Taming Eliza Jane

by Shannon Stacey

  Gasps of outrage filled the room. “You get a discount? I let that bastard spend himself all over my prettiest slippers and I had to pay full price for that lace I just bought!”

  Once they got going, Miss Adele’s chickens could cluck at each other for damn near forever, so Will stepped forward and cleared his throat. “Eliza Jane, I want you in my office in one hour.”

  She smiled ever so sweetly at him. “I do appreciate the offer, but I’m afraid I must decline. I have a previous engagement.”

  “One hour,” Will warned through gritted teeth. “And if I have to come and get you, there’ll be a show the likes of which this town has never seen. Hell, they’ll probably even write songs about the day the women’s libber got herself spanked right in front of God and Gardiner, Texas.”

  Chapter Three

  Will was mildly surprised to hear the door to his office swing open at the designated time. Truth be told, he was a mite relieved, as well. He’d had some serious doubts as to whether the woman would show up.

  Threatening to spank a woman in the middle of the street and actually doing it were two different things altogether. That was the sort of thing that would seriously rile up the good Christian women in town. And he’d rather be set upon by a passel of Adele’s clucking chickens than by the ladies of the Gardiner Bible Brigade.

  Eliza Jane paused in the doorway, the blazing sun behind her, and Will set his newspaper down across his lap. She sure was a fine-looking woman. It really was too bad about her disposition.

  She walked into his office with her chin hiked up. “Doctor Martinson, this is my traveling companion, Edgar Whittemore.”

  That’s when Will noticed the man who’d come in behind her. Once the man closed the door, he stepped out from behind Eliza Jane and Will fought hard not to smile. He hoped Edgar Whittemore wasn’t her idea of protection.

  The man was built like a barrel softened by wood rot, and he’d already had to push his spectacles back up onto his nose. His brown hair had been spit-combed flat to his head, and he gave the overall impression of being a man who’d left his balls back in his mama’s apron pocket.

  “Pleased to make your acquaintance,” Will said, but he neither rose from his seat nor offered his hand, just in case Edgar’s palms were as sweaty as his nose.

  “I wish I could say the same, Doctor,” the man replied, but the whiny pitch made him sound like a petulant child, so Will wasn’t too concerned about the words coming out of his mouth. “Your behavior toward Mrs. Carter has been nothing short of abominable, sir.”

  “Well, now, that’s a mighty big word, Edgar. Good thing I got me one of those paper certificates from Harvard Medical School.”

  That got their attention. Edgar’s glasses almost fell off his nose, while Eliza Jane’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully.

  “Be that as it may,” Edgar squeaked, “this treatment of Mrs. Carter simply cannot be tolerated any longer. Threats of physical violence against her person on the part of both the town’s law enforcement and its doctor are simply untoward.”

  Will folded his newspaper, then leaned forward to prop his elbows on his desk. “Well, heaven forbid we should be untoward. Maybe you should write yourself a letter to the governor, Edgar.”

  The traveling companion’s Adam’s apple bobbed. As displays of temper went, it wasn’t all that impressive. “Doctor Martinson, perhaps we should—”

  “Perhaps you should tell me why a woman who’s spent four full days telling the women of this town to speak up to their men is standing there silent while you lecture me on my abominable behavior?”

  She wasn’t remaining silent by choice, Will figured. Everything about her body language and the expression she was trying like hell to mask let him know Eliza Jane wanted to shove Edgar’s head down into his neck until he was just a pair of spectacles perched on two shoulders. He knew the feeling.

  “Due to the aforementioned threats of violence,” Edgar said, “I felt a man to man discussion was called for—an issue of Mrs. Carter’s safety, you understand.”

  Will tried to stare him down, but the man’s gaze was as squirrelly as a preacher in a whorehouse. Finally, he just looked down at the man’s city boots. “Rattlesnake!”

