Wild Texas Rose (3 page)

Startled, she gazed into the ink-blue of his eyes. Gone was the arrogance, the impertinence. There was a look of undeniable interest.

Was his expression reflected in her brown eyes? Fearing so, and confused by her emotions, she stepped back. “You'd best give me directions.”

“I'd love to,” he murmured. “Ah . . . um ... my sister lives on Comanche Street. Tell her I need help. Clothes, and quick.” He went on to explain, “She runs a boardinghouse, only one in town. You can't miss the sign. Lois Atherton is her name.”

Oh, no! They were certain to meet again, and Mariah, as a consequence of being too sheltered in spite of her advanced years, felt awkward. How would she handle the situation?

“One more thing,” he said. “What's your given name?”

Allowing familiarity was neither proper nor prudent. “Miss McGuire is all you need.”

 

 

All he needed? She might be right. Heart hammering, Whit watched her go. The elegantly beautiful Miss McGuire could fill a blatant desire, no doubt about that. Her shapely body, her burnt-auburn hair, her milk-chocolate-colored eyes got to him.

It hadn't taken him long to figure out she wasn't wearing a corset, and didn't need one. She was by no means petite, but that type never appealed to him, anyway. He liked his women on the tall side.

Beyond that, he was fascinated by her frosty airs which had rivaled the blue norther whipping across his cloak-clad body. When her ice had defrosted a bit, though, he had liked her even better. He got the idea there was one helluva warm woman beneath that glacial exterior. His kind of woman.

Damn. What was the matter with him? Miss McGuire was a lady, not a trollop. And ladies meant trouble. Parsons and babies' breath and wedding rings.

Whit didn't believe in marriage. Not since his wife had wound up dead in the burned-out ruins of their home. Dead, naked, and in the arms of another man, the man he had thought to be his best friend.

His top teeth ground against the bottom ones. He had learned his lesson about women on the quick side, and it stayed with him. Sixteen years had passed since Jenny had made him a cuckold, but no woman had played him for a besotted fool since then or would in the future.

Whit glanced at the cloudless sky, the sight shifting his thoughts to a more immediate problem. His hundred-section spread hadn't had a drop of rain in months. The creeks were drying up. Of course, it was early in what should have been the rainy season, so the situation might right itself, but Whit was concerned; concerned enough that he intended, as soon as he got back to the ranch, to dam the spring-fed creek along the south pasture.

Whit had another worry. Joe Jaye. The stubborn farmer had continued his fence-stringing. So far, Whit had kept angry cattlemen from the tenderfoot's fences, but how much longer would that hold?

These things preying on his mind, Whit shouldn't be daydreaming about women. Correction. Woman. His mind's eye kept drawing pictures of womanly allure. Miss McGuire.
Will you ever see her again?
a voice echoed within him. Well, he did have her cloak ...

He decided to make a point of looking her up.

 

 

“Well, I'm not surprised.” Lois Atherton, whom Mariah guessed to be about forty, shook her head of dark curls. “But I never figured it would take this long for Barbara to toss him on his hind end.”

Lois stopped hoeing the newly planted vegetable garden behind her clapboard boardinghouse. “Women are always gettin' riled at my brother.”

Mariah wasn't astounded at these frank words. During her travels from the Gulf Coast to west central Texas, she had experienced a great deal of Texas-style candor. In fact, she was beginning to believe nothing further could shock her anymore.

“They fall for Whit . . .” Lois clapped her hands to scare away a huge tabby cat that was eyeing Gus as if he were a joint of Sunday beef. “Scat, Fancy!”

While moving the parrot cage closer to her side, Mariah cast a menacing glare at the sharp-eyed feline.

“As I was saying,” Lois admitted, “Whit never sees fit to call a preacher and buy the ring.”

“Maybe he hasn't met the right woman.”

“Hmmph.”

“Perhaps luck just hasn't been with him.”

