Promises Keep (The Promise Series)

by Sarah McCarty

  His hand stroked her hair. “What are you suggesting?”

  “Well, you did leave your hat at Millicent’s.”

  He squeezed her tightly. “We don’t need to go back there.”

  “I want to.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m starving.”

  “We can get something to eat without having to sit amidst a bunch of gawking townsfolk.”

  “But I want to sit amongst a bunch of gawking townsfolk. I want them to see me with my husband. I want all those women to see me with you. I want to eat my dinner while they eat their hearts out wishing they had half as much man sitting next to them.”

  “You might be stretching it there.”

  She smiled and braided her hair down her back. “You’ll have to trust me on this, Cougar. There isn’t a woman in this whole territory who, after today, wouldn’t give her eyeteeth to spend a day with you.”

  He frowned. “I don’t want any of them.”

  She stood, straightening her skirt and brushing straw from the hem. “That’s what makes it even better.”

  She held out her hand. He stared at her a moment, his gaze assessing, as if not really believing what she’d said. She waited until the doubt left his expression and that slight smile she loved took up residence at the corners of his mouth before saying, “Take me to dinner, Cougar.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “I’m glad you two came back,” Millicent said as she passed by with a loaded tray. “Can’t let riffraff chase you out of your favorite places.”

  “I agree,” Mara said, taking a last swallow of milk. She pushed her empty plate aside and waited for her husband to finish his meal. She wanted to talk about Ms. Dickinson’s speech. The second Cougar’s fork touched his clean plate, Mara pounced.

  “So is everything Miss Dickinson said true?”

  Taking a deep breath, Cougar calmly wiped his mouth on his napkin. Mara was primed for a fight and she was going to force him to give it to her. It was cowardly, but Cougar stalled. “Not all of it, no.”

  Mara leapt on that like a dog with a new bone. “Which part wasn’t true? The part about a man owning his wife, right down to her children and the dress on her back? The part about she’s nothing more or less than a dog to him in the eyes of the law? The part about a woman being dependent on her husband during his life, and on her male children after? The part about anything that what was hers upon entering the marriage becomes his immediately upon speaking their vows? The part about how everything is the husband’s to spend as he pleases even though the money was never intended for him? Or the part about how she could work beside her man all her life and he could die and leave her nothing if the spirit moved him? And she would have no recourse?”

  In direct contrast to Mara’s outrage, Cougar’s response was calm. “The part about all men being oppressive monsters.”

  Mara snapped up straight. “You really don’t care, do you?”

  “Not,” Cougar admitted, “enough to make a spectacle of myself over it.”

  Realizing they were once again the center of attention, Mara abruptly sat down. She lowered her voice. “I can’t believe someone as concerned with honor and fairness as you would deliberately condone an injustice of this proportion!”

  Cougar frowned as he shoved his plate away. “To tell you the truth, I’ve never given the subject a whole lot of thought.”

  “How could you not?” Mara cried.

  “In case you hadn’t noticed,” Cougar defended himself. “Up until now, the subject hasn’t concerned me over much. There haven’t been a ton of women in my life.”

  “Well, it’s come up now.”

  Cougar grimaced. Millicent’s arrival saved him from an immediate answer.

  “Would you all like some coffee?”

  “No.”

  “Yes,” Cougar said at the same time, his expression resigned, indicating his realization that she wasn’t letting him out of this discussion.

  With the coffeepot in one hand, Millicent plopped two stoneware cups on the table before bracing her hand on her hip. “Let me guess. >From the tension between you two, I’d say you’re both discussing that Dickinson woman and women’s rights.”

  “How’d you guess?” Cougar groaned.

  “Just take a look around.” Millicent jerked her head in the direction of the other diners. “You can tell who’s discussing what by the expressions on their faces. Any woman who looks ready to spit nails accompanied by a man who looks like he’d rather be at his own funeral, are chewing the same fat.”

