Born of Treasure (Treasure Chronicles Book 2) Page 2

  Amethyst flashed him a smile of straight white teeth. “We’re bosom friends. She tells me all her secrets. I’m her only confidante.”

  Clark gritted his teeth as he bumped through the crowd. “Grandfather’s train came in. He’s ready to depart.”

  She blinked her painted lashes at him and sighed. At least it was in relief and not annoyance. Leave it to Amethyst to gain a following when she was supposed to act as look-out. “It seems I must be going. You’re a splendid audience.” She pushed her chair back, her gaze focused on Clark.

  His stomach did that happy clench he’d come to enjoy.

  “Who might this be?” asked the man who’d kissed her hand. He stood, folding his arms.

  Clark rolled his eyes and rested his hand on his pistol. “I’m her husband, chap.” They would have to go over, again, how it wasn’t a good idea to bring attention to themselves when they were stealing. Amethyst would’ve never survived alone as he’d done growing up.

  The man rocked back on his heels, stroking the two pistols at his belt. Awesome, they could have a shoot-out in the train station café.

  “So, darling,” Amethyst cooed as she wove through her group to clasp his hand. “They had a wonderful selection of lotion in the gift shop. I bought a bottle of Shea butter with chamomile.” She slid one arm around his neck, rising to her tiptoes. His groin clenched—brass glass, the operation to get the pocket watch had to keep fumbling.

  “You’ll have to show me later.” His hand on the small of her back, he turned toward the entrance. Of course, Amethyst, being Amethyst, turned to face him.

  She bit his lower lip before pushing against his front. Her tongue darted into his mouth and she moaned, lifting her right leg to drape it around the back of his knee. She tipped her head back, eyelids lowered, with that timid smile she only seemed to give him, as if she still craved his approval. Yes, she was his.

  “I can rub it all over you.” A little fun couldn’t hurt so long as they didn’t earn bullets in their brains. He trailed his finger along her jawline. “I know just where you like it… the most. Then I get to enjoy those little giggles.”

  She nuzzled her nose against his neck, whispering, “You should’ve answered me. I didn’t know what had happened to you.”

  The women sighed from behind them, as if envious of their public love fest. Clark heard the men shifting their stance. Buck down, boys. She’s made her choice.

  “Thief!” The clock smith roared into the café, waving his handgun overhead, his cheeks flushed and eyes wide.

  “Brass glass.” Clark pushed Amethyst behind him and lifted his arms to shield her. A waitress screamed and another dropped her tray. Porcelain dishes smashed against the marble floor.

  “You stole from me.” The clock smith’s hand wavered as he aimed the gun at Clark’s chest. “You give it back. We’ll duel like men.” He wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “You ain’t a man. You’re a crook.”

  The pocket watch had better not show around his neck. “You have me mistaken for someone else, sir. My wife and I were enjoying a meal here while we waited for my grandfather to arrive.”

  “I didn’t see this fellow eating,” the man who’d kissed Amethyst said from the crowd. Why couldn’t he have stayed quiet like the others? Clark should’ve kneed him in the balls the second he touched her.

  “You just came in, how would you know?” Amethyst swung around Clark, her yellow skirt swishing around her legs. She pushed the clock smith’s hand aside using her parasol. “This is a reputable establishment. You’re besmirching my husband’s good name when all he wanted to do was help his grandfather return home.”

  They would have to go over the best way for Amethyst to knock a gun aside. It should aim at the floor, not toward a quaking waitress with tears on her cheeks.

  “Where is this grandpa?” The clock smith curled his lips.

  “He’s waiting at our buggy,” Clark said. Lies needed to be kept simple and believable. Most of the people would have buggies, and a gentleman would assist his grandfather to the rig before fetching his wife from her entertainment.

  “I won’t bring a feeble, elderly man into this absurd ruckus,” Amethyst exclaimed. “Wait until my best friend, Amethyst Treasure, hears about this. She’ll love contributing this amusing story about how backward the west is. She has the ears of all the major Eastern newspapers, you know.”

  The clock smith licked his thin lips. “I know it was you, fella. You stole something from me.”

