But Everett wasn’t waiting for her, Nellie couldn’t help thinking. And that was all that mattered to her, now and later and all the painful times in between. Everett didn’t want her.
At least he didn’t want the real her. The wild her.
Maybe the original Everett she’d met would have…
Banishing the thought, Nellie gave her Old Orchard bottle a rebellious swish, readying herself for more. She didn’t really want to drink any more. To her, whiskey tasted like vinegar…only slightly less toothsome. But this was her last-ditch effort to do the right thing by Everett, and she didn’t want to fail.
“I don’t even like bunnies,” Nellie lied. Then, screwing up her face, she valiantly took another hefty swallow of whiskey.
Reflexively she shuddered. Everett gave a knowing laugh.
“It’s a good thing the bunnies have the sense to like you anyway, despite all your protests,” he said. “Just like the rest of us do.” Quietly he covered her hand with his. He squeezed. “Before you get too out of hand, give over that bottle.”
Defiantly she clasped it harder. “If you’re wanting to be paid for it, I can do that. I have my own money, you know.”
“I don’t want to be paid for it.” Everett peered at its sloshy, foul-tasting contents. “Besides, I wouldn’t have the first idea how much to charge for two and a half swallows.”
“Humph. I have an excellent job at the newspaper,” Nellie informed him proudly, beginning to feel the disorienting effects of the whiskey despite Everett’s low estimation of her consumption so far. “Did I ever tell you how I got my job?”
“You did not. I’d like to know.”
She examined him, decided he meant it sincerely and loved him a little bit more because of it. “I read a horribly offensive and sexist article in the Leader and wrote to the editor in protest. He liked my writing well enough to offer me a job.”
“I’m impressed.”
Not enough to marry me! her poor sorrowful heart cried, but Nellie forged on in spite of it. “When I arrived and he realized I was a woman, he rescinded his offer.” She heard Everett’s swearword in response to that and smiled in acknowledgment. “It took me all afternoon to persuade him to hire me. But I did it.”
“I don’t doubt you did.” For a moment, all Everett did was gaze at her, proudly, affectionately and—if she wasn’t mistaken—sadly, too. “You’re an extraordinary woman, Nellie. Truly.”
At that, she scoffed. Everett’s sad, stoic tone scared her. She didn’t understand it. She didn’t want to. And yet…
“If I’m so extraordinary, why do you sound so miserable?”
“Because—” Everett began, then he broke off. He squeezed her hand in his again. “Because I don’t want any of this.”
That was blunt. The depth of her despair upon hearing his words shocked her. Morosely Nellie stared at the dust motes floating in a beam of sunshine. The barn would never host a wedding now. It looked so lovely, yet it would remain empty.
She’d so wanted it to be filled to the rafters with the wedding vows that she and Everett would exchange. Her heart hurt with the effort it required to suppress her longing for that.
“I don’t want to hold you back,” Everett was saying, “and I don’t want the world to be without your newspaper stories.”
She had the impression he’d been talking and she’d missed something. Perhaps, Nellie realized belatedly, she was more susceptible to the effects of demon drink than she’d thought.
“Don’t worry,” she told him, doing her best not to weep. “Everything in my story will be positive. None of it will reflect poorly on you or your vaqueros or your hacienda.” Drawing in an empowering breath, Nellie squared her shoulders. She even, miraculously, managed to sound composed. “It turns out that I was wrong about mail-order marriage bureaus. They’re not frauds. They really can find ideal matches for people. I know that because they found me you, and I feel that we, together—”
To her dismay, her throat closed up on the words. Nellie could not speak. She couldn’t see through the haze of tears filling her eyes, either. Drat! Why was this so difficult?
Doing the right thing was supposed to be, if not easier, then at least heartening. But Nellie didn’t feel heartened. Sitting there, close enough to feel Everett’s warmth and hear his breath and know his kindness, she only felt…alone.
So alone. And sad. And hopeless and tipsy and bereft.
