Magic and the Texan (2 page)

“She wouldn't have got much in him. Stinkingest varmint between San Antonio and Laredo, her brother. I might as well give it to you straight, Beth honey. The closest lawman is in San Antonio. Outlaws cotton to La Salle County. But don't worry, not one whit. You won't suffer for ruffians. My word is law on the Caliente. I'll take care of you.”

Always, Bethany had yearned to hear such a pledge from someone like Jon Marc O'Brien. Her chest tightened. Before being handed the chance to become his wife, she'd had no life, no future, and had been betrayed by all she'd held dear.

But luck had finally smiled at her, through the benevolence of an angel and a twist of fate. Fallen she might be, yet she hadn't arrived with malice, and she still had worth, lots of worth. All she needed was a chance to prove it.

“I promise to take good care of you and your home,” she said in a voice both soft and earnest.

She'd keep her word, but it wasn't by rights hers to make, and never had been. If truth be told, Bethany had been more than put through her paces. This saddle-broken miss wasn't even Jon Marc's mail-order bride.

Elizabeth Ann Buchanan, pious Catholic lady better known as Beth, was the one who got bitten by that serpent—not Hoot Todd's sister.

It was as plain as Jon Marc O'Brien's soap-ugly face: his bride-to-be didn't like him.

Still hurt that she'd barely looked at him, much less smiled, he set the last of Beth's valises in the beflowered wagon, then peered at the porch of the post office, where the postmaster—who didn't believe in marriage, sight unseen—stewed in a straight chair while braiding rawhide into a whip, Stumpy at his side. Mostly, Jon Marc saw the medium-tall lady, neither stout nor skinny, who hadn't accepted Liam's offer to make herself at home in one of the chairs.

Jon Marc had stared at her tintype, now tucked in a coat pocket, times too numerous to count. With a veil covering her face in the photograph, he hadn't been able to make out her features. In person she was more than he'd counted on. He'd gotten very lucky, just to have a chance with her. Lovely, just lovely was his Beth.

She wore a straw Gypsy bonnet tied with a ribbon beneath a sweet face of high cheekbones and a wide forehead, and the prettiest eyes and the smoothest skin in the Lone Star State. Her hat rode atop midnight black hair pulled back, tight as a tick, and skewered beneath her bonnet. Her sea green traveling suit had a prim collar, but the jacket stretched a tad snug across the bodice. Her bosom caught his attention, secondary to Jon Marc's knowing this was a diamond of many facets.

She fit his requirements for a wife; her virtues met the standards that poets spent their imaginations praising. Her arrival on his birthday—well, it was magic. A gift. The culmination of a wish on a magic lamp, made long ago by his supposed aunt, Tessa O'Brien Jinnings.

Tessa, who had wished him a bride on this particular birthday.

Unlike his two half brothers, Jon Marc had met magic with planning. Careful planning. Knowing that today would dawn, he'd made certain, before laying eyes on Beth Buchanan, that his bride would be the cream of the crop.

Cream had never been creamier. Musical and poetic; educated in a convent, and had stayed on after her schooling was over; daughter of the noble, recently deceased Aaron Buchanan, cattle broker in Wichita. At her dying father's behest, she hadn't returned to the cloister.

Although it had taken quite a bit of asking for her hand, she had agreed to become a ranch wife, not long after her father's death, and here she was.

But where was the feisty Beth of the letters, quick to debate and speak her mind? She struck Jon Marc as young, alone, and too scared to confess her heart by saying she liked neither the town nor the man.

How could he ensure her happiness?

A poet would form the right words. Jon Marc wasn't a poet. He was a brush popper with an appreciation for verse, period. At this point in time, he wished—man alive! how he wished!—he'd gotten more accustomed to the company of ladies, as his two half brothers had done before marriage.

Considering the mess he'd made of himself, his first time out of the chute, with a certain San Antonio widow, he frowned. Persia Glennie had tutored him, amongst a host of lessons, to “take care how you kiss a lady, else you'll stick your big nose in her mouth.”

Persia had smoothed a few of his bedroom talents, yet he remained green as grass in the areas of sweet-talking a lady. Like when he'd tried to compliment Beth. To disappointing results. He must keep trying.

Dusting his hands, he approached the porch and climbed the three steps. Beth retreated, a scant backward movement of her shoulders, as if she feared he might touch her.

“Y'all 'bout ready for the big event?” Liam asked from his chair, his brows wiggling at the bridegroom.