  He had no proof. He couldn’t have noticed one missing timepiece within the few minutes he’d attacked.

  “You think I took something from you, sir. What, pray tell, would that be?” It was almost fun to use civilized words. If Clark were back in the gang, he would’ve shot the man dead and moved on. Maybe it would be easier to take him outside for a duel. The clock smith’s hand shook—he couldn’t be a better shot than Clark.

  “I can call the sheriff,” a waitress offered. Any moment, the owner of the establishment or the train station master would appear to make the mess worse. Being detained for questioning wouldn’t help a thing, especially with the pocket watch on his person.

  “You… you,” the clock smith sputtered. “Hey, you were in my office. You wanted my watches.”

  Clark lowered his eyelids to appear bored. “I have a watch. I don’t need one of yours.” He pulled the tiny brass pocket watch from his vest pocket and held it up. “You can see my name on the back. This is clearly mine, a gift from my wife.” He kissed the top of her head. Amethyst had insisted on the inscription when she surprised him with it.

  “Every gentleman has an engraved pocket watch,” she’d said as she fastened it to him. “Be happy I didn’t order something gaudy.”

  “Not everyone is obsessed with clocks,” Clark added. “You may want to return to your shop. If there was a criminal in there, you need a detailed report of what was stolen to give to the sheriff.”

  “I’m sure he’ll help you track the thief and return your clock.” Amethyst tapped the floor with the tip of her parasol. “Come along, darling. Grandfather will grow impatient and make the ride terribly unpleasant.”

  “Good day, folks.” Clark held out his arm and she rested her hand in the crook of his elbow.

  “You really need a hat, darling,” she said as they glided through the café’s entrance. “What will grandfather say when he sees you acting like a hooligan?”

  Clark chuckled when they reached the street. In case anyone from the café watched, he steered her to the left where the buggies for rent waited. “Grandfather will love to hear about how only you can make yourself sound incredible by being your own best friend.”

  She spun in front of him to kiss his chest. “This is so much fun. Where is your father sending us next?”

  he stationmaster wiped his nose on his monogrammed handkerchief, images of gears woven in the lace along the edge, a product of his wife’s handiwork. The ballroom had never seemed so dusty until the clocks took over. When the stationmaster had been a child, the room had still been used for dances and guest speakers, despite the white paint peeling on the walls and the dying curtains.

  “I swear it.” The clock smith’s face streaked red from his chin to his ears. “I went through everything, checked stuff with my inventory. The boy took off with the swan watch.”

  The stationmaster flared his nostrils as he studied the cluttered ballroom. “You know, Dan, I’m negotiating with a very powerful man on your behalf in regards to that pocket watch.”

  Dan turned redder, somehow. The stationmaster had never before seen anyone that purplish shade. “I know full well you’re getting half the commission.”

  “We’ll both make a goodly amount.” He should get more than half. Dan wouldn’t have known the prize he had if the stationmaster hadn’t mentioned seeing the advertisement for its return. He’d happened to mention it when Dan paid his rent for the ballroom office. Fate had worked in their favor. “You must’ve mentioned it to
someone. How else would anyone know it was here?”

  Dan backpedaled, blinking. “I didn’t blab, not even to my sweetheart. I only told you I had it. Who’d you tell?”

  The flier had been sent with the wanted posters that the station master hung around the terminal each month. Each year, the flier passed around, and had been for at least twenty years.

  “I grabbed it up cheap,” Dan had said. “The pawn shop guy said it won’t open. I’ve been working on it. I love a challenge with my watches.”

  The stationmaster doubted Dan made much profit on his clock refurbishing, but the man loved his work and took in projects people paid him for to get by. “I only wrote to Senator Horan in answer to his flier.”

  “Who knows what secretary pawed through the letters.”

  Dirt ground beneath his shoes as the stationmaster crossed to the stage. He’d forgotten about the abandoned props.

  “I never let anyone in here,” Dan continued. “I meet with my clients out by the benches. Nobody but me comes in. I like to keep organized for myself, you see.”

  The grime made it obvious the station cleaners never got to delve into the space. “What about the trap door?” The stationmaster pointed up. “You said the villain escaped that way. It wasn’t locked?”

