The Genuine Lady (Heroines on Horseback)

by Sydney Alexander

  “I don’t quite know what you mean,” he said after a moment.

  She looked at him. He was gazing at her with concern in his dark eyes. The stubble on his face was dark and thick after their long night and morning’s ride. Wipe the dirt from his face and put him in clean clothes, she thought, and he was a true gentleman, despite his western drawl. But he was made of harder stuff than most gentleman.

  She supposed that perhaps she was, too. It was possible that she had never been a true lady; not in the way that Cousin Anne or Uncle Richard or Lady Walsall might have meant, to be sure. But she did not know many people from her old life who could have survived last night’s terrors without lapsing into hysterics. Even so… She tried to find words that didn’t make her sound like an utter fool, but it was a challenge. “They are… westerners,” she said slowly. “They look out at the prairie and they don’t feel fear; they just see their homeland. All this grass and space and empty sky: it doesn’t unnerve them. It is simply part of their world.”

  “And it unnerves you?”

  “It does,” she admitted. “I am used to a smaller world.”

  “You should be happy then,” he said. “Not frightened.”

  She looked at him again. He smiled at her. “There’s no borders here, don’t you see? There’s no one to tell you stop, you’ve gone too far, go back.”

  She bit her lip in thought.

  “That’s what you’re here for, isn’t it?” He looked at her in a knowing way. “That’s why you left England? Because you wanted your freedom.” He swept one arm out across the silver-green prairie, the grasses nodding and waving on the never-ending swells. “And look — you’ve got it.”

  She followed the curve of his arm with her eyes. She thought she saw, but still… “It’s bigger than I expected, I suppose,” she said with an attempt at a laugh. “Freedom, that is.”

  “It’s easier when you’re not alone,” Jared said then, his heart in his words, and she had to pull up her horse then, and put her hand to her head, and try to stop the dizziness he gave her with that simple suggestion.

  He pulled up as well, let the roan sidle close to Galahad. The ponies nibbled at one another’s muzzles and squealed, but he ignored their bad behavior. “If we were alone —” and he used the word alone in an entirely different manner this time.

  “We aren’t,” she stammered, too quickly. Little Edward was asleep, lulled by the motion of the pony, but once they stood still a few minutes ago he would awaken and demand to know where they were.

  “I know,” he growled. “But — and I mean no insult — I wish we were, Cherry Beacham.”

  Her heart was pounding and she clutched at Galahad’s bristling mane for security. He had to stop setting her head to swimming while she was mounted — one of these days she would fall right off her pony. And then she knew, and her mouth opened, and she said it: “I wish we were too, Jared.”

  He smiled, and pounced. Before she could react, his mouth was on hers, a searing, demanding kiss that took all the strength right out of her limbs. She dropped her reins and with the hand that wasn’t holding on for dear life, she reached up and took his head in her hand, knocking his Stetson askew as she returned the kiss. His lips were hot and hard on hers, and when he opened them and asked her to do the same with his actions, she could not resist him. Together in the center of the great, wide prairie they melted together, and it wasn’t until the baby began to stir that they were able to separate, and ride, boot to boot, towards home.

  Someone’s home. Cherry laced her fingers through Jared’s, their horses nestling close together, and decided then and there that she would be alone on the prairie no more.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  When Jared had tied down the last bundle, and hopped down from the side of the buckboard, the bed of the wagon was not even remotely filled. A few boxes, a few bundles of linens bound up with string. The cookstove and the iron bed, her most bulky furnishings, were staying in the shanty. Patty had a furnished spare room just waiting for her. Of all her furniture, only the Beechfields cradle and rocking chair were coming along, and Cherry was almost ready to admit that Little Edward was quite growing out of the cradle. Not her lap, however. It would be a long time before she admitted that.

  Cherry looked at her little collection of worldly possessions without regretting its lack of size. “At least it will all fit into Patty’s spare room,” she said cheerfully. “I shall not be crowded by a bureau cluttered with curios or tripping over unnecessary bits of furniture.”

