by Lisa Plumley
“I’m not angry. I—” Another thought struck Grace. “Is this why you refused me the editorship of the newspaper?” she asked, distraught. “Because you wanted me to be matched instead?”
“No. Not at all.” As though that were patently obvious, her papa patted her arm. “I did that because the Pioneer Press really did require an experienced editor. And because you never truly wanted to have that job yourself.”
“Papa! Anything an experienced man can do, I can do.”
“That’s true.” Blithely, he crunched more toast. “But you didn’t want to be editor. You wanted me to be proud of you.”
She shook her head. “They were the same thing.”
“They were not.” His smile was sunny—and understanding. “It’s not what you do that makes me proud, Grace. It’s who you are, both inside and out. So long as you are yourself—truly yourself—I’m beyond proud of you. Always and forever.”
Grace’s eyes filled with tears. She simply couldn’t help it. “You are? You’re proud of me?”
“Endlessly proud,” her papa assured her. His startled gaze met hers. “You didn’t realize that already?”
Grace could not speak. She felt too astonished.
“Well. All talk of pride aside,” Papa blustered, “I still insist you are doing yourself a disservice by giving up on love so easily. Poor Mr. Murphy is bereft, you know.”
And with that reminder—and an extra helping of toast with jam—Grace knew exactly what her next mission had to be.
Chapter Eighteen
With a mixture of pride and dismay, Jack gazed at his saloon’s packed tables and full bar. Men stood between both, hefting whiskeys or lagers, and they lingered at the billiard tables, too. Even the skinniest drinker in Morrow Creek could not have found room to bend an elbow at his place today.
“It looks as if Heddy Neibermayer is good for business,” Marcus observed, setting down his sarsaparilla. “There’s hardly a man in town who isn’t hiding out in here.”
“Hiding out? Pshaw.” With a blustery exhalation, Daniel waved to a friend in the crowd. His brawny reach almost upended a nearby cowboy. “There’s not a man alive who’s afraid of a bunch of tiny little women. Not me, that’s for sure.”
Jack smiled. “I’ll be certain to let Sarah know that.”
Daniel’s horrified look made him laugh.
“You can’t.” Marcus shrugged. “Sarah’s getting ready for that closing rally today, just like Molly is.”
The rally. Jack knew Grace would be there, too. But after…
“There won’t be any livin’ with ’em,” opined a banker who stood within spitting distance, rolling his eyes, “now that those suffragettes have all our women het up over ‘equality.’”
“A man just can’t reason with them,” said another. “Last night, my wife made me wash my own dinner dishes! Said I ate the blasted food happily enough, and I might as well wash up, too.”
The men beside him grumbled. More grousing was heard.
“Ah, but the ladies at Miss Adelaide’s place have got them corsets you made now, Murphy,” a miner volunteered with an eager grin. “The sight of them ’most makes it all worthwhile.”
“That’s for certain!” O’Neil raised his mescal.
“Three cheers for Murphy’s underwear!” someone yelled.
Bedlam erupted. Men from every side of the saloon hoisted their drinks, sloshing ale and tequila with good-natured yells.
All was forgiven, it seemed to Jack—secret past and all. At the realization, a curious sense of relief struck him. Even Jedediah Hofer—recently paid a bonus for his kind business terms—genially raised a glass in salute.
Daniel joined in. Then, seeing his friends watching, he lowered his drink. He winked. “There’s something special about those unmentionables, all right.”
“So, Murphy.” Marcus addressed Jack with an interested gleam in his eyes. “I guess you’ve gone from seamstress to savior in a matter of days. And you’ve given every man in town a sanctuary to hide from the suffragettes in, too.” His satisfied smile flashed. “How does it feel to turn from sissy to hero?”
Jack scowled. “Shut up and drink, Copeland. Else I’m giving your place to someone who spends more money.”
“I want to know, too,” Daniel butted in, edging closer. “What miracle are you going to work next, Professor?”
Professor. The designation had rapidly become his nickname. Jack decided he didn’t mind the sound of it so very much after all. He spread his hands along the bar. “Well, as soon as Harry gets here, I’ve got something special in mind.”
