But with that wide-hatted cowboy riding into her yard right this moment, doubtless on Patty Mayfield’s business, how was she to keep clear of the Bradshaw gossips? Her mule brayed a welcome, and his horse neighed in response, and she knew that in a moment he’d be knocking at her door, peering in her window again perhaps, trying to peep through the gauzy white curtains to see whether or not she was lying dead atop her bed sheets as he’d claimed to be doing that first meeting.
He only knocked this time. Little Edward, sitting upon the floor battering two smooth sticks together, looked up with wide-eyed interest. The door did not receive knocks, as a general rule, unless his soft-spoken, pale-haired playmate had arrived. He hoped very much that it was her. She had different names for things than his mother. It was so interesting to him.
His mother flung open the door, which creaked in protest on poorly-hung hinges, and he saw the man in the sand-colored hat who had caused so much excitement a few weeks before. Little Edward clapped with appreciation.
“I see you are back again,” Cherry said resignedly, instead of greeting him, and the cowboy lifted his eyebrows and twisted his mouth in a sort of grimace which she supposed was meant to be a smile.
“Patty Mayfield sent me up to make sure you hadn’t died of snakebite and forgot to come to her party,” he said gruffly. “She’s mighty worried about you. Said she knew you wouldn’t just skip a party bein’ held in your honor and all. Says you English have got too much honor for that.” He eyed her frankly, noticing the fabric of her dress was fresh and clean, and the crooked collar was cut square and rather low, giving him a glimpse of more bosom than these upright prairie wives tended to show. “I reckon she was right, and you was just gettin’ ready to come on down, but she thought I better check on you anyways. So here I am.”
“Here you are,” Cherry agreed. She ran her hands along the wide lace collar of her new dress. It was too low, she could tell by his expression. Too high for Paris, too low for Bradshaw, too out-of-fashion to matter, she supposed. “How nice of you to agree to check on me,” she said suddenly, making up her mind. She would have to go, or the whispers would be worse than if she had simply shown up and told every man, woman, and child that she was a disgraced unwed mother who had been cast out of her last living relative’s home. She wondered that she hadn’t realized that before. She had been simply courting rumors, keeping to herself like this. The cowboy’s presence, seeming as dark and strong and large as a horse looming there in her doorway, was a reminder of the real world that was out there beyond her bitter memories and her lost love. There were people out there that she would have to deal with, do business with, exchange idle conversation on the street with, for the rest of her life, if she was truly going to make Bradshaw her home, and her son’s home. And that was her plan, after all. “Will you escort me to the party, then?” She forced herself to smile. “Mr.—?”
“Just call me Jared,” he said. “Everyone’d think it was queer if you didn’t.”
“Jared,” she murmured, uncertainly, and as his storm-blue eyes seemed to darken and fasten upon her own, she had to resist the urge to step back from his suddenly predatory gaze. More than ever, she was aware of his looming size in the crooked little doorway of her shanty, of how much larger and stronger he was compared to her dainty lines. She felt her heart quicken, a little stirring of what could only be named lust. Just looking for someone to take the reins for you, she told herself chidingly. Those days are long gone. She had to manage for herself now. Edward was gone, and how could she ever love another? She forced herself to swallow, look away, find her tongue. “I’ll saddle my mule,” she said, and slipped past him, careful to touch neither the doorframe or the cloth of his plaid shirt, towards the lean-to.
CHAPTER FIVE
He felt her eyes on his back all the way down to Bradshaw, but he never turned around. She had explained that she did not wish to take the baby into town, for her own inscrutable reasons, and so she insisted on a slight detour as the little boy had been deposited at the Jorgenson’s, taken into the smiling youngest daughter’s adoring hands. Without the baby, the trip was silent, even the footfalls of the animals muffled by the deep sod they trod upon. Jared had grown into a silent man, and so he shouldn’t have felt discomfited by the lack of conversation… but he did.
