Wicked Temptations (4 page)

He shrugged. "We will survive." He looked at Priscilla Phipps standing in the doorway to the back room, wondering, for the first time, what she'd be like in bed. She was certainly closer to his age, and of a better age to mother his children. But as a spinster woman she'd probably never had a man in her bed, which could make things unpredictable. And she wasn't much to look on, with her carrot-red hair a tangle of curls and cobwebs, her freckled face smudged with dirt, her eyes rimmed in blond lashes, and her figure—he scanned the length of her. At least she was curved in all the right places. Very nicely so. And from the rise and fall of her ample bosom, he knew her breath had quickened from his perusal. Maybe she'd be passionate in bed, once they got through the deflowering. He'd never taken a virgin before, much less one nearing forty...

"Lord Whittington? Is there something else that you want?" Miss Phipps asked, drawing his eyes to her face, which, he noted, was flushed a rosy pink. There was also the hint of prurient sparks in her eyes. And her lips were parted. Full moist lips that looked oddly inviting.

Hell! He was mooning over a homely spinster with a razor sharp tongue and aspirations of starting a newspaper in a field dominated by men. All she had going for her as a wife was that she was curved in all the right places and would undoubtedly be able to hold Trudy in check. "No, Miss Phipps," he said. "We are done. I'll go to the bank now and take care of the agreement. Good day." He turned abruptly and left.

When the door closed behind him, Priscilla could barely catch her breath. Was the dry, high plains air getting to her? She fanned her face.
Lordy
,
lordy
, the man did nothing but look at her. But when his gaze moved down her chest, she could feel it, warm and tingly, like fingers touching her
there
. Touching her where no man had ever touched. And he had not even laid a hand on her...

"Miss Priscilla? You alright?" Abigail's voice seemed to come from out of nowhere. "You look like you just ran a mile. Maybe you should sit down."

Edith giggled. "She's just reacting to Lord Whittington. You saw the way he looked at her, eyeing her like she was on the auction block and he was about to make an offer."

"I am
not
reacting to Lord Whittington," Priscilla snapped, the sound of his name on her lips bringing prickles of heat moving down her. And at the junction of her thighs, odd things were happening. Things she couldn't explain. Like having a rush of adrenaline in an area she'd just as soon ignore, but couldn't.
 
It came to her then that if Lord Whittington so much as touched her, even by accident, she was certain she'd need smelling salts to keep from swooning. She made a mental note to add those to her list of supplies when she went to the general store later...

"Had you ever thought of marrying?" Abigail asked.

Priscilla looked at Abigail with a start. "Why on earth would you ask that question now?" she asked. "Certainly you have no thoughts of me and Lord Whittington?"

"No, I was just wondering. Have you?"

Priscilla hated answering that question. She'd thought about it most of her life. But her carrot red hair did not have the deep rich tones of the heroines in her Dime Novels, and her blond brows and lashes seemed to draw attention to her red-rimmed eyes. There was no cosmetic in existence that could cover her freckles, and she had the kind of skin that red-heads hated—soft and smooth, but so white, she looked like a ghost with mud splatters on its face. Men just didn't take to women who looked like she did.

Before her father died he'd given up hope of seeing her wed. But he left her and her mother comfortably well off. His dying words, the night he passed away from a burst appendix, were, "You won't need a man to take care of you, lovey, because you and your ma are well fixed." He shut his eyes then and exhaled his last breath....

"Miss Priscilla? I didn't mean to get personal," Abigail said, "I know you must have had offers from men. Just seeing the way Lord Whittington looked at you says that much. I was just wondering why you didn't ever get hitched."

"I might have considered it a long time ago," Priscilla said, even though no man had asked for her hand, "but ever since I began reading the writings of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan Anthony, I have come to realize that marriage is a man-made institution, inherently unjust to wives, and with this injustice, entered into with the sanction of church and state, husbands are given complete authority over their wives."

Abigail looked at her, bafflement on her brow. "I never thought of it that way," she said. "I guess it's a good thing I didn't go ahead with the marriage."

