chamber. Rawhide Murray sat on Ian's left. Wearing a short frocked coat with covered buttons, a white shirt and a string tie, he looked every inch the gracious and well-bred southern gentleman that he perceived himself to be.

  The stir of animosity in the room and the tension that permeated the smoke-filled air left Ian feeling irresolute and vaguely disturbed. He turned his gaze from Rawhide and stared out at the noisy parade of disgruntled citizens who were rapidly filling the hall to capacity. It seemed that every male resident of Cactus Gulch had decided to attend this council meeting.

  They had separated into factions. The bank president, Doctor Smith, their friends and associates occupied the front row near the speaker's podium. The owner of the blacksmith shop and the two Stacey brothers who ran the livery stable, along with their cohorts and cronies, sat in the second row. Pete Tobias, the saloon keeper, Max Abernathy, the proprietor of the locksmith, gun and boot repair shop and Robert E. Lee Porter, the town's handy man and excuse for a carpenter, sat in the third row.

  In the fourth and fifth rows, immediately behind the lower echelon of the town's business establishment, a sad assortment of townspeople, ranchers, cowboys and other curiosity seekers and hangers-on had congregated.

  Several of the town's female citizens were also in attendance. They had been relegated to the back row of the hall. The women entrepreneurs of Cactus Gulch--Mother Murphy, who ran the town's only restaurant, Clara Clayborne the owner of Clayborne's Boarding House, Millicent Tucker, the proprietor of Millicent's Millinery, Sewing and Alteration Shoppe and Toadie Daniels who operated the town's only laundry made up one group. Flossie Miller and several of her 'girls' made up the other.

  Milo elbowed Ian as he surveyed the volatile crowd. "All hell's gonna bust loose the minute them proposals start getting proposed. At times like this that I wished I still toted a gun." He turned to stare briefly at the profiles of the three city council members who sat to his left before turning once more to face Ian. "Council members, hell they ain't nothin' but cowards and ass kissers, the lot of 'em." He leaned very near Ian and was set to whisper into his assistant's ear when the council room door burst open and a group of tight lipped, hell-for-leather, gun toting men came into the room, dispersed and took empty seats among the various other factions.

  Milo whispered to Ian, "Damn, that's Jules Martin and his harem as if we didn't have enough trouble already."

  Ian thought as he watched the men take seats in different parts of the room that someone should explain to Milo that Jules didn't have a harem. The men who had come with him to this meeting were no different from the other men present, except for their sexual preference and the fact that they were, for the most part, more faithful to their mates than were many of the town's heterosexual males.

  Milo cupped his hand to his mouth and whispered in Ian's ear, "I smell trouble. It's a good thing that I made that lazy assed sheriff and his no-good deputy get up in time to make this meeting."

  Ian studied the pot-gutted sheriff and his pimple-faced, just-past-adolescence deputy who were stationed on either side of the entrance to the council chamber. Neither of them looked capable of defending themselves.

  Milo seemed to read his thoughts. "Them two couldn't fight the gnats off their own asses. Remind me to fire both of them when this here meeting is over."

  Ian reached for a pad to make a note to himself. He wasn't sure that Milo had that authority to fire a duly elected sheriff without the approval of a majority of the city council. He was so lost in his own thoughts and speculations that he almost jumped from his chair when Milo banged his gavel on the table to call the meeting to order.

  The last bang had scarcely died away when an ear-splitting explosion rocked the room, shook its occupants and jarred the windows.

  Milo jumped to his feet. "What the hell was that?"

  Before the startled citizenry could react and before Milo had the opportunity to say more, the door flew open and a freckled-faced boy of maybe ten years dashed through it. He was swinging his arms and shouting at the top of his voice. "Come quick, Sheriff Thomas, come quick, Toby Matthews and his Kickass Gang just blew a hole in the side of the bank."

  Pandemonium broke loose. Loud imprecations and angry shouts ripped through the tense air. Citizens pushed and shoved and stepped over each other in the rush to get outside.

