Taming Eliza Jane

by Shannon Stacey

  “Mrs. Carter, are you okay?” Dan was saying. So it was her, then. “Do you need the Doc?”

  She shook her head frantically. Good Lord, the last person she needed right now was Will Martinson.

  All of her money was gone—money left to her by her mother, who had inherited it from her mother. All gone. In trying to protect the money from the men in Eliza Jane’s life, her mother had entrusted it to a man with a gambling problem.

  Rage sizzled through her. If she had been allowed control of her own inheritance, this wouldn’t have happened. She was considered too delicate, too weak-minded to tend to her own finances? At least she didn’t squander away somebody else’s money.

  A hand patted her back and Eliza Jane lifted her head to find Edgar trying in his awkward way to console her. She sighed. While he was a most vexing travel companion, they had been together for several years. And his situation was now as desperate as hers.

  “What are we going to do?” she whispered.

  He took a deep breath and pushed his glasses back up onto the bridge of his nose. “We’ll simply use our remaining funds to travel back to Philadelphia. Once there, maybe we can discover the details of this unfortunate incident and perhaps find some legal recourse.”

  Eliza Jane nodded, her mind latching onto the plan. “Yes. There must be some recourse. There are laws governing these sorts of affairs.”

  Of course, the person who’d broken the laws was dead, and his estate apparently decimated alongside her own, but it was a goal to work toward.

  “Here’s what we’re going to do,” Edgar said in a strangely calm and decisive voice. “We’re going to retire for the evening. After a good night’s sleep, we’ll meet at the restaurant for breakfast at eight and talk more about what we should do, such as sending letters on ahead to help expedite the process.”

  Eliza Jane nodded and rose to her feet, feeling only a little shaky in the knees. “Yes, let’s do that.”

  They parted ways, and though Eliza Jane tried to follow his advice, sleep remained elusive until the wee hours. Every time she willfully tried not to think about her new state of poverty, she ended up remembering the feel of Will’s mouth against hers, of his hands against her flesh. Forcibly, she turned her mind away from those images, only to find herself dwelling again on her financial situation.

  Edgar’s solution—getting on the next stage and returning to Philadelphia—was her only reasonable option. But there was a part of her already regretting not knowing how things would turn out with Sadie’s child, or how the chickens would fare when Miss Adele passed on. She wanted to know how Lucy Barnes was going to get the sheriff to the altar with her daughter. And she wanted to spend more time with Will. As she finally drifted off to sleep, she thought it was a shame she couldn’t stay in Gardiner just a little longer.

  By eight-fifteen the next morning, she was getting nervous. Edgar was never late. By eight-thirty, she was growing frantic, and by a quarter til nine, she was knocking on the door of his room. There was no answer.

  After knocking several more times in vain, she went down to the front desk. “Have you seen Mr. Whittemore?”

  Dan’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed hard. “He checked out, ma’am. Told me he was buying a horse and leaving town.”

  Dread curdled like day-old sour milk in Eliza Jane’s stomach. “He can’t just up and leave town. Not without me.”

  “I’m sure sorry, Mrs. Carter, but he paid for your room here for a month and left you this note.”

  There was nothing she could do to hide the trembling of her hand from him as she took the note and unfolded it.

  As my employer is deceased and no further funds are forthcoming, I consider my employment hereby terminated. I have paid for your lodging through the month. I regret I cannot leave you further monies, but as I am entitled to severance compensation, I have dispersed the remaining funds to myself. Best wishes, E. Whittemore.

  Not Edgar, too. This simply couldn’t be happening. She was stranded in Gardiner, Texas with not so much as a dollar to her name.

  Eliza Jane crumpled the paper in her fist and spun on her heel. She imagined the clunking of her heels as a war drum as she marched toward the sheriff’s office, not even registering the people on the street, even the angry men in pink shirts.

  Chapter Five

  Will finished the piss-poor coffee Adam had offered him and considered getting on with his day. He had a shipment of medications to inventory and letters from an East Coast colleague to answer, and he wasn’t going to get it done sitting in the sheriff’s office.

