Wild Texas Rose

“Mariah?” Whit called, uneasy. He shouldn't have let her go out by herself! “Mariah!”

Twenty feet away, she stepped from behind a wide pecan tree, a hairbrush in her hand. The moon lit her with a beautiful glow. “No need to shout. I'm right here.”

She glided toward him. She wore a shawl around her shoulders and a white flannel nightgown buttoned up to her chin. The scantest of women's undergarments had never aroused Whit the way this sturdy nightgown did now.

The full moon behind her, she tilted her head to one side and brushed her hair. Long hair. Red. Thick and flowing. Silken hair invited his touch. He ached to wrap a curl around his finger and bring it to his lips.

“To hell with right and wrong,” he whispered. “Let me show you how good it can be between a man and a woman. Mariah, come here. Let me be your man . . .”

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Table of Contents

Prologue

Whit Reagor thought he had seen it all in his thirty-six years. Astride his stallion, the owner of the vast Crosswind Ranch disregarded the rolls of damnable barbed wire lining a rickety wagon. Keeping his blue eyes on the farmer, he pulled his John B. Stetson lower on his dark brow. It was a common occurrence to see his young neighbor stringing fence along the border of his poor excuse for a farm, but this was the first time Whit Reagor had seen him tote sidearms.

A six-shooter was part of the everyday outfit around this valley, but two pearl-handled dueling pistols looked downright foolish tucked behind the belt of the bony, sawed-off greenhorn wearing a crumpled derby, black sack coat, checked trousers, and laced shoes, all of which were covered with half an inch of west central Texas dust.

Whit was amused, but he tried not to show it. He was the only person in the vicinity of Trick'em, Texas, who didn't make light of the disinherited son of the Earl of Desmont.

But no one had dared to use Joseph Jaye for sport in Whit's presence, not since he had cleaned the floor of Maudie's Saloon with the hide of rancher Charlie Tullos. Though Whit didn't enjoy resorting to fisticuffs, he damned sure wasn't shy about taking up for an underdog.

Whit felt sorry for Joseph, and he admired him for not giving up, for trying to turn a bad deal to good. He had seen others tuck their tails between their legs and head back East under less trying circumstances. Joe Jaye's circumstance was trying. Very trying.

The saddle creaked as Whit swung from his sorrel stallion on this hot September afternoon in 1882. “Say, neighbor,” he said, “those pistols looked better on your mantel shelf.”

Joseph Jaye, born titled twenty-four years earlier in Sussex, England, gave no reply, only hitched the belt higher on his spindly frame and picked up a cedar post to hammer it into the rocky, hostile soil.

“Meant no offense,” Whit said sincerely as he led Bay Fire around a cactus bush's spiny needles.

“My weapons serve me no good on the mantel.” Huffing and puffing, Joseph stopped working: “I came to Texas expecting to be a gentleman farmer, not a gunslinger or post-hole digger. But my expectations and the reality here are two different things.” He turned to Whit and raised his eyes to make up for the disparity in their heights. “Raiders snipped my fence last night. I must protect my property.”

Whit identified with the problem. During his fourteen years of being a land baron, he had struggled to keep his range free of rustlers and sodbusters. But he was a Texan accustomed to the hard life of making a living from desolate land, which wasn't the case with this tenderfoot. If Joseph didn't learn to live by the ways of the West, he might as well start picking out his tombstone.

The erstwhile viscount should have been Whit's enemy. Rancher versus nester. Open range opposed to barbed wire. But despite their differences and their diverse heritages, they shared common interests. In the six months of their acquaintance Whit had grown to appreciate those similarities. Both had an appetite for aged whiskey, good smokes ... and books, but Whit Reagor would be damned before he'd allow anyone to know the last part. A cattleman had to save face.

He motioned toward the twisted coils of red-painted Glidden wire. “Way I see it, you'll be doing a helluva lot of protecting. Folks around here don't cotton to devil's rope.”

“I appreciate your concern, Whitman, but I–”

“Your property cuts across the Western Trail,” Whit interrupted, turning his line of sight to the grove of pear saplings hugging Mukewater Pond. “Come next spring, your fence will keep thirsty cattle from their watering hole.”

“I need no reminders.” Joseph lifted his derby to push a loose strand of flax-colored hair to the crown of his sweat-dampened head. “But there'll come a day when the whole of Texas will be fenced. It's already begun to the east. Why, even Captain King down south is doing it!” He picked up one cedar post and began to center it in a hole. “Cattlemen will be forced to change their methods.”