“Something to do with Grace,” Marcus crowed. “I knew it!”
“I didn’t say that,” Jack countered—not entirely convincingly, he felt sure. “I didn’t say a thing about Grace.”
But she had been all he’d thought about for days.
“We figured you’d come round eventually.” Daniel whacked the bar, making drinks totter. “Just like us. If two of us are going to be hog-tied to uppity Crabtree women, we might as well all three of us be.”
“Damned straight.” Marcus took a celebratory sarsaparilla swig. “What’s your plan?” he asked, always eager for strategy.
“Tell us,” Daniel urged. “You’re sure to need our advice.”
Jack rolled his eyes, then slapped down his bar cloth.
“It’s true. You will need help.” Marcus offered a solemn look, untroubled by the raucous saloongoers all around him. “You shouldn’t go off half-cocked, especially with Heddy Neibermayer and her retinue in town. Their opinions matter to Grace.”
“She’s likely to turn you down flat just to save face,” Daniel opined. He caught Jack’s aggrieved look and raised his hands in apology. “Can’t argue with a woman. The last thing Grace Crabtree is going to do is accept your proposal—”
“Who says I’m going to propose to her?” Jack protested, appalled to be caught in such a sentimental wallow.
“—with a whole caboodle of lady reformers around.”
Wisely, Marcus nodded. “Daniel is right. Wait till Grace is alone, Jack. You’ll have your best chance with her then.”
“You two are daft. Grace isn’t like that,” Jack disagreed. But as he considered matters further, the certainty he’d awakened with this morning—the certainty engendered by his visit with Adam Crabtree and his own damnable loneliness—slowly seeped away. Jack felt the blood drain from his face. “Although she does put a lot of store in what Humorless Heddy says….”
Alarmed for certain now, he gave Daniel and Marcus a wide-eyed look. They nodded somberly. “You don’t get many chances with women. They’re funny that way,” Daniel said. “Tetchy.”
The cowboy leaned in. “All I can say is, don’t wear your trail boots with cow patties on ’em.” He gave a sage wink.
Fraught with uncertainty, Jack stared back. But before he could so much as answer the cowboy, a strange sound reached him from outside. It sounded like many feet tramping in the street. Like chanting and rabble-rousing and marching. Like trouble.
He glanced to the doorway and glimpsed dust rising.
“Damnation. Is there a protest outside my saloon?”
His patrons heard it, too. One by one, they quit laughing and drinking and clanking billiards. The faro table fell silent. The dice stopped clattering. Whiskeys went slack in several hands as every head turned to the saloon’s entryway.
He’d waited too long, Jack realized. Grace had gotten fed up and hurt and knee-deep in frustration and had taken out her dissatisfaction the best way she knew how. By leading a whole cadre of uppity women against his saloon. Or him. Or both.
She probably meant to shutter him for good, he realized, with an entire contingent of troublesome females at her command.
Swallowing hard, Jack steeled his courage. He fisted his hands. Then he headed for his saloon doors, ready to defend everything that truly mattered.
It would not be easy, he reasoned as he heard the chanting gr
ow louder. It would not be pretty, nor done the fancy way he’d hoped. But it would be done, and that was all that counted in the end.
With the saloon hushed behind him, Jack straightened his shoulders. Outside, all was in a ruckus. Inside, everyone held their whiskey-soaked breaths, waiting as he crossed the floor.
He pushed open the doors. Every chair scraped as men rushed to follow him, crowding behind in a tobacco-stinking clump.
Jack stepped onto the stoop. Sunlight blinded him. He shielded his eyes, ready to confront the trouble head-on.
It was even worse than he’d thought. Women crowded every inch in front of his saloon. More marched from either side, some ladies he recognized and some he didn’t—doubtless Heddy’s reformers. Many of Morrow Creek’s finest women had come, too.
In astonishment, Jack gaped at the placards they wore, the signs they held aloft. He spied a pair of dance-hall girls from the Excelsior Performing Troupe, then a lady juggler, then his four sisters, gaily waving from behind their banner.
