The Genuine Lady (Heroines on Horseback) (22 page)

But the women just ignored him.

Cherry sat through the dinner in an agony of worry and disappointment. Little Edward chattered and laughed and covered himself with mashed potatoes, and picked at his little bites of pork, but she could not even bring herself to do that. If Jared was hurt, if the roan had stepped in a hole and thrown him, if he had fallen from the hayloft, if anything at all had happened — or if it had not. What of the way he had just ridden away without warning this morning? Her mind kept coming back to those doubts that had taken residence in her mind this morning. That he regretted her now. Surely he could have told her yesterday that he was just going to ride back to the claim after spending the night with her? Instead he had just melted away after making a promise to her. A promise he might very well regret in the light of the day.

She hated herself for counting so much on Jared’s help, but wasn’t that what he had promised to be, just last night in bed — her helpmeet, her partner, her
husband?
Surely it wasn’t unreasonable to think, for just a moment, that she might lay her burdens upon his shoulders. Surely it wasn’t unreasonable to think that he might step between her and the world, between her and her enemies, and with his man’s strength and his man’s authority say, “You’ll leave Mrs. Beacham and her son alone, thank you very much. They are my responsibility now.”

But perhaps it was. She pushed some peas around on her plate.
 

“Cherry?”

She looked at Patty, who was standing to clear the emptied dishes.
 

“Matt’s going to saddle up and go looking for Jared now.”

Cherry nodded miserably. Then, suddenly ashamed of herself, she squared her jaw and rose from the table. “Thank you both. I’ll help clear, Patty. I apologize for my lack of appetite; it certainly wasn’t the cook.”

And Cherry began gathering the plates. She was going to go on as she always had, and Jared would either come and help her, or he would not.

Assuming he wasn’t lying dead on the prairie. But Cherry very definitely did not believe that to be the case. He had been riding across these prairies since he was a boy. Jared knew what he was doing.

***

Jared had no idea what he was doing.

Wilbur was looking warily at him from across the cabin, rattling his spoon in his empty tin bowl with a nervous rhythm. The hired boy had been told the day before that he wouldn’t see Jared for a few days. Now the boss was sitting on his bed, head against the wall, drinking steadily from a dark bottle that had been hidden beneath the mattress. Wilbur wasn’t bothered by the drinking, but he was a little offended that the bottle had been hidden. As if he wasn’t trust-worthy enough not to go stealing the boss’s liquor! Also, he thought Jared might offer him a taste. He’d worked all day on the barn roof, and a man got a thirst. Wilbur was fifteen, but he was pretty sure he was a man, and Jared’s hiring him to feed the animals and work around the claim had proved the fact for certain.

Jared was getting tired of Wilbur’s hunted looks, but there was nothing he could do. He was absolutely paralyzed — where to go next, who to tell, how to tell it.
 

The only thing he knew was, she’d show up sooner or later.

Sooner, knowing that witch.

She’d show up and start making a fuss all over Bradshaw.
 

He’d thought he was done with her at last. Wasn’t proof of that just last night? Getting Cherry to promise to marry him? This would be the final clincher, he’d thought, the nail in the coffin of that whole sordid mess. He’d have a new family, as far removed from the one that had been denied him as possible. Up here in the wilds of the Dakotas, he and his Englishwoman and that sweet little boy of hers would start all over again.

And then this damned letter.

It was somewhere in his bed, crumpled up after dozens of readings, maybe hundreds. He had stopped three times just on the ride out to the claim to dig it out of his saddlebag and read it again, the roan ducking his head for snatches of forbidden grass while his master was lost in a private misery. Then Jared would shake his head, come to, and stuff the letter back in the bag before he pulled the roan’s head up roughly and kicked the horse back into a gallop.
 

He’d thrown it into his rumpled bed before he’d gone out and joined Wilbur on the roof of the barn, which they’d been rebuilding ever since the cyclone had torn it apart. It was hard work and despite the sharp north wind they’d both had sweat pouring down their faces and stinging their eyes, but he hadn’t stopped hammering away until the sun was setting and he couldn’t see to place another nail in the rough boards.

