Forgetting Herself

by Yvonne Jocks

  Her new sun hat emphasized her nod, earnestly seconding his opinion.

  Since that didn't accomplish much, Stuart asked, “What do you mean to do about it?”

  The sheriff snorted—so much for respect. “Critter's dead, son. What else needs doing?”

  “Finding who did it?” Stuart felt Mariah watching him, and that made him uncomfortable, too.

  “Wel , now, that might be a touch difficult,” said the sheriff, just as Stuart had expected. "Coulda been anyone bel ed that cat. For al I know, it could've been one of you herders, wanting to make out how you're being ... now how did they put it, Franklin?"

  “Abused and harassed,” offered the deputy.

  The sheriff said, “Abused and harassed.”

  Now Da couldn't stand it, either. "That wouldna be too smart, fixing a cougar to feed on our own stock!"

  Stuart winced inwardly at the perfect opportunity that gave the lawmen to comment on the intel igence of sheep farmers.

  But Mariah spoke first. “It could have kil ed me, Sheriff Ward!”

  The sheriff actual y made a noise as if he cared. But what he said was, "Now what were you doing out near them wool ybacks, Miss Mariah?"

  Miss Mariah. It had bothered Stuart when Dawson cal ed her that; it al but grated on him now. He knew, then, what most bothered him about the lawmen's deference to his wife.

  They were treating her as a lady despite her being his wife, not because of it. She'd put on stockings and shoes to come to town, and a fresh dress. It occurred to Stuart that she'd brought al of it—even the stockings—from her parents' home. With the exception of her hat, he'd not bought her clothing once since their marriage.

  Left with him, she'd probably stil be faded and barefoot___

  “I brought my husband his lunch,” Mariah insisted, glancing sidelong at Stuart, a touch of confusion clouding her fine gray eyes. Did she sense his displeasure? "And while I was looking for my pet lamb, I came upon the cougar. Stuart shot before it could hurt me," she added loyal y.

  And he had.

  But she had been with the sheep, to get into danger in the first place.

  The sheriff said, “Wel that is lucky.” As if skil and alertness played no part in it at al .

  On some level, Stuart recognized his resentment for the overreaction it surely was. Mariah knew him better than anybody in the world; he had nothing to prove to her. But he did his best to sound particularly calm and rational when he asked, “Can you look into who might have done this?”

  He didn't even add, you might start with men who can rope wild animals. Someone—probably a handful of someones—had to hold the beast stil long enough to tie a bel on, after al .

  “Wel now, son,” drawled the sheriff. “As I said, that might be a touch difficult. But if I come across anything, I'l be sure to let you know.”

  And that was it. As usual.

  Stuart felt... foolish. Over reactive. Paranoid.

  Damn it, with a bel ed cat dead in his wagon, how could he feel paranoid?

  But more than anything, he felt angry.

  Mariah said, “You're being too modest, Sheriff. Couldn't you ask some questions?”

  Ward puffed up some. "Wel , I do know a few folks who tend to hear things, Miss Mariah. I'l see what—"

  “Mrs. MacCal um.” He couldn't keep it in any longer.

  Ward, Franklin, Mariah—even Da looked at Stuart with surprise. To her credit, Mariah tucked her arm under Stuart's and smiled gently at the lawmen. "Shame on me, letting you be so informal, Sheriff Ward!"

  Was she flirting? Not flirting to attract romantic interest, of course—even angrier than he'd felt in a long time, Stuart would never believe that of her... even with men more attractive than these.

  But she was manipulating them with her smiles and her ladylike manners. Even that, after the day he'd had, frustrated him deeper than he ever would have expected.

  Even if, this time, it didn't work.

  “If I come across anything, Mrs. MacCal um,” drawled Ward, “I'l let you know.”

  From the disrespect in his tone, he might as wel have been talking to Stuart.

  Or Emily. Or Bonny.

  Mariah blinked, clearly taken aback, while her two al ies headed back into their office with only the shortest, “Folks” by way of good-bye. It felt like watching her be snubbed by her cousin's wife al over again.

