Read Online Night Flower (Gone-to-Texas Trilogy) by Shirl Henke - Free Book Online Page B

change before Grandfather sees me.” Both her hands and her face were smeared with the same muck as her cloak. Although the cloak had protected her dress, her shoes were muddy and left tracks across the light rose-colored carpet and gleaming hardwood floor of the entry hall.
           Just as she was in the process of removing one offending shoe, the study door opened and Adam, Rafe, and Deborah emerged.
           “Ramsey, I thought I heard the front door,” Adam said and stopped, frozen. Melanie, too, was frozen, stocking-clad foot planted daintily on the rug, thick-soled muddy shoe clutched tightly in one small hand. Speechlessly, she glanced from her grandfather to her parents.
           Deborah gasped in distress at her filth-encrusted stepchild; then her face brightened in a smile of welcome. The girl looked so guilty that Deborah couldn't be angry, especially when she saw Rafe's scowl as he looked at his daughter's ratty hair and disheveled appearance.
           “Melanie, I'm so glad to see you,” Deborah said, closing the distance to hug the girl. She bent her silver-blond head to Melanie's dark one as they embraced.
           Rafe crossed the room, and took the ugly shoe from Melanie's grubby fingers. “This is the kind of a stunt I'd expect from your brothers, not from a young lady of twenty-one.” With grudging good humor he tossed the shoe aside, hugged her, and planted a kiss on her forehead. “Ugh, what is this stuff all over you?” He sniffed. “Egg—rotten eggs!” he said incredulously, holding her at arm's length now, freeing her from Deborah's protective embrace to inspect her. “You look like an escapee from some slum riot.”
           Melanie finally recovered her voice and her wits. “Oh, bother my clothes or a few silly eggs! What are you doing here? You never wrote you were coming for a visit. Did you bring Adam and Caleb and Lenore along?” Melanie's gold eyes were sparkling now, her initial shock fleeing as joy at seeing her parents replaced it.
           Looking over her shoulder, Rafe saw the broadsides, picked one up, and scanned it. “This is not just a visit, young lady. We've come to take you home.”
           “I'm afraid your grandfather's letters have been a bit more explicit about your exploits than yours have, Melanie,” Deborah remonstrated gently.
           “Home? You mean back to Texas? To the ranch?” Her crestfallen expression was quickly masked as she replied with steel in her voice, “I have important work here, Papa, Mama. I just can't leave now.”
           “Is that important work posting these leaflets? And does it include being pelted with garbage?” Rafe asked in a voice heavy with sarcasm.
           “And being involved in a riot or two, not to mention having her life threatened by one Cyrus Juline, a slave catcher from Georgia,” Adam said with obvious distaste for the bounty hunter.
           “Riot?” Deborah looked back at Melanie with concern.
           “It was only a small riot on the Commons last month. I was out of range of the guns—”
           “Guns?” Rafe thundered.
           Melanie made a gesture of dismissal, as if shooting and mob violence were as commonplace for a Boston lady as attending the symphony. “Only a few men had guns, but the constabulary disarmed them before anyone was killed.”
           “One man was shot in the shoulder and three people were badly injured by rocks thrown during the melee,” Adam added grimly.
           “But the rock only grazed my temple. I hardly had a scratch! Considering all the Comanche raiders and renegades in Texas, I scarcely think you can consider it safer there,” she countered.
           “But, Melanie, look at you,” Deborah chided. Ignoring the mud and garbage, she ran her hands over her daughter's hideous gray dress and looked down at the heavy high-laced shoe on Melanie's left foot. “You're