“You asked me before if I thought we were meant to be together,” Everett was saying now, forcing her to recall those times she’d foolishly shared her feelings—her fantasies that somehow, some way, they were destined for one another. “I didn’t have an answer for you then. But now I do.” He drew in a ragged breath. Then, “The answer is no, Nellie. It has to be no.”
Stunned, she let his words wash over her. As gently said as they were, they threw into harsh relief her earlier hopes that Everett’s pursuit of her, here to the barn, meant he cared.
That her inability to drive him away…meant he cared.
Wordlessly Nellie nodded. The motion made her tears fall on their joined hands. Embarrassed, she pulled away.
But Everett reclaimed her hand. Urgently he pressed something in her grasp. “That’s why I got you this,” he said, sounding hoarse and angry and bewilderingly formal. “So you can be happy. So you can go back to the city and be happy.”
Dazed, Nellie opened her hand. A train ticket lay there.
Everett was sending her away. Here, in the place they were supposed to have been married—if her daydreams had come true—he was giving her the ticket he’d promised. He did not love her.
She’d succeeded.
Victory had never felt more bittersweet.
“I see.” With tremendous determination, Nellie stood. She wobbled a bit, but she did it. She nodded. “Thank you, Everett.”
Through her teary vision, she glimpsed his expression. He appeared aghast—probably at having provoked her tears at all. Men, her editor had informed her, did not like emotional women.
Unfortunately he’d also said there was no other kind.
For no good reason other than the fact that she was at a loss for what to do next, Nellie handed Everett the bottle.
“If you’ll excuse me,” she said, “I think I might be ill.”
“Oh! I’ll help you.” Sounding aggrieved, Everett stood. Gentlemanly to the end, just as she’d suspected, he reached for her. “Let me help you. I’m sorry, Nellie! Let me help. Please.”
But Nellie Trent hadn’t been an unconventional, inconvenient, tomboyish woman all her life for no reason. The reason was, it turned out, that her sporting ways allowed her to run. So before Everett could touch her—before he could break her heart all over again by pitying her—Nellie turned and ran away.
Forever.
Chapter Nine
With his head in his hands and his unwanted whiskey bottle on the kitchen table in front of him, Everett moaned in agony.
“Why?” he groaned. “Why did it take me so long to see what was happening?” An idea occurred to him. With extreme bias, he wrenched off his stupid borrowed eyeglasses. He hurled the spectacles away from him, letting them clink to a stop on the oak tabletop near Marybelle’s basket of clean laundry. “It’s probably these damn spectacles,” Everett groused. “I could hear that Nellie was upset, but I couldn’t see what was wrong. I was confused. It was dark. She’d been drinking. Drinking!”
He had actually driven a good woman to drink, Everett realized. He was a monster. However, drinking sounded like a fine idea for the likes of him, Everett realized tardily. He grabbed the Old Orchard. He took a searing, useless glug.
It didn’t help. He was still faced with the reality that he’d sent away Nellie—likely crushing her heart in the process—and he didn’t have the firs
t idea how to remedy the problem.
Why hadn’t she been thrilled to return to San Francisco, the way he’d thought she would be? Why had she cried instead?
Could it be that she hadn’t been pretending to care about him? If it was, he’d been a fool to push her away.
Melancholically Everett looked up. At least a dozen of his vaqueros stared back at him—most of them with distinct belligerence, resentment, or some combination of the two.
“If you want sympathy, patrón,” Pedro announced, crossing his arms sulkily, “you won’t get it from us. We miss Nellie.”
“Da,” Ivan said, apparently too riled up to eat for once. “This is not the way springtime wedding fever is supposed to go. This is not the way Edina said it would be. Right, Edina?”
“Absolutely!” The cook stepped up to the big Russian’s side, stalwartly laying her hand on his shoulder. “The boys went to all that trouble to make everything perfect for you and Nellie, and you ruined it.”
At her words, Everett flinched. He drank more whiskey.
“I was lying for part of it,” he told her brokenly. “She wanted an answer from me. When it comes to Nellie, the answer is always ‘yes!’ Always ‘yes!’” Everett babbled, awash in raw-feeling memories. “But if I’d said that, she’d have stayed.”
