She selected two loaves of bread, a brick of cheese, and a goodly supply of meat—ham and bacon being her main choices because they wouldn’t spoil as quickly as fresh chicken or beef.
A rattling sound made Brianna’s heart catch. She froze and stopped breathing to listen, hoping against hope that it wasn’t the restaurant owner. The tension eased from her shoulders when she determined that the sound was only a shutter flapping at a window.
Thank you, God
. It would be just like that filthy-minded old lecher to sneak in when he knew she was here alone. He considered it his privilege to corner her in the kitchen. Brianna detested the feel of his groping hands.
He’d probably never notice tomorrow that he was missing food. Keeping a proper inventory was one of his greatest failings. That would work in her behalf. The last thing
she needed was to be apprehended by a Glory Ridge posse and incarcerated for theft.
Brianna picked up the lantern and bent to grab the pillowcase she’d packed with food. It was heavier than she anticipated. How would she manage to carry their possessions, the food, and Daphne to the livery stable at the same time? Only with the good Lord’s help . . .
W
Until coming to Glory Ridge, David had watched his mouth only when he was with his brothers’ wives and kids and around ladies in town. Otherwise he had talked anyhow he wished. He guessed those days were gone forever. Brianna could go to the devil, but he’d be damned if he taught his daughter to speak like a cowpoke.
He heeled the dirt again, wondering if the earth here was packed clay. His ass—well, okay, his
behind
—ached like a son of a bitch. He tensed, realizing with a jerk of his stomach that he couldn’t even manage clean language when he was thinking. How was he going to raise a daughter to be a fine lady? His ma had taught him right, and Ace had added ear cuffing as an incentive. David had just wandered away from good manners over time while overseeing rough-edged cowhands at his ranch and equally coarse
deputies in town. When you were around bad language, you picked it up. It wasn’t as if he was beyond salvation. With some practice, he’d do okay.
A rectangle of yellow spilled from the open livery doors, the source coming from a lantern hanging inside the barn. Occasionally, when the breeze let up, David could hear the hiss of the lamp. He stared up at the last-quarter moon, resembling a ball that had been cut in two. Judging by the moon’s position, still rather low, it had to be around midnight. How long had he been there—three hours or more? Where was that infernal woman? He knew she planned to run tonight, and she struck him as being too smart to attempt a long jaunt afoot. She’d appear at the livery, sooner or later.
An awful thought occurred to him. Judging by her speech, she might hail from Boston, and even though she’d worked as a housekeeper and governess on a ranch for years, that didn’t necessarily mean she’d acquired wisdom about the wilds of Colorado. What if she had it in her head to walk to some town? The thought scared David half to death. With a diminished moon, it was dark out there on the prairie, and the terrain crawled with dangers: a few rattlesnakes that were emerging from their dens with the coming of spring; hungry coyotes that had survived a long, hard winter; and, damn it, maybe even a stray mountain lion. Big cats didn’t commonly frequent the prairies, but they had large hunting territories, and when the game grew scarce, which it might have done during the snow season, they went farther afield. Prairie dogs made a nice snack. A hungry coyote was also fair game. So was a damned fool woman, stumbling along in the darkness with a child. Her highfalutin manner wouldn’t intimidate a puma. David pictured the confrontation, with Brianna braced for battle against a predator with lethal teeth and claws. He could almost hear her say, “I beg your pardon,
suh
.”
David was about to leap to his feet when a shuffling sound reached him. He had needle-sharp night vision. Gaze routing through the silvery darkness, he picked out a shape moving toward him, a little over five feet tall and bulky, as wide at the bottom as at the top. As the figure came closer,
he was able to see more clearly. It was a woman in skirts, carrying a child over one shoulder and two large bags in each hand. David relaxed against the barn. She shouldn’t be carrying that kind of weight. It was what his ma called a lazy man’s load.