  “Very sensible,” Jared said approvingly. He climbed out of the wagon and wiggled it with a few hard shakes to check the stability of the parcels and barrels within. Cherry watched the bold outlines of his biceps bulging in his flannel shirt and caught her breath a little. She didn’t look away, though. She encouraged the feeling, the naughty stirrings of desire that she knew too well. She was coming to enjoy this return to life, this second chance at love. If, late at night, she lay awake on her pillow and thought wildly that she was being unfaithful to darling lost Edward, those feelings were easily kept at arms-length during the day. When the sun was shining, it was simply more pleasurable to be happy than sad, to be a woman loved instead of a forgotten almost-widow. And she had little doubt that Jared loved her.

  As if hearing her thoughts, the cowboy crossed the dying, crackling autumn grass and put a calloused finger beneath her chin. She smiled as he turned her face up to meet his.

  “Do you want something, Mr. Reese?” she asked mischievously, and his smile crooked.

  “I most surely do, Mrs. Beacham,” he breathed huskily, and she parted her lips unconsciously, her own eyes darting down to his lips in anticipation.

  His hand left her chin and slid around to the nape of her neck, pressing her up against him as he stole a deep, possessive kiss. She nearly went limp in his arms, her knees weak and trembling as desire stole through her limbs, and he slid his other hand behind her back, his arm strong against her, tilting her hips up, so that she pressed against his sudden hardness and felt his need. Her arms came up of their own accord and drew him still more tightly against her, and they were still locked together when Patty came out of the empty cabin with Little Edward on her hip and suggested that they tie the knot before they got themselves into trouble.

  Cherry laughed like a child watching a Punch & Judy.

  Jared blushed crimson beneath his scruffy whiskers and mumbled something about seeing to the mule.

  Patty shook her head and climbed into the wagon’s front seat, still clutching stout Little Edward in one strong arm. “You’re getting heavy, young man,” she told him, and the boy smiled and laughed at her.

  Jared, eventually cured of his blush and apparently satisfied that the mule was adequately harnessed, climbed up on the wagon-box as well. “Are you coming up?” he asked Cherry gravely, and she nodded and accepted his hand.

  It was the middle of October, a full month after the cyclone that had brought down Jared’s lovely barn and brought together Jared and Cherry, and they had been enjoying themselves most wantonly ever since. Cherry, because she was a respectable widow, kept her distance from Jared when visiting in town; Jared, because he was hopelessly in love with Cherry and would have given her the moon if she had asked for it, followed her into town and spent the empty hours until she left at the saloon, drinking with Matt whenever he could coax him out of the house, leaving Patty and Cherry to giggle and drink tea in the parlor of Patty’s pretty little house on the edge of town, while Patty tried to get the details on Cherry’s love affair and Cherry denied her absolutely everything, but with enough blushing for the truth to be readily available. Patty, faithful friend, kept her mouth shut, and so Bradshaw remained ignorant to the passion between the Englishwoman and her neighbor, the stranded cowboy.

  Although it must be admitted that a few people in town were rooting for the neighbors to fall in love. Miss Rose had been heard to say in her public parlor, on more than one occasion, that it was a sha
me two shipwrecked misfits like those two didn’t form an attachment for one another. But Miss Rose would say anything to get people talking, everyone knew that. And Big Pete was worse for gossip than any lady anyone had ever heard of. Months after she’d taken him in to “patch him up” after his bar-fight with Little Pete, Big Pete was still a parlor boarder at Miss Rose’s, and everyone knew whose parlor. Miss Rose didn’t care who knew her business, though, as long as she knew everything about everyone else as well.