  “No lock on a trap door.”

  “We can fix that.” The stationmaster rubbed the bridge of his nose. “So the supposed thief went with that girl everyone was talking about. Amethyst Grisham.”

  “I know it was him. Had to be him.”

  “It looked like him?” Who could say clockwork hadn’t dimmed Dan’s eyesight?

  Dan coughed. “More or less.”

  “I’ll mention it in my letter.” The stationmaster sighed. Senator Horan had been willing to pay two thousand dollars for the broken watch. “I should’ve sent it instead of negotiating for more. I’d been certain it had to have sentimental value. Why else would he want it? The diamond couldn’t be worth much, if it was real.”

  “It had to be them. It was a Grisham watch.”

  “What?” The stationmaster whirled around. “I thought we were talking about Senator Horan’s pocket watch.” They could still get the money. He pulled off his top hat and shook it at Dan. “Don’t fool with me like that.”

  Dan backed into a table. The clock parts scattered across it rattled. “N-no, it is that watch, the one Senator Horan wants. I looked up the swan symbol on the front. It’s the Grisham family crest.”

  “Bloody gears.” The stationmaster jerked his hat back on. Dan had claimed to have owned the pocket watch for ten years, and that flier of Senator Horan’s had gone around long before that. “Did the Grisham family hunt it down then? Why didn’t they just ask you for it back?”

  Dan gulped. “The girl called the thief Clark, said he was her husband. Clark Grisham, then.”

  Jeremiah Treasure wondered when he’d become an alcoholic. Up until his twentieth birthday, he’d never touched a drop of the stuff except for some wine at the holidays. That was when his father had handed over the running of the ranch so he could concentrate on the other businesses. Let Garth have his mines and railroads. Jeremiah yearned for the feel of hot wind stroking his face as he galloped his roan through a field after a wayward calf.

  In the evenings, he and his father would sit in the office, sharing some rum, and discuss how the ranch got on. Jeremiah wondered if he should resent his father’s prying, but Garth had built the family name up since his boyhood when he’d trained to be a lawyer. After university, he’d joined the army, raised to the title of major captain, and fell in love with the land out west. He could teach a lot.

  Jeremiah glared into his shot glass of vodka. He should’ve never started those nightly glasses of rum. They led to drinking whenever his nerves became agitated.

  “Jere?” Alyssa Ottman’s gentle voice jerked him from his thoughts. “You’ve already had two of those. I think three should be your limit.”

  He glanced at his girlfriend in the wicker porch chair beside him. If she’d told Clark that, his half-brother would’ve laughed and made a joke. Thanks for keeping an eye on me, Mother.

  Jeremiah winced. Where had the Clark reference come from? That bastard, taking the word literally, had crawled into him. In less than a season, had Clark really made that much of an impact on the family?

  “He’s here!” Zachariah leapt off his chair to dart toward the road to meet the steamcoach Garth had sent to the train station.

  Jeremiah lifted the shot glass to his lips, but paused. Alyssa hated alcohol. Scowling, he set it back down on the porch table. He could have been entertaining her in the garden or checking on the ranch hands, rather than awaiting Captain Greenwood. Why would the head of the army for Hedlund want to see his little brother, anyway? Zachariah didn’t scream specialness.

  The government took anyone into the army, and Zachariah had never seen action because he was Garth’s son. The wealthy held titles in the army out of prestige, not because they deserved them. That had to be why Clark always fidgeted whenever someone mentioned the soldiers.

  The Bromi driver hopped down from his seat to open the steamcoach door. A rotund man in his blue army uniform stepped down, straightening the visor on his cap. Gold tassels hung off his broad shoulders and metals glistened on his jacket.

  Jeremiah rose from his seat as the others on the porch followed suit. Zachariah shook the captain’s hand, his face glowing in the afternoon sunlight. Captain Greenwood continued up the path to the ranch house without looking at Zachariah, who tagged at his heels: a puppy yipping for attention from its master. Zachariah weakened the Treasure name. Maybe Clark should join the army, to prove what kind of a man a Treasure could be.