“You may be right.” Lois lifted a palm. “But I doubt it. You've heard the expression ‘once bitten, twice shy'? Well, that about sums up Whit's problem.”

She assumed his sister would admit more about Whit Reagor, but Mariah didn't press the subject, even though she was curious. For some odd reason, he hadn't left her thoughts since their inauspicious meeting. Hair as black as a dark night, blue eyes tinged with dark gray, height tall enough to make her feel short ... He was like no man she had ever met before, not even Lawrence, but ...

Why couldn't she be practical? Despite the memories of that wretched night in the shadows of Castle Cornet, where her virginity had been claimed, Joseph was the man for her.

Lois brushed her palms down the front of her gingham apron. “The ‘right' women don't perch in saloons. 'Course, if he'd tie up with ladies instead of strumpets, the story might be different.”

“He p-pays ladies to . . .” Had it been only minutes earlier when she'd thought nothing further could shock her?

“Whit? Ha! He doesn't have to pay. Not to say he isn't generous.” Lois yanked a weed from a mounded row. “Buys his gals trunkful after trunkful of fancy duds just for the pleasure of strippin' those duds off their backs.”

Mariah blushed again, something she seemed to do often where Whit Reagor was concerned. Though she had tried her best to adjust to life in this often bewildering land, she was a product of her Calvinistic background. The females of Guernsey didn't discuss men they barely knew, much less bedroom intimacies.

As for the man in question, here she was chattering with his sister while he waited to be rescued. “Mrs. Atherton, your brother is waiting for your help.”

Lois lifted a palm in an air of dismissal. “Aw, it'll do him good to cool his heels awhile.”

A gust of air blew.

“Oh, all right. I'll rescue the jackanapes. Come on in the house. Gotta fetch his clothes. Better bring that bird of yours. No tellin' what Fancy might do.” The proprietress took off for the house. “I keep a room just off the kitchen for Whit, not that he uses it for much.” Short of the back porch, she said, “Too bad he's too old to turn across my checkered apron. I'd teach him a lesson or two.”

Mariah grinned. Imagining that rough-and-tumble Texan–a man probably in his late thirties! –turned over an aproned lap was rather humorous to imagine.

Cage in hand, she followed Lois inside. The kitchen was toast-warm from the iron Chandler stove, and the scent of bacon and the soda bread Texans called biscuits filled her nostrils to remind her of the breakfast skipped at the Double Inn.

As if she sensed Mariah's hunger, Lois offered, “There's a plate under that cloth. Grab yourself a bite.”

“Oh, I can't take someone's food.”

“I was saving it for Whit. Always do when he's in town.” The words had a wistful quality to them, but they were replaced with her former tone. “Usually feed it to the chickens, though. Go on, girl, eat up! If he's hungry after I fetch him, I'll fry up a half-dozen eggs.” Lois winked. “No matter how mad I get at Whit, I wouldn't let the baby of the family go hungry.”

Underneath the brusque attitude toward her brother, Mariah believed Lois loved him very much. He did, she realized, have a way with women. Without a doubt, the man was spoiled rotten.

As the older woman disappeared into the room adjoining the cooking room, Mariah set her reticule on the table, lifted the cloth, and reached for one of the salty-pork, butter-dripping biscuits. Heaven's! The staple diet for this frontier state, beans and fried-to-shoe-leather beef, had begun to get tiresome. But, she reminded herself, everyday life would be rosy after reaching Joseph's estate.

She dabbed the linen cloth to her lips and fed crumbs to Gus. “Thank you,” she called to the adjoining room.

“Come on in here where I can hear you proper.”

Mariah found Lois Atherton folding a chambray shirt into a valise. The room smelled of leather and tobacco. Trousers, shirts, and a buckskin jacket hung from hooks in the wall. A cartridge belt lay on the oak bureau. Though she remembered Whit Reagor saying he had a “spread out west,” she wondered if he was a gunslinger. After all, there were those translucent-white scars on his upper body. She knew what they looked like, but how would it feel to touch them ... ?

