by Sharon Ihle
Libby shrugged, dazed by everything else. "Possibly. What are you going to do? Go look her up?"
"I don't know. I don't want to think about that right now. I'm not done talking about you. Where were we?"
By now, Libby was in such shock, she could hardly remember her own name, much less where their conversation had been interrupted.
It didn't matter. Donovan seemed quite content to do the thinking for them both. "I believe you were probably wondering what it cost me to get this deal for you. Right?" He jabbed the contract with his finger, and Libby automatically nodded. Another pencil fell out of what was left of her bun. He laughed, glanced at her disheveled hair, and said, "It beats the hell out of that hat. Did you burn it?"
Her throat was so dry, Libby nearly choked as she said, "No, but I did bury it away in the bottom of my dresser."
"You should have buried it, period." After a short laugh, Donovan turned serious again. "Back to what this contract cost me—not a damn dime. All I had to do was sign a little paper, myself, a deposition agreeing that I'd never lay claim to any part of the Savage family fortunes, including the name. I'm back to being William Donovan again."
"Will—" Her lungs felt as if they'd collapsed, and Libby's throat closed tightly, making it impossible to go on.
"I hope you weren't trying to call me Willy," he snapped. "I thought I'd warned you about that."
Gasping and laughing at the same time, Libby finally managed to draw a breath. "No, honest, I wasn't, but I am wondering how you could have given up your name? Why?"
"Because..." He paused, looking puzzled, or maybe hesitant, for the first time since he'd stepped through the door. "Oh, I don't know, Libby. Maybe I felt like getting out of the big city and taking another look around Laramie, and maybe I thought I'd see if one of the local newspapers needs a first-rate advertising solicitor. Or maybe, just maybe, I came here and did it all for you."
"For me?" She heard the words and understood somewhere in her brain exactly what he was saying; but, for some reason, Libby couldn't let herself believe it. "You mean you... love me?"
He rolled his eyes and sighed. "I was hoping you'd figure that out for yourself. I'm not much good at this sappy stuff—remember?"
"Oh... Donovan." The tears in Libby's throat rose to her eyes, threatening the floodgates. Needing to touch him, to feel his arms around her and know that this was real, she swung herself up on the counter, leading with her right leg as if mounting a horse. Trouble was, the counter wasn't as wide or as high as most horses. Had Donovan not been there to catch her, Libby would have flung herself beyond the counter and onto the floor.
Righting her and wrapping her firmly in his arms, he kept his face just inches from Libby's as he said, "Still as awkward as ever, I see."
"That's right. I haven't changed, but I think one of us has." She touched his cheek, finding out that he was very real. "Oh, Donovan," she murmured, her breath catching in her throat. "How you've surprised me. As long as it took you to finally find a real family, I can hardly believe you've given them up for me."
"Yeah, well, that's what I did all right."
His complexion seemed to darken. Or maybe it had turned a little rosy. William Donovan—blushing? And could he possibly be aware of it? He glanced down at the floor then and shuffled his feet, making Libby think that maybe he was all too aware.
Speaking with what sounded like a fair amount of difficulty, Donovan went on. "I don't know why it took me so long to figure it out, but did you know there's no law that says a fella's got to accept just any old family that gets thrown at him, even if he does want a family as badly as I do?"
"But—"
"Let me finish, while I still can."
Libby wasn't about to miss the rest of what Donovan had to say. She pressed her lips together, flattening them, and gave him a short, silent nod.
"It occurred to me," he went on, "that if I wanted a family so damn badly, why not start my own?"
"Your own family?" she blurted out, forgetting herself. "You mean you want children?"
"I guess so," he whispered softly. Donovan's eyes misted slightly then, making them look bluer and more luminous. "I have to tell you, Libby," he said in that same soft whisper, "the idea of making a new family with you sounds just about perfect."
"Oh... oh," Libby's voice, heart, everything felt strangled, wrung out. "Oh, Donovan... I love you so much."
