Proving Herself Page 8

  "Mother!" Mariah said in a gasp. Even Laurel stared. She was younger than Papa by perhaps fifteen years, though Mama's hair was still a luxurious brown, and she'd kept a good figure. But she was in her forties!

  Even if she could still whistle pretty well.

  Vic, taking another plate from Mrs. Sawyer to dry, said, "You can't mean to deny it, Marian!"

  "I do! True, Mr. Pembroke is... pretty," their older sister admitted. "But not handsome. Not like Stuart."

  Victoria and Laurel exchanged amused looks. Stuart MacCallum wasn't unattractive. He had a solidity about him, an earthiness some women might like. But handsome? Not like Lord Collier.

  Lord Collier drew the eye, then rewarded it for coming.

  "Pretty, then," said Mama diplomatically. "And I've seen a lot of pretty men. Men who made a career of being pretty."

  "Oh, really?" Lady Cooper laughed.

  Mama winked and took a washed cup. "In my wild youth."

  But Mama often teased about her mysterious "wild youth."

  Were the men discussing the next wild-horse roundup? Laurel wondered. The government had put a bounty on mus­tangs. Laurel would like to be down there, arguing that... but she was avoiding Lord Collier ever since her sister had embarrassed them both. Married?

  Besides, she was one of the women.

  Mariah sat down, as if disgusted by all of them, and Mama got out a candy stick for her. "Are you sure you don't want some fresh air?" she asked.

  She didn't offer Laurel or Victoria candy or fresh air. It seemed Mariah and Mama had grown even closer since the marriage. If Laurel never married, would she lose that? Much though the idea pained her, she looked out the window again, and noticed Lord Collier strolling toward the creek. Maybe he did not feel part of the men's conversation, any more than she did the women's.

  "That's a very pretty dress, Laurel," offered Mariah.

  "Thank you." Laurel put her last dish back in the cupboard with more force than necessary. Yee-haw. Now they got to talk fashion. "Mama had it made while we were in Denver this spring."

  "Under protest," her mother teased. Laurel had to admit she did fancy how the material swished around her ankles, how the gray lace traced a leafy pattern over the blue lawn. At least Mama hadn't chosen flowers. But she still hated the shoes.

  "Perhaps she can go to the same couturier for her new winter gowns," suggested Lady Cooper.

  Laurel wiped her hands on the flour sack that, tied behind her, made an impromptu apron. "I don't need new winter gowns."

  Marian shook her head in that know-it-all way of hers. "You always say that, and you're always wrong. There will be par­ties for Christmas, and dances. You might as well look styl­ish."

  "I won't be going to parties and dances," Laurel reminded her. "Likely I'll be snowed in on my ranch."

  Mariah looked helplessly toward their mother, so Laurel did too. "I'm old enough to get married like Mariah did, but I'm not old enough to risk my claim cabin in the winter?"

  "I wouldn't want anyone I loved wintering alone," said Mama. And Laurel had hoped that if she would find support from anyone...

  She tore off her flour-sack apron. "Are we finished?" She didn't want it said that she shirked her work—even woman's work.

  Mama hesitated, then gave in. "Go ahead and enjoy the sunshine, sweetie. While you can."

  While you can. Laurel all but fled for the creek, almost turning her ankle on the uneven ground in those girl-shoes. Only when she reached the sheltering trees that grew along the creek could she slow down and take a breath. Here in the grass and trees, by the rush of water, she could be herself. And here she could find the Englishman who might yet have a solution for her.

  She expected to find Lord Collier.

  She just didn't expect to find him in the willow grove, look­ing young and lonely on Nate Dawson's rock.

  Collier rested an arm on his knee, staring at the creek and feeling useless. Then Laurel Garrison appeared through a cur­tain of willow leaves to pull him out of his sulk.

  She did look attractive in that gown—the shape of leaves, dappling the clearing, blended with its lace pattern, and in the shadows her own eyes glowed somewhere between blue and gray. Her braided crown of dark hair showed off the angle of her heart-shaped face, the slant of her pretty jaw, even her ears.