The fact was, he was finding himself far too interested in this little hellion from England, this genuine lady with her confused accent and her foolish sidesaddle and her quick temper and her astonishing eyes. She didn’t even look like the women he was used to. Her dress was simple but in a pattern that he had not seen before, with too much skirt and not enough bodice, and the curving seams somehow accentuated her beautiful bosom. When he saw the train of it flowing down from the sidesaddle after he had assisted her in mounting the mule — she had put her hands to the saddle and lifted one leg with the clear expectation that he would hoist her up, with an imperiousness that he found galling and titillating all at once — he understood the cleverness of the cut: the plain dresses of the homesteader’s wives here could never have produced that sensual fall of fabric which exaggerated her every curve. And damn, the woman had curves! Hope had been slim, even with the baby on the way she had been a very thin slip of a girl; Jared used to handle her delicately, for fear he’d bruise her, or break her plumb in half. The English lady, though dainty enough, was endowed with luscious swells in all the right places. He reckoned he could handle her roughly and she’d ask for more… he swallowed, and tried to think of something else. Sitting in a saddle was no place for having thoughts like that.
But he couldn’t think of anything else. The English lady… Jared suddenly realized that neither he nor anyone else seemed to know her name. This seemed like an awkwardness that was going to come to a head very quickly. He wondered if she had purposely withheld the information, and how on earth it was going to be handled when he presented her to Patty Mayfield at last. Patty would want to introduce her to everyone, all of Bradshaw, as the guest of honor, and how could she do things properly if the woman didn’t have a name, for gosh sakes? Patty was going to be embarrassed, but Jared was more worried over how she’d fret at him for not finding out the lady’s name on the ride back.
He supposed he could just ask her.
Why not? He could rein back a little and ride next to her. The track was wide enough for a hay wagon; there was no reason why he was still riding ahead of her mule, after all.
He was being downright unfriendly by not riding beside her, in fact, name dilemma or no name dilemma.
Ungentlemanly, really. And these high-class ladies, they set such store by men being gentlemanly. Wouldn’t want her to be disappointed in his behavior. She might think he disliked her.
And… he didn’t dislike her. After all. The thought surprised him, because he had been nurturing a very particular and satisfying dislike of that woman, following what had been, of course, a complete over-reaction on her part after he had done the only reasonable thing a frontiersman could do, in checking to make sure that she hadn’t died alone, far from help or friend, and it wasn’t at all his fault that he’d seen her breast, she should have covered it up, that breast of hers, that round, lovely, perfectly-sized breast, that his hand could cup and fit perfectly into his grasp, so that he could make her gasp with surprise and pleasure when he gently, gently squeezed…
Jared shook his head, rapidly, like the roan shaking a fly from a shaggy ear, and let out the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding with a great huff. From behind him, her voice spoke up, gently mocking. “Is being my escort such a task to you?”
That was it, then. A fair excuse. He couldn’t simply ignore her after she’d spoken to him, and he’d have to ride next to her in order to reply to her. Jared reined back suddenly and pushed his right leg against the roan’s ribs; the horse moved to the left to make way for the lady’s mule to come up beside him.
She smiled at him as they were at last abreast of one another. Her smile was beautiful,
he thought, dazzled. It made her entire face so bright and open and charming, quite the opposite of her tightly controlled words and her previous tendency to fly into a rage and hit him. He smiled back, although he hadn’t meant to, and afterwards puzzled over the un-asked-for reaction. He wasn’t a demonstrative man.
“You’re no task,” he said, and was surprised by the husky rasp in his voice. He looked away, fixing his gaze on the prairie horizon. Bradshaw would appear over the next rise, he knew, and then disappear again, on and on for another mile until, very suddenly, they were amidst the color and revelry of Patty Mayfield’s party, a rainbow on the prairie. “My pleasure to escort such a fine lady to her own party.”
“You are too kind,” she replied formally, and he was disappointed that her tone had not remained light. A distance seemed to open between them, although their horses continued abreast. “It has been a very long time since I have been to a party,” she went on. “I must admit, it would have felt odd to arrive on my own. Where I come from, such a thing would look very odd. I would have had to cry off.”
