by Yvonne Jocks
“Stuart MacCallum?” Victoria whispered, somehow as informed as ever.
Mariah nodded.
She would have felt more relief if Victoria had not winced at the very idea.
* * *
The next morning did not go any better. Getting ready for church rarely went smoothly, with six girls bustling about and Papa trying not to catch sight of anybody not fully dressed. In what seemed like a quiet moment, downstairs in the foyer, Mariah took her father's arm and said,
“Papa, I'm eighteen now.”
He frowned down at her, baffled. He knew her age.
“It's time ... time I started thinking of the future.”
“Future takes care of itself,” he said, then turned his attention to his second daughter, descending the stairs. “Proper shoes, Laurel Lee. Now.”
And by the time Laurel had clumped back upstairs to change out of her cowboy boots, Kitty and Audra and Elise had descended into the foyer and the moment had passed. Especial y when
Mariah ended up bundled in the back of the surrey, instead of up front.
During services, she glanced occasional y over her shoulder toward Stuart. Sometimes he raised his intense gaze to meet hers, the curve of his jaw bruised... and once, he nodded.
Tomorrow, he'd said. That meant today.
Victoria kicked Mariah's ankle then, and inclined her dark head in a different direction. Mariah noted Alice Wright watching them, eyes gleaming. Quickly, Mariah turned her gaze back to the minister. Were other members of the congregation watching, too, judging as they sang and prayed and fol owed their respective families from the church?
We are engaged to be married! Mariah wanted to shout at them, but of course her parents—especially her father—should know first.
She tried yet again, once they got home. Her sisters settled in to read or draw or play piano—quiet activities, appropriate for the Sabbath—and even Papa sat in the parlor with Elise on his lap, squinting at the newspaper he read to her.
“Papa,” said Mariah—at least she'd managed the voice for that—and he looked up expectantly.
“What's that letter?” asked Elise, pointing to a bit of type, but Papa guided her little hand firmly out of the way; she knew better than to interrupt.
“Papa, about last night,” Mariah forged ahead.
He waited.
“I...” No, that wasn't right. “When I went outside, Papa, I wasn't alone. I was ...” That wasn't right either. She swallowed. Hard. Then she tried, “I never meant to disappoint you.”
Papa said, “Yesterday's done with, Mariah.”
He didn’t understand! “But Papa—”
Then a knock sounded at the door—so firm as to be defiant—and Laurel, first to look out the bay window, said “It's the sheep farmer!”
Mariah had just run out of time.
Chapter Six
Well , he was here.
Nothing in Stuart MacCallum's life had taken so much courage as walking up the brick path to the Garrison mansion and defiling their fine front door by drumming his knuckles on it.
Facing Mariah's home up close, for the first time, did little to clarify why she would want to marry him. One corner of the verandah rounded out into a gazebo with a porch swing. Everything from the snug, arch-roofed sheep-wagon where Stuart lived could fit within the railings of that gazebo.
Yet here he stood, fixing to ask her father for the right to resign Mariah to such a home as that.
Stuart knew full well the answer would be “No.” The only question was how violent that “no”
would be. But at least they would have asked.
If worse came to worst, they did not need her father's blessing to legally marry.
But for themselves, they needed to have asked.
Stuart knocked on the door again, harder. It opened, and he stood face-to-face with Jacob Garrison at last.
The rancher blocked the threshold to his home as surely as the door had. Although Stuart stood taller, Garrison exuded authority. Even in a go-to-meeting suit, his white head bare, Garrison's posture bespoke power.
Which changed nothing.
“My name is Stuart MacCallum,” said Stuart, just in case the cattle baron had never bothered to peg a name to him.
Garrison said, “I know it.”
“It is time I spoke with you.” Stuart swallowed, hard, and managed to add, “sir.”
Mariah was this man's daughter, after all .
“I don't talk business on the Sabbath.” Garrison began to close the door in Stuart's face.
