The Genuine Lady (Heroines on Horseback) (11 page)

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.

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?”

As if on cue, her son laughed delightedly. “Outside in the sun,” Jared told her with a jerk of his head. “Ate a biscuit like a man. Now he’s playin’ with Blue.”

“The dog?” Cherry seemed to remember the hound from the night before, but she couldn’t be certain. “Is he safe?”

“Unless you’re a steer tryin’ to break out of the herd,” Jared said, smiling. “With a baby, he’s nothin’ but an old lapdog. As good a nursemaid as that Swedish girl, I reckon.”

Cherry nodded and decided to trust him on that. She must have trusted him already, or she wouldn’t have run to his cabin in the middle of the night, following the track that she had seen his horse’s hooves take after that first encounter at the shanty.

“There’s biscuits,” he said then, and looked away from her suddenly. He clumped out of the cabin, boots heavy on the floorboards, and left her blinking after him, outdoors into the sunshine where his hound played with her baby. His departure was so abrupt, his voice so chillingly stiff, that she wondered for a moment what she’d done wrong. But there was no explaining that man, she told herself. Look at the way he’d left her at the party, without a word of good-bye. Look at the way he went around peeking in women’s windows! She wasn’t sure what instinct was telling her to trust him, but she didn’t suppose it meant she had to like his company.

Cherry sat up cautiously, not at all happy with the resultant pounding in her temples, and glanced across the room. A fat cookstove sat in the opposite corner, between two glass windows, its stovepipe neat and straight right up to the hole in the roof. The hole wasn’t jagged and ill-cut like hers, she noted. It was perfectly fitted to the stovepipe. She shrugged; it was the first shanty she’d ever built, after all. Maybe next year she would hire some men and build a cabin like this one, with wooden floors and glass windows. After her first harvest, when she had finally made some money, instead of merely spending it.
 

On top of the stove was a dutch oven; she had a sudden hankering to get at the biscuits she knew were kept warm inside, and she flung back the quilt and went across the clean-swept floors on bare feet, wondering in the meantime where on earth her boots and stockings could have gotten to. What a strange country, America, that she could wake up in her neighbor’s bed, with bare feet, and go and help herself to biscuits as if nothing untoward was happening! What a strange land, the West!
 

The biscuits were fat and brown-crusted; she looked down at them thoughtfully. Her stomach was none too steady. But perhaps a nice breakfast was just what she needed. Edward, and indeed her father, had always consumed massive breakfasts after their nights out on the town. “Have you any butter?” she called.
 

“I do, but you don’t want any.”

She furrowed her brow. “What? Whyever not? Has it turned?”

“No, but it’ll like to turn your stomach. Eat it dry, and have some more water,” Jared advised, his voice coming in the open front door.
 

“I want tea,” she said obstinately.

“Haven’t got any tea.”

“Haven’t got any!”

“Don’t touch the stuff.”

“Why—!” Cherry was at a loss. Here she was, homeless and ill, and not even a cup of tea to console her!
 

“Make you some coffee if you want,” he offered.

“You Americans and your coffee!” she sniffed, but she took out a biscuit anyway, covering the pot again, and took the tin cup of water over to the door. The sun was dazzling on the shining buffalo grass and she had to blink, hard, trying to ignore the thrumming in her head. Liquor was truly beastly stuff. Why men were so attached to it she would never know. She opened her eyes again and looked around her, and then she sighed with envy.