That was just as well. Didn’t make no sense to him, wouldn’t make no sense to her neither. Better he just kept his own crazy to himself.
Jared left the cabin door open most nights he stayed on the claim, sometimes all night long, so that he could feel the soft breeze, see the stars. He hated feeling caged up in the darkness of a room, and he reckoned Blue, the Catahoula hound he’d brought back from one of his trips south, would warn him if anything dangerous and hungry came wandering up to the homestead in the night. The night sounds, the night air, the night sky, reminded him of nights out on the cattle drive. And he was suddenly missing those nights.
Fact was, he was seriously reconsidering his decision to hold a claim and be a farmer. It was a lonely life. Jared had thought he’d wanted to be left alone, thought he’d rather crawl away from the world and lick his wounds for the rest of his days. He’d gone on with the cattle, trying new trails, riding east and west and southwest, everywhere but the trail that would lead him straight down to Galveston. It had done nothing for him, the drives. He’d gone to Hope for so long. He’d ridden with her in his thoughts, seeing her face in the sky as he lay near the dying fire at night. He’d decided he’d needed a change.
The claim on the outside of Bradshaw was his change, and he’d decided to stick close to home, concentrate on his fences and his buildings and his plans for the farm, but after a few months, he’d emerged, gone back down to the Professor’s to have a drink with Matt, and before he knew it he was part of Bradshaw life, known by everyone, even making a few friends, getting used to being around people again.
And that was he noticed that the claim was a lonely place for a single man. And since there wasn’t going to be a woman to keep him company, well, it was time to make other plans before the winter set in and he went plumb crazy.
The drive and a ride down to Texas was the most likely solution. Back to cattle drives, back to wintering someplace where it didn’t snow and lock a man up in his cabin for months on end. Well, it was what a man knew. But now Matt was in love with that Patty Mayfield. He’d seen them when he was riding out of town, hand in hand while the Mayfield Morgans looked over their stall doors and begged for corn. He’d seen what was coming next.
And that left Jared to go to Texas alone. He wasn’t sure he could face that. He needed a buddy to keep him straight in Galveston, or he’d do something foolish, like go looking for Hope so he could gaze at her lovely face and ask her what he’d done wrong, why he wasn’t good enough for her. He knew what Matt would say, that he could never have had enough dollars or acres or head of cattle to keep Hope interested, but he’d never really believed that. Hope had loved him. He must have done something wrong, to drive her away like that, to a life with another man. It must have been him. Must have been.
The moon began sliding up from the prairie, a golden coin in the dark blue sky, and Jared watched it with detachment. It was rising over the Englishwoman’s claim, he thought, the liquor making him fanciful, it was rising over Miss High and Mighty, and would it meet her muster? Or would she shake her head, say not good enough, don’t come back around here, we had better moons in England, better men than you. . .
He’d changed moon to men, and never noticed the difference.
He’d seen her today, beautiful and flushed from the sun, her skin slowly growing more tan despite her bonnet. It was the first he’d seen her since Patty Mayfield’s party, two weeks gone. Since he’d insulted her pride, said she was weak. She didn’t like him, anyway, that Miss High and Mighty. Didn’t like no one but herself. And that baby. She loved that baby to distraction. He could tell in the way she had been curled around him, sleeping as close as a lover that first time he’d happened upon them, her breast bared from the cheap cotton of her dress, her lips slightly parted as she breathed, her lashes dark upon her cheeks…
He pushed the chair onto its back two legs and balanced it there, one leg against the doorframe, and tried to gather his thoughts, tried to push them away from the Englishwoman’s rich, round breast. But his mind was stubborn; it had locked on to the image and it just wouldn’t let go.
He let it wander around the rest of her body, let it unbutton her dress and start revealing the rest of those white curves. The baby had conveniently disappeared; if someone had asked he’d have guessed they put it in a crib somewhere, preferably in the barn, where it wouldn’t waken from their groans and moans.
Or squeals. He wondered what sort of noise a proper Englishwoman would make in bed. Would she stay prim and proper, or would she lose her stiff inhibitions and just go wild?