Again he blushed, but this time he took it in stride, his euphoric expression overshadowing his rosy cheeks. Still, for a moment, Libby thought he was going to turn away from her. He didn't, but he did mutter in a deep serious voice, "Oh, now don't go getting all sappy on me. I told you, I'm not much good at that sort of thing."
Fighting her tears, she said, "Do it right, Donovan. Ask me to marry you."
He tugged at his collar, looking distinctly uncomfortable. "I guess you forgot that I'm not exactly the marrying kind."
"Oh, I remember perfectly, but it seems I've discovered that I am the marrying kind. I won't live with you or have your babies any other way. Now, are you going to ask me to marry you, or not?"
Surprising her, Donovan turned Libby loose, ripped off his hat, then slammed it to the floor. "I knew it," he shouted. "I just knew it. Didn't I tell you the first time I looked into those big calf eyes of yours that I saw a little white house, a picket fence, and kids running amok in a vegetable garden? Didn't I? You lied to me."
But he wasn't angry. His eyes were twinkling with mischief. "I didn't lie, not really. I thought I didn't want those things, but now I see that I can't stand to have it any other way. Not between us."
Her eyes misting with tears, blurring anyway, Libby didn't see the men approaching until the door crashed open, setting off the bell with such gusto, it sounded like the fire alarm. She turned toward the racket only to find Hymie down on one knee, his shotgun pointed directly at Donovan's heart.
"Don't move you citified slicker," he cackled, "or I'll blow you to kingdom come. We seen this fella get off the train, Libby, but I couldn't find my blasted gun right away. Sorry it took us so long to get here."
Behind him, with feet wide apart and Libby's father's pistol drawn, stood Jeremy. "Looks like we're just in time, sis," he said, sounding tough, in spite of the fact that, using both hands, he still couldn't keep the gun from shaking.
"Wait." Donovan's hands went straight above his head. "Don't shoot. I'll marry her. I swear I planned to marry her all along. I'll do it now, right this minute if you want."
Amazed by his sudden declaration, though not terribly surprised, Libby thought about calling off the guns. Instead, she turned so only Hymie and Jeremy could see her, smiled and winked. "If Donovan told me once, boys, he told me a thousand times that he's not the marrying kind. He's lying."
"No, I swear to God, I'm not lying." Donovan eased one hand lower toward his vest. "Let me show you."
"Whatcha doing there?" Hymie jabbed the shotgun toward him. "Reaching for your weapon?"
"No gun, I swear. Just some proof." Fumbling for a moment, he pulled out a small blue velvet box. "See? I already bought the wedding ring—in San Francisco. My sister, Susan, can verify that." Keeping his eyes trained on the gunmen, he handed the box to Libby. "Take it, it's yours."
Biting her lip to keep from showing her pleasure as she turned to him, she raised her brows high. "You got me a ring? You really were going to ask me to marry you all along?"
Grinning broadly, Donovan glanced at her. "You bet. Now call off your dogs."
"You let me go through all that, that 'marrying kind' business, when you meant to ask me anyway?"
His grin sheepish now, he shrugged. "You said, if something's too easy, it's not worth having. I thought you might like to work a little at getting me to propose, so you could properly appreciate me."
"Really?" As she tried to decide exactly how to handle the situation, Libby remembered a little something she'd forgotten to clear up before leaving San Francisco. Trying to hide an impish gri
n, she said, "I think you might be right, Donovan, and thanks for the suggestion. Hymie, Jeremy? You can put your guns away."
Although Donovan no longer looked worried about the pressman or Libby's brother, she thought he did seem to be a tad concerned about her. "Everything's all right then?" he asked. "We're getting married?"
"Oh, I didn't say that." She batted her lashes in a way that would have made her friend Dell enormously proud. "I haven't exactly said yes, yet. I don't want to make this too easy for you."
"Aw, come on, Libby."
"I have to be sure—sure that you'll do anything to protect me and our children from harm."
"Of course, I will. I swear it." He slapped his palm to his chest.
"You'll do... anything?"
"Yes, yes. How can I prove it to you?"