Ashamed of her caprice, Mariah considered the gunbelt. Surely he wasn't a gunslinger; her imagining him so had been the result of too many traveling hours spent reading too many dime novels. After all, her own reticule held a revolver, which didn't make
her
an outlaw.

“My purpose for being here is twofold,” Mariah said, determined to get down to business. “I'm waiting for the Yuma stage, so I'll be needing accommodations. Mrs. Watson at the inn said you might rent me a room.”

“I don't board nobody lest I know something' about them. Said you're headin' for Yuma, right?” Not waiting for an answer, she continued. “That's a long ways for a woman alone to travel. Tell me about yourself.”

Mariah made explanations of her island homeland.

“So what is a lady from Guernsey doin' in Dublin, Texas?”

“I'm on my way to a calling. Schoolteaching.”

Lois's look was wary as she grabbed a pair of worn yet shiny boots. “I never figured you for a schoolmarm.”

“Well, I am, and I'm proud of it.”

“How'd you come to be a schoolmarm?”

Running her palm across a polished oak bureau, Mariah thought about an answer, and decided on the truth. “Actually, I'm not a full-fledged teacher as yet.”

“I see. But you still haven't told me
why.”

“I traveled to London when I was seventeen, and my heart went out to the street urchins. They seemed so hopeless.”

Mariah wouldn't admit feeling a kinship toward those children. The hurt was too deep. If she lived to be a hundred, she'd never forget the long years of her miserable childhood yearning for her father's affection.

Hopelessness she was well acquainted with. And she needed to be needed.

Though she had long given up on Logan McGuire, she had left him a letter on the day of leaving St. Peter Port. She'd spelled out her frustrations and anger. But she'd signed it with love. Did one ever
not
love a father, no matter how difficult he might be?

Lois asked, “Don't they need teachers in Guernsey?”

“Of course, but–”

“You'd have to be ugly, which you're not, if you've crossed the Atlantic just to force the three Rs down younguns' throats. Must be another reason.”

Her mind not on Joseph, Mariah could have told her about Lawrence, but didn't. With unseeing eyes, she pretended to study a paperweight. For years she had loved the dashing lieutenant. At eighteen, she had met him and her head was never turned by any other Guernseyman from then on. Her feelings for him had been so strong that she'd pushed aside her teaching aspirations, for all she'd needed to make her life complete was Lawrence Rogers, and their dreams–marrying, living in India, rearing a dozen children. Then the subcontinent's killing climate foiled those plans.

Why, oh why, did it still hurt this deeply?

“Gone dumb on me?” Lois asked, interrupting her thoughts.

At long last, Mariah answered the woman's question. “I'm engaged to a fine gentleman in Trick'em. It's west of here.”

“Oh, I know where Trick'em is, all right,” Lois said with a chuckle. “The Crosswind Ranch–”

A petite young woman with brown hair popped her head through the doorway. “Did I hear you say Trick'em?” Catching sight of the stranger, she said, “Oh, hello there!”

“My daughter Kimble,” Lois explained. “She's gettin' hitched tonight. Kim, this is Miss McGuire.”

After introductions were complete and Mariah's best wishes extended to the bride, Kimble inquired, “Okay, now what was all that about Trick'em? Has Uncle Whit arrived?”

“Of a sort.” Her mother turned to Mariah. “My baby brother owns a ranch in your intended's neck of the woods. Looks like you've gotten a jump on meeting your neighbors.”

Mariah's heart slammed against her chest as she inhaled sharply.

Chapter Two

Joseph Jaye felt like bawling into his morning tea. His sleep had been disturbed by a nightmare in which his saplings were trampled by pounding hooves. Yet he wasn't concerned so much about nightmares as he was about Mariah. She'd arrive in a week, the next Saturday, and her arrival should be made special.

But at the rate things were going, the welcome would be grim. The one-room log house's roof, if one could call it that, was beginning to fall in, and now dirt was filtering into his teacup and onto the wobbly table.

