She pushed that topic aside in order to appease her own curiosity. “So where did you hide your money up here? I searched for it for days before Morgan loaned us the money to pay off the bank.”
He grinned and stood up, leading her down the porch steps and around to the back of the house, then about ten feet beyond the little water hole. She watched as he slowly reached into the slag pile and pulled out a little sack. She laughed. Of course it would be in the one place she had decided wasn’t worth checking. He showed her the tiny mark he’d made on the cliff face a foot above the top edge of the slag to indicate where he’d hidden his money. It wasn’t big enough to notice unless you were looking for it.
After a hearty dinner that evening, she took a quick bath in the stream. There was a tent set up in the yard when she returned. Morgan had already said she and Charles could have the cabin to themselves for the two nights they would be there. Bo seemed delighted with the arrangement. He was already lying in front of the tent, his tail wagging as she passed by. But Morgan wasn’t in it yet, as she found out when she entered the cabin and saw him sitting at the table with her father.
He stood up immediately. “I’ll see you in the morning, then.”
He wasn’t saying that to her. He didn’t even glance at her as he left. She gazed after him wistfully, missing the Morgan who at least talked to her. Her father rose too and crossed over to give her a warm hug good night.
“You can’t imagine how glad I am to have you home again,” Charles said.
She knew he meant back in America, so she didn’t mention that they weren’t home yet—or that she wouldn’t be staying once they were. That was another conversation she wasn’t looking forward to. The few times she’d tried to broach it in the wagon on the way here today, he’d distracted her with another topic, so she had a feeling he’d guessed that she wanted to return to England and was avoiding the subject.
The next morning Violet woke up before her father and took her coffee out to the porch, as had been her habit during her stay at the camp. Morgan had come in while they were asleep to make the coffee. He’d left a basket of pastries on the table, too, and an assortment of fruit.
She stared at the entrance to Morgan’s mine. The steel door was open, indicating he was in it. Once again, she thought about asking him if he wanted to take her fishing today. It would be such a perfect opportunity to mend that fence, as it were. Should she wait until he joined her and her father for lunch?
Bo caught her eye when he came out of the tent and trotted toward the stream. She started to call him to her, but stopped when she saw him reach his target. So Morgan wasn’t mining after all, but sitting in the bed of flowers?
Recalling how they’d tumbled into those flowers the night they’d danced, she left the porch to join him at the edge of the stream. She brought her coffee with her. He’d done the same. Because he’d known she’d come out on the porch as soon as she woke up and he didn’t want to be there with her? She sat down next to him anyway.
“I thought you would be mining as usual,” she said.
He glanced at her briefly. “I always knew when I was ready to go home, I wouldn’t give two hoots about this mine anymore. But I didn’t expect to meet Charley and like him as much as I do. So your pa and I came to a new agreement last night, and the only reason I’m telling you this is because it cancels the one you and I had.”
“I assured you that you would be paid back!”
“Settle down, we’re not rival miners now. We might have more to dispute, but your father and I don’t, and I’d prefer you hear this from me. I’ve swung my pick for the last time. With Sullivan out of the way, I no longer have a reason not to let crews in here to deplete the rest of the silver from both mines or to form a real partnership, including an even fifty-fifty split with your family. One or both of your brothers can oversee the place until we can hire an experienced manager to run the operation. But the location no longer needs to be kept secret.”
And then it seemed to just fall out of his mouth as an afterthought: “Why did you really leave?”
She’d been waiting for him to look at her again, but even for that question he didn’t, so she glanced down at the stream as well before saying, “What I told you wasn’t a lie, but there is more. Yes, I was still distraught because of the violence, but I was also appalled at myself for what happened afterward and beyond embarrassed about it. I simply couldn’t stay any longer, but you weren’t willing to take me back to Butte yet. You wouldn’t even take me to town to pay off the loan. You sent Texas instead. So I took matters into my own hands.”
“That’s it?”
He was looking at her now! She felt like groaning. “If you must know, you were being too familiar.”
“Iwas?”
She blushed at the reminder that she’d started it. “Afterward, you were.”
“You would have preferred that I ignore you after we made love? Really? That wouldn’t have made you spitting angry?”
Bloody hell, she thought, of course it would have. She gave him a pointed stare. “I’m going to speak plainly this once, then we will never mention it again. What we did can’t ever happen again, and I was afraid you’d expect more of the same if I stayed.” There. That wasalmostall of it.
“Probably,” he said grudgingly.
“Then you understand!”
“No.”
She looked away so he wouldn’t notice her gritting her teeth. She was not going to tell him how much she wanted him, that even now it was hard to resist putting her hands all over him. It would be beyond the pale to admit how much he tempted her to sin again.
But it was also a sin to lie, so she cleared her throat and said softly, “I was also afraid I’d want more.”
Morgan turned to her and gave her the most amazing smile, one filled with happiness, pleasure—an invitation? “So why can’t it happen again?”
Violet gritted her teeth again. “Because this isn’t my world. I don’t belong here. I’m going back to London where there’s civilization, polite society, servants, indoor plumbing, fashionably dressed people...” She couldn’t finish because she started to choke up, realizing how much she was going to miss him when she left Montana.
