The Genuine Lady (Heroines on Horseback) (27 page)

At first he didn’t see her, as the steam hissed from the train’s engine and the wagons were rushed up to unload the baggage and supplies that were bound for Opportunity. Porters were darting around him, and little boys with hand-carts, hoping to make a few cents carting luggage to the hotels, but although Jared worked his way down the platform, gazing up at the windows of each passenger car, he didn’t see those familiar red curls, that smooth white face, those snapping green eyes. He felt down-hearted and tired at the thought of another pointless day in Opportunity, while back in Bradshaw Cherry grew angrier and angrier with him for his cowardly absence. Maybe he was going about things the wrong way. Maybe he should’ve just stayed put, waited for her to get off the train, and told her in front of Cherry and God and everyone that what they had shared was dead and gone.
 

Yeah, he thought, kicking at the dusty street beside the siding. That would have made a lot more sense. If he’d been thinking clearly a week ago, he’d have listened to Matt, and none of this would’ve happened. Cherry would have understood, why, of course she would have! Why had he thought this whole damn ordeal had to be kept quiet? Hell, it might make her like him a little more, knowing some girl had chased him all the way from Texas after two years.

Maybe not. Maybe that was going too far. But still…
 

Maybe he’d just go get the roan out and ride home after all. Take his chances. See Cherry. Take her in his arms and promise her —

“Why, Jared Reese, you handsome thing, you haven’t changed a bit.”

He whirled, heart in his throat, at the familiar purr. And there she was, standing there like an apparition from his past, a ghost decked out in ebony feathers and jet silk: Hope Townsend, lately of Galveston.

***

“Of course I had to do everything possible to provide for my son, Jared. Of course you understand that.”

Jared was more unhappy than he had ever been in his life.
 

He had stopped just short of squirming with discomfort on the delicate French chair he had found himself seated on, certain he was ruining the red velvet with his saddle-stained clothing, damaging the slim gilt legs with his muscular bulk, but he couldn’t have guaranteed to anyone that he wouldn’t leap up at any moment and go running from the room and belting down the staircase and straight out into the street, right in front of everyone at Opportunity Hotel, from the disapproving front-desk clerk with his pressed suit and his silver spectacles to the murmuring ladies taking tea in the hotel’s sun-room.
 

But Hope had done nothing wrong, in her estimation, and she made that very clear in the matter-of-fact way she described her actions. She had found herself with child. She had taken the man with the most cash in his bank account. It was that simple, to her. He wondered if all women thought that way. He wondered if Cherry would drop him like a hot potato if someone with more money came wandering into Bradshaw.

He thought of Cherry’s fiery temper and fierce independence and knew that she wouldn’t. She didn’t want his money. She wanted someone reliable to love her, not take care of her. He was pretty sure that after these shenanigans, she didn’t even want him anymore. He sure wasn’t reliable as she might have hoped.

He could have told her he had never been a reliable man. Or he hadn’t been since Hope had thrown him to the curb. She’d ruined him; he’d never be a nice, normal, sensible man again. Just his presence in this gaudy hotel sitting room had to be indication enough of
that.

The room was very quiet and he realized that Hope was watching him warily. She was waiting for him to speak. She leaned from her chair and picked up a china tea-cup from the service on the little table between them, taking a delicate sip with motions as measured as any fine English lady’s. With her other hand, she smoothed the black silk of her skirts. Hope was wearing mourning of a sort, but her dress was still a dizzying confection of lace and slashed netting and seed pearls, and there were still feathers in her hair, though they were dyed jet-black. There were shiny black stones at her throat, and in her ears, but there were shinier clear ones on her fingers. Jared didn’t know if they were real or not, but he had his suspicions.
 

She waited impatiently, a pretend little smile crooking the right corner of her lips. He could see it there, false and forced, like everything about their relationship. She was a beautiful fraud, his Hope. He had loved her and she had repaid him with lies.
 

“But there wasn’t a boy,” he croaked finally. “You lied about the baby.”

Hope sighed and smiled at him. “I didn’t
lie,
Jared! These things… well, they’re not always certain. I didn’t lie to you and I didn’t lie to him.”

