Night Winds by Gwyneth Atlee Page B

feeling, with your future all in ruins.”
    Shae stared, dumbfounded . Was this the same young woman she had last week helped to repot plants? The same friend whose eyes teared over root-bound ferns? She wondered that foam didn’t drip from Cynthia’s chops, she seemed so ravenous for gossip. Shae sagged into the carved chair again, like a sail devoid of wind.
    Cynthia settled into an overstuffed sofa . Her plump behind, beneath its bustle, made quite a dent. Mrs. Browning lowered her stylishly padded rear beside her daughter’s. Both leaned forward, like a pair of foxes over an unattended, fluffy chick.
    Shae felt sick . She’d long ago realized that Mrs. Browning wished her daughter to dump her socially less fortunate companion. What Shae hadn’t wanted to admit was her friend’s true nature, which was growing more apparent by the hour.
    “There’s not very much to tell,” Shae shrugged . “I simply couldn’t bring myself to go last evening. All those people and their gossip . . .”
    Mrs. Browning, the lead gossip, nearly beamed . “It’s really just as well, dear. Certainly, you aren’t up to traveling within that social sphere.”
    Her social sphere, she meant. Even so, Shae didn’t care to argue that the whole idea bored her. Neither of the Brownings would believe her anyway.
    “There’s a rumor about that Ethan asked you not to come last night, that the real split occurred beforehand,” Cynthia reported.
    Shae laughed aloud, despite her misery. So, her “betters,” unable to believe that she would turn her nose up at a Lowell, had constructed a more palatable version of events. Remembering her aunt’s opinions concerning Cynthia, she wondered if the tale began with her so-called friend. Or, more likely, with her mother, since Cynthia had never excelled at anything as creative as inventing her own stories.
    “I really don’t care what anyone thinks was the cause,” Shae said, disappointing both of the women . “Right now I’m more concerned with having someplace to spend the night until my father settles down.” She would never trust these rumormongers with the true reason she’d departed home.
    Cynthia’s eyes cut toward her mother’s and the two exchanged an inscrutable look.
    “We’d simply love to have you, dear,” Mrs. Browning crooned, “but we’re having people over in a little while. Some of the same people you no doubt wish to avoid.”
    “The Lowells?” Shae asked . Neither woman was dressed as for a party, and nothing in the house bespoke it. She realized they were lying, but she decided to see if feigning ignorance would gain her anything. “Don’t worry. I’ll stay out of sight.”
    “I’m afraid, under the circumstances, it wouldn’t be appropriate.”
    “We truly wish we could,” Cynthia chimed in. She glanced once more at her mother. “But maybe it would be a good idea if we weren’t seen together for awhile.”
    Until she captured Ethan, she was saying, Shae presumed . They were banishing her permanently from their presence and her last toehold in polite society. Shae cursed herself for the hurt that washed over her. She’d been so foolish, so naïve, not to expect this. Still, the betrayal stung, and she found herself remembering Phillip Payton on the beach this evening, the pain in his hazel eyes because of Ethan’s mysterious breach of faith.
    Standing abruptly, Shae spun on her heel and limped toward the door . Unable to resist the impulse, she turned and blurted toward her former friend, “Ethan Lowell will never have you! He thinks your behind might sink the El Dorado .”
    Cynthia’s mouth dropped, and her mother’s face pinched itself into a pucker.
    Shae glared at Mrs. Browning. “And he finds it odd that you so loathe me, since Cynthia tells everyone your own father plays piano in a house of ill-fame in some frontier hell-hole.”
    Mother turned on daughter, horror etched in every wrinkle on her face. “What is it you’ve been saying about