The Genuine Lady (Heroines on Horseback) (3 page)

But there was no one more alone than Cherry, with no husband at all.

Her hands tightened on Edward, and the baby, awakened and alarmed by his mother’s trembling body and the braying mule a few feet from their heads, raised his own voice and began to weep with the frustration of good sleep lost. The hat moved furtively away from the window, and through the howling cries Cherry distinctly heard a man’s voice call: “Sorry ma’am.”

Oh, really! Sorry, was he? And was the Stetson-wearer really just some nosey neighbor, snooping around her homestead, waking her baby, and scaring her nearly to death? What outrageous behavior! Cherry’s jaw took on a forbidding tilt, demonstrating the same tight ferocity she had displayed when Lady Walsall had forbidden her to attend Edward’s funeral, when the doors of society were barred against her, when her cousin Mrs. George Braithwhite told her that she had no longer had a guest room to accommodate her but offered the kitchen chamber and a place in the staff of her Washington Square mansion. It was an altogether formidable look, and greater men than Jared Reese had felt a cold shiver run down their spine when it was turned upon them.

She was up and out of her rocking chair before the Stetson could escape her view, and still buttoning up her bodice with nimble fingers, her left arm clutching Little Edward to her side. Of the trio, Little Edward alone seemed delighted by this sudden turn of events: things had seemed frightening when he first awoke, but the sudden swiftness of action by his ordinarily slow and always tired mother, the rushing swoop through the air as she shifted him to her hip and leapt for the shanty’s front door, was truly the best thing Little Edward could imagine, for he had his mother’s adventurous heart, and as yet knew not what calamity such a trait could bestow.

Edward squealed with delight as he found himself propelled through the door and into the oven-heat of the prairie evening. But his pleasure did not register with the other two players on the wind-swept stage. The stranger was making for his horse with all speed, and Cherry was determined to give him a piece of her mind. She darted after the cowboy — he was surely a cowboy, in that weather-beaten Stetson they all wore like prizes of war, and in that plaid shirt and worn leather chaps — and as soon as she was close enough, snatched at his sleeve. He whirled around, his chest nearly touching hers with stunning swiftness, and she stopped abruptly, tilting her defiant chin up to meet his gaze.

Then their eyes locked, and Cherry saw stars.

For a brief moment, her rage faded; his dark-blue eyes were like the Atlantic waters after a storm, and they held hers with fierce intensity; she could not tear herself from his gaze. The very air seemed to crackle around them. Her breath caught in her throat.

They stared at each other, speechless, until Little Edward squirmed and said “Baaaaaah,” to the cowboy’s horse.
 

The cowboy started and then looked at Edward and laughed.

Cherry found her breath again, and remembered that, charming eyes or no, this fellow had been staring in her window at her. Trespasser! Pervert! She glared at his tan face, so crumpled with mirth.

“Whatever is the meaning of this?” Cherry demanded of the stranger, scarcely remembering to cover up her accent with the patched-together patois she imagined to sound like an American accent. She had no idea what a startling garble her voice actually sounded like.

***

Jared, who just a moment ago had been having something like a religious experience in the strange woman’s eyes, now eyeballed her like a horse that’s seen a snake.
 
What the hell had she just said to him? “Are you alright?” he asked, hoping she wasn’t taking some sort of fit. He had a brief vision of being left there alone with a baby and no one to care for it. What on earth would he do with it? He eyed the baby with some discomfort, which only seemed to egg the woman on. She definitely wasn’t taking a fit, he decided. That was a relief.

“Filthy backwoods pervert!” the woman raged, now sounding like a West Indian who had spent several years amongst the Cajuns of the bayous. “How do you dare spy upon me?” (This sounded rather Scottish.) “I shall report you to the authorities!” (Now she slipped back into an accent he recognized as English, as if she had been sailing eastward this entire time.)

“Wasn’t spyin’,” Jared muttered, as shame-faced as a boy caught with his hand in the jam-jar. 

“You were!” she insisted, and the toddler in her arms waved his hands to punctuate the exclamation.“Spying on me, common gutter-trash! I shall have you arrested!”

