A/N: Up next is Return Engagement. This episode doesn't really match up with the backstory given in the pilot A Rose for Lotta. Was that Lotta supposed to be this Lotta's mother or something? I also thought a brief pause in the action would be nice since Long Way to Ogden really kicks off a string of high-drama episodes that will only lighten in tone twice (at Easter Bunny Crossing and The Wedding) before it blazes over the finish line with the season finale Never Say Die.
So, Return Engagement in this universe is mostly a one shot type drabble, no murder during the performance or anything like that, just Annie being Annie.
As always, I own nothing but my OC.
"Is that who I think it is?" Hoss said slowly. Annie glanced over at the woman exiting the stage and her gut soured.
"Lotta Crabtree." It might have been eleven years, but the woman's fashion sense hadn't changed a bit. Nor had her hair, though it was possible that wasn't entirely natural. "Think we should be worried who she's scheming with this time?" Hoss gave her a sideways look.
"You tell me, you had her figured out last time."
"It wasn't that difficult, why else would someone drive a buggy hell bent for leather across the Ponderosa unless they wanted us to stop them, especially back then? Everyone for at least a hundred miles knew how Pa was about people on his property."
"True." A frown crossed his face. "Wonder how long she'll be in town?" The two of them watched the stack of trunks being handed down off the top of the stage.
"Probably long enough to put on a couple of shows and leave." At least, she hoped that's all it would be. There weren't any scheming mine owners to conspire with this time, but that didn't mean there wasn't someone else quietly planning trouble. "Maybe we should ask her."
"Can you do it without clawing her eyes out?" Annie threw the actress a dirty look.
"Can you honestly say she wouldn't deserve it?"
"Maybe she does and maybe she don't, it ain't none of our concern." Hoss glanced over at the woman himself. "It was a long time ago."
"She could have gotten Joe killed."
"Reckon so." Her brother scratched his head. "But that don't change the fact little brother walked into that trap all on his own."
"And he'd do it again." And all over a woman at least seven or eight years older than he was, and a professional liar when you got right down to it. With all the nice girls spread out between Virginia City, Reno, and Carson City, why did he always fall for women bearing trouble?
"Yeah, he would at that. Course, Ms. Crabtree is a fine looking woman."
"Not you, too."
"I'm just making a statement, little sister, not intending to court the woman."
"I'd certainly hope not, last time we could have lost the Ponderosa."
"Uh … Lotta Crabtree?" Candy leaned in on her other side, his gaze trained on the woman holding court near the stage coach. "Would that be the Lotta Crabtree?"
"Yeah," Annie said shortly. A hand landed on her back, then Joe was pushing his way between her and Hoss.
"None other," he said with a soft whistle. Annie rolled her eyes and elbowed him in the ribs. "Hey, what was that for?"
"For not growing up in the past eleven years." Candy snickered and Hoss swallowed a laugh. Ben sighed heavily and untied Buck's reins from the hitch rail.
"I'd rather not speak to her, but that would only prove nothing around here has changed since she last visited." Annie bit her tongue. Virginia City had changed, but that didn't mean they had to roll out the welcome mat for the likes of Lotta Crabtree, famous actress or not. The woman had conspired with Alpheus Troy and that was enough for Annie. Once, it would have been enough for her father, too. "Let's go. Candy, I'll introduce you."
"Thanks." I think. At least, that's what Annie heard. The five of them walked their horses over to the stagecoach and the actress turned from her admiring public when Ben cleared his throat. A flicker of unease crossed her face and darkened her eyes, but it was masked in an instant.
"Why, Mr. Cartwright, how nice to see you again." She held out her hand. Annie bit her tongue to keep from snarling when her father kissed the woman's hand. The actress' gaze slid sideways. "Ms. Cartwright."
"Ms. Crabtree." Annie thought she did an admirable job of concealing her dislike, but it must not be good enough to fool a professional. The woman's eyes hardened and her spine stiffened. Yes, she knew the hatchet had never been buried, nor would it be.