  Edgar let loose with an unholy, high-pitched squeal that like to wake the dead, then he spun on his heel. After shoving Eliza Jane to one side, causing her to trip over Will’s exam stool and go skirt up on the floor, he ripped open the door and fled the office.

  Much to Will’s dismay, Eliza Jane quickly set her skirts to rights. Without waiting for him to offer assistance, she climbed to her feet and righted the stool.

  “That was plain mean,” she told him, but he could see a smile dancing around the corners of her mouth.

  “Fine choice of a man to see to your physical safety, darlin’.”

  She took a seat on the wooden bench he kept for waiting patients. “He works for the man who administers my mother’s estate, the money from which enables me to travel and further the cause of women’s independence.”

  “So he tugs the purse strings and you have to dance. There’s a mighty helping of irony in that.”

  “I’m so pleased it amuses you.”

  “Well, you ain’t exactly gone out of your way to endear yourself to the citizens of this town,” Will explained. “Before you talk about being mean, you should take a good, hard look in the mirror.”

  “I am not mean.”

  He leaned forward across the desk. “You talked Miss Adele’s whores into going on strike, then convinced more than half the women in this town to stop seeing to their men’s needs. From a male point of view, that’s not just mean. That’s downright cruel.”

  And she knew it, too. He could see by the gleam in her pretty blue eyes that she knew the fastest way to bring a domesticated man to his knees was to cut him off from good food and his warm, willing woman.

  The pounding of running feet approaching on the plank sidewalk caught his attention. Whoever it was was moving too quickly to be Edgar Whittemore coming back for the charge he’d abandoned.

  Johnny Barnes ran through the open door, his face red and his chest heaving, carrying his baby wrapped in a blanket.

  “Doc! Jesus, you gotta help me, Doc!”

  Will moved around the desk and took Johnny Junior before his father could drop him on the floor. “What happened?”

  “His britches…” Relieved of his burden, Johnny paused to bend at the waist and take a few deep breaths. “I was trying to change his britches, and what’s in there…it can’t be right, Doc. He must be sick or something.”

  Will laid the nine-month old on the exam table and peeled back the blanket. Then he gagged as an aroma like a three-day-dead skunk filled his office. He, a Harvard educated doctor and a veteran of the Union’s hospital tents, swiped at the tears blurring his vision and gagged again.

  “Good lord, Johnny, he ain’t sick. He’s ripe is what he is.”

  “Are you trying to tell me that’s normal?”

  “It started out as normal, but this ain’t like cheese or wine that gets better with age. Did Melinda take sick to bed?”

  He worked efficiently as he spoke, cleaning the baby and rediapering him from his own stock. The office was going to be a while airing out before he could close his door, though.

  “She ain’t in bed,” Johnny answered. “That crazy woman done moved in to the hotel until I show her some appreciation. If that ain’t the most damn fool notion.”

  Will turned and pinned Eliza Jane with a look that would have made a woman with a weaker constitution squirm. This one only glared right back at him.

  “It’s all that damn women’s libber’s fault,” Johnny continued, still oblivious to her presence. “Save us all a whole lick of trouble if Sheriff Caldwell would just shoot her and be done with it.”

  “He’d like to,” Eliza Jane said, and Johnny damn near jumped out of his skin. “But murder’s not a good choice for an officer of the law.”

  “You
!” Johnny bellowed, and Johnny Junior, being startled out of the euphoria of having clean britches, started to fuss. “This is all your fault.”

  Will picked up the baby and leaned against the wall to watch the show. “Eliza Jane Carter, this here’s Johnny Barnes from down to the livery stable. Johnny, meet the damn women’s libber.”

  She stood and Will got the impression she was accustomed to using her height to intimidate men. She had a good five inches or so on Johnny. “Your lack of appreciation for your wife is hardly my fault, Mr. Barnes.”

  “If you hadn’t come here, Melinda would be home right now taking care of Johnny Junior.”

  “And you. Taking care of you.”

  “Well, yeah, I reckon.” Johnny looked downright confused. “She takes care of me, too.”

