by Craig, Emma
Whatever a stagecoach was. It sounded mighty sinister to Rosamunda.
She sniffed, inhaling a snootful of dust, which made her sneeze. Her resentment against Jed edged up another notch or two. Although she knew nothing about stagecoaches, she expected their trip on the one from Denver wouldn’t be very restful. At least she wouldn’t have to endure this horrid saddlebag anymore. Mistress, who generally had her priorities straight except in certain circumstances, would probably hold Rosamunda on her lap once they boarded the stagecoach. That was something to look forward to. Rosamunda could hardly wait to get to Denver.
With one last, hot scowl at Jed’s enormous back—and it was a sin for anything to be a big as that monster’s back, too—Rosamunda lowered herself into the saddlebag. She dug furiously at the rabbit fur for several seconds, more to indicate her displeasure in this latest twist in her fortunes than to build a nest. Then she turned around thrice, subsided into a little ball and closed her eyes, praying for sleep.
Let these benighted human beings find their own way to San Francisco, if that’s the way they were going to be about it. They’d receive no further help from Rosamunda.
# # #
Tacita stared at Jed’s broad back, too, but with feelings far different from Rosamunda’s careening around inside her. They were alone together again. She and Jed and the vast American frontier. Well, and Rosamunda, but the Yorkie hardly counted, since she was so small and all.
Traveling over hundreds of miles with no company other than Jed’s was a thrilling prospect for Tacita. While on the train, she’d enjoyed such luxuries as baths and decent food, but she discovered herself missing their cozy chats by the campfire. Although she’d tried her best to disguise it, she hadn’t been disappointed when Jed suggested traversing the rest of the way to San Francisco by some means other than rail.
“This Agrawal character, whoever he is, obviously knows your route, Miss Grantham,” he’d told her when they left the train right before it reached Santa Fe. “And if that man you saw on the other train last night really was your uncle, he does, too.”
“I refuse to believe Uncle Luther has anything to do with this strange series of events, Miss Hardcastle.”
He’d looked particularly impressive when he’d lifted his eyebrow and stared down at her. His expression let her know he thought she was being foolish, if not downright stupid, and it aggravated her almost as much as his assertion that her uncle could be somehow involved in these criminal activities. Still, his ironically lifted brow had reminded her forcefully of a character in her favorite novel.
For just a moment, he’d looked exactly as she’d always pictured Prince Michael’s dashing friend, Rupert Hentzau, in Prisoner of Zenda. Only much, much bigger. And, it must be acknowledged, of a finer character. Tacita was certain Jed Hardcastle wouldn’t betray her, or leap into the castle moat and swim to safety, abandoning her to her fate, should things take a turn for the dangerous.
No. Jedediah Hardcastle would protect her. Tacita knew it, and her heart thrummed a thrilling rhythm in her breast. She’d never had anybody make it his business to protect her before. Actually, she’d never had anybody pay any attention at all to her before.
She decided not to think about that right now.
She did, however, discover an almost ungovernable itch to have Jed pay attention to her some more. After a moment’s thought, she decided she had nothing to lose by speaking to him. He might not appreciate her insinuating herself into his silence, but Jed Hardcastle wouldn’t run out on her just because she was tedious.
“Mr. Hardcastle?”
Jed had harbored a faint hope that he’d be able to forget he and Tacita were alone again. He’d hunched himself in his saddle, and done everything he could think of to become one with nature. That’s what he’d always done before; or at least that’s the impression he’d tried to give to all his other clients. And it hadn’t been difficult, mostly because he preferred the silence of the land to the inane chit-chat indulged in by most of the back-easterners he’d met in his life.
At Tacita’s question, however, he realized how silly he’d been. There was no way on earth he could forget Tacita Grantham rode with him. And that there was probably not another human being within a fifty-mile radius of them. And what he’d like to do with her out here in the quiet. Or anywhere else, for that matter. Not even the devil-tongued terrier was in evidence to torment him at the moment. For several miles, she’d hung out of her fancy saddlebag and glared daggers at Jed, but she’d given it up at last.
