The Genuine Lady (Heroines on Horseback) (30 page)

Because he didn’t know what was between them anymore. Was he in love with her? Was she in love with him? Maybe she
had
loved him in Texas, and maybe she
had
married Townsend to protect him. Maybe that was true. For a surety he had loved her, that could never be questioned. He
had
loved a girl named Hope Sullivan with all his heart and all his soul. Once.

But did he now? He couldn’t say. Even if she had lied to him to save his life, as she claimed — and it was a pretty story at first blush, but now that the heat of the moment had passed, he wasn’t so convinced that it was true — more than two years had passed since he had thought, for a few dizzy months, that he was going to
marry
her. That time had since been tainted; those memories were not sweet, but bitter and ruined. He had not suffered from nostalgia at the thought of Hope’s ruinous love; just the opposite, in fact.
 

And another fact that could not be denied: Hope hadn’t just been a dancer, as she had always told him. He had been naïve, of course, a fool in love, to believe that she wasn’t just as much a whore as the rest of the girls in the dance-hall. He had been foolish enough to swallow the line, when it was just one more of Hope’s never-ending lies.
 

And now, naturally, she was playing quite the opposite act, putting him out of her room and blinking in the hallway every night at nine o’clock sharp. They’d done nothing more than kiss on the divan, and Hope had been acting like an untouched virgin, slapping at his hands and squealing whenever his fingers started to wander away from her shoulders, or her elbows. It was enough to make a man crazy, the constant teasing with her lips and the constant pushing away with her hands.

But there had been one benefit to Hope’s changeable temper and teasing ways: it had let Jared slip out from under her spell before he was completely lost. If she had been the lovely, giving, sweet-natured girl that he had fallen in love with all those years ago in Galveston, he would have followed her anywhere. But this Hope, raw and unshielded by her actress’s poise, was an altogether different woman, and one that Jared did not care for.

And so night after night he vowed his eternal love to her even while he struggled to remember just what it was he loved about her. None of the answers seemed right. Nothing that he thought of seemed to apply, in anyway, to the harridan in jewels who was glaring at him, angry as always, right at this moment.

“Hope,” he began, exasperation at the ragged edges of his voice. “Hope, it is unreasonable to expect me to stroll into town with you on my arm. Good God, woman, half the town thinks I’m marryin’ someone else! What will they say? These things take time. It’s a small town, we don’t want too much talk.”

“Oh, why do we care?” Hope sounded bored. She leaned back towards the mirror and pinched at a curl next to her cheek. “It’s not as if we’ll be living there or something.”

“My claim is there.” Jared was startled. This was the first he’d heard of any objection to living in Bradshaw. Although, honestly, they hadn’t actually discussed
any
sort of future. Just a lot of vague promises about taking care of her and protecting her and loving her, that sort of thing. He hadn’t wanted to make anything as solid and irrefutable as a
plan,
and she hadn’t brought it up either. The open-ended nature of their relationship was a safety valve he hadn’t thought he’d need, but he’d been grateful for it. Now he was losing it.
 

“My claim is there,” he repeated. “I’m proving up that land. It’s going to be my homestead. Of course I’ll be living there.”

Hope narrowed her eyes at the sound of the word
“I,”
instead of
“we.”
She turned from the mirror and put her hands on her hips, glaring at him. The black lace netting atop her full skirt rustled beneath her clenching fingertips. But when she spoke, her voice was strangely soft, even wheedling. “Now Jared,” she sighed. “Surely you don’t want to live up here in the old Dakotas forever. Wouldn’t you care to go somewhere warm, darling? What about your land in Texas?”

“My land in —” Jared shook his head. “There’s no land in Texas. That land agent took my money and disappeared. You’d have known that, but…” They looked at each other, neither willing to acknowledge what had happened the day he’d tried to tell her there wouldn’t be a ranch on the Rio Grande. “There’s no land,” he finished lamely. “All I’ve got is in Bradshaw.”

And then Hope laughed, loud and merry, turning her head back and giving herself over to amusement until Jared thought she’d gone insane. He was starting to wonder if he ought to go for a doctor when she recovered herself, gasping a little and wiping at her eyes. He looked at her with narrow eyes. “What’s going on?”

