Behaving Herself

by Yvonne Jocks

  Jack waited, and of all people in the world, he deserved an honest answer about her marital plans.

  “I don't know,” she admitted miserably. “I just don't know.”

  He sat back, watching her, and his face slowly took on kind of a thoughtful look. Soon she could not

  read him at all.

  “How about,” he suggested quietly, “if I were to give up gambling in favor of storekeeping. No more poker, no more faro, no betting on the horses.”

  “You couldn't be happy!” she protested.

  He raised one eyebrow at her but, other than that, she still couldn't tel if he felt hope, anger, frustration... or nothing at all.

  “Could be I've learned to appreciate games with bigger stakes,” he challenged. "Could be I'd find myself more than satisfied laying odds on a good woman's happiness, or wagering on a store's ledgers coming up black instead of red."

  Oh, she did want to believe him. And yet she'd no sooner flirted with hope than she must reject it.

  “Do you mean to buy Mr. Hamilton's store?” She'd promised to go home with her family! She wanted to go home with them ... didn't she?

  “Nope,” said Jack, still amazingly nonchalant—and she realized what he was doing. This must be what people called a “poker face.” He added, "I do have a less-than-respectable past to outlive.

  Seems a place like Wyoming might offer better opportunities."

  “Wyoming ...” she whispered.

  “And that's not just to sweeten the pot,” he assured her— which, were so much not at stake, would make her laugh. He claimed to be giving up gambling for her—and yet here he sat, more of a gambler than ever. And she loved him for it. He wasn't putting money on the line so much as he was his future, after all, and how could she see anything sinful in that? In fact, she found it so admirable that she longed to fol ow his example ... but could she risk it?

  She'd never been a gambler, herself. But maybe . . . maybe she could learn.

  She looked down at the playing card he'd given back to her, which she'd happened to set on the quilt facedown. “As ... as luck would have it,” she volunteered, in a flimsy attempt at nonchalance,

  “I'm returning to Wyoming myself.”

  “That so?”

  She nodded, then made her own bet. "But I mean to teach. Even if I marry, I would like to continue teaching somehow. I'll have to marry someone who's open to that possibility."

  “As luck would have it,” Jack said, “I'm especially partial to teachers myself.”

  Audra suddenly needed to drink some lemonade. Were they doing what she thought they were doing? She felt as if she'd fallen into a game she could not escape—but she did not want to escape it. She wanted only to play it right.

  “Papa told Aunt Heddy that there are some mines opening near Sheridan,” she noted, as

  indifferent as she could sound when discussing something of such import. Her version of

  indifference did not approach his ... but that was all right, too. Perhaps, just perhaps, this was a game they could both win, just by playing. "If so, the coal companies will build towns around them.

  They won't be high-class, but they'll still need stores."

  “I'll keep that under consideration,” he said slowly.

  Audra put the lemonade down and cool y added, "They may also be desperate enough for schooling that they'd allow a lady teacher to marry, or even to keep company with her"— Say it-—

  “her fiancé. Properly chaperoned, of course.”

  Jack swallowed hard, but otherwise looked calm as a summer morning. "A teacher needs to preserve her reputation."

  She nodded.

  “I reckon,” he ventured, an edge of excitement beginning to undermine his casual tone, "that any la-dy with good sense would demand a long engagement. That way, any fellow lucky enough to

  have laid even that much claim on her could prove himself to her and her family."

  She had to press her lips together to fight a delighted smile. Surely even her father would consent to a plan like that . . . wouldn't he? If Jack stayed out of trouble—more or less—for an allotted amount of time, what possible argument could anyone have against her marrying him?

  especially her.

  And, oh, she desperately wanted to marry him. "How long an engagement do you think she would suggest?"

  He inhaled lightly through his teeth, considered it as he might consider how to price a basket of preserves. “Six months?” But his dancing blue eyes gave him away, and she laughed.

  “More like two years, I'd think,” she countered, and it did sound like forever . . . perhaps because she'd chosen the other extreme.