  “And do you ever bring her flowers? Have you ever thanked her for the meals she cooks or for having a clean shirt to wear?”

  He frowned and scratched his head. “When’s the last time she thanked me for sweating my balls off—excuse my language, ma’am—every day at the livery to feed her and this young’un and keep a roof over their heads?”

  “She thanks you hundreds of times a day, in all the little things she does for you,” Eliza Jane argued, and Will just shook his head. “Cooking, cleaning, mending, raising your son and seeing to your needs.”

  Johnny’s face turned as red as Miss Adele’s satin sheets. “It ain’t right for you to be talkin’ about a man’s needs, Miss Carter. That ain’t right at all. My mama’s got a word for women like you.”

  “Whoa!” Will stepped between them, holding the baby out to his father. “Now, Johnny, there’s no call to bring your mama into this situation.”

  Lucy Barnes was the righteousness-spewing, book-thumping, self-proclaimed leader of the Gardiner Bible Brigade, and Will wanted no truck with her. She was one hell of a scary woman.

  “We were doin’ just fine, Doc. Melinda and I had a nice life together before she came to town. Now my wife’s living in the hotel and Junior here misses his mama something fierce.”

  “Your wife wouldn’t have moved out if she was happy,” Eliza Jane argued, and Will winced.

  “You watch yourself, lady,” Johnny said. “Or somebody just might save Sheriff Caldwell the cost of a bullet.”

  He left, the baby cheerfully waving bye-bye over his shoulder. Will decided to go on back to his desk and sit down before he throttled Eliza Jane in his own office.

  “Close the door,” he told her, despite the lingering odor.

  She looked for a second like she wanted to force a please out of him, but she closed the door and took a seat on the bench again.

  “These people aren’t chess pieces that you can move around for your amusement,” he told her. “You’re playing with people’s lives.”

  “I assure you, Doctor Martinson, that I am neither playing nor amused.”

  “Now there’s no call to get all prissy with me. We’re just having a conversation.”

  Eliza Jane folded her hands in her lap. “It seems our conversations consist of you telling me what to do and expecting me to do it. I’m sure you’re aware of my feeling regarding women blindly obeying men.”

  He was definitely aware that he found it sexy, the way she pursed her lips when she was trying to be prim and proper. “Maybe it would help some if you think of me as the deputy sheriff and yourself as the town troublemaker.”

  “I’m not surprised you find a woman with a mind of her own troublesome, Deputy.”

  Will wasn’t of a mind to talk circles with this woman for the rest of the day. “What happened to Mister Carter?”

  Eliza Jane sucked in a surprised breath and Will was pleased he’d thrown her off her guard. And while he had to admit to a certain amount of personal curiosity, that wasn’t why he’d asked.

  “I don’t believe my marriage is any of your concern,” she replied stiffly.

  “Right now you’re stirring up trouble in my town, so everything about you is my business. Unless you’d rather I fetch Sheriff Caldwell.”

  She gave him a hateful look, twisting her fingers together in her lap. “My husband divorced me because I couldn’t bear him a child. He cast me aside as though I’m worthless because I’m barren.”

  Will’s professional interest was stampeded over by the personal when he saw how the anger he heard in her voice couldn’t keep the pain from her eyes. “He was a jackass.”

  He saw the sheen of tears, surprised because she didn’t seem the weepy kind.

  “My father supported his decision.”

  “If that’s the case, he’s a jackass, too,” Will replied. “And the problem might have been with your husband, darlin’. Being a doctor, I know these things.”

  “His new wife bore him two children in three years, and she was expecting again when I left Philadelphia.”

  “He’s still a jackass for not seeing there’s so much more to you than a barren womb. He was a fool not to see that.”

  She was looking everywhere but at his face. “If we’re finished discussing the humiliating, intimate details of my life, I’d like to leave now.”

  Will had thought he’d like Eliza Jane more if she was less prickly, but he didn’t like seeing her like this any better. “What I was trying to get at is maybe you’re not spreading any message but your own personal bitterness.”