Grace stepped from among the crowd, and the sight of her made his breath stop. Dressed in her usual commonsense garb, her hair up high, she held a gaudy sign firmly in hand. It did not—as Jack had feared—proclaim his uselessness to the entire world.
Instead, in enormous letters, it read…
GRACE CRABTREE LOVES JACK MURPHY.
Disbelieving, he blinked. Grace’s sign remained, held in a grip as steadfast as the gaze she fixed him with next. Her face flushed with love and trust and truthfulness, and Jack felt humbled by the realization of what he was seeing.
Grace. Beautiful, proud, maddening Grace. His Grace. If she would dare to declare her feelings this way, in front of her suffragette idol and all her friends—in front of his sisters and hers—then surely there was a chance she meant it.
GRACE CRABTREE LOVES JACK MURPHY.
Every sign read the same, Jack realized in a daze. Somehow, Grace had marshaled all her reformer friends, all the members of her clubs and teams, nearly every female in town, just to say…
GRACE CRABTREE LOVES JACK MURPHY.
“I reckon she means it,” Daniel said from behind him.
“What are you waiting for?” Marcus poked him. “Go!”
The damned fools sounded nearly as choked up as Jack felt. Any minute now, they’d start blubbering. So would he. Casting them a helpless look, Jack stepped forward.
Grace met him halfway, her eager strides biting through the dusty street. Her gaze never left his. Jack welcomed the telling thump of her man-shoes all the same. He grasped her free hand, and knew that touching her again was all he’d wanted.
“I’m sorry, Jack.” The words came in a rush, husky and heartfelt. “I’m sorry I hurt you, sorry I doubted you—sorry I didn’t make sure to stand by you when you needed me most.”
He could only gaze at her, awestruck, taking in the beloved angles of her face, the familiar sprinkle of freckles on her nose, the telltale and hopelessly endearing tilt of her chin. Grace meant what she said. She meant it, and because of that, Jack knew he couldn’t wait any longer.
“Grace, listen—”
“Please say you’ll accept my apology,” she hurried on, giving his hand an impassioned squeeze. Her homemade sign wobbled, then straightened against the vivid sky. “Please say you’ll give me another try, Jack. If I have to ask you every day, you know I will. You know I possess the fortitude, when I really, truly want something, to try and try—”
“Grace.” Jack shook his head. “You’re not—”
“I’ve always said that anything worth having is worth fighting for. Haven’t I?” Her gaze beseeched him. Her speech rambled on, scarcely leaving a word edgewise for Jack. “You are worth having, and so is the love we shared. I won’t give up! I know now—thanks to my sisters and yours, thanks to Papa and my mother—that the important thing is being who we are. I couldn’t improve on you if I tried, Jack. I thought I was, only…only all I was really doing is loving you. Just as you are.”
He stood there, buffeted by her rush of words, waiting for Grace to say her piece. It was important that she speak freely, Jack told himself, before he turned loose all the explanations, the apologies, he held so tightly inside him. Grace needed to know he understood—and forgave. Wholly.
Instead Grace flung her sign-holding arm outward. “Say something!” she demanded, tears in her eyes. “Grunt at least!”
The women nearby pressed nearer. The men inside did, too.
But somehow Jack couldn’t do a thing but smile. His heart simply felt that full. So he contented himself with squeezing her hand once more, loving her courage and strength. “Grace—”
“I know we still have problems to overcome,” Grace rushed onward, jittery even in her clodhopper shoes. The pink in her cheeks heightened further. “They can’t all be shoehorned away, all neat and tidy just because we say so. But I know we can do it, Jack! If you’ll only forgive me, and—”
“I forgive you. Grace.” Happiness burbled up and threatened to cut off his words. Determined, he kept on. “I’m sorry, too. Sorry I didn’t tell you everything. Please—” His voice broke, causing him to try again. “Say you forgive me.”
Her eyes widened. “Oh, Jack! Oh course I forgive you!”
“Because if you do,” he continued doggedly, “I feel certain there’s no problem too big for us to tackle together.”
