The Rocky Mountain Heiress Collection (44 page)
Read The Rocky Mountain Heiress Collection Online
Authors: Kathleen Y' Barbo
“Mae Winslow,” he said with more than a little admiration. “I heard you promised to end your crime fighting once you married.”
“I’m not married yet,” she protested, shielding her eyes from the sun’s glare.
He gave a deep chuckle that cut through her, then his face grew serious. “I’ve been wondering what was taking you so long to come after me,” he said in a slow drawl that accompanied a sweep of her prone person with his gaze.
Accustomed to such impertinence in men like this one, Mae looked past him to the still-soft patch of earth. From where she sat, she could easily reach the ring’s hiding place, but could she fetch the pouch and make good her escape without Dan catching her?
“It has always interested me,” she said as a plan formed, “that some men assume they garner more attention from women than is truly theirs.”
Mae scooted away from his shadow and slowly rose. As she expected, the overconfident Dan merely watched while she reached for the ribbon restraining her hair.
“Impossible,” he said with an arrogance that surprised her. “For you surely have come for what you want.”
“I have, at that.” Her heart beating faster, Mae forced a smile. “Indeed, you’ve found me out.” She inched forward. “For you see, I was watching you swing your shovel.”
One dark eyebrow rose, as did the corner of his mouth. With it, a pair of dimples appeared. Her statement had the desired effect, as Dakota Dan showed a keen interest in her every move.
Behind her back, Mae coiled the ribbon around her hand and
prepared to make good on her brilliant plan. All she needed was a distraction.
But Dakota Dan moved first, capturing her in a most brazen embrace. Eyes as blue as the Colorado sky caught her attention as his face drew near. She could hear his breathing, smell the scent of soap and saddle leather, see his jaw clench, watch the vein at his temple pulse.
Then the rogue had the audacity to capture her lips with his. She’d shared the occasional kiss with dear Henry, but this was, well…impertinent. Impossibly impertinent.
But to push him away might foil her plan. Resigned to endure the kiss, Mae waited.
Just then, the mare nickered. Dakota Dan turned toward the sound, and Mae sprang into action. Before the outlaw could gather his wits, Mae had his ankles knotted together with the most lovely length of pink ribbon she owned.
“A pity to leave it behind with the likes of you,” she said as she bolted over the confused man. She hoisted the shovel in her delicate hands and quickly unearthed the leather pouch.
A whistle, and the mare came racing through the brush, trailing the broken vine like an extra rein. Mae caught the saddle and slid into place, riding off toward town, Dakota Dan still fumbling at the ribbon binding his ankles behind her.
“Where have you been?” Mama called as Mae put on her most penitent look and pressed past her into the church. “At this rate, you’ve barely got enough time to don your gown. Oh, mercy, look at your hair. It’s full of tree branches.”
Drama was, indeed, Mama’s strong suit, for at best she’d borne a few leaves back with her from her escapade. Surely the speed of the horse’s gallop had removed all the rest.
Mae allowed but the briefest of attention to her toilette, including a mere sweep of a brush through her tangles. The pink ribbon gone, she settled for one the color of the Colorado sunset, then sent Mama off to join Papa at the church. One last look out the window toward the West, where she’d left Dakota Dan and her life of crime fighting behind, and she made for the door.
Long ago she’d promised the Lord to follow His lead. Today that path led to dear Henry and a long overdue wedding.
Some moments later, Mae Winslow slipped quietly into the vestibule just as the pastor called to the organist to begin the anthem. There she found dear Henry, who greeted her with a kiss more appropriate to the honeymoon than the wedding.
“I feared you’d not come, sweet flower,” he whispered, his gaze traveling the length of her.
“Nothing would keep me from this appointment,” she responded with the truest of hearts.
Dear Henry reached to pluck something—a twig—from her curls. “Not even your former career as a crime fighter?”
“No need to continue that career, Governor Daniels,” she said with a sly smile as she noticed his watch chain had been replaced with a pink ribbon. A familiar pink ribbon. “It appears Dakota Dan has been caught.”
“Permanently,” dear Henry said as he linked arms and led her toward the pastor, where the ring was finally set upon the right hand.
Or, rather, the left.
To Jess
Which rhymes with “bless”
For rescuing my mess!
And to my village
.
