Proving Herself

by Yvonne Jocks

She sank back onto the tarp, hearing snow crunch beneath it, and didn't protest at all when he rolled onto her. She laughed when he used his teeth to pull off his mittens, then began fumbling under their blanket and coats and clothing. She knew full well that the temperature was somewhere around the zero mark. But they had remarkable ways of keep­ing each other warm.

  "I'm already practiced at this part," she said happily, offer­ing her mittens up to him so that he could pull those off with his teeth, too. He complied, like the gentleman he was.

  "Mustn't lose one's edge," he whispered. "Viscountess."

  Viscountess. That made her feel a little cold. She'd spent her whole life disappointing her father with her unladylike behavior. How would she possibly impress a viscount?

  But when her and Collier's bare hands finally found hot, bare skin under layers and layers of clothing, she knew she had to try. And not just for him.

  She'd gotten herself out of a frozen creek. She'd managed to keep her claim, despite Papa's setting himself against her. Surely she could prove herself—Oh ...

  She pretty much lost the ability to think as Collier mounted her, filled her, began to move inside her. But she managed to clutch at one thought, as surely as she was clutching at him.

  To keep him, she guessed she could do anything.

  She had to.

  Collier could not explain Laurel's sudden enthusiasm, but he welcomed it. She would need every bit.

  Not that he had lied. Her father might be nouveau riche, but she'd been raised well enough, for a Wyoming girl. He hardly need worry that she would blow her nose on her sleeve, or curse, or slap the viscount on the back and call him "pard."

  Amusing though that image was.

  But when he considered everything that she ought to do, rather than simply what she might avoid, the task sometimes seemed overwhelming.

  "Take shorter steps," he chided gently at least once a day. "There is nowhere to which a lady need hurry."

  "Nowhere?" Laurel protested finally, folding her arms. That was that just the sort of thing that she ought not do in Denver. Rather than scold—she was only being Laurel, after all—Col­lier took her hands in his and unfolded her arms for her.

  "Nowhere," he insisted, looking seriously down at her.

  Her eyes began to dance up at him. "Not even if the hotel were on fire? Or would a lady simply stand there and look pretty until she went up like a torch?"

  "One would hope that in a fire," Collier said, ducking his face closer to hers, "nobody would notice either way."

  Then they were kissing again, and embracing again, and no longer caring how ladies and gentlemen behaved.

  "So I shouldn't speak too loudly," she clarified perhaps a week later, lying with her head pillowed on his bare abdo­men while they both recovered from another bout of marital relations.

  He was stroking her hair, drawing his fingertips across its sleek darkness. "Certainly not. That shows deficient breed­ing."

  "Should I whisper, then?"

  "Hardly. Exclusivity is quite rude."

  She turned her head to better see past the length of his chest to his face. "Do you swear you aren't making this up?"

  "My word as a gentleman."

  She considered that. "Do you swear you're a gentleman?"

  He stopped petting her hair and brushed his fingers across her cheek instead. Lord, but she'd become precious to him. Especially now that she might...

  The thought seemed too radical to entertain. But what if she found she enjoyed society? What if mixing with people like the Baroness Tentrees encouraged her to experience En­gland?

  Was it possible that his little rancher might yet bloom into a wife not only worthy but desirous of British citizenship?

  Oh, he doubted it. Likely such thoughts ran counter to their original bargain. But it made a lovely dream.

  He sighed. "Unfortunately, my dearest, I am not always a gentleman around you."

  "Unfortunately?" she challenged, and caught his finger be­tween gentle teeth, then began to tease it with her tongue. He had shared many things with her that he had never, never thought he would reveal to a proper wife.

  At moments like this, it hardly seemed unfortunate at that. But once they reached Denver...

  Damn, but he both dreaded and anticipated the trip in equal measure. One moment he could not wait to escape this box. The next he hoped to be completely snowed in. With her.

