by Martha Hix
Joseph watched the rancher ride away. As usual, he hadn’t bothered to correct Whitman about Mariah Rose McGuire’s last name. Though Whitman Reagor was the only person in Tirick’em who had shown cordiality toward him, Joseph rather enjoyed keeping something to himself, especially after his blunder.
After asking for Whitman’s pledge of honor, he should have kept his lips sealed about her heart once belonging to another. Perhaps here in Texas, though, Joseph surmised, men were more accustomed to young ladies changing their minds about such things.
Of course, Mariah had had change forced upon her ...
He had met her in the Channel Islands in her hometown of St. Peter Port, where Joseph had settled to make a name for himself in the Bailiff of Guernsey’s retinue. He adored the beautiful redhead at first sight, even when her head was turned by the dashing Lieutenant Lawrence Rogers of the India Corps. For the thousandth time, Joseph gave thanks that Rogers had succumbed to malaria.
Once the competition had been laid to rest, Joseph had been free to court her. Naturally she had been vulnerable and she had, on the rebound, accepted his proposal.
Though he realized her feelings weren’t nearly as deep as his own, she had agreed to follow him to Texas. They would be together soon, only six months from then, in March.
“So little time, so much to do,” he muttered. Somehow he’d make up for the treacherous deed done on the island of Guernsey, the memory of which shamed him. On the eve of his leaving and filled with too much champagne, he had fallen victim to the fiend of lust and forced himself on sweet, innocent Mariah.
The ungentlemanly deed hadn’t been completed, but Mariah wasn’t so informed. Though she was quick-minded, she led a sheltered life in the Iles d’Normandie. To confess his lack of prowess would have been demeaning, and in the aftermath, he had used her naivete to his own advantage.
Her supposed tarnished honor wasn’t his only hold on Mariah, however. Joseph’s sins were many. After he had found his land in such a sorry state, and because of his fear of losing Mariah, he couldn’t confess that he, too, had been a gudgeon, though not in the same way. So, his letters to her had been bald lies.
She was expecting fine China, servants, and the genteel life. Furthermore, he had promised her the freedom to pursue her schoolteaching. Once she learned that his money had been spent first on pear saplings, then on barbed wire, and that he could offer no more than a log cabin, hard work, and menacing cutthroats, how would she react? Would she ever trust him again?
If only he had something to give to make up for the lies. Sweat rolled down his quivering backbone. If only he had Whitman’s fine dark looks and charm with the ladies, he’d feel more confident. If only he had wealth, a comfortable rock home, and a prosperous ranch like Crosswind, all the material goods Whitman Reagor possessed. If only he hadn’t lied.
Joseph glanced at the dusty wake of the man who had so much. There wasn’t a lying bone in his friend’s body. At that moment he almost hated Whitman Reagor.
Chapter One
March 1883
Naked as the day he was born, a tall lean man barreled out of a modest house, into the crisp dawn and onto the dirt street–deserted except for one spectator.
Mariah McGuire, a birdcage clutched in her gloved hand, averted her farsighted brown eyes, but found herself staring once more. Standing less than a quarter block away, she was taken aback by the fracas, even more so when a wild-haired blonde, wearing a wrapper and wielding a skillet, darted out of the same door in pursuit of the man. Obviously all hell had broken loose on a back street in Dublin, Texas.
Mariah halted. Never in her twenty-three years had she witnessed a domestic squabble as improper as this, though she had been around more than her share of her parents’ arguments.
“Dammit, woman.” The man’s voice was strangely calm as he quizzed the shapely woman gripping the cast-iron weapon. “What the hell’s the matter with you?”
“You, that’s what. You’re just like all the rest. You ain’t interested in nothin’ but gettin’ between my legs!”
Mariah rolled her eyes. Texas was a wild and woolly place, and Texans were a breed all their own. That she had learned from her travels across the state, first by train from Galveston to Lampasas, then by stagecoach from there.
“I’ve heard enough of your empty promises, Whit Reagor,” she heard the brassy blonde screech.
“Promises? I never make promises I don’t intend to keep.”
