The Endless Sky (Cheyenne Series) Read Free

trouble for the likes of him. Shrugging, he headed toward the library...and Agatha. He could sense the eyes of the women following him as he strolled from the ballroom, cat hungry young matrons on the prowl, silly little virgins tantalized with naughty thoughts, hostile and horrified respectable women who were appalled that a savage was allowed to contaminate their sacrosanct society. He despised them all.
           Once there had been a white girl he had honestly liked. Stevie. The image of a freckled elfin face with a wide smile missing several teeth flashed into his mind. She couldn't have been more than eight. Hell, he was only twelve or so. Back when he was still naively trying to fit into white society. Before... Don't think about it!
           He made certain no one was watching as he turned to the left heading down the hall instead of out the front foyer. The Cabot home, like so many of the Beacon Hill mansions, was an immense mausoleum filled with endless dark passageways and dank cavernous rooms. Chase was a little early but the silent library was preferable to the noisy chatter in the ballroom. Most of the time he was comfortable being alone. That was how he chose to live his life.
           Selecting a cigar from old man Cabot's humidor, he lit it and stared out the window at the winter garden where ugly topiary huddled beneath a blanket of soot-stained snow. Could white men leave nothing in nature untouched?
     
    * * * *
           Stephanie stood behind a large potted orange tree, praying that she had escaped the notice of Rayburn Lawrence. Of all her suitors, he was the most troublesome. Bumbling prep school youths who stammered or brought her wilted nosegays she could handle, but Mr. Lawrence was older, a college man. Of course, so were a number of others. But they are not friends of Chase Remington , her subconscious rose to taunt. She tamped the thought down. Chase had not even remembered her. She had felt his eyes on her several times as she and Lawrence danced but he had not approached.
           The luster had decidedly worn off the evening. Her feet were swollen from having clumsy young men trample them on the dance floor and her head was beginning to ache from the smell of overheated bodies and heavy pomade. Father was doubtless closeted away in Mr. Cabot's private sitting room discussing business with other rich Boston merchants. She slipped quickly through the crowd and went in search of him.
           Her slippered feet made scarcely a sound on the Khorasan rugs as she wended her way down the hall. Strange, all the rooms seemed dark. Had she taken a wrong turn? The house was immense and she had not often visited here in the evenings. Just as she started to turn and retrace her steps, she heard whispered voices. Some instinct made her freeze, flattening herself against the wall beneath the black shadow cast by a huge ornately scrolled rococo cabinet. The instant she heard Chase Remington's name she began to tremble.
           “He's in the library now. Expecting to have a tryst at midnight. I've forged a note to the lady explaining that he'll be detained until one.”
           “I expect the lady won't get 'er pleasurin', Gov'nor, seein's 'ow Remington’ll be dead before the clock strikes twelve,” a voice with a thick Cockney accent replied. “Ain't nobody better with a dirk 'n me, Gov.”
           “Just be certain to make it look like a robbery. Leave by the library window. His paramour will discover him with his throat cut when she arrives. I wonder what tale she'll invent for sneaking into the Cabot’s' library at that hour?” Then the tone suddenly shifted from nasty amusement to tight anger as the man with the cultivated Boston accent admonished, “Don't botch the job—that damned savage is as hard to kill as a timber wolf!”
           Where had she heard that voice before? Stephanie shivered with fright as the disembodied conversation