Brianna stumbled, tripped on her skirts, and almost fell. Then, straightening from a weaving, bent-over stance, she regained her balance and plodded forward. David remained in the shadows, relief mingling with annoyance. At least the woman had sense enough not to set out afoot. Once again he had to admire her grit, although he deplored her actions. Here she was, planting one foot in front of the other even as her strength failed her. Damn her stubborn pride.
She staggered past him, never noticing him in the shadows, and entered the livery, stumbling to a stop just inside the doors. The child was double wrapped in both her own new cloak and what looked like her mother’s cape, which left Brianna with no protection from the cold except for her threadbare dress. Where was her shawl?
“Hello?” she called as she stepped from David’s sight. “Wake up, my good fellow! I need to hire a horse!”
Did she even know how to ride? David settled back, prepared to be entertained. He doubted the bloke who manned the nightshift would rent out the gentlest, or soundest, steed in the stable to a greenhorn. Why offer good horseflesh to someone who wouldn’t recognize it?
David heard plaintive grumbling and then a man’s footsteps. The voice that rang out was not the livery owner’s but that of a younger fellow. “How do, Mrs. Paxton. What brings you here at this hour?”
Brianna replied, “I need to hire a horse, sir.”
“For what?”
“For transportation. Why else does one hire a horse?”
“Where you heading,” the man asked, “and when will you be back?”
“I have no plans to return,” Brianna replied. “I will be dropping the horse off at a livery in some nearby town.”
The fellow laughed. The tone had a decidedly nasty
edge. “We only hire out horses for round-trips. We can’t have one of our mounts dumped off somewhere. We’ve got no way to get it back.”
“Oh, well.” David could almost hear Brianna’s mental wheels spinning. “Then how much to
buy
a horse, sir?”
The stable hand took his time answering. “Well, now, a hundred and fifty dollars ought to do it. Unless you’re feelin’ accommodatin’ and want to make a trade with me to lower the price. I just freshened the hay in our one empty stall. It’s ready for use.”
“I beg your pardon?” David had heard that note in Brianna’s voice earlier and knew it didn’t bode well for the guy on the receiving end. “Are you suggesting something inappropriate, sir? I will remind you that you are speaking to a lady.”
David could see where this was heading and pushed to his feet to intervene. Before he came fully erect, he heard the stable hand say, “A lady, you say? The word is out now. Everyone in town knows your girl is the by-blow of some cowpoke who just rode into town and married you six years too late. From where I’m standing, I don’t see no lady, just a gal with way too high an opinion of herself and up for the taking by any man who can pay her price. Hell, even that dress is indecent, so tight across your bosoms I can see your nipples plain as day.”
As he stepped through the doors, David heard Brianna gasp at the insult. At a glance, he saw that she’d deposited the snoozing Daphne on a hay bale. Now she stood with the filled bags, old pillowcases judging by the looks of them, lying at her feet. Her slender body braced with outrage, she faced the livery worker with her chin held so high she was in danger of getting a crick in her neck. David stepped abreast of her, taking the other man’s measure. Flicking back his duster to expose his Colts, he met the fellow’s gaze, which went from hostile to cautious in a blink. The distinct smell of whiskey met David’s nostrils.
“This
lady
is my wife,” David said, keeping his voice level. “She needs to buy a horse and tack for a fair price. A hundred and fifty dollars is outrageous, and you know it. I
could buy three fair to middling mounts, possibly four, for that amount.”
The skinny, shabbily dressed employee paled visibly.
Startled by the sound of David’s voice, Brianna whirled to face him, her expression incredulous. He noted with a glance that the stable hand was right. The cold night air had her nipples standing at attention like well-trained cadets.
“You!”
Words seemed to fail her for a moment. “What are you—? You’re supposed to be at the hotel asleep!”
“Or so you
thought
.” David winked at her, which he figured was wiser than scowling. He didn’t like it when people said they would do one thing and did another. “Never underestimate your opponent. You set yourself up for nasty surprises.”
