Proving Herself Read online

They rode on in silence until he finally prompted, "But?"

  "Then why did you marry her?" Laurel guessed he could refuse to tell her again, as easily this time as before.

  But instead Uncle Benj winked and said, "Because your mama was already taken."

  The next morning Laurel opened her eyes to a woodpecker's hammering. She took a deep, happy breath, surprised by how warm the air felt. Surely it would be a mild winter, with a summer like this, wouldn't it?

  Crawling out of bed, she didn't bother with a robe. She washed quickly before pulling on a simple workdress.

  "Mmm," protested Vic into the pillow. "What?"

  "Nothing," whispered Laurel at the thatch of curly dark hair that hid her sister's face. "Go back to sleep."

  "Good." Vic sighed, and Laurel sat back on her packing-crate stool, picked up her boot... then sat there in the shad­ows. Why wasn't she still asleep? It was dark!

  Maybe Victoria and Lord "Cole" had the right of it. Maybe no woman in her right mind would homestead, much less on a mountainside. Was she in her right mind?

  She looked at the cowboy boot in her hand. She loved wearing boots, their comfort and protection and sure step. The ground never felt so solid when she was wearing girl-shoes that couldn't even ward off a decent dew, much less rocks or thorns or cow chips. Was she really the only girl who'd ever noticed that?

  Among her sisters, it seemed she was.

  If she decided to behave as a woman ought to, to give up the hard work and ride out the winter safe in town, then what did she have to look forward to? New winter fashions? Parties and dances? Services in the stark white church every Sunday?

  She agreed with Mr. Thoreau and Miss Dickinson about having a better cathedral right here in the woods.

  Courting?

  Fellows had been sniffing around Laurel since she'd turned sixteen, and a sillier process she'd never seen. A cowboy who looked just fine in his baggy shirt and butternut trousers would spiff himself up like a parlor decoration, hair slicked back, jaw shaved, and mustache waxed, just to request the chance to sit on her folks' porch swing with her and say noth­ing.

  And after they had such good sense about footwear, too!

  She'd quit that foolishness after the first few tries—men she'd considered friends, who'd managed to embarrass both of them so badly that she couldn't ask them for roping lessons or horse advice ever again. But if she moved back to town, there they'd be again, those otherwise capable fellows who didn't see her as anything but a potential bride.

  Laurel shuddered and pulled on her boots, enjoying the firm thunk of her foot into each solid leather heel. She guessed it didn't matter whether she was sane or not. She wasn't styled for the same niceties her sisters were. She didn't enjoy them—like at Lady Cooper's luncheon the other day, they'd downright spooked her. Which left building a life of her own, one she did fit.

  Which meant finishing her woodshed, on sheer faith that she would need to keep wood dry come winter. Not that she put too much faith in the Good Lord Pembroke, no matter how pretty he'd looked trying to convince her.

  Digging holes for comer posts, she wasn't surprised to look up and see her father, astride his buckskin, watching her from the trees. The last pinks of sunrise had barely left the sky, and her skirt hem hung dark with dew. He must have gotten up as early as she had, to already be here.

  Papa nodded a mute greeting and rode into the clearing. Wiping her hands on her skirts, Laurel met him halfway.

  "Laurel Lee." Her papa's gray eyes surveyed her morning's work from beneath the shadow of his Stetson. "Buildin’ a shed."

  Even his questions came out sounding like commands.

  "Yes, sir," said Laurel, reaching out to stroke Casper's blond neck, his whiskery nose, as she looked up at her father. "You always told me wood's no good wet."

  Instead of answering, he eyed the garden, then her corral. Likely he thought her a fool too, to do so much work for something she'd have to leave. "Where's your sister?"

  "Still asleep." Laurel relaxed when a smile briefly creased her father's face.

  "Takes after her mother."

  And I take after you. Did he even know that? Everything Papa did, she'd wanted to do, always. Even this.

  "Light a spell," she invited. "Stay for breakfast. I'm sure Vic will be out soon. She just stays up later than me, writing in that journal of hers."

  Takes after her mother," said Papa again. With a creak of leather he swung stiffly off Casper. He loosened the horse's cinch, then left the animal to forage while they talked.

