Proving Herself Read online

  "Yup." And she felt amazingly better. A little lonely, yes, but nowhere near as overwhelmed. Because of his... help.

  It occurred to her that she was courting trouble. "Cole?"

  "Lorelei?" he teased back.

  Suddenly she did not know what she wanted to tell him. "Thank you."

  "You are welcome, dearest. Do send Alexandra home with the details, please. I should like to arrive to my wedding on time."

  Dearest. That was probably for Lolly, but she replied, "Yes, milord."

  He laughed. "I never expected to hear that from you!"

  "Well, don't expect it. I was joshing!"

  "So I assumed."

  Then Laurel just stood there in the dark pantry, the tele­phone receiver cradled to her ear, and listened to a whuff sound that she guessed was him breathing.

  She jumped at a sudden clicking. "Hello?" asked a gruff voice. "Hello? How does this confounded contraption work?"

  "Mr. Davis?" she asked, recognizing his Minnesota accent.

  "Eh? Is this Lolly?"

  "No, it's Laurel Garrison. We—I was using the line. I'll hang up so Lolly can put you through. Good-bye, Co—Lord Col­lier."

  She heard the smile in his voice. "Good-bye, Miss Garrison. And you, Mr. Davis."

  Setting the receiver back in its cradle, Laurel felt odd in­side, sort of lonesome and happy at the same time.

  And scared. Very scared.

  This wedding would be complicated by more than orange blossoms and apricot decorations!

  While Laurel saddled Snapper to ride home, Mariah shooed the other sisters out of the stables. "This is private."

  "Is it?" asked Laurel, wary.

  "We haven't had much time to talk." Mariah held Snapper's halter while Laurel smoothed the saddle blanket, then lifted her sidesaddle onto the gelding's back.

  "We never did talk a lot," she noted carefully.

  "That's not true." And Laurel guessed it wasn't. There'd been a time when they were each other's best playmates. They'd been inseparable ... until they started to grow up.

  While Laurel wanted to play Indians by the creek, Mariah went gooey-eyed over the Sears Roebuck catalog and started curling her hair, even on weekdays. She even started wear­ing...

  But now Laurel looked at her sister's not-as-waspish waist more closely. "You're not wearing your corset."

  Mariah blushed. "Laurel Lee Garrison!" But when Laurel only quirked a brow—See why we don't talk?—Mariah smiled, secret and soft. Laurel hadn't seen such pleasure in her sister before, even when she talked about Stuart Mac-Callum.

  And Mariah did go moon-eyed when she spoke of Stuart.

  "I'm going to have a baby, Laurel," she confessed.

  Laurel felt everything inside of her go still. "A baby?" Her sister and a sheep farmer! It was... it was...

  Actually, it was scary. "Does Papa know?" Laurel tightened the cinch, making sure Snapper wasn't holding his breath.

  "I don't think so. Mama and I thought we should wait. Stu­art knows, of course, and he's terribly excited. And I wouldn't be surprised if Vic's figured it out."

  "You're ... ?"

  Again Mariah nodded, so happy that another laugh bub­bled out of her and she didn't even seem to notice.

  "Well, congratulations! That's wonderful, I guess."

  Mariah blinked those big gray eyes of hers, the edge of her giddiness starting to fade. "You guess?"

  Yet again, Laurel had somehow blundered across the line of propriety. "You do want to have babies, right?"

  "Well, of course I do. What woman wouldn't want babies?"

  Laurel winced. "Not for a long time I won't. Maybe never."

  "Oh, you'll change your mind," said Mariah in her know-it-all way. "Actually, that's what I came to talk to you about."

  "Babies?"

  "No! But..." The older girl blushed.

  Despite her need to get back to the claim, Laurel wondered what could make her sister so uncomfortable. "But what?"

  Mariah took a deep breath. "You seemed so upset about

  the honeymoon, I thought maybe you had concerns. I wanted to, well, assure you."

  Laurel waited. "Assure me?"

  Mariah blushed even more. "Oh, mercy! I just wanted to say that if you have, well, questions. About the wedding night. That you don't wish to discuss with Mama. Then you should feel free to, well... ask me."