“Then that’s what you should have done,” Marybelle said staunchly. “You should have said ‘yes’ a thousand times.”
His housekeeper was right. She was right a thousand times. And yet… “I couldn’t let her stay,” Everett insisted in his own defense, unable to reconcile his good intentions with the calamity that had just occurred. “I tried to help Nellie once I realized she was crying, but she was fast. Too fast for me.”
“She was too perfect for you, you mean,” Oscar accused with his expression unforgivingly flinty. “Nellie was poetry and light and hope and joy! And you, patrón, are—”
“Gonna git her back,” Casper interrupted gaily. “Right?”
They all stared expectantly at Everett. He frowned.
“Springtime wedding fever is not about misguided sacrifice and broken hearts and cast-off eyeglasses,” Marybelle urged him. “It is a time for l’amour and kisses and wedding dresses!”
She traded a look with Edina, reminding Everett that his housekeeper and cook had been diligently at work on a gown for Nellie. She’d even tried it on, he knew. The women had all shooed him from the house before he caught an “unlucky” glimpse of her wearing it. Now, Everett wished he’d looked anyway.
It would have been a memory worth keeping close forever.
“I don’t have ‘springtime wedding fever,’” he grumbled, irked to have his feelings for Nellie reduced to the equivalent of a bout of sniffles. “That’s nothing more than a myth.”
“Sí. What you’ve got is nada,” Pedro said fiercely. “No Nellie, no wedding, and no good reason for any of it.”
But Everett did have a reason. “She would not have been happy here,” he told them stonily. “She is a citified woman. She needs a citified man. A man like Astair Prestell. Someone who—”
“Someone who will bore her to tears with useless jabbering and endless pomposity?” Edina inquired. “That kind of someone?”
Everett slumped. “A gentleman,” he stated carefully. “Who—”
“A gentleman who wears suits?” Casper inquired, an oddly comprehending look on his face. “A gentleman who wears specs and neckties? A gentleman who shaves twice a day and totes around a boring ol’ inch-thick book everyplace? That kinda ‘gentleman’?” Wrinkling his brows, Casper gestured at Everett. “’Cause you already are one of them, patrón. You made yourself into one.”
Everett shook his head. “It’s fakery. It’s all fakery. I’m no more a gentleman than my mustangs out there are,” he said. “Nellie deserves better. She deserves…everything.”
His vaqueros glared judgmentally at him. So did Edina and Marybelle. Everett fancied that even his cat and dog scowled.
“You are wrong about Nellie,” Oscar said, cutting straight to the heart of the matter. “She is not like Miss O’Neill. She does not want a Schwätzer like Astair Prestell for a husband.”
“Non. Indeed, she does not!” Marybelle nodded vehemently.
Everyone else only gawked at her. There was silence.
Then, “You know what Schwätzer means?” Edina asked, turning wide-eyed to her friend. “How on earth do you know that? I mean, Oscar said it like it was something awful, so I guess we all agreed with that part, but you seemed to know it for certain.”
Coyly Marybelle said, “I may have been studying Deutsch.”
Oscar brightened. “Wirklich? Marybelle, that is wunderbar!” He smiled at her. “I am very impressed by you.”
The housekeeper smiled serenely. “Vielen Dank.”
At that, Oscar seemed almost beside himself with joy. He grinned at Marybelle. She cast him a flirtatious glance back.
“Well, I reckon Edina and Ivan ain’t gonna be the only ones gettin’ themselves hitched soon,” Casper said gleefully. “Do you s’ppose you can line up weddings like whiskeys and do ’em one right after another? ’Cause the barn’s already decorated—”
“There aren’t going to be any weddings,” Everett interrupted harshly. “Not this week. Not in my barn.” He didn’t think he could stand it. Not after all that had happened. “I made a hash of things with Nellie. She’s gone. It’s too late.”
“Patrón.” Pedro tsk-tsked. “It is never too late for amor.”
