Susan Johnson by Silver Flame (Braddock Black) Page B

for confirmation.
    “Ten o’clock is fine.”

D uncan Stewart, buttering his toast with crisp precision, was speaking to his daughter in a sharp tone. “If you insist on keeping company with”—he paused, spread the butter carefully into each corner, looked up at his beautiful daughter with deliberation, his cool, disdainful eyes the prototype of her and derisively went on—“ineligible men, I suggest you find someone with enough money to support you, should it come to that.”
    “But, Daddy, you’ve plenty of money for us both,” Valerie Stewart replied uncontritely, dropping a teaspoonful of sugar into her teacup and negligently lifting her lacy black lashes to gaze unconcernedly back at her father.
    “Just like your mother!” he said, exasperated, and took a neat bite of his toast. “You don’t understand a thing about money.”
    “Actually … I’m just like you, Daddy. Poor Mama thought money was sent in the mail on some regular schedule. I know better. I know how you make your money. The question is, since you’re in this sharp-set mood this morning, did one ofyour business transactions with the Indian agents go awry?” And the lovely young woman with dark ringlets artfully arranged atop her perfectly shaped head scrutinized her father with baby-blue eyes, predator’s eyes, as cool as ice. When he gave that level of attention to buttering his toast, he was irritated. She smiled then and soothingly coaxed, “Tell me. Is there someone who could be pleasantly—er—talked into something?”
    “No, dammit,” her father grumbled. “I wish it were that easy. They’re talking about another investigation in Washington. Hell and damnation, a few Indians die 4 and you’d think it was everyone’s favorite grandmother.”
    “Daddy, don’t take it so hard. You know very well, the hue and cry will die down in no time. A few headlines in the papers always gets the do-gooders motivated, but never for long. By the time the investigation gets sifted down all the bureaucratic levels, no one will care anymore.” Even before her mother had died, Valerie had already stepped into the role of confidante to her father. Priscilla Wyndham Stewart had never understood her dashing, volatile husband. But he was one of the youngest colonels ever to be commissioned in the Civil War, and he’d swept her off her feet when he’d come back to Ohio on leave. It was the uniform, she’d always fondly recalled. Her father, Judge Wyndham, had never quite approved, but he’d continued to send money to his only daughter until her death three years ago. Her health had always been frail, the doctor had said. Personally, Valerie thought the laudanum her mother took for her genteel “nerves” had finally done her in after twenty years.
    Duncan Stewart wasn’t wasteful with his wife’s money, and in truth, he had amassed a modest fortune in his business transactions. The problem was, he always wanted more. He sat in occasionally on the poker games at the Montana Club. But he wasn’t comfortable writing a check for six figures every night of the week, and if you couldn’t, you didn’t get invited into the inner circle.
    Helena, Montana, had more millionaires per capita than any other city in the world. Over fifty millionaires lived in the small mountain capital. And some of the millionaires were bringing in a million a month from a single one of theirmines. Hundreds of English remittance men, younger sons in some form of disgrace, had also settled in Helena until such a time as the scandal died down and their families called them home. Society was very blue and very extravagant. It was also fluid.
    One society hostess remarked, she was always cautiously polite to her servants, for one never knew if they might be a member of society a week hence. There were still overnight fortunes to be made in mining gold, silver, copper, and coal. In timber. In railway construction. In land development. Across the world, it was the time of