The Genuine Lady (Heroines on Horseback) (19 page)

Although
it must be admitted that a few people in town were rooting for the neighbors to fall in love. Miss Rose had been heard to say in her public parlor, on more than one occasion, that it was a shame two shipwrecked misfits like those two didn’t form an attachment for one another. But Miss Rose would say
anything
to get people talking, everyone knew that. And Big Pete was worse for gossip than any lady anyone had ever heard of. Months after she’d taken him in to “patch him up” after his bar-fight with Little Pete, Big Pete was still a parlor boarder at Miss Rose’s, and everyone knew whose parlor. Miss Rose didn’t care who knew her business, though, as long as she knew everything about everyone else as well.

But what Miss Rose
didn’t
know, nor did Patty, nor did Matt, no matter what their suspicions might have been, was that Cherry and Jared had been spending so much time together that land agents would be forgiven for thinking that Cherry had given up her homestead altogether. No one could have gone that far, not in their wildest imaginations. Walking out was one thing, a torrid affair was simply unheard of. And Jared credited himself with convincing Cherry that she needed to move into town for the winter: he swore he’d move into town as well if only she’d listen to him. Realizing at last that she’d be utterly alone once the snow grew deep on the prairie if she stayed put in her claim shanty, and with the memory of the cyclone still firmly in her mind, Cherry quietly hired a young man fresh off the train to mind her claim for her, and Patty and Jared came out to help pack up her belongings and Little Edward.

As Jared shook the reins at the mule, Cherry looked over her shoulder at her little home. Eli, who was sitting on the claim for her for the winter, came out of the lean-to barn where he’d been making friends with the cow. He was a nice boy, and he’d agreed to say he was her American cousin if anyone came asking. She’d get no grief from the government for leaving the cabin for the winter. But she would miss it after all; who would have thought such a thing, that she’d feel sorrow over leaving the wretched little shanty she had built herself, leaning crazily in all directions and gusty with drafts where the tar-paper had torn!
 

Eli had said he’d fix it up for her a bit, to give him something to do all winter; Jared had promised him that he’d shoot him like a common animal if he made any moves to steal the claim for himself, and they’d parted, all in all, on good terms. It was best for everyone. Eli had been on the road in hopes of starting a new life for himself, but he wasn’t old enough to file a claim of his own yet. He had a place to stay and she would get an improved place to live in the spring.
 

But she was still sad to leave her home. It was the first place she had carved out all on her own, for she and Little Edward to start their new lives. She had not inherited it, the land was not hers because of who her father was, or her grandfather or her great-grandfather. The roof over her head had been there because she had built it there, however wobbly and leaky, not because the first Marquess of Beechfields had done a favor to a king and been gifted a manor house.

No, this was her first stab at liberty, this shanty, and so it did not feel like triumph to sit in front of her worldly possessions and sway in the cart back to town, no matter what a good friend Patty was. Or no matter how much her affair with Jared had caused her to dread those lonely prairie nights without anyone within shouting distance, let alone someone to curl up against in bed.
 

And bed… that was a whole separate worry: how would she arrange time with Jared in Bradshaw? Certainly, he would be moving into town as well, but even so, there would be no privacy at all. Patty would always want her company; to come and sit and sew, to come and make cookies, to come and gossip, to walk with her down to the store and see what the
rest
of the town was gossiping about. She suddenly saw that the entire decision was a terrible one, but it was too late — The goose was cooked. There was no putting its feathers back on. She sighed and let herself nestle a little closer to Jared. He felt her push against him and looked down at her bent head. He smiled.

Patty looked at them both over Little Edward’s nodding head and smirked. She’d have those two lovebirds married before Christmas, she decided. They might as well turn up the track to Jared’s cabin and leave Cherry’s things there; it was going to be such a bother to pack them all up again!
 