Stuart shouldered into the closing space. “This is not business.”
Garrison looked Stuart up and down, unimpressed.
“But it is important,” Stuart added—and that, too, was the truth. He'd never had a more important appointment ... next to filing his claim.
Maybe not even that.
For a moment, he feared the cattleman would not al ow him in. Afraid I'll stink up your mansion?
Then the older man moved out of the way in silent, begrudging invitation. Taking off his hat, Stuart stepped over the threshold and into Mariah's world.
A lush green rug brightened the front foyer, the kind that a clumsy footprint of mud or manure would likely ruin. Autumn flowers fanned out of a glass vase on a table, poised to be bumped to the floor with a misplaced elbow. Gas lamps hung from the ceiling, complete with crystal droplets to catch the sunlight, and the stairway boasted a sturdy, carved banister that Stuart could not imagine keeping his younger siblings off, should they ever live in such a place.
But his family did not live in such a place. Likely they never would.
Off to one side of the foyer sat an open parlor and six neatly dressed girls, some more familiar than others, staring at Stuart with frank curiosity. The only one who mattered, though, was Mariah, still wearing her fine Sunday dress. Wide-eyed, obviously unsure about this, she took a determined step toward him—
Even as Stuart began to raise his hand to signal her back—she could not help with what he had to say—she hesitated. He realized that her father had made the same gesture first.
Garrison led the way into a room with a huge desk and overstuffed furniture, an eight-foot pair of longhorns arched over the main chair. More framed pictures hung on the paneled wall than Stuart had ever seen outside of a photographer's studio, but he did not get the chance to study them, only caught a glimpse of faces, many of them Mariah's. Even after pulling the door shut, Garrison neither sat nor offered a seat to Stuart. He folded his arms and waited.
Stuart said, “I am here to ask for your daughter's hand in marriage.”
Garrison stared, his expression so blank that he either had not heard or could not grasp the meaning of the words.
“Your daughter Mariah,” Stuart qualified, since the man did have six. "I have a legal claim northeast of town and mean to prove up in four years. I have a home—a wagon, but it will keep her warm enough until I can build a house. My flock is small , but it will grow. Wool will always be needed."
Garrison continued to stare.
Stuart said, "I do not drink, or gamble, or consort with loose women. I attend church regularly. My wife and children will never go hungry, nor will I never raise my hand to them. And I intend to have your daughter Mariah as my wife."
Only when Garrison blinked did Stuart realize that, for most of his speech, the rancher had not even done that.
“I am no man for pranks, MacCallum,” drawled the rancher.
"This is no prank. I mean to cal on your daughter Mariah, and I am here to do you the courtesy of saying so. My intentions are honorable."
For a moment, humor lit Garrison's shadowed gaze— that, more than anything else, prodded awake the sullen hostility that coiled deep in Stuart's gut. "What makes you think any of my girls would have you?"
Because she said so. Because of how she looks at me, kisses me. But those reasons were for Mariah, if they should be spoken at all . “I believe she will consider it,” Stuart
hedged.
Perhaps even that was too much information. Garrison had not become one of the most powerful ranchers in the territory through stupidity, after all . His gaze sharpened as he obviously figured out the only sane reason Stuart would hold such a belief: through previous acquaintance with Mariah.
“Get,” said the rancher, barely a whisper but deadly as the hiss of a viper. “Now.”
Stuart said, “It is your house,” and turned to leave. Even lacking an answer, he'd done what he meant to.
But Garrison said, “Ain't stopped you before,” and Stuart hesitated. He looked, curious—and faced hatred.
He wondered, with a moment of discomfort, where Garrison kept his firearms.
“I have never been in your house.” That much, at least, Stuart could say. He was not proud of his and Mariah's secrecy, much less their behavior, but they'd never violated the sanctity of her father's home.
“My grass,” clarified Garrison. “My water. My range.”