  “Are all the men being as impossible as Cougar?” Mara asked resentfully.

  “That depends on who you’re talking about.” Millicent supplied as she poured coffee into their cups. “A lot of them are spouting the Bible about how Eve gave Adam the apple and therefore all sin and suffering are a woman’s fault. Father McAlester started that one by claiming women are a man’s unworthier half, and only through a life of hard work and blind obedience can she make up for it.”

  “That’s a crock.” Cougar bit off.

  “Amen to that,” Millicent agreed. “Still, the less intelligent ones are all for it.” She tapped her temple with her forefinger. “They know they don’t have enough up here to win an argument with a woman, so they fall back on something they feel can’t be disputed.”

  “It figures,” Mara muttered, damning Cougar with a glance.

  Cougar held up his hands defensively. “I have not once brought up the Bible in an effort to keep you in line, so don’t go flashing those looks at me.” He toyed with his coffee cup as he admitted cautiously. “Since I never had cause to concern myself with the subject in the past, I’m still forming an opinion.”

  “There isn’t one to form,” Mara contested hotly. “There is only one side to this issue. The correct one. If a black man is to have the right to vote, the right to own property, then there is no longer any argument for a man to deny his wife the same privilege.”

  Millicent nodded her bright red head slowly. “She’s got a point there.”

  Cougar glared at her. “Who appointed you referee?”

  Millicent grinned cheekily, snagging a creamer and sugar from an adjacent table and shooting them over to Mara. “It’s my establishment.”

  Cougar grunted. Mara watched as an older man argued heatedly with one several years his junior. “What are those two arguing about?”

  “The same thing.”

  Mara’s face showed her surprise. “Which one’s for Suffrage?”

  “Old Man Clemence to be sure,” Millicent said, pulling over a chair and flopping into it. Her voice lowered conspiratorially. “Old Man Clemence had himself ten daughters. All ten are decent, hard working women, with horrible taste in men. That one sitting with Old Man Clemence is Harold Beacham. He’s the youngest girl’s choice for husband.”

  Mara observed the young man in his early twenties with his even features, his white blond hair and his shockingly vivid blue eyes. She could well see how he’d turn a girl’s head. “He’s very handsome.”

  “And that’s all he is,” Cougar sneered, wondering if his wife found the twerp’s flash attractive.

  “Exactly,” Millicent snapped, shooting Cougar an annoyed glance. “Clemence can’t stand the man anymore than he likes his other nine son-in-laws. To a man, they’re a lazy, shiftless lot. On the other hand, he adores his girls. Since he had that spell last year, he’s been giving serious consideration to what would happen to his family when he passes on. As the law stands now, when he dies, the men get everything he’s worked his life for, and his girls will wind up with nothing. For as sure as God made little green apples, that bunch will fritter the girls’ inheritance away and then be on their way.”

  “And that explains why Harold is so opposed to suffrage,” Cougar finished.

  “What are some of the other arguments?” Mara asked.

  “There are some,” Cougar ventured, wrapping his hands around his warm cup. “That feel giv
ing the woman the vote will attract people and industry to the area. Right now, Wyoming is just a strip of land people cross in order to get to the other side. We thought the railroad would bring people in, but we’re having to rethink that because people are still just passing through.”

  “Isn’t that the truth,” Millicent sighed. “Since they completed the Transcontinental Railroad last May, this town’s lost half its inhabitants.”

  “What happened to them?” Mara asked.

  “They moved on with the railroad,” Cougar answered shortly. “They came to build it, and now that the job is done, they’ve left the great American Desert behind them.”

  “And good riddance to most of them,” Millicent spat. “They called that influx of bad seed the ‘Hell on Wheels’ for a reason.”

  “Yeah,” Cougar agreed, remembering the cesspool of whores, gamblers, and drunks Cheyenne had been.