  “There 'tis,” sighed Da, and swung himself back into Pooka's saddle. Stuart had insisted on driving, to be closer to Mariah. Now, helping her silently into the wagon again, he wondered if that had been so wise a choice.

  Her back seemed a little arched itself. And he did not feel steady enough to deal with whatever she meant to say.

  Al she did say, when he settled into the driver's seat beside her, was, “I wonder what Sheriff Ward intended to see, by asking questions.”

  Stuart released the brake. “Giddap!” Only as the wagon lurched into motion did he add, more quietly, “Nothing that would have helped us.”

  “You can't know that,” Mariah insisted.

  “I can,” Stuart insisted right back. And maybe she heard something in his tone, because she did not pursue the argument.

  He felt somehow that he should apologize. He loved her, after al —even annoyed with her, he loved her as much as life. Had the mountain lion hurt her or, God forbid...

  He could not bear to imagine it, much less how it would have destroyed him.

  Surely, compared to that, it was petty not to apologize for resenting her ladylike composure, for snapping at her friend the sheriff. And yet...

  Something ugly inside him was not sorry. That ugliness resented not just her ladylike composure but the way it got her a respect that marriage to him could not. It resented being reminded that she'd been safer before she met him since—as this afternoon proved—accidents could indeed happen. It resented the fact that his sisters, who had never secretly met a boy beneath a kissing bridge, could not garner the respect she could... just because of who their father was.

  He recognized the ugliness of those feelings, and the unfairness. Mariah had not been under that bridge alone. But recognizing it was about as much as his decency could manage, for the moment.

  Mariah had neither prompted nor deserved Stuart's anger. Best to hold his tongue until he could better control it.

  Then she asked, hesitant, "Could we please drive by my parents' town house? As long as we're here, I'd like..."

  She faltered to silence when Stuart slid his gaze to her. He knew what she'd meant to say, as surely as he'd predicted the sheriff's dismissal. She wanted to stop at Old Man Garrison's mansion for "a few more things." She usual y did, when they came into town on a weekday.

  She did not have enough room in his caravan to keep much, and so had left too many of her belongings behind when she married him. Damned if that didn't make him feel guilty, too.

  “Never mind,” she said, softly.

  But he drove the team silently toward the tree-lined street that was named after her mother, to her family's three-story mansion, anyway. In a spring-wagon. With a dead mountain lion in back.

  God forbid he feel guilty about denying her whatever it was she wanted this time, too.

  “Thank you,” said Mariah, when she saw what direction he'd headed.

  Stuart said nothing. Not when he reined the team into Garrison's drive, around to the back of the house, and drew them to a stop. Not when Mariah kissed him on the cheek and hopped down

  from the wagon, hurrying over to the kitchen door—which was opened by the latest of the

  Garrison housekeepers.

  Da, who'd never seen the Garrison place before, rode up beside Stuart as he sat waiting. Looking from the towering shade trees to the carriage house to the mansion itself, his father whistled between his teeth. “By al that's holy, lad. Could be we should've run cattle!”

  Then, Stuart said something.

  Too much of it, at that.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

&
nbsp; Mariah did not take very much from her room this time; it wasn't as if she had anyplace to put excess. But she did select a white shirtwaist and blue skirt to start wearing to church, since her most recent Sunday dress was fading, and a careful y wrapped vase she'd brought home from Italy.

  She also took the weekly story papers that her mother stacked in the pantry for her when the family finished with them. Those wouldn't take a great deal of room. She would give the ones she'd already finished to Emily MacCal um.

  “Won't you take some fruit with you, dearie?” asked Mrs. Sawyer as Mariah tied her latest treasures into a bundle with a flour-sack towel. Mrs. Sawyer was taking care of Thaddeas and the house while Mariah's family spent their summer on the ranch. If the part-time housekeeper had opinions about Mariah's marriage, she kept them to herself.

  Mariah considered the bowl of peaches and oranges, imported from southern states, and her mouth watered for such a delicacy. She'd skipped lunch, after al .

  But ever since the incident with Mother MacCal um and the Christmas cookies, Mariah was careful not to bring food home from her parents' house. It might reflect badly on Stuart.

