The Genuine Lady (Heroines on Horseback) (13 page)

Really, Cousin Anne would have to try harder to think of insulting names for her.
 

She snatched up the letter from the table and tossed it, with a sudden peal of laughter, into the fire of the cookstove, and slammed the door shut without bothering to watch the much-handled paper crinkle and blacken. Little Edward clapped his hands from his grassy nest in the yard, and she whirled out to join him. “Shall we go and see our friends get married, my darling?”

But her good mood was a little put off by the false warmth of the sunshine. Autumn was in the air. She could feel it in the sudden briskness of the wind on her cheeks, reddening them as she pulled the girth of her sidesaddle tight on the little spotted pony. She could see it in the elongated puffs of cloud scudding south on a high north wind. She could see it in the fawn-colored grasses spreading from beneath her feet to the horizon in all directions. It was hot yet, but in truth, summer was over, and she did not mind admitting to herself that she was afraid of the coming winter.

Galahad shifted his weight as she leaned on the surcingle, nearly treading on her toes, and she laid a hand on his neck to steady him. His coat was growing in, a thick furry layer of seal brown and bright white creeping through his sleek summer coat.
 

She left the pony ground tied, the split reins pooled at his fore-hooves like an anchor on a ship at sea. It was a funny way to tie a horse but the horse-trader had shown her how to do it, saying that cowponies were taught to stand so. It made sense; there was nowhere to tie a horse out on the prairie, after all. The horse-trader had been a nice man, traveling across the countryside with a string of horses; he had seen in a moment that Cherry was a keen horsewoman and had not bothered trying to sell her anything spavined or aged. She had picked out the piebald pony in a moment, and while he hadn’t done her any favors on the price, he had taken the time to show her the particulars of the pony’s more western training and the long-shanked curb bit on his bridle. She had named him Galahad as soon as the horse-trader went trotting away toward the Jorgenson’s place. He was her new knight, to replace her gallant Lancelot, and she loved him from the first.

With Galahad standing before the shanty, ears pricked and watching her through the open door, Cherry went back inside to tidy up Little Edward. He was playing with some rough toy soldiers that Matt had made for him, atop a bunch-y looking rag rug she had laboriously knotted to try and cover the dirt floors, grown colder and colder with the cooling nights. The toy soldiers were constant hazards within the shanty and without, as Little Edward took them everywhere with him but possessed several more than he could comfortably carry in his two pudgy hands.
 

But how could Cherry complain about something so trivial, when the toys made him so happy? The little boy loved Matt, and the cowboy always had a new toy whittled for him when Cherry rode into town once a week to take tea with Patty. He never said anything about Jared, although Cherry had thought them to be great friends, but she did not ask after him. It had been two months since the horse thieves had taken Lancelot, two months since she had run to him, two months since he had kissed her. And if she still thought of that kiss each night on her pillow, well, she was certain that he did not. Or he would have come to see her, would he not?

Although she had been too busy to think of anything but farm work from sun-up to sun-down, and it stood to reason that Jared would be in the same position. He
might
have been thinking of her at night, too…

She shook her head to rid it of all thoughts of Jared and swung up Little Edward in her arms. “Oof, you're growing heavy.”

He laughed, cunning blue eyes alight with pleasure, and she cuddled him. “My own little man,” she told him, planting a kiss on his plump cheek. “Come. Escort your old mother to this wedding, will you not?”

And give me something to think of when I see Jared there, she thought. Lest I take one look at those stormy eyes and fling myself at his head like a common thing.

***

For the wedding, Jared consented to wear a clean white shirt, newly unfolded from a shelf at Mayfield’s Central Emporium, and a black string tie that he wore more loosely than Patty approved of. The parlor of the Mayfield house was positively
stifling
with the scent of hothouse flowers, or so he thought petulantly, running a finger beneath his stiff collar and eying the closed windows, wondering if he could sneak one open without Mrs. Mayfield’s eagle eye falling upon him. She was a forbidding woman, Mrs. Mayfield, and if Patty turned out anything like her when she was older, Matt was surely in trouble. 