  Something Cougar said clicked in Mara’s active brain. “You said we before.” She caught his large hand in both of her small ones. “Are you a member of the legislative council?” she asked, full of hope.

  Cougar sighed, knowing what she was going to say. “Me and eight others.”

  “Then you can convince them,” she crowed happily. “When you all get together, you can convince them of the importance of this issue.”

  “Mara,” Cougar began, turning his hand over in hers to gently clasp her fingers. “Your faith is flattering, but some of these men believe just as passionately that this movement should not proceed.”

  “That’s ridiculous!” Mara sputtered. “What possible reason can they have to think that way?”

  “I’ll grant you,” Cougar said, striving for patience, “that the distinctions between men and women are less defined here in the West where you depend on each other for your very survival, but there are some men that plain enjoy the knowledge that they are kings in their homes, and those men are not going to want their apple carts upset.”

  Before pouring herself a cup of coffee, Millicent yelled at the other patrons to help themselves to dessert and coffee. She was officially taking a break.

  “It’s my opinion,” Millicent said around her mug. “That most of these men are just afraid.”

  “Of what, for goodness sakes!” Mara asked, despairing of ever reaching the bottom of this argument.

  “Afraid of losing their sweet little wives.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Cougar cut in. “Giving women the right to vote and own property wouldn’t make it any easier for a woman to divorce a man.”

  “No,” Millicent agreed in her bedroom voice. “But it would force a man to sit up and take notice of her. He wouldn’t be able to dismiss her opinion, because it would matter. He wouldn’t have absolute control over his wife and daughters. Sooner or later, they would challenge his opinion. Or worse yet, make him back his opinion with fact.”

  “In short,” Mara realized in a hushed voice, “this would be only a beginning. When women got used to voting, they’d start attending rallies…”

  “And you can bet those rallies wouldn’t be held in a saloon while the hopeful official bought votes with beer,” Millicent put in dryly.

  “And once women realized their power…”

  “They’d start putting it to use,” Cougar finished. “Hell! No wonder those men are scared!”

  Mara kicked her husband under the table. “With less drinking and more thinking, this world would be a better place.”

  “Don’t tell me you are going to join the Temperance League, too?” Cougar asked, true horror darkening his golden eyes.

  “Of course she’s not going to do anything so stupid,” Millicent—who enjoyed a good bottle of booze as much as her late husband had—jumped right in to reassure him.

  Mara shot her a dirty look. “I haven’t decided yet,” she corrected in exasperation.

  “Great,” Cougar groaned. “That’s just what you said before you became an ardent Suffragist.”

  “With cause!” Mara retorted.

  “With cause,” Cougar agreed tiredly. “But on the whole, I think we would have spent a much better day if you’d just kidnapped me like I’d suggested.”

  Millicent spotted one of her customers helping himself to some of her pumpkin pie, and jumped to her feet. “Hey you! I said to help yourself to some dessert, not to the entire thing.” With a hurried “excuse me”, Millicent was back at the helm of her establishment.

  Mara shook her head at the woman’s volatility. “She’s as unique as her establishment.”

  “I’m fond of her,” Cougar said, helping himself to some more coffee. When he offered more to Mara, she held her hand over the cup. “You have no appreciation for good coffee.”

  “It’s my only flaw.”

  Cougar choked on the first mouthful. He stared at his wife for a good two minutes. She remained as solemn as a judge. “Because I’ve had enough arguing for one day,” he stated magnanimously, “I’m going to let that bold-faced lie pass unchallenged.”

  Mara snorted and poked at the piece of pie Millicent had set before her on her way to serve another customer.

  “Tell me something.” Her eyes met Cougar’s across the table. “If you really hadn’t thought much about Suffragettes, why were you so disgusted when you found out why I wanted to come here?”

  Cougar took a healthy bite of his own spicy pie. He chewed it slowly before swallowing and answering. “First off, because I really didn’t want to argue with you.”

  “And secondly?” Mara prodded.