  She had surprisingly ladylike ears.

  Collier looked past her for companions, but he saw none. He doubted convention would condone so private a meeting in Wyoming, any more than in England, yet their privacy re­lieved him.

  With Miss Garrison and her little homestead, he still had at least a chance to grasp at something that mattered.

  Apparently she felt the same. "You've got to think of some­thing."

  "Other than our marriage, you mean?"

  Her stricken expression, before he could smile his insin­cerity, did little to soothe his self-esteem. Less so her response. "I don't want to marry you."

  "So I assumed," he assured her. "Never fear. I've cherished no romantic intentions toward you either." He tried not to remember the feel of her wet curves in his arms and on his lap, the taste of her mouth opening under his own ...

  Well, they had agreed to forget that. Apparently she had done so.

  He felt somewhat less bruised when she frowned. "Why not?"

  Because I have no future. Because I have been exiled from my past. Because Fate has conspired to make me into so hol­low a shell of the man I thought I would be, I've no heart with which to love anybody. Especially you, leaf shadows and liquid eyes or not.

  Because I have allowed you to see me too desperate to make any pretense of glory or allure.

  He made do with, "What gentleman would want a wife he could not impress? I am, after all, no laborer. And I hail from neither Wyoming, Montana, nor Idaho."

  To judge from her startled expression, she remembered her own words from the water hole. That's not fair. You never told me what would impress you."

  "I'm not sure I know anymore." He tossed a pebble toward the splashing, gurgling creek.

  She smiled that wide, forthright smile of hers. "So it's not just me that has you bucking our marriage."

  "Oh, it is you," he assured her solemnly. Only when her eyes widened did he return her now fading smile. "But not just you."

  When she came to the boulder, he pretended to feint, as if she might throw more mud. She studiously ignored-that. "Well, it's not just that you're an immigrant man-of-leisure that would make me decline," she conceded haughtily.

  When he saw that she meant to climb onto the rock, Collier stayed her with a gloved hand, then shrugged out of his suit coat and laid it, lining up, to protect her gown. Sir Walter Raleigh he was not. But he'd not been absent from England that long.

  Miss Garrison eyed him oddly, then carefully sat on the coat instead of the stone. They still had a marginally respect­able foot of space between them—not enough to make this conversation proper, of course, but perhaps enough to pro­tect him from injury, should her father or brother discover them.

  Permanent injury, at least.

  "Actually," she said, "it's been nice not worrying that you might be sweet on me. I mean, other than..." She blushed.

  Collier looked quickly away. "Yes."

  "But that was just a..."

  "Quite," he agreed, and cleared his throat. "An anomaly."

  "A what?' When he glanced back, she looked more an­noyed than flustered.

  "An exception to the norm," he clarified, amused.

  "Oh." She remained wary. "Exactly. So I haven't worried."

  He cocked his head. "Were I... sweet... it would worry you?"

  "All I ever wanted to be was a rancher." She flopped back on the silk lining of his coat and stretched her arms out over her head, as if celebrating her own reach. Did she have any idea how improper such a pose was? Or how erotic? Her bosom fought the restraint of its bodice, and the way her back arched and her hips slanted downward reminded him of nothing so much as—


  Well, of things he ought not be thinking around any woman of good breeding. Or supposed good breeding. It did perhaps explain the water hole, though.

  "Everyone assumes I want to settle down, marry, have chil­dren," she explained, relaxing from her stretch. When she pillowed her head on her arms, he judged it politic to look elsewhere. "No matter how often I tell them different. It's not that I disapprove of those things, but..."

  Collier watched a butterfly float by, more intrigued by her words the less he watched her body. "But?"

  "Hard enough to be a rancher without being a wife. Look at what happened after dinner. The men went to talk live­stock, and the women stayed behind to clean. And why don't the men stay behind? The kitchen isn't their job, that's why. They work outdoors, chopping wood or building fences. But I've been chopping wood and building fences, too. Did you see me out by the corral smoking cigarettes?"

