Free Lone Star Loving by Martha Hix Page B

his spine; his hand chopped the air in a gesture of frustration. He’d thought the angles were covered: keeping her from employment, then holding her crime over her head. He had thought.
    Where was she? How had the chit managed to flee Laredo?
    â€œSit down, Ianito. You make me uneasy.”
    Ignoring the conspirator he’d summoned an hour ago, Ian paced the worn rug of his father’s town house. He stopped when Maria Sara Montana asked, “With your gambling losses high, why didn’t you keep the smuggling money to pay your debts?”
    â€œI took the biggest gamble of all. I gambled that Charity would turn to me in her desperation. Then I would have control of the McLoughlin fortune.”
    The bells of St. Augustine Church pealed through the balcony’s open doors; the calls of a street peddlar floated up to the second floor; the dankness of the muddy Rio Grande filled his nostrils. “Charity could have been my ticket out of here,” he lamented.
    â€œYou cut a pathetic figure,” Maria Sara snickered. “I almost pity you.”
    He would have been outraged at her remarks if he didn’t himself believe that they were true. In every way he had botched his grand plans of becoming as rich as a sheikh of Araby. He must get himself under control. “Charity will be my ticket out of Laredo.”
    â€œYou have seen many schemes fall by the wayside. I would think that experience might have taught you to give up your futile quests.”
    â€œFutile? I think not.” Refusing to ponder past failures, Ian sneered at the petite blonde who was seated in a wing chair near the cold fireplace. “Yes, Charity is estranged from the rich McLoughlins, and, yes, her father has no use for me, but–”
    â€œI imagine Senator McLoughlin would delight in seeing you muck out his stables. And I would rejoice to see you thus employed.”
    â€œMuck out barns? I think not. McLoughlin will change, once the marriage vows are exchanged. I couldn’t be that wrong about family loyalty.”
    And the father would share his wealth with an earnest son-in-law. Ian Blyer intended to act humble, hard-working, God-fearing for as long as it took to get control over land and cash. This didn’t mean he didn’t love Charity in his own way, even though she didn’t accept his feelings. When she had arrived in Laredo, he had been upset by his father and had said some regrettable things about money. But Charity wouldn’t listen to his apologies.
    â€œI shouldn’t have to chase after what was promised under an April moon: Charity’s hand in wedlock.”
    â€œI am pleased she got away.”
    Surely he hadn’t heard right. “I believe you wish me no good.”
    Maria Sara lifted a shaking hand to smooth wisps of dark blond hair from her nape. Running his hand through his own dark blond hair, he heard her pained voice. “Wish you no good? What about what you’ve done? Why do you say frank things in front of me? You should know they hurt–”
    â€œYou know volumes about me–why shouldn’t I be candid?”
    â€œYou know why.”
    Choosing not to contemplate what had been, Ian halted at the balcony’s doorway to concentrate on what might have been.
    Charity should have been Mrs. Blyer by now. After all, he came from a good family–financially strapped, but good. The Blyer name meant something in this part of the country, and his father served in the state senate. Granted, that wasn’t as august as being a U.S. senator from the great state of Texas, as Charity’s father was, but the Blyers didn’t want for respectability. Besides, what about the personal element?
    He, Ian Blyer, was the handsomest man in Texas. The Baylor College annual for 1885 had named him such, and no woman in her right mind wouldn’t agree. To reassure himself, Ian stopped in front of a large mirror that graced one wall of the sitting