Jon Marc rubbed fingers across his lips.
I thought you said her eyes-uz blue.

“Are you ready?” he asked her.

“Yes. Let's do go on to the church.”

He blinked twice at Beth's suggestion. Several times in her letters, she'd objected to being wed by a “foreign” priest. Padre Miguel had been born in this area, and had more right to call himself a Texan than most who did. San Antonio being too far to travel to exchange vows in front of an Anglo priest, the Caliente too precarious to leave, lest Hoot Todd wreak havoc on the place, Jon Marc had begged her indulgence.

Apparently his argument had worked, but he wanted to make certain. “You're agreeable to Padre Miguel marrying us?”

She kept her head lowered while replying, “I have no objection. I want what you want.”

“Ain't that peculiar, no objection?” Liam put in. “Sorta goes with the eyes.”

Jon Marc studied the big hazel eyes that refused to meet his stare. Curious. Why had she fibbed about eye color? What stirred her to do it?

Apparently she'd rather be anywhere but here, yet she'd go through with the wedding. Why? Money, most likely.

Her father's last illness had destroyed the Buchanan fortunes. Jon Marc had sent funds for her trousseau and stage fare. Couldn't be much, if any, of it left. She might return to the convent, if she had the means to get there. Wouldn't come from him. By damn, he wouldn't spend hard-earned cash to expedite her leaving.

“It-uz me, I wouldn't've changed over to the Meskin church for no gal, 'specially one I never met.” Liam squinted at Beth. “Iffen I-uz a gal, I won't marry no feller I ain't met afore. No tellin' what mighta been crawlin' under his saddle.”

“It's Church of Rome, not Mexico City, and we couldn't have been married in the church, if I hadn't converted,” Jon Marc came back, peeved. “Furthermore, watch your mouth.”

“Thank you,” Beth murmured to Jon Marc.

Liam lifted his half-braided whip to the sun, squinting at his handiwork but giving the bridegroom food for thought. “Y'all got a lot to learn, be what I think. Got the cart leadin' the horse, planning to marry afore ya even know if—”

“You do too much thinking,” Jon Marc interrupted.

He then noted a flush of embarrassment in Beth's face, all the way to her slightly pointed chin. “Liam Short,” he demanded, the timbre lifting Stumpy's ears to attention, “apologize to my lady.”

Rheumy gray eyes filling with contrition, Liam did as ordered. “Beg pardon, ma'am. But I think a lot of your man. I worry. 'Fraid y'all be making a mistake. Hope ya ain't.”

Lifting her chin with dignity, Beth replied, “You wouldn't be much of a friend, Mr. Short, if you didn't question my presence. I trust, as time passes, that I measure up, both to your standards and Mr. O'Brien's. Actually, I meet his. We have, you understand, been on friendly terms for a good while. By correspondence, granted. But does a couple ever really know each other until they've lived in marriage?”

Did she mean it, though, about wanting forever-after?

Jon Marc brushed her elbow. She started. The straw hat teetered on her head of black hair, reminding him of dark days gone by. When his mother flinched at her husband's touch.

Georgia Morgan O'Brien had gone into marriage with a disinclined heart, which proved it wasn't smart to push a woman in a direction she didn't want to go. Jon Marc realized something he should have considered months ago. He ached for a willing, perhaps even eager bride.

Where the hell is that magic lamp when an hombre could use help?
A purely rhetorical question, since it was common knowledge, at least in O'Brien circles, that the lantern was no more.

He proffered a forearm for Beth to lay a palm across, which she did. “Liam, if you see Hoot Todd, tell him not to look for his sister.” Jon Marc lifted her parasol to ward off the sun. “Miss Todd is with the saints.”

They quit the porch, strolling toward the buckboard with the lame dog Stumpy hobbling in their wake, two strangers about to pledge their troth to each other.

Jon Marc halted short of the wagon. Cost what it may, he couldn't bring himself to wrest a vow from a reluctant bride.

Or was it conscience?
I cannot be false to this woman.

Taking the cowardly advance, he said, “You don't have to go through with this.”

“I want to! We should proceed with our plans.”

Bemused, Jon Marc let the parasol tilt away. It just didn't settle, how she said one thing while her actions said another.

Of course, he'd promised to love her, when he didn't have the first idea what love was like. Surely it started with admiration and respect. He had those.

And a wild desire for her.

