Authors: Ellen O'Connell
“Sure. Eight men split over two hundred dollars, and they probably left all of it in the saloon. So what happened?”
He didn’t sound hungover or drunk, and he didn’t smell like whiskey. Tobacco maybe.
“I quit,” she said after a moment.
“Why?”
“She tried to control my private life.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“I’m going home.”
“You can’t go back out there by yourself. Sell it, Norah. Stop being stubborn, show some sense, and sell it.”
“Would Mr. Van Cleve give you a bonus if you convinced me to do that?”
“I’m not working for Van Cleve any more, haven’t been for some time.”
Astonishment broke through her determined stoicism. She stopped staring at the street and looked at him. The familiar two-day stubble covered his lean jaw, his mouth was tight with aggravation at a woman who wouldn’t do what he thought she should, and once again he was proving brown eyes could be cold.
If she listened to him and showed some sense, she’d be afraid of him. Instead, against all reason, the world seemed less bleak than it had a few minutes before.
“What happened?” she said.
“I quit.”
“Why?”
“He tried to control my private life.”
That did it. She smiled. “Aren’t we a pair.”
His expression softened too. “A sorry pair. Look, you don’t have to sell to him for next to nothing. Sell it to me, and I’ll pay you what it’s worth. You can live on that for years.”
“You. What would you do with a farm?”
“Live there. Work it.”
“You’re not a farmer.”
“The only farm work I never did was pull a plow, and that’s only because Uncle Henry couldn’t find a harness small enough. I liked it in spite of him. I liked watching things grow, seeing what the land can do when you take care of it. Sell it to me, and we’ll both be better off.”
“Will we? Would Mr. Van Cleve leave you alone because you used to work for him or because of who you are?”
“No, we didn’t part friends.”
“Then you wouldn’t be better off. The ones who are still holding out are like the Carburys. There are enough of them to put up a good defense, but you’d be alone. He’d win, and you wouldn’t have your money any more, and I wouldn’t have it either because it would run out and leave me right back where I am, only older.”
“I can handle Van Cleve, and you can buy a smaller place close to town and raise your goats.”
Could he handle Van Cleve? Norah shivered, only partly from the cold. “I don’t need a smaller place close to town. I already have a place, and it’s home.”
“So you’re going to go back out there and starve — or let them hurt you.”
“No, I’m going to go home for a while and decide what to do and start again.”
He turned up the collar of his coat and pulled it closer around his neck. “Let’s go someplace warm and talk about this.”
“I don’t want to go anywhere. I’m fine here. If you have so much money, you can buy your own land. You can find land no one’s trying to steal.”
“Yeah, but I like your place.”
“That’s the problem. It is my place. You were only inside the house once. How could you take such an affection so fast?”
He looked away down the street, his voice dropping so low she could barely hear him. “I know the place pretty well now. I’ve been living there a while.”
“You what!”
“After I quit Van Cleve I needed a place to stay, and it was sitting there empty, so I’ve been living there.”
“Since when?”
“Since that first time I took you to the restaurant. I went back there that night.”
“You, you....” She couldn’t even think of anything bad enough to call him. “You were thieving the first time I set eyes on you, and you’re still thieving. That’s what it is, you know, moving into my house without telling me. You saw me again. You saw me more than once after that. Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you ask?”
“I didn’t tell you because I knew you’d get like you are now, and I didn’t ask because you would have said no. I’ll pay you rent. Decide what it’s worth for the six weeks or so, and I’ll pay it.”
“A hundred dollars,” she said furiously. “Since you’re so rich you could buy the whole place and you weren’t smart enough to ask first, you can just pay a hundred dollars rent.”
He glared at her, and for a second she thought he’d refuse, then he opened his coat, pulled up his shirt, and started digging around underneath. She watched in fascinated horror. After a quick check up and down the street to see if anyone was witnessing the whole thing, she went back to witnessing it herself.
Finally he brought his hand back out, holding a small sheaf of bills. He counted a hundred dollars and held it out to her. She grabbed it and watched him put the rest back where it came from.
