Proving Herself Read online

  "You ought not be out here," she protested reluctantly. "I'm sure Mama has refreshments set up for the hands."

  "Let me see to your horse," he insisted. "You get inside before the boss knows you weren't there all along."

  And although Snapper was her horse, her responsibility, Laurel knew Victoria was running a risk by covering for her.

  "Thank you." She put a hand on his arm. "I owe you."

  Nate looked at her for a long time, as if maybe she did, which worried her. "Miss Laurel, can I ask you something?"

  Miss Laurel? "What is it, Mr. Dawson?"

  As she'd hoped, her return formality teased a ghost of a grin out of him, but he avoided her gaze as he asked, "Are you sweet on that Marmaduke what's been bedding at the Coopers'?"

  Then he looked up, and she could see how much the thought had troubled him. It troubled her, too. "What?"

  "Well, folks have been saying..." He kicked a tuft of grass. "Not that I listen much."

  "People think I'm sweet on a remittance man?"

  "Not a lot of people, but you did go to the Coopers' t'other week. Well, I told 'em they were liars," he assured her vehe­mently. "I said, 'Miss Laurel has too much horse sense to let some fancy-pants Englisher charm her. And they saw as I had a point. But, I figured I should ask you direct."

  Which, she realized, was very much what her father had recently done. Who else thought she was sweet on Collier Pembroke?

  Don't be ridiculous, she thought—but it didn't come out of her mouth. Maybe the not-to-be-remembered kisses by the water hole silenced her. Or maybe the fact that Pembroke was doing her a favor, no matter his reasons. She couldn't just dismiss him as she would a ... a sheep farmer.

  "Thank you for asking me," she said, and Nate nodded. "Maybe you could tell people it's none of their business."

  He frowned impatiently. She hadn't said what he wanted her to say. But she wasn't sure she could say more and still be truthful or fair—a situation she liked no more than he did!

  "Are you sure you want to see to Snapper?" she asked now, a desperate change of topic. "I ought to be the one doing it…"

  Nate scowled. "Get along now."

  So Laurel did, circling to the two-story ranch house from the river, on the kitchen side. Though they had shade trees, Papa had refused to plant any too near the house. But by tucking her skirt up into her belt, so that its folds hung as high as her stockinged knees, Laurel managed to shimmy up a post to the veranda's roof, then through her younger sisters' gabled window.

  "Laurel!" Victoria's exclamation startled Laurel so that she fell, with a thud, onto the wooden floor. "It's about time. You nearly got me into very big trouble."

  "I didn't ask you to lie for me," said Laurel, untucking her skirt as she sat up. She'd just sort of hoped.

  "I told Papa we were fixing your hair—" Victoria made a face—"and trying to smooth your elbows."

  "You said 'elbows' to Papa?" Their father considered the mention of any noninjured body part to be somehow brazen.

  Victoria nodded. "And your knees."

  Stifling a laugh, Laurel peeked out of Kitty and Elise's bed­room, into the upstairs hallway, then darted into the bedroom she'd always shared with Mariah and Victoria. It felt strange to see her sister Audra's things there. But Mariah had left to marry, and Laurel did have her own home now.

  Until first snowfall, anyhow.

  She peeled off her dusty dress, then hurried to the wash­basin in her unmentionables to splash scented water onto her face, her neck, her bared arms. She refused to ask if her elbows looked so terribly bad. "Are the Coopers already here?"

  "The Coopers?" When Vic handed her a flour-sack towel, Laurel snapped it at her, and Vic laughed. "Yep. All of them."

  Which meant Lord Collier, too. Had he thought of some­thing?

  Vic handed Laurel her blue party dress. Laurel pulled it over her head in a rustling confusion of bishop sleeves and lace bertha, then spun to have Vic button it. "Nate Dawson thinks I'm sweet on him." Where there was gossip, could Vic be far behind?

  "You've always liked Nate," admitted her sister.

  "No, sweet on Collier." Laurel grinned, now that it wouldn't be such a betrayal of her English ... friend? Co-conspirator? Partner? "Dawson called him a Marmaduke."