  Since he had no answer, he opened his own mouth, damp­ened two ringers, then reached out and drew them slowly down Laurel's chest, down her abdomen, across her belly, and lower. She arched into the sensation as a cat might arch into a particularly satisfying caress. Then she turned her face away from his face and in the direction of his feet—and im­portant points between—to thank him in equally salacious ways.

  Collier had no idea what he was doing with so uninhibited a woman as her—outside of this, of course!

  That should have been enough warning.

  Laurel guessed she'd hoped her mountains would rescue her by snowing them in. February and March passed with the sort of intemperate weather that bolstered such selfish opti­mism. A Chinook turned their good, hard crust to slush again; then a blizzard packed it down into shoulder-high snowdrifts.

  Then, the third week in March, an Alberta clipper froze everything so solidly that they could have skated to town— and the freeze lasted. So Collier and Laurel loaded their sleigh, tied Snapper and Llewellyn behind it, and drove away from the only home they'd known together.

  "Only for a week, right?" Laurel asked, huddling closer against Collier's side, under the carriage rug, as he drove.

  "Only a week," he assured her. "You won't lose your claim."

  And her claim was the important thing, wasn't it? Even if he did still think of it as only hers? Laurel wasn't sure any­more ... and that uncertainty scared her.

  They stayed the night with the Coopers—not because they weren't welcome with her parents, but because the Coopers had more space. It gave them time to settle the horses, dine with her family, have alterations made on her new clothing, and to buy her a finer trunk. Heaven forbid Collier be em­barrassed by Laurel's luggage, after all.

  The arrangements did not, however, allow Laurel to seek comfort from Collier in the most pleasant, most primal way she knew how. By unspoken agreement, neither she nor Col­lier wanted to insult their hosts with less-than-polite behavior.

  Besides, their minds were on other things.

  By time they rose in the wee hours of the morning to catch the five twenty-five to Denver, Laurel felt so nervous she could barely eat.

  What if she embarrassed him? What if she spoke before she thought, and angered his father? What if she proved to him only that she wasn't suited to be his wife?

  Collier's spirits, however, improved with every passing min­ute. The way Laurel felt whenever she rode into the foothills, Collier seemed to feel as they left for the train depot.

  Collier saw to the luggage and the tickets, and they waited together in the steamy warmth of the stove-heated depot. He looked so competent as a traveler, and so handsome... es­pecially with his hair still long, and pulled into its little tail.

  That concession to his winter as a mountain man, he had made for her—and it meant a great deal to her. But...

  Again her stomach clutched. What if she embarrassed him?

  After the train chugged into the station, the temperature dropped and the noise increased as disembarking passengers filled the depot, many just to grab a cup of coffee before climbing back onto their second or third-class cars. Collier ushered Laurel across the frozen platform, which was shad­owy against the pressing darkness of early morning, and gave her a hand up the wrought-iron steps onto the train. As if she couldn't climb stairs alone, as a lady.

  Then again, in these shoes...

  The interior of the Pullman palace car stunned her. Bur­nished walnut and mahogany. Plush seats of velvet and bro­cade. Polished brass and silver. Mirrors. Oriental carpet.
The ceiling even boasted painted frescoes. It looked more like a parlor than a train—and a fine parlor indeed!

  Several passengers glanced up from newspapers or needle­work to note Collier and Laurel's arrival. Laurel couldn't shake the feeling that they were noticing the quality of their coats, which the colored porter politely took to hang in a small wardrobe by the doorway—and then the quality of their traveling suits.

  "Second class would have been fine," she murmured once Collier led her to their seats and settled beside her to await the train's departure.

  "Not for you," he assured her. But when she narrowed her eyes in challenge—had she wanted first class?:—he had the grace to duck his head and smile a little, complete with dim­ple. "Father may meet the train," he explained more honestly.

  May meet the train? "You mean he might not? You cabled him we're coming, right?"

  "Yes, but he's an important man." Collier did not look any more satisfied by his answer than she felt. "And he may just want me to know how little importance I hold."

  How little importance? Collier? "But he's your father."

  "I apologize," he said. "I ought not have spoken so."