“Now ma’am,” Jared began in a mollifying tone, feeling alarmed at the mention of bringing in the law. He’d managed to stay out of jail, but he’d bailed Matt out more than once and knew it wouldn’t suit him at all. The men in jails didn’t tend to bathe, and Jared had a sensitive nose. “Now ma’am, this is all a misunderstanding, and I’m mighty sorry for peeking in your window like that. I was just worried on account I didn’t hear no one around the yard. Folks can get hurt easy and you got to check on your neighbors from time to time.”

“Well, you may be sure I will not be checking up on you in such a fashion,” she huffed, but her outrage seemed to be simmering down somewhat. She was distracted by something else. “And are you saying that you are my neighbor? In which direction?”

“My place is to the south, just over —”

“To the south! So you are the one who means to divert my water!” The woman sniffed derisively. “Oh yes, I’ve heard about the gentleman buying pick-axes and talking of irrigation canals! You talk too much, I’m afraid. I am considering legal action should you pursue such a course, I think it only fair to warn you.”

“You can’t take me to court for irrigating my own fields,” he argued, clearly forgetting in his discomfiture that you should never argue with a riled lady. “And the headwaters are on my land. I think it’s clear I can do what I choose with the water.”

“So you think you can just divert the stream and leave me to die of thirst, is that it?” The woman cast him a withering look, as if she looked upon him and saw something shriveled-up and foul, and he found himself at a loss for words.
 

“Now ma’am,” he began lamely. “I don’t think — And wait — did you say
you’re
gonna take me to court?” His mind started to turn over. “Maybe I could talk to your husband when he’s around, maybe —”

“I see what is going on here,” she interrupted icily, hitching up the baby on her hip. The motion popped one button free on her bodice, a button perhaps only half-secured when she’d come bursting out of the shanty to pursue him, and quite without meaning to Jared found his gaze fixed upon the patch of white that was gleaming from between the two pieces of faded blue calico, his mind’s eye helpfully supplying the rest of the round apple of a breast that he had seen just a few moments before, and his imagination began to construct other, even more pleasing images: the other breast, for starters, and then the smooth white slope of her belly, the darkling little shadow of her navel, the golden curls — yes, they’d be golden, to match that thick braid and those elegant brows — tufting in that lovely
v
of her legs —

She was suddenly much closer to him and then she was leaning back her free arm and then before he knew what was happening, she was slapping him. He put his hand to his stinging cheek, astonished. She had actually slapped him. The pleasant picture he had been painting for himself fell face-down from the wall. “Why, you little bitch,” he heard himself say, as if from a distance. “I only came out here to advise you and your husband to get back on that train before you starve to death, but I guess I won’t bother now. Might be you starvin’ would do us all a favor.”

Her jaw dropped, her eyes widened, her baby squirmed against a tight grip, and Jared reckoned he’d just said the meanest things he’d ever said to a woman. He actually felt a little ashamed of himself. You didn’t wish ill on a woman, or call her a bitch. It just wasn’t the way a man ought to behave himself. There was no harm in her slapping him, he had to admit that. He’d been ogling her like she was a showgirl and he got what he deserved. It was him who’d spoken out of turn and gone too far. And they both knew it.
 

“I’ll be out of your way now,” he murmured, and turned to catch up the reins of the roan, who was watching him with pricked ears, as if he, too, was shocked senseless by the way Jared had just spoken to a lady. Jared felt his ears start to burn. There were only four other creatures alive on this stunted little homestead, as far as he knew, and all four were gazing at him with distaste and disbelief. Even the mule in the lean-to and the round-eyed baby were regarding him with studied silence.
 

He and his neighbors were not going to be friends, that much was certain. He hoped they found someone they could rely on out here, though, or they really would starve to death come winter. This place wasn’t half good enough to survive the year, and the Dakota winters were no laughing matter.

And a woman like that, too pretty by half: what was she doing out here alone, anyway? Jared shifted uncomfortably in the saddle and resisted a nearly painful urge to look over his shoulder.
Too pretty by half,
hah, she was stunning. Those eyes… a queer light blue, with a dark ring around them, like the sky in the spring. All he wanted was one more look… but no, he wouldn’t. Jared resolved to be strong. A woman, especially one with a temper like a snake’s, was the last thing he needed in his life.