Whit's back stiffened at the reference to change. His world had been torn apart by the changes brought by the Civil War. During Reconstruction, and in his youthful inexperience with money, Whit had lost the family plantation in Jefferson. The morning the carpetbaggers took Wildwood, Whit had vowed never to be broke or humiliated again.

He had worked hard to become wealthy and to take care of his kin. Cattle drives had lined his pockets, and would continue to. Nothing was going to change. “You're wrong.”

“Am I?” Joseph asked. “You wait and see.”

Four feet from the fenceline, Whit looped the stallion's reins around a chaparral. “You keep up this fence-stringing, and you'll find I'm not the only one who doesn't hold with change. Folks like Charlie Tullos don't take kindly to cow-gouging wire.”

He wondered if Joseph, who gave no comeback to the advice, was capable of protecting himself. His eyes on the pistols again, Whit said in the neighborly spirit, “If you're gonna pack sidearms, learn to wear them right. The butts should be right round elbow level. An hombre needs his weapon, er, weapons in easy reach.”

“They are rather cumbersome. Impedes my post digging, if you will.” Joseph shifted the dueling pistols against his scrawny legs and looked defiantly up at Whit. “But I shan't be without them.”

Giving thought to Tullos and his ilk, Whit figured there was a grain of smarts to the farmer's determination. However, a dollar to Crosswind's title, Joseph was as useful with guns as Whit was with a skillet. No use at all.

He doffed the Stetson from his black hair and rubbed sweat from his brow. “A pistol has many uses, Joe. If you're lucky, one of those pearlies might protect you from harm. If you're not, well, it's liable to blow a hole in your foot.”

Joseph squared his thin shoulders. “If you're implying that I'm not handy with firearms, you're mistaken. I've spent many a morning riding to hounds.”

“Used pistols on the foxes, did you?”

“Whitman, you're being facetious. As usual.” Joseph pulled his lips into a straight line. “And contrary to what you may believe, I have a duel in my past.”

Must've gotten lucky,
Whit surmised. Or he was spinning a yarn? False pride had a tendency to stretch Joseph's truths occasionally. “You're not in dueling country. But if you're looking to settle a score, you ought to track down the swindler who sold you this prop–”

A rattle from the patchy grass interrupted his advice. Turning to jerk iron, he eared the hammer. His shot echoing in the hot still air, the single bullet tore the rattlesnake in half. The rattler hissed on for several seconds after its death.

“Texas isn't the land of crumpets and tea, Joe.” He glanced at the wide-eyed onlooker. “You're in hell's backyard. Few things, be they snakes or men, survive here. Much less thrive.” Whit replaced the Colt in its holster, and decided the fellow still wasn't scared off. “How 'bout I teach you to use a gun?”

“Apparently you weren't listening to me.” The white face belied indignation. “I know how to shoot.”

“Don't be so touchy.”

The Englishman braced his palms on top of a secured fence post, and leaned forward before going back to the former subject. “I know I'm a fool. But I refuse to go gunning, as you westerners put it, for the man who promised me a grove of pears when he should've said prickly pears.” He proceeded down the fenceline and started his digging anew. “I'm going to make the best of this land, and I will grow succulent fruit!”

Arguing pears was another exercise in futility. Whit sighed in frustration. He had two options: hightail it back to Crosswind, or again try to bore some sense into Joseph's thick skull. Quitter not being a part of his name, Whit decided on the latter.

He might as well lend a hand, too. Poor Joe had nary a soul to help with the chores. And standing around while others worked went against Whit's sense of right and wrong. Of course it rubbed him wrong, this devil's rope, but wasn't offering one's services part of being neighborly? Wasn't the West being pieced together on that philosophy?

The cattlemen around these parts, including Whit's own men, probably wouldn't agree, but that was their problem. He grabbed a pair of leather gloves from a pocket and pulled them over his work-worn hands. Bending, he picked up a crowbar and plunged it into the ungiving ground. A whip of dust whirled to cover the toes of his boots.

“Joe, give up this fencing business,” he advised. “You've got the stockraisers around here riled, especially Tullos. And you know it.”

“This is a matter of principle. If I bow to pressure, Tullos and his ruffians will think me weak.”

A frown pulled at Whit's angular face. Charlie Tulles headed the Painted Rock Ranch lying east of the pear grove, and he was seeing red over this fencing business. Without much provocation, he'd order Joseph strung from an oak tree.