  "Well, Marmaduke or not, who wouldn’t be sweet on him?" countered Vic, which made Laurel feel somewhat better.

  "A cowboy."

  "Well, you may be a rancher, sister, but you are never going to be a cowboy. Sit down." Laurel sat, and Victoria quickly combed her hair, then began braiding it.

  If Papa had his way, Laurel wouldn't be a rancher either. Not this winter, anyhow.

  How far had she fallen, that her only hope for a solution was a handsome blond Marmaduke?

  Collier didn't have a solution. The news from Edgar had stunned him so, he was having trouble reasoning at all.

  Still, somehow he suspected seeing Laurel Garrison would help him figure the rest of it out. But she had still not come down to her sister's lawn party at the Garrisons' country home—if one could call a wooden farmhouse, no matter how nicely kept, a "country home."

  Laurel's mother—introduced to him as Elizabeth Garri­son—had done a nice job of setting up trestle tables with pink bunting decorations in the shade of some nearby trees. She was showing Benjamin Cooper wax gramophone cylin­ders that, Collier could only assume, were newly acquired.

  The cheerful strains of "Hot Time on the Old Town" soon sang out into the summer air.

  Laurel's father, the dour rancher himself, looked even more like a judge, with his white whiskers and terse way of speaking. No, he likely would not be bribed. Alec Cooper dogged the man's heels as Garrison exchanged words with some ranch hands who'd come up to the house for lemonade and biscuits. Alexandra sat on a wooden folding chair, dis­cussing something with a strawberry-blond daughter and the lawyer Thaddeas. Mr. and Mrs. Stuart MacCallum, newly-weds, from what Collier understood, stood very close to each other, speaking in tones nobody else could hear.

  Still no Laurel.

  "Where the hell is she?" muttered Collier under his breath.

  Only then did he feel a gaze on him, and he slanted his own downward to see the smallest Garrison girl watching him. She had cascading blond hair caught back in an over­size blue bow, a picture of innocence. And she asked, "Where the hell is who?"

  Collier sank into a crouch to put himself more at eye level with the child. "I beg your pardon," he said seriously. "I should not have said that word."

  She shook her head in solemn agreement.

  "You know not to repeat it, don't you?" he asked.

  She nodded.

  "What's your name?" he asked.

  "Elise."

  He made an abbreviated bow. "Pleased to meet you."

  "You're pretty," she said.

  Collier widened his eyes. Starting a bit young, wasn't she? "Thank you," he said, resisting the urge to smile.

  Elise rocked back on her heels. "Where the hell is who?"

  Collier scowled at her, then heard a screen door slam shut, and slowly stood. Was that Laurel?

  Having only seen her in a day suit—and mud—he barely recognized her in a fashionable party dress. Gray lace overlay a lawn gown of blue, in a Gibson-girl style that slimmed her hips and raised her... complemented other womanly attrib­utes. She wore her hair braided into a crown, sleek and sen­sible.

  Good Lord. She was... attractive!

  Her gaze seemed to sweep across the rest of the company, then caught on Collier's, even as he stared. For a long mo­ment Laurel stared back. Then she flushed and went to the sister whose birthday it was, the brown-haired, bespectacled girl.

  Her next-youngest sister—Victoria?—stood for a longer moment on the porch, watching him with interest that a true Englishwoman would never venture.

  But he was not in England anymore. And with the letter from Edgar still rustling in his pocket, Collier was currently disenchanted with the women of his mother
country, as well.

  How are the business ventures progressing? Edgar had writ­ten before closing, as if any news Collier offered would ap­proach the import of his own. Collier wrote back, I am part-owner of a Wyoming cattle ranch. Just to see how it looked, should he mail it.

  It did not look half bad ... if he could only make it true.

  Laurel Garrison, hugging her younger sister, glanced to­ward him again. Somehow they would find a way to discuss this.

  "Collier, dear," greeted Alexandra, coming to his side. "Are you surviving the heat? Let Audra fetch you some lemonade."

  "Please," agreed Collier, and smiled at the strawberry blonde, who seemed to be Audra. "Thank you."

  She all but ran toward the house.

  "I do wish you would tell me what has upset you," coaxed Alexandra, once they were alone. "I'm quite certain it per­tains to that letter from Edgar, so you might as well tell me the rest."

