The Genuine Lady (Heroines on Horseback) (36 page)

He hadn’t expected the warmest welcome in the world, that was true. Hell, he wasn’t even looking for it. His first goal was to warn Cherry that some unsavory characters had shown up and were looking for her and the baby; only after he’d helped her get Edward safe was he going to try and make amends for all his stupid behavior. And whatever in God’s name Hope had done.

But he sure as hell didn’t expect her to leap back from his embrace and give him the slap of a lifetime across his face. He raised a hand to his burning cheek wonderingly, wincing at the sting of it, while the woman he loved glared at him with tight lips and cold eyes.
 

“Cherry?” he attempted finally, after she didn’t say a word for a moment or two. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw motion: Little Edward, who hadn’t stirred despite his mother’s request to go back to the house, was looking up at them with wide eyes. Looked like the little tyke was just as shocked as Jared was.
 

Cherry saw his glance shift momentarily and she, too, looked down at the boy. “Sorry, Eddie, darling. Mummy made a mistake. She thought Uncle Jared was someone bad, isn’t that funny? Hahaha!”
 

Eddie — Eddie? Where had that name come from? —clapped his hands at her forced laughter. “Jawed,” he sang out. “Goddamn Jawed
bad!”
 

“Hmmph.” Cherry turned back to Jared. “Jared bad, Eddie says.”
 

“I don’t reckon that’s any more than I deserve,” Jared said ruefully. “But I wonder if you’d step over here and talk to me in private. I got somethin’ to tell you and it’s not for little ears.”

“I don’t think I want to hear anything you have to say,” Cherry announced, lifting her chin. “I don’t think I’m quite in the mood for you at all right now.” She put her hands on her hips and looked expectant, a clear suggestion that he remove himself from the barn and her presence. Pretty tough for a woman who’d just been melting in his arms. There were times he thought Cherry was a sight more tough than he’d ever been. He was coming down off his triumph of having kissed her
very
quickly.

But he didn’t have any choice but to see this through. Their relationship had to wait. Little Edward came first.
Someone
would tell that old man where Cherry was living, and he’d be marching down here with that gun-totin’ cowboy and that teeth-chatterin’ nursemaid, and there’d be hell to pay on both sides if he did. “Cherry, I know you’re mad, but this is about Little Edward.” He glanced down at the boy, who’d gone back to beating on his bucket. “Eddie. Someone I saw on the train. Cherry, tell me: do you have a real tall, gray-haired relative who might think Eddie’d be better off with him?”
 

To his shock, Cherry’s pale complexion seemed to fade to something like gray, and she took a step backward, nearly falling until her back hit Galahad. She leaned back against the pony and stretched an arm under his neck, her chest rising with frightened breaths.
 

Jared took one look at her round, frightened eyes and knew he had to step into action. He was going to have be the man here. Well, well, Cherry wouldn’t thank him for that later, but… “Let me put a saddle back on this horse and get both of you out of here,” he urged. “Until we can figure out how much power these folks actually have. He hired a gun to scare you, so it might be he hasn’t really got the law on his side at all.”

“A gun!” Cherry swallowed and then shook her head, as if she was having trouble getting her bearings. “Stop. Tell me everything.”

“No time. You need to go —”

“We’re not going anywhere.” She stood up suddenly, letting go of the pony. “There’s a blizzard coming on, had you not noticed? I’m not riding out onto the prairie with my son to be frozen in a snowstorm.”

Jared sighed. She was right. For a few minutes, running wildly through town to try and warn her, he’d forgotten all about the storm. The wind rattled the door again as if to remind him.
 

Cherry seemed to have recovered herself. She had certainly regained her color, Jared observed. The pink flush in her cheeks was either her fierce temper or too much time spent out in the wind. He wondered how she’d been spending her time since she came into Bradshaw. Not baking and knitting, he figured. That wasn’t his Cherry.
 

She grabbed him by the arm while he was busy daydreaming and pulled him into the opposite corner of the barn. Percival leaned out of his stall, ears pricked, and nuzzled at Jared’s coat collar. “Who’s this?” Jared asked, distracted by the prospect of new horseflesh. “He’s real handsome.”