"Hoss, Little Joe." The woman took their hands with a smile that only brightened when she noticed Candy. "And who is this?"
"My foreman, Mr. Canaday, we call him Candy." Annie's blood boiled. Candy eyed the woman with more than a touch of disinterest.
"Ms. Crabtree." To her, it was rather obvious he wasn't sure how to react with her father saying one thing, and Annie another. Idly, she wondered just how correct Padre Javier was.
"It's a pleasure, Ms. Crabtree," Hoss swept his hat off. "A pure pleasure. You ain't changed a bit, ma'am."
"Why, thank you, Hoss." She looked around with a tiny frown on her face. "Is your brother not in town today?" Silence descended and most of the remaining crowd took the opportunity to wander away. "Oh, did I say something wrong?" A gloved hand rose to her mouth. "Adam isn't … injured, I hope?"
"No, ma'am." Joe stepped into the middle of the ring and kissed her hand. "Older brother decided he'd rather go to sea than ride herd on a bunch of cows about six years ago."
"He went to sea?" Her voice rose. "Whatever for?"
"Don't ask us," Annie said tartly. "We're just his family, he never bothered to tell us anything." Much less keep in touch once his first couple obligatory letters had found their way home. It had been at least three years since they'd heard anything at all.
"Well. I must say I'm shocked. The man I met all those years ago didn't seem the type to up and leave."
"People change." Some of them anyway. Her father threw her a warning look and she snapped her mouth shut.
"How long are you in town, Ms. Crabtree? We'd be pleased if you could join us for supper at the Ponderosa." Annie ground her teeth. The last thing she wanted to do was sit through supper with that actress at the table. How could he even make the offer after what she'd done?
"That's very kind of you, but I'm afraid I'll have to decline unless we could eat at the hotel. I'm only in town for two days, just a stop over on the way to San Francisco, you see." A smile touched her mouth. "I haven't time to go buggy riding through the mountains this time around." Annie's eyes narrowed and the smile dropped like a stone. "However, I must insist you attend a show as my guests, all of you."
"That's very generous of you, ma'am." Ben looked around at them. "I'm sure we can see our way clear to accept."
"Wonderful." She shook his hand and gathered her parasol. "I must be off, traveling is so tiresome. I do wish someone would invent a more comfortable method than those rattling stagecoaches."
"There's always the train," Annie said with a smirk.
"Yes, provided the rails can reach one's destination. Not every town, especially West of the Mississippi, can claim that distinction."
"What a shame. It must be terrible on your gowns and furs. Not to mention those fifty dollar bottles of champagne." Joe nudged her in the ribs, but she ignored him. They all knew what the woman had done, and why, there was no sense glossing over it. Pa might have half believed he'd been having supper and dancing all night, but she knew better. And so had Adam.
"Let it go, Annie." Joe's voice brought her around in shock. "It's over." She straightened her spine and turned smoothly, then swung into the saddle and reined her grulla around.
"Not to me." She urged the gelding into a lope and headed for home. It wasn't long before hooves rumbled behind her. She glanced over her shoulder and snorted. "Should have known he'd send you."
"Who else?" Candy asked with a grin. "He thinks I can talk some sense into you, but I know better than to try." His grin faded. "Seriously, what did she do?" Annie threw him a sideways glance and reined Reno to a halt. Candy's horse stopped a moment later and they stood side by side in the road.
"A bunch of silver barons wanted Ponderosa timber and Pa wouldn't sell. They hired Lotta Crabtree to lure one of the boys to town so they could hold him hostage for the timber."
"Why didn't they just hire someone to kidnap you?"
"You didn't know Pa back then, he was twice as suspicious as you, if not more. Hated people on the Ponderosa, considered Virginia City a den of vice and forbid any of us from riding in alone for just that reason. It was still a wild place, we didn't even have a sheriff yet, and all the newcomers chasing silver hated that we controlled a thousand square miles of land, preventing them from claiming their piece of the bonanza."