But the lucky bridegroom was happy enough today, happy enough to grate on Jared’s raw nerves with every cheerful whistle and boisterous guffaw. Now, Jared was happy for him, he really was. What sort of sod wouldn’t be glad for his best friend when he found the girl that made him happy? He just wished Matt wasn’t so darned chipper all the time. It made it harder to sit and brood about the Englishwoman, and that was all Jared cared to do these days. Wonder what to do about the Englishwoman. It made for a change from brooding about Hope Townsend and the family she’d made with a Texas millionaire.
 

Mrs. Mayfield swirled into the room like a summer cyclone, shiny brown skirt everywhere, plumping pillows and straightening antimacassars and running a finger along the vases and china figures upon the what-not and the mantlepiece, frowning at her fingertip critically. Jared stood rigid in the corner near the pair of brocade wing chairs that faced each other companionably, like two conversing friends and where, he knew, Matt had asked Patty if she would. He had chosen this corner to hide from the wedding preparations for that very reason, because this was where his old life riding where he pleased with his buddy had ended, and he thought that might help him make his decision. 

Mrs. Mayfield had turned to leave the parlor, satisfied at last that her daughter could be married from its august confines without disgrace, and Jared might have been scot-free if it weren’t for those blame flowers. 

But alas, he sneezed.

Mrs. Mayfield whirled around and eyed him without pleasure. “Why, Mr. Reese —” She was the sole person in Bradshaw that refused to call him Jared — “Just the fellow I wanted to see! I need someone to carry in the chairs from the boxroom, and then the dining room chairs as well. You can line them up there, yes? Of course you can.” And the imposing lady went hustling back to the bowels of the house, leaving Jared to ponder the excess of fabric in her gown — that was no homesteader’s dress she was wearing. It reminded him of Cherry’s funny dress she had worn to her party. Fancy Mrs. Mayfield reminding him of Cherry! But that wasn’t the only thing. Her careful enunciation as she bit out commands — Mrs. Mayfield was an educated daughter of Philadelphia — reminded him of Cherry’s odd accent. 

But maybe he was just looking for an excuse to think about Cherry.

Not that he ever paused in that pursuit for very long. 

Jared dutifully carried chairs and thought about Cherry. He put a chair down before the fireplace and thought about the feeling of her soft curves pressed close to his rough hardness. He made a neat row of chairs, facing the fireplace, and thought about the sweetness of her lips parted beneath his. He brought in the dining room chairs and thought about curling that sinful mass of golden hair around his hand and pulling her head back to expose her swan-like white neck, about popping the buttons of her dress one by one and setting her breasts free of that cheap calico she wore like all the other frontier women. Trying to be like all the other homestead wives. Except that she never could be, and she never should be. She was glorious as she was: a hot-tempered aristocrat with an independent streak as deep and long as any colonial. 

He went upstairs in search of more chairs, and thought about her. 

And then he stumbled right into her.

She was backing out of a deep closet in the upstairs hall, shadowed by the deep maroon wallpaper and curtained window at the staircase end of the hall, arms full of some rich ivory stuff, eyeing it to be sure nothing snagged upon shelves or doorframe, and he was gazing down at the embroidered pattern on the seat of the spindly chair in his arms, the one he’d found in the spare bedroom, watching the flowers dancing in and out with one another and thinking of spilling Cherry’s hair loose as he laid her down in a wildflowered little copse he had once discovered while riding out alone after an errant cow, when he stumbled into her, the chair first, and then as he dropped it, tripped over it, his whole body tumbled into her, and they went crashing to the ground in a confusion of ivory satin and lace.

He opened his eyes. Her own eyes, wide and shining and startled as a deer’s, were mere inches away. He became very aware of his chest on hers, and the broken chair somehow wrapped around his ankles felt a very minor inconvenience. He would kiss her again, that’s what he would do, just as he had that morning at his cabin, and they would both put their ghosts to rest and he would forget Hope and she would forget that dead husband of hers—

“Get off of me,” she whispered fiercely.