Jared crossed his arms and leaned back in his foolish little chair. It creaked alarmingly. “You lied to one of us, Hope. You told us both we were going to be fathers. Whether or not you lied about the baby is something else entirely. You still told
both
of us we were going to be fathers. You picked the father with the most money, that’s all.”

She just shrugged, still smiling. “What was I to do? I was in love with you, of course, but Townsend was always after me. And he was so wealthy…” she trailed off, and then started again. “He had money enough to do whatever he wanted, Jared. What makes you think everyone is the gentleman that you are? You have no idea how… how
commanding
he could be. I simply had no choice in the matter. If I hadn’t married him… well…” the perky tone to her voice faded, to be replaced with a shakier quiet. “Things would have been difficult. To say the least.”

Jared raised an eyebrow. So far, he was managing to stay immune to her charms. She was still beautiful, that was for damned sure. But he could see her conniving nature at last for what it was, and the truth beneath her flawless complexion and luscious curves was not an attractive one. “Are you saying he forced you?” he asked, not bothering to conceal his skepticism. “And then you agreed to marry him anyway?”

And then Hope put down her cup with a little clink on its saucer. She raised round green eyes to him from beneath dark lashes, and he felt a little catch in his chest.
His beautiful Hope…
he must stop, he must not think that way. She touched her lush, full lips with the tip of her tongue, and her chest was suddenly heaving with rapid breaths, like a frightened animal in a trap. “I know you don’t believe me but… I
had
to, Jared, can’t you see?” she whispered, her expressive face a picture of sorrow and regret. “He swore he’d do anything — he had a set of pearl-handled pistols, oh, you should have seen them! And he said… and he said…” she shook her head suddenly and pressed her lips together.
 

“What did he say?” Jared leaned forward from his chair, reaching out to clasp her hand. She was so frightened, that much was clear, and it wasn’t right, she shouldn’t be so upset from something in the past. He wished he didn’t care, he cursed himself for caring, but all he wanted to do was stop her from feeling frightened. His passion was frightening
him.
“He’s gone now, Hope, it’s all right now, you’re safe…”

Hope shivered violently and clenched his hand in a fist, grinding the bones together. Her eyes were downcast again; all he could see was her lashes upon her white cheek, and he felt a rush of something male and protective sweeping over him. He wanted to keep her safe from the world and tear her clothes off all at once. “He kept the pistols in a beautiful case. He opened them up and showed them to me… they were so gorgeous, Jared! I reached out and stroked one.” She shivered and sighed all in one motion.
 

Jared’s mouth was dry. He thought he could imagine where the story was going. Had the bastard actually threatened to kill her? “What happened then?” he managed to croak.

“He laughed at me. So soft, and cruel. Then he said the right one was named Hope, and the left one was named Reese, and the newspapers would say it was a lover’s pact.” A tear spilled down her cheek, and then another.
 

Jared was dumbstruck.

“He
made
me marry him, Jared! I couldn’t let him kill you! How could I, when I was so in love with you? Oh
Jared —”
And Hope burst into tears. “I should have killed him myself,” she wept. “I should have pulled out that old pistol and shot him right in his black heart!”

Jared was at her side in an instant, kneeling beside her chair, holding her hands tightly in his. He couldn’t have explained his emotions at that moment, they were all so confused and conflicted and swirling. He felt rage at the audacity of the millionaire who had stolen Hope from him, he felt sorrow at what they had lost, but most of all, coming from deep within him, he felt a churning, raging, embarrassing desire rising up from the sight of the beautiful girl who had come to him for protection at last. And there was guilt, too: which meant somewhere, in the back of his mind, he must have remembered Cherry.
 

But Bradshaw and the claim and Cherry seemed a thousand miles and a hundred years away. Right now was Hope, and he was back in that boarding-house room in Galveston, uncoiling her curls across the faded white sheets of his hard little bed. He put his hands in Hope’s red hair, spilling hair-pins as he pushed back her little feathered bonnet, feeling the glory of those fiery curls in his rough fingers, and she turned her tear-stained face up to his, those great green cat’s eyes gleaming at him from behind wells of unshed sorrow.
 

