Scandal Meets Its Match (The May Flowers #7) - Merry Farmer Page 0,32

Lenore. There was nothing she could do but confess.

“His name is Bartholomew Swan,” she said in a hoarse voice, her shoulders itching as sweat ran down her back. That didn’t seem like the right place to begin her story, so she turned in her pacing and headed back to the end of the dining room table where the men stood. “How much of the news from Wyoming has been reported here in England?” she asked.

All three of them exchanged baffled glances and shrugged or shook their heads.

“Only what you have told us,” Freddy said.

“We wouldn’t have heard anything that you haven’t,” Reese added.

Lenore gulped and grabbed the back of one of the chairs tucked into the table. “Have you heard anything at all about the Wyoming Range Wars?”

Again, she was met with baffled looks.

“There is a war in Wyoming?” Phineas asked.

“In a manner of speaking, yes.” Suddenly, Lenore felt as though she had to sit down. She pulled out the chair and flopped into it. The men followed suit. “I’m sure there are many facets of the war that I don’t understand, but in short, it’s a war over cattle and grazing rights.”

She gathered her thoughts a bit more as the men settled into their places. She had all three of their rapt attention.

“Ranching is a serious business in Wyoming,” she explained. “Fortunes are made and lost raising cattle for market. The largest of the ranches have formed an organization, the Wyoming Stock Growers Association. Papa is a member, and so is Howard Haskell, the founder of our town, but neither of them are comfortable with what’s been going on recently.”

“What has been going on?” Freddy asked. He sat beside Lenore, which enabled him to reach for her hand and squeeze it in comfort.

“The WSGA has been trying to buy out or otherwise eliminate competition from smaller landholders and homesteaders,” Lenore went on. “As you might imagine, those homesteaders aren’t too happy about it. In turn, the WSGA members aren’t too pleased with their resistance. Which is just business as usual in most places, but this is Wyoming and they are frontiersmen. What might have been a simple disagreement elsewhere is starting to turn into violent clashes. Several men have already been killed in Johnson County.”

“And this Bartholomew Swan has something to do with that?” Phineas asked, glancing to Freddy as though he should have been the one sitting next to her, holding her hand.

Lenore nodded tightly. “I met Bart at a social event in Laramie a few years ago. I hate to say it, but he took a shine to me.” She swallowed the sick feeling that rose up her throat. “I had no interest in him at all, of course, but he didn’t much care about that. I was naïve and more concerned with balls and social events at the time, so I let him escort me to various functions while Papa and I were visiting. This was right before his planned trip here, to London.”

The men exchanged looks, though it was clear none of them knew where the story was going.

“I’ll spare you the details of how I ended up in a particular situation,” she said, sending a look across the table to Phineas, “but one evening, I found myself in a position to look through Bart’s personal correspondence.” Phin would likely be able to guess that the way she snooped through his office the night before wasn’t the first time she had gone nosing in someone else’s business. “What I found there was evidence of Bart’s involvement in the murders of some men at the Waverly ranch and detailed plans to murder several more of the local ranchers who were holding out against the WSGA.”

“Murder?” Freddy’s hand grew tight around hers.

A look of understanding dawned in Phineas’s eyes as he likely remembered her passing reference to the Waverly ranch during their walk through Hyde Park.

“In cold blood, for the most part,” Lenore continued with a nod. “These are not polite, London gentlemen. Some of them are one step up from gunslingers. And I had the proof of what they were planning in my hands.” She took a breath and went on. “I had the proof in my hands when Bart burst into the room and caught me with it.”

Freddy, Phineas, and Reese all flinched in alarm, as though they knew exactly where the story was headed now.

“Needless to say, I only barely escaped being murdered myself,” she went on, face burning as she left out the