  Jeremiah scowled. Clark was on his mind again.

  Garth shook the captain’s hand. “Welcome, sir. We’re pleased to have you at the Treasure Ranch.”

  “Captain Treasure.”

  Garth laughed. “People don’t call me that anymore. I haven’t been an active member since Jeremiah was born. It’s ‘Master Treasure’ around here, but please, call me Garth.”

  “Mister Treasure, then. We believe in formality in the army.”

  “As long as you make the title of Captain, you keep it your entire life,” Zachariah recited. “It’s an honor. Even if you raise up in the ranks, ‘Captain’ you remain in public.”

  His little brother could’ve been in a schoolroom practicing his times tables for a tutor. Thinking back, that was how he’d acted for the professor their father had hired: studious, solemn, and perfect. Jeremiah’s Professor Esselte had cared more about shooting apples off trees than quoting classics.

  Every Friday, the professors had lined their pupils in Garth’s office for them to recite a weekly essay for him and Georgette. Professor Esselte had helped Jeremiah write about the land and ranches, about new irrigation methods and farming inventions. He’d loved the discussions with his father that followed.

  Zachariah had talked about ancient civilizations and bowed while their parents clapped. No one applauded him now. He shrank against the railing while his widened eyes tried to consume Captain Greenwood.

  Jeremiah scratched his chin. If he’d been promoted to Colonel, he would’ve preferred that title to Captain. The army had to do things differently.

  Garth rested his hand on Georgette’s back. “I would like to introduce you to my wife, Georgette.”

  Captain Greenwood kissed her gloved knuckles. “A pleasure, my lady.”

  “Welcome.” Georgette smiled.

  “My son, Jeremiah.”

  Jeremiah shook the captain’s hand, surprised at the softness of his beefy palm. He’d expected active army men to have calluses, thickened skin. They shot weapons, rode vehicles and horses. Did the man sit somewhere all day? He should be keeping the peace when Bromi attacked the outlying farms or when ranchers feuded.

  “Got a firm shake there. You looking to get into the army?” Captain Greenwood grinned, but it didn’t touch his eyes.
His gaze darted around the porch as if looking for something. Didn’t Georgette’s potted spider plants and white wicker furniture appeal to him?

  Jeremiah tensed. “No, sir. The land’s in my heart.”

  “This is Alyssa Ottman,” Garth continued. “She’s the daughter of a family friend.”

  “Good afternoon, sir.” She curtsied in her blue gingham dress. If Amethyst were doing it, her bosom would spill from a low-cut bodice. Alyssa kept things proper, with a high lace collar and a corset the same color as the skirt. Jeremiah held his hands behind his back to keep from holding her arm. She wasn’t his, yet.

  “Pretty thing,” Captain Greenwood said. “You look like a flower, Miss Ottman.”

  Not a flower. That would be Amethyst, all bright and weird, one second innocent and the next poisonous. Alyssa was rain, soothing and soft.

  “You’ve got another son?” Captain Greenwood’s gaze took to the yard, hesitating on the nearest barn where a ranch hand carried two buckets through the open double doors.

  Garth nodded. “My son, Clark, is traveling with my daughter for the summer. She stays in New Addison City for most of the year and wanted to see Hedlund.”

  Captain Greenwood pursed his lips before the grin returned. “Our Hedlund is a good place. She won’t be disappointed none. Now, about this boy. I don’t remember hearing about him before.”

  “I doubt you’ve heard much about our family,” Georgette said. “Our names might be well known, but we tend to stay quiet, sir. We keep to our own affairs.”

  Jeremiah hid his smirk with a cough. Good for his mother. Captain Greenwood didn’t need to know their secrets.

  “You’ll enjoy being a guest here,” Alyssa said as smoothly as Georgette spoke. “The Treasures are fabulous hosts. I’ve never felt more at home. You’ll have to try Mistress Treasure’s lemonade. I swear it’s the best in Hedlund.”

  “Zachariah, my boy.” Captain Greenwood clapped him on the shoulder and laughed, brightening Zachariah’s beam. “You never said anything about your big family. For all I knew, it could be just you and your old man.”