“Reckon he wanted to leave you with something to remember him by.” Wes raised his eyebrows beneath the brim of his black hat. “You know, like a man in love would do.”
“Andrew doesn’t love me.”
“Maybe he’s trying to. What does it say?”
She scanned the writing. “He’s looking forward to seeing me again on his return trip, and he wants to spend more time together next time he visits.”
When Andrew and his father had left the ranch, they hadn’t been returning home like all of their friends. They were now headed farther west to El Paso, where they had some type of important business meeting planned with the railroad. Andrew had said something about the laying of the track running behind schedule. The Mortimers had plans to stop by Twin Rivers again on their way back to San Antonio, which should be in about six weeks.
She looked back down at the letter. “It also says he enjoyed talking about horses with me and wonders what would happen if he bred one of his thoroughbreds with an Arabian.”
That was an interesting idea. She’d already tried something similar by breeding Ares with Helen, but Helen was only a quarter horse. Thoroughbreds were a far more prestigious breed. A foal sired by one of Andrew’s horses wouldn’t have a clean bloodline, but if he had the speed of a thoroughbred while also exhibiting the stamina and heat tolerance of an Arabian, the beast would be beyond magnificent, especially in the desert.
“Does he say anything else?”
“Sorry. I got distracted.” She looked back down. “He’s… he’s blocked three weeks out of his schedule to be here at the end of the summer.”
Indeed. It seemed Andrew Mortimer was trying to love her, or at least like her.
The notion caused a light sensation to fill her chest. Andrew’s words weren’t idle promises hastily uttered during stolen moments. They had intention. Forethought. He was planning to spend three weeks in Twin Rivers just for her.
After she’d learned of Robbie’s deceit, she’d known what she needed to do next, even if marrying before the end of the year had seemed like a drastic decision. But now that she’d met Andrew, now that they shared an affinity for horses and he’d set aside a chunk of time to spend with her, she liked the image of what her future life could look like.
Or at least, she could see herself fitting into the image rather than running away from it.
But what if Andrew didn’t come to care for her the way she hoped?
Or worse, what if they got along fine when he returned to visit and he proposed? But after they wed and she moved to San Antonio, where she’d have calls to make and suppers to host and balls to attend, Andrew decided he’d made a mistake in choosing a wife?
She leaned her head against Athena’s back and drew in a shuddering breath.
“Aw, come on, Charlie.” Straw rustled, and Wes’s hand landed on her shoulder. “If Andrew’s that bad, you don’t need to marry him. I’ll back you against Pa in that.”
“It’s not that. I like him.” Or rather, she thought she did. She kept her head pressed to Athena’s back, the feel of the beast’s hair comforting against her skin. “But what if I make him a terrible wife?”
“You won’t. You’ll make him a wife who understands hard work and can help with the ranch he’s set to inherit.”
“And the railroad baron part?” She raised her head. “What am I supposed to do about that? I’m not a socialite like Mariah. Hang it all, I spilled gravy on both of us at supper and after that I stepped on his foot when we danced.”
She’d not told Wes either of those things earlier, but his face remained expressionless. No surprise she’d made a mess of things with Andrew, no sympathy either. At least he didn’t look at her with exasperation the way Pa would.
“Was Andrew cruel to you afterward?”
“No, he was as gentlemanly as one could expect for the situation.” If anything, he’d been extra gracious and understanding. Yet another point in his favor.
“Then I don’t see a problem.”
“Did you watch him at the ball? He was surrounded by beautiful women wearing jewels the entire time. If our parents weren’t trying to arrange a marriage for us, I doubt he would have escorted me to supper. And it’s not as though I can blame him, considering.”
“He probably knew the other women, Charlie. I watched him at the ball, too. He wasn’t seeking those women out, they all sought him. He may have looked Anna Mae’s direction a time or two, but he didn’t dance with her, and you can hardly blame a man for taking notice.”
Charlotte shook her head. No, she couldn’t blame a man for watching Anna Mae.
“If you really think wearing jewels makes those women more attractive to him, then wear more jewels yourself when he comes to visit. I know you’ve got some necklaces.”
She frowned. The ring she’d worn for the ball had felt like a ten-pound weight on her hand.
“It’s more than just the jewels.” She looked down at her split skirt and serviceable brown boots, both covered in layers of dust from her race across the desert. “I need to be more feminine. More charming. I should stop wearing split skirts. That will never do for the wife of a railroad baron. And I should take up playing the piano again, maybe do some painting.”
Wes sighed so loudly Pa could probably hear it up at the house.
“Is something wrong?”
“Besides the fact your plan will make you miserable? It’s one thing to wear a necklace, but you hate playing the piano and painting.”
“I won’t be miserable. I’ll be proper, feminine, attractive.” All things she hadn’t been for the first twenty years of her life.
“I only want you to do this if you think you’ll be happy with Mortimer. Otherwise, pass on him and give yourself more time. The right man will come along.”
No, he wouldn’t. Pa had been trying to find her a husband for over two years, and the right man hadn’t—not unless she counted Andrew.
The difference was that she could actually see herself being happy with Andrew…
Just so long as he was happy with her in return.
