She helped Cecily into a ribbon-trimmed corset covered in peach satin and tightened the laces, then picked up a matching petticoat of crisp lawn, its hem edged with a full twelve inches of handmade lace. “We are in a different country, Alice,” Cecily said as she stepped into the petticoat. “We must adapt ourselves to the customs.”
Alice gave a disdainful sniff and picked up an organza morning gown and started to slip it over Cecily’s head.
“Not that dress, Alice. The brown velvet habit. I plan to ride about the ranch today.”
“Not with Madame LeFleur and the other two, I hope.” Alice removed the habit from the trunk and carefully unfolded the full skirt.
“Are they awake yet?” Cecily asked.
Alice sniffed. “No. Cook informed me of that, too.”
“I imagine they’re used to keeping late hours.” She raised her arms and allowed Alice to tie on a horsehair bustle. “When you see them, give them my regards. I imagine I will be occupied with Charles most of the day.”
“Very good, m’lady.” Alice fastened the buttons of a fine linen blouse, with a jabot of more frothy lace. “I hope you won’t be needing Nick for anything this morning, as he’s run off, too.”
“Run off?” Cecily asked, alarmed.
“Oh, he hasn’t run away, m’lady. He’s gone off with some cowboys.” She helped her mistress into the skirt of the habit. “Thinks he’d like to be a cowboy himself. As if footman weren’t good enough for him.” She gave a sharp tug on the tapes of the skirt.
“Not so tight, Alice,” Cecily gasped.
“Sorry, m’lady.” Alice loosened the tapes, then picked up a pair of hand-knit stockings.
Cecily sat on the edge of the bed and allowed Alice to fit her with stockings and a pair of high-button riding boots. “Hurry, Alice. I’d like to speak to Charles before he leaves to attend to his days’ duties.” What did a rancher do all day? She’d have to find out. From the cradle she’d been groomed to be the perfect wife for an English gentleman. She’d have to adapt those lessons to become the ideal spouse for a Texas rancher. She’d prove to Charles that he couldn’t live without her.
She stood and shrugged into a short, close-fitting jacket of matching brown velvet, then accepted a cockaded campaign hat, a jaunty ostrich feather trailing from its crown. She smiled at her reflection in the mirror as Alice arranged the hat on her head. Charles would see that she’d come to the ranch prepared to ride. She’d impress him with her practicality as well as her sense of style.
She descended the stairs and followed a long hall toward the scent of bacon and toast. The dining room, like the rest of the house, was elegantly appointed, with mahogany furniture, Turkish rugs and polished wood paneling. A silver coffee urn gleamed from a mahogany sideboard. A smaller silver tea service sat on the table, a folded newspaper by its side. But not one of the dining table’s twelve chairs was occupied.
As Cecily stood staring at the empty chairs, Charles appeared in the doorway across the room. “Oh, I see you’re up.” He strode to the table and snatched up the paper. “I trust you slept well.” He scanned the front page, not even looking at her.
“Good morning, Charles. I slept very well, thank you.” She smiled, hiding her dismay at his casual greeting. “I was just about to have breakfast. Will you join me?”
He shook his head. “No. I must be off. Ring the bell and Mrs. Bridges will take care of you. Goodbye.”
He tucked the folded newspaper under one arm and exited the room the way he’d come in. Cecily stared after him. Not once in the brief exchange had he even looked at her. Did he resent her presence here so much that he couldn’t bear the sight of her?
“Charles, wait!” She hurried to catch up with him.
He paused, his hand on the door. “Yes?”
“I’ll come with you.” She reached up to adjust her hat. “This will give me the ideal opportunity to learn more about the ranch.”
“Really, Cecily, I don’t have time to wait for you to change.”
“Charles, I’m already wearing my riding habit.”
For the first time that morning, he really looked at her. He swept his eyes over the cockaded hat, the close fitting velveteen jacket and the full skirt. Cecily knew the outfit showed her figure to advantage. Though she tried not to be an overly vain woman, she couldn’t help being pleased by the appreciative gleam that came into Charles’ eyes.