His hand strayed towards the buttons of his pants, started to fiddle with them.
And then Blue started barking wildly, somewhere just over the first round hillock to the east, his sharp barks shifting into baying howls.
Something was out there. He reached for his gun reflexively, letting the chair legs slam down to the floor again as he jumped up and went out the open door.
***
She was weeping by the time she had climbed the last hill, disgusted with herself even as the tears welled out of her eyes and down her dirty cheeks. She wasn’t a coward, she wasn’t, but this was too much, this was more than she could bear, and she wanted with all her heart to be back in Beechfields, the real Beechfields, not this dull dry stretch of grass and bad-land she was pretending was Beechfields. She wanted to be in her room, curled up under a feather coverlet with the beech trees tapping on her windows with their gentle fingers. She wanted to know that her father was down the hall in his study, nodding over another book, the candle guttering in that little draught from the crooked window they had never bothered to have sealed up. She wanted to feel safe again. And that was what sent her, on foot, Little Edward strapped to her back in a shawl like an Indian papoose, across the moonlit prairie towards Jared Reese.
She didn’t know who was in the barn, or what they had wanted. She was a light sleeper, or she might not have been warned of the trespassers at all. She had just heard the mule neigh, and heard an answering neigh, and then a hushed curse. She had gone to the window, instantly wide awake, and seen the shaded lantern casting pale light upon the grass across the yard, swinging a glowing path towards the lean-to barn where the mule and the cow were shut up.
She didn’t cry out a warning, or reach for the shot-gun she barely trusted herself to shoot. She didn’t wait to find out what they wanted, if they were friend or foe, if they were lost travelers or claim jumpers. She didn’t really need to, did she? The shaded lantern, the beeline for the barn — they were thieves, murderers, perhaps worse, and if the mule was lost to her, then she would slip away into the hills like a thief herself, and make for the nearest neighbor that she had.
Jared.
She hadn’t dared to hope that Little Edward would be silent; she had swaddled him like an infant and pressed the linen close against his lips, parted in sleep, half frantic that she would smother him but just as terrified he would awaken, cry out, and alert the villains to her presence. But Little Edward, ever like his father, was a heavy sleeper; he submitted to the wraps and the shawl sling without slipping from his dreams, and Cherry mouthed a silent prayer of thanks for the well-greased door hinges as she stole from the shanty and moved in the shadows of the little house, creeping in the scant darkness while the men, blinded to the darkness outside by their own lantern, went on with their nefarious activities in the barn. She supposed she’d never see her mule again. She wasn’t particularly attached to the cow, but Lancelot had been a darling mule, and she was sad to think of him being led away, lead-rope tied to the saddle of one of the thieves.
By the time she had reached Jared’s homestead, a twinkle of golden light upon the silver ocean of the moonlit prairie, she had ceased to mourn for her mule alone, and was lost in sorrow for her homestead. It would be set alight, she supposed, burned to the ground, after every small token she owned had been taken. They wouldn’t have found her little private bank of coins and notes unless they were very c
lever; the compartment in the iron cookstove’s underneath was immensely cunning, and she thought it unlikely that thieves on horseback would hitch up the wagon and attempt to steal a great weight like an iron stove. She imagined they would have to go back, kick around the ashes a bit to see what was left, dig out the stove from beneath the charred rubble that had been her shanty, her home, her Beechfields, and pry out the money-box. At least she would still have her savings. But for what? To start again?
She thought of the shanty she had built with her own hands, nail by bent nail, smashed fingers sucked in her mouth regardless of the dirt, and the tears came pouring away freshly. Charlotte Beacham had been hounded from London a ruined nobody, had been turned out by her family in two cities on two different continents, had crossed an ocean and a prairie, had borne her son and built him a home on her own, and now, thinking of the ashes of it all behind her, she felt broken at last.