  Collier said no more than when she'd started asking him, last night. He was unsure he could force the words out to so sympathetic—so British—an audience without embarrassing himself.

  "One mustn't keep these things to oneself," she insisted. Then she groaned when little Elise raced screeching by them, pursued by Alec and two dogs. Unlike Mrs. Garrison, how­ever—who only called a warning about the phonograph— Alexandra had too much breeding to raise her voice at her son.

  "I'd best speak to Mr. Cooper," she decided, instead. "Are you quite certain—"

  Miss Audra returned, carrying two glasses of lemonade from the kitchen. Collier said his thanks, then waited until the girl backed away from them before he told his cousin, "Please go on."

  With clear reservations, she did.

  He found Laurel again; she was talking to her older sister and her sheep-farmer husband, MacCallum. She met his gaze, then averted her eyes. Both MacCallums looked over their shoulders at him. Collier noticed Thaddeas Garrison scowling in his direction as well. Lovely.

  At this rate he would never get the chance to speak to Laurel in private; everyone would be watching for him to make some sort of romantic overture.

  Alexandra had moved and was speaking quite seriously to her husband until Cooper caught her waist and swept her into an impromptu dance to the Spanish instrumental playing on the phonograph. Alexandra protested, but clearly with lit­tle conviction. Mrs, Garrison laughed at them. Little Elise dragged the birthday girl—Kathryn?—into a dance of their own.

  Collier decided a better opportunity would not come. He strode to where Laurel still stood with her sister and brother-in-law, and bowed. "May I have this dance, Miss Garrison?"

  She hesitated, eyes widening. Surely they danced in Wyo­ming!

  "I promise not to tromp your feet," he insisted.

  "It's not that." She pressed her lips together, nodded, then looked quickly toward the phonograph, almost startled, when "La Media Noche" scratched to an end.

  Was her distressed glance toward the suddenly silent ma­chine relief or disappointment? Either way, Mrs. Garrison re­placed that wax cylinder with another, and cranked the handle.

  "Go on, Laurel," insisted Marian MacCallum.

  "All right," said Laurel, as the announcement before the song identified it as "And Her Golden Hair Was Hanging Down her Back."

  Collier did not miss the soft look that the MacCallums ex­changed, as Mariah had golden hair. He, however, had more interest in the brunette who reluctantly placed her hand in his.

  She wore no gloves, but he still did. The latest recording had a cheerful beat to it, and Collier found it easy to swing his pretty little rancher into step with him.

  Miss Laurel matched him step for step. "We don't normally dance here," she admitted, her gaze skipping between his chest and his eyes, down and up. "Uncle Benj was just be­ing ..."

  "Himself?" suggested Collier. She laughed, and they both relaxed slightly. "I could think of no other way to speak pri­vately with you," he admitted over the music, leaning his head toward hers. "Without endangering our reputations, that is."

  For some reason she laughed at that idea. When he quirked an eyebrow, she reined her gaze back to his chest and he could see no answer through her eyelashes.

  "You've been asking about homesteads," she told him with­out looking up.

  When he turned with her, she easily followed his lead. "It hasn't done me a great deal of good."

  Her gaze rose to his again, stricken. "No?"

  "Unfortunately not, but I'm not done," he assured her. "I'm rather desperate to announce some progress to my family. Thus far, your ranch is the closest I've come to anything of worth."

  She rolled her eyes. "I feel so very special."

  This time he spun with her. Clutching at his arms, she rode out the spin beautifully, her gored skirt flaring behind her, and she laughed up at him. Unseemly or not, he had a hard time not grinning at her clear enjoyment of the maneuver.

  "Why is it so important that you announce progress now?" she asked him.

  Remembering the letter in his pocket, and so many very different dances back in England, Collier frowned.

  "Cole?" she prompted—and when he started at the nick­name, she flushed. "I mean," she corrected teasingly, "Lord Cole."

  They held each other's gazes in playful challenge. Never would Collier have thought he'd find it so easy to talk to either an American or a woman about things that truly mattered.

