Miss Phipps and the Cattle Baron (9 page)

Lady Whittington cupped Priscilla's chin and
raised her face so she could study her skin more closely. Brows
pinched in deliberation, lips pursed in dismay, she sighed, and
said, "You do have quite a crop, but I can have cook make up an
infusion of parsley juice, lemon juice, red currant juice and
orange juice. If you apply it to your skin under your facial cream,
it will help make the freckles less noticeable while getting rid of
them."

Feeling utterly unattractive, tears misted
Priscilla's eyes. And to her mortification, she saw Adam standing
in the doorway. She had no idea how long he'd been there, but the
look on his face could stop an advancing army. He crossed the room
in three long strides. Glaring at Lady Whittington, he said, "What
the bloody hell are you doing, Mother!?"

Lady Whittington looked at Adam in shocked
surprise. "Do not use that language with me, Adam," she clipped. "I
am helping Miss Phipps with her toilette."

"Miss Phipps is fine just the way she is. Do
not impose your standards on her. She is fresh and pretty and does
not need the aid of infusions and dyes and all manner of female
fripperies that will make her look like a clown!"

Lady Whittington's eyes darkened with
awareness. "I do not believe you are in a position to dictate what
is best for Miss Phipps. You are not her husband nor her father.
And I would ask you to leave this room at once."

"No, I will not leave. You're causing Miss
Phipps distress when there's no reason for her to feel anything but
satisfaction with her fresh, natural appearance. She's perfect the
way she is."

When Priscilla looked at Adam's reflection in
the mirror and saw the resolve in his dark eyes, she realized his
words had not been hollow praise. He actually
believed
what
he was saying. The idea that Adam thought her pretty brought tears
of joy welling, and when she blinked, they brimmed over her eyelids
and trailed down her cheeks.

Lady Whittington glared at Adam. "Do you see
what you've done! You have upset Miss Phipps and made her feel
miserable about herself, when most of her problems can be overcome
with a few simple remedies."

"She has no problems!"
Adam bellowed,
"except the incorrect notions about beauty that you and others like
yourself have put into her head. She is beautiful the way she
is."

Unable to sit any longer without breaking
into sobs, Priscilla shoved the dressing-table stool back and
rushed out of the room and down the hallway. Hearing footsteps
close behind, she hurried down the stairs, ran out of the house and
rushed toward her buckboard.

Adam grabbed her arm as she attempted to
climb up. "Where are you going?" he asked.

She swiped a finger beneath each eye. "To
The Town Tattler
."

"Why? Because of my mother?"

"No, because that's why I moved to Cheyenne
in the first place. But I seemed to have gotten distracted of late.
Now, I want to get back to the reason I'm here." She shrugged off
his arm and climbed onto the box, and he didn't try to stop
her.

His hand on the buckboard, he looked up at
her and said, "Don't take to heart the things my mother said. They
mean nothing."

Priscilla took the reins. "The things your
mother said were nothing less than what I have heard all my life.
And it really doesn't matter because
The Town Tattler
is
what's important to me, not trying to fix myself up so I can
attract a man who will try to run my life." She gave the reins a
jiggle and the horse started forward.

Until now, she had accepted the fact that she
was unappealing to men and would never know love. Or if she did, it
would be unrequited. But after Lady Whittington's close scrutiny,
all of her mother's fretting and fussing about her appearance came
rushing back. But for some unexplainable reason, Adam did not see
her the way everyone else did, and it was baffling and disturbing
and confusing. It was also heartbreaking. She had at last found a
man who looked at her through rose-colored glasses, but if he
aligned himself with her, he'd be laughed at and ridiculed by the
voters he needed to help him get elected as mayor. And although
Adam might think she was pretty, his mother would be a constant
reminder of how the world really saw her.