  "Oh! You mean about—"

  Mariah nodded. Well, of course Laurel wouldn't need to know about that with Collier. But she had to admit a certain amount of curiosity.

  "You like it, then?" Their mother had assured them that many women did—with the right man, of course. But Laurel only had to watch some dogs or horses to wonder about that.

  Mariah covered her face with her hands for a moment, then sat down on a bale of hay. When she lowered her hands, however, there was no mistaking the naughty glow in her eyes when she said, "Yes. I like it very, very much."

  And this was Mariah. The good girl! The lady!

  Looping an arm over Snapper's neck, her cheek against his side, Laurel asked, "How much? Is it as good as kissing?"

  "Is Lord Collier a good kisser, then?"

  Now Laurel blushed. But really, he was a fine kisser. All she had to do was remember their time by the water hole, or in the buggy by the creek, and she could understand why Mariah blushed.

  Did Stuart touch Mariah in such intimate places as Collier had touched her? Laurel decided she didn't want to know that much.

  "You kiss while you're doing it," Mariah confided, still blushing. "At least... we do. Mostly. Oh, Laurel, you must never let Stuart know I've been telling you these things!"

  "I'm not certain I can ever face Stuart again!"

  But Mariah laughed. She was, after all, the woman of ex­perience. "Perhaps I said too much. I just wanted to reassure you that, if you're worried about your wedding night, you oughtn't be. Everything will be fine, if you love him. It's like joining your souls by joining your bodies."

  If she loved Collier?

  Laurel quickly turned her face into Snapper's neck. She didn't love Collier. She was only pretend-marrying him. And she would never find out if he was the sort of man who would kiss her while they "became one," and that was all for the best. Really.

  "Laurel?" Mariah stood again. "You do love him, right?"

  Laurel wished she could lie more easily. "You've no idea," she whispered into Snapper's black mane.

  Luckily, that was enough for Mariah. But the conversation left Laurel strangely unnerved as she rode back to her claim. Or maybe the feeling came from what she rode back through. Leaves, though turning colors, still hadn't begun to fall. Squir­rels, their tails especially bushy, seemed more active than ever. And a honking noise drew her attention skyward, to watch the uneven V that was a flock of geese, already head­ing south for the winter.

  If she weren't marrying Collier Pembroke, she would soon be bidding farewell to her homestead.

  Laurel guessed that had to be enough for her, too.

  Collier's family did not attend the wedding, because Collier had not yet told them of it.

  Oh, he saved one of Alexandra's silver-edged wedding cards for them, and bought an extra copy of the Sheridan Times to clip their announcement. His family need not sus­pect that the ceremony had been anything less than appro­priate. But he did not want them interfering. Most likely they would not have come anyway.

  But a greater reason was that he did not fully trust Laurel to go through with it.

  He found it remarkably easy, readying to marry her. His name appeared in the society column as glowingly as if he were the crown prince. He had occasion to brush off his best coat and top hat. And once married to Laurel, he would even have a family again.

  Of sorts. If only a pretend family.

  It should sustain him for the two or three years he needed to prove his worth and return to England, in any case!

  The morning of the wedding dawned cold. The thermom­eter that Benjamin Coo
per and his son had installed outside the kitchen window had shown a hard freeze for several days, but the skies stayed reassuringly blue. All in all, Collier felt rather optimistic about the day.

  Even the decorations, which the Garrison girls had set out the evening before, looked cheerful. Apricot had been a bril­liant choice, not being any one of the colors in that silly rhyme about "Blue, love will be true; red, wish herself dead; yellow, ashamed of her fellow..." etc. He'd once noted to his younger sister that the only two auspicious colors in the entire list were blue and pink—all the rest meant something unpleasant. Choosing a color unburdened by such supersti­tions was just the ticket.

  Unless Laurel knew enough about the color spectrum to have realized she was combining yellow and red, and thus was both ashamed of him and wished herself dead.

  After a sharp rap on his bedroom door, Benjamin Cooper opened it. "Well, don't you smell fine."