Edith stopped scrubbing and looked up. "That may be how you look at it," she said, "but I want to find a good man and settle down and let him make the money so I can concentrate on keeping house and raising the
young’ns
. The job here with you will be fine for a while, Miss Priscilla, but I don't want to stay working here the rest of my life. And I still want to get to know young Frank Gundy." She started moving the brush again.

Priscilla stared at the covey of young women on hands and knees scrubbing the floor and was tempted to tell them a few sordid tales as a warning, but refrained. Perhaps they'd find good men who'd love and cherish them and want only the best for them. Then on the other hand, they could end up like so many others, which was precisely why
The Town Tattler
would have a column devoted to the suffrage movement. Feeling a renewed sense of purpose, she picked up a scrub brush and joined the women on the floor.

***

Adam looked up at the freshly painted facade of
The Town Tattler
building. In only five days, the place looked functional, and the huge mound of rubbish out front was gone. He never would have believed it could be ready for business in just a week.

However, Priscilla Phipps had come west with a wagon train of homesteaders, and her paper was potentially a rabble-rousing voice against cattlemen. That being the case, he was anxious to learn what printing equipment she owned. So here he was, heading across the street in a beeline. Although he told himself he wanted to look at her equipment, who was he fooling? He wanted to see the plain, unadorned spinster lady who was running the place. Something about the woman had taken hold of him, then burrowed under his skin like a wood tick that refused to let loose.

When he entered the building, he found her struggling with a crowbar to wedge open a large wooden crate, which he assumed held her printing press. She stopped and eyed him guardedly while waiting for him to announce his reason for his being there.

Glancing around the large room, he was surprised to find the plaster walls patched and freshly painted, and the scrubbed floors holding a waxy sheen. Then he settled his gaze on Priscilla Phipps. The unadorned brown dress she wore draped over her shapely body in a way that indicated she wore no corset. Although it covered her completely, the effect it had on him was unexpected. Her small waist, softened by the lack of whalebone, made him want to wrap his hands around it, and the sight of her full breasts, unhampered by bones or other stays, caused things to happen below his waist, something he didn't need right now. Focusing on her face, he said, "I thought I'd stop by to see how things were going."

Wariness creeping into her eyes, she replied, "Things are proceeding as planned."

Eyeing the crowbar clutched in her hand, he said, "You had your hands full opening the crate when I came in. Where is your pressman?"

"He injured his wrist while moving the crate in," she explained. "The press is very heavy. But I can manage fine on my own." She jammed the crowbar into the crack between the boards again, attempting to wedge them apart. But the boards held fast.

Adam walked up and took the crow bar from her hand. "It takes more muscle," he informed her. "Like I said, printing is a man's business." He shoved the bar between the boards and wedged them apart, then quickly ripped the boards off the wooden base, dismantling the crate. He set the crowbar aside and offered a smile.

She did not smile back. Instead, she stared at him, lips compressed, pupils enlarged leaving narrow rims of olive green. Or was it light brown? They seemed changeable. "If you're trying to validate a point," she said, her voice irritated, "you have only proved that I am not very good with a crowbar. But since I'm not in the crating and shipping business, that's of no importance." She gathered the slats of wood scattered about the floor and started stacking them by the pot-bellied stove, which was positioned against one wall.

Adam tipped the old Stanhope press first to one side, then the other, while retrieving the wood slats trapped beneath its four paw-like feet. Seeing the outdated thing, with its hand cranks and levers, he had to stifle a laugh. At best, she'd be able to pull two-hundred sheets an hour, one side at a time, and the sheets would have to be run through a second time in order to print the reverse side. If she and her pressman worked around the clock, seven days a week, they'd never be able to keep up with their competitors. But he admired her grit and determination, even though her newspaper was bound to fail. "The press looks like it's been well cared for," he volunteered, a gesture intended to underscore good will.

"My father was meticulous about his printing equipment," she replied. "After he died, my pressman, my mother, and I carried on as he would have wanted us to."