  "Mama keeps a journal?" asked Laurel, fetching him some water from the pail hanging by the door.

  "Obliged." He took the tin cup. "Sometime back."

  "Why did she stop?"

  "Raisin' a family's hard work. Honest work."

  "I never said otherwise," Laurel protested.

  Papa glanced at the cabin, then back at her.

  "You started a ranch without implying any of that!"

  "Different for me."

  "It shouldn't be," she insisted.

  "Husband might disagree."

  "Then thank goodness I don't have one!"

  Only when her voice echoed to silence in her little pine clearing did Laurel realize how she'd raised it. No matter how she tried, it seemed she and Papa always ended up fighting.

  At least, they had since she'd turned twelve and he started treating her like a lady.

  Her father returned the cup to its pail. He stopped, dead still, when Victoria appeared in the doorway in her cotton nightgown, dark hair curling everywhere. "What are you yell­ing— Oh!"

  Then she ducked back inside before their father recovered enough to turn away. "Hello, Papa!" she called.

  Jacob Garrison looked accusingly at Laurel, as if it were her fault her younger sister was gallivanting half-dressed about the foothills. Still screwed up tight from their argument, and embarrassed by her temper, Laurel went back to digging holes.

  For a few minutes Papa just watched. Then, as incapable of standing still while someone worked as he was of flying to the moon, he strode over to the garden. He caught up the hoe on the way, and began to hack at weeds.

  Unlike some cowboys, Papa did what needed doing, not just what he could from horseback. That was the only reason she guessed he'd agreed to the town house—for the girls' schooling. Laurel wondered if he ever felt as if he were suf­focating after too many weeks in town. Better this, the smell of freshly turned soil, the strain of her arms reminding her that she was alive.

  The soft chopping of the hoe into the dirt stopped. She looked up, caught her father's eye, and followed the encour­aging tilt of his head.

  Just past the cabin, amid the trees, stood a doe and her fawn. The baby stood almost as large as its mother, its speck­ling long gone beneath a shaggy brown coat. Both creatures stared back, dark-eyed and free.

  Then, quick as a wink, they bolted.

  Laurel looked at her father, pleased to have shared that moment with him. He nodded as if he understood, then re­turned to the garden. But instead of doing more weeding, he lowered himself onto one knee—stiffly, as befitted an old cowboy—and pulled up one of her onions. He knocked the soil off it, then turned it in his callused hand.

  It seemed an odd thing for him to do; the stalks had just barely begun to droop into a request to be harvested. Misgiv­ing tightened in Laurel's stomach as she watched him. She didn't want to ask. Maybe if she just ignored him ...

  But that would be cowardly, and she took pride in never being a coward. Besides, it was her garden, on her home­stead. So she crossed the yard to him while he retrieved the knife from his belt, cut a section off the onion, and shook his head.

  "What is it? Have pests gotten to it?"

  "Thick and tough," he told her, then tossed her the onion.

  She caught both the vegetable and the reference he'd just made. Onion skin very thin, mild winter coming in; onion skin thick and tough, coming winter cold and rough. And the skin of this onion wa
s by no means thin, despite the warm weather.

  "That's an old wives' tale," she protested weakly.

  "Bees are buildin' their nests high," he noted. Another wives' tale. "Woolly bears are near to black."

  "You can't predict the winter, Papa. Not even with onions and bees and woolly-bear caterpillars to go by." And the shaggy coat on the fawn. She didn't want to remember that.

  Her father stood again, slowly, to his full height. He was not a tall man, but she'd realized that only a year ago. He didn't have to be. "Won't have you stayin' past snowfall."

  No. That was all she really had to say to test his resolve, wasn't it? No. She'd said that to his face only once, as a child, with dire results. But she wasn't a child anymore.

  What would he do if she dug her heels in, once and for all?

  Victoria reappeared in the cabin doorway, fully dressed this time. "Papa! Why are you here? Is everyone all right?"

  "Family's well, Victoria Rose," he assured her, then flung the bit of onion he still held across the clearing, toward the wood, before turning to receive a hug from his third daughter.