  Collier said, "Perhaps it's the orange blossoms." Mrs. Gar­rison had brought bouquets of them off the Burlington Northern, straight from New Orleans, two days previous.

  "You look ready to do this," noted Cooper.

  Did he expect Collier to abandon the wedding? "I am."

  But Cooper made a clicking noise, quirking the side of his mouth under his mustache and inhaling through his teeth. "Well, then, son, I got something I'd better show you."

  Despite a pang of foreboding, Collier followed the rancher into the hallway and to the round window with its view to the west. Even standing within a foot of the glass, Collier felt cold shimmering through it. "What should I look for?"

  Cooper folded his arms and ducked his head, as if waiting patiently. "The mountains."

  So Collier squinted, leaning closer to the icy glass to better see... the smudge of grayness where the Bighorn range should have been. "Is that fog?"

  "That's snow, son. Comin' this way." Cooper cleared his throat, and when he cast his gaze upward toward Collier, he even had the grace to look sympathetic. "And if Laurel has a lick of sense about her, she isn't."

  "Isn't?"

  "Heading out in the middle of a snowstorm, even if it is to marry a prize like yourself."

  Collier looked back out the window, digesting this news.

  "It's already come as "far as her homestead?"

  "Yep. Though even if it hadn't, I wouldn't advise her to try outrunnin' it."

  They both knew how good Laurel Garrison was about fol­lowing people's advice. "And if she were to try?" Collier had to force himself to turn away from the fascinating, looming storm.

  Cooper's eyes narrowed with honest anger. "You'd best pray she doesn't, son. 'Cause if she gets caught out in weather like that, could be she won't be marrying anybody. Ever."

  Chapter Twelve

  When Laurel opened her eyes on the cold morning of her wedding, something about her cabin felt wrong.

  Maybe it was marrying a man she didn't love. Maybe it was lying to her friends and, even worse, her family. Maybe it was the fear of becoming "Lady Laurel."

  Lord Collier had assured her that she would not have to sport the title. But he should tell that to Lady Cooper, who'd been protesting her fancy handle for ten years now. And when it came to cowboys...

  Likely "Lady Laurel" would follow her to her grave.

  She huddled, warm under her quilts, blowing little clouds of breath, and thought, I don't have to go through with it. Papa always said if you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging.

  But if she quit on this particular grave, she would lose the claim. And all the money her folks had spent on the wedding. And the esteem of a man who she'd come to rather... like.

  She just had a bad case of the jitters, was all. Maybe she should have spent the night in town, as everyone had asked

  her to do. But, dang it, this was her last night alone in her own cabin, on her land, the reason for doing this in the first place.

  Her last night alone for the next few years, anyhow.

  She would not be hurried out of it. She'd promised she would set out near daybreak. The ride wouldn't take her but an hour, going easy. Since the wedding wasn't until after­noon, she still had plenty of time to be bathed and powdered and dressed up like one of Elise's china dolls.

  But everything surely did seem still outside. The bird cries sounded distant and infrequent. No bare aspen branches scraped together; no pines rushed like a creek.

  Something wasn't right!

  Laurel swung her feet to the dirt floor, hugging her quilts closer while she yanked her boots on over the stockings she'd worn to sleep. The ground outside had frozen hard over the last week. The inside would freeze once she let the cookstove die out. But when she and Collier returned—that was an im­age she had trouble envisioning—they could fire things up again.

  With her boots on, wearing her cocoon of quilts and blan­kets, she shuffled to the window to scrape off frost and peek out at the quiet clearing. It looked normal, just more hushed.

  Well, something felt wrong. And not just her conscience.

  Moving to the stove, Laurel pulled off her nightgown only long enough to throw on a boy's woolen union suit, a pair of dungarees under her heaviest skirt, and two flannel shirts. Only then did she pull on her coat, hat, scarf, and mittens and step outside to see just what was wrong. The morning seemed dark; it wasn't just the slow sunrise that cast a shadow across the basin. Snapper nickered at her from his corral, in the shelter of the shed she'd built, so she doubted dangerous animals roamed about.

  Then what seemed like a mere handful of white, like feath­ers, blew past her from behind. Slowly Laurel looked over her shoulder at the mountains—and the mountains weren't there.