"Easy." Libby knew her expression had to be deliciously conspiratorial. She couldn't have hidden it. "It seems this newspaper office and the entire upstairs are overrun with mice."
Donovan started and made a kind of strangled sound deep in his throat, but to his credit, he didn't utter a word of protest.
"If you can get rid of those mice, I'll marry you. Oh, and by the way—we grow them as big as rats out here in Wyoming Territory."
The End
Page forward for a note from Sharon Ihle
followed by an excerpt from
The Law and Miss Penny
A Historical Western Romance
Author's Note
I got the idea for writing the story of Donovan and Libby while in the midst of researching my novel, The Bride Wore Spurs, as several scenes in that book were also set in Laramie, Wyoming Territory. As I studied the town's history, I came across the fact that in 1870 this small frontier burg was the first to grant women the right to vote. Since it took another fifty years for the nation to recognize women as intelligent, reasoning creatures, I began to wonder exactly what could have made the suffragists' battle go on for so long. Surely fifty percent of the population could have convinced enough of their hard-headed men to grant the vote sooner—couldn't they?
I dug deeper, and that's when I stumbled over the fact that lobbyists—special interest groups like the liquor and textile industries—had a firm grip on the reins of this nation's policy-makers, even way back then. When I queried others about this injustice, nobody seemed to know that these groups played such a large part in keeping the minds of American women in their kitchens—hidden away in little glass jars, as it were, like raspberry preserves. It is for those women, and myself, that I wrote this book. I hope you enjoyed it.
Complete your journey with an excerpt from
The Law and Miss Penny
A Historical Western Romance
Excerpt from
The Law and Miss Penny
A Historical Western Romance
by
Sharon Ihle
Bestselling, Award-winning Author
New Mexico Territory
A profusion of springtime flowers painted the desert landscape, coloring the outskirts and the drab little settlement of Bucksnort in splotches of brilliant red, pink, and yellow. Casting a pall over the bright spring day, a man riding a big sorrel horse crested the knoll at the edge of town. His expression was dark, filled with singular purpose, and though his hat was white, the color of peace, the man beneath that hat was anything but peaceful.
Today marked his twenty-eighth birthday, but he felt much older than his years. The first quarter of 1888 had yet to pass, but since January he'd already killed three men. If he added to that number the outlaws felled by his guns over the past couple of years, the score would have tallied somewhere around two dozen. But United States Marshal Morgan Slater never dwelled on those figures, or on the men he'd cut down. As always, he focused all of his thoughts on the next assignment.
Now as he rode away from the town of Santa Fe and headed north, his thoughts were consumed with catching up to the Doolittle Gang and bringing them to justice. He would gain the latter through the courts if possible, but if forced to mete out the sentence himself, Morgan would do it without hesitation. Two members of the Doolittle Gang had already slipped through his fingers and the system by swaying a sympathetic jury. This time, one way or another, he'd see to it they weren't so lucky.
Morgan had not forgotten the ugly sneer on Billy Doolittle's pockmarked face when the judge pronounced him free to go—free after having taken part in one of the bloodiest train robberies of the century. Nor was he likely to forget the look in Billy's beady black eyes as he'd taunted Morgan, vowing to settle the score if their paths should ever cross again. Morgan swore on that day that if it was the last thing he ever did, their paths would cross again. And the sooner the better.
With his anger growing as he thought ahead to the hunt, Morgan urged his big red mount into an easy lope. He'd named the horse Amigo, and in many ways, the animal was his best and only friend, even though he'd castrated the beast early on in their partnership. Only a damn fool would ride a stallion on a manhunt, he had reasoned, and no one had ever had cause to call Morgan Slater a fool.
As he and his best friend rode into the town of Bucksnort, Morgan noticed a group of people crowded around the garishly painted wagon of a medicine show. Although he hadn't had much firsthand experience with such operations, what little he did know added more provocation to his already foul mood. Most of these "doctors" were quacks, and a swollen wallet was the only ailment their tonics could possibly cure. Since confidence games were second only to murder on Morgan's personal list of crimes against society, he nudged Amigo toward the gathering and watched as a middle-aged woman stepped out of the medicine wagon and began to beat on a tom-tom.