“Shut up!” The blonde hurled the skillet at the man. “You never had no intention of marrying me, so get gone and stay gone!”
The missile thwacked against his broad right shoulder, and Mariah flinched. The indecent Mr. Reagor didn’t move a muscle. His wildcat assailant dusted her palms and pranced back into the house, the door banging behind her.
He whipped around, charged toward the domicile, and pounded the heel of a fist against the barrier. “At least give me my clothes.”
“Your behind’s been nekkid all night, so why get stove up about it now?” the woman yelled from inside the house.
“Heavens,” Mariah uttered, trying to disregard the loud voices and continued thumping on the door.
She started walking again. How nice it would be to reach the gentility of her new home in Trick’em. Though the town was only four days’ travel from here, the connecting stagecoach wouldn’t depart for three more days.
“Barbara,” Whit Reagor said sternly, “if you think I’m going to prance round in the altogether, you’ve got another think coming. Open the door before I break it down.”
Though she was embarrassed for the two combatants as well as for herself, Mariah felt strangely compelled to halt again. She watched the blonde hoist a window sash, then toss a petticoat at the man’s face. The garment was as stark-purple as the hair on Whit Reagor’s head and chest was starkly black.
“Try that on for size, you snake in the grass!” the angered female demanded, her challenge punctuated by the window slamming shut.
“Women,” the man muttered, shaking his head.
He shrugged one wide shoulder, held the shiny undergarment aloft momentarily before casually covering his lower midsection. As if he had nary a problem, he turned toward the street–and Mariah Rose McGuire.
From the distance of no more than fifteen feet, she caught the lift of an ebony brow. A smirk stretched his mouth. Why, he didn’t even appear humiliated.
Even though her parrot issued trilling protests to the approaching stranger, Mariah held her ground. No brazen Texan, even one as fine-looking as this man, was going to send her scurrying for cover.
“How doin’, ma’am?”
No reply passed her grim lips. She was headed for Widow Atherton’s boarding establishment, even if it meant passing the crudest, most disreputable man she had ever encountered. Mariah lifted her nose as well as the birdcage clutched in her gloved hand, and started again on her intended path.
“Hey, lady, don’t be hasty. Wait up,” the man called from behind her. “You there with the auburn hair and the parrot. Wait up, pretty lady.”
Mariah ignored the pleas, and took ten more steps.
“lady?”
Seemingly pleased with himself, her parrot mocked over and over, “Lady, lady!”
Gritting her teeth, she admonished, “Hush, Gus.”
She glanced over her shoulder and detected that the man was not more than five feet away. Blessed with a head for sums, she calculated him to be a half foot taller than herself, which would make him at least six two. Handsome described him in a word, ruggedly handsome in two. His bright blue eyes contrasted with his olive complexion and dark hair, hair that was curly and short-cropped above clipped sideburns. Whereas Joseph was thin, short, and pale, this man was anything but.
She shook off the comparisons, turned her head, and kept walking. Joseph deserved more than unfair comparisons. He was her savior. Aggrieved over losing so many of her loved ones–first Lawrence, then her mother and grandmother–she h
ad been without hope for the future. At twenty-three, she was too old to make a suitable marriage and too repressed by her father to follow her dreams. But the Viscount Desmont had changed all that.
He offered his love, and in exchange asked for nothing more than her hand. Quite unlike her father, who had hectored in his mélange of English and French, “No femme in her right mind wants anything beyond mariage and, as long as I draw a breath, I won’t have ye wasting yer life with schoolteaching,” Joseph understood her aspirations.
And he, a member of one of England’s oldest and most noble families, had renounced every birthright privilege to offer his name to a connetable’s spinster daughter from a lesser part of the British Empire–a spinster who had allowed him liberties with her body. She was fortunate he hadn’t cast her aside in favor of a more virtuous woman.
It was her duty to repay Joseph for his sacrifices. But didn’t he deserve something better than a wife who felt nothing beyond obligation?