  "I received news yesterday." He admitted to her what he'd not yet told Alexandra. "My older brother is engaged."

  "Congratulations," she said, but must have read his expres­sion, because she added, "... is what I would normally say, but clearly that isn't the case?"

  He shook his head. "He once agreed never to marry. That way my children would inherit. But he's broken his agree­ment."

  She snorted. He blinked, startled to hear such a sound out of so pretty a face. "I'm sorry you won't inherit, but really— he has the right to marry if he wants!"

  Collier did not, of course, mention Edgar's reasons for thus far avoiding marriage. Instead he offered more acceptable reservations. "He does not love her, and I doubt she loves him."

  "How can you be so sure?"

  "Two years ago she promised to marry me."

  Her eyes widened, and they danced in silence until the last, scratching notes of the song. Well, at least he'd said it. His onetime flame, the Lady Vivian—who did have golden hair, though only once had he seen it hanging down her back—no longer had him suffering in silence. For that, he felt grateful to the less polished, more candid Miss Laurel.

  "That's—that's terrible," she said finally, as they stepped back from each other. The dance had ended, after all.

  He shook his head. "Vivian wanted to be mistress of Brambourne. I should have realized."

  "No wonder you want to have good news of your own."

  "There must be a way," he insisted. Then, at a tug on his coat, he turned to see the little blond she-devil with the big blue bow. "Hello again, Miss Elise," he greeted warily.

  "Can I dance?" she asked.

  "That's not how you do it, Elise," corrected Laurel. Then, instead of instructing her sister on the true etiquette of danc­ing, she said, "You bow, like this, and say... What was it you say, Lord Cole?"

  He narrowed his eyes at the nickname, but consented to demonstrate both bow and request to her sister, one hand neatly behind his back. "May I have this dance, Miss Elise?"

  Instead of agreeing, the little girl bowed back. "May I have this dance, Mr. Cole?"

  This was very much not Brambourne, so Collier scooped the little girl up into his arms. "Only if you watch your lan­guage," he cautioned dryly as another tune, "Mockingbird," whistled out of Mrs. Garrison's phonograph. "And my name is Lord Collier."

  The little girl leaned dramatically back and forth to the music. "Oh." But she did not correct herself.

  Instead she asked, "Are you going to marry Laurel?"

  Collier stopped dancing. "Good Lord!"

  "El
ise, really!" protested Laurel. She and Collier glanced at each other, mutually amused at the foolishness of the young…

  And stared.

  It was a ridiculous idea. Even if it would remove her from her father's legal authority. Even if it would give him some­thing quite startling with which to counter Edgar's missive. Even if it would provide him a place to live when the Coopers left Sheridan. It was... It was...

  Laurel was not yet flatly denying it. Neither was he.

  Their eyes widened in something akin to mutual panic. "No," Collier managed to say finally, at the same time she did.

  Laurel laughed an uneven laugh. "Of course not."

  "Not in the least," added Collier.

  "Goodness, no," agreed Laurel. But from the way she glanced at him, she wasn't thinking as resolute a no as he would have thought.

  "Stuart married Mariah," insisted the little girl he held, still swaying to the music even if he did not.

  "Stuart and Mariah," corrected Laurel, "were in love. Lord Collier and I are not."

  That, at least, they could agree on. But when Elise, clearly disappointed, said, "You could still marry, couldn't you?" he could not help, well... considering it. If only to dismiss it.

  It was sheer folly, of course. Desperate they might be, but this?

  No, he thought grimly.

  But from the depths of his desperation, against all wisdom, wrenched the word maybe.

  Chapter Seven

  Laurel's mother led an easier life than many frontier wives. The family had a large stove, a crank washing machine, an indoor pump, and the help of Mrs. Sawyer, their latest house­keeper. But still...

  Drying a plate, Laurel looked longingly out the window toward the corral and wondered what the menfolk were say­ing.

  The women, not surprisingly, were talking about men.

  "I'm happily married, Alexandra, so I don't mean anything improper." Mama directed her next comment to Victoria. "And I'd never want this to leave the room. But—" As if she didn't have the words, she whistled a long, descending note. "Your cousin has got to be the most handsome young man I've ever seen."