“Do you mean that? Do you?” Grace pushed even nearer, her sign now threatening to conk him on the noggin. At his nod, her relief was evident. “Because there’s another matter we should discuss straightaway, and I know I can’t wait, because I love you so much, and I’ve already wasted so much time, and as often as a certain saloonkeeper—”
The women behind her beamed. A few lofted their signs.
“—has been pestering me to sample the ‘glories’ of marriage, I’ve decided there’s only one sure way to—”
Damnation, Jack realized. He was about to have his marriage proposal wrestled right out from beneath him. His freethinking reformer of a woman was about to lead his proposal herself.
“Stop.” Jack could scarcely form the word, so overwhelmed did he feel in that moment, with his palms sweating and his head swimming and his heart pounding and nearly all of Morrow Creek scrutinizing his every move. “Just wait a minute.”
Grace’s eyes widened. Biting her lip, she waited.
“I may not be the roughest man in the territory,” Jack said. “I may not be the most rugged either. But I do know that I love you, Grace. And I won’t have my marriage proposal sneaked out from under me.”
He tried to muster a fierce look—and knew he only succeeded in squeezing her hand still harder. Love caught his breath and made his heart hammer, and there was only one way to move forward. Still holding her hand, Jack dropped to one knee.
Grace gasped, her eyes shimmering with new tears.
“That is why,” Jack told her hoarsely, “you will stand silent while I tell you I love you. I love you, Grace, with all my heart and soul and every single breath I’ll take.”
Women nearby swooned. Grace only nodded.
“And that is why,” he continued, “you will wait patiently while I explain all the ways I missed you, and plan never to miss you again for as long as I live. Without you,” Jack said in plain truth, “I feel only half a man, needing all the time.”
This time, his saloon patrons sighed, the sound deep and soulful. A few men sniffled. But Grace only nodded.
“And that is why,” Jack said finally, as sternly as he could, “you will nod agreeably when I say that you must marry me soon, before I lose all hope of happiness altogether.”
Grace nodded with a vigor that astonished everyone. The tears in her eyes overflowed, dampening her cheeks, but she looked beautiful to Jack all the same.
“It’s only with you,” he said, his knee fixed in the dusty street, “that I am truly myself, Grace. I was a fool not to realize it before. I am a saloonkeeper and an inventor, a man who loves good
lager and science alike. Thanks to you, I’m whole again. And I don’t want another day without you by my side.”
Hastily, Grace shoved her sign away. As befit any proper lady suffragist, she fell to her knees right beside him in the street, then flung her arms around him. “I’ll marry you, Jack. I could not possibly love you more. Yes,” she said urgently, holding his face in both hands. “Yes, yes, yes!”
Overcome with joy, Jack drew her close and kissed her. Rowdy applause filled the saloon behind them. Raucous feminine cheering overflowed the street. But all Jack’s thoughts were for Grace…for the woman in his arms and in his heart.
Hardly able to keep from bawling himself, Jack ended their kiss. He drew back and regarded Grace with all the gratitude of a man who’d nearly lost everything—but had somehow found it again. He pressed his forehead to hers, gazing into her eyes.
“Thank you,” he whispered. “For not giving up. For loving me still. Most of all…for being yourself.”
“Thank you.” Grace grinned. “For loving me anyway.”
They stood, laughing, Grace wiping away happy tears. Jack clasped her hand and raised their joined arms aloft.
“Who wants to go to a wedding?” he yelled.
The whole assembly cheered, Heddy Neibermayer and all. Men surged forward to offer congratulations, sham commiseration and hearty slaps on the back. Women rushed closer, aflutter with talk of wedding planning and flowers and dresses.
Grace’s whole face shone as she turned to Jack. “See? Isn’t this marvelous? With all this help and a bit of orderly cooperation—”
“Courtesy of you, I’m sure.” Jack smiled.
“We ought to have no trouble at all with planning a wedding, bringing our families together, finding a way to share our building space and everything else.”
Gladly, he held her close. “Well…I didn’t want to say so before,” he admitted, spying his sisters, “but we might have an easier time of that last than we thought. It seems I’m quite a bit wealthier than I planned on, thanks to a certain quartet of meddlesome women who’ve sold my designs far and wide.”