Abruptly, he turned away. “I’m sure you would find ranch work quite tedious,” he said. “You’d be better off remaining here at the house and finding some other way to amuse yourself.”
“I did not travel all the way across the ocean for amusement, Charles. I came to be with you.” She tucked her hand in the crook of his elbow and gave him a determined smile.
She felt the muscles of his arm tighten beneath her hand, as if he were bracing himself against some blow. “All right then, you may come along,” he grumbled. “But there’s not much of consequence to see.”
* * *
Ten minutes later, they set off, Cecily riding sidesaddle on a roan gelding. Charles glanced back once to see that she was settled. Even that brief look was a mistake. She smiled at him and he felt all weak inside, like a man with a sudden fever. Why was this woman having such an effect on him?
She was lovely enough, he couldn’t deny that. His gaze lingered on the froth of ruffles cascading over her full breasts. Even the heavy cloak wrapped close around her did little to hide her nipped-in waist and well-rounded hips. He wrenched his eyes away, facing forward once more. He’d known more than a few pretty women in his day. Appearance alone couldn’t explain Cecily’s effect on him.
Perhaps her attraction lay in the absurd combination of neediness and confidence with which she addressed him. She’d led a sheltered life of innocence; if anyone needed protecting here on the harsh frontier, it was Cecily. And yet she’d had the nerve to declare that she’d come all this way because of her conviction that he needed her.
He scowled and urged his horse into a trot. No, he most certainly did not need Cecily. She was no more than a pretty lure, designed to trap him into the kind of life his father had designed for him. As long as he remembered that, he’d be safe from her charms.
“Where. . . are we riding. . . in such. . . a hurry?” Cecily rode her horse alongside his, doing her best to maintain a neat seat during the jarring trot across the prairie. The feather in her hat whipped up and down like a fishing float, and her breasts jostled in a way that made Charles’ mouth go dry.
He reined his horse to a walk. “I’m headed over to Bryce and Alan Mitchell’s ranch to talk to them about buying some calves they have for sale.”
She nodded and shifted in her saddle. “Tell me about your work. What does running a ranch involve?”
He started to protest that ranching was a topic that would no doubt soon bore her, but stopped himself. Maybe that was the proper approach to take. Let her see life on a Texas ranch as one tedious duty after another. Before long, she’d be begging to return to England and the whirl of parties, musicales and plays to which she was accustomed.
“It’s very hard, dirty, tedious work.” He shook his head. “Most tedious. Cattle are exceedingly dumb animals. They get stuck in mud bogs, or eat poisonous plants, or succumb to strange diseases. They wander off into ravines and can’t find their way out. I and my men spend our time riding miles and miles looking for lost cattle or tracking down stolen animals. In the summer it’s a constant search for water and in the winter the herds have a disturbing habit of standing in one place until they freeze to death. Many’s the night I thought I’d freeze to death, too, sleeping out under the open sky with only a bedroll for shelter.” He hazarded a sideways glance to see if she was as appalled as she should be, but her face held an expression of eager interest.
“It sounds quite exciting. Exactly as I pictured life here. I can hardly wait to experience it myself.”
He stared at her, alarmed. “It is not the sort of thing in whic
h a lady would be involved.”
She leaned toward him. “Do women never help with the ranch work, then?”
He shifted in the saddle. “No. Well, a few do. But that’s entirely different.”
“If I’m to be your wife, it seems –”
“No. I forbid it.”
She clamped her mouth shut. Her lower lip quivered and he wondered if she’d burst into tears, but she quickly composed herself. Still, he felt he had been too harsh with her. She was not to blame if she couldn’t understand the way of things here.
“We’re about to cross over onto A7 land.” He nodded toward a dry wash ahead of them. “That dry riverbed – they call it an arroyo – marks our boundary.”