  “There’s something in the air today, Doc,” Adam said. “Can’t rightly say what, but I’ve got a bad feeling.”

  “I’m sure whatever it is, you’ll just shoot it.” Will hoped like hell whatever it was had nothing to do with Eliza Jane.

  “Probably so.” Adam stood and adjusted his gun belt. “Let’s go get some breakfast. I hate killing people on an empty stomach.”

  It took Will a few seconds to grab his hat and close the door behind him, and then he almost ran right into Adam. The sheriff had stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and shoved his hat back on his head.

  “Is it just me, Doc, or do you see a whole lot of angry men wearing pink shirts?”

  Aw, hell. “I see them.”

  “I really wanted some steak and eggs, too.”

  “Let’s go get some. Ain’t no law being broken here. A man’s got a right to wear a pink shirt if he’s a mind to.”

  “And half the men in town just happened to get a hankerin’ to wear pink on the same day?”

  “Maybe they had a sale at the Mercantile.”

  Adam snorted and fixed his hat. “Or maybe that women’s libber of yours is up to no good again.”

  Will didn’t see any point in wasting his breath trying to deny it. This had Eliza Jane’s name all over it.

  “Oh, hell,” Adam muttered, and Will followed his friend’s glance to see the woman in question bearing down on them like a runaway freight train. “Let’s ignore her and pray she goes away.”

  Will could have told him it wouldn’t work, but he followed him back inside anyway, not bothering to close the door. It wouldn’t keep her out. Adam returned to his desk and started reading the paper with a vengeance while Will poured himself another mug of piss-poor coffee and settled in the other chair to wait.

  It didn’t take long. When Eliza Jane stormed in, her face even more pink than the menfolk’s shirts, Adam didn’t even glance up. Will would have laughed if she didn’t look fit to commit murder at that moment.

  “I have somebody I want you to shoot,” she told Adam straight out.

  That certainly got Will’s attention, and the sheriff’s, too. “It ain’t the doc, is it?”

  She looked at Will as though considering. “No.”

  “Good. I couldn’t shoot a friend.” He folded the paper and slapped it down on his desk. “If you’re having some sort of problem, why don’t you just tell him about it? He’s a sworn deputy and he likes you.”

  “Because Doctor Martinson is far too civilized for this matter,” she said.

  Will tried not to be insulted. After all, being called civilized was a compliment as a rule. But the fact she was turning to another man for help set his teeth on edge. And his gun wasn’t exactly just for decoration.

  “Edgar Whittemore has fled town with all of my money. I want him hunted down and shot like a dog.”

  Adam took his sweet time considering her words. “I ain’t never shot a dog, ma’am. How exactly would that differ from shooting down a man, do you reckon?”

  “I don’t care how you shoot him, as long as it causes him a significant amount of pain.”

  “Well now,” he said so slowly Will wanted to slap him in the back of the head just to make him talk faster, “that’s a pretty bloodthirsty way of thinking from a woman who just decked out half the town in pink.”

  The shirts didn’t even come close to the color of Eliza Jane
’s cheeks, but Will was having a hard time feeling sorry for her. It seemed like every time he and Adam managed to get folks calmed down, she went ahead and got them all riled up again.

  “I don’t do their laundry,” Eliza Jane said.

  Will chuckled. “That’s one hell of a coincidence, darlin’.”

  “Sometimes men need to be reminded that the women who make their lives easier can also make it more complicated. I distributed small squares of cloth imbued with red dye. But that’s not nearly as urgent a problem as that of Edgar Whittemore.”

  “The way I see it, that problem’s only urgent to you.”

  “He said your horse was ugly,” Eliza Jane said. “I heard him.”

  Adam raised an eyebrow. “Did he now?”

  “He did. Edgar told me your horse was so ugly his own dam probably wouldn’t give him milk.” And she nodded as she spoke to emphasize the point.

  Will tried his damndest not to laugh, but he couldn’t hold it back. He knew Eliza Jane had a way of making people listen to her, but this was just downright devious. Unfortunately, he got Adam laughing, too, and that made her so furious she even stomped her foot.