The stable hand’s eyes flicked from David’s implacable face to the guns he wore, and he appeared to shrink into his clothes. Gesturing weakly toward the nearest stall, he wet his lips and managed, “This one’s an okay mount.”
With one look, David noted that the gelding had a swayback and unsound knees. He rejected it out of hand. Aware that Brianna had retreated to curl an arm protectively over the sleeping child, he felt his temper flare. She acted as if he were an insane, murderous child abductor. The thought maddened him. He lived by his honor, and he expected others to do the same. On top of her failure to stand behind her word, she’d been about to embark on a fool’s journey. It was one thing to endanger herself, quite another when it involved his daughter. Possibly she didn’t realize how perilous her actions could have been, but he wasn’t in any mood to consider both sides right now.
Two stalls down, David selected a nice-looking bay with far better conformation. He quickly negotiated a price, bearing in mind that the owner of the livery was a decent fellow and would be the one to take the financial hit if David bid too low.
Once the haggling was over, David began saddling the horses and his mule. At that point, Brianna finally found her voice to protest.
“Now that you’ve foiled my plans, Mr. Paxton,” she said crisply, “I see no point in leaving in the middle of the night.
We can postpone this madness until morning and travel by daylight like normal people.”
Standing at the opposite side of Blue, David flipped a stirrup strap up over the saddle and shot his reluctant bride a burning look. “Your decision to take off tonight suits me just fine.”
“Earlier, a journey on horseback was my only recourse, sir, not my chosen mode of transportation. If you’re bent on taking us out of here, a stage would be far less taxing on both me and the child.”
The lantern light cast dark hollows beneath her delicate cheekbones. Under her green eyes, the smudges of exhaustion had become so pronounced that they had the dark, purplish hue of bruises. David could see how played out she was, and he had no intention of pushing her too hard. However, he wasn’t willing to return to the hotel and trust her to stay put until morning. She’d made that impossible, and she’d have to suffer the consequences. High time this feisty female learned that David Paxton said what he meant and meant what he said.
Kneeing Blue’s belly and jerking on the cinch, David replied, “I’ll make accommodations along the trail as comfortable as possible for you and the child.”
“How magnanimous of you!”
Lowering the stirrup and patting Blue’s neck, David tossed her a forced smile. “I’m not about to give you a second chance to sneak away. You’d drop out of sight, and I’d play hell trying to find you.”
Two bright spots of guilty color touched her pale cheeks.
“We’ll ride out tonight,” David said with finality. “And we’ll travel by horseback until you come to accept this marriage. If that means riding all the way to No Name, so be it. I’m not taking you into some strange town where you can start screaming that I’ve kidnapped you and plead your case before another judge. Custody of my daughter hangs in the balance.”
“She is
not
your daughter!”
David bit down hard on his back teeth. When he’d gotten a firm grip on his ire, he looked her dead in the eye and said, “I’ve got an order signed by a judge that says different.
I’m not a man who riles easily, but if you say that one more time, I’m likely to get mad. I mean
really
mad. Needle me any other way, but no more about Daphne not being mine.”
“And if I refuse to leave with you?” she challenged.
He shrugged. “Then I’ll take my child and be on my way. I never said you have to come. Stay here if you like. You can keep in touch with Daphne by writing letters, and anytime you change your mind, I’ll pay your way to Denver.”
Sparkling tears beaded on her dark lashes, forming them into spikes that outlined her beautiful eyes with shimmering black. “You can’t just
take
my daughter,” she cried.
“Watch me.” David patted one of the saddlebags. “The law is on my side. That document, signed and stamped by Judge Afton, says I’m your husband and the father of that child. I have every right to take her. You can come, or you can stay. I don’t give a damn which.”
Brianna could barely contain her outrage. Not knowing which offense to address first, she blurted out, “A
proper
husband would have boxed that livery attendant’s ears for saying such scandalous things to his wife!”