The Wrangler's Inconvenient Wife

by Lacy Williams

  “And Edgar?”

  He simply shook his head, a frown overtaking his expression.

  “I need to talk to him,” she said.

  He shook his head again. “He’s out making the rounds, talking to the others. We’ll have a watch on you girls all night.”

  Between the men she knew would be keeping watch over the cattle, and now this... She guessed none of the cowboys would be sleeping tonight. Guilt surged, but her protectiveness over Emma won out.

  “Could you...take me out to him?”

  “He wants you girls to stay put.”

  She’d asked, but couldn’t really imagine having such a conversation in front of his brother and her sister anyway.

  “Then...is there any chance... Could you ask him to come to me?” She hated that her brother-in-law saw the tears she was fighting to keep at bay. Hated that she had to resort to nearly begging because of her stubborn husband.

  “I’ll try.” Matty gave her a sympathetic smile. “How’s Emma?” he asked, with a glance at the canvas.

  “Scared,” Fran answered honestly. Emma couldn’t stop shaking, no matter how much Fran reassured her. She was scared for Fran, panicking at the thought of Underhill taking her away.

  Fran hated that the fear had returned to her eyes, wished that there was a way to comfort her sister, but she knew there wouldn’t be until this all had ended.

  And the way things were going, Fran couldn’t see a way to a good resolution for all of them.

  Emma’s safety was the most important thing.

  “Ed said to remind her about the lesson from yesterday morning. He said he’d left y’all a present earlier.”

  She nodded, reading between the lines to his true meaning. The shooting lesson and the pistol that Edgar had left them before Underhill’s appearance. She was a little surprised Edgar hadn’t taken it back, but she was glad of the extra protection. She didn’t know if Emma could shoot a man, but she thought she could, if her sister’s life depended on it.

  Matty took his leave, promising to relay her request that Edgar come talk to her.

  But he never came.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “You’re being an idiot.”

  Edgar didn’t react to Ricky’s statement. He stayed in his squat, bent over his horse’s hoof. The animal had picked up a stone in the last few minutes of the day’s drive and Edgar needed to remove it and let the horse rest for a while.

  “She’s up in the wagon, crying. Wants to talk to you,” Matty added.

  Edgar shifted, edging his shadow out of the weak moonlight. He was working mostly by touch, but he’d asked for no fires, so he was doing the best he could.

  He ignored his brother’s mention of Fran crying.

  “Edgar—”

  “I heard you,” he burst out, head against the horse’s flank. “Aren’t you supposed to spell John about now?”

  Grass crunched, as though his brother was pacing a circle, but Edgar didn’t turn to look. He’d gotten enough accusatory looks from both Ricky and Seb all afternoon. He didn’t need one more.

  “Edgar—” Ricky started.

  “If I was going to take advice, it wouldn’t be from you!” he burst out. He couldn’t take the both of them ganging up on him.

  “You think you know everything!” Ricky countered. “No one else can ever be right—”

  “Because that’s the way it is!”

  Ricky threw a punch.

  Edgar caught it in his palm, Ricky’s fist smacking against his flesh. His brother’s eyes were a little wild, about how Edgar felt right now.

  “Right ain’t always right,” Ricky muttered after a long, hard stare passed between them.

  “This ain’t solving anything!” Matty exclaimed from behind them.

  “What’s to solve?” Edgar asked. He turned away, kept his head low, so his brothers wouldn’t see the emotion welling up in him. “She lied to me.”

  “You sure about that? Underhill could be the one lying.”

  “With a federal marshal along for the ride?”

  It seemed preposterous. And if it was an unfounded accusation, why wouldn’t she have told him sooner?

  Even if she hadn’t outright lied, at the very least, she’d omitted some very important information.

  He couldn’t trust her.

  And he obviously couldn’t trust himself. She’d grown on him with her noncomplaining attitude, her protectiveness of her sister...but maybe it was all an act. Or maybe she really was willing to do anything to save Emma.

  “You talk some sense into him yet?”

  The third voice—Seb’s—had him on his feet almost instantly.

  “What’re you doing out here? You’re supposed to be with the wagon,” Edgar barked.

  Both Seb and Ricky looked at him, faces serious, and he turned away, taking off his hat with one hand and shoving his other hand into his hair.

  It just reminded him of Fran, how she’d washed and cut it.

  “We know you care about her,” Seb said. Low and soft, like Edgar was some flighty filly to be brought around by gentle speech. “Kinda hard not to notice.”

  “I don’t want to,” he growled.

  “You can’t just let them take her away,” his youngest brother pushed.

  “She says Underhill wants Emma. If that’s true, then he doesn’t have any reason to push for her to be incarcerated.” Unless she really had stolen from him.

  “You’re gonna make that gamble? What if he gets so mad about being thwarted that he tries to punish her?”

  “I don’t know!” he thundered, spinning to face his brothers. “I don’t know anything anymore. She’s got me all mixed up and turned around!”

  He threw up his hands and his Stetson went flying into the night.