“Sounds like you come from someplace pretty stuck up,” Jared remarked.
The lady clicked her tongue in annoyance and he sighed. Wrong thing to say. “Not stuck up,” she corrected him firmly. “We have a way of doing things. But…” she paused, looked around here in a measuring sort of way, and seemed to let herself slump in the saddle a little, as if suddenly realizing that she was not being watched by a thousand judging eyes. “It’s different here. It’s fresher, newer, you have to do things differently just to survive. I could never have lived alone there, you see. Without a chaperone? Oh no! But here, no one thinks anything of it at all.”
“It’s better here,” Jared suggested. “Than back East, or over there.”
“It is different,” she repeated. “I do not know if it is better. But,” she brightened a little, “Perhaps that is because I have kept too much to myself. It does not do to shut oneself up! I should have met the rest of the people here months ago.”
“They’re good people. Might not be what you’re used to, but plainsfolk are tough, and the city folk that just arrived, well, they have to toughen up real quick. I reckon you’ll need some help before winter sets in, so you best make the acquaintance of the rest of the county or you’ll be high and dry when you need someone.”
She frowned. He bit his tongue in consternation. He’d probably just offended her. Miss High and Mighty was touchy. “I can assure you that I am plenty tough, sir.”
“Call me Jared.”
“I have done more than ornament drawing rooms and play the pianoforte.”
“I’m sure you have.”
“I have been a farmer since I was just a little girl learning at my father’s feet!” She seemed to grow more upset about things, instead of less, he noticed. “I used to train horses, you know, good horses, and I hunted with the most daring men in England. I am an sportswoman, sir, as well as a farmer. I am quite the equal of the task I have set myself. You needn’t worry about me.”
“Yes ma’am,” Jared would have tipped his hat, but she wasn’t looking. Miss High and Mighty was fuming, lips pursed, chin lifted so high he thought if it came to rain she’d surely drown. She sure was hot-tempered. Give her one tiny nudge, and she was off at a full gallop. He felt kind of sorry for the people of Bradshaw. They didn’t know what was about to hit them. This little tornado floated in like a cottony summer cloud and then just started knocking over buildings.
“I won’t be talked down to,” she fumed, the genuine lady in the fancy-cut faded gown, in the gleaming side-saddle strapped on the questionably conformed mule, and he thought he’d never seen anyone look so ridiculous and unsuited for ranch life in all his days, and he’d seen a lot of city slickers in shiny suits and carrying cardboard suitcases stumble down the steps of the train station and promptly fall face-first in the mud. And she wasn’t through. “I cannot abide being spoken to as if I am a child. Pray do not lump me in with these hapless city folk, sir, and you may warn the rest of your country-men to do the same. I am every bit as able to make a living for myself out here as you.”
He sighed and agreed with her, again, but she had already somehow slowed her mule, imperceptibly, without hauling back on the reins like most women would have done, mashing the sides of the mule’s mouth with the steel bit, but with a gentle squeezing of the fingers, and in doing so let the ungainly animal slip his big nose behind his little roan’s striped red-and-white tail, and the conversation was at an end. Jared decided that silence was probably just as well; she was all keyed up about meeting her neighbors, that was all, and it had been kind of mean of him to pick a fight with her the way he had. Of course she didn’t want to look like a soft new arrival in front of everyone like that! Why had he reminded her of that? He was going to have to be more considerate. Women’s feelings were so easily hurt, and their pride was so easily wounded. It was nice, really, how men weren’t like that. You could say anything to another man and he’d just laugh it off.
In the meantime, they had another twenty minutes of riding, and he was regretful that she hadn’t ridden on ahead of him, so that he could watch the graceful sway of her body in that preposterous saddle.