“Oh Jared,” she giggled. “It’s too wonderful. Don’t you even know? The deed for that land came six months later. I thought you had a copy. But I guess I have the only one.”

Jared stopped breathing for a minute, and he thought maybe his heart had stopped beating too, because the room started spinning and he saw spots before his eyes. By the time he had recovered himself, he was seated on the divan and Hope was sitting up against him, fanning him ardently with her painted fan.

The breeze blew her curls in his eyes. “Stop that,” he ordered, catching at her wrist. “Stop playing and tell me what’s going on.”

She toyed with teasing him a bit longer; he could see the trouble in her eyes. But something sharp in his tone told her that he was done playing with her. She might lose her temper with him day in and day out, but she had yet to see Jared grow angry with her, and she decided that she didn’t want to.

“You own the land in Texas,” she said simply. “A courier brought it to Mrs. O’Keefe’s house, and she sent him to the dance-hall to deliver it to me, and, well… I’ve had it ever since.” She got up and started rooting around in a valise leaning against the wall. “I have it right here, as a matter of fact…”

“Have
what?”
He didn’t think he understood correctly. The ranch-land along the Rio Grande was
his?
How could that be? He’d been told the land agent was a crook, that he’d taken the money to Mexico. He’d been told his life savings were lining someone else’s pockets.

“The deed to the land,” Hope smiled, brandishing an envelope. “With your name on it. I guess you didn’t get a copy after all. I told the courier you were out on a drive and you’d be in Dakota for a year — I asked Mrs. O’Keefe after you left, you know, so I’d still know where you were — and to send you a copy there. But maybe he didn’t bother with it.” She laughed again, that pretty trilling laugh he had always been so wild about in Galveston. But suddenly it didn’t sound so lovely to him anymore.
 

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” he gritted out from between clenched teeth.

She ignored his tone and settled down on the divan again, wagging the envelope in his face. “I thought you knew.”
 

“Like hell you did!” Jared snatched at the envelope and opened it, reading the parchment paper within it feverishly. His hands shook as he put the deed back in its envelope and set it down on the table ever so gently, as if it were made of delicate china. Then he got up from the divan and stood over her, face set in fury. “You kept it a secret from me — all this time I thought I had lost everything I’d invested, and you knew about it… so that you’d have something to hold over my head down the road.”

“Why, Jared, that’s just cra—”

“Is it? Why did you follow me here, Hope?” He started pacing around the little room, weaving in and out of the overstuffed furniture and gilded tables that crowded the space. The floor creaked beneath his boots. “You could have any man you choose. You already proved that once before. You wanted a cattle baron and you married a cattle baron when you saw it would take too long for me to become one myself. Why don’t you go and find yourself another one? Too proud to dance for your supper anymore?”

Hope’s face darkened dangerously. “How
dare
you,” she hissed. “When I think of the way you mooned over me for
four solid years
and now you throw my love in my face! I hand you the deed to the land you thought was stolen
 
and you insult me for my troubles! Is this how you intend to treat the woman you marry? Maybe this Englishwoman ought to know about it!”

Jared was shaking his head. “This is crazy,” he muttered. “You’re crazy. I’m crazy. I have to go.” He snatched up the deed and stuffed it inside his coat. “I can’t do this with you, Hope. I can’t see the truth from the lies with you.”

Hope looked away from his bleak gaze, her face falling for the first time. “I love you,” she said softly. “Everything I do, I do because I love you.”

“You have a funny way of showing it,” Jared snapped, going to the door.
 

“I know,” she whispered as he went out of the room. “I do.”

***

Jared had every intention of getting straight on the 1:10 train and hopping off at Bradshaw. That had been his goal since he had gotten up that morning and told Hope that today was the day he went back. To sort things out, he’d said, still stuck in the paralysis that wouldn’t allow him to think more than a few minutes ahead. What “sort things out” meant, he hadn’t had a clue. See Cherry? And tell her what? That he loved her? That he’d left her? How could he talk to her when he had nothing that made any sense to tell her?