The golden star on the prairie was a lamp in an open door, the faint track was sloping down towards it, a ramp delivering her gently to his door, and she went stumbling down the hill tripping over the buffalo grass roots, and the man, hatless for once, holding out the shotgun slowly leaned it against the cabin wall and came forward, hands outstretched, to receive her.
CHAPTER NINE
He meant to put her to bed, well-dosed with whiskey. He aimed first to calm her and second to put her to sleep. The baby, equally sated with milk from the pans in his sunken springhouse along their disputed creek, was put back to sleep in a soft bundle of quilts on the wooden floor. The dog laid down next to the baby in a protective manner that made her smile despite her upset. Then she started talking, stammering, blurting out all her fears.
Jared doubted the shanty had been fired, and told her so, once he had dabbed at her tears with a handkerchief, and boiled up a kettle, and poured as much liquor as he dared into the tin cup along with the steaming water. She’d made a face at the taste and wrinkled her perennially sunburnt nose like a little child, and he’d laughed, and she’d managed a watery smile, and then the crisis was over and he was able to reason with her.
“They were likely only after the mule. There’s been talk of men out there that take them to the auction down in Opportunity and sell ’em to folk fresh off the train. I’m sorry you lost him, but he’s a good mule; he’ll be alright. They’d have no reason to fire the shanty; they probably never even wanted to wake you. The less trouble, the better, these fellas think.”
She’d sniffed, but the tears didn’t start again. He was relieved. Tears in a woman were such an unsettling thing. You didn’t want to set them off. “I loved Lancelot.”
“Well…” Jared wasn’t much of one for falling in love with animals, not since he lost Prince. That was why the roan was just the roan; he hadn’t named another horse, not ever, in hopes of avoiding too much affection for them. Prince, he’d been Jared’s best friend, nearabouts, certainly more reliable than flighty old Matt, and twice as handsome. “I had a nice horse once,” he volunteered hesitantly. “Could read a cow’s mind. I could fall asleep on a drive and he’d do all the work. But he’s gone. My horse I got now is nice too. Horses don’t last forever, one way or another you lose ’em afore you’re ready to.”
“I know it,” she sighed. “I’ve lost a few.”
“You had a lot of horses before, I guess, livin’ in England.” Jared had an idea that English people as a nation were very enthusiastic about horses.
“A stable with thirty loose-boxes,” she said dreamily. “And that was just for the hunters and the saddle horses. I had a darling mare named Daisy; she’d jump anything. But my first memory is sitting on my pony, Prince. Father said I named him myself. I don’t remember but I suppose it’s probably true. Such a silly name!”
Jared started a little bit. Then he sat on a wooden chair next to her, poured himself his own measure of hot water and whiskey. “That was my good horse’s name, Prince,” he admitted after a drink or two. “I bought him from a dealer with a string of horses from Kentucky. He was a real fine-boned feller, noble… thought the world of himself. Was a good name for him, I thought.”
“Did you have him a very long time?”
“I did,” Jared said. He looked into his cup, frowned at it. “Few years, anyway. I sold him to a lady in Galveston, though, and bought a new horse to ride on the range. He was too delicate for the cattle drives. I didn’t want to break him down. He’d break his fetlock as soon as turn it, better on a smooth street than a rough prairie, I thought.” He sighed. “I thought so.”
She was looking at him with eyes still wet and luminous from her tears. Her lashes were dark and long against her cheeks, tangled a little; he wanted to rub his finger along them, ever so gently, and part the damp strands so that they stood out evenly and tall. He remembered Prince’s lashes so long and elegant over his soft brown eyes, how he’d turned and looked back, how Hope had waved her handkerchief and promised to take good care of such a special horse.
He remembered how when he’d come back to town that fall, she’d said he’d broken a leg banging against his stall wall, and been shot. How Matt had said folks down at Ruby Lowe’s were saying she’d raced him break-neck down a hard-packed street, trying to beat some out-of-towner gent, and he’d cracked his leg clean in two on the rock-hard ground. How Jared had turned away, saying that Hope would never have done that, Hope would never have lied to him, Hope would have taken good care of the horse she knew meant so much to him. He’d even let her ride Copper a few times that winter, and he didn’t allow anyone to ride Copper. She’d asked him, that spring, as he prepared to head back north, if he’d think of selling her Copper.