She wore a plain cabbage-green dress with leg-of-mutton sleeves, making her short, stout figure appear even more so. Her light brown hair was slicked back and tied into a large knot at the top of her head, and her features were plump and droopy. But the thing that caught Morgan's eye was her mouth—more correctly, the side of her mouth, which was stretched to accommodate the butt of a fat stogie.
This unladylike sight only added to his less-than-high opinion of the show. Morgan slid his rifle out of the scabbard, swung his body up and over the saddle, and dropped Amigo's reins to the ground to signal the horse to stay. Then he elbowed his way through the crowd for a better view of the action. By now the frantic drumbeats of the woman's tom-tom had been joined by the jangling of a tambourine. A tall, thin man wearing a swirling black cape and a top hat was slapping the instrument against his palm, encouraging the hoots and catcalls from the crowd. Morgan assumed this weathered old man to be "Doc Zachariah."
A younger woman stepped out of the back of the wagon then, gracefully made her way to the musicians, and bowed low from the waist. She was costumed in a white buckskin dress featuring rawhide strips at the elbows and knees, and blue beads fashioned into chevrons. At her neck she wore a breastplate made of cerulean beads woven into concentric circles, and at the crown of her head, a single eagle feather sprouted up from a blue-beaded headband. She was the very picture of what a real live Indian princess should be, Morgan supposed, and she lent the troupe a touch of legitimacy.
Morgan didn't buy it for a minute. He was sure that only one detail of this performance could be considered authentic. The girl appeared to be at least half Indian, tribe unknown. His gaze flickered to the signs nailed against the side of the bright red wagon. Doc Zachariah's Kickapoo Medicine Show, read one. The others made lofty claims: Money-Back Guarantee, Certificate of Purity, and Cures All! But the most outrageous proclamation of all was: Purveyors of Kickapoo Wizard Oil, A Secret Formula Known Only by the Daughter of the Great Chief Sagawaka, Princess Tanacoa!
Morgan studied the "princess" who now faced the audience in a trancelike state. Her skin was dusky, light cinnamon in color, and her blue-black hair was plaited into braids which reached the tops of her thighs. Although he was far from an expert on
Indians, Morgan doubted that she carried any actual Kickapoo bl
ood in her lying, cheating veins. Nor had she lived amongst the tribe which sired her. Her features were too soft, and her expression too haughty for her to have been raised by a band of savages.
She glanced at him then, catching his stare, and he saw that her eyes were a rich violet-blue color, fringed with thick lashes of the deepest ebony. She dared him with those eyes, alternating between a "come-get-me" look and a "try-it-and-I'll-carve-your- liver-into-a-whittle-stick" expression.
In spite of the fact that he never backed down from anyone, Morgan found that he was the one to break eye contact. He glanced at the dusty road, wondering briefly if she'd used some kind of hypnotic trick on him, and then heard the voice of the "doctor" resound as he gave his pitch.
"And don't we all know the signs of the first stage of liver disease? Ayuh. It's that painful ache which strikes so many of y'all right across the small of your back."
Several men in the crowd, farmers who toiled over their crops daily, immediately swung their hands around to their backs and began to rub the aches and pains brought on by long hours of hard work.
"The kidneys... uric acid." The man shuddered dramatically. "The consequences of that horrifying malady are just too dreadful to even think about, but for today, thar is hope for one of y'all." He held up a small brown bottle. "I offer the last of Princess Tanacoa's Special Kickapoo Wizard Oil to the first man to offer me one paltry dollah." At the gasps from the crowd, he added, "That's right. One measly dollah."
Several voices erupted at once, and a few of the men began to argue over who had been the first to lay claim to the elixir. The man turned toward the back of the wagon where the younger woman stood, catching his wooden leg in the hem of his cape, and grasped the large back wheel to keep from falling. "I now call on Princess Tanacoa, true daughter of the great Kickapoo Medicine Man, Chief Sagawaka."