***

Midnight came and went, the chimes on the mantelpiece clock in Patty’s parlor ringing the hour gently. The sound wafted through the sweet-smelling walls of the little house, still so new and shiny and dripping with resin, as if it was a living thing yet, still a tree, still grasping upwards towards the sun. Cherry sat up in bed, her head leaning back against the headboard, her knees drawn up close to her chin, with the coverlet loose over her plain muslin nightgown.

She was all alone.

Little Edward snoozed in the nursery next to Patty’s bedroom; still just another guest room while it awaited a first-born Barnsley. Down the hall and isolated for the first time since his birth, Cherry sat up in bed and listened to the silence.
 

She missed Jared.

In the past month since the cyclone, he had often come to her after sunset, when chores for both of them were long done and the baby was fast asleep. He’d pushed open her door softly, softly, after he whistled outside in the darkness, putting the quiet roan into the barn with quiet Galahad, the two horses seemingly just as conspiratorial as the two humans to make as little noise as possible, to avoid stirring up the night around them. And there was no one to hear, that was true, out there alone on the moon-silvered prairie, but it did not stop them from their creeping about, their need for secrecy, their hiding from the world.
 

She supposed now, alone in her bed and thinking foolish thoughts, that it was his way of showing her that all he wanted was her bed at night. He didn’t want her as wife, didn’t want to give her his name, but he enjoyed her company tolerably well and damn well adored her body next to his. Upon his. Beneath his. Entangled with his. She shivered with the thought and bit back a moan of longing for his hard limbs entwined with hers.

But it was nothing but lust for him, and she was supposed that was just as well. If he didn’t want to marry her, well, she had sworn she would never marry again. She tried to forget that she had not sworn any such thing. She had sworn she would never
love
again. For, of course, she had never married at all.

But to never love again — well, it was easy enough to prevent a marriage, simply don’t get married, but it was another thing entirely to prohibit love. Quite impossible, in fact, Cherry had been slow and dismayed to realize. Love came whether it was wanted or not, love came whether it was denied or not, love simply
came,
and there was nothing a person could do about it. It was like the cyclone in the night, tearing across the prairie faster than any galloping horse; it could not be stopped, it could not be wished away, it could not even be avoided with an agile side-step. Love did as it pleased.

So Cherry was forsworn, it would seem, but there was no helping it. She had been thwarted from the start.
 

“I apologize, Edward,” she whispered, and the wooden bed did not reply. “I loved you, Edward,” she sighed, and the little sweet-smelling room stayed silent. “I have given you up, Edward,” she admitted at last, empty and certain after so many false starts and pretend finales. She waited, but there was no sorrowful ghost to remonstrate with her, there was no fluttering of the curtains as a spirit left her forever. There was only silence. She was really and truly alone.

And then there was a whistle in the darkness, like a kill-deer in the grass, but stronger and firmer than those will-o-the-wisps, and like a flash she was flinging back the counterpane and rushing to the window, and there below her, laughing up at her, was her own beloved Jared.
 

She flung open the window and leaned out, letting the muslin curtains to swirl like ghosts in the night-breezes, and Jared pressed his fingers to his lips and pointed towards the kitchen door. He was going to sneak in; he didn’t want her to do anything excitable and give him away. She nodded and he went stealthily towards the kitchen door, leaving the roan tied behind the barn with a sizable pile of Matt’s good alfalfa hay to keep him quiet.
 

She listened as he came up the steps, heard the pause as he skipped the fourth step, which squeaked, and his cautious tread down the hall. Then she saw the crystal door-handle, the last word in fashion from Mayfield’s Central Emporium, turn, and then he was slipping into the room.

She was waiting for him. She watched Jared’s eyes devoured her, from head to toe, in her simple nightgown, her hair in a thick braid over one shoulder. The moonlight shimmered, bathing her in its pale glow, and her eyes were deep dark pools; her lips a shadowed promise. She wanted him, and she wanted him to know that. But she was also a little frightened of his daring.