He’d been in a welter of confusion when he went into the Opportunity Hotel that morning, but now, as the winter noontime sun wanly shone down on the frozen street, he knew his way forward. Not anything too specific, mind; the deed in his pocket, granting him a thousand acres of prime grazing land down near the Rio Grande, was a gift he had never expected. How that would affect his future, he couldn’t say. But one thing he did know: he was going to go back to Cherry. And he was going to tell her he was sorry, and he loved her. And then he would say it again. As many times as it took. He’d tell her the whole sorry story, lay it at her feet, and beg for her forgiveness. And if she didn’t give it to him, well… he’d ask again tomorrow. And the next day. He’d grovel at her damn feet, if that’s what it took.
 

Cherry would be worth it. Hope never had been. He’d been a fool not to see it.
 

He’d tell her that, too. A couple times. All the time. Over and over. What a damn fool he’d been.

He smiled and shook his head at himself.

The station-master was coming out of the office when Jared went up the steps to the siding. “Help you?” he asked, glancing up from the telegram in his hand.
 

“Ticket to Bradshaw,” Jared said, digging out some money.

“Not today,” the station-master said with a shrug. He waved the telegram in the air. “Train’s done broke-down east of Ellis Springs. They expect it will come tomorrow though.”

Jared’s shoulders slumped, then he shrugged too. “Guess it’s a long ride for me, then.”

The station-master nodded. “If it’s that important. Can’t wait for tomorrow, huh?”

Jared smiled, his mind blissfully clear for the first time in weeks. “It’s that important.”

The roan would be happy, anyway, he thought as he went trudging back to his hotel. That poor horse was bored as hell hanging around in the livery stable, missing his pasture back in Bradshaw, where he had the freedom to gallop around and kick up his heels if he felt like it. He had started greeting Jared with pinned ears and a switching tail whenever he saw him, a sure sign of a fed-up horse. He’d love a nice gallop… that would cheer him up in no time at all… and it would raise Jared’s spirits, as well. Nothing like a gallop, no sirree…

He climbed the steps of the hotel, put his hand on the door-knob, and stopped. There was a clatter and rattle coming from behind the hotel. He walked across the wooden porch and looked down the alley that ran between the hotel and the livery stable. There was definitely an agitated horse kicking at the walls back there. He leaned way over, his shoulders and head out in the alley, trying to see what was going on…

…And pulled himself back sharply as a horse came careening out of the back door of the livery and charging up the alley, galloping so hard that Jared barely escaped with his head. He jumped back onto the porch and swatted his hand around at the dust kicked up by the loose horse.
Must
be a loose horse, because no rider ever would have been fool enough to…

He stepped to the edge of the porch, eyes narrowing, coughing on dust. The horse was moving at a racing clip through the town of Opportunity, scattering dogs and small children and causing a grocer to pull up sharply, nearly overturning his wagon as his mule bounced sideways, mouth agape in protest against the hard bit, and the dust was rising up in a cloud behind him, but even so, he thought he recognized that apple-shaped rump, that brown-streaked tail…
that feather in her hair!

“Goddamn it!” Jared Reese shouted, and the whole town of Opportunity seemed to turn and look at him. “That bitch stole my goddamn horse!”

***

“You won’t regret this,” Cherry told Mr. Morrison. “Thank you so much!” She was having a hard time staying cool and professional right at the moment. Mr. Morrison’s lumber-yard business was going so well, he’d decided to open a new business in Bradshaw, and he’d told Cherry about it first.

“A livery stable is just what this town needs to put it on the map,” Mr. Morrison said grandly, holding back his team with one hand. Percival danced beneath Cherry and she gave him a sharp tug on the bit, chiding him for not standing still. The Thoroughbred went rigid, ears lop-sided with shame. She patted his neck.
 

“I couldn’t agree more,” Cherry replied emphatically. She wasn’t actually altogether certain what a livery stable would do for the local economy, but she supposed if people could rent horses and put up their own horses for a spell, that might be good for people who wanted to open up businesses in town. There were always ambitious people getting off the train and getting back on again when they saw that the town was just a way-station for homesteaders on their way out to their claims, after all. Not everyone wanted to make a living as a farmer. “It’s a wonderful plan,” she went on. “And having stock for sale all the time is a very wise addition to it.”