“Percival,” Cherry said shortly. “One of my clients. Now tell me what you know about my Uncle Richard.”

“Uncle Richard? Is that who that was?” Cherry was standing very close to Jared, her voice hushed and low to keep Eddie from hearing, and Jared, with his back up against the barn wall and Cherry’s chest nearly touching his, was having a hard time concentrating. The effect that woman had on him! Damn! With Hope, it had been all perfume and shimmering gowns and naughty words murmured in a thrilling voice. But with Cherry it was… it was
everything.
Her very presence consumed him.
He wondered how he was ever going to convince her of that.
 

“Tall, silver-haired, thick eyebrows and blue eyes?” He nodded. “That’s my Uncle Richard.” Cherry bit her lip. “He… he doesn’t like me,” she said lamely. “He’s the reason I left England.” She looked furtive suddenly, refusing to meet Jared’s eyes.

“Turned you out? And you a widow expecting a child?” Jared was shocked. He’d had an idea her relatives would have been more, well, honorable than that. “But you were all alone in the world! How could a relative do that?”

Cherry shook her head sadly. “Oh, Jared, I was never married at all! Edward died before we were married. Uncle Richard had just inherited the estate and title from my father, and he turned me out without a penny that hadn’t been specifically entrusted to me by my father. I’m not a widow at all,” she went on, turning to rub at Percival’s velvet nose. When she spoke again, her voice was bitter. “I’m a dishonored woman who ran away because I had no home left to me.”

Jared blinked away his shock at her confession. It didn’t matter. There was too much else at stake. He reached out and touched her arm. “Cherry, listen to me. You’re not a dishonored woman. You can’t call yourself names and beat yourself up. Cherry?” She ignored him, but she didn’t shake off his hand. Emboldened, he slid his hand up, touching the softness of her neck, teasing the silken skin just behind her ear. She stirred, and leaned into him, closing her eyes. His heart leapt; she wasn’t slapping him away, she wasn’t snapping at him. “Cherry, you’re an angel,” he whispered clumsily.

A muscle in her jaw worked; her throat convulsed as she swallowed hard. But she went on stroking at Percival’s muzzle, her fingers dancing as the young horse wiggled his lips playfully and tried to snatch at her fingertips, and Jared went on stroking her neck with the same slow rhythm. His heart was singing that she would let him near her again, but at the same time, he knew they didn’t have time for any of this. “Cherry,” he whispered, hating to break the spell. “We got to go inside and be ready for your uncle when he comes.”

She nodded but didn’t move.
 

“Cherry,” he murmured again. “Come on, sweetie. Let’s go get Matt and Patty and tell them to be on guard.”

“You’re right.” She opened her eyes and smiled at him. He caught his breath at the sight of her smile on him again. “Whatever else we have to talk about, it will keep. Eddie comes first.”
 

She put Galahad back in his box and then got Eddie back into his scarf and coat for the short walk back to the house. The wind outside must be biting, for even the barn, with its low ceilings and warm horses, was starting to feel bitterly cold.
 

Jared didn’t try to take her arm as they were walking through the yard; he wasn’t that sure of himself yet. But he did try to block the wind from her and Eddie, and if that meant their hips bumped a few times, well, she didn’t turn and give him an angry glare, as she might have. His thoughts, in a turmoil for the past month, were finally starting to settle down. If he could get rid of these fools from England,
and
get Hope on the next train out of town, winning Cherry back shouldn’t be too hard, after all.

All he had to do was chase a few folks out of town forever.
 

That wasn’t too tall an order, was it?

And then Patty came bursting out of the house, her face twisted with fear. “Cherry Beacham, get that boy as far away from here as you can!”

***

Cherry snatched Eddie up to her chest, completely forgetting that the boy had grown so tall and heavy in the past few months that he was nearly too much for her to carry around. The look of terror on Patty’s face was too alarming for words: something truly awful must have happened for stalwart Patty Barnsley to look as though the house was afire.

But she didn’t run away. There was nowhere to run to. The snow was starting to fly, tiny snowflakes stinging at her cheeks as they melted, and the day had darkened so much that the mid-afternoon sky was looking more like dusk. The heavy weather was settling in, and everyone in Bradshaw was about to be snowed in.
 