He was a dentist whom necessity had made a gambler; a gambler whom disease had made a vagabond; a philosopher whom life had made a caustic wit; a long, lean, blond fellow nearly dead with consumption and at the same time the most skillful gambler and the nerviest, speediest, deadliest man with a six-gun that I ever knew.
—
Wyatt Earp, regarding Doc Holliday
We had a little misunderstanding, but it didn’t amount to much.
—
Doc Holliday
Daybreak found Anna Finch astride her horse, Maisie, heading for the foothills west of Denver. Her father had given her the mare before he decided riding horses across the high plains was not for well-bred women of marriageable age.
As the youngest of five daughters, Anna had always been able to tug on her father’s heartstrings and get whatever she wanted from him, and what she’d wanted was a proper saddle. Not one of those sidesaddle contraptions where a lady had to balance herself and her bustles to avoid falling and injuring more than just her pride. Despite her mother’s vocal protests, Anna soon had exactly what she wished for. That old saddle still served her well, though Papa long ago believed she’d retired it, along with her habit of watching the sun rise out on the prairie, astride a trusty horse.
As an observer of people, Anna had learned by watching her sisters, who’d been forced to give up all but the most docile pursuits, that there would come a day when this would be asked of her too.
And once that day came, she’d no longer have the freedom to ride like the wind. Instead, she’d be left knitting in some parlor, praying for a breeze.
Shrugging off the thought, Anna urged her horse to a trot and let the mare find her own pace across the plain. Wild streaks of orange and gold teased a sky painted deepest purple as she loosened her hairpins and tossed them behind her.
If the maids wondered why they had to fetch so many hairpins from the mercantile, they never said. Nor did anyone question why Anna’s skirts were often coated in trail dust or why the occasional set of youth-sized trousers found their way into the carpetbag she carried on her rides. Those who resided under the Finch roof, be they servant or family, preferred a sort of self-induced blindness that relegated all but the most obvious to the edges of their vision. And sometimes even the obvious was missed.
Anna, on the other hand, prided herself in seeing details. As a girl, she’d begun the custom of writing in a journal. Once the risk of Mama or Papa coming across a written record of her life became a concern, Anna had turned to poetry and, on occasion, fiction. Writing poems and stories couldn’t be counted against her, she reasoned, so she’d created characters and events that gave her staid life in Denver a sparkle it might not otherwise have.
Her dream, however, was to use her love of writing to make a difference. Wouldn’t Mama and Papa be shocked to know their youngest daughter’s fondest wish was to become a journalist? She smiled at the idea of someday seeing her byline beneath a headline on the front page of the
Rocky Mountain News
or the
Denver Times
.
Maisie sidestepped a rift in the ground, jolting Anna back to a more careful observation of the trail ahead.
It did not escape her that tomorrow was May Day. How odd to think that the girls at Wellesley College would don their best gowns tomorrow morning and make merry at the May Day celebration, just as Anna had each year while there. Odder still that she’d gone from that to this, from a woman longing to be a wife to a woman bent on escaping the title by writing about it.
But that was another story, one she’d told time and again through the now-retired character Mae Winslow—named for the May Day celebration that spawned the first story.
Even her best friend Eugenia Cooper Beck, ironically one of Mae’s biggest fans, had no idea the real author of those embarrassing dime novels was Anna Finch herself.
Or had been, Anna corrected as another hairpin went flying. She’d negotiated for a dozen of those silly books, falling into the career backwards when a story she wrote as a joke for her literature class at Wellesley was mailed to an editor at Beadle & Adams on a dare.
Still, Mae’s stories had given Anna a venue for expressing how she felt about the confining institution of marriage as embodied by the arranged alliances her sisters had made. The fact that the only way she could get out of her contract was to marry the character off still galled Anna. At least she had escaped with a nice sum, now gathering interest at the National Bank of Boston.
An amount she would have gladly traded for the opportunity to garner a different type of interest from Daniel Beck, the only man
who’d made her reconsider her feelings about donning the shackles of a wedding gown. However, her handsome neighbor, now Gennie’s husband, had never seen her as anything more than the girl next door.
Another hairpin fell, and a strand of hair blocked her vision. She swiped at it and shook her hair free to blow in the fresh breeze. The last day of April looked to dawn kind and gentle rather than with the harsh chill of last week. It was still cold enough, however, for Anna to wish she’d chosen clothes for greater warmth rather than greater anonymity.