The Professor’s breakfast was a greasy delight of sausages and fresh eggs, to be washed down with a black bitter brew he swore was coffee. Jared, who ate it whenever he was in Bradshaw overnight, was fairly certain it had a lot to do with his constant bad temper. But a bachelor kitchen was a sorry thing, and a cabin on the prairie a lonely one. Jared spent some of his nights in town to get away from the quiet, laying down his head in a room at Miss Rose’s. Miss Rose set a real pretty table, but her girls were always giggling and giggling got on his nerves, so he dragged the weakly protesting Matt down to the saloon most mornings to break his fast and work on his hangover.
 

Matt, as usual, recovered much more quickly from a night ill-spent than Jared did. Jared supposed this was because Matt was a cheerful drunk, and he was just a gloomy one. There was nothing really to be cheerful about, in Jared’s estimation. He’d gotten tired of cattle drives, and wanted a ranch, so he’d filed a claim out here in hopes of putting cattle on that good green grass. It wasn’t a place he’d ever planned upon settling, but it had made a lot of sense at the time, and now here he was. It was good enough land. He had the cattle. He’d plant some wheat where he could irrigate. He’d asked Michael Wassbaum, the town’s attorney, if that crazy neighbor-lady he’d met last week could actually sue him for diverting the creek, and Wassbaum had said she couldn’t, and that was about the sum total of his life right now.
 

But Matt, who had no claim and no land and no worries, Matt was prattling on now about some party. A party! Like they were schoolgirls, or Galveston debutantes out in their billowing white dresses, pretending they were royalty. Jared just hated royalty. And parties. And debutantes. And Galveston. He wished Matt would quit talking about going back. It wasn’t going to happen.

“I hear there’s going to be a
genuine
lady at this party of Patty’s,” Matt announced with some delight. “Patty Mayfield said so just now, over to the store. She said it’s going to be some…” he paused to remember the word. “Some
swar-ray
. Fancy, like Back East, with nice clothes and a punch bowl. On account of the genuine lady she met. In the store. Buyin’ pickles, she said.” He thought. “Even genuine ladies like pickles,” he said wonderingly.
 

“We got ladies enough,” Jared said absently. He was absorbed in a month-old newspaper some cowboy had left lying around, and barely paying attention to Matt, who was no better than a fool most days anyhow. “Seems every week another one gets off the train looking for a husband. Don’t know why everyone wants to get excited about this one.”

“Not some schoolmarm,” Matt scoffed. “A
Lady
. An English lady, the kind you got to bow and kiss her hand. Patty Mayfield said she talks like she has something wedged in her throat. Said she talks real fancy.”

Jared looked up from his newspaper, suspicion rising in his thoughts. “She say where this lady lives?”

“Just she has a claim in the district. Don’t know why she’s out here. Don’t know much about her at all, except she’s a widow. That’s why Patty Mayfield is throwing her a party. So everyone can talk to her.”

A widow! Well, that would explain why she was alone at the claim… although not why she would have thought it would be a good idea to actually
be
on a claim
.
A woman alone on the prairie… with a
baby…
and a
lady
besides…

Call that a lady! The way she’d spoken to him! The way she’d slapped him!
 

The way she’d
looked
at him… as if, for a moment there, she wasn’t so much wantin’ to kill him as wantin’ to… well… Jared grinned to himself.

“Well, hell.”

“What?”

“I do believe I spoke out of turn to a
lady
.”

Matt’s smile fairly split his face in two. “Go on! Tell me!”

Jared had a sudden vision of the sleeping woman, the curve of her breast, the gold of her braid, her lips slightly parted as if welcoming a lover’s kiss in her dreams, and instantly revised an earlier plan to get up from the table and walk up to the bar. It had been more than a week, but the sight was still firmly entrenched in his mind’s eye. He’d stay seated for the time being, yes he would. Quite cozy here in this chair, no need to stand. “She’s got quite a temper,” he allowed. “Don’t think much of men, if you asked me.”