***

The following week, to a great burst of
cheers from Priscilla, Trudy, Alice and the four women, Jim Jackson
pulled the first edition of
The Town Tattler
off the press
and laid it on the copy table. As Priscilla stared at the
five-column folio, she was so excited she had to remind herself to
breathe. A banner headline set in large flourishing foundry type,
and occupying the width of the page, heralded the establishment of
The Town Tattler
, and on the top of the page, an ornate
nameplate embellished with attractive calligraphy, stated:
Volume 1, Number 1, July 31, 1885, Serving Cheyenne, Wyoming
Territory
. The editorial below the banner headline invited
women writers to visit the office of
The Town Tattler
and
chat with Miss Priscilla Phipps about submitting poems, short
stories, viewpoints and opinion pieces for possible publication.
Readers were encouraged to write to
Miss Manners
with
questions about proper etiquette , and to
Miss Valentine
for
advice for the lovelorn. As a bonus, all new subscribers would
receive a lovely engraving suitable for framing.

Priscilla looked at the small decorative wood
engravings set above each editorial column, pleased with what she
saw. The cut for
Miss Manners
showed children gathered
around a table, the one for
Miss Valentine
displayed a
couple sitting on a loveseat, and the one for her Women's Suffrage
column, was of Esther Hobart Morris, a suffragist whose efforts
were instrumental in passing the equality laws that governor
Campbell signed into law in 1869, granting the women of Wyoming
Territory the right to vote, along with the right to hold public
office, own land, and retain property from their dead husbands,
making Wyoming's government the first to do so. Priscilla had been
twenty-two at the time, but it stirred a longing back then to move
to the place where she could hold property in her own name.

Her eyes returned to the woodcut of the
romantic couple and the fact that
Miss Valentine
was a
middle-aged maiden lady who had never been in love. Although now,
she did know what it was like to be infatuated. Oddly, she felt
qualified to give advice to the lovelorn because it would not be
muddled up with senseless female emotions.

Edith, who had not read the
Miss
Valentine
column until now, peered over Priscilla's shoulder,
and commented, "I can't imagine ARJ, whoever she is, even asking if
she should allow a man to court her who left her sitting alone at
the Picnic Social to go off with some other woman. But you set her
straight. Do you know who she is?"

Priscilla realized Edith had been off with
young Frank Gifford during the time when she'd told the women that
the questions and answers for
Miss Valentine
would be
fabricated until readers began to write in. "ARJ and the others are
made up for this issue," she said. "After the women start sending
in questions, I won't have to do that."

Edith's smooth brow gathered with a frown.
"But... was the incident based on something that really happened
to... someone?"

On the way home from the picnic social, when
the women asked about her time with Lord Whittington, Priscilla had
been vague about what happened after Adam bought her basket. She
hadn't wanted to explain where they'd gone, or what they'd been up
to. Now, she suspected Edith thought
she
was ARJ, and Adam
had left her to go off with another woman. Perhaps it was best left
at that, because the truth made her blush, and it would later be an
embarrassment, when Adam lost interest. If, in fact he was actually
interested in her. He gave every indication he was, unlikely as it
seemed. Answering Edith, she said, "No, it was just something I
came up with."

Edith said nothing, but Priscilla knew she
was not convinced. It would be perfectly reasonable to think that
the freckle-faced, red-headed unattractive spinster had been
deserted to sit alone with her picnic basket and eat the delicacies
she had prepared, while the handsome, wealthy British lord slipped
away and picnicked with a beautiful and charming woman more fitting
for a man of his station. How shocked Edith and the others would be
to learn that prim and proper
Miss Valentine
had not only
been thoroughly kissed by Lord Whittington, but that she had lost
complete control of herself during that kiss...

Trudy, who was reading over Priscilla's
shoulder, said, "What does Mrs. W. M. Coggswell mean when she says
'the man who has a wife controls two votes instead of one, and
he who has grown daughters controls as many as he has
daughters?
'"

Priscilla glanced over her shoulder at Trudy.
"That letter written by Mrs. Coggswell was read in the
Massachusetts House of Representatives during a debate on suffrage
and used it as an example of why enfranchising women was
pointless."

Trudy looked at Priscilla, puzzled. "Is that
true what Mrs. Coggswell said, that if I were grown, my father
would take my vote from me?"