  So she shook her head, said thank you, and hurried back out the door before her husband or father-in-law could grow impatient.

  But her husband had apparently passed impatient.

  “—with the sheriff?” Stuart was asking, sounding angry. Again.

  “She did have a way with her,” agreed Mr. MacCallum—and Mariah realized they were talking about her.

  “No,” said Stuart. "Her father's money had a way with her. Did you not see it? As long as she was Miss Mariah, she could do no wrong. And why? Because Ward and his lackey looked at her, but they saw Old Man Garrison. As soon as she admitted to being Mrs. MacCal um, they treated her as badly as they do you and me."

  Mr. MacCal um saw Marian coming and cleared his throat.

  “And why would she admit to being Mrs. MacCallum?” demanded Stuart, oblivious. “Especial y since she stil cannot see what a robber baron her father real y—”

  “Whist,” insisted his father, yielding subtlety a few words too late.

  “—is,” finished Stuart... and slowly turned on the wagon seat to face her, brows flat, eyes squinting.

  Clutching her bundle, Mariah stared back. She wasn't sure facing the mountain lion had stunned her so. She knew Stuart did not like how their interview with Sheriff Ward had gone—

  —despite that Stuart himself had spoiled that—

  —but he thought the sheriff and deputy had only been polite because of her papa's money?

  He thought she didn't want people to think of her as married?

  He thought her father was a robber baron?

  She'd hoped it didn't real y matter what he believed about her family ... until she heard him slandering them.

  Mariah's first instinct was to run back into the house and up the stairs, to lock herself in the room that she'd shared with Laurel for so many years. But she was no child—and that would mean showing Mrs. Sawyer that something was wrong. Even with the betrayal of Stuart's words crashing over her, Mariah would not do that.

  After everything she'd put her family through to marry Stuart, the last thing she could do was let them think she wasn't...

  Let them think he didn't...

  No. She circled him and the wagon slowly, stil half disbelieving what she'd heard. Then she darted into the safety of the carriage house and, past that, the stables. She'd always found comfort around horses—their warmth, their smel , their intel igence. Horses put her in mind of her father.

  The robber baron.

  It didn't help that one of the horses stabled here was Mariah's old mare, Buttercup. Her sisters had promised to ride the palomino regularly, after Mariah married. So why wasn't she out at the Circle-T?

  Buttercup tossed her golden head, dark eyes liquid beneath a fal of com-silk forelock, and snorted hel o. She stil remembered Mariah, even after al these months.

  Then the horse ducked her head, rol ed her eyes, and Stuart said, “Mariah ... ?”

  She walked over to Buttercup, petted her velvety nose. She wished she'd accepted the fruit after al . Poor Buttercup, neglected al these weeks while Mariah bottle-fed a lamb, might like a slice of peach.

  “I did not mean for you to hear that,” offered Stuart.

  “That doesn't make it al right,” said Mariah.

  “No. I don't suppose it does.”

  But that had always been one of Stuart's problems—or hers. He couldn't make things al right, could he? Not always. Not like she'd hoped he could.

  “My father,” said Mariah, scratching behind her palomino's ear, “is no robber baron.”

  Stuart said nothing.

  Mariah turned back to him. “He isn't.”

  Stuart stood in the doorway from the stables to the carriage house, his hands spread—stil silent.

  That was when the hurt truly set in, infecting no one part of her, but her very being. The man before her was so very familiar. She knew those heavy-lidded eyes and outward-slanting brows, knew that faintly cleft chin and rounded jaw—and the feel and taste of his set mouth. She knew how his thick hair, the color of dark wheat, felt under her fingers. She knew those broad, set shoulders; and that thick chest; and those solid legs, planted stubbornly as he quietly waited for her to realize how blind she was being about her father.

  This was Stuart, her husband, and she'd loved him almost as soon as she'd known him....

  But her hurt, soul-deep, came from the fear that she'd never completely known him at al .

  “I am sorry, Mariah,” said Stuart.