He crouched back on his heels to pet Stumpy, who snapped. “Beth, we've just met. We ought to get better acquainted. It could be this . . .
place
may not please you. Folks say God forgot La Salle County.” But God had been good to Jon Marc O'Brien, right here in the badlands. “It must look pretty bad, you being used to mercantiles and recitals and the hubbub of town life. Hope you'll give it a second look, though.”

“I've been looking for days, from a stagecoach window. I am here to stay, but . . .” Beth shuffled her feet, giving him a peek at pointed shoes.

Red shoes.

Why the dickens did a lady wear such shocking shoes?

She was saying, “I can't take accommodations when there's no hotel or boardinghouse. I can't stay in your home, either, not just me and you, us not wed. It wouldn't be proper. We should proceed with our plans.”

Jon Marc had a word with himself. So what if she had a hankering for red footgear? Padre Miguel smoked cigars, brewed his own beer, and wasn't above cheating at cards. Any of the three would have gotten him tossed out of a Protestant church. Could be, Anglo ladies of the Catholic religion, even former novices, wore whatever they wished on their feet.

Jon Marc waved his hand in dismissal. He said, “If there's any place where you needn't fret over gossip, it's La Salle County. I'll pitch my bedroll under the stars. Till you're ready for the wedding. Or whatever. Will this suit you?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“No, ma'am.” His lips twisted into a lopsided grin as he turned his head up, abandoned Liam's mutt, and took a long gander at the beauty fate brought him. “I'd love to make you mine, rightaway.” It might be forward, spilling wicked secrets, but if there were to be no falsehoods between them . . . “Every night I've fancied me and you, alone in our marriage bed.”

His blood raced even now, as it had on many occasions, not all of them at night.

Beth didn't appear shocked. In fact a hint of a smile tugged at her heart red lips, which Jon Marc decided to take as a good sign. That she hadn't been insulted, was there a chance that she might someday become a wanton in the marriage bed?

“Beth, I've waited thirty years for a wife. I reckon I can wait a spell longer.”

“I thought you wished to be married on your birthday.”

Tired of gawking at bearded faces, sick of leading the lonely life of a bachelor rancher, Jon Marc had intended to marry her, first off. But just because the magic lamp brought a bride today didn't mean they must marry on his birthday.

Never in his letters to Beth had Jon Marc mentioned the powerful lantern that came into Tessa's hands in 1860, in a seaside town on the Mediterranean. And he wouldn't. Not yet. The pagan could scare his bride away. Being devout in religion, Beth might be further put off by knowing an all-too-human genie, at the behest of Aunt Tessa, had once been able to play God.

“No marriage,” he answered. “Not today.”

This time Beth looked at him, really looked at him. Feminine shoulders drooped, then straightened, like a schoolteacher with a mission. Was it challenge in those eyes?

“Jon Marc O'Brien, are you backing out on our plans?”

“No, Beth honey. I'm not. I'm insisting on time.”

 

 

Beth honey. She liked it when Jon Marc called her an endearment. It gave her enough strength not to keep arguing for a quick marriage, which would serve only to draw more attention to how desperate she was to change her name to O'Brien.

That he had stalled in going through with the wedding had her worried, though. How long would he drag his feet? Would Liam Short's keen old eyes spot more inconsistencies?

“Anything I can do or say that'll make you feel more at home?” Jon Marc asked. “Or more welcome?”

“I—You—You have welcomed me, sir. I'm relieved to have arrived.”
You can't imagine how relieved. Or how daunted.

Filling angelic Beth Buchanan's shoes? It would be Cinderella's stepsister jamming fat toes into a glass slipper.

How would Jon Marc react, should he learn what had brought Bethany to both slippers? Bethany Todd—daughter of a criminal, long-estranged sister to his enemy, discarded mistress of a double-dealing lawyer—had let Miss Buchanan talk her into this ruse, “to save Jon Marc from grieving and being lonely.”

The last full sentence Bethany recalled the tragic miss uttering: “You need him, too.”

Yes, but what if Jon Marc discovered the truth?

 

 

Imposter and prey departed the post-office grounds, setting out in a rose-bedecked buckboard of antebellum vintage for the short trip to the church of Santa Maria, where Jon Marc would tell Padre Miguel to “douse the candles.”

“Be right back,” Jon Marc said, once they were braked in front of the wooden-steepled structure.

He strode toward the tall doorway, Bethany's eyes on his shoulders and lean hips. It was a grand appreciation she had for his form. If they ever got there, what would he be like in bed?