  But what Miss Rose didn’t know, nor did Patty, nor did Matt, no matter what their suspicions might have been, was that Cherry and Jared had been spending so much time together that land agents would be forgiven for thinking that Cherry had given up her homestead altogether. No one could have gone that far, not in their wildest imaginations. Walking out was one thing, a torrid affair was simply unheard of. And Jared credited himself with convincing Cherry that she needed to move into town for the winter: he swore he’d move into town as well if only she’d listen to him. Realizing at last that she’d be utterly alone once the snow grew deep on the prairie if she stayed put in her claim shanty, and with the memory of the cyclone still firmly in her mind, Cherry quietly hired a young man fresh off the train to mind her claim for her, and Patty and Jared came out to help pack up her belongings and Little Edward.

  As Jared shook the reins at the mule, Cherry looked over her shoulder at her little home. Eli, who was sitting on the claim for her for the winter, came out of the lean-to barn where he’d been making friends with the cow. He was a nice boy, and he’d agreed to say he was her American cousin if anyone came asking. She’d get no grief from the government for leaving the cabin for the winter. But she would miss it after all; who would have thought such a thing, that she’d feel sorrow over leaving the wretched little shanty she had built herself, leaning crazily in all directions and gusty with drafts where the tar-paper had torn!

  Eli had said he’d fix it up for her a bit, to give him something to do all winter; Jared had promised him that he’d shoot him like a common animal if he made any moves to steal the claim for himself, and they’d parted, all in all, on good terms. It was best for everyone. Eli had been on the road in hopes of starting a new life for himself, but he wasn’t old enough to file a claim of his own yet. He had a place to stay and she would get an improved place to live in the spring.

  But she was still sad to leave her home. It was the first place she had carved out all on her own, for she and Little Edward to start their new lives. She had not inherited it, the land was not hers because of who her father was, or her grandfather or her great-grandfather. The roof over her head had been there because she had built it there, however wobbly and leaky, not because the first Marquess of Beechfields had done a favor to a king and been gifted a manor house.

  No, this was her first stab at liberty, this shanty, and so it did not feel like triumph to sit in front of her worldly possessions and sway in the cart back to town, no matter what a good friend Patty was. Or no matter how much her affair with Jared had caused her to dread those lonely prairie nights without anyone within shouting distance, let alone someone to curl up against in bed.

  And bed… that was a whole separate worry: how would she arrange time with Jared in Bradshaw? Certainly, he would be moving into town as well, but even so, there would be no privacy at all. Patty would always want her company; to come and sit and sew, to come and make cookies, to come and gossip, to walk with her down to the store and see what the rest of the town was gossiping about. She suddenly saw that the entire decision was a terrible one, but it was too late — The goose was cooked. There was no putting its feathers back on. She sighed and let herself nestle a little closer to Jared. He felt her push against him and looked down at her bent head. He smiled.

  Patty looked at them both over Little Edward’s nodding head and smirked. She’d have those two lovebirds married before Christmas, she decided. They might as well turn up the track to Jared’s cabin and leave Cherry’s things there; it was going to be such a bother to pack them all up again!

  ***

  Midnight came and went, the chimes on the mantelpiece clock in Patty’s parlor ringing the hour gently. The sound wafted through the sweet-smelling walls of the little house, still so new and shiny and dripping with resin, as if it was a living thing yet, still a tree, still grasping upwards towards the sun. Cherry sat up in bed, her head leaning back against the headboard, her knees drawn up close to her chin, with the coverlet loose over her plain muslin nightgown.

  She was all alone.

  Little Edward snoozed in the nursery next to Patty’s bedroom; still just another guest room while it awaited a first-born Barnsley. Down the hall and isolated for the first time since his birth, Cherry sat up in bed and listened to the silence.

  She missed Jared.

  In the past month since the cyclone, he had often come to her after sunset, when chores for both of them were long done and the baby was fast asleep. He’d pushed open her door softly, softly, after he whistled outside in the darkness, putting the quiet roan into the barn with quiet Galahad, the two horses seemingly just as conspiratorial as the two humans to make as little noise as possible, to avoid stirring up the night around them. And there was no one to hear, that was true, out there alone on the moon-silvered prairie, but it did not stop them from their creeping about, their need for secrecy, their hiding from the world.