She wished Joseph hadn’t made so many sacrifices. When her grief over her losses had started to heal, she had been wracked with doubts about the future. Yet what could she do? There was nothing left for her in Guernsey–nothing but a father who thwarted her ambitions.
No longer was she under Logan McGuire’s thumb, but she’d solved one problem to take on another. After leaving the isolated island home that was nearer to France than to England, Mariah had had her first taste of freedom, and it had gone down smooth as thick Guernsey cream. If not for her approaching marriage, she’d have been free to do as she pleased here in Texas. Dash it, she was enjoying her independence!
“For Pete’s sake, lady! Wait up. You don’t have to be afraid. I’m not out to rob you of anything!”
Whit Reagor’s shouted words brought Mariah back to the present. Strange, she thought, that he hadn’t raised his voice to the blonde. “Sir, are you addressing me?”
“You’re the only person on this street except for me,” he replied in a deep baritone, a grin dimpling the right side of his tanned, stubble-shadowed face, “so I reckon I am.”
While a gust of wind tugged at her hatpins, she took a hesitant look at him. He was covering himself–partially–with the petticoat. Mariah noted his blue lips, then her line of sight lowered, and she scrutinized his narrow hips, his long hairy–shivering–legs. My, those legs were nicely formed. The sight of them played havoc with her senses.
“Like what you see?”
Ignoring his question and marshaling her wits, she lifted her gaze. “What do you want?”
“Help.”
Should she get involved? The blonde might have right on her side, Mariah thought, but she was protected by wrapper and roof, while Whit Reagor was bare to the frigid elements. Putting herself in any charitable person’s place, she said, “Let’s find some privacy. I’m sure your lady friend is watching us.”
The man at her heel, she aimed for a grove of live oak trees a half block away. Privacy assured, she whipped around and nearly collided with his towering frame. “Be kind enough to say your piece.”
His indigo-blue eyes twinkled as he apparently ignored her request. “Say, Red, bet you’re not from round these parts. Your accent is different, mainly English, but sorta ... hmm. . . French?”
“I am not addressed as ‘Red.’ ” Having no intention of explaining her Norman French and Scots Irish heritage, she gave him a haughty onceover, which she regretted immediately. One shouldn’t do that sort of thing in front of a nude man.
“Many pardons, ma’am.” A tease in his tone, he changed the subject again. “My money says you’ve never got a gander at a naked man before.”
Mariah placed the parrot cage on the ground, and stepped to the oak tree. How true. Though she had four brothers, they had kept themselves covered in her presence. And that night with Joseph ... he hadn’t uncovered himself, as near as she could remember.
She shuddered. There were, her now departed mother had told her, certain things a woman was forced to endure. “When you go to the marriage bed, Daughter, close your eyes and think of England,” Anne du Moulin McGuire had advised. This one and only piece of advice concerning the union between men and women had proved to be prudent. On the night Mariah and Joseph had toasted their future and had drunk too much champagne to his bon voyage, she had closed her eyes, both in distaste and boredom. And when she awoke, turning back had been impossible.
Whatever spark there might have been for Joseph had fizzled that night, and she dreaded the marriage bed. After all, a woman couldn’t drink herself into oblivion every night of her wedded life.
The Texan broke into her brown study by saying, “I shouldn’t have mentioned nudity to a lady. Forgive me.”
Mariah pulled herself together. “It’s not the state of your undress that’s disturbing, sir. It’s the state of your affairs. That poor woman is quite distressed. Shouldn’t you try to make amends?”
He shrugged. Clutching the purple petticoat even closer to his private parts, he shortened the distance between them. “Barbara’s a little hot-tempered. She’ll get over it.”
Now that Whit Reagor was close by, she got an eyeful of his scarred, hair-whorled chest. How did he get those scars? This thought was replaced by another one. It was an odd yet nice feeling to be eye-to-chest level with a man.
Mariah gathered her wits and responded to his statement. “My sympathies are with your lady.”
“She needs condolences like a boar needs teats.”
A flush rising in her cheeks, Mariah curled her lip. “Your crudity is only outweighed by your gall.”