  He began to smile, his poker face slipping. “Nine months? Scandalous implications aside.”

  Her heart began to smile with him. “Eighteen months.”

  “An even year.”

  She could have suggested a year and a quarter, but she didn't want to. Even a year seemed too long to wait—and yet, compared to forever without him, a year of being courted by Jack could rival heaven. “Well... perhaps she could accept a year,” she supposed. “If he Really did behave himself. Some unmarried couples might have difficulty doing that... I've heard ...” Her face felt terribly hot again.

  “That,” he said, “is what curfews and chaperones and other such rules are for, darlin'.”

  “Oh,” she whispered. They stared at each other across a basket, a playing card, glasses of lemonade, and plates of chicken. A butterfly dipped past them, en route to the wildflowers.

  “Did we just do what I'm prayin' we just did?” Jack asked finally.

  Please, please, please. But she wasn't as much of a gambler as he. Best to face everything up front.

  “Are you the sort of man who prays regularly, Mr. Harwood?”

  “I'm willing to marry into it,” he promised, leaving only one more area in which he—and she—

  must appease her sense of propriety.

  “You have the funds to open a store?” she asked reluctantly.

  “I do. I might not start big, but if I play it right, it will grow well enough.”

  Play it right. She needed to know. “Are those funds from gambling, Mr. Harwood?”

  “The funds with which I bought this tasty lunch,” he admitted, "and the even tastier company, came from just such ill-gotten gains. However, for the business itself, I'm financed from marginal y more respectable sources. Ferris Hamilton has promised me a commission on the sale of his mercantile, due to a few prime buyers I've eased in his direction. And I had the luck of meeting an investor with faith in my prospects. I make no promises as to where he got his money,“ he added, poker-faced again, ”but he and his partner are cattle ranching in Argentina."

  Ranching? For a moment, she'd expected something far shadier. “That doesn't sound so terrible,”

  Audra admitted.

  Jack said, “He'd prefer to remain a silent partner. If that doesn't strike you as too ... speculative a basis for your future.”

  “As luck would have it,” she said, excitement beginning to warm her as they cleared the last of their obstacles, “I'm partial to speculation myself.”

  “Are you,” Jack challenged, his blue eyes seeming to drink her in.

  “especially gambling,” she assured him, beginning to lose her breath.

  “That is lucky,” Jack admitted, his voice rough, and she nodded. So he said, "Audra Garrison, would you consent to marry me after a proper engagement of one year and live with me even if I'm just a

  storekeeper who owes his start to questionable investors?"

  "Do you consent to marrying me even if I make you wait through a proper engagement and if I insist on teaching after marriage?"

  “I never dreamed of winning so fine a prize in al my life,” he assured her.

  So she nodded. "Yes, Jack. Yes, I would love nothing more in the world than to marry someone as kind and as funny and as ... as honorable as you."

  “I may not be as honorable as you
think,” he warned. "But I wil endeavor from here on out to be.

  For you."

  “You are honorable enough for me.”

  He reached into his pocket; then his face fell. “I bought a ring. Just in case. Trouble is ... I paid for it with gambling money.”

  She might have accepted a store based on ill-gotten gains, though she felt relieved she never need know. A ring? Their whole relationship pushed the bounds of respectability!

  "I already have a cuff link that I got in a less-than-appropriate manner, and I adore it. But if you have the other one, best not wear it in front of my father until after we're married."

  Jack said, "I am about to kiss you and I do not want to die with so fine a future before me. Just how deadly is your father?"

  And, oh, she did want him to kiss her! “Put the ring on me first, and maybe he won't resort to gun-play.”

  So Jack pulled a small velvet box from his pocket, opened it, and let it fall uselessly to the blanket as he claimed the ring inside. Then he slid that onto Audra's finger to claim her as well. It was an incredibly beautiful ring, a diamond-cut diamond framed with a small, fiery ruby on either side, and it fit her as well as her hand fit his, as if it had been made for her.