She nodded. “Is every ranch as large as yours?”
“Some are larger. However, the Double Crown is not my ranch. It belongs to my father and his business partners.”
“I like the name, the Double Crown. Did you think of it yourself?”
“Hardly. My father named it.” The Earl was accustomed to always having final say in such matters. It must be vexing him to no end to have Charles in charge now, even in a most limited way. That as much as anything had likely prompted his demand for Charles’s withdrawal. “You’ll find the locals don’t usually refer to it by that name,” he added.
“What do they call it?”
“The instant they heard the property belonged to a group of British peers, some wag dubbed it Nobility Ranch, and the name stuck fast.”
The slightest frown creased Cecily’s forehead. “Do they resent us, then, as foreigners in their country?”
He shook his head. “For the most part, no. The name is sort of a friendly way of letting us know that to them, we’re all on the same level. It’s one of the things I like most about this country, really.”
She nodded and slowly scanned the scenery around them. Charles followed her gaze, as if seeing the land for the first time. They had left the area near the ranch house, with its encircling corrals and outbuildings, and made their way onto the open prairie. The weather was milder today, the sun almost warm as it illuminated the endless vista before them. Not a house or barn or semblance of a road stood out against the sweep of grass that rippled in the wind like breakers on a vast ocean. The sky overhead mimicked the land, an azure canopy unadorned by a single cloud.
Charles reveled in the freedom of this open land. Texas was a place full of possibilities. But it was also a place with few rules or definitions by which to measure one’s life. Like a ship without an anchor, he sometimes felt swallowed up in the vastness.
“It’s very different from home, isn’t it?” Cecily said at last, turning back to him.
He nodded. “Yes. It is very different.”
“You’re different, too, Charles.”
“Different?” He rested his hand on his thigh and turned to look at her. “I’m brown as an Indian, I’ll wager, from this unceasing sun. And I may have added a stone or two, what with the manual labor no one can escape here.”
She touched one elegant finger to her chin, studying him. Her gaze lingered on his shoulders, down his arms, stopping for a moment at the hand on his thigh, then skimming back up to his face. The directness of her stare startled him, even as a tremor of arousal raced through him.
“You’ve always been a most handsome man, Charles. Texas has only added to your looks. No, the difference I’m referring to is something else. Something in your manner.” She smiled. “Oh, you’re as charming as ever, to be sure. But you also seem more. . . independent.”
He could have told her Texas alone had not given him the new autonomy she sensed. Only finally breaking free from his father’s tight control could have made him a truly free man. And he fully intended to stay that way.
“I must say I find you different as well, my dear.” He guided his horse down into the arroyo that divided the Double Crown and the A7 ranches. “You’ve blossomed into quite a lady. I’m astonished some young man has not stolen you from me before now.”
Her eyes widened in surprise. “Oh, I wouldn’t allow that, Charles. You and I are promised to one another.”
He winced. “Yes, well, that was quite some time ago. We hardly know one another. I’d hate to keep you from some more deserving man.”
“How can you say we don’t know each other? We grew up on neighboring estates.”
“We’ve scarcely spent much time in each other’s company. You can’t say we’ve really ever been close.”
“I know I’ve always loved you.”
He jerked his head around to stare at her. The intensity of her gaze unnerved him. “You can’t possibly know any such thing,” he said.
A soft look stole across her face. “I remember the very first time you kissed me, Charles.”
He faced forward again, frantically searching his mind for a memory of kissing Cecily. When would he have done so? The only times they’d been together had been at balls or dinner parties or other social outings, surrounded by other people. Even their engagement had been accomplished at a dinner table full of relatives, arranged more by his father and hers than the bride and groom-to-be themselves.
“I was fourteen. We were out riding with some other young people and I was showing off. My horse balked at jumping a hedge and I was thrown.”