"I bet you loved that."
"No. But I understood the reasons behind his decision." She nudged Reno to a walk and ambled along, her thoughts drifting back to a different time. "She drove across the Ponderosa and ended up luring Joe into town. We went after them and spent all night searching for him. He turned up near dawn, dancing with her in a restaurant. Adam and I talked about it later, and nothing really added up. She claimed she didn't know what they were really after, but she's not stupid, she had to at least guess."
"What changed?"
"Don't know. Joe said she helped him fight off the two men who came to collect him and take him to Troy."
"How?"
"Never underestimate a parasol."
"Huh. I'll have to remember that." He kept pace with Reno and glanced over. "You planning on going to the show?"
"With a Derringer in my hand bag."
Joe had said that Lotta was a good singer, but Annie had no way to compare the performances since she'd spent the last one searching for her brother. The woman knew how to play a crowd that was for sure. As for her song choice … that left a little something to be desired.
"Whatever you do, wherever you're goin', Jim along Rosie with me. Out in the sun or if'n it's snowing, Jim along Rosie with me. Jim along Rosie, Jim along Rosie, Jim along Rosie, Rosie, do. Jim along Rosie, Jim along Rosie, Jim along Rosie, and I'll Jim along with you!" Annie glanced sideways. The rest of the saloon seemed to be enjoying the performance, though. The song continued, but Annie was more focused on her costume. Since when did one wear yellow feathers with a red and black gown? It didn't match, much less look attractive, at least to her. A black feather boa would have been the better choice.
The song finally ended and the theater erupted with applause. Lotta swept back through the velvet curtains and took several bows, the black feathers in her dark hair dancing, triumph evident on her painted face. Then she disappeared behind the curtain again and the theater's owner appeared. "There will be a brief delay for Ms. Crabtree to change her costume before the next song."
Candy leaned over and whispered in her ear, "You can take your hand off that Derringer, sweetheart, I don't think she has anything nefarious in mind."
"Easy for you to say," she muttered. "That woman's sneakier than a mountain lion."
"Says the sneakiest woman I know." Annie threw him a look and he chuckled, prompting her brothers to hiss at them to hush.
"Hush yourselves, she's not even singing right now." She swatted at the feathers on her own hat, wondering why she'd even worn the blasted thing.
A few minutes later, Lotta stepped through the curtains in a flounced white gown with a long train, white feathers in her hair, and a huge feather fan clutched in her grasping, greedy, gloved hands. "Professor." She nodded at the musicians seated next to the stage and they struck up a new, slower, tune. "How can I leave you, how can I leave you, leave you by this time tomorrow? Don't want to grieve you, how can I leave you? Parting is such sweet sorrow. How can I tell you, how much I'll miss you … miss you by this time tomorrow?" Annie risked a quick glance at Joe to see if the woman was attempting to send him a message, but he didn't look any more absorbed in the performance than the next man.
Which, for a man like Joe, was odd. What – if anything – had really happened between them eleven years ago? All one had to do was look at Lotta Crabtree and you knew she would never be interested in a mere boy, no matter how much money Troy had paid her.
For months afterwards, she'd wondered if Adam had fallen for the actress, just not as obviously as Joe had. Their last meeting with the woman in the restaurant that morning played in her mind again. She'd been sure he was going to kiss the actress, but Pa had made her leave before she could find out.
What was she missing?
The song concluded and Lotta took her bows to a standing ovation. Annie clapped politely, the thoughts in her head spinning like a locomotive's drive wheels. Lotta had been the picture of politeness at the stage … but had it been too polite? Greeting all of them first, even inquiring about Candy before she commented on the missing brother ….
Considering it had been Adam who'd shot Poole and been harshest towards her the first time, wouldn't she want to know where he was before anyone else? Shouldn't she be the slightest bit concerned? Adam had been quite a bit rougher back then than he was just before he up and left, one of Pa's staunchest supporters in the fight to use any and all methods of keeping the Ponderosa in Cartwright hands. It hadn't been until later, after a sheriff had been appointed and the law began to smooth Virginia City's rough edges away, that his views had shifted.