  Sheriff Thomas took careful aim at the ceiling and fired his six-gun. The blast echoed through the council chamber. A pall of silence fell over the occupants as, to a person, they stopped and stood perfectly still.

  Sheriff Thomas was clearly feeling his power. "Everybody take it easy 'cause nobody goes out there just yet."

  Milo's face turned a turkey-gobbler-snout red. He waved his arms about as he shouted, "You damn fool, what the hell do you think you're doing?"

  Sheriff Thomas leaned against the closed door and blew on the barrel end of his six-gun. "I'm protectin' the good citizens of Cactus Gulch."

  Milo shouted over the rumble of unhappy voices. "The citizenry don't need protectin', you stupid asshole, but their money does. Open that door and get out there and stop them robbers before they make off with every dime that's in the bank."

  Sheriff Thomas pushed back his hat with the barrel of his gun. "I ain't going out there and tangle with Toby Matthews and his whole Kickass Gang. That would be suicide."

  Milo jumped over the table and pushed his way through the press of people, shouting as he went, "When I get through with you, you snivelin' son-of-a-bitch, you're gonna wish that old Toby had caught you cause I'm gonna kick your ass so hard that you're gonna have to unbutton your shirt to take a piss." As he spoke he bore down on the frankly frightened sheriff.

  Ian realized that if someone didn't do something and fast this volatile situation would escalate to violence and bloodshed. Without thinking of what the consequences could be he jumped atop the table and shouted, "Milo, No!"

  Much to his surprise Milo stopped and turned. As he stood staring at Ian, his temper seemed to cool to just below the boiling point. "Give me one reason why not."

  Ian raised his arms. "Please, ladies and gentlemen, sit down."

  Someone from the crowd shouted, "But them bastards is stealin' our money."

  Ian pitched his voice to a low, persuasive tone. "They have already made off with the town's money. If we go running after them before we are organized and prepared, some of us are bound to be hurt, maybe killed." He extended one hand in Milo's direction. "Our problem now is how to retrieve our money. Our mayor is well versed in catching outlaws and capturing thieves. Why don't we all sit down and let him decide how best to handle this situation?"

  The din from the crowd dropped to a murmur. Over the hum Jules Martin called out, "What about these three proposals the city council's supposed to vote on today?"


  Ian kept his voice low and persuasive. "That will have to be postponed until a later date." What was wrong with him? He was usurping authority on every hand.

  Milo nodded his agreement. "That's right. First things first I always say."

  One by one the disgruntled citizens found their places and sat down.

  Milo made his way across the room and toward his seat.

  Ian slipped into his chair as the reckless magnitude of what he had done hit him like a blow to the head. Men had been ridden out of town on a rail or lynched, or even killed for daring to speak as he had spoken.

  Milo came around the table and stood beside Ian. "You saved my neck again, friend." He banged his gavel on the table and shouted, "This here meeting will come to order."

  The gathering settled into a quasi-orderly assembly with Milo devising a plan that met with the approval of the majority. He would form a posse of hand-chosen men, those hardy males who were tall in the saddle and quick on the draw. Milo, of course, would head the posse and they would go after Toby Matthews and the Kickass Gang. Not only did Milo promise to be back by Thanksgiving Day in time for dinner, he pledged to return with every cent of the stolen money.

  The sheriff reminded him, "Thanksgiving Day is a little more than a month away. That don't give you much time." Then he protested mildly. "Ain't getting that money back my job, Mister Mayor?"

  Milo asked belligerently, "Do you think you can do it better than me?"

  Sheriff Thomas hung his head. "I reckon not."

  Milo pointed a stiff forefinger in the sheriff's direction. "Somebody has to protect the town while most of the able-bodied men are gone. Are you up to that job?"

  Sheriff Thomas couldn't get the words out fast enough. "Yes sir, you bet I can. Me and my deputy will be on guard every minute the posse is away."

  Milo nodded his agreement and then set about the task of selecting his posse. He had scarcely named the last man when Rawhide stood and drew himself up to his full five-feet-two inches. "Sir, you have offended me."