  “We started out four days ago with a job to do. We’ve still got to get the cattle to Pa’s buyer. That’s what I want to focus on.”

  Cattle were easy, even if it was going to be a challenge to get them to the buyer on time.

  Cattle didn’t tie him up in knots, didn’t turn everything from black-and-white to gray.

  Or rainbow colored, like looking at the sun behind closed eyes.

  “Will you please go back to the wagon?”

  Seb considered him for a long moment. Finally, the younger man crossed his arms across his chest. “No.”

  “What?”

  “I’m not going. If you want to make sure Fran and Emma are protected, you go.”

  He turned to Matty, but found no help there. Ricky was trying to hide a faint smile behind one hand but not succeeding.

  “I guess you’re not going, either,” he said, disgusted with their maneuvering.

  “I’ll just get one of the other hands to do it,” he threatened.

  Seb shrugged. “If you want to be that big of a coward. She’s just one woman. Nothing to be scared of.”

  “A woman who wants to talk to him,” Ricky threw in. “That can make for a dangerous creature indeed.”

  Edgar wasn’t laughing. Neither was Ricky.

  He wasn’t up to seeing Fran. He was afraid she would be able to convince him of her innocence and convolute his thinking.

  But he couldn’t leave Emma unprotected, either. He’d made a promise.

  * * *

  Fran clutched the pistol in the folds of her dress, sitting awake in the dark.

  Seb hadn’t come back, and neither had Ricky.

  Beside her, beneath the canvas wagon cover, Emma was wide-awake, too. Fran couldn’t see her, but she could hear her sister’s near-panicked breathing.

  “How come one of them isn’t back yet?”

  But what Fran heard was her sister’s fear. Fran reached out a hand i
n the darkness and Emma clasped it painfully.

  “Edgar promised to take care of you,” Fran said. “And I trust him.”

  Because she still did, even if he let Underhill take Fran. He’d given his word.

  “Well, I don’t!”

  The vehemence in Emma’s voice surprised Fran. “What?”

  “When you married him, he promised to take care of you. If he lets that Mr. Underhill and that marshal take you, he’s breaking a promise.”

  The sound of Emma’s soft sobs prompted Fran to tug her closer and put her arms around her younger sister.

  “Oh, Emma. God’s going to work all this out.” She had to believe it. Otherwise what had all her effort been for? “He must’ve put Edgar right in our path, and must’ve surrounded us with all these cowboys for something, don’t you think?”

  Emma quieted. “I don’t know.”

  “Well, I do.”

  And thinking like that made Fran realize something else, too. What if God had put her in Edgar’s path for a purpose? To open his heart from those wounds of his past?

  She held Emma until the girl quieted, and then left the weapon with her sister.

  She had to talk to Edgar, now, tonight, even if it meant saying her piece in front of his brother.

  Hopping onto the wagon seat, she hissed, “Ricky! Seb! Matty!”

  There was silence, but she had an awareness that she wasn’t alone. There was someone out there. Why didn’t they answer?

  “Ricky!” she called again, this time a little louder.

  She stepped out of the wagon into the waist-high grasses, intent on finding whoever was out here and making them take her to see Edgar.

  “I know you’re there! Matty!”

  Grasses rustled, and for a moment she was frozen with fear. What if she’d gotten it wrong and it was one of Underhill’s men?

  “It’s me.”

  Edgar came out of the darkness, the moon’s weak light falling on his broad shoulders and illuminating his Stetson, leaving his face in shadow.

  “Oh. Good.”

  He looked ominous in the moonlight, tall and unapproachable. “What’s the matter?”

  She swallowed the lump of fear and emotion that seemed lodged in her throat. “I need to talk to you.”

  “You should get back in the wagon. Get some rest.”

  Unspoken, his message was that she could talk, but he wouldn’t listen.

  He took her elbow in a very impersonal way and turned her back toward the wagon, but she dug in her heels. They were only feet away, she didn’t want Emma to overhear everything that was said.

  “Do you really think I’ll be able to sleep?” she asked.

  He let go of her elbow and moved back a step. Distancing himself from her.

  “There are others around, keeping a lookout over you and Emma.” His voice was cold, distant.

  As if he’d already cut himself off from all emotion concerning her.

  Tears burned the back of her throat.

  “Not because of that,” she said, and had to clear her throat to try to dislodge the tears.

  “You said, more than once, that I’ve turned your life upside down. Did you never stop to think that maybe God put me on that train in Wyoming for just that reason? It wasn’t a coincidence that we met and married—”

  “No, it was a mistake.” He’d gone tense, muscles taut. Closed off to her.

  “No, it wasn’t,” she breathed, tears now blurring her vision.

  “It should never have happened. I should’ve found some other way to fix things back in Bear Creek.”

  She shook her head, held on to her middle with both arms. She took a shaky breath, and she knew he heard it because he shifted his feet as if he was uncomfortable.

  She wished she could see his face so she could better tell if he was just pushing her away or if he really had completely shut off his emotions.