“Won't Mariah be pleased to see this hovel?” he asked aloud. Talking to himself was a frontier-acquired habit. “Yes, just as delighted as when you first laid eyes on it.”

He hadn't been pleased. Nothing had turned out as planned since he had become engaged to Mariah.

Lapsing into memories, he recalled the nightmare of confronting his father. Joseph, full of wedding plans and high hopes, had arrived in Sussex on an autumn day in 1881. The Earl of Desmont had received him in his study.

Skilled in the art of intimidation, Damien Jaye was seated at the raised dais of his massive desk. Without rising to offer his youngest son a welcome, he had deigned him to the small chair.

Joseph explained his intentions, and the Earl of Desmont bellowed, “You'll not marry that woman.”

“If you'll agree to meet Mariah Rose,” Joseph said, forcing courage, “I'm certain you will change your mind.”

“Never!” His father's voice boomed. “I won't allow you to bring one of your strumpets into the family.”

“Mariah is different.”

The earl picked at a fingernail. “Haven't I heard this before? About a milch maid at your grandmother's estate in Hesse-Nassau. Karla Strack, wasn't she called?”

The fragile chair squeaked under Joseph's light weight as he fidgeted. Yes, he had been smitten with Karla, but his feelings for her had nothing to do with his love for Mariah. Besides, he'd been but seventeen at the time. “Karla was a nice girl,” he said meekly.

Damien Jaye threw back his head, laughing, jeering. “What a chump you made of yourself, sonny boy, challenging your elder brother to a duel over her charms.”

“I did nick Reginald's ear,” Joseph said in defense.

“His pistol wasn't loaded, fool! He let you shoot him!”

This humiliation hurt. He idolized his half brother, and couldn't have loved him more if they were full siblings. He'd never thought Reginald wouldn't respect his dignity. But Joseph wouldn't delve on the duel's shame. Reginald approved of Mariah and for that Joseph would forgive him anything.

Light reflected off the good earl's quizzing glass, lancing into his scapegrace son's eye. “You'll not marry a common piece of baggage. She's after title and money. Give up that Island hussy or be turned out.”

The study grew deathly silent, save for the ticking of a clock. Joseph knew his choice would be a final one, as lasting as his love. The small chair tipped backward. “Papa, you have forced my hand. I will marry Miss McGuire.”

The Viscount Desmont departed Sussex as plain Joseph Jaye. Disinherited, a return to the Norman archipelago was out of the question, for his father had tarnished his name with the elderly bailiff. Joseph had set out to establish himself, and America beckoned as the best place for a young man to start afresh and make a home for his bride. New Orleans, a favorite of Reginald's, was the area he first decided on.

In the Crescent City, a gentleman, or so he seemed at the onset, offered title to his farm. The St. Charles Hotel's bar was the setting for the conversation.

Leroy Smith's meaty hand made a grand sweep. “Pears grow in abundance in Coleman County. Step right outside the door, Lord Desmont, and pick 'em by the bushel!”

“Mr. Smith, I've read that Texas is a barren state.”

“Not all of it.” His booted foot resting on the brass bar rail, Smith winked conspiratorially and shoved a drink at Joseph. “I'd surely hate to part with such a gem of agriculture, but I could make you a special price.”

“If your pear plantation is so prosperous, why do you wish to sell it?”

“I'm getting on, you understand. Why, I'll be fifty next month! So I'm off to make my fortune in the oil fields of Pennsylvania. Have to think of my old age, you see.”

This made sense. “Does the farm have a home?”

“Why, my esteemed fellow, you wound me! Of course it comes with improvements. Never would I offer a nobleman such as yourself anything but the finest.”

Now a year older and many thousands of dollars poorer, Joseph took a good look at the “improvements.” Smith had played him for a fool. The sparsely furnished log house could only be categorized as a shack with its earthen floors, a sod-patched roof, and cracks between the logs. As if on cue, a gust of biting air ate into Joseph.