  Outrage flamed on her cheeks and Will had to bite back a smile. It seemed he liked her more when she was fired up, after all.

  “How dare you?” She rose to her feet, using her height again, and he didn’t bother telling her it had no effect on him. He just folded his arms across his chest and looked up at her.

  “Hit a sore spot, did I, darlin’? I can’t help thinking if your husband hadn’t divorced you, you wouldn’t be traveling around preaching the evils of men.”

  “I don’t preach the evils of men. I preach the strength of women.” Eliza Jane leaned over his desk, placing her palms on the wood. The position put him close to eye level with her breasts, but Will tried to pay attention. “And perhaps it was being thrown away like a broken toy that opened my eyes to the fact that a woman has no standing but what the man in her life—father or husband—chooses to allow her.”

  She sucked in a breath after that tirade and Will’s gaze was drawn back to her breasts. Did the woman even know what she was doing to him?

  “The way women are regarded in this country is wrong,” she said, really on a roll. “And if the men in this town are threatened by a woman speaking her mind, then they’re in the wrong, too.”

  “I agree,” Will said.

  She’d been working up a full head of steam, but his words derailed her. “And…you do?”

  “Yes, I do.” He felt a pang of regret when she stood up straight again, removing her breasts from his close proximity. “But not everybody in Gardiner does. Plus there are a lot of women who are impressed by what you’re saying but don’t have the education or experience, and they can be mighty clumsy in trying to practice what it is you’re preaching.”

  “But if it changes their—”

  “Johnny and Melinda Barnes did have a good life going, Eliza Jane. They were a happy, loving couple, been sweethearts since they were walking barefoot and hand-in-hand to the schoolhouse. And that baby was a joyous occasion, let me tell you.

  “And I’m willing to wager the only reason Melinda up and left her two Johnnys is your words getting all mixed up in her head, making her think she’s supposed to be holding out for more. And there ain’t no more she needs than a husband who loves her, a healthy baby and their little home she’s got done up real nice.”

  He had to give her credit for giving his words due consideration before she spoke again. “I’ll talk to Melinda Barnes privately. If my words have misguided her, as you believe, I’ll help her sort things out and get her home to her family.”

  “Thank you, darlin’.” He grinned at her just because he liked the way it flustered her. “And if you could try no
t to cause any more discontent before the stage comes, I’d be mighty grateful.”

  He didn’t like to think about her leaving so soon. It was a foolish notion, but he really wanted to get to know her better. And just not getting to know what was under her clothes, either, although he wouldn’t mind that.

  Will considered himself a smart man, and he knew Gardiner wouldn’t hold a woman like Eliza Jane for long. But it wouldn’t break his heart any if the stage was late, sensible or not.

  “I don’t deliberately set out to cause discontent.” Her highly attractive mouth curved into a small smile. “It just sort of…happens. I have that effect on people, I guess.”

  That wasn’t the effect she had on him, at all, but he reckoned she didn’t want to hear about the baser biological urges of a man right then.

  “Just try to lie low until the stage comes, darlin’. If you lie low, things will quiet down.”

  It was standing room only in the front parlor of the Gardiner Hotel the following evening, but it was deathly silent when Eliza Jane finished speaking.

  She wasn’t surprised. Very few women were accustomed to hearing their monthly cycles spoken about at all, never mind with such frankness. A handful of women had even fled the room at different points. But if even one woman managed to give her body a few months’ rest between pregnancies, it was worth the scandalized, stunned silence of her audience.

  Dan O’Brien—who as it turned out was not only the desk clerk, but the proprietor of the establishment—had tried to protest having a lecture in his front parlor, but Eliza Jane had simply informed him of the evening’s topic and he’d fled for parts unknown.

  “Any questions?” she asked, and she was surprised when a young woman shyly raised her hand. It was the pregnant woman she’d seen when she first arrived in town, the one who had an infant and toddler already.