  She supposed now, alone in her bed and thinking foolish thoughts, that it was his way of showing her that all he wanted was her bed at night. He didn’t want her as wife, didn’t want to give her his name, but he enjoyed her company tolerably well and damn well adored her body next to his. Upon his. Beneath his. Entangled with his. She shivered with the thought and bit back a moan of longing for his hard limbs entwined with hers.

  But it was nothing but lust for him, and she was supposed that was just as well. If he didn’t want to marry her, well, she had sworn she would never marry again. She tried to forget that she had not sworn any such thing. She had sworn she would never love again. For, of course, she had never married at all.

  But to never love again — well, it was easy enough to prevent a marriage, simply don’t get married, but it was another thing entirely to prohibit love. Quite impossible, in fact, Cherry had been slow and dismayed to realize. Love came whether it was wanted or not, love came whether it was denied or not, love simply came, and there was nothing a person could do about it. It was like the cyclone in the night, tearing across the prairie faster than any galloping horse; it could not be stopped, it could not be wished away, it could not even be avoided with an agile side-step. Love did as it pleased.

  So Cherry was forsworn, it would seem, but there was no helping it. She had been thwarted from the start.

  “I apologize, Edward,” she whispered, and the wooden bed did not reply. “I loved you, Edward,” she sighed, and the little sweet-smelling room stayed silent. “I have given you up, Edward,” she admitted at last, empty and certain after so many false starts and pretend finales. She waited, but there was no sorrowful ghost to remonstrate with her, there was no fluttering of the curtains as a spirit left her forever. There was only silence. She was really and truly alone.

  And then there was a whistle in the darkness, like a kill-deer in the grass, but stronger and firmer than those will-o-the-wisps, and like a flash she was flinging back the counterpane and rushing to the window, and there below her, laughing up at her, was her own beloved Jared.

  She flung open the window and leaned out, letting the muslin curtains to swirl like ghosts in the night-breezes, and Jared pressed his fingers to his lips and pointed towards the kitchen door. He was going to sneak in; he didn’t want her to do anything excitable and give him away. She nodded and he went stealthily towards the kitchen door, leaving the roan tied behind the barn with a sizable pile of Matt’s good alfalfa hay to keep him quiet.

  She listened as he came up the steps, heard the pause as he skipped the fourth step, which squeaked, and
his cautious tread down the hall. Then she saw the crystal door-handle, the last word in fashion from Mayfield’s Central Emporium, turn, and then he was slipping into the room.

  She was waiting for him. She watched Jared’s eyes devoured her, from head to toe, in her simple nightgown, her hair in a thick braid over one shoulder. The moonlight shimmered, bathing her in its pale glow, and her eyes were deep dark pools; her lips a shadowed promise. She wanted him, and she wanted him to know that. But she was also a little frightened of his daring.

  “You came here!” she whispered, crossing the room to him, in a voice that was half-pleased and half-panicked.

  “Cherry,” he murmured, pulling her close, “I couldn’t let this winter go by without coming to you. You must know that.” He pressed her lips into her hair, nuzzling, and she leaned up against him, pressing her hips up to find his.

  “I was so lonesome, thinking of being without you,” she whispered brokenly. “I need you, Jared.”

  His eyes flashed at that, but he said nothing. Wordlessly, he drew her down to the bed, pulled her nightgown over her head, loosened her braid.

  “I shall have to braid this all over again before morning,” she sighed, and then laughed, as he pulled strands of golden hair to fall over her white breasts. He wrapped a curl around one pink nipple and she shuddered at the sensation, unable to restrain a moan from escaping her throat.

  “Hush love,” he murmured, pressing a finger to her lips. “We aren’t alone on the prairie anymore. I don’t know how often we can get away with this. Why did I send you to town? I should’ve kept you with me. We could have been snowed in together all winter long.”