“You came
here!”
she whispered, crossing the room to him, in a voice that was half-pleased and half-panicked.

“Cherry,” he murmured, pulling her close, “I couldn’t let this winter go by without coming to you. You must know that.” He pressed her lips into her hair, nuzzling, and she leaned up against him, pressing her hips up to find his.
 

“I was so lonesome, thinking of being without you,” she whispered brokenly. “I need you, Jared.”

His eyes flashed at that, but he said nothing. Wordlessly, he drew her down to the bed, pulled her nightgown over her head, loosened her braid.

“I shall have to braid this all over again before morning,” she sighed, and then laughed, as he pulled strands of golden hair to fall over her white breasts. He wrapped a curl around one pink nipple and she shuddered at the sensation, unable to restrain a moan from escaping her throat.
 

“Hush love,” he murmured, pressing a finger to her lips. “We aren’t alone on the prairie anymore. I don’t know how often we can get away with this. Why did I send you to town? I should’ve kept you with me. We could have been snowed in together all winter long.”

“Oh
Jared,”
she whispered fiercely. “I should have loved that. Must we always be lovers in secret? I am too fond of you for this charade to be maintained. Someone will guess before the week is out.” She put her hands flat against his chest and looked up at him, heart in her eyes. “I do not want to be ashamed of us.”

***

Jared sucked in his breath. She was gazing at him with shining eyes, and he was realizing with shocking suddenness just how much he meant to her. It was alarming and a relief all at once. He had thought that a secret affair was all she wanted from him. He had thought he was a diversion from rough homesteading life, a pleasure, nothing more. What about that husband, that memory she never seemed to let go of? “We can be as much as you want, Cherry,” he whispered carefully, minding his words, and drew a line of kisses from neck to navel, drawing another deep sigh from her heaving chest.

But she was not done with the subject. She sat up suddenly, sending him tumbling backwards onto the bed. The springs squeaked in protest and he looked at her in confusion. “I want everything,” she told him deliberately, hair coiling deliciously around her moonlit curves. “I want everything.”

He knew he should be cautious, that she had led him down a similar path and then thrown dirt in his face once before. But men were made to be women’s fools, and he had proven before that he was all too clever at that. So he’d be Cherry’s fool; at least she was a truer woman than Hope could ever have been. He threw caution to the wind and gave her his all. “I love you,” he told her softly. “Is that what you want? You have my love, Cherry.”

“I love you, Jared,” she allowed. She paused, and he watched her eyes as she struggled with something within. “But… will you keep me a secret or love me in front of the world?”

He reached out a trembling hand and touched her cheek. One tear glistened there, and he whisked it away. He couldn’t believe what she was asking of him, but he was desperate to give it to her, if she truly wanted it. “You’ll love me, and no one else, Cherry,” he confirmed.

“You.”

“
And no one else.”
He didn’t want to say his name.

“Only you, Jared. I love only you.” She was speaking now; she had given up whispering. The house would hear. He did not care.

“You’ll marry me, Cherry,” he demanded gruffly. He only half-believed her, but he was beyond caring. He could make her forget. He’d come this far already with this crazy Englishwoman. And she could make him forget Hope as he made her forget Edward. They’d fix one another together.

“Oh, Jared, I will!”
 

Cherry flung herself at Jared, and he caught her in a great pile of naked limbs and soft breasts. He pushed her back to the bed and took her mouth in a long, devouring kiss. She entangled her fingers in his dark hair, pulling him close to her, and the bedsprings squeaked as he fell atop her. She laughed a little, a throaty chuckle that drove him half-wild with lust. But just as quickly as he sought to spread her thighs apart she was wiggling away, still giggling, and he found himself chasing her naked loveliness all around the bed, quite forgetting the need to be silent. He tickled at her breasts and sensitive sides whenever he caught her, and she squealed, slapping at his hands. “For shame!” she tittered mockingly. “And here I thought you would make me a respectable woman!”