  "You're just making sure we're behaving ourselves, right?" When Papa held Victoria back to study her, clearly remem­bering how she'd been dressed when she first came out of

  the cabin, she only grinned. Vic had their mother's knack for laughing off Papa's solemnity. "Well, aren't we fortunate I've got a job at the newspaper now—maybe I can keep our scan­dals out of it!"

  He was not amused.

  "Stay for breakfast, Papa," said Laurel. This was still her land. She was still hostess. Tell us what brings you here."

  He nodded in the polite response he would give any settler and followed them into the shadowy, one-room cabin, taking off his hat. Putting on the beans she'd soaked the previous night, Laurel tried not to see the cabin's interior through his eyes: no whitewash, no nice furniture. She'd gotten by with packing crates, the bed, the table, and the new camp stove. And she was proud of her stove.

  Homesteaders couldn't prove up without one.

  "You don't mind beans, do you?" asked Vic, as if they could have offered him eggs or meat. They didn't have either just now—but Vic had, Laurel could smell, put biscuits on.

  "Nothin' wrong with beans," he assured them.

  Especially flavored with new onion. "Sit a spell."

  He settled himself carefully on a packing crate and told them what he'd come to tell them. "Kathryn's birthday is next week. Your mother expects you at the ranch."

  "Is she going to have school friends over?" asked Victoria.

  "Jest family," insisted Papa. "Mariah's sheep farmer and the Coopers."

  Family? The Coopers? Not surprising, since her second youngest sister Kitty and Alec were good friends. And Uncle Benj was practically kin. But...

  "Did you hear?" teased Vic. "Lord Collier might be there." She knew full well Laurel had dined with him and the Coo­pers.

  What was there to do other than concentrate on chopping onion—minus the thick, tough skin—and pretend not to no­tice her father's darkening interest?

  "Lord Collier," he repeated, his drawl making a mockery of the title. So much for pretending not to notice.

  "Lady Cooper's cousin," she clarified. "He's staying with—"

  But when she glanced back, his distaste made it clear he knew exactly who the Englishman was. Papa wasn't as sus­ceptible to bright smiles and dimples as were other members of the Garrison family, she guessed. Especially not on men.

  "What is he to you?" he asked, his very tone a warning.

  As if she were looking for a beau, much less a foreign one! Laurel wondered exactly how she would torture Victoria for this. "He isn't anything to me," she insisted, wishing that sounded more true. It was true. Especially if one forgot the kissing... and the business they'd discussed earlier this week.

  Laurel realized she had too many exceptions to convince Papa, even if she was innocent. Practically. So she added the onion to the beans and tried a little more truth.

  "I dined with Uncle Benj and his family last week," she explained. "Lord Collier wants to invest in my cattle ranch."

  At Papa's expression of disbelief, she lifted her chin. "He does."

  “Only got that one cow," Papa reminded her, incredulous. And that one had been a maverick.

  Not if I let him invest. "Well, I turned him down, of course!" But that was treading toward untruths, so she turned back to the stove and stirred the pot.

  "He must be a hard fellow to say no to," teased Victoria.

  "Maybe for you." Laurel felt far too aware of her father's gaze to laugh. "You think he's the shiniest thing Sheridan's seen in years."

  At least attention shifted momentarily off her. "He is," in­sisted Victoria to their father. "And he's interesting—from a whole nother country! That doesn't mean we can't behave around him. It's just that some of us are around him more than others."

  Papa's gaze slid back to Laurel.

  "Well, maybe you can swoon at his cloth-topped feet at Kitty's party, then," she challenged, annoyed.

  "That wouldn't be any worse than asking cowboys to please show me how to throw a lariat," countered Vic, taking affront at Laurel's tone. As if Laurel had used that merely as a ploy to flirt with cowboys.

  They did show me how to throw a lariat!" she retorted.

  Then it occurred to her that her father had never given her permission to spend time with any of his hands. "Like perfect gentlemen," she added weakly.

  Which was mostly true.

  Papa shook his head and muttered, "Losin' my appetite."

  Which apparently reminded Victoria to check on the rolls in the Dutch oven. "All I'm saying is, a fellow like that would be hard to refuse. Doing business with, I mean."