  Well, wasn't she the suffragette? "I should have noticed if you had," he teased.

  "Sometimes it seems the whole world is crowding me into behaving like some woman" she admitted. "And every time I reject another beau, or... or wear my cowboy boots under my dresses, where nobody should be looking anyway, it feels like I'm bucking the world all over again. I don't like feeling that way. I don't mean it wrongly. But it's not my fault I was born female."

  After that little speech, Collier had to look back at her. He managed to focus on her face, her eyes. "No, I suppose not."

  "So as soon as you opened your mouth, out by the—that is, when we met..." she clarified quickly, and blushed again.

  He looked away again. They'd do best to avoid remem­bering their first meeting or open mouths.

  "I figured right off that we had so little in common, you had to be safe," her voice explained.

  Safe? He might not be the scapegrace his brother was, but neither had Collier ever held the reputation of being safe around single women. Or married ones. Did she think him a gelding?

  But when her gaze met his, her blue eyes widened, as if she realized the true impropriety of lying beside him, where he had only to lean over her, lower himself onto her...

  She scooted herself quickly back up, bracing herself with her arms splayed out behind her. It still showed her bosom in good form, but held less invitation. And he did still need her more for other purposes.

  "Can't you think of any other solutions?" she pleaded.

  "Other than what?" he challenged, perhaps too innocently.

  She lifted her chin in a dare. "I refuse to even say it."

  "Yet you do admit that marriage would be a solution?"

  "A bad one!"

  "Well, yes. That goes without saying." And it did. His level of desperation—even to consider the suggestion of a six-year-old—humiliated him.

  Not that he needed to maintain a facade around this little rancher woman. Perhaps he understood what she meant about feeling safe, at that. "Unfortunately I've thought of no good solutions."

  She wrapped her arms around her skirted knees. "Oh."

  "I am still willing—even eager—to invest," he insisted. Part-owner of a Wyoming cattle ranch. Even if he had to admit, some months later, to the investment's failure, he could sur­vive several months on the esteem of such an announce­ment.

  Laurel shook her head. The only thing worse than losing the ranch would be knowing I had lost someone else's money, too."

  "Even if I don't mind losing it?"

  "You should mind."

  "At this point," he admitted, "I consider it a payment on the remnants of my pride."

  "Then you have a pretty strange kind of pride, and I won't be party to encouraging you."

  No lady in England would ever have spoken so directly. But he was no longer in England—might never be again.

  That, however, did not bear considering.

  They sat in dappled sunshine, listening to the birdsong and the creek, until she said, "I don't understand a pride that comes from what folks think of you, instead of who you really are."

  Which suggested something quite fantastic. "You yourself do not care what people think of you?" he asked carefully.

  She sat up straighter, as if alert to a suggestion she might resent. "I care what my family thinks of me. And what folks think of them. But I guess I care about the homestead more, or I never would have caused as much talk as I already have."

  Not to mention meeting him here, unchaperoned.

  "You let the land office misconstrue your age," he re­minded her. "For land that's available only to people twenty-one or older." Or head of a household. Or a military veteran. He had done his reading. But she was neither of those, either.

  The little homesteader nodded slowly. "But I'm not alone."

  "So you are not wholly against certain ... duplicity."

  She narrowed her eyes. "I'm more against it than not."

  "Even if it would allow you to keep your homestead?" So now he was corrupting honest young country girls. That he did not feel ashamed only proved the depths to which he had sunk.

  "Why?" she asked, wearing that dangerous, mud-throwing look.

  In for a penny... "What if we should pretend to marry?"

  Lord Collier had looked so pretty this afternoon, in Laurel's favorite spot by the creek, that she'd found herself not listen­ing to him so much as watching him. But she heard his foolish notion clearly enough. "What?"

  "A marriage of convenience," he clarified. "But less per­manent, and only you and I the wiser. You must admit, half of Sheridan seems to fear us mere steps from the altar al­ready."