No longer could Whit tiptoe around the farmer's fragile ego. “Tullos already thinks you're weak. And if you're smart, you'll be careful. He's after your neck, Joe.”

“I ... I–Well, I know he isn't pleased.” His voice rattled like a Mexican tambourine as he peered toward the drooping leaves of his sickly orchard. “But I won't have cattle trampling my saplings.”

Whit went back to the crowbar. Any fool ought to know fruit trees wouldn't grow in the arid land west and south of Fort Worth. Successful fruit growing in this area stood the same chance as Whit Reagor giving up women and whiskey and wild times.

Females brought another point to mind, and he said, “Might not be a good idea to send for that gal of yours.”

Whit watched for a changed expression. There was none; the farmer merely continued his digging. He rarely discussed his future wife, and Whit had an inkling why. Any woman marrying a man who had a fancy title in front of his name would be expecting a lot more than Joe Jaye was offering. That had to weigh on the poor fellow's conscience.

“Mariah and I have been apart for over a year,” the Englishman replied finally. “And I miss her every hour of the day, but our separation won't be forever. Her ship will sail from the Isles right after Christmas. She'll be here in Trick'em next spring.”

“Reckon she'll get here in time to see you wearing a rope necktie?”

“It won't come to that.”

His statement had the hollow ring of bravado, and Whit snapped, “You're living in a dream world.”

He grabbed a handful of caliche from the hole he had dug, throwing the earth aside. Joe ought to be pistol-whipped for bringing a greenhorn woman to his dried-up eighty acres.

And what about this Mariah? Whit wondered and conjured up images of voluptuous beauty, tempestuous winds, and hot wild sex. He cast sharp eyes at the diminutive Englishman, and concluded that he couldn't attract such a hot-blooded beauty, though he had seen Charlie Tullos's wife, Temperence, casting overt eyes at Joseph.

Well, Temperence was peculiar.

No doubt Joseph's limey lady wouldn't fit the description of beauty. More than likely she was a prune-faced shrew of an old maid desperately seeking a husband. After all, she was a schoolmarm.

Defiance faded from Joseph's eyes. “I've a favor to ask. If bad luck should befall me, could you find it in your heart to see after my Mariah?”

“Whoa!” Whit set the crowbar aside to pat the air. “What you're asking is akin to marrying me off to your bride. Another marriage isn't for me.”

“Mariah isn't like your ... you know, your . . .”

Joseph's pussyfooting opened an old emotional wound, provoking Whit to growl, “Dammit to hell, I was drunk when I told you about her. And if you know what's good for you, you sawed-off pipsqueak, you'll never mention Jenny again.”

“Please pardon my blunder, Whitman. What I meant to say was, my Mariah would never do you an injustice.”

“Like hell.”

“Believe me,” Joseph went on, “I don't think anything drastic will happen over my fences, but if you're right, I shudder to think of her alone in Texas.”

“Ships sail back to merry ole England just the same as they sail over.”

“I'm not asking you to marry her,” Joseph pleaded. “But I would appreciate your ... Just see that she's all right.” He stepped closer. “Will you do that for me?”

Whit started. Back in '64, at the Battle of Mansfield, he had been the one to make such a request. A soldier of eighteen at the time, he had been scared to death of dying from his wounds; and with blood pouring from the flesh between his heart and collarbone, he had begged his captain to see after his future wife's welfare, in case he didn't pull through. Well, he hadn't died. But a week later Captain John Coke took a killing minié ball in the gut. Nonetheless, Whit knew the comfort of an oath of honor.

An invisible noose tightening on his neck now, he gave in. “I'll do it. Hope I don't end up regretting it.”

“You won't, and I thank you.” Joseph heaved a sigh. “I needn't remind you Mariah Rose is the light of my life.”

“Reckon you don't.” Half a minute later, Whit prompted, “Tell me more about her. Is she nobility like you?”

“Her maternal forebears were of fair breeding, but her father is a mere
connétable
–law-man, in your vernacular–on Guernsey, which is part of the British Empire.”

Geography not being a topic of interest, Whit got back to the subject of Joe's woman. “She's a gal after a title.”

“Not at all. She's unique, you understand.” The former Viscount Desmont lifted a shoulder. “Be that as it may, Mariah's mother and grandmother were quite thrilled she was to become a member of the ruling class. Of course, the old girls are dead now.”