She looked up into her brother’s face, a face that was too trusting of her, even though he was slow to trust most others. A face that was tan from days spent riding his ranch and lined from hours spent long into the night pouring over the ranching books. Most people probably assumed someone else saw to the day-to-day workings of the A Bar W and Wes and Pa just reaped the profits the cattle brought in, but her father and brother had always worked harder than anyone else. She wouldn’t allow more cattle to be stolen from her family because of her foolishness.
She’d ride into town after breakfast tomorrow and pay Daniel another visit. And she’d don a skirt and use a sidesaddle too. She had to find a way to both get and keep Andrew Mortimer’s attention—and by something other than spilling gravy on him.
“Daniel, there you are.” Ma looked up from where she stood spooning beans into a bowl in the kitchen. She flashed him a smile that made her look young enough to be his sister. “I was about to send Anna Mae for you.”
“We didn’t figure you should miss two meals in the same day.” Anna Mae set a plate of homemade tortillas on the table.
“I didn’t mind missing lunch. Just wish I had something to show for my ride into Mexico.” And some hope to give Mattherson about recovering his stolen cattle. He stepped farther into the kitchen and hung his hat by the door. His stomach chose that moment to let out a growl, and he snagged a tortilla off the plate.
“Snitch.” Anna Mae swatted at his arm, but he rolled the tortilla up and tore off a bite before she could grab it back. The familiar taste of his ma’s cooking filled his mouth.
“Manna,” he spoke around his mouthful of food. “This has to be what God sent the children of Israel in the desert.”
“Daniel Harding.” Ma waved a spoon covered in mashed pinto beans at him. “You take that back. It’s near blasphemous.”
“It’s not. Doesn’t the Bible say manna was ro
und and white? These tortillas are all a person needs for sustenance.”
“Go get your father if you’re in such a hurry to eat.” Ma used her spoon to gesture toward the hallway. “And leave the food alone until everyone is seated at the table.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He turned and headed down the hall past his and Anna Mae’s rooms and into the parlor. Pa’s chair sat empty, so he closed the door and walked across the hall to his parents’ room, then knocked.
“Come in.”
Daniel opened the door to find his father sitting at his desk, his back hunched over the Bible and another book, probably a theological commentary.
For one pure, simple moment, Pa looked nearly normal. It was almost as though they’d moved back through time, almost as though the gunshot wound had never occurred.
Then Pa looked up and over his shoulder, and the wheelchair that the bed was hiding moved ever so slightly, just enough for a person to realize any other man would scoot his chair back with a scrape against the floor, not glide easily on wheels.
“Daniel? You all right?”
“Huh? Oh, yes, I’m fine. I just… ah…” How to explain that for a second he’d gone back to a time before Pa had lost his leg? “Supper’s ready.”
Pa rolled farther away from the desk, the smooth movement nothing like the small jerks Pa had used to move his wheelchair when he’d first gotten it seven years ago. “What’s the matter, son?”
Nothing. Everything. Daniel glanced down, his gaze catching on the tin star pinned to his chest—the same tin star his father had worn for twenty-five years before a rustler’s bullet had torn through the artery in his leg.
“Did you ever have days where you felt like all you did was get things wrong? As sheriff, I mean.” He wasn’t about to start on all the things that had gone wrong the day Pa lost his leg. And he didn’t have time to go into all the things he’d done wrong by falling half in love with Charlotte Westin.
He might currently be begging God to take away his feelings for Charlotte and help to protect the town from losing more cattle, but if there was anything he could go back and change, it would be that night.
He’d stopped asking God why He’d allowed Pa to be crippled long ago. God had never answered, and if he had to think back on it, that was probably about the time God had stopped answering his prayers altogether.
But the strange part was that Pa wasn’t upset or angry. When he’d lost his leg, he’d said something about his situation being part of God’s plan and God setting his life on a different path. Then he’d started devoting every spare minute of his day to studying the Bible and praying.
Daniel could complain about the unfairness of it all, but doing so wouldn’t give Pa his leg back, and since Pa seemed happy enough despite his condition, he—
“I heard Mattherson lost more cattle, and you took a posse into Mexico looking for them.” Pa spoke in that kind way he had. “Searching for stolen cattle doesn’t seem very wrong to me.”
Daniel sank down onto the bed. “It does since I never stopped them from getting stolen in the first place, and I have little hope of recovering them.”
Pa looked at him with eyes that seemed to see too much. “Mattherson say that?”
“Yep. Right before he told me he’d made a mistake when he voted for me to take your position, and that if I don’t recover his cattle, the commissioners will start looking for another sheriff.”
“Don’t let it bother you too much. He’s just hurting over the loss is all. He’ll simmer down in a few days.” Pa spoke as though the problem wasn’t new, as though he’d heard similar complaints during the years he’d worn the sheriff’s badge. “No one expects a sheriff’s office of four men to police every last inch of this county, not even the commissioners. This isn’t the first time we’ve had trouble with rustling in these parts.”
No, but it seemed like the worst. “He says he’s lost so many cattle he might not be able to keep Winnie in that special school of hers next year.”