“So I have something to remember you by,” she’d said huskily, and the wind had captured the little lock of red hair she let fall out of her hat and tossed it across her eyes and down her cheek. He’d taken his finger and pushed it out of her face, and she’d smiled up at him tremulously. “You just keep leaving me behind, year after year. A girl is like to forget a man.”
“You wouldn’t forget me.” She never had, not in the three winters he’d spent in Galveston. She’d been waiting for him every fall, coming out onto the porch of Ruby Lowe’s Dance-Hall and Rooms, where she was a dancer, but not a whore. She made sure every man knew that, and he remembered how she had whispered those words into his ear during their first spin around the creaking boards, smelling of expensive scent and with champagne-perfumed breath: “I’m a dancer, not a whore.”
He was so tired of thinking of her, always.
“He was a good horse,” he said.
There wasn’t any reply. Jared looked, and chuckled.
He sat for a little while and watched the woman asleep in his bed, her gilt locks spread across the pillow. She was remarkably beautiful, he thought, if he were honest with himself. And brave, she was very brave. If the tiniest bit foolish, he amended, to come out here all alone and with no knowledge of how to build up a homestead and live on the frontier. And loving; he’d seen the way she looked at that little tyke of hers, just learning to pick himself up and stand. She must have made that man a fine husband, whoever he’d been. Damn fool to get himself killed and leave such a beautiful woman to shift for herself.
Beautiful…
Her pale complexion was slowly giving over to a golden tan, and though her nose was red with sunburn her cheeks were somehow glowing. Those dark lashes on those sun-kissed cheeks — why were her lashes so dark, with her light hair? Jared leaned forward in his chair, admiring every inch of her, those high cheekbones, that slim nose, the graceful curves of her rose-pink lips. A beautiful woman. A beautiful woman alone, come to him for protection. His body stirred, and he felt a bit feverish.
A bit — he turned to the open door to feel the cool breeze against his hot cheeks. But the prairie’s gentle caress was not the touch that his body craved.
He looked back at the sleeping woman in his bed and felt a rush of possession. He wanted her for his own.
And was that
so crazy? He would be good for her. She would be good for him. He could protect her. And she was loving, and gentle-hearted, if one could get past that fierce temper.
And best of all, Jared reflected, she might be prone to rages, but she was no liar. And that, if he were completely honest with himself, he’d know for a fact that his sweet-tempered, angelic Hope was the most incorrigible liar on the face of this earth.
A wise man would forget Hope, and start thinking of Cherry.
He sighed and went outside, to splash some cool water on his face and try to settle his raging body down.
***
She could scarcely believe she’d slept at all, but when Cherry tried to lift her head from the pillow, the room spun so that she let it fall back into the prickly-soft feather-down with a thump. She opened her mouth to ask where she was, but her tongue was thick in her dry mouth. She felt sick as death, besides, she realized: stomach curdling and skin crawling, and not from anything that shouldn’t have been sharing the clean sheets with her, either.
“Cup of water,” a man’s voice suggested, gravelly with early morning, and a tin cup appeared. She blinked.
“Jared?” she croaked. He appeared before her eyes, looking down at her with sympathy. The stubble on his cheeks was so dark it was nearly black. Black as a raven’s wing, she thought, and she might have laughed if her head wasn’t about to split open. She winced instead.
“I might have gotten you a bit drunk last night,” he admitted apologetically. “I just wanted to calm you down. But you probably aren’t much used to liquor.”
She remembered. The thieves, the lantern, the moonlit run across two miles of prairie. She swallowed with an effort, grimacing against the lump in her throat, and accepted the cup of water. “I’ve never taken more than a glass or two of wine or a little champagne,” she murmured when her throat felt a bit more open. “Shame on you, getting me drunk like that.” She managed a weak smile. “And where is Little Edward?”
The Genuine Lady (Heroines on Horseback) Page 8