“Money belt,” he said. “Under everything where it doesn’t show.”
A hundred dollars. She’d been sitting here feeling sorry for herself because she’d had to give up almost everything she’d earned and pay for two weeks at the boarding house to stay there at all. Now she had a hundred dollars in her hand, as much as Mr. Van Cleve would pay for her entire property.
She ought to give some of it back. She ought to feel guilty. She pushed the bills into her pocket on top of the few coins and bills left from her wages.
“You can live on that for a year, you know,” he said, “but it’s not enough. A woman could make a living on your place, but you’d need to start with enough cash to hire help, and I don’t see so much as a plow out there. Did you hire everything done?”
“The day you came wasn’t the first time Mr. Preston and his men came to the place.”
“What does that...? Are you telling me they stole farm equipment?”
“They took everything except some of the small tools.”
“I never saw a plow, harrow, or anything of the kind on the ranch,” Cal said thoughtfully. “I suppose they’d sell it all. Preston might even have shared what he got with his men and never mentioned it to Van Cleve. How did you harvest? Contract with reapers?”
“Yes. Threshing too.”
“Not much of a crowd standing in line for that in these parts any more.”
“No, getting them to come may be a problem this year, but there has to be a crop for that to be a worry. We haven’t had a full crop for three years. Maybe it was just as well because with the barn burned we had no storage. Sometime in there we stopped worrying about anything except getting by.”
“Stop worrying at all. Sell it to me, live off the money, or buy some smaller place that suits.”
“I have a place that suits. It’s home, and you better be moved out before I get there.”
“Or what? You’ll throw me out? You’re shivering and we need to talk about this some more. I’m hungry, and if you don’t get up and come along, I’m going to drag you. You can try to stop me and get an idea of your chances of throwing me out before I’m ready to leave.”
Norah didn’t move, staring across the street but really seeing the man beside her as she had seen him that first day in her yard. “Caleb, I know you’ve killed more men than just the one I saw, and I know you’re a thief. You’re a liar too, aren’t you?”
“When it serves.”
“Would you lie to me?”
She heard an impatient huff of breath. “No. But I might not tell you something, like living in your house. Then again, maybe I’m lying now.”
She knew that, knew it all too well, and asked anyway, “That day with Preston, if you hadn’t recognized me, would you have tried to stop them?”
“No.”
“Would you have — participated?”
“No.”
“Have you ever hurt a woman?”
“I did my best to kill two women once. I didn’t, but I messed them up real bad.”
“The prostitutes? In the place your mother used to work?”
She whirled at the sudden deep throaty sound he made, saw his face shut down, and wished she hadn’t asked.
“How do you know about that?” he growled.
“Becky’s husband’s grandfather knew Henry Sutton. I talked to him.”
“Did you. I guess you know some secrets then.”
“I’m sorry. It was nosy of me, but I was....”
“Afraid.”
“A little. I’m not any more.”
“You should be.”
“I know, but I’m not.”
“Get up. We’re going to the restaurant to have breakfast.”
In spite of his words, he didn’t move.
“We could be partners,” Norah said at last.
“Partners.”
“I have three hundred twenty acres and a house you want, and you have money and — abilities I need. We could be partners and both have what we want.”
“And how would that work? I’d put in cash and labor and get some part of the profit if there was any, and you’d still own everything? I’ve already done too much work for nothing in my time.”
The bitterness in his voice pierced her, and maybe that’s why the next words popped out of her mouth before she thought it through.
“We could get married. You’d own it as much as me then, more probably. That would make it a real partnership.”
He recoiled as if he’d been burned, managing to put several extra feet of the walk between them before she finished speaking. “You’re out of your mind. You don’t want to be married to me.”
No, she didn’t, but it wouldn’t last very long. He might stay long enough to get in a crop this year, but farming would bore a man like him in a year. Two at the most.
“You could just say no. You don’t have to jump around and make excuses.”