Hope’s tragic, beautiful, matchless eyes were what undid him. He was drowning in them. The visions of Cherry, her gilt hair and her blue eyes, were fading from his mind. All he could think was that Hope had loved him, and sacrificed for him, and all this time he had called her a liar and worse and let his friends do the same, while she lived with a
murderer,
for God’s sakes! He’d let her lie for him and let her live without love for so long — he was a fool and a worse — and with a groan he leaned down and pressed a kiss to her swollen lips. He’d do
anything
to make her feel better.
Anything.

And just like that, Jared was consumed with the woman who had bewitched him so many years before.

“Ho there, girl, where are you riding so fast?”

Cherry looked over her shoulder, startled, and then stood in the stirrups, reining back Galahad. The pony shook his head against the bit; he was having too much fun galloping flat-out to want to stop now. But the man waving his arm at her looked as if he wanted to talk to her, and Cherry didn’t know so many people in this district that she could afford to just ignore folks. Since she had made up her mind to make a go of things with neither her allowance nor Jared, she had realized that she was going to need the help of the community whenever possible. Whether that was accepting hospitality, like she had done with Matt and Patty, or bartering fancy work for practical work, as she had with Mrs. Thompson when she realized that she simply wasn’t keeping up with a rapidly-growing Edward’s clothing needs, Cherry had taken a great deal of effort to shed her reclusive ways and be as friendly to the other residents around Bradshaw as possible.

That thought in mind, she jogged Galahad back towards the man. He was about fifty years old, she thought as she drew close, wrinkled skin leathery from the harsh sun, with a fur-lined coat drawn close to his chin to keep out the prairie wind and a fur hat pulled down over his ears. He took off the hat as she drew near, and she waved at him:
no, no, put it back on.

He just waited, hat in hand, nodding at her suggestion. She noticed a hand-cart at his side, filled with all sorts of hardware. He was building something. A fence, perhaps, or even a shanty. She didn’t recognize him, so he might have been a new man on the prairie, out to see his claim for the first time. He must be in some rush to make sure it was done before the snows set in.
 

“Good day to you, sir,” she called, pulling up Galahad a short distance away. She wasn’t so foolish as to ride right up to a strange man, however set her mind might be on
friendliness.
 

“Good day,” he replied. “That’s a fine pony you have there.”
 

He had no particular accent, she noticed — a peculiarity of the eastern states, she thought. So he was from back east. “He is a fine pony,” she acknowledged, a touch of wariness in her voice. “I would guard him with my life.”
 

His eyes flickered from her face to her hip, and he surely saw the outline of the little pistol she kept there — another lesson from Matt. She couldn’t quite use it yet, but it was there to make her look dangerous. But the man only chuckled. Then he burst into laughter. “Oh, excuse me ma’am,” he chortled. “But you are a frontierswoman for sure, if you think I’m going to try and swindle your good pony. So suspicious! I commend you for it. No, no, I was only admiring.” He held up his hands so that the belt of his trousers, bare of any weapon, was plain to see. “I am just a plain farmer, although I admit I am in want of a good horse myself.”

“He’s not for sale,” Cherry said suspiciously, uncertain of where the man was going with this conversation.

“No, no, I would never dream of offering… I can see you are that fond of him! My mule is lame and without him, I am on foot today. I only wish my horse was so nice as yours.
 
I am in want of a man to train him to saddle.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Back there, at my claim. I have a shanty, and a barn, and a good horse I bought from my cousins in Kentucky. Too good a horse for the likes of me. He can pull a wagon when he has a mind to, which he rarely does, but he’s scarcely saddle-broke, and I’m no horse trainer.”

Cherry considered the man for a moment. He looked like a nice enough sort, and she liked the sound of his voice, so clean and even after the squawks of New York and the intermingling foreign brogues and drawling accents of Bradshaw’s Babel of residents. Almost English, his voice. Almost like home. “Does he buck, or nap, or rear?” she asked thoughtfully.