  “I never lied to you.” She said the words as softly and levelly as she could. “Underhill is the one lying about me.”

  He didn’t answer, staying distant in the dark.

  “You can say what you want, but I know what really happened,” she said. “I got too close, didn’t I? You’ve kept yourself isolated out here on the ranch. You claim to want independence, but I think you’ve really been hiding all these years.”

  He flinched as if she’d struck him.

  She went on, “You were so hurt by what happened in your childhood that you didn’t want to let anyone come close again, so you made excuses. You claimed not to trust women, claimed you never wanted to marry... All because you were afraid of falling in love.”

  “What—”

  She interrupted him this time, pushing on his chest with the force of her emotion.

  “You’re afraid of letting me in—and that’s a fool thing to be, because I’m here and I’m...”

  She stopped.

  She’d almost blurted, “I’m in love with you.”

  But she couldn’t give that to him, couldn’t declare her love when he was standing stone still, silent, determined not to let her in.

  “I won’t hurt you,” she said instead.

  And she waited.

  He assessed her in silence, for a long time, and she began to hope...

  But he only said, “I’ve got to spell John with the cattle. Seb will be here shortly. Tell Emma to keep that weapon close. I don’t want any surprises.”

  And gave her a nudge toward the wagon.

  She was blinded by tears as she fumbled her way into the covered space.

  Emma was there, holding on to her. Comforting her. She should have been doing that for her younger sister instead.

  She didn’t have any hope left. Edgar had taken it all with his callousness, with his refusal to believe that she was more than her circumstances.

  What now?

  Emma would have her happy ending, but for Fran only darkness remained.

  * * *

  Edgar made his way back to his horse, chest hot like he had a spike of fire through his sternum.

  There was a reason he’d wanted to be far away from Fran.

  Seeing her tears, her face white in the moonlight, pleading...

  It was enough to give a man permanent heartburn.

  How could he trust a woman like her? He couldn’t. Running away made her look guilty. The presence of the federal marshal compounded it.

  If she was innocent, why all the hullabaloo?

  He knew the story of how the insane man who’d become obsessed with Penny had attempted to get Penny’s pa out of the way and tried to kidnap her as well, but what if this situation wasn’t the same?

  He didn’t know anymore.

  And he had a job to do.

  He passed Seb on his way to the wagon to guard the girls. Edgar would spell John, and at least two of their guys could get an hour or so of rest.

  Edgar wouldn’t sleep anyway.

  The cattle were edgy, restless when he took a slow circle around the herd. He ranged out farther but didn’t come across any of Underhill’s men.

  Then a bunch of coyotes started yipping off in the distance and he thought that was probably what had the cattle spooked. It didn’t take much.

  He warned the other riders, and then spelled John. He ground tied his horse and walked a bit, swinging his arms to create some warmth in the cooling night air.

  The girls would be all right.

  He’d take Emma home to his ma and...then what? How would he explain that he had a wife but she was in custody of a federal marshal, awaiting trial?

  His ma would not be happy.

  And she would probably demand he go down to Tennessee and see what had happened with the trial.

 
He thrust a hand through his hair.

  His own decency would demand he go after her. Even if he didn’t want her in his life, he would have to finish it.

  He’d promised to get her a start, hadn’t he? He was man enough to provide at least that for her.

  His horse nickered and he turned. In the dark, he could barely make out the form of his animal. He’d wandered farther than he’d thought, just like his thoughts.

  He had one job to do. One.

  Get the cattle to Cheyenne. He could worry about his wife and all the trouble following her after that point. Whether that meant going to Tennessee or staying here with Emma for now, he didn’t know.

  He couldn’t think about the things she’d accused him of—using his pa’s ranch as a place to hide.

  It rankled.

  Mostly because his brothers had said the same thing.

  He wasn’t a coward.

  Was he?

  * * *

  Between all the emotion of the day and knowing Underhill was somewhere close by, Fran couldn’t sleep.

  Judging by Emma’s rapid breathing, she wasn’t sleeping, either.

  “It feels like we’re too exposed in this wagon,” Fran whispered.

  “I know.”

  Fran sat up. “If we aren’t sleeping anyway, maybe we should just be out with the cowboys.”

  Rustling came from Emma’s side of the wagon bed and she popped up. “Can we?”

  They scrambled to find their shoes in the dark. And Fran had an idea.

  “Do we still have Seb’s trousers and shirt?” she asked.

  There was a long pause before Emma responded. “I think so. Why?”

  “You should put them on. If the men are looking for you, it could make a difference to what they see in the dark.”

  Emma didn’t argue with her, which told Fran the depth of her fear. It was a struggle getting her dress off and the trousers on in the dark confines of the wagon bed.

  Fran helped her pin her hair as closely to her head as she could and then they were ready.

  Fran stuck her head out of the canvas first. “Seb? Ricky?” Somehow, she knew Edgar would’ve left.

  No answer.

  Had they fallen asleep? Or ridden farther out?

  Or worse, had they detected a threat?