  She decided not to ask if the ring had indeed been made for her. Not just yet. Jack's eyes were of far more interest to her than precious gems anyway.

  “Once your pa gets to know me,” he said, a little breathless, taking her other hand as well and using them to draw her a little closer to him, “maybe I'll win him over.”

  “Papa isn't won over, Jack,” Audra assured him. “Ever.”

  Jack kneed a plate of chicken out of the way to kneel closer. "You will find, darlin', that I tend to underestimate odds and overestimate chances. I won you, didn't I?"

  “No,” she said, thrilled by how near he leaned. “You earned me.”

  He said, “Thank God,” but then she cured him of blasphemy by kissing him, in front of God, the school board, her father, and everybody. She longed to fling her arms around his neck, to rediscover al the territory they'd explored before, but Jack held on to her hands tighter and, with the barest tease of lips and tongues, ended the kiss quickly enough to keep things chaste.

  Somehow, the simplicity of the kiss held even more promise for their future. They had a lifetime to explore all enchanting aspects of marriage, from its basest sense to its heights.

  But she kissed him again, quickly, for all that.

  “Here he comes,” Jack warned, glancing away—but not letting go of her hands. “And I reckon he'll blame me, instead of his scandalous little schoolteacher of a daughter.”

  He sounded so mournful that she giggled. Her father wouldn't Really kill him. Probably.

  “I like being scandalous,” she admitted. “It's fun.”

  Jack laughed out loud. “Darlin',” he said, leaning back to kiss her hands. His lips tickled her fingers as he murmured, “As far as fun goes, this is only the beginning.”

  “I bet you're right,” said Audra happily, before turning to beam her pleasure at her approaching father.

  Papa's clear disapproval did not diminish when Jack risked leaning close enough to whisper in Audra's ear, “I'll happily cover that bet, ma'am.”

  She happily let him.

  Epilogue

  Before the next summer arrived, Jack Harwood survived the longest, snowiest, most frustratingly abstinent winter he'd ever imagined—no thanks to Audra.

  Well... it could be that he owed her something on the survival side. He appreciated Wyoming's frontier spirit. He liked the social interaction of running a general store for the Black Diamond mine

  —the matrons who shopped early for dinner; the children who came by after school; the

  bachelors who stopped in for tobacco or just to talk. He enjoyed gambling on what would or would not sell, bluffing suppliers into the lowest prices so that he and his hardworking customers could both rake in the winnings. But he lived for Audra.

  On weekends Audra stayed with her family, either in Sheridan or at the ranch. During the week she rented a room from the mine foreman and his wife and taught school for the children of the Black Diamond site. Jack spent every Wednesday evening with her in the Brannons' parlor; drove her home on Fridays, where he took supper with the family; saw her again for church on Sundays, took dinner with her extended family, and drove her back to the Brannons'. She also came by the store after school, to keep an eye on the older of her pupils who congregated at the soda fountain there and to drive Jack slowly crazy with wanting her.

  Lucky for her he was either masochistic enough or philosophical enough to almost enjoy delaying their physical union, because that part of the winter, his schoolmarm didn't make easy. Often as not, it was Audra who suggested they take a private detour while out driving, or who snuggled against him so perfectly as they kissed good night that he couldn't stop kissing her until the sound of Mr. Brannon's footsteps or—worse—her father's yanked them apart. At other times it was Jack who initiated such things. But he could no longer count on her to steer their conduct as she once had. To his joyful despair, Audra had developed a taste for fun to rival his own.

  Once, when they almost lost control of themselves in a stopped sleigh, she even suggested they secretly elope, then not tel anyone unless they got caught together. But Jack needed to prove himself to himself almost as badly as to his future in-laws. For that reason, and with much creative use of snow, Audra remained a virgin until their wedding. Just.