As she spoke, the day came back to him. He’d been twenty-one, fresh from school, racing across the fields with his brothers Reg and Cam, and others of their set. Cecily was too young to be with them, but she’d followed anyway, pleading with them to wait up. He’d looked back just in time to see her try to take the hedge. She’d flown over her horse’s head and landed in the grass with a sickening thump. Heart in his throat, he’d wheeled his horse and raced to her, vaulting from the saddle and rushing to her side.
“You held me and comforted me and kissed my cheek.” Cecily’s voice was dreamy. “I knew then that one day we’d marry.”
He urged his horse to the top of the arroyo, and emerged on flat land again. Then he sat and waited for Cecily to reach the top also, and for his heartbeat to slow its crazy pounding. He couldn’t remember holding a fourteen year old Cecily in his arms, had no recollection of that chaste kiss on the cheek. But the memory of holding a fully grown Cecily lingered fresh in his mind, and the thought of kissing her made him stiff and uncomfortable.
He looked away when she rode up beside him, and silently scolded himself. Instead of thinking of making love to Cecily, he should be working to convince her to give up this crazy idea of marrying him. He should persuade her to leave Texas altogether.
They rode in silence after that, though he was aware of her eyes on his back, caressing him with love looks.
They stopped to water their horses at a rock cistern. Cecily unbuttoned her cloak. “It’s much warmer today, isn’t it?” she said.
“The weather here changes constantly,” he said. “If you aren’t careful, the constant seesawing hot and cold will make you ill.”
“I’ll learn to cope. Others do.”
Why did she have to be so blasted reasonable? He tried another approach. “Your parents must be beside themselves with worry. I don’t know what you were thinking, running away like this.”
“I wrote them a letter. I told them I was coming here to be with you and that they shouldn’t worry.” She tucked a stray lock of hair beneath her hat. “I’ll send a letter this afternoon, notifying them that I’ve arrived safely.”
“Your father will no doubt order you home at once.” At least I hope so, he thought.
She shook her head. “I don’t see why they should be so concerned. I used my own money to get here – part of my inheritance from my Aunt. I came properly chaperoned, and I’m staying at the home of my fiancé. Why should they worry?”
“But what possessed you to do such a thing in the first place?” The question burst from him with more passion than he’d intended.
She grew still, and fixed him with a steady gaze, a gaze that seemed to see past his carefully
constructed facade, into the innermost part of him. “I knew you needed me.”
The absolute certainty with which she spoke shook him. “Why would I need you?” He gripped her shoulders, battling the urge to shake some sense into that lovely, infatuated head of hers. “I’m running a ranch here, not a tea party. This isn’t a place with a social season that requires me to host dinners and give balls or even entertain very many guests. I don’t need a hostess or a dance partner or a fourth hand at whist. Why should I need you?”
She watched him, serene. “Every man needs a woman beside him,” she said when he’d finished speaking. “To support him and comfort him and to bear his children.” Her smile deepened, revealing dimples on the left side of her mouth. “You just haven’t realized it yet.”
Those dimples drew him. He traced the gentle curve of her mouth with his eyes and felt himself giving way to the desire to keep her here. “No!” The word was for him even more than her. He had to send her away. And soon, before she’d snared him completely. “You’re wrong. There’s only one way a man needs a woman.”
He jerked her toward him, intending to kiss her roughly on the cheek, to muss her hair a little and disturb her delicate sensibilities. Let her see this brutish side of him and realize he was not the perfect gentleman she believed him to be. She’d run home to her father then, he was sure.
But at the last moment, she turned her head and instead of kissing her cheek, his mouth crushed against hers. Instead of crying out and pulling away from him, she pressed closer, pressing her breasts against his chest, her thighs against his own.
She smelled of rosewater and sunshine, and everywhere she touched him grew as hot as midday in August. She let out a breathy sigh and he caught the breath in his mouth, and plunged his tongue between her teeth to taste her sweetness. Even then, she didn’t push him away, but melted against him, shaping her body to his own.
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