As soon as Tacita’s sweet voice caressed his ears, he felt like groaning.
Instead, he growled, “Yeah?”
“Er, how long did you say it will it take us to get to Denver?”
Frowning slightly—he hadn’t meant to sound so gruff—he said, “About a week or so.”
She cleared her throat, and Jed realized she was feeling a little shy. Probably because he hadn’t been very polite in his response, a fact his mother would deplore. He could almost hear her lecture on courtesy as he rode, in fact.
He tried again. “I expect it won’t take us more than a week or so, Miss Grantham. The accommodations along the stage route won’t be this rough, although they won’t be near as comfortable as they were on the train.”
“Oh, I don’t mind the roughness,” Tacita said quickly.
Hearing sincerity in her voice, Jed glanced over his shoulder, nonplused. “You don’t?” He regretted that he hadn’t hidden his incredulity better when he saw her pretty eyebrows draw together.
“You needn’t look so surprised, Mr. Hardcastle. Just because I’d never been exposed to camping out before we undertook this journey doesn’t of necessity mean I can’t learn.”
“No, ma’am. I reckon that’s true.”
Warming to her subject, Tacita added, “Nor does it mean I can’t enjoy the experience. I find I rather appreciate life in the wild and nature in all her untamed glory.”
Rosamunda snorted, sending a few strands of rabbit fluff sailing out of her saddle bag. They wafted away on a breeze.
Tacita gave an indignant sniff, sending a tremendous urge shooting through Jed. He wanted to snatch her off her saddle and into his arms. Good gravy, he thought glumly, he had it bad.
“In fact, I think I’ve done rather well on our journey thus far.”
Suppressing his urges, Jed murmured, “Yes, ma’am. You have. You’ve done mighty well.” There. That had been polite, hadn’t it? Besides, it was more or less the truth. He hoped it would make up for his earlier shortness of manner.
“I have? Do you really think so?”
She sounded so amazed and so pleased by his offhand compliment, that Jed’s sympathies were stirred. An urge to prop up Tacita’s self-regard swelled in his large chest. This woman needed her confidence bolstered. He expected that parents who found a body tedious as a child might leave anyone feeling insecure and unsure of herself. He’d heard female children were particularly vulnerable to slights, perceived or real.
Jed knew for a fact that when anybody told him he was a nuisance when he was a boy, he used to figure he was just doing his job. From what Tacita had said about her childhood, if anybody had told her she was a nuisance when she was a girl, she’d have figured she was being bad. He knew it was silly of him to want to undo in a couple of months a lifetime’s worth of bad feelings about herself, but he also guessed he wouldn’t lose anything by trying.
“Yes, ma’am,” he continued, feeling quite noble about his mission. “You’ve held up pretty well on this trip so far. For a female.”
“Thank you.”
She didn’t sound as appreciative as Jed might have wished, and he figured maybe she was still feeling shy. Because he was in an expansive mood this fine morning and had finally had a good rest, he decided it wouldn’t hurt to elaborate.
“Yes’m. When we first met up in Powder Gulch and I got a gander at you and your fancy clothes and your dog and all, I figured you for one of them—those
—worthless, snobby city females who’d screech and scream every time you saw a snake or sat on a rock of something.”
“Really?”
“And when I saw how you pampered that dog of yours, I pretty much figured you were like a lady I met up with once in Houston. She weighed around three hundred pounds and carried a French poodle with her everywhere. Called it Fifi, and fed the stupid thing better than her servants.”
“Servants?” She must have swallowed wrong, because the word came out sort of strangled.
“Had a whole house full of ‘em,” Jed continued. “Hell, I figure if she’d done a third of the work she had those poor people do for her, she’d’a lost a hundred pounds easy. Nothin’ like settin’ around for gettin’ fat, my ma always says.”
“Does she?” Jed heard her suck in a big breath. “And you thought I was like that lady?”
“Yup. Then, on the first day, when you insisted on using that stupid sidesaddle, I knew it. Hell—er—shoot, I expected I’d be having to sling you over my shoulder and carry you most of the way to San Francisco.”
“Indeed?”