  They married that fol owing summer on the lawn of her family's Sheridan home. Their minister still officiated, but the church couldn't hold everyone they'd invited. Most of the workers from the Black Diamond site came, either through a connection to her or to him. Any cowboy from the Circle T who wasn't working that day showed to celebrate as well. Half of Sheridan attended in support of the family, including a harried looking Peter Connors with his shrill wife and three children. Lucy Wolfe showed, of course, along with the Lees. Ferris Hamilton arrived by train from New York City, where he hoped to take Lucy to legal y marry. Folks gave the couple sidelong looks, though Mrs. Garrison's obvious approval forbade further commentary, but Ham and Lucy hardly noticed.

  Hedda Cribb came north from Texas with Melissa Smith. Melissa wore an engagement ring,

  although her intended, Early Rogers, had to run his father's gin and simply sent his congratulations.

  Jack suspected that the widow Cribb's own interests lay more in Thaddeas than in him and Audra.

  She'd not been invited to Triad's wedding earlier that year, sudden as it had been, and seemed to take great satisfaction in peering critical y at his new bride, who, for better or worse, had far more patience for it than would any of Hedda's blood nieces.

  Of course rancher Jacob Garrison's daughters, all six of them, attended. As usual, Jack could barely contain his amusement when he considered what his future father-in-law must have gone through with Audra's three older sisters and their surprising choices in mates. No wonder the rancher had never gotten around to killing him. After Mariah, Laurel, and Victoria—not to mention Thaddeas—

  Garrison must be plumb worn out. Someday, if Jack ever tired of focusing exclusively on Audra, he meant to ask her for the whole story of how her older sisters had paired up with their own husbands.

  But as he stood by the preacher on that summer lawn—blue sky above, Bighorn Mountains in the distance, orchestral music wafting on the air—and watched Audra approaching on her father's arm, Jack doubted that day would ever come. Her beauty hurt his eyes, made him forget to breathe. Her sorrel hair had grown to her shoulders over the year, but hadn't yet lost its delightful curl. She wore the wedding necklace he'd bought with the last of his gambling money—a diamond framed with rubies, like her engagement ring, to remind them both of her true fire. But the shine in her fine, large eyes outdid it and the Denver wedding gown she wore. Any fool looking at her could see on her perfect, china-doll face that she was in love. Even a fool
like him.

  He still wasn't sure he deserved her, much less the family, the community, the belonging that came with her. But he wasn't one to turn down Lady Luck.

  As often happened in her presence, he didn't hear much of the preacher's sermon. It all meant that he and Audra would be together forever, and that was more than enough for him. He did hear her promising to love, honor, and cherish him—it seemed to be family tradition to avoid the word obey—and he tried to convey with his every word his delight that she trusted him to do the same.

  And then, amazingly, they'd become Mr. and Mrs. John Harwood. Man and wife.

  He about lost himself in kissing her—his wife—until her father began to make a low noise like a growl. Reluctantly, Jack and Audra drew back from each other yet again. But he could tel by her blush that he wasn't the only one thinking this would be the last time they'd have to stop.

  After a year that had seemed to crawl, the afternoon rushed by in a gala of gifts, congratulations, fine food, elegant music, and dancing—Lordy, but he loved dancing with Audra. His new brothers-in-law gave him advice on how best to keep on Garrison's good side, most of which involved staying out of the rancher's way . . . except for Thaddeas, who, as expected, threatened to kill him if Jack made Audra unhappy. His new sisters-in-law flattered him with attention and welcome, even more than on Sunday gatherings . . . except for Laurel, the “cowgirl,” who also threatened to kill him if he made Audra unhappy. His new father-in-law scowled at him, as usual, and his new mother-in-law held his arm and talked quietly with him, reminding him increasingly of his own mother ... if Ma had married better.

  Then, finally, the merry-go-round of celebration came to a stop with Jack and Audra together, alone, at the refined Sheridan Inn. At last.

  For a long, quiet moment, standing at the foot of the bed with his bride's hands warm and right in his own, Jack felt almost shy. Their day had been so perfect. Could anything they did tonight live up to a year of expectations? especially for her?

  “Jack?” she whispered, barely meeting his gaze with her own.