It was the best way she knew to get what she wanted.
"I didn't receive any telegrams. I was probably already gone." Peyton's face clouded in memory of the letter that had sent him on this journey. "Angelina had written to me some months ago. It took me a little while to wind up my affairs, and finding transportation in this direction from California wasn't easy. I've gone through two horses in the process. I had no idea what I would find when I arrived here."
He looked up at Tyler and Evie. "The children have been blessed in finding someone as thoughtful as you to look after them. Had I come here and found my sister gone and her children scattered to the winds, I would have been desolate. Thank you for keeping them together."
"It's been our pleasure," Evie answered. "They are beautiful children, and I really don't know what I would have done without them."
"But you and your husband will be wishing to set up a home of your own," he said with understanding, sipping his coffee. "It is difficult for newlyweds to be suddenly endowed with four children."
Evie panicked, but Tyler placed his hand across hers and held it to the table, steadying her.
"My wife has always wanted a family, sir. She has none of her own, so she is being honest when she says it has been a pleasure. We can't help but be worried over the children's future. I know this has come as a surprise to you, and you'll need time to make plans. We'll be happy to stay until you say otherwise."
Peyton looked relieved. He reached in his pocket and pulled out a handkerchief, and his paintbrush rattled to the floor. He looked at it with bemusement, then leaned over and tucked it into his pocket again. Absentmindedly, he tucked the handkerchief back in without using it, either.
"I'll admit to a certain amount of consternation on my part. I'm a bachelor with no children to my name. Angelina was all the family I had left. I'll make provisions for them one way or another. There isn't as much money as there used to be, but I suspect it's cheaper living here than San Francisco, and I've got a little land nearby. We'll make it work." He smiled at Carmen, and she gave him one of those grave little looks of hers.
Evie clenched her fingers in disappointment at the mention of his lack of progeny, but he hadn't said he was taking the children away yet. She tried to keep her voice even. "I'll be happy to look after them in any capacity. Carmen is very good, but she is too young to shoulder all the responsibility of her younger brothers and sister."
Peyton leaned back in his chair and tapped his fingertip on the table as he watched the anxious faces around him. He cast a speculative glance at the boy with spectacles in his pocket and a crutch leaning against his chair, then to the young girl who sat close to him. But his gaze most often came back to the woman with the thick chestnut tresses of a woman he had known too long ago.
"You're quite right, of course. If it is no inconvenience to you, I'll ask you to go on as you are. I'll take a room at the hotel while I take a look around, reorient myself as it were. Tell me, Mrs. Monteigne," he couldn't help asking, "are you from around here?"
Tyler crushed Evie's fingers against the table to keep her from answering. "My wife was born in St. Louis. She never knew her parents, but it seems they come from these parts. That's not something we speak openly about, if you understand me."
Peyton drifted off on a memory of his own. "I used to hate this town. My mother was half Mexican, half Indian, and people around here despise what they call 'breeds.' It's a hard enough life without having your neighbors hate you. But I can remember one little girl who wasn't from around here. She went to school in St. Louis, and she didn't have the same kind of prejudices. She made me see that the rest of the world was different and that I could go out and find my own place in it. She probably saved my life, 'cause I was an ornery cuss back then. Mrs. Monteigne reminds me a little bit of her."
Tyler's fingers squeezed warningly around hers, but Evie was tired of