  Even worse than the fear of not real y knowing him was the temptation to run to him, let him hold her, beg him to lie to her some more. Because if she let herself do that, it wasn't just Stuart she wouldn't know. She'd forget herself, as wel .

  So despite how she ached to touch him, to let him anchor her yet again, Mariah asked, "Are you sorry for what you said, or for me hearing it?"

  Stuart's brows leveled in frustration. “Both,” he admitted.

  She tried again. “My father is no robber baron.”

  Stuart thought for a moment, then said, “Could be he's not.”

  Could be, humoring her was a mistake. “Are you jealous of him, Stuart?”

  His eyes narrowed into a darker scowl.

  "My father was a respected cowboy and soldier and trail boss, too, and money had nothing to do with it. He earned men's respect. And he earned his fortune in cattle, the honest way, because he risked starting a ranch in the wilderness—real wilderness, not a hundred and sixty acres of rocks and sagebrush—and he stuck with it. And he's never blamed anybody, not anybody, for his setbacks. He's never blamed the Union for bankrupting Texas. He's never blamed the fanners for chasing the drovers out of Kansas. And as much as he hates sheep, I don't think I've ever heard him blame you for the overgrazed range, either. If anything sets my father apart from you, Stuart MacCal um, it's that."

  She was shaking by time she finished, shaking from the words she was throwing at the man she loved. She already regretted saying them, doubly regretted her hurtful tone.

  But at least they were the truth.

  “Is that al ?” asked Stuart, low.

  And oh, she wanted it to be al , but somehow the words kept coming. "It's not fair that people don't like sheep farmers, Stuart. But that doesn't give you the right to distrust al cattlemen. That's not fair either. Have you considered that maybe people like Sheriff Ward would be more wil ing to help you if you were a little ... friendlier?"

  Stuart said, “Your da is nae a friendly man, and he does al right.”

  “And you think that's because he has money.”

  He scowled, said nothing at al .

  Buttercup bumped Mariah's shoulder with her nose and snorted horsey breath into her hair.

  “This is my horse,” announced Mariah, no longer sure what she was saying, just that she somehow, somehow had to make him understand. "
Her name is Buttercup, and she's been my horse since I was twelve. She's lady-broke, and I used to ride her sidesaddle—with that sidesaddle," she added, pointing toward the wal of tack, "—al the time. Papa said to take her with me, when I went to live with your parents, and again when I married you. He said I was the only one who could sel my saddle—that's cowboy talk for giving up cattle, Stuart. Sel ing your saddle. But I didn't take it, or Buttercup, because I didn't want you to think expensive things like that mattered to me. But they do matter to me, Stuart, even if it's not because they're expensive. You just mattered more."

  Stuart swal owed. When he released a breath, took another, his chest fel and rose with the force of it, and his voice caught. “Now I don't?”

  “I didn't say that!”

  He waited, his brown eyes hurt and accusing, and Marian couldn't fight the need to go to him any longer. Even if she lost everything—her pride, her security, even herself—she could not stand here while Stuart looked at her like that.

  So she went to him, hay crackling under her shoes, and she tentatively took one of his slack hands in hers. She wished he would hold her—or at least hold her hand. He did neither.

  . “You stil matter more, Stuart MacCal um,” she said. She looked up at him; into his familiar, sullen face; into his heavy-lidded, dark brown eyes. Her own eyes burned, and he blurred in front of her.

  “You have always, wil always matter most of al . I just...”

  He waited.

  “I just don't understand why I have to choose,” Mariah admitted, voice breaking. “I've accepted it, and I choose you, but I never understood ...”

  It wasn't until Stuart's fingers closed tightly around hers that she began to cry in earnest.

  He did not pull her against him as she wished he would, as he had so often before. But he did raise his free hand to her face, traced tears off her cheeks.

  “You ought not have to choose, at that,” he murmured, voice thick. “Dinna cry. I never meant to make you cry...”

  And since she hadn't meant to make him feel guilty, she just cried harder.

  Stuart kissed her forehead—then squeezed her hand once more and stepped away. Panicked,

  Mariah swiped the back of her hand across her eyes, turned to fol ow him. He couldn't leave her!