The questions only multiplied during supper when Lotta continued digging into their lives for the past eleven years, as though she had a right to know everything about them. "Still just Ms. Cartwright, Anne?" The woman clicked her tongue. "What's wrong with the men around here?" She reached for her champagne flute. "They must be blind."
"About as blind as the men around you, it seems," Annie replied with a feral smile. "Since you're still Ms. Crabtree." Beside her, Candy choked, turning a laugh into a cough.
"Touche." Annie studied the champagne in her glass.
"Or perhaps they simply don't want to be pawns in your games." Conversation ceased and Lotta's eyes went dark. Her fingers tightened on the delicate flute.
"I'm not the only woman in history to make a mistake, Ms. Cartwright. I still maintain I knew nothing of what Mr. Troy and his friends had in mind. Once I knew, I began to work against them."
"But not before you lured my brother to town, and into range of their grasping games."
"Anne." Her father's eyes were dark. "This is hardly the time or the place to refight old battles." He glanced around the table. "The past is over and done with." He raised his glass, a hint of pain crossing his face. "A toast. To old acquaintances renewed." They drank and he lowered his arm, rubbing at his back with his other hand. Lotta's dark eyes followed his every move.
"Are you all right?"
"Hm? Oh, yes. I was shot a few weeks ago, it's mostly healed now, just twinges sometimes if I move wrong." He nodded at her and Candy. "It's thanks to those two I'm alive."
"Oh, dear." A gloved hand rose to her mouth. "It was that bad?"
"It was nothing, really." Annie bit back a sharp comment. He could only say that as he'd been asleep for most of it. If he knew what all had really gone on in Los Robles, gray hairs would be the least of his worries.
"Well, I'm certainly glad you're all right." Lotta took a drink from her glass and Annie's eyes narrowed. Was her hand shaking? She glanced between Lotta and her father. Did the actress carry a torch for a different Cartwright? She nudged Candy's boot and he stilled ever so slightly, blue eyes flicking between her father and the actress as he took a drink.
He pressed the heel of his boot down gently on her toe and she sat back with a smothered huff. If it wasn't her father, what had made the woman's hand shake like that? Lotta Crabtree had traveled the West for years, putting on performances everywhere from elegant theaters and dance halls to ramshackle saloons and mining camps, so she was no stranger to violence.
"You ain't the only one, ma'am." Hoss downed half of his drink in one swallow. "When they come back with Pa toting enough bandages to wrap up one of them Egyptian mummies, it plum scared us half to death."
"That's for sure." Joe's tone was light, but his eyes were anything but as he stared at the swirling champagne in his glass. "It's one thing if it's us, but for Pa to get hurt …." Lotta swallowed hard.
"Well, I may not have children of my own, but I do know how helpless you can feel when someone you love is in pain and there's not much you can do to help." She withdrew a crumpled handkerchief from her handbag and dabbed at her eyes. "I lost my mother some years ago and that was hard enough even without someone intentionally causing her harm."
"I'm sorry." Ben squeezed her hand and she blinked a few times. Annie's eyes followed the handkerchief as it was stuffed back into the tiny beaded bag, her heart skipping a beat.
That conniving woman.
She finished her supper in a seething silence, extra careful to guard her tongue lest the wrong words slip out and ruin everything. It would devastate her brothers, not to mention their father.
How could he?
"Annie? Is something the matter?" She forced a smile and shook her head, carefully glancing upstairs at Lotta's skirts disappearing around the curve of the hotel staircase after they'd bid the woman good evening.
"No, Pa. I just need a moment before we head home."