  "They do not!" But when Lord Collier only held her gaze, Laurel had the grace to look down at the lace across her lap. Even Papa had wondered!

  "How do folks pretend to marry? We would have family there." A horrible thought occurred to her. "Unless you meant to elope, and we couldn't do that. It would break my parents' hearts!" As if lying would not? She was loco to even con­sider it!

  "The marriage itself would be legal," admitted Collier. "We need not bribe the judge or minister. We need only see it as a business arrangement, and treat it thus."

  "But why?" Loco!

  "You keep your ranch and do on it whatever you originally meant to do. I have quarters for the winter, and something to write home about, and may invest as much as I wish in the ... what is the name of your ranch, anyway?"

  Of course he had to ask that. "It doesn't have one yet."

  He shrugged, as if even that did not matter. "In the ranch. This continues for two, perhaps three years."

  She looked toward the mountains. She loved it out here. The higher she went into the foothills, the happier she got. To spend another winter in town, with barking dogs and cry­ing children and trolley bells, would be terrible.

  The surge of determination that swelled her chest surprised even her. So instead of laughing in Lord Collier's lovely face, she heard herself echo his words. "Two or three years?"

  "You come of age," he explained. "The ranch may even start to turn a profit. Should we succeed—as a business, I mean—I .could finance my own return to Brambourne in some semblance of triumph."

  "And then?"

  He blinked, as if startled from a fine fantasy. Then?"

  "At what point do we tell people we've annulled it, so it's not a real marriage, and we were just living together without the benefit of clergy?" She winced to imagine it. "Papa, you know how you fussed about that Englisher and me marrying up, a white back?"

  Then Collier said, "I suppose we could divorce," and the original idea seemed saner from pure contrast.

  "You think I'd disgrace my family with even a pretend di­vorce?"

  "Perhaps, if they dislike me enough, they might not mind so terribly." Bracing his weight on a hand between them, he leaned nearer. "Or if I succeed in England, I could desert you."

  Her mouth fell open. "Well, thank you kindly!"

  Only then did his dimples show. "Merely being courteous. That way I'd be the villain—with some safety provided b
y the Atlantic Ocean—and you'd have everyone's sympathy."

  As if she wanted anyone's sympathy. Or as if something so minor as an ocean would stop her father—or her mother!— from hunting down anyone foolish enough to hurt one of their girls. Even pretend hurt.

  It all seemed so complicated it made her head hurt. Then he said, "And you would have your ranch."

  Maybe her head didn't hurt so much, after all.

  Her ranch. For all his archangel hair and perfect features, Lord Collier could have sprouted horns and a tail, for the temptation he'd placed before her. Laurel braced herself to argue him out of ever suggesting anything like this again.

  But then he went and said, "Perhaps you're right." And he leaned back. "It is a desperate idea, of course. I apologize."

  Confused all over again, Laurel slid off the boulder and went to the creek's edge, folding her arms around herself, droopy sleeves and all. She was desperate, too.

  Lord Collier said, "It was rude of me even to presume— and after your family's hospitality, as well as Benjamin Coo­per's—"

  "I can't decide right away," she interrupted.

  Now he sounded oddly frightened. "What?"

  "I... I need to think about it." She turned back to him, longing for guidance, afraid to take it. "May I think about it?"

  "Certainly," said Collier. "Business decisions ought never be rushed."

  And that was all this was: a business decision.

  It frightened her less that way.

  "Or pretend marriages?" She attempted a smile.

  His laugh sounded nervous, despite the boyish brash of his angled smile. "Quite. Except..."

  Another exception? She wasn't sure she could take many more.

  "It is August," he reminded her. "Even were we courting already, marriage before winter would be something of a scandal."

  He was right. Again. "Oh."

  "Not impossible," he assured her. "But if we are even con­sidering this, we should let people know our intentions, or they shall never believe us when the time comes."

  Oh. Looking down, Laurel kicked a rock into the creek— then tried not to hop from a hurt toe. Darn shoes! "What does that mean, exactly?" she asked. "Letting people know our intentions?"