“How so?” Simmons asked.
“You may not know this, Colonel, since you’re from back East, but out here, a single steer requires from twenty acres of the best land to thirty acres of the worst. Despite how many settlers he’s bought out, Patton still has too many cattle grazing on too little land. He can supply beef, all right. But they’re going to be scrawny critters compared to the fattened cattle you’ll be getting if you buy from the Double C.”
“Hmm.” The colonel straightened the other side of his mustache, apparently deep in thought. “I had no idea it takes so much pasture to support a single cow. No wonder everyone out here is so land hungry.”
Since Flint was as guilty as every other rancher in the Territory of claiming and controlling as much land as he could hold with a Winchester, he let that comment pass. Instead he said, “Over the past year, Patton’s been able to buy out a lot of folks who underestimated this land. My brother and I have been here nine long years. We’ve learned what it takes to raise a calf into a prime piece of beef. The Double C deserves to be considered for that contract.”
“I’m getting some pressure from Patton to be fair,” the colonel explained. “It’s understandable, when my daughter is marrying one of the partners in the ranch I’ve been favoring.”
Maybe marrying one of the partners, Flint thought. Even more reason for him to encourage the colonel to look at the merits of the Double C’s claim to be able to supply the very best beef to the fort.
“Send someone to check out the average weight of the cattle Patton has been shipping to eastern markets from Cheyenne,” he suggested. “Compare it to our numbers last year. I think you’ll have all the evidence you need that our beef is better.”
The colonel smiled. “By George, I’ll do it. And congratulations again, Flint. I hear the music starting. I presume you and your bride will be sharing the first dance.”
“Of course.” Flint realized he was going to have to dance with Hannah. He should have thought more carefully about that story they’d made up about how they’d met. It had been Hannah’s idea, really, but he’d gone along. Now they were going to have to dance together for the first time and act as though it was something they’d already done for an entire evening.
He found Hannah in a circle of well-wishers, mostly women, and said, “May I have this dance, Mrs. Creed?”
She blushed prettily when he addressed her with her married name, as a new bride might be expected to do.
Except she was a widow and had already been through all this before. He was the one feeling out of sorts. He was the one who had gotten married for the first time. He was the one feeling the weight of the lifetime of responsibility he’d taken on. She held out her hand and said, “I would love to dance.”
There was something strange about her voice, something low and sultry that skittered down his spine and settled in his loins. Flint’s body felt hot. He stuck a finger under his collar, which suddenly felt tight. Then he reached out to take Hannah’s hand and draw her onto the dance floor.
The fiddler played a slow, melodic waltz. Flint slid his arm around Hannah’s waist and felt nothing beneath his palm but warm silk, and beneath that, a flesh-and-blood female. Instead of keeping her gaze averted, Hannah looked up into his eyes. She was taller than Emaline, so her face was closer, and he had the sensation of falling into those two deep blue pools.
He shouldn’t have been surprised when she moved with him as though they’d been dancing together their entire lives. He saw the sheen of perspiration above her bowed upper lip and wondered if she was nervous. He could feel her breath on his face.
He admired the fine arch of her brows and the length of her dark eyelashes as they brushed her cheeks when she lowered her gaze. He smiled faintly at the spattering of freckles across her nose and said, “Well, we did it.”
She raised her eyes to meet his and managed a wobbly smile. “I’m trying to look happy. Am I succeeding?”
“Let me see if I can help.” He lowered his head and kissed her lightly on the lips. And felt a sizzle shoot down his spine.
The crowd around them applauded, and there were even a few hoots of laughter.
Hannah blushed rosily and ducked her head shyly.
He grinned in an attempt to hide how stunned he was by how much he wanted her. He had to swallow before he could speak. When he did, his voice was hoarse. “There. Now you look like a bride.”
And he was acting like an idiotic groom.
It was obviously doing him no harm with either Hannah or the officers and their wives standing around them on the dance floor. It dawned on Flint that he’d made vows to this woman. He was pretending affection for her right now, but the wedding had been no sham. They were well and truly married.
First and foremost he felt regret. That he hadn’t tried harder to wrest Emaline from his brother before Ransom had captured her heart. That he’d been so desperate to avoid the pain of losing Emaline that he’d agreed to marry the first woman who came along.
He felt sorry it was Hannah he’d found. Because if things had been different, he would have been proud to marry a woman like her. This just felt wrong.
Not that he wasn’t grateful for all the things Hannah was. But she wasn’t Emaline.
Flint realized he’d been woolgathering, and the music had stopped.
“Flint?” Hannah said.
He let his hands drop and took a step back and bowed to her. She curtseyed to him.
The crowd applauded, and he made himself smile at the sea of faces as he took Hannah’s hand in his own and moved toward the table where refreshments had been laid out.
“I’m not thirsty,” Hannah said. “Can we go outside and get some air?”
“Sure.” Flint didn’t know why he hadn’t thought of it himself. They worked their way through the crowd to the door and out onto the front porch, which was lit by several lanterns that had attracted both moths and mosquitos. Hannah led him down the stairs and out onto the moonlit quadrangle.