“Yup. But then you surprised me and agreed to ride astride. Reckon the insides of your thighs must have been pretty chapped by that time, but you never moaned about ‘em.” He chuckled, then realized Tacita, being a proper lady and from the city and all, would probably frown upon him talking about her thighs. He cleared his throat. “Er, anyway, I thought it was mighty bold of you to agree to ride astride, ma’am.”
“I see. Well, now, isn’t that interesting?”
Jed couldn’t account for the way her words seemed to have gone cold. To the best of his recollection, he hadn’t ever said so many nice things about anybody in one conversation before. Especially not a female. He gave a mental shrug and decided being so extravagant with his praise felt kind of good. Anyway, she could use it. Might bolster her confidence and make the rest of their journey less burdensome to her if she knew he approved of her performance so far.
“Shoot, ma’am, all in all, I reckon you’ve held up better’n most of the men I’ve guided. After all, the most we ever generally face on one of my guided trips is a few buffalo, a deer or an antelope, or bad water. Maybe a mountain lion or a bear. I’ve never encountered an Indian or a crazy Gypsy drummer or a gun-totin’ bandit before I met up with you.”
She was silent for the longest time. Jed figured she was embarrassed about having been honored with such an array of accolades. He hardly blamed her. If all those compliments had been aimed at him, he’d be blushing from the glory of it.
Tacita bowed her head and stared at her fingers, which had tightened over her saddle horn. She didn’t know whether to scream or cry. Or be flattered. Since her teeth were clenched up hard enough to bite through barbed wire, she supposed she couldn’t do any of those things until she calmed down a trifle.
“Anyway, I think you’ve done real well, Miss Grantham. Real well.”
At last prying her teeth apart, Tacita opened her mouth. Her intention was to say “Thank you.” What came out was, “Please call me Tacita, Mr. Hardcastle.”
Immediately, heat infused her cheeks, and she knew she’d turned red. Of course, since she’d been out in the elements for so long and her face was now as brown as a berry and freckled to boot, she didn’t suppose Jed would be able to tell. Nonetheless, she turned her head away so he couldn’t see. Rosamunda took that opportunity to utter a ferocious growl, so Tacita bowed over the saddlebag and began to fuss with her.
Silence greeted her utterance, and Tacita wondered if Jed was as astonished by it as she was. She heard him clear his throat again.
“Er—you want me to call you by your first name, ma’am?”
He sounded uncertain, and Tacita’s embarrassment grew. Along with embarrassment, a sense of ill-usage blossomed. Imagine, him comparing her to a three-hundred-pound female with a poodle named Fifi! Why, she didn’t weigh more than ninety-five pounds, if that, and anybody who’d compare so superior a Yorkshire terrier as Rosamunda to a French poodle was unfit to own a dog!
She snapped, “Yes. Unless that offends your ideals of Western masculinity, Mr. Hardcastle.”
After she heard the sarcasm in her voice, she expected him to bridle and the conversation to degenerate into one of the verbal battles they’d been waging ever since they left Powder Gulch. She was, therefore, surprised when he said, “Well, then, ma’am, thank you kindly. And I’d take it as a real honor if you’d call me Jed.”
At once her indignation evaporated. Why, he sounded quite diffident. Tacita was charmed.
“Thank you, Jed. I’d be pleased to call you by your Christian name.”
For some unaccountable reason, Tacita felt inordinately pleased with herself as the mules clopped her and Jed and Rosamunda along the mountainous trail on their way to Denver.
# # #
It was because of her parents, of course. Jed had known it for some time now. They’d left her all alone to the mercies of hired help and she’d never learned to appreciate herself. That’s why she doted on that fat-assed terrier of hers and had no self-confidence. It was ‘cause she didn’t realize she could give her affection to a human being who would value it.
A vague itch he’d been nursing along for many day now began to solidify in Jed’s breast. He knew it wasn’t a good thing, but he couldn’t help but wish Tacita could lavish some of her affection on him. The at-first-tentative wish had grown over the days until it could now be classified as a full-fledged longing.
His longing had not abated when they camped that night. In fact, it had become stronger and more fully defined as the day progressed.