He grasped the lapels of his threadbare coat. If he hadn't spent two hundred dollars for every mile of barbed wire, he could have afforded to build Mariah a good solid home.

Pulling himself together was the only answer. The house situation would rectify itself. Recently he had written Reginald, instructing him to sell the London townhouse, which was Joseph's only property save for this Texas land. In the past he'd wanted to keep a tie to England, but no more.

But he should've written to Reginald as soon as he had seen the horrid state of this farm. What a bloody idiot he was. Soon he'd be answering for his lies!

On the other side of the coin, what could Mariah do to him? Leave for home? She had little beyond the modest dowry bequeathed by her du Moulin grandmother. She would be forced to make the best of the situation, same as he had.

Joseph sympathized with himself as he considered the swindler Leroy Smith. Should he be thankful there was any kind of house at all he wondered, but gratitude did not swell his chest. Until his money arrived, he was possessed of nothing beyond a bad investment and a body racked with unfulfilled lust. Too long he had been denied comforts, be they material or female.

A rat scurried across the floor, halted in the middle to peer with beady red eyes at him. Tail twitching, the rodent ran for cover. It bumped into Joseph's watering pail.

The bucket was a reminder of chores to be done. Since no rain had fallen in months, he'd been forced to carry water from the pond to each and every one of his saplings. Peasant work. It was beneath his dignity, but he had to tend the orchard. Then he'd fix the roof.

Roof repair wasn't in his repertoire of skills. But then, what was? His upbringing had prepared him neither for life on the range nor for the grip of a handle or a hammer.

He pitched his tea–dirt, leaves, and all–to the earth floor and made for the hide cover that served as a door. The air outside the cabin was bracing, and he inhaled a deep draft while walking the quarter mile to his pear trees.

Nearing the orchard, Joseph picked up his pace. His heart raced. “Oh my God!” he yelled. A long section of the fence was cut into small pieces! His saplings were trampled! He looked to the ground. The soil had been packed by horses' hooves.

The nightmare hadn't been a dream. It was reality.

His eyes burned with tears, tears quickly blinked away and forgotten when heavy footsteps approached from behind and a forearm whipped around his neck, jerking him backward.

“Last night was just a warning from Mr. Tulos, Jaye. You string your fences agin and we're gonna kill ya.”

Joseph was scared witless. Texas law didn't protect him against fence cutting, yet through his fright he made a frantic oath to himself that he'd extract his vengeance. Someway, somehow, the lowlife Charlie Tullos was going to pay for sicking his pack of brigands on him!

He needed help and where was Whitman when he needed him?

 

 

Whit approached Miss McGuire. She was sitting pencil-straight on a bench in front of the Double Inn, the rectangular log building that served as the small town's stagecoach stop. Gnawing at the underside of a wing, the caged parrot sat next to her.

Lois had given Whit a blow-by-blow account of the redhead's visit, including her change of heart over accommodations and her hasty departure from the boardinghouse.

Damned if she wasn't avoiding his eyes. Damned if he didn't guess why. He had been a little slow earlier this morning, what with dodging Barbara's skillet and his parading naked in front of Miss McGuire, but now Whit suspected she was in fact Joe Jaye's Mariah Rose.

Trick'em was a dot on the map, a typical small town. Word got around on who was marrying whom, and only one man expected a foreign bride, though no one had known the particulars of her arrival.

“You left something at my sister's place,” Whit informed her. Now fully clothed, hatless, with his hair slicked back by pomade and his clean-shaven cheeks reeking of bay rum, he tucked her cape and needlepoint handbag under his arm. “Thought you might be needing your reticule.”

“I ... I was”–she moistened her lips, an obvious gesture of agitation–“was planning to fetch it in a few minutes.” She didn't reach for the handbag. “Thank you.”