  As if anything else would apply to Laurel!

  Papa said, "Been askin' 'bout homesteads." It came out sounding like an accusation.

  "You have?" asked Victoria, uncertain.

  But Laurel knew whom he meant, even before he clarified, "His Lord God Pembroke."

  She just wasn't sure whether to be embarrassed that her father knew that much, or pleased that Lord Collier was keep­ing his promise... trying to, anyhow. / shall think of some­thing, he'd said, and he'd kissed her knuckles. Well, her dress gloves—another reason to dislike that useless fashion!

  "Do you think he'll try filing a claim?" asked Victoria.

  Both Laurel and her father snorted at the very idea—then looked at each other, startled. To her relief, his eyes warmed with humor. Any man whom Laurel couldn't imagine home-steading, he seemed to figure, was a man he didn't have to worry about.

  And she couldn’t imagine Lord Collier doing anything so, well... laborious. So perhaps Papa was right.

  They managed to enjoy their breakfast together anyhow. Things didn't get strained again until Laurel walked with him back to Casper, his buckskin, as he readied to leave.

  He swung himself into his saddle, set his heels, and stared down at her. "First snowfall," he warned, in case she'd for­gotten.

  She stared up at him and thought: No. But she'd lost the desperation to say that just now. She would prove it to him instead.

  Then he said, "Best not set your heart on such as can't love you back, Laurel Lee." He nodded at her and reined his buck­skin back toward the Circle-T.

  Laurel could only hope he meant her ranch.

  Chapter Six

  Collier received the letter, in Edgar's hand, the day before Miss Kathryn Garrison's party. He tossed it unopened onto the desk.

  "You and your brother are close, then?" drawled Benjamin Cooper, who'd brought the missive.

  "Increasingly less so." And Collier turned the page of the book he was reading, called The Beef Bonanza.

  "I do believe that book was written afore you were born," warned Cooper. "There's not much of a bonanza left to be had."

  Collier looked up only from basic courtesy. "I'll bear that in mind."

  "Especially not in the one-horse
operations." Cooper's eyes, particularly bright, confirmed Collier's suspicions of a warning. Heaven forbid he tread into the life of Laurel Gar­rison! "If you really want to invest in somethin', I hear tell the automobile has a fine future ahead of it."

  Collier looked deliberately back down at his book. It seemed the more polite choice than telling the man to sod off. Only once Cooper left the room did he glance toward the letter. Likely it would be bad news. But he opened it anyway.

  Because she was late for Kitty's party, Laurel rode in along Goose Creek, where the trees would hide her, taking time to catch her breath. She'd gotten late through foolish concerns over her tanned skin, her rough hands. It would be equally foolish to tear in so fast, pouring sweat, that she scared the guests.

  Not that the guests meant anything to her.

  When she rode through a sweep of willow leaves, near the family's old claim cabin, she was surprised to see an old friend. Nate Dawson, her father's ranch hand, sat on the rock where they used to meet when she wanted to learn how to cowboy... or when she ran late. More than once he'd taken her horse in himself while she made for the house, to sneak in the back way.

  He stood and palmed his hat off when he saw her, as if she were still living at home, as if they'd never fought.

  "Same old Laurel." And he reached up to help her dis­mount.

  "I'm not awfully late, am I?" she asked as he lifted her to the ground. But he didn't step back from her very quickly.

  The last time they'd fought, it was because Nate wanted to be more than friends. He hadn't insulted or compromised her, but it had made things awkward between them all the same.

  "Only a little after two," he told her. "I think your sister's saying you're already upstairs, getting ready."

  Laurel groaned. "Victoria?"

  "One and only." Nate still hadn't stepped back.

  Darn it!

  If Laurel wanted a beau, she could do worse than him. Lean and tanned as most cowboys, he had shaggy brown hair and a ready smile. He'd proved his loyalty more than once, especially during last year's family scandal—Marian's marrying that sheep farmer.

  But Laurel didn't want a beau, certainly not one who didn't understand why she couldn't just marry a fellow with a home­stead instead of proving up her own.