“Been known to happen.” He glanced down, then up. The dimple in his right cheek deepened. “But can’t you see I’m in a fix? Can’t go sashayin’ round in the altogether, Mrs.... um... you’re Mrs.... ?”
“Miss,” she amended. “And it would serve you right, sashaying round in the–” She laughed at the ludicrous situation. “Oh, heavens, take this.”
Mariah whipped the knee-length cloak from her shoulders. “This will cover you much better than”–her finger pointed to the petticoat, her eyes traveling to his wickedly handsome face–“that garment.”
“Petticoat,” he corrected, his grin widening. Clumsily he maneuvered his left hand to fit her gray woolen cloak around his shoulders. “It’s a purple petticoat.”
She imagined herself wearing such a damson-plum-colored undergarment. My, it’s lovely, isn’t it? she thought, but realized she’d voiced the question when he said, “Depends on who’s wearing it.” He winked boldly, dropped the blonde’s highly personal wear to the street, and took two steps closer. “I’d bet my spread out west of here that you’ve never seen a purple petticoat before.”
On guard again, perhaps because he was correct, she snapped, “What gives you the audacity to say that?”
“My crudity is only outweighed by my gall.” His retort mocked her earlier words. “That aside, the way I see it, there are two kinds of women–ladies and lovers. From the scowl on that pretty face of yours and the blush in your cheeks, I’ll bet you’re the former.”
She grabbed her reticule and parrot. “I’ve tarried too long. Leave the cloak at the Double Inn.”
She grimaced, remembering the previous sleepless night. Her stay at Dublin’s stagecoach stop had been less than pleasant, thus forcing her to find quieter accommodations. Nevertheless, she had no desire to acquaint Whit Reagor with her prospective temporary residence, the Atherton home. She had seen more than enough of Mr. Whit Reagor.
“Leave it for Miss McGuire, please. Good day, sir.”
“Sir, sir!” Gus squawked.
“Whoa there, Miss McGuire. Don’t leave just yet.” Whit cocked his head. “If you wouldn’t mind, ma’am, could I trouble you some more?”
“What now?” she asked in exasperation.
“If I’m seen like this,” he said, in a first show of humility, “I’ll be the laughingstock of four counties.”
A measure of her instinctive humor returned, and sh
e chuckled. His very human reaction to possible ridicule was strangely endearing. “Actually, not the laughingstock you would’ve been if I hadn’t passed by.”
“Got me on that one,” he conceded, leaning a shoulder against a tree trunk. “Well, what’s it gonna be? Will you or will you not take a message across town?”
She shifted her weight to the other foot. “I will.”
“Good girl, sweet angel of mercy. And I thank you.”
For the first time she heard, really heard, the vibrating quality to his tone. Nice, so nice. Before she could settle her confusion, he leaned forward to brush the side of his roughened forefinger against her cheek, eliciting an involuntary quiver from Mariah.
Startled, she gazed into the ink-blue of his eyes. Gone was the arrogance, the impertinence. There was a look of undeniable interest.
Was his expression reflected in her brown eyes? Fearing so, and confused by her emotions, she stepped back. “You’d best give me directions.”
“I’d love to,” he murmured. “Ah . . . um ... my sister lives on Comanche Street. Tell her I need help. Clothes, and quick.” He went on to explain, “She runs a boardinghouse, only one in town. You can’t miss the sign. Lois Atherton is her name.”
Oh, no! They were certain to meet again, and Mariah, as a consequence of being too sheltered in spite of her advanced years, felt awkward. How would she handle the situation?
“One more thing,” he said. “What’s your given name?”
Allowing familiarity was neither proper nor prudent. “Miss McGuire is all you need.”
All he needed? She might be right. Heart hammering, Whit watched her go. The elegantly beautiful Miss McGuire could fill a blatant desire, no doubt about that. Her shapely body, her burnt-auburn hair, her milk-chocolate-colored eyes got to him.
It hadn’t taken him long to figure out she wasn’t wearing a corset, and didn’t need one. She was by no means petite, but that type never appealed to him, anyway. He liked his women on the tall side.