When they stopped, she turned to him and said, “This was a mistake.”
“Maybe so,” Flint agreed. “But it’s a little late to do anything about it.”
Her chin was quivering, but she didn’t cry. “I could leave. I could go …” Her voice drifted off.
“Where?” he said, knowing she had very few options. “You’re safer staying with me, Hannah. Besides, you’re my wife now. You belong with me.”
She shook her head. “You don’t want me.”
He shouldn’t have been surprised to hear her say it. He hadn’t exactly been playing the part of the happy bridegroom. But the facts hadn’t changed. “I need a wife.” That was true, but so much less than the truth. “And you need a husband.”
She grimaced. “What are we going to do?”
“We’re going to excuse ourselves and go to bed and get a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow we’re going to ride back to the ranch and start the rest of our lives.”
“I didn’t think the wedding would feel so real,” she said quietly. “It seemed profane to be making vows like that when we feel as we do toward one another.”
“Yeah. I know.”
“Is there any chance we’ll ever be happy together?”
He snorted and shook his head. “Hell, Hannah. How can I know that? We have as much chance as any other two strangers who marry out of necessity. We can always hope for the best.”
“Will you promise me something?”
Flint’s stomach was knotted, and his throat felt raw. He didn’t know when he’d had a more uncomfortable conversation. “What?” he asked at last.
“Promise you’ll help me keep searching for my sisters.”
“Hannah—”
“I feel so lonely, Flint. I’ve grown up in this enormous, crazy, loving family, and now I’m all alone.” She looked up at him with her heart in her eyes. “I don’t think I can bear a life of loneliness.”
“You have me, Hannah.” The words were out of his mouth before
he could stop them. Her response came just as quickly.
“Do I?”
“I’m your husband,” he said. “For better or worse.”
“In sickness and in health.”
“As long as we both shall live,” he finished.
She sighed. “I’m tired, Flint.”
“Come on, Mrs. Creed. Let’s go say good night and get some sleep.”
Flint had the fleeting thought as they left the parade ground that sleep should be the last thing on his mind on his wedding night.
“I’m not worried.” Emaline said the words aloud because the truth was, she was trembling in her high-button shoes. Ransom had promised he would return before dark. The sun was long gone from the sky, and he was still out there somewhere on the prairie.
She continued the soliloquy because she found the sound of her own voice comforting in the awful silence of the empty house. “Ransom is fine. He got busy and forgot how late it was. He’ll show up any minute and hug me and kiss me and apologize profusely for being tardy.”
Emaline had kept herself busy throughout the day sweeping floors, dusting furniture, making beds, even doing laundry and hanging sheets out to dry on a rope she found strung between two lodgepole pines behind the house. She’d made a stew for supper out of dried beef and fresh vegetables from the garden out back. She’d felt very much like a wife. She’d also felt very much alone.
Her aunt had been a constant presence in her life, and Emaline hadn’t realized how much she would miss sitting down to a cup of tea in the late afternoon, exchanging gossip and discussing the day with another woman. She found herself praying that things worked out between Flint and Hannah. Even if Flint ended up building another house for the other couple, it would likely be close enough that she and Hannah could visit often.
“Where are you, Ransom?”
Emaline was shocked at the anger she heard in her voice. She never got angry. Well, hardly ever. There was no reason to get angry when her father and her aunt catered to her every whim. If she wanted something, she asked for it, and usually, she got it. Before today, Ransom had been as accommodating as her father and her aunt. When he promised her something, he delivered.
So where was he? Something must have happened to him. Something bad.
Emaline put her hand to her mouth and realized she was about to chew on a fingernail. She knew better. Ladies didn’t do such things. And she’d been raised to be a lady.
So why hadn’t she married one of the gentlemen she’d met back East in Virginia, before her father had been posted to this godforsaken place? Wyoming was vast and dangerous. So many things could kill a man here. A Virginia gentlemen would never have stayed out in his tobacco fields so late that he missed supper.
“Where are you, Ransom?” This time her voice sounded plaintive. And alarmed.
Emaline stared out the kitchen window at the barn and the corral down the hill, where the wind carried the smell of manure away from the house toward the river below. She eyed the bunkhouse. It was empty. She’d already checked to be sure.
Ransom had told her that Cookie—a lot of ranch cooks were apparently called Cookie—who prepared the cowboys’ meals during the roundup, would be staying out on the range with the cook wagon, since the cowhands would be doing some sort of fall roundup over the next week, counting cattle or some such thing.
Emaline stomped her foot and said, “You promised, Ransom! You said you would be here. How am I supposed to trust you if the first time you leave me alone in the house you don’t come back when you said you would?”
The worst part was, Emaline had no idea where to go hunting for him. The only thing she could do was wait.
She sat down at the dining room table, which she had set for dinner with the only thing available, mismatched plates and forks and metal cups. She planned to replace those items with china and glass and a set of genuine silverware when Aunt Betsy returned from Denver.
She would have a linen tablecloth, too, she decided. Not that the pine table wasn’t beautifully crafted, but the finish left something to be desired. It was a long table, built to seat eight. She’d put herself at the opposite end of the table from Ransom, as her father did when she hosted a dinner with him.
