Autumn Lover by Elizabeth Lowell Page A

had become. Then had come the ague that Penny couldn’t shake off.
    And on top of it all were the Culpeppers, gathering like vultures around the dying Ladder S.
    Don’t think about it , Elyssa told herself. I can’t fix the Culpeppers now. But I can comfort Penny, who haslost as much of her childhood as I have in the past two years .
    “Hush now,” Elyssa said gently. “It will be all right. Just because Bill hasn’t been by here for a while doesn’t mean he has been dead drunk in his cabin all that time.”
    Penny nodded but said nothing.
    Carefully Elyssa blotted Penny’s eyes with the corner of her apron.
    “Oh, dear,” Elyssa said. “I’m leaving little flour tracks all over your face.”
    For a moment Penny closed her eyes. Then she took a shaky breath and hugged Elyssa.
    “Maybe the flour will blot out the freckles,” Penny said.
    “Then I’ll wipe off every speck of white. I love your freckles.”
    “Only because you don’t have them. Even though you go outside in the sun without your hat.”
    “Not very often,” Elyssa said. “Too much sun makes me look like one of Lord Harry’s boiled lobsters.”
    “Such beautiful skin you have.”
    Penny looked at the younger woman enviously.
    “All cream and pink,” Penny continued. “Like your mother’s. Hair like spun flax and eyes like blue-green gems. Just like hers.”
    “So you say. Personally, I think you’re quite wrong. Mother was an unusually beautiful woman. I’m not.”
    “That’s not what all the men think.”
    “Tell it to the English lords. They thought I was about as comely as a wart.”
    Penny shook her head in disagreement.
    “I know the kind of woman who attracts men,” Penny said emphatically. Then she added sadly, “And I know the kind who doesn’t.”
    The tone of Penny’s voice said that she considered herself one of the unattractive women.
    Frowning, Elyssa turned to kneading a second batch of dough. While she worked, she thought of what it must have been like for Penny to grow up in the shade cast by Gloria Sutton’s sun.
    “A man who looks only at the outside of a woman isn’t worth having,” Elyssa said after a time.
    “That’s the only kind of men there are.”
    “For heaven’s sake, Penny. You’ve turned down half the hands who ever worked on the Ladder S!”
    “They only looked at me after they gave up mooning over your mother. If they gave up.”
    Tight-lipped, Penny ground harder on the coffee beans. The combination of sadness and acceptance in her expression told Elyssa more than words.
    “Who was he?” Elyssa asked.
    “What?”
    “Who was the man who couldn’t see past Mother to you?”
    Penny went very still for an instant. Then she poured the last measure of ground coffee into the pot on top of the stove and added more wood to the firebox. Soon the water went from simmering to a hearty boil.
    “What was it about this new ramrod—what is his name again?” Penny asked.
    The crisp, no-nonsense voice was the old Penny.
    Elyssa let out a breath she hadn’t been aware of holding. If Penny came apart under the strain of outlaws and an old friend who drank too much…
    It didn’t bear thinking of.
    We’ve lost too much to lose each other, too , Elyssa thought. Father. Mother. Mac. Uncle Bill, in all the ways that matter .
    I can’t lose Penny .
    “Hunter,” Elyssa said quickly, accepting the change of subject. “No mister. No last name. Or maybe no first name. He didn’t make it clear.”
    “Is that why he struck you as rude? You know it’s the western way to be informal.”
    Elyssa’s cheeks pinked with more than the heat of the stove. She could hardly explain about the snagged skirt and Hunter’s forearm under her breasts and his eyes watching her nipples stand so hard against the soft cloth.
    Just thinking about it was unsettling. Talking about it would embarrass both her and Penny.
    “Sassy?” Penny asked, using the old childhood nickname.
    “Hunter accused me of flirting with