How to Lasso a Cowboy (51 page)

Nobody.

She rounded a bend and her gaze blurred as the tears finally defeated her control. Now that she was out of sight, she surrendered to the anguish twisting in her belly, making her gasp for air. But she didn't slow her pace. She prayed to God and Wakan Tanka, the Great Mystery, that she would escape the suffocating life that was now hers.

Nobody knew what she had left behind when she was returned—not even her family.

Pain arrowed through her breast and Emma stumbled. A firm hand caught her arm, steadying and shocking her.

“Easy, ma'am.”

She whirled around and the stranger released her. The man hastily removed his hat and worried the brim between callused fingers. He wore brown trousers with a tan buckskin jacket and a red scarf around his neck. Thick, wavy, brown hair hung to his shoulders and his dark blue eyes were steady, but guarded. The man's black and white pony stood patiently on the road, its reins hanging to the ground.

“I'm sorry if I startled you, ma'am. It's just that I saw you stumbling-like and thought you might be sick.”

The man's voice was quiet and husky, as if he didn't use it very often.

Emma's cheeks warmed and she dashed a hand across them to erase the telltale tear tracks. “No, that's all right. I didn't hear you.”

A cool spring breeze soughed through the tree's bare branches and Emma shuddered from the chill beneath the too-light cape.

The man removed his jacket, revealing tan suspenders over a deep blue shirt, and awkwardly placed the coat over her shoulders. “You shouldn't be out here, ma'am. You'll catch your death dressed like that.”

Emma's fingers curled into the soft material and the scent of cured deerhide tickled her nose with memories of another life. She caught herself and tried to hand the jacket back to him. “No. I can't—”

“I'm fine. You're the one who's shivering like a plucked sage hen.”

She almost missed his shy, hesitant smile.

“Thank you,” she said softly. Besides the leather, she could smell woodsmoke, horses, and the faint scent of male sweat in the well-worn jacket. “You're right. It was stupid of me to run off like that.”

The man dipped his head in acknowledgment, and his long hair brushed across his shoulders.

“Are you from around here?” Emma asked.

“Yes'm. About four miles northwest.”

That would make him a neighbor.

The steady clop clop of hooves directed Emma's gaze to the road. A man dressed in a cavalry hat and pants and a sheepskin coat rode into view. He drew his black horse to a halt beside the other man's mare.

“I was wondering what happened to you, Ridge,” the man said, eyeing Emma like she was a piece of prime rib.

She shivered anew, but this time it wasn't from the cool wind.

“Ease off, Colt,” the man called Ridge said without force. “The lady needed some help is all.”

“She all right?” the man asked.

“The lady is fine,” Emma replied curtly. She'd had enough of people talking about her like she was invisible to last a lifetime.

The clatter of an approaching buckboard put an end to their stilted conversation and Emma's heart plummeted into her stomach when she spotted her father's stormy expression.

Colt backed his horse off the road as the wagon slowed to a stop beside them.

“Get in, Emma,” her father ordered in a steely voice.

Words of refusal climbed up her throat and she swallowed them back. She wouldn't humiliate herself or her family in front of two strangers. With tense muscles, she returned her Good Samaritan's jacket. “Thank you.”

She kept her chin raised and her backbone straight as she climbed into the wagon's back seat. Ridge's hand on her arm aided and steadied her until she sat beside her sister.

“Stay the hell away from my daughter, Madoc. She doesn't need the likes of you,” her father ordered.

Shocked, Emma only had a moment to give Ridge a nod of thanks before her father whipped the team of horses into motion.

Her mother, too, was pale. There would be little mercy from her father for embarrassing the family with her abrupt departure from church, and for her improper actions with the man called Madoc.

A man her father thought wasn't good enough even for her.

EMMA
endured the awful silence all the way home by thinking about the man who'd been so kind to her. Madoc. The name sounded vaguely familiar, but she couldn't place it.

The wagon rattled into the yard and her father halted the horses in front of the house. He hopped down and helped Emma's mother, then her sister. Emma didn't wait, but clambered down herself, earning a disapproving scowl from him.

“Wait in the study, Emma,” he ordered. Then he exchanged a brusque look with her mother.

Emmna settled into a wingback chair in front of the desk, sitting with her feet flat on the floor and her hands resting in her lap like a proper young lady. She would've preferred to sit with her legs folded beneath her, but she figured she'd provoked her father enough for one day.

Her mother perched on the twin of Emma's chair, her face pinched with worry. Her father, however, didn't appear the least bit anxious. No, he was spitting mad.

“What do you have to say for yourself, young lady?” he demanded.

She met his glowering eyes without flinching. “You and Mother have no right making decisions that affect my life without talking to me first.”

Her father blinked, apparently startled by her forthrightness. “You're our daughter and you live under our roof. That gives us the right.”

“Would you ship Sarah off without talking to her about it?”

“Sarah is not you.”

Boiling anger and hurt engulfed Emma as she gripped the armrests. “What you mean is Sarah is still clean and pure, but poor Emma is used and soiled.” Her nostrils flared and her fingernails dug into the armrests. Long-held silence
exploded in defiance. “I am not a
thing
you can cast aside and forget about. I have a life. I have hopes and dreams.”

“Which will never be realized around here,” Emma's mother interjected almost gently. “No respectable man will have you.”

Emma's stomach caved and she stared down at her fisted hands, which had somehow ended up in her lap again. She raised her head and turned to the older version of herself. “Thank you for sharing that with me, Mother.”

Her mother flinched at the sarcasm, and even Emma was shocked by the depth of her own bitterness.

“That's enough, Emma Louise,” her father ordered. He stood and paced behind the desk, his body silhouetted against the windows.

The regulator clock ticked loudly in the muffled silence. Emma concentrated on its steady rhythm—tick-tock, tick-tock—to block out the other sounds swirling through her head, but the memories were too powerful to be denied any longer.

Pounding hooves.

Gunshots.

Screams.

Blood.

Her heart hammering, Emma stared at her hands, almost surprised to find they weren't scarlet-stained. Instead, she noticed how they'd finally lost their dried parchment texture, but weren't nearly as smooth as they'd been seven years ago.

Her father stopped pacing, but remained standing behind his desk. “Maybe it was wrong of your mother and I to make plans behind your back, but we were only thinking of your best interests. As you know, your aunt Alice is a widow with no children. Your uncle left her very comfortable financially, and we doubt she'll ever marry again. She's willing to let you move in with her and begin a new life.”

Emma took a deep, steadying breath. “I'm fond of Aunt Alice, but I want to stay here. This is my home, where I was raised. I don't want to leave.”