Then he’d gone inside the cabin, seen the damned letter, and started reading it again. And again, and again.

Then he’d started drinking.

And that was about where he was right now.

Wilbur spoke up, in a voice still high-pitched with youth. “You got bad news, Mister?” He sounded sympathetic.

Jared regarded Wilbur. He was lanky, with the coltish legs and arms and angular face of a very thin boy slowly becoming a very large man. Too young for heartache, Jared thought. Heartache like
this,
anyway. “Woman trouble, son,” he admitted gruffly. “And let me tell you: that’s the worst kind of trouble. They plague you and plague you, and you just keep lettin’ ‘em. And askin’ for more.”

Wilbur was a little taken aback. Woman trouble, from a strong character like Mr. Reese? A cowboy who had ridden every trail between Dakota and Texas, slept out beneath the stars, roped a longhorn and tamed a mustang? He didn’t know what to say. Maybe there was more to being a man than he had thought. He’d never given women problems any consideration at all.
 

Jared had to laugh at the boy’s startled face. “Want my advice, son? Avoid women as long as you can. They’ll ensnare you soon enough, and then you got no escape. Less you want to build a cabin up in the mountains somewhere and turn into a hermit.” The thought was suddenly very appealing to Jared. He could go out into the Rockies, hole up the forest, live in a cave like a bear. Anything to avoid her…

Wilbur furrowed his brow. “Well, Mr. Reese, what kind of trouble do you mean? My mama gets real mad at my pa, but then he brings her back something nice from town and it sweetens her right up. Maybe you gotta find her something nice at Mayfield’s.”

“Something from Mayfield’s.” Jared smiled and shook his head. “Son, I’d have to get her somethin’ from Timbuktu to make up for what is about to happen.” He thought. “Or Paris,” he amended. Cherry probably wouldn’t like anything from Timbuktu. Her tastes were a little more refined than that.

Wilbur didn’t know what a Timbuktu was, but he looked alarmed nonetheless. “What’s gonna happen?”

The knock at the door made them both jump.

“Who’s that?” Jared called.

“It’s Matt!”

Jared sighed. “I mighta guessed.”

“What’s Matt want?” Wilbur asked.

“Drag me back to town.”

“You gonna go?” Wilbur looked hard at the bottle, memorizing its curves. He’d only have a little.

“Not a chance in hell. I’m going to hide out here like a goddamned coward and let the women scratch each other’s eyes out. Much safer.” He took another swallow and shut his eyes.

Matt gave up waiting and just came in, bringing the cold night air with him. “Women sent me out here looking for you,” he told Jared. “ ’Lo Wilbur.”

“ ’Lo Mr. Barnsley.”
 

“Are they terrible mad at me?”

“Patty thinks you’re dead, but since you aren’t, I imagine she’ll want to do the job proper.”

“I got some news,” Jared said heavily.

Matt went very still. “Not from—”

Jared nodded.

“Bitch.”

Wilbur gasped with shock and delight.
 

“Come on, Matt—” Jared shook his head. “There’s no reason for that.”

Matt thumped his fist against the cabin’s wall. “There’s plenty of reason! She led you on for years, and then when she thought she had you good and trapped, she saw something shinier and went after that instead. And now that you’re finally settling down with someone else, she’s trying to get you back again!”

“It’s not her fault. He died. She’s all alone in the world. She didn’t write just because she knew I was with Cherry, Matt, now that’s just absurd.”

Wilbur’s eyes flickered from man to man, absolutely entranced.

“All alone in the world? Except for his children and his family and his money, Jared. His
money
and that’s all she ever wanted, anyhow. She ought to be happier than she’s ever been now.”

Jared shook his head. “She hasn’t got any children.”

Matt looked up at the cabin roof, as if to heaven. “God help you, Jared, what the hell happened to that damn child?”

Wilbur was in transports.
 