He wasn't talking to Stuart at all . He was talking to a nameless, faceless sheepherder. Well he and the other cattlemen may have arrived first, but Wyoming had free range nevertheless. Free water.
Free grass.
So much for showing respect. “Not anymore,” said Stuart quietly.
Jacob Garrison, steel eyes glittering, said, “My daughter.”
Not anymore. But that was Mariah's decision to make now, not Stuart's.
“Good day,” Stuart said instead, and turned his back on this man's fury, walked into the foyer.
Mariah stood waiting at the foot of the stairs, one hand clutching the banister tight enough to turn her knuckles as white as her stricken face.
Stuart's heart ached, to see her distress. Had she thought her father would say yes? Was her love truly as blind as that?
But of course it was. Mariah's faith in human nature was only one of her many fine qualities. Likely he was taking advantage of that gentle blindness, to marry her away from this.
But he stared at her, and he knew that he would do almost anything to have her with him—if only she still agreed.
If only she could bear the troubles that faced them.
Stuart heard Garrison's boot-step behind him and wrenched his gaze away from Mariah to look back at the man who now thoroughly hated him—the man he meant to make his father-in-law.
Garrison was not looking at him, though. Garrison was looking at his daughter.
Questions burned in his gaze. Then a moment of betrayal. Then fury.
“Mariah Lynn,” drawled the rancher, voice gravel y and thick. “You got somethin' to tel me?”
Mariah's fine, gray gaze fluttered from her father to
Stuart and back, helpless and hurting. How could she possibly go against her father, her family ... her storybook world?
She parted her lips, but no sound came out.
It was asking too much. Stuart should have known all along. Perhaps he had.
He inclined his head slightly, but not so much that he had to wrench his gaze off of the sight she made. This might be the last he got to see her for some time. He would need to remember. "Miss Garrison,“ he said, low. ”Good day."
She stared, stricken, but said nothing. So be it.
Stuart turned to leave, the spot between his shoulder blades feeling more like a target than ever.
Garrison would not likely forgive this insolence. Stuart had been a fool.
But at least he'd been a fool for the finest woman he could ever have shared dreams with....
He opened the glass-paneled door himself, stepped out onto the verandah, reached the brick pathway.
Then he heard soft footsteps—and turned to see Mariah rushing after him. “Stuart!”
He stopped and she caught up to him, caught his hands with hers before he could even take off his hat. “Yes! Of course I wil marry you! That is...” She lowered her gaze, suddenly shy after having announced herself to the neighborhood. “If you still want me. I've been such a coward. But I do mean to marry you, if... if that's what you want.”
Stuart held her hands, so small and delicate, tightly in his own and he felt dizzy with surprise.
Relief. Joy.
With love.
Perhaps he was not such a fool, at that.
“I would be honored,” he assured her, surprising them both with a shudder of nervous laughter to his words. She's said yes— openly! “How could I not?”
She laughed with him, despite tears glittering in her soft eyes, and she clutched to his hands as if for strength. The nervousness beneath her joy drew Stuart's gaze upward from her to the dark form looming on the porch behind her.
Jacob Garrison's bearded face held a fury so potent it seemed to paralyze him—and it focused, full force, on the man with his daughter.
Stuart knew better than to assume that paralysis would last. “How can I cal on you?” he asked quickly, while he still could. He doubted he would be welcome through the doors of the Garrison house again! “May I walk you home after services on Sunday?”
“Next week?” asked Mariah.
Stuart felt his mouth stretch into an uncharacteristic grin. “Aye, next week. When else?”
“I—of course I will ! But won't I see you before then? We have so much to talk about!”
Several of Mariah's sisters crowded the front doorway, letting out the heat, listening to them.
Stuart saw Mrs. Garrison join her husband on the verandah, take hold of his arm. She was not a large woman. He doubted she could hold the rancher back for long.
“We'll talk on Sunday,” Stuart assured her, and squeezed her hands before releasing them, backing up, belatedly thumbing his hat brim. Then a horrible thought came to him, and again he raised his gaze to her father's silent fury. It still burned specifically at him, but... “You'll be all right until then, won't you?”