This was terrible. He was promised to Miss Amalie Crunch. He had no business harboring lustful thoughts about Miss Tacita Grantham. Honor, right, suitability, prudence, rectitude, propriety: All of those virtues and more dictated that he redeem his word and marry Amalie Crunch. Nowhere in the entire gamut of human principles was one that forgave a man for jilting a woman to whom one was betrothed in order to take up with a female whom one merely lusted after.
Unfortunately, Jed couldn’t seem to fight his attraction any longer. Not only that, but he’d come to the dismal conclusion that mere lust wasn’t his primary problem. Hell, he’d conquered physical desire before.
No. His problem as he saw it looked to be dangerously close to love. His mind tiptoed around the word cautiously, eyeing it askance from different angles and hoping it would turn out to be something else; something not so frightening.
It didn’t work. No matter how he looked at it, the result was the same. He—God save him—loved Tacita Grantham. He loved a pampered, rich city woman who didn’t know beans about the West and who was engaged to marry somebody else. He sighed, hoping he’d get over it before he made an ass of himself.
# # #
Tacita dismounted that evening feeling as stiff as if she’d never been on a horse before. She wanted to rub her sore bottom, but since Jed was right there watching her she didn’t. Then she had the perfectly sinful thought that she’d like him to rub her bottom for her.
Oh, dear. This was terrible. After having deliberated all day long, ever since she’d asked Jed to call her by her first name, Tacita had come to some uneasy conclusions.
For years, she had whiled away idle moments in the contemplation of how it would feel to be loved. Although she would never allow herself to believe that her parents didn’t love her—they were, after all, her parents—she had come to the realization long since that the kind of love her parents had for her wasn’t the most comforting in the world. Her parents’ love for her wasn’t the kind that invited a person to unburden herself of her problems, or the kind that kissed skinned knees and made them better.
When Tacita had had problems with teachers, she never talked to her parents about them. She talked to Mrs. Wilkins, the housekeeper, if she talked to anybody at all.
When Billy Jones had called her a pumpkin head, she hadn’t cried and told her mama about it. No. Ta
cita had merely figured Billy was right, since she’d never been given reason to believe he wasn’t. In fact, when Mrs. Wilkins assured her she was no such thing, she wasn’t quite sure whether to believe her or Billy Jones. After all, Billy Jones’s parents hadn’t gone away and left him to the tender mercies of a housekeeper. Only the parents of pumpkin heads did that.
When Tacita thought about being loved, the kind of love she’d received as a child was not the kind she craved.
No. If Tacita were ever to be loved, she’d want a gentleman to admire her not merely for her physical attributes which, she admitted without vanity, were fairly good. She’d want more than that. She’d want his attention and his affection, too.
She’d want him to consider her a worthwhile person and one to whom he felt drawn to spend his time. She’d want him to enjoy chatting with her on chilly evenings by the fireplace, and to enjoy being with her at other times as well. Over breakfast, for example. Or whilst riding on horseback through the wilderness.
Tacita knew these reflections were silly. For years, she’d been keenly aware of her own dullness. She knew she was too uninteresting to attract the kind of attention she longed for from a gentleman.
For some days, however, she’d been uncomfortably aware that she regarded Jed in a light that was about as far removed from her initial dislike as it was possible to get. Today, for the first time, she admitted that she regarded him in exactly the way she’d want to be regarded by a person who loved her.
Her stomach tipped upside down when she realized she’d fallen in love with Jedediah Hardcastle. Head over heels. Which was bad enough. The most depressing part, though, was that she knew he could never return her regard.
After all, Jed was a man who had conquered the wilderness. He was at home in the wild and woolly West. He could handle a gun and defeat evil villains, yet she felt sure he would also feel at home in fancy drawing rooms, as well. After all, he’d been quite adept at life on the train. And his grammar, except when he was trying to prove himself rugged, was quite good. Yes, indeed. Jed Hardcastle was a fascinating man who’d lived a fascinating life. He needed a woman as fascinating as himself. No matter how hard she tried, Tacita couldn’t feature Jed being happy with a boring woman.