  Cougar sighed at her persistence. “Secondly, because the few times I had heard of these women speakers, I was told they were mannish to the point of impersonation, and that they believed in free love and were generally rude, crude and obnoxious.”

  “And now that you’ve actually heard one speak?”

  “I found the woman extremely intelligent, committed to her point of view, and not the least bit inclined to strip down for an all-day orgy.”

  She knew she was going to regret this, but Mara couldn’t let it slide. “What precisely is an orgy?”

  “Something you’ll never get to experience.”

  Mara slanted Cougar a warning look. “I’ll be the judge of that.”

  Cougar merely looked amused. “An orgy, my curious wife, is when a bunch of men and women get together for the sole purpose of rutting.”

  “At the same time?” she whispered, scandalized.

  “Definitely at the same time,” Cougar replied, humor brimming over in his eyes to spill into his voice. “And, in answer to that question hovering on the tip of your tongue: no. I’ve never participated in one.”

  “Well, I should hope not!”

  Cougar tossed some coins on the table and pulled back Mara’s chair. Her mind still turning over the concept of an orgy, Mara followed him meekly out the door.

  “All those people naked together,” she whispered as she stepped into the warm sunshine. “How unsanitary!”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  It should have been easy from there on out, but it wasn’t. Somehow, while that day in town had brought Cougar and Mara closer, it also gave birth to dissatisfaction. A nagging discontent that drove Mara mad with the need to test the limits of Cougar’s control.

  It was as if the day in town has shifted her knowledge of who she was and what she could do. She was filled with a restless energy to test what she now knew about herself. Unfortunately, Cougar was still determined to keep her wrapped in cotton wool.

  Hence, the resumption of the argument they’d been having for the last three mornings since she’d heard Anna Dickinson speak.

  “What do you mean, no?” Mara asked, dropping onto the bed, openly ogling the play of muscle on his body as he stood naked before the mirror shaving.

  “Just what it sounded like,” Cougar replied, lifting his chin to run the straight razor down his throat. Dipping the razor in the bowl of water on the commode, he rinsed off the soap.

  Mara grabbed a
hold of the canopy post and met Cougar’s gaze in the mirror. “You’re being ridiculous, high-handed and unreasonable.”

  The razor halted its downward path. “It is not my fault you woke up this morning with a bee in your bonnet about nothing.”

  “Nothing?” Mara growled, one knee coming up to rest on the bed. “You call my rights as a human being nothing?”

  “This has nothing to do with rights,” Cougar countered, wiping the last of the shaving foam off his face. “It does have everything to do with you attempting to become boss of this outfit.”

  “That’s a lot of bull and you know it.”

  “Is it?”

  “Damned straight it is.”

  “You looking for punishment?” he asked, reminding her he’d laid down the law about swearing.

  She squeezed her thighs together and resisted the urge to melt. “You make up these rules just so you have a reason to punish me.”

  “And you break them for the same reason.”

  He had her there, but today was not one of those days.

  “I’m not going to let you weasel out of this discussion so easily.”

  “We’re not having a discussion,” Cougar said with a condescending patience that set Mara’s teeth on edge. “Because there’s nothing to discuss.”

  “We are most certainly going to discuss why you refuse to sign part of this property over to me.”

  Cougar set the towel on the washstand. “First off, it would just be on paper and not proof of anything. It probably wouldn’t even be legal.”

  Mara shrugged unconcernedly. “Let’s pretend that it is.” She really didn’t care whether this transaction was legal or not. It was the principle of the thing.

  “That’s the most ridiculous thing that I’ve ever heard.” Cougar turned to face her. “What would be the point of this whole charade if it wasn’t even legal?”

  “It would prove to me that you respect me as well as love me.”

  Cougar blinked twice before reaching for his blue shirt off the bed. “I never told you I love you.”

  Mara brushed his argument aside. “You love me so much you can’t see straight.”