  “This is not amusing! That man stole from me, and I want you to go and get my money back and then shoot him.”

  When the men managed to get themselves under control—with help from her downright evil expression—Adam put on his best serious face. “How did Edgar Whittemore come to gain possession of your money?”

  “The executor of my mother’s estate entrusted it to him in his capacity as my chaperone.”

  “So he was supposed to have your money?”

  Eliza Jane took a deep breath. “Yes, but he wasn’t supposed to run off with it.”

  “Was he told that specifically?”

  When she placed her palms on Adam’s desk and leaned forward, Will shook his head. Trying to intimidate the sheriff with her height wouldn’t work.

  “Sheriff Caldwell,” she said in a deceptively quiet voice, “that money is mine. Despite the fact it was administered by two men, those funds belonged solely to me. When Mr. Whittemore severed his employment, he also lost the right to govern my funds.”

  Will had to admire the short rein she kept on her temper. He also had to admire the way Adam was keeping his gaze anywhere but the breasts Eliza Jane was displaying front and center. Will knew that was no easy feat, and the sheriff was a true friend, for sure.

  Of course, thinking about those breasts of hers got Will thinking about the very hot and sweaty dreams he’d been having and wondering if Eliza Jane could afford to leave town now. Maybe she’d have to stick around for a while longer, and wouldn’t that be both a blessing and a curse?

  “Did he leave you anything at all?” Will asked, drawing their attention to him. At least Eliza Jane stood up straight again, removing temptation from Adam’s line of sight.

  “He had the semblance of decency enough to pay a month in advance for my hotel room. But he absconded with the remaining cash.”

  “Unfortunately, Mrs. Carter,” Adam said, leaning back in his creaky wooden chair, “I ain’t sure that’s reason enough to shoot a man down like a dog. Or even like a possum, I reckon.”

  Eliza Jane’s fingers curled and Will wondered if she was fixing to try scratching Adam’s eyes out. He hoped not.

  “You shot a man for calling your horse ugly,” she hissed.

  “Yes, ma’am, but the facts weren’t in question.”

  “The fact is, your horse is—”

  Will leapt to his feet, ready to throw himself in front of the bullet.

  “—irrelevant.”

  Will breathed a sigh of relief and managed to keep himself from strangling her. She shouldn’t bait Adam like that.

  But she wasn’t done yet. “This isn’t a matter of equine comeliness. It’s a matter of theft.”

  “I haven’t had my breakfast yet,” Adam said, and any citizen of Gardiner would have taken that for the warning it was.

  “Well, I can’t afford breakfast, can I?”

  Will watched them try to stare each other down, realizing this was the first time he wouldn’t put his money on Adam.

  All of a sudden, the sheriff grinned. “You have to get a job.”

  Eliza Jane blinked. “A job?”

  “Yes, ma’am. If you ain’t got money, that’s the best way to get some. You think you’re entitled to being treated equal to a man, so now you can work like one. And the men who can give you a job are right outside. Wearing pink shirts, I reckon.”

  Will would give her one thing—she could cuss like a man when the occasion called for it.

  Eliza Jane tried not to be discouraged as she stepped into the office of the Gardiner Gazette. Or more correctly, she tried not to let the discouragement she did feel show on her face. The search for employment wasn’t going well, and her reputation had proved to precede her.

  A young boy setting type looked up her. “Help you?”

  “My name is Mrs. Carter. I’d like to speak to the proprietor about any employment opportunities.”

  The boy’s eyes widened. “Jumping Jehosophat! You’re that da…you’re the women’s libber.”

  She sighed. “I am.”

  “You want to see who about what?”

  “I need a job.”

  It was at that moment the largest man Eliza Jane had ever seen stepped out of a back room. Big and brawny, with ink-stained fingers like sausages and sporting a mass of unruly black hair on his head and face, he greatly resembled a giant, shaggy grizzly interrupted during his winter nap.