“That might be true for Edina and Ivan,” Everett agreed. “And for Marybelle and Oscar.” Although he was still dumbfounded by their budding romances, he was pleased for all four of them. “But it’s not true for me. I know what I’m not, and I’m not what Nellie needs. No matter how much I want her, I can’t—”
“How do you know?” Ivan asked bluntly.
“How do I know what?” Everett gulped more whiskey. It still didn’t help. His vaqueros’ sour moods didn’t help, either.
“How do you know you’re not what she needs?” Edina clarified, easily seeming to understand what Ivan had meant.
Wistfully Everett remembered when he and Nellie had shared a similar synchronicity. The recollection made him feel worse.
With the last of his patience, Everett tried explaining again about Miss O’Neill—about her judgments about his ranch and his character and what right-thinking women wanted and needed.
He didn’t get far.
“That is absurdité! You must fight for the woman you love!”
Oscar’s outburst earned him a startled gasp from Marybelle. In an aside to her, the gallant vaquero confided, “I may have been learning some of le française, as well. For you.”
In response, the housekeeper swooned. Oscar winked.
That was it, Everett decided. The world had gone crazy.
Oscar did not wink; he was far too solemn for that. His ranch hands did not berate him; they were much too deferential to do so. And he did not, it occurred to him, have to stay here and listen to this. Resolutely Everett pushed back his chair.
Unsteadily he rose, bottle in hand. “I’m leaving.”
“Yahoo!” Casper leaped to accompany him. “I’m going, too!”
Everett blinked. “Going where?”
“To fetch Nellie, of course.”
“I’m not going to fetch Nellie.”
But his vaqueros and Edina and Marybelle had already assembled themselves to accompany him. Eagerly they waited.
“You must!” Marybelle urged. “Go get her.”
Everett scowled. “I wouldn’t begin to know how.”
“Apologize,” Edina said readily. “Sweep her off her feet. Ask her to go away with you! It will be romantic.”
“I already tried to get Nellie to g
o away with me,” Everett said, remembering that balmy moonlit night. “She told me no.”
Nellie’s rejection of him then had solidified all his fears—that she didn’t want him, couldn’t love him, didn’t need him. Everett didn’t want a second dose of that hurtful tonic.
“The old ways have a solution for this, patrón,” Pedro said. “If you are not sure of your lady’s affections, you must—”
“No more traditions.” Stanchly Everett held up his hand, cutting off Pedro before his vaquero could finish. “No more customs. No more wedding fripperies.” He scoured them all with a pain-filled look. “Haven’t you all done enough?”
For a moment, they lapsed into regretful stillness.
Then, from Ivan: “We have done enough, patrón. Have you?”
Everett frowned. About to insist that he had done enough—because he had loved Nellie, and he had tried to do what was right by her, and he had believed the right thing was sending her away—Everett was forced to reconsider.
He’d accepted this whole imbroglio the way he’d done everything else so far in his life—with curmudgeonly equanimity. He hadn’t tried to fight. He hadn’t done anything except enjoy Nellie’s company…and then send her away. Maybe it was time, Everett decided, to fight for what he wanted—to fight for Nellie, no matter what the risk was to him.
She was worth it. Together, they were worth it.
With a decisive gesture, Everett set down his whiskey bottle. He reached for his hat, then tugged down the brim.
“This ‘old ways’ solution,” he asked Pedro. “What is it?”
He could scarcely hear the specifics over the din of celebratory whoops and shouts from his improvised family. But before very long, Everett figured he had enough…if he combined it all with love and courage and a little bit of luck, besides.
* * *
It should have been her wedding day, Nellie realized as she paused over her satchel with an armful of petticoats. It should have been her time to declare her love for Everett, dance amid the hay bales beneath his barn’s ribbon-bedecked timbers, and find out if Edina and Marybelle were right about the fun to be had during a raucous midnight chiverie.
Weddings Under a Western Sky: The Hand-Me-Down BrideThe Bride Wore BritchesSomething Borrowed, Something True Page 24