“I’m not jumping around, and I’m not.... You don’t mean a real marriage. You mean just — a partnership.”
“The only kind of marriage I want is a real one,” Norah said, amazed at the strange words that kept coming out of her mouth.
Her shivering had turned to shaking. He stood and held out a hand, face stony. Too stiff to get to her feet without help, Norah reached out and let him pull her up. Neither one said another word as they walked to the restaurant.
H
E’D PRETEND SHE
never said it.
Desperation had driven her to say it, and if she wasn’t already in a panic over her own foolishness, she must regret it and be wondering how to back out.
Except she didn’t look particularly panicky, desperate, or regretful at the moment. More like calm and downright pleased with herself. And she had every right to be pleased. After slaving for months to earn twenty dollars, she had lifted a hundred from him in less than a minute.
Whatever else that boarding house did, it gave her a decent place to sleep. She looked better rested than he’d ever seen her. In fact now that she was warming up, no longer shivering and blue around the lips, she looked good enough any man she just proposed to ought to be shouting yes and doing whatever she wanted, ignoring any attempt she’d make to change her mind. Any husband-material kind of man.
The first time he’d seen the new dress, he’d let her know in no uncertain terms how much he liked the look of her in something other than gray. Even though he’d have chosen real red if given the chance.
Today, with cold gray light from the windows blending into the softer yellow light of the lamps around the room, he couldn’t imagine any woman looking better in any dress. Her hair looked darker and shinier, her eyes bluer, her cheeks a more delicate pink.
The best part of the dress was the line of buttons that started right under the lace collar and marched down over the tempting curve of her breasts and on further into the tuck of the waist that had fit his hands just right when he’d held her at Christmas. The buttons didn’t stop there but continued past even better territory until they ended where the material bunched into some decorative something halfway down her skirt. About where her knees must be.
Not being husband material, Cal’s ideas about those buttons had nothing to do with fashion and a lot to do with popping, ripping, and tearing. He gave serious consideration to hauling her off somewhere and showing her what marriage to him would be like, which would scare the idea right out of her. Her voice jolted him back to reality.
“I meant what I said. You can just say no. I won’t cry or have a conniption. It was a thought as to how we could work things out, but if you don’t like it, you don’t. Are you married already?”
“No.”
“Stop glowering at me. Say no, and let’s enjoy breakfast.”
How could she tell he was glowering when she wouldn’t look at him? She stayed focused on the menu board as if the few items listed needed studying.
“How lumpy is the porridge?” she asked.
“Very.”
“That’s too bad. I guess flapjacks then. And bacon?”
Marrying her was absolutely out of the question. He leaned forward, his arms on the table. “You’re being as stubborn and stupid as when you sat alone out there trying to starve and pretending you weren’t. Sell it to me.”
She pressed back in her chair, her smile disappearing, and finally met his eyes. “No. See how easy that is to say and be done with it? I’m not selling it to you or anyone else. No.”
His jaw tightened, and he forgot about buttons. In the last days he’d come to believe not only would she sell the farm to him but that she’d be happy to do it, grateful even. Her stubborn refusal to do what any sensible woman would do infuriated him. He ought to marry her just to teach her a lesson.
The flapjacks were dry and tough, but enough syrup made them edible, and the bacon arrived crisp and without char.
They ate in silence, but he couldn’t mistake the muley look on her face. Neither intimidation nor persuasion was going to get him anywhere. Not having to buy the land would mean starting out with a much bigger cushion of cash. He banished the thought, and his mind skipped on to others even more treacherous.
Now that she looked and acted the way the woman who had been the Girl should look and act, if he wanted a wife, she’d be the one he’d want. To marry the Girl. After all the dreams and all the years. Partners. A real marriage. He took several deep breaths to steady himself.
“When a man proposes to a woman, doesn’t she get to take as long as she wants to answer?”
“I didn’t pro....” In other circumstances the look on her face as she realized that’s exactly what she had done would be funny. “Yes, we get to take as long as we want, but you only have until I find someone to give me a ride home.”