"Oh. We'll be out at the buggy." Her father ushered the rest of them outside and the smile slipped off her face. Annie whirled in a sea of satin and lace and stomped up the stairs. If she knew Wendell, he'd given the actress the best suite in the hotel. She knocked on the double doors and waited, saying nothing as Lotta's voice drifted through the wood, politely asking who was there.
When the door inched open, she half expected it to be slammed in her face. "Ms. Cartwright?" Lotta hesitated in the doorway, a nervous look in her eyes. "Is something wrong?"
"I guess that depends on what you think of a man keeping contact with an actress he met once and ignoring his family for over three years." Lotta's mouth fell open in a shocked 'o' and she stepped back.
"What makes you –"
"It slipped past them, and Candy never met Adam, but did you really think I wouldn't notice his initials? Or did you intend for me to see it?" For a moment, she thought Lotta would deny everything, then the woman drew herself up and waved her inside the room.
"Your brother has always said you were the smartest of the four." Lotta stalked across the room and poured herself a glass of something from the decanter on the side table. She took a sip and swallowed slowly. "I figure you don't have much time before someone comes looking for you, so I might as well begin. I met Adam for the second time about four years ago, out in San Francisco. He'd just returned from a voyage to the Orient and he saw my name on the billboard for a performance. We had supper together and talked for quite a while. Frankly, I was shocked when he told me he'd left."
"You know where he is." Lotta threw her a look over her shoulder.
"Yes. But I can't –"
"I don't care where he is." Annie picked up a trinket box off the parlor table and studied it. "Mother of pearl, must have been expensive." She set it down. "I see your tastes haven't changed."
"I've worked hard to get where I am, Ms. Cartwright, and I won't apologize for liking the finer things in life." Lotta set her glass on the table and turned with a swirl of skirts. "Your brother is the same way, to a degree." Annie snorted. "No, let me finish. He wanted to be his own man, not live in your father's shadow his entire life."
"Adam left because he wanted to run everything his way and he was tired of Pa 'bossing him around' as he put it in that last argument. He chose to leave us without so much as a goodbye and I could care less what he's been up to since them. If you want to keep in touch with him, that's your business, but tell him from me, that I never want to see that Yankee granitehead again."
"But, Anne –"
"No. I looked up to him, even when I didn't understand his reasoning. Then he left without a word, like none of us mattered a bit. Then his letters stopped arriving, and I knew we didn't matter, that whatever he'd found out there was more important and I stopped caring." She turned for the door, then looked back with her hand on the knob. "You're never to say a word about Adam to any of them, do you hear me? If you do, I'll spread your part in Troy's conspiracy across the front page of every newspaper in the country and your reputation will be destroyed." She closed the door behind her and stalked downstairs and out to the boardwalk.
"Get lost, little sis?" Joe asked from Cochise's saddle with a smirk.
"Of course not." She gathered her skirts and climbed into the buggy. "I stopped to talk for a few minutes, that's all."
"Ah. Well, let's get home, six o'clock comes mighty early." Ben reined Buck around. "Drive on, Candy." Their foreman clucked to the mare and the buggy rolled forward. Annie glanced up at the hotel windows as they went by, wondering if Lotta was watching them. Candy eased his boot over and nudged her foot. She pressed her toe over his and his mouth thinned. They glanced at each other sideways in the growing darkness.
Hiding something?
She knows.
A/N: So, this was not exactly how I planned this episode to go. Then Captaintjf messaged me asking if Adam would ever return (especially for The Wedding) and I told them I wasn't sure. Personally, I hadn't planned on including him in this fic, one reason being, I wasn't sure where he was or what he was doing, or how Annie could conceivably track him down if she ever wanted to. Then, I rewatched A Rose for Lotta for this chapter and Lotta stepped into the picture after that lingering look they shared at the end of the pilot episode.
I haven't worked out particulars yet, but the groundwork is laid down should Annie decide she has to have answers. Or if the decision is taken out of her hands. Any thoughts or suggestions on a return for Adam?
Poll will be on my profile; majority rules though it probably won't be season eleven if you want him to come back.