Whit swung around to seat himself on the bench with the bird between them. Except for the occasional buggy passing by on this quiet Saturday morning, they were alone on the tree-lined street. While eyeing the parched cottonwoods across the gritty road, he extended his long legs, leaned back, and settled his elbows on the bench top.

Joe Jaye must be an idiot to let this high-toned beauty out of his sight, he decided. A man, Whit being no exception if he weren't the careful type, would be perfectly willing to make a fool of himself over her.

So what was her story? he wondered. What about that first lover of hers? The fellow must have been daft to let her go. But maybe he was akin to Whit, only interested in women on a temporary basis.

And who said she was pure as the driven snow before meeting the fellow? Certainly not Joe. Whit knew, real well, that women couldn't be trusted.

Distrust pushed aside for the moment, he stole a glance across the wicker cage's top, taking in her perfect profile, her pinned-up auburn hair. Just looking at the enticing Miss McGuire warmed places inside him that ought not to be warmed by someone else's woman. Joe's woman.

Whit couldn't imagine her in that runt's arms. Somehow neither could he imagine her living in the shack her future husband called home, nor picture her holed up in some musty schoolhouse. There were a lot of things beyond Whit's ken.

Funny, though. Joe had failed to mention either her last name or her beauty. What else had he kept to himself? For the first time Whit questioned the dandy's honesty.

On top of these suspicions, aggravation set in. That title-born farmer had left his future wife to her own devices in a state chock full of horny cowboys on the lookout for females of the available, or at least persuadable, variety. If a man–even one from the lowest rung on society's ladder, much less from Joe's former station–offered for a lady's hand, he ought to take proper care of her.

Was she a lady? No highfalutin woman with the sense God gave a buffalo would consent to what Joe offered, unless she lacked looks or character. And this one surely didn't lack for looks!

At a loss for words, Whit settled on a compliment. “This reticule of yours is pretty.”

“Thank you. I stitched it myself,” she offered. “On the journey across the Atlantic.”

Her reply was issued in a soft tone, like the tinkling of water in a calm brook, and he appreciated the sweet sound.

“Must be good with your hands.” What would it be like to have those fine-boned fingers caress him, to have them prove their dexterity? A horny cowpoke himself and making no inward apology for the fact, he fidgeted on the bench and gained a splinter in the posterior, which pride forced him to ignore.

Thinking back on his concerns for her welfare, he said, “You needed a room. Why didn't you take one at Lois's?”

“I decided ...” Her nervous fingers laced together. “To tell the truth, I was a bit unsettled.”

That made two of them. He took a slow gander at the woman he had wrongly conjured up to be a soap-ugly, shrill-voiced schoolmarm. “Mariah, you're not what I expected.”

“How did you know my name!” She slumped back in the seat. “Never mind. Being from Trick'em, I imagine you know.”

“Yeah, reckon I do.”

“I'm Miss Mariah McGuire. Lord Desmont's intended. I assume you're acquainted with him.”

“I know Joe all right. We're neighbors. My main ranch lies north and west of his farm,” he said. “I knew he was expecting a bride, but I never thought he wouldn't meet your boat in Galveston.”

“If that's an insult to Lord Desmont, I'll thank you to keep your opinions to yourself. And furthermore”–she shot him a withering glare–“if you're implying I can't take care of myself, you're mistaken.”

“Oh, I'll bet you can.” He chuckled. The bulging reticule under his arm drew his next comment. “Any woman known to tote a gun is the take-care-of-herself kind.”

Her arms crossed over her full bosom, Mariah twisted around to face him. Indignation was written on each of her pretty features.

“You ... you snooped in my reticule!”

“Don't jump to conclusions, Red. I didn't mill through your belongings. That satchel of yours is as heavy as a chunk of lead, and I couldn't help but feel the outline. That's all.” He paused. “Know how to use firearms?”

Her arms lowered. With a wide swipe she brushed a piece of lint from her gray skirts. “Don't tempt me to demonstrate my prowess. That is, if you're partial to your toes.”