“Ah…” Pa sat back in his chair, the skin around his eyes crinkled with lines that spoke of wisdom. “That has a way of making the situation a little more serious, doesn’t it?”
“Can you think of any way for me to recover his cattle?”
Pa rolled away and bent at the waist, pulling a large, thick map out of a jug on the floor. “I expected the rangers to be here by now.”
“Me too, but I can’t sit around waiting for them any longer. Right now, I’m the only one standing between the county’s cattle and those rustlers. Is it wrong of me to almost hope that if the outlaws strike again, they target the Westins? They can afford to lose stock the way other ranchers can’t.”
“Not wrong, son. Our hope is that no other cattle get taken, but wanting to control the damage isn’t a bad thing either.” Pa tapped a section of the map. “Maybe ride out to Sam Owens’s place. See if that trail has been busy.”
He glanced over to where Pa pointed. He would check the trail, though he doubted the rustlers had used it since it had been discovered. Still, the idea held more merit than blindly rambling through the mountains, searching for tracks only to come up with nothing.
But unless he found the rustlers had hidden Mattherson’s stolen cattle on this side of the Rio Grande, whatever he did next wouldn’t be enough to make much difference to a certain rancher and his family.
4
Her leg was going numb. Charlotte shifted for probably the twelfth time since leaving the ranch fifteen minutes ago and tried to find a comfortable position on Athena’s back.
How did women use sidesaddles on a regular basis? They were horrendous.
They were also something she’d have to accustom herself to if she married Andrew, just like she’d have to get accustomed to wearing a skirt all the time.
Charlotte clenched her jaw and gave the reins another flick, but Athena kept up her ambling trot. Probably because the horse didn’t know what to do with the ridiculous saddle that put all of the rider’s weight on one side of her body.
The sidesaddle also positioned her too high on Athena’s back, which not only made balancing difficult, but also caused her to pull too tightly on the horse’s bit and Athena to hold her head at an unnaturally high angle.
Now that she thought of it, side-saddle riders were supposed to use some special sort of curved bit to prevent the reins from pulling the horse’s head up. The ranch probably had one, but she hadn’t the first notion where Wes would store such a thing. She only knew about Mariah’s old sidesaddle because she’d found it buried under extra saddle blankets while cleaning out the tack room a month ago.
Charlotte leaned forward, bringing herself closer to Athena’s neck and relieving some of the pressure on the bit. The trouble was, doing so nearly upset her own precarious balance, which Athena accounted for by slowing her pace.
“Come on, girl. Giddyap.”
Town lay just ahead, and never before had she been so glad to see the white clapboard church and string of buildings that made up Twin Rivers. If Athena could talk, she’d probably say she’d never been so eager to have a rider dismount either.
Charlotte turned Athena toward the sheriff’s office, then spied Daniel’s dusty brown hat and tall form across the street at the courthouse. He stood with a couple of the commissioners, and if the stiff way he held his back was any indication, he wasn’t having the best of mornings.
She wouldn’t take up much of his time, just say her piece and be on her way, leaving him to think about whether he wanted to help her with Andrew in earnest.
Athena ambled to a stop beside the hitching post, and Charlotte blew out a breath. Finally.
Except how was she supposed to get off her mount while wearing a skirt? If she shifted her lower left leg, she’d never be able to unhook her right one from the ridiculous pommel holding it atop Athena’s back. But if she moved her right one, could she get off the horse without losing her balance?
If only she had a stool like the one she’d used
to help her mount at the ranch.
Athena shifted on her hooves, then gave her head an impatient shake.
“I know, I know. I’m trying to get down.”
Charlotte unhooked her right leg from the odious high pommel. If she could bring it down on Athena’s opposite side as though she’d ridden astride, then maybe she could swing off the horse like normal.
Except the fabric of her skirt had gotten caught beneath her left leg, and she started to slide down the side of the horse. A squeak escaped her lips, and she lunged for the top pommel with her hands.
“Whoa there.” Strong arms threaded themselves beneath hers, holding her at a ridiculous angle sideways to the horse, but also preventing her from sliding to the ground. “What are you doing?” Daniel’s familiar voice rumbled beside the back of her head.
“What does it look like?”
“I have no idea.”
“I’m trying to dismount, you dolt.”
“Since when do you have trouble dismounting from a horse?” Genuine puzzlement laced his voice.
“Since I’m riding sidesaddle and wearing a skirt!” Her shout could probably be heard across the street at the courthouse. “But my leg is caught, and I can’t—”
He hefted her up, pulling her weight away from the saddle and freeing the fabric she’d been sitting on. She twisted her left leg away from the wretched second pommel that had trapped her skirt.
“There.” Daniel set her down.
Ground. Flat, wonderful and solid beneath her feet.
“Thank you,” she breathed. But when she drew air back into her lungs, the comforting scents of leather and wind and sunshine surrounded her, and she had to stop herself from leaning closer just to be nearer his smell.
“Why are you riding sidesaddle? And wearing a skirt?”
She blinked at him, then took a step away and straightened her shoulders. “I’m just trying to be proper is all, ladylike.”
“Ladies don’t usually try breaking their necks when dismounting from a horse.”
Tomorrow's Shining Dream Page 4