  Laurel began to wonder about some other things. His father had been in the country for a month. He'd crossed an ocean and over half a continent, and yet he could not come the extra four hundred miles to Sheridan? It was not as if Sheridan were some whistle-stop! They had the inn! Or was that, too, simply a means by which to show his power over his son?

  "But, Collier—"

  "Please, Lorelei. Please pretend I did not say that."

  Collier sounded so miserable that Laurel did hesitate.

  With a long whistle, one more called "All aboard!" outside, and a great lurch, the train began its departure from Sheridan. Her home. Where she wanted to be. Laurel had been to Den­ver before, with her family. But she'd never dreaded it like this!

  "Look." Collier pointed. "I made certain we had seats on the west side, so that you can watch the mountains when the sun comes up."

  And she looked at him, so golden and beautiful and so kind to her—and so desperate to impress his family—and her heart almost broke. So instead of asking more about his father's motivations, Laurel held her tongue and slipped her hand into Collier's.

  He squeezed it tightly.

  And for the first time Laurel stopped wondering merely if Collier's family would like her.

  For the first time it occurred to her that she might intensely dislike Collier's family.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  The British-financed Windsor Hotel, five stories of granite and sandstone, dominated downtown Denver. Its spacious lobby and twenty-foot ceilings echoed with culture—as did the gen­teel clack of billiard balls by the adjacent wine room. This was the world to which Collier had been raised and edu­cated, not the world of incessant cold and daily drudgery.

  So why did he find himself murmuring, as they approached his father's rooms, "'Half a league onward'"?

  Laurel, on his arm, stopped right there in the hallway. "We're going into the Valley of Death?"

  Ah. "You know Tennyson."

  "I know that poem. Victoria recited it at school." She con­sidered him a moment. "I have some education."

  "I never doubted it." In fact, she looked every inch the American heiress. She'd changed from her traveling suit into a sleek day dress of cinnamon-colored batiste, enhanced with lighter lace bands and insets. Her dark brown hair, drawn neatly up with Alexandra's borrowed Lalique combs, glowed with the same good health that lit her blue eyes. And winter had faded her suntanned skin toward a somewhat more ladylike complexion. "In fact, you are everything I could have hoped for in a bride."

  "But it's not really—" Whatever she'd meant to say, Laurel ducked her head and tried, "They might not think so."

  For a mere second son? He could have done far worse ... even from their viewpoint. And from his, he was beginning to wonder if he could possibly have done better.

  "If anybody can convince them, it is you. Oh!" And he drew a small box from his pocket, one he'd been holding since the day before. "I almost forgot. I brought your engagement ring in for repair. They could not quite match the original; I hope you shan't mind the difference."

  "It's smaller," she said—exactly what he had hoped not to hear. But then Laurel smiled widely up at him, her heart-shaped face as beautifully unpretentious as ever, and he did not doubt her approval. "I like this one much better. Thank you, Cole."

  They stood together in the corridor, glancing both ways as if to hide some desperate dealings, as Laurel removed her glove long enough for Collier to slide the ring onto her finger.

  "This one seems sparklier, too," she noted, turning her hand slightly to catch light in its facets. Interesting. Collier would not have thought that she, of all women, would so easily see the difference between cut glass and a real dia­mond.

  She surprised him in so many ways.

  "Perhaps it's the lighting," he suggested smoothly, helping her put her glove back on. The family would see the diamond when she removed her gloves again to dine, or for tea—no sooner. To show it off would be coarse ... and, considering the type of ring Lady Vivian would likely wear, foolish.

  "Ready?" he asked, taking a deep breath.

  "Nope," she admitted just as honestly—but without any plea to back out of this appointment either. "You?"

  How could she make him smile, against so serious an oc­casion? But she did. "Not at all," he assured her. "Shall we?"

  " 'Into the valley of the shadow of Death,'" she misquoted. "That would be the Bible, dearest." He considered that. "I suppose it's better than 'the mouth of hell' though." She nodded, and Collier knocked.