He blinked. The fantasy started to fade. He’d waited too long. He’d let her get mad. You couldn’t let Cherry get mad, hadn’t he learned that yet?

“Get off of me!” She started to struggle, eyes snapping sparks, golden cheeks reddening. She was really working herself into a temper now. Jared thought of a palomino mare he had saddled but never been able to ride. In fact, he’d never seen the saddle or the mare again. The golden mare had twisted and turned and lathered and then flipped backwards, snapping the stout rope he’d tied her to the post with, and gone leaping out of the corral. Jared thought:
I gotta get better with the fillies.

And he kissed her.

He kissed her possessively, trying not to bully but asking for every gain, and with a sigh of surrender she softened beneath him and opened her lips, arching up to meet him, and he tasted of her hungrily, teasing and cajoling to find her hesitant tongue, and they melted into one another as comfortably as old lovers.

***

Patty Mayfield watched them for a few long moments. She had heard the crash when the chair hit the ground and someone fell, and so she’d gone to her door, telling her two little sisters, who had been giggling on her bed while they were supposed to be helping her with her hair, to stay put; she didn’t want them to tire themselves unduly when they were being so helpful with dressing her, she told them tartly, and they dissolved into tearful laughter and didn’t stir from the bed. 

So Patty alone had the pleasure of watching Jared, the avowed hermit of the county, and Mrs. Beacham, the genuine lady, wrapped in a deeply passionate embrace on the floor before the hall closet. She felt a giddy pleasure, thinking she was responsible, because of making him fetch Cherry for the summer party and all. And Patty thought it would be nice for Jared to get married, since she was taking Matt for herself. She watched happily, and then she noticed that the yards of satin and lace that were to be her very chic and sensational wedding gown were coiled up between the lovers, and she cleared her throat to put a stop to things before too much damage could be done to her wedding attire.

Cherry and Jared turned their heads in unison at her little cough. Cherry’s eyes widened; Jared’s closed.

“I fell,” Cherry finally said lamely, and Jared’s body started to shake on top of her. She stirred beneath him with some fright — good heavens, was the man taking a palsy? But no… she was astonished… he was laughing, silently and painfully, and tears were starting to well from his tightly closed eyes.

“I fail to see the humor,” she told him stiffly. Patty Mayfield stood and looked on, fascinated.

“Oh, yes,” Jared choked, struggling to regain composure. “Oh yes, Mrs. Beacham. You fell, and I fell atop you, and my lips fell upon yours. I apologize for my clumsiness, and for my lips’ clumsiness.”

***

Cherry tried to stay angry, furious even. But the cowboy was looking at her with a boyish gaze that would melt the most glacial of tempers, and he
was
rather delicious to smell, all scrubbed up and clean for the wedding, a mixture of the leather and horse one would expect overlaid with fresh plain soap, and that kiss had been every bit as nice as the first one he’d presumed to steal from her at the cabin that awful morning. 

She’d missed him since then, even if her pride had kept her firmly at her own claim, and he at his.

She’d missed his kiss. She’d missed everything about him, most of all the way the way he made her feel, as if she were the only girl in the world to him, and as if the sun were rising up inside of her, and as if she might be set ablaze by his touch, and…
 

She could not help but give him a tiny smile. 

“Your face is so bright when you smile,” Jared whispered huskily. “Wish you'd smile at a fellow more often.”

Her face fairly glowed at that compliment, and she was about to speak, parting her rosy lips for some sweet sentiment, when Patty Mayfield evidently decided that the damage to her wedding toilet could not carry on for another moment.

“You two better find another place to make love than on top of my wedding veil,” she announced, hands on hips. “Cherry, honey, I think it’s time to get dressed, anyhow. Will you come and help me?”

***

“And how long have you been walking out with Jared?”