“There never was a child.” He jabbed a thumb at the letter. “She wrote. There never was a child. They fought somethin’ terrible and then he just up and died last month and she’s got nowhere to go in the world. She didn’t even inherit the house. He left it to his brother.”

“Who?” Wilbur couldn’t contain himself. “Who are all these folks?”

Jared ignored him. “So she’s comin’ here and —”

“You can’t let her come here!” Matt’s voice was close to panic. “I tell you, Jared, you better write that crazy bitch a letter and tell her she can’t come here!”

“I can’t stop her, Matt, she’s already on her way, according to this. She’s probably two days away, if she left the day she sent this.”

Matt leaned against the wall. “I need a drink.” He looked to Wilbur as if for help; Wilbur blanched and sat deeper into his chair. He didn’t touch Jared’s bottle! He’d never even thought of touching the bottle! Why was Mr. Barnsley looking at
him?

Matt shrugged and looked back at Jared. “Jared, you better be waiting for her and put her right back on the train before she even gets her trunk off. You have a life here. You have a woman waiting for you back in Bradshaw. The past is the past.”

Jared didn’t do anything. Didn’t nod, didn’t shake his head, didn’t give any indication that he’d heard Matt. Matt came over and took the bottle from him. He tipped it up and took a long drink, throat working. Then he handed it back and wiped his mouth with his shirt-sleeve.
 

“Jared.”

“What.”

“Don’t let her come here and upset Cherry. That lady’s special. And she ain’t gonna break your heart as soon as she hears some old moneybags jingling the change in his pockets. She got news today, too. And it isn’t good news. Cherry’s got troubles of her own.”

Jared looked up at that. “What happened?”

“Trouble from home,” Matt said simply. “I’d leave it for her to tell you, though. And if you’re not going to deal with that woman, you’d better be the one to tell her, too.”

There was silence for a few unhappy minutes. Then Matt spoke up again.
“I’m
not telling her.”

Jared just sighed and took another drink. “I’ll tell her when I can.”

“When’s that gonna be? Tonight? She’s waiting for you.”
 

“Not tonight. I can’t…” he looked at his shaking hands helplessly. He’d had more than one too many. He’d had a bottle too many. “I’m a damn fool, Matt,” he said, and Matt didn’t disagree. “I have to deal with this my own way. Cherry…” he trailed off, at a loss for words, or even for what to do.

“I’ll tell her you said hello,” Matt said drily, and went back outside to mount his horse.

“Wait, wait,” Jared called after him. He sighed in resignation. “At least let me send along a letter.”

Cherry read the letter exactly one time, from beginning to end. Then she put it down and went into the kitchen and got to work. There were bigger problems in her life just now than Jared. And if Jared wasn’t going to stand up and help her, if Jared was going to send his regrets from the claim, saying that there was too much work to do to see her, well then, she wouldn’t worry about him another minute. Cherry floured her hands and pounded at dough and set a loaf of bread to rise, something that she could never have imagined being able to do just a short time ago.
 

Nor could she have imagined the comfort it would give her, to do things with her hands that
had
to be done, not things that were done merely to keep her busy, to make her appear lady-like, to show off her white hands as those of a gentlewoman.

When had that happened, exactly? When had she become so capable and practical and skilled?
 
She had been the heiress to a fortune and the daughter of a marquess and the betrothed of a future peer, and it had not been so long ago. She could embroider a cushion and she could manage a staff of servants and she could write the seating charts for a dinner party without offending anyone, from a duchess to an honorable. But of all the things that she had learned growing up, the only thing that had really come in any sort of use to her had been how to ride a horse.
 

She
was
good with a horse. She wondered if that was something that could be of practical use to her. Farming was an idea that she knew something of, from riding out with her father. But when she called herself a farmer, named herself a farmer to people like Jared, who were questioning her ability to live out on the prairie and provide for herself, she knew in her heart that she was desperately overstating her knowledge. She was a farmer who had overseen farmers. She was a farmer who had watched others plant her fields and bring in her harvest. She was an overseer, in truth.