  "Damn," she exclaimed. The honest-to gosh curse slipped out of her on a puff of white breath. The first snowfall, and it had to be a storm? On her wedding day?

  Laurel had grown up in Wyoming. She knew that the smart thing to do would be to make sure Snapper had feed, carry in a good load of firewood, string a rope to the shed, then go back inside to sit this out. She'd be a fool to get caught be­tween here and town, should this blow into a blizzard. Her family knew that, knew better than to ride out and check on her.

  "Well," she told Snapper, wiping a wet blob of snow off her cheek with a mittened hand. "I guess I can get married as well in another few days as today, right?"

  No matter what the family and the newspaper and those fancy cards Lady Cooper had printed up said.

  No matter what the Good Lord Collier was expecting.

  Who knew? Maybe this was the sign she'd needed to re­think this whole plan. What she ought to feel was relieved.

  But she stood there in the snowy clearing and wasn't quite sure what she felt... except cold.

  "We can hardly sit here not knowing," protested Collier half­way through breakfast. He couldn't eat anyway.

  The girl had faced down a longhorn cow. What made him think she would not try to face down a snowstorm?

  "Point of fact." Cooper gestured with his spoon at the din­ing room window, beyond which snow fell steadily like pow­der from an upturned box. "That is exactly what we've got to do. Takes a lot more gumption to stay home and let the world sort itself out than it does to charge off to do the sortin'. That's why I've always figured the women of the species outdistance us menfolk in courage. The least we can do is learn from 'em."

  "Mr. Cooper," chided Alexandra, low. "Your spoon is for eating, not conducting an orchestra."

  "You are right as ever, my darlin'." Cooper put down the spoon. Rather forcefully.

  "All the same, I should like to go wait at her parents' home," declared Collier. "In order to know all the sooner."

  "All the sooner might be week's end," warned Cooper. "They can ring us on that telephone box as soon as she turns up."

  Collier folded his napkin. "The Garrisons are decent peo­ple. I doubt they would protest putting me up, should the storm keep me from managing three blocks back."

  Even the house beside theirs wa
s blurry, through the white.

  "Go ahead," conceded Alexandra. "And you," she added, when Cooper pushed his own chair out. "But you had best hope she isn't riding down today. The groom ought not see the bride before the ceremony, on their wedding day."

  Cooper blinked at her. "That's why we should hope she isn't out in this storm?"

  Alexandra narrowed her eyes, clearly swallowing back a less-than-ladylike retort. Fortunate Cooper. If she'd been Lau­rel, he'd likely be wearing her tea. "Yes, dearest," she said, voice dripping with sarcasm. "That is the only possible reason to hope she is not out in this storm. Why else?"

  The way her husband advanced on her, it would be a few minutes before Cooper left. Collier could not sit still that long, so he went to the front hall and put on his chesterfield, ga­loshes, gloves, muffler, and his beaver hat.

  "The benefit of bein' in town," announced Cooper when he showed, shrugging on an incredibly heavy coat of some thick, curling black fur, "is that if we do get turned around some, we're bound to hit a fence or a house. The trick"—he pulled a cowboy hat low on his head, then tied it down with a muffler—"is to not stop until you've reached shelter, savvy? Even if you fall down the creek bank and break your leg, you'd best drag yourself along till you hit a fence, then follow it to a house. Else we'll have to thaw you out to fit you in the coffin."

  Collier thought that, as usual, the older man was talking mainly to hear himself talk. Then Cooper said, "Here goes nothing," and opened the door.

  Good Lord! This was October? Collier actually took a step back, instincts he'd thought long civilized out of the Pembrokes warning him to stay inside.

  Then his civilized blood triumphed over that instinct, and he lowered his head and pushed out into the storm.

  Snow had already collected to about six inches, though Collier could not hear it beneath his boots—the wind howled too loudly. Fighting that wind, he could see Cooper ahead of him, and trees or lampposts up to ten feet off. Cooper was right; with picket fences on one side of the walkway, and curbs on the other, they could navigate the three blocks to the Garrison home.

  But Laurel would be riding through open country.