“Are they in the house, Patty?” Jared shouted. “Where’s Matt?”

Patty didn’t even react to Jared’s sudden presence in her yard. “Some crazy man has Matt in the parlor with a gun to his forehead. He says he’ll shoot us all if we don’t hand over the baby.”

Cherry looked at Jared in confusion. This wasn’t so much frightening as it was bizarre. “My uncle wouldn’t do that,” she said, furrowing her brow. She tightened her grip on Eddie, hoisting him up on her hip. “He might be a peer in England, but that hardly makes him above the law. He
knows
that.”

“Maybe he reckons the only law out here is the one he brings with him,” Jared suggested. “He said something about adoption papers. If he forces you to sign them, they’ll be legal enough no matter
how
you claim he got them signed. It’d be your word against his in a court.”

“And my word is worth nothing,” Cherry agreed with a little head-shake. “Uncle Richard! Uncle Richard! Have you never done anything for love?”

Patty was nearly dancing with anxiety. “For the love of God, would you just get out of here? They didn’t know I was in the house. And with this howling wind, they won’t have heard us yet. I’ll go and get help for Matt, but don’t put Eddie in danger!”

Eddie was struggling in her grasp. “It’s
cold,”
he snapped. “In
side.”
 

“You’re right, darling, let’s go inside.”

Jared grabbed at her elbow. She glared at him, and was confused when he almost smiled. What did he think was worth smiling about at a time like this? “We might as well go in and face what’s going on, Jared,” she told him icily. “Standing out here and being frozen to death in the snow isn’t going to help. And besides -- the train hasn’t left yet. If we can get them to march straight back down to the train station, we won’t be forced to endure my uncle and cousin while we’re snowed in.”

“That’s true,” Jared admitted. “But wait just a minute.” And he undid the buttons of his coat, slowly, and with some swearing, because his fingers were clumsy with cold. Then he pulled a gleaming pistol from his belt and checked the chamber. He nodded. “Alright then.”

Cherry eyed the pistol. “How often do you carry that?” She’d never seen it before.
 

He shrugged. “When I go for a long ride. I took a long ride last month.”

“Indeed, I remember,” Cherry said dryly.
 

“Cherry —” He reached out for her hand, and though at first she wanted to snatch it away, she let him take it. He squeezed her fingers in his, and she felt the comfort he was offering her. Comfort, and strength. And a gun.

***

Anne Braithwhite was not happy with the way her afternoon was going. She had found herself in a tacky little parlor, overstuffed with brass-buttoned furniture and china figurines, while a cowboy that she was fairly certain was some sort of criminal — perhaps a bank robber, they went for that sort of thing out here, she had heard — tied up a nice-enough looking gentleman who had been carrying a sack of flour into the house when they’d arrived. The nursemaid was sobbing softly in the corner; she’d been dressed down by Richard for shrieking when the nice-looking gentleman threw a punch and the cowboy hit him in the nose and made it bleed, and Richard himself was pacing about like a jungle cat in a cage, muttering.

The muttering was the most worrisome part of all. Her great-uncle George had been a mutterer for ten years. She didn’t know if he’d muttered after that; after he started leaving little nails on the chairs in the salon and carrying around a crucifix and a kitten his family locked him in a suite of rooms in the west wing of the house and that had been the last she’d heard of Great-Uncle George. But who would have the moral fortitude to lock up Richard if he began booby-trapping the divans and threatening to sacrifice kittens? Not weak-willed little Louisa, that was for certain. It would be the undoing of the family. A hundred times worse than what Charlotte had done with her harlotry.

But Richard’s temper had always been a worrisome thing. Look what had happened with Charlotte. He had handled the whole thing very badly. The little slut could have been sent down to France for her health. Things could have been arranged. By now, a full two years later, she could already be married respectfully to someone not-so-choosy. But no, here they were in the Dakota Territory, tying up an innocent man, adopting a child by force, about to be caught up in a blizzard. Everything, Anne thought with a sniff, had gotten entirely out of control.