"Not exactly," Priscilla said. "Women in
Wyoming Territory can vote as they wish, but most don't bother to
do so, and those who do, vote as their husbands dictate."

"Well, when I am old enough, I will vote as I
please," Trudy huffed.

"Then you had better marry a man who will not
challenge you, or you will have a very troubled household,"
Priscilla said. "But even if women start exercising their right to
vote, they are still not allowed to vote when nominating men for
office, or in primaries and conventions. But after the delegates
have made the primaries, the men up for election are very glad for
women to come in and help elect them."

Trudy's face brightened. "Then I shall help
my father get elected as mayor by writing things about him that you
can post in
The Town Tattler
," she said.

Priscilla looked at Trudy with concern.
Taking an open political position at this point would alienate many
potential subscribers. But she didn't want to put a damper on
Trudy's new-found interest in suffrage. Wyoming Territory, being
the first government to allow women the vote, was a maverick in
America. Offering a compromise, she said, "
The Town Tattler
will not be taking sides in the upcoming race for mayor, but I will
be holding what I will call Town Tattler Meetings, where I'll talk
to women about suffrage and temperance and other issues that are
important to women. Perhaps you'd like to attend the meetings and
pass out some leaflets about your father there."

Trudy broke into a wide grin. "Yes, I'd very
much like that, and I'll start at once designing the leaflets.
Would I be able to print them here?" she asked.

Priscilla considered that. Being involved in
her father's election would take Trudy's mind off Tom Rafferty. For
that reason, Adam might approve of her interest in women's rights.
"I'll talk to Mr. Jackson and see if it's something we can do on
our press."

Trudy clasped her hands in delight. "When I
distribute the leaflets I'll tell the women about the importance of
voting. My father is the smartest and the most handsome of the
candidates, so the women will certainly vote for him over the other
candidates. "

Trudy's enthusiasm was contagious, and
Priscilla found herself saying, "You're absolutely right about
impressing on women the importance of voting. If they don't
exercise their right, other states and territories who haven't yet
given women the right to vote will see no reason to grant it, and
our sisters all over the country will remain in bondage to their
husbands, and to men's laws. As it stands, all over the country
intelligent women are denied the right to vote, while ignorant,
drunken and immoral men can cast their ballots. It is grossly
unfair to women."

Trudy looked at Priscilla, fervor in her
eyes, and said, "Do you have any literature on women's suffrage
that I can read?"

"Yes, right over here." Priscilla lifted a
stack of newspaper clippings of speeches given around the country
by women fighting for the cause and handed them to Trudy." If you
read through these, you'll know how to address the women at the
meeting when they ask you questions about voting. Always remember
that knowledge is power."

Trudy took the clippings, an eager smile on
her lips, and settled onto a tall stool at a table to began
gleaning the articles.

That evening, as Priscilla sat at the
dressing table brushing her hair while mulling over the day's
events, it came to her that Trudy, with her youth, and her
enthusiasm, and her beautiful young face might be enormously
successful in persuading women to vote for her father. Then she saw
her own face in the mirror, and a sick feeling settled in her
stomach. Lady Whittington's well-meaning attempt to make a plain
woman into something she was not, troubled her. Priscilla had
thought she'd come to terms with her appearance. Then Adam came
along and made her wonder if she'd been too critical of herself
over the years...

Until Lady Whittington pointed out the ugly
truth.

She thought about Lady Whittington's
misplaced pity. She didn't want anyone's commiseration. But from
Lady Whittington's piteous looks while dining with her during the
past week, she knew the woman was genuinely concerned, which
Priscilla found aggravating and pointless. Maybe it was time to
apply that defense
modus operandi
from her early years when
she'd been teased mercilessly about her appearance by her
schoolmates, until she'd announced to them that she was a
descendant of Queen Elizabeth, and produced the color plate to
prove it. Although they never cozied up to her, they had at least
left her be after that. So if it worked during her school days,
there was no harm in applying it now, if only to give Lady
Whittington something to ruminate about. At least for a little
while.