She fol owed his gaze, spun back to face him. "Me? Of course I will ! I'll —I'll make Papa understand...."
Papa growled.
Stuart continued to back away. Better her try to make the cattleman understand than him—as long as she was safe.
Only when he reached the tree-lined street and his old riding horse, and swung into its used saddle, did Stuart face the fancy Garrison home again. Despite its gazebo, its turret, its gables and bay windows, the finest part about it was the beautiful young woman lingering in front of it—and, behind her, the rancher who hated him.
But who hadn't moved to kill him. Yet.
Dizzy with warring emotions, Stuart chose hope—in honor of Mariah—and rode wisely away.
“I will see him dead first!”
Watching Stuart's broad shoulders as he rode off, still damp-eyed from her confusion of fear and guilt and joy, Mariah froze at her father's pronouncement.
He did not mean it, of course. He was just angry. Shocked, even, and that was her fault. She should have let him know before now.
But Papa could not mean to harm Stuart!
Mother said, quiet and firm, “We can discuss this inside.”
Mariah finally wrenched her gaze from Stuart to look back at her parents then, and her sisters behind them. Mother seemed perhaps too calm—set for a crisis—and Papa...
The infuriated questions in Papa's eyes made Mariah's stomach ache.
“Nothin' to discuss,” he said—but he could not mean that, either. He was her father, not some villainous guardian in one of Victoria's dime novels. Once he recovered from the surprise, surely he would see reason.
Wouldn't he?
Mariah looked quickly down the street once more, for reassurance, ignoring several shocked neighbors to watch Stuart ride across their bridge. For a fleeting moment, she wished he were waiting under it instead, wished she could sneak away to meet him, to find shelter in his strong arms, to lose herself in his embrace.
But they were courting properly now. With the intention of marriage. That had to be better than meeting in secret... once everyone understood.
Returning to the ve
randah, Mariah faced her father. “I wanted to tel you before now, Papa,” she insisted. “And I tried...”
He glared at her, silently demanding more from her than she even understood.
Mama took a deep, shuddering breath and said, “Oh, Mariah.”
And Laurel said, “Not a MacCallum!”
Papa turned and stalked inside. The younger girls scattered backward to make room.
Mama slid her arm around Mariah's waist—oh, how wonderful that gentle show of support felt—and followed him, closing the door behind them. “Girls, go upstairs,” she said to the others. “Jacob, don't you think we had best hear her out?”
Papa said, “Nope.”
Elise, squirming as Audra and Victoria herded her up the stairs, stuck her face between the posts to ask, “Is Mariah getting married?”
Again, Papa said, “Nope.”
As if that, at least, were not her decision to make! Mariah raised her chin and said, “Yes.”
Papa spun on her, then. “How do you know that man?”
The intensity of his question frightened her. “He ... I first met Stuart at school.”
The half-truth sounded too much like a lie, and Papa nodded suspiciously, eyes burning. He did not believe her—which made her memory of those secret meetings under the bridge, those longing looks across the church, feel even more damning.
But she had first met him at school!
Mama said, “Upstairs,” one more time—in the quiet voice that they never disobeyed—and then Mariah stood alone in the foyer with her parents.
“Stuart wanted to talk to you from the start,” she insisted, looking from one to the other, searching for the acceptance she'd never been without. "I'm the one who thought he shouldn't, who said we should keep our feelings secret until he had his claim. I can see now how wrong that was, but—but if you're angry at anyone, be angry at me."
“He took liberties with you,” Papa reckoned.
'Wo.'" But that was also a lie—at least, too close to a lie to be defended—and he seemed to know it. He turned sharply away, as if from an image too horrible to envision.
Mariah's face burned. "Stuart MacCallum has always been a gentleman with me! Any ... any liberties he might have taken ... I offered freely."