  His altogether frightening appearance was in no way mitigated by the very bright and cheery pink shirt he wore.

  “Well, well, Mrs. Carter,” he said, and she caught a trace of an almost faded accent—English, perhaps. “What an unexpected surprise.”

  The boy laughed. “If it was expected, it wouldn’t be a surprise, would it?”

  The man’s face reddened to a shade that contrasted horribly with the shirt. “Billy, you go on out back and fix yourself a snack.”

  Eliza Jane waited until Billy was gone before saying, “I’m sure the surprise isn’t entirely welcome, Mr. …”

  “Seymour. Frank Seymour.”

  He folded his beefy arms across his even beefier chest and waited. Clearly he wasn’t inclined to make this visit any easier on her, not that she could blame him.

  A shadowy movement behind Mr. Seymour made her suspect Billy was not having the snack he was instructed to eat, but was shamelessly eavesdropping. She had to admit she didn’t care for having another witness to her ongoing humiliation, even if he was only half-grown.

  Eliza Jane drew a deep breath and straightened her shoulders. “I know you’re disinclined to feel kindly toward me just now, Mr. Seymour, but I assure you nothing about my lectures was meant toward you personally.”

  “Since I’m the one personally wearing pink, I’m disinclined to care.”

  Pride was a difficult lump to swallow but she forced it down. “I’m sorry about the shirts. I really am. But I need a job.”

  “Even if I had an opening—which I don’t—you’re the last person I’d offer employment. You wreaked enough havoc before I ever even met you.”

  That seemed to be the prevailing statement among the male business owners in town. Since only two women owned businesses in Gardiner—Marguerite at over at the restaurant and Miss Adele—her situation seemed hopeless indeed. She wasn’t any more suited to cooking and waiting tables than she was to being a prostitute.

  “Consider this,” she said after a moment. “The faster I earn money, the faster I leave town.”

  Frank Seymour seemed to consider what she said, but then he shrugged. “As appealing as that sounds, I can barely keep myself in ink as it is. Can’t afford any help.”

  Eliza Jane forced herself to smile instead of bursting into tears. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Seymour.”

  She walked out into the sunshine with her dignity more or less intac
t, but with absolutely no idea what to do next.

  If she ever had the misfortune to set eyes on Edgar Whittemore again, she was going to wring his neck like that of a troublesome chicken—of the poultry variety, of course. They had never been friends, exactly, but she didn’t remember ever treating him so horribly as to merit that kind of treatment.

  She began to wander aimlessly down the sidewalk, moving only because people kept looking at her askance. She’d only gotten as far as the Mercantile—where she’d already been turned down by Tom Dunbarton despite his crisp white shirt—when a tall, willowy blonde girl dressed from jaw to heel in a frothy lemon concoction stepped into her path.

  “Mrs. Carter?”

  Was there any doubt? Eliza Jane couldn’t imagine too many tall, black-haired unaccompanied women wandered around Gardiner. “Yes?”

  “My name is Beth Ann Barnes.” Even the soft, southern and utterly feminine drawl didn’t keep Eliza Jane’s skin from tightening up when she recognized the last name. The girl continued on, confirming her fears. “I’m Lucy Barnes’s daughter.”

  Such a sweet, innocent appearing child had come from that fearsome shrew? Whatever the girl wanted, she apparently had no intention of moving until she’d said her piece. “What can I do for you, Miss Barnes?”

  “Call me Beth Ann, please. And I need some advice about…a matter of the heart.”

  Eliza Jane managed to refrain from slapping herself in the forehead, but just barely. This couldn’t be happening to her. “Beth Ann, I don’t think—”

  “My ma wants me to marry Sheriff Caldwell. Has her sights set on that something fierce. But I’m in love with Joey.”

  Eliza Jane mentally ran through the list of people she’d met, but came up empty. “Who is Joey?”

  “Joey Keezer,” Beth Ann answered in a loud whisper. “He rides for a ranch not far from here. But Ma says he’s no kind of husband for a girl like me and that I’ll marry the sheriff just as soon as she turns his mind to it.”