 
"You must not have had many subscribers then," he said. "You could not have pulled many copies a day."

"We were in the process of building up our numbers when my mother passed away from pneumonia," she said. "But since our newspaper was a weekly publication, as will be
The Town Tattler
, there was no pressure to get it out every day."

"So, it will be a weekly," Adam mused. How much trouble could that cause? Not much, he surmised. Satisfied that this homely snip of a woman with her outdated equipment posed no threat to the cattle industry, he said, magnanimously, "Tell me where you want the press and I'll move it in place."

Her lips parted as if to protest, then she blinked several times, and said, "If you could move it a little to the left and square it with the wall, that would be appreciated."

Adam promptly complied. "Is there anything else I can do while I'm here?" He turned and found her standing just behind him. As he waited for her response, he noted a confusion of cobwebs in her hair. Reaching into the tangle of tresses, he said, while taking in the scent of lilac wafting from her, "You have collected yet more cobwebs in your curly red hair. The last time I was here, I was certain you had already gathered the bulk of them."

Her hand came up, trapping his hand beneath hers. Eyes wide, nostrils flaring with her quickened breaths, she removed her hand at once and pressed it to her chest, seeming to be struggling for air. Fearing she might swoon, Adam took her by the arms and said, "Are you all right? You look a bit winded. Perhaps you've been trying to do too much too soon." Her arms were well-muscled, he noted—a woman without a man to do her heavy work. Which explained why she looked so fit for a woman approaching middle age. That thought had the odd effect of making his trousers grow tighter. What in hell was coming over him with this woman, responding like a pubescent boy, aroused by the sight of a trim ankle or the pointy tips of budding breasts pressing against a dress.

"Yes, I suppose you're right," she said. "With my pressman laid up, I've been entirely on my own to put things in order." She lowered her hand from her chest, drawing his attention to the rise and fall of her bosom and the way the front of her dress stretched with each breath. His trousers became tighter. He looked up to find her staring at
that
part of him, eyes wide. After a series of nervous, blinks, she said in a voice, edged with panic, "Thank you for helping. Please leave at once. I must get back to work."

Realizing she feared she was in danger of losing her virginity to a potential rapist, Adam said, "I assure you, you are in no danger of my taking advantage of you." When her face reddened with mortification,
 
he clarified. "What I mean is, I apologize for removing the cobwebs from your hair. I had no right to approach you in that way."

Her darkened pupils diminished, as she replied in a nervous voice, "I'm afraid my hair is a blessing, and a curse. A blessing because I don't need to fuss with curling irons, and a curse because the curls collect anything they come in contact with."

Adam scanned the tangle of tresses, some caught up in combs, others springing free and framing her face. "You're right," he said. "Along with the cobwebs are tiny pieces of debris." Fighting the urge to pick the pieces out one at a time, he said, "From whom did you inherit your very red hair? Your mother, or your father?"

She combed her fingers through her hair, dislodging tiny pieces of rubbish and sending a tortoise comb askew. "Red hair has come down through my father's line, presumably since Tudor times," she replied. "The carrot color is also a curse, as you can imagine. But it's what God gave me, so I accept it, though I sometimes wonder why He was angry with me to do so."

Until now, Adam thought carrot red hair as unattractive as the pale, freckle-faced women who seemed to be burdened with it. Oddly, it didn't seem as unsightly as before. "Why do you believe red hair is a curse, Miss Phipps?" he asked.

Her eyes rolled upward, as if trying to see her own hair, as she said, "Because clearly men turn from women with bright red hair, afraid perhaps that if they were to marry them, they would beget a brood of freckle-faced children with the same. But I'm used to that, and if God appeared right now and asked me if I'd like for Him to change the color of my hair and make my freckles vanish, I'd smile and assure Him that He has, in fact, blessed me. Because of my hair, and the unappealing way I look, I have become a strong, self-supporting woman who is not in need of a man for my livelihood and wellbeing. In fact, I believe it was God's plan for me to be completely independent of a man."