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"Anywhere," he said, then turned his back on her as he looked at some papers on his desk. "Take whatever rooms you want. The house is mostly empty."
"All right," she said softly, then started for the door.
"Mrs. de Longe?"
She paused with her hand on the door.
"I'll be away in Denver for the next week. I usually take my son with me, but since you seem convinced that you can handle him, I'll leave him in your care."
"Yes, certainly," she said with as much courage as she could summon. How in the world was she going to control that horrid boy for a whole week? Should she ask where the whips and chains were stored?
"If you should change your mind after the first day or so, I'll leave this draft here. You can cash it at the Legend bank, and you and your son may leave at any time."
"And who will look after your son?"
"He seems to be rather good at taking care of himself," Cole said. "I've never found that he needs anyone."
"Like you, Mr. Jordan?" she said. "Perhaps he is merely echoing your sentiments, that you believe you need no one else on earth."
Turning, Cole gave her that little smirk again. "I see. Now let me guess, Mrs. de Longe. You think you are just the person I need."
Kathryn gave him a very sweet smile. "Mr. Jordan, I hope your horse steps into a hole and you fall and break your neck. Good day, sir." As she firmly shut the door behind him, she heard his laughter.
"Mother, you have gone mad," Jeremy said when he heard what she had done. "You should have taken the money and we could have left this horrible place. Zachary is incorrigible. And the father is as bad. I've heard that—"
"Jeremy, you are not to repeat what you've heard about either of them. Zachary Jordan has no mother, so we must be forgiving and—"
"I have no father," Jeremy said and there was the unmistakable tone of jealousy in his voice. "But that fact has yet to excuse me from any misbehavior."
"Jeremy, my darling, you have been blessed with a mother who is sane and sensible and loves you very much. That poor child has had no one except a man who lives under the illusion that every woman on earth is dying to spend her life with him. He is vain and arrogant, not to mention ignorant of the simplest courtesies and—" She broke off because Jeremy was staring at her oddly.
"Come on," she said, picking up one of the cases at his feet. "Let's see if we can find someone to tell us where his rooms are, so we can live as far from him as possible."
Jeremy grabbed the other bags and started to follow his mother up the stairs. "And a room that we can put a padlock on."
"I think that was just Mr. Stewart's little joke," Kathryn said as she paused on the landing, looking at the two hallways in front of her, one branching right, the other left. With her free hand she ran it along the surface of a table, then frowned as her hand came away dirty.
"I don't think it was a bad idea," Jeremy said as he followed his mother down the right corridor, his shoulders pulling under the weight of the bags. "Really, Mother, a padlock could be quite an asset"
Kathryn was opening doors, looking inside the rooms, then clucking in disgust. It was obvious that the house had once been beautiful, but now neglect had been allowed to make the rooms almost uninhabitable. Dirt and dust were everywhere. In one bedroom there was a mouse nest in the feather pillow on the bed. One bedroom's window had blown open, and it looked as though it had stayed open for days, because the floor and the surrounding furniture were damaged severely.
When Kathryn opened the door at the end of the corridor, she said, "Ah," in such a way that Jeremy came to peer over her shoulder. He could see that this was obviously his bedroom, as Jeremy thought of the man who had made his mother so unhappy. There were clothes and dirty boots slung everywhere. A pile of socks that looked as though they hadn't been washed in years were heaped by the door.
With thumb and one finger extended, Kathryn picked up a sock and held it aloft. The toe was worn through. "Disgusting," she said, dropped the awful object, then shut the door. "Come, Jeremy, we will move into the opposite end of the house."
"Where does the other one sleep?" Jeremy said under his breath as he followed his mother's swift footsteps.
Kathryn didn't say anything, but she silently thought that poor Zachary could probably sleep in town in one of those… those houses, for all his father knew.
"Mother, you must rest. And you must admit defeat."
Kathryn ran the back of her hand over her sweaty brow, pushing the fallen hair out of her eyes, and looked up at her son. She was on her hands and knees scouring the kitchen floor, which she was sure hadn't been washed in the last ten years or so. "Darling, if I had ever admitted defeat I would have been hanged for kidnapping long ago and you would be living a life of leisure with your father."
At that Jeremy smiled and sat down at the big pine kitchen table that now gleamed from his mother's efforts. ""You could always help me, you know."
Jeremy picked up an apple from the bowl on the table and bit into it. "I am an O'Connor, you know. Blood of kings, that sort of thing."
Kathryn threw her dirty rag, and it would have hit him smack in the face if he hadn't caught it midair then dropped it disdainfully on the floor. She got off her knees and lowered herself onto a chair near her son. "Jeremy, darling, what in the world am I going to do? Mr. Jordan will return in a day or two, and I haven't made any progress at all"