***
She stalked away from him the moment her mule had been secured, leaving him fumbling to attach the reins to the hitching post as he stared after her departing back. He swallowed hard, foolishly mesmerized by the swinging of her hips, and swore as he dropped one of the split reins in the dust at his feet. The roan looked at him curiously, being accustomed to a certain level of professionalism in his handling, but Jared just shook his head and continued to watch the disdainful woman. Those extra folds and drapes of cloth resembled nothing so much as an angry mare switching her tail to display her simmering resentment. Jared had never been much good with mares, and he knew it. They were too quirky, too uppity, too quick to temper and hard to predict. Didn’t mean he didn’t want this one, though. He felt a stirring of lust just watching those swaying hindquarters. Sometimes you just have to have the toughest horse in the corral. Sometimes, nothing else will do.
“Mind your manners,” he instructed the roan as he finished tugging the knot tight. The horse ignored him and immediately reached out with yellow teeth for a hunk of wood from the post. Jared only sighed. No one listened to him these days. It was nearly enough to send a man on that cattle drive Matt had been yammering about.
He went through the little side-yard between the general store (MAYFIELD’S CENTRAL EMPORIUM AND HARDWARE, the gilt letters announced from the front windows) and the Mayfield’s tidy two-story house, the nicest in town after Miss Rose’s palatial manse, past the sour smelling patch of weeds next to the back door where Mrs. Mayfield emptied the dishpan three times a day, past the stable where the Mayfield Morgans grandly crunched at their hay, and reflected ruefully that he was in the wrong business. He had some money put away (he’d once had quite a lot) but leading cattle drives had never landed him the kind of wealth that the Mayfields were clearly enjoying, and farming a homestead hadn’t shown itself to be much of an improvement.
“Should’ve been a shopkeeper,” he muttered to the Mayfield Morgans as they poked their shapely heads over their stall doors and regarded him curiously through thick forelocks. But then again, he never was happy stuck indoors for a long while. Standing behind a shop counter day in and day out, rainy days and fine, would have been a kind of hell. Wintertime, now, that about drove him to distraction. The thought of wintering in Galveston revisited him then. But he couldn’t see living in the same town as Hope and her family. Hope and her husband. Hope.
Beyond the Mayfield barn, the prairie stretched out again, jungle green and endless as the sea. Bradshaw was a one-street town yet, and one side looked exactly like the other. Except today, with the color and music and delicious smells of Patty Mayfield’s handiwork dotting the grass and the little stand of cottonwoods that stood knotted together along Bradshaw Creek. He looked for Miss H
igh and Mighty, for the excess of fabric and frippery and the bird feather curling from her silly bonnet, but she had disappeared. There was a little throng gathering near the cottonwoods, and he supposed that was where she had gone, to stand in state and be gaped at by the local yokels. He thought of that tight-lipped accent speaking the homesteaders’ names: Patty, Sven, Johnny, Billy, Suzie, and then he realized, with a ridiculous sense of disappointment, that she had outright refused to speak his Christian name on the ride over. Just that one time, when he’d told her, “Call me Jared,” and she had repeated it so softly…
He wanted to hear her say it again. He needed to hear her say it again. Maybe over and over. Maybe moan it. Maybe scream it.
And then he’d whisper her name against her throat, breathing the sound of it so that her skin trembled beneath him…
And that was when Jared realized that he still didn’t know her name.
CHAPTER SIX
Well, it wasn’t the worst decision she’d ever made, coming to the party. Cherry was feeling quite adored at the moment, and after all the time she had been spending alone, she couldn’t help but enjoy the sensation of being the center of attention. She might never have been the belle of the ball in London, but she had received her share of flattery and gallantry. The rough-hewn citizens of Bradshaw weren’t exactly what she had known before, but still, they were lovely to her.
The well-wishers who had gathered around her were darling folk, really, with their sweet country accents and their funny rustic ways. More than one of the ladies had pressed cloth-wrapped bundles into her hands, full of freshly-baked bread or cookies, and Cherry accepted the parcels, one after another, with promises to return the dish towels or the bandanas or the burlap sacks, and smiling at reassurances that she needn’t bother, she was sure to pass along the favor one day, wasn’t she?
The Genuine Lady (Heroines on Horseback) Page 5