The expanse of the table loomed large. It was meant for a large family, which she and Ransom would never have. The space separating them from each other at the table reminded Emaline of the space separating them from each other in bed last night.
Ransom wanted a real wife. That was the exact word he’d used. Real.
“A wife is more than a bed partner,” she said aloud. “A wife is a helpmate. A wife supports her husband. She isn’t only a brood mare.”
But that was obviously one of the main functions of a wife in the West, where the population was scarce. Men needed sons to help them labor on their spreads, to help them herd and brand and round up their cattle. Most of all, they needed sons to carry on after them when they were gone.
They needed daughters to help their wives do myriad tasks around the house, from gardening to canning, from soap and candle making to cooking, cleaning, sewing, and laundry.
Thanks to her aunt Betsy, Emaline was proficient at all of those tasks. Of course, she’d done more observing and supervising than actual work. She even knew how to wring a chicken’s neck, although she’d done it only once.
Emaline had lit every lantern she could find downstairs, hoping to keep her fears at bay. The shadows created by the flickering lights left her feeling skittish. She paced from the kitchen to the dining room to the parlor, then back to the kitchen. She kept glancing out the kitchen window. She figured Ransom would return to the house from that direction, since he’d need to put his horse away in the barn for the night.
She was keeping a pot of coffee hot on the stove, but it had been on the fire so long she was sure it must have burned down to sludge by now. She poured herself a cup and sat down at the kitchen table. “I’m going to drink this cup of coffee and when I’m done, Ransom will walk through that door and beg pardon for being so late.”
Emaline had to sip the coffee, it was so hot. It did taste like tar, though it wasn’t nearly as thick. She took her time, holding the coffee cup in both hands. Nevertheless, when she drank the dregs, Ransom had still not returned.
She slammed the tin cup on the kitchen table and stood in a rush of skirts. “This is intolerable! I won’t stand for it!”
There was no one to hear her outburst. No one to placate her. No one to soothe her fears.
“What am I supposed to do, Ransom? I haven’t the slightest idea which way to ride to find you. I have no idea where you went today. It would be ridiculous for me to go haring off in the dark after you. You’re probably sitting around a campfire somewhere with those cowhands of yours exchanging stories, having a grand old time, forgetting all about me,” she finished petulantly.
Telling herself nothing was wrong did nothing to quench the growing terror clawing at her innards. She kept imagining the worst. From the little she’d seen during her stay in the Territory, the worst could be pretty bad.
“Don’t be hurt,” she whispered past an aching throat. “You can be late, darling. I’ll understand. But please, please don’t be hurt.”
This land was unforgiving. If Ransom had been thrown by his horse and knocked unconscious, some wild beast might have decided he would make a tasty dinner. If he’d been ambushed by renegades, he might have become a pincushion for their arrows. Squatters might have put a bloody hole in his chest with a shotgun blast. He might have been caught and crushed in a stampede of cattle.
“You have a wonderful imagination, Emaline,” she chided herself. “But it’s getting you nowhere. You need to do something.”
But what? What could she do?
It was the feeling of helplessness, Emaline decided, that left her so discombobulated. She sat down again at the kitchen table and made herself wait. Any minute, Ransom would walk through that door. She would hug him and kiss him and promi
se to do anything he wanted, if only he would promise never to be late coming home for supper again.
Emaline snorted, an inelegant sound, but the only one that fit her mood. She was wondering what she could use to bribe Ransom, to ensure he was never late again. She was ready to promise him anything, even that she would make love to him and get pregnant and die in childbirth, if he would promise to get home every day on time.
The snort became a chortle. She was the most laughable creature on the planet. A fool for love.
Emaline had known in her heart she loved Ransom. But the depth of her fear for him, and the lengths to which she was willing to go to make sure he was safe, brought home to her how necessary he was to her happiness. Her unwillingness to make love to him seemed beyond ridiculous now. What if he never came back? What if she never had a chance to experience that closeness with him? How great was the risk, really? For heaven’s sake, she might be barren!
Emaline made up her mind, then and there, that if Ransom came back—no, when he came back—she was going to lie with him, and damn the consequences.
It was a long night. Emaline changed her mind about making love to that stupid, inconsiderate man at least a dozen times. By the time dawn came, she’d been through every emotion, from frustration to fury to forgiveness and back again a hundred times. Her eyes were gritty from fatigue. Her heart lay heavy in her chest.
No one had come during the night.
Emaline made her weary way upstairs and changed into a split riding skirt and blouse, put on a riding hat and boots, and headed out to the barn to saddle her horse. She knew she was probably on a fool’s errand, that Ransom would likely return to the ranch house while she was gone and be frantic at her absence.
“So let him worry for a change,” she muttered as she tightened the cinch on the saddle.
The one thing Ransom had said he was going to do for sure was ride fence—that is, ride along the length of the barbed-wire fence that provided a boundary for the Double C—checking for posts downed by cattle rubbing against them or barbed wire cut by interlopers. She headed away from the house in the same direction she’d seen Ransom take when he’d left the previous morning.
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