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particularly palatable.” He hailed a carriage and instructed the driver to their inn. “Pity we wasted an evening there and didn’t even see Little Miss.”
    “I am certain the innkeeper will know where to find the residence of The Opera Queen. I’ll send a note to Marlena and ask her to dine with us.”
    “Why not just call on her yourself?”
    Once inside the cubicle his mother pinned him with her cool blue eyes. “You know very well why. It isn’t proper, and as much as I don’t mind a slamming door in my face, I know you will take offense and I don’t want to upset you.”
    He studied her appearance. She was adept at disguising herself when the need arose. Her hair, dyed a scandalously bright red, was stuffed beneath the opulent garnishes of a Parisian headdress festooned with tule and plumage. Her normally rouged cheeks were pale as porcelain and her lips remained their natural nude color. She looked every inch the lady. But he wouldn’t ask her to go on in disguise. He loved her for who she was, and believed others should, too.
    He pursed his lips as he wondered. “Why doesn’t it offend you, Mother?”
    “You have to have pride to be offended, and you have to abandon your pride to make a living as a woman alone. So, I abandoned mine years ago. We all go through life bargaining with the talents granted us. As women, our options are few. We’ve got wife-ing, whoring, and a palm full of career opportunities. Only one of those was a true option for me. But I am not ungrateful. I have more money, freedom and authority than I would have otherwise, but I have no illusions that it’s a respectable line of work.” She reached across and squeezed his hand. “There will never be a society where whoring is shameless, and there shouldn’t be. And that’s not really what you want anyway.”
    He felt his brow scrunch in confusion, but she went on.
    “Sooner or later, you’re going to have to acknowledge it bothers you that I’m a whore, instead of being angry that it bothers everyone else.”
    He gritted his teeth. “You’re not a whore, Mother. You gave up paying customers years ago.”
    She leveled her eyes at him. “Dalton, I run a brothel.”
    He blew out a hot breath. “All right, Mother. I’ll admit it. You’re right. I wish you weren’t a…a…”
    “Whore,” she supplied with an amused grin and he huffed in anger.
    “Stop it,” he said. “I’ll never call you that. Never . But I do wish…”
    “What, Dalton?” she asked softly.
    “I wish you knew what it was like to be loved for who you are outside of a bedroom.” Her lips curved slightly, sadly, and he reached out to touch her knee, looking her straight in the eye. “You’re worth more than that, Mother.”
    Her eyes bore into his with a brightening sheen and she covered his hand with hers. “I was wrong when I said I didn’t have any pride.” She squeezed his hand. “It’s sitting right across from me.”
    Dalton’s throat crowded with emotion and he swallowed as he sat back to survey the cityscape passing by the carriage windows. Four months had crawled by since he left Virginia City, and he was itching to get back. The trip abroad had proven three things. The first was that the only travel he enjoyed was done through mountain ranges on horseback. The second was that he considered himself wholly American, despite his English parentage. And the third was that he cared very little for large cities, like London and Boston. He’d seen enough. Too many people. Too many noises and smells. Too many rules. He wanted to return to the place where life was real and raw.
    The rush of excitement upon stepping foot on American soil under American sun was invigorating, but he still had a long way to go to feel a western wind at his back, the gentle glide of a tamed mustang beneath him and the wide dawn breaking over a landscape sculpted by the Creator. Four months away from the place where he belonged seemed interminable, and he wondered