  The Viscount of Brambourne's hotel room, while fine, was still a hotel room all the same. It had a sitting room off the viscount's bedroom, larger than that off hers and Collier's, but hardly a palace. And Collier's father, while a distin­guished, strong-jawed man in a fine suit, was still a man.

  My father could take him, she thought grimly.

  She recognized Edgar easily from his resemblance to Col­lier—likely their beauty came from their mother. And the three Tentrees—rather, the Fordhams of Tentrees—struck her as a matched set of china dolls, mother, father, and daughter.

  Before Laurel could see more of Lady Vivian than pale blond beauty, Collier squeezed her hand, and the viscount was commanding her attention. "So this is the wife."

  She belatedly realized that Collier had presented her.

  The viscount looked her up and down. Was her hair neat? Was her dress nice enough? If so, both were thanks to Collier, not her. And in any case, she'd been spoken to.

  "Good afternoon, your lordship."

  "Rather chill for me." He turned to Cole. "I see no reason to have hastened a marriage before receiving proper permis­sion."

  Laurel wasn't sure she understood the insult—beyond that it was an insult, and a rebuke. When she glanced at her hus­band, the tightness in his jaw showed he did understand.

  Either way, Edgar Pembroke, Senior, was doing little to impress her with anything but his poor manners—even the way Americans defined them!

  "As my letter explained," said Collier, "the scheduling of our wedding was a business decision regarding her ranch."

  "Our ranch," she interrupted. Oops.

  Collier squeezed her hand. "Of course, dear. Our ranch."

  "Yes. Well. We'll speak more of that in private." And that

  was clearly all the greeting the viscount would give his sec­ond son or his new daughter-in-law. Collier bowed slightly and said "Father," then turned toward his brother.

  Edgar, blond and handsome as Collier—if lankier—was more pleasant. "So this is my new sister! Mrs. Pembroke, you are even lovelier than your photograph."

  When she extended her hand, he pressed it between his own and kissed her on the cheek quite gracefully. "I trust you are enjoying Denver," he said. Collier had explained that statements were considered more
polite than flat-out ques­tions.

  She could have said, We just got here, or, if she were really honest, I'd rather be home. But she said, Thank you, Lord Edgar. I usually do enjoy Denver."

  Again, Collier showed his approval with faint pressure on her hand while Edgar moved his attention to his brother. "And good Lord, look at you! How long has it been?"

  "A year and a half." Had Cole been counting the days?

  "So it has." Edgar had the grace to look uncomfortable. "Water under the bridge, hey? Shake hands, shall we?"

  When they did so, the older brother's eyes widened, and Laurel had to swallow back a laugh. Chopping wood tended to strengthen a man's grip, at that.

  Then the Tentreeses stood. Collier turned with Laurel to make those introductions. And between giving and receiving proper responses, she finally faced the woman he'd meant to marry.

  Golly. If this was what Collier chose on his own, Laurel didn't have a snowball's chance in Texas of keeping him.

  Lady Vivian wore what Laurel guessed was the latest fash­ion from Paris. Her perfume glided across Laurel's nose just as the most expensive scents probably should. Even up close she looked china-doll pale, the most ladylike pallor Laurel had ever seen. Her yellow hair was so carefully dressed it seemed permanent, unlike Laurel's, which was held up not only with hairpins but with prayer. But Lady Vivian owed her poise to more than clothes and hair. She had a lady's posture, a lady's expression, the kind of daintiness Laurel guessed would require assistance through doors and in and out of carriages. Or chairs.

  A short woman herself, Laurel felt like a draft horse.

  "Charmed," Collier told Lady Vivian with a bow.

  "Such formality from an old friend," she scolded. "Do shake hands, Lord Collier, as a brother should."

  Laurel hoped he took particular care with the lady's bird-like bones. She noticed that he addressed his "Congratula­tions on your forthcoming nuptials" to Edgar.

  The honor was conferred on the groom, not the bride, Lau­rel remembered. People really did care about these things!

  "May I present my wife," said Collier, as he had to her par­ents, and now Laurel had to smile and say something inane.