Marry Me (7 page)

So she’d try, to the very last.

“Imbert.”

He looked up again, so hopeful, and scrambled to his feet.

“I hope you don’t mind that I use your given name.”

He swallowed, head shaking vigorously from side to side. “Whatever you want,” he burst out.

She smiled at him, and he beamed immediately, the tips of his ears ripening like a tomato in the sun.

He’d do whatever she asked of him. It was new to her, this kind of power over a man just because one happened to be female. Kate wielded it as comfortably as an expert marksman bore a rifle, as surely in her control.

Emily didn’t like it. She didn’t want his happiness on her head, couldn’t use his hopeful eagerness for her own ends. It just wouldn’t be fair.

“What is it?” he asked, a puppy begging for a scrap of bacon, and she felt her own hopes plummet.

“Nothing,” she told him. “Nothing at all.”

Reg had come up hurt. Gotten himself tangled in some mess of brush or another, earning a deep gash across his foreleg. Since the horse was barely mobile under the best of circumstances, even a scratch was enough to hobble him.

“Damn it!” Jake sprang back, not quite fast enough, and Reg’s hoof nicked his shin. “That’s at least three bruises, you sorry nag. Serve you right to let you fester away. You’d hardly be slower on three legs than four.”

The horse snorted with a proud disdain his bloodlines shouldn’t have allowed, and Jake glowered at him. “Easy now,” he said, more soothingly than he felt, and sidled carefully closer. “I’m just trying to clean it out, I’ll be as gentle as a love, I promise—”

“Hello!”

The cheerful shout from behind caused Reg to jump again, out of his reach, and Jake turned his glare on the approaching woman, who deserved it even more than the horse.

“What!” he shouted, frustration getting the better of him.

Miss Bright faltered in mid-step, and her beaming smile wobbled. Only briefly, alas.

“A charmer, aren’t you?” she said pleasantly. “One wonders what you’re doing out here all alone. Although I suppose it’s possible you wearied of the demands of the adoring throngs who no doubt flock around you in more populated areas, drawn by your charismatic personality, and so are seeking relief on the lonesome prairie.”

“That must be it.”

“I—” She caught sight of the horse’s leg. “Oh, you poor dear!”

“Watch out! He’s nasty when he’s hurt, and he’ll kick you—”

By then she’d recklessly dropped to her knees by Reg’s injured leg, frowning in fierce concentration. “Oh no, he won’t. Will you, dearie?” she whispered. Her fingers were quick and light, running down the leg, testing for more injuries, just skirting the glisten of dark blood, while Reg stood placidly, as if mesmerized. “I’m just going to see…yes, you have a wicked one, don’t you? That must hurt terribly. We’ll have you fixed up in no time.”

Finished with her examination, she gave Reg a fond pat, straightened, and whirled on Jake, battle lighting her eyes.

“What were you thinking?”

“I—”

“Not so loud,” she hushed him. “I don’t want to frighten him again.”

Christ. It was
his
lousy horse.

“He could go gangrenous in no time.” Technically it might have been a whisper. But it held more fury than most people’s screams. “He could have been lamed permanently. He could
die.
You have to clean out wounds like that—”

“For crying out loud, I was
trying
.”

She paid him no mind, just went on with her furious instructions. “You have to clean it gently, so as not to force any foreign bits in further, and then—oh, heavens, it’s much easier if I just show you.”

She turned so fast her skirts snapped like a flag in the wind. “Don’t spook him while I’m gone. Be
nice
, speak calmly. Let him know you’re here. I’ll be back in no time, sweetheart.” She addressed the last to the horse before trotting off to the shack.

“Traitor. Not gelded soon enough, were you, fighting me every second but standing there like a lamb while she had her hands on you,” he said, half angry, half amused. An odd mix she seemed to promote in him like no one else ever had.

She was back in an instant, a small tin in one hand, gray cloth in the other, and pushed him aside with a gently dismissive shove against his biceps:
What are you doing in my way?

“Here we go.” She knelt down beside Reg again, grass coming up to her hips. If the horse decided to kick she’d be laid out flat, and Jake’s muscles twitched with the instinct to drag her from danger, or at least get between her and it. But he stayed where he was, alert and waiting, because he already knew she wouldn’t listen to sense on this point. “Hold this, will you?” she said, shoving the tin in Jake’s direction and letting go without waiting for his assent, as if it had never occurred to her that he wouldn’t do as directed.

She cleaned the wound with an efficiency that surprised him, her hands expert, her touch magic, for Reg stayed placid and still, as if captivated by the quick flash and press of her hands over him.

“Okay, there, that’s better, isn’t it? Now the salve.” She held out her hand and he obediently plopped the tin in her open palm. And wasn’t she a managing sort, given the opportunity?

The ointment glistened in the sun, a thick layer of grease, and she was finished in no time, wiping off her slick fingers on the cloth and climbing to her feet.

“Here.” She gave him back the half-empty tin. “I’m not going to bandage it now. Better it gets some air. But it should be cleaned again tonight, spread a little more on when you’re done. I don’t expect any problems, but if he starts limping more, or it swells up, or the wound reddens, you must call me immediately.”

Curious, he lifted the ointment to his nose and sniffed. His eyes watered immediately, the inside of his nostrils burning. “Jesus! What the hell is this?”

“You don’t expect me to give away my secrets, do you?”

“You’re good at that. With him.” He nodded toward the horse, who’d begun lazily cropping at the grass.

“Everybody has to have a talent.”

“Yeah?” He bit back the questions. How’d a frilly bit of ladyship learn to patch up a walking glue factory? But it wasn’t allowed. He was not to learn any more about her, not one more thing that would make her real and interesting and anything more than an obstacle.

“So,” he said into an awkward pause. “Thanks.”

She’d done her duty. Proved once again why it’d be too damn heartless on his part to force her off the claim. He expected her to flounce on her way. But she just stood there, twining her fingers in front of her as if awaiting something more from him. But hell, he’d said thanks. He wasn’t thankful enough to abandon the claim, if that’s what she had in mind. Reg wasn’t nearly useful enough for that.

She was dressed up today, he realized suddenly. Her blouse was a froth of lace and ruffles, with buttons that shone like the inside of a shell. She’d done up her hair, a pile of curls that lay in pretty waves across her ears; he’d watched a woman do her hair enough to know that carefully attractive disorder must have taken a hell of a lot of work to achieve. Her skirt was deep blue, with some kind of finish that made it glimmer like water, but she’d mussed it while she attended to Reg. There were two dark, damp ovals at her knees where she’d knelt in the grass, and a thick dark smear of grease across her left hip.

“Sorry about that.” He pointed at the smear, then jerked his finger back; it seemed somehow indecent, his pointing at a part of her body, even in such an innocent way. It made his head spin. “You’ve ruined your skirt. Don’t guess you’ll want to go off to your party like that.”

“Party? I’m not going anywhere.”

“Not your usual wardrobe for trying to grub out another couple of yards of grass.”

“Oh.” She looked down at herself and laughed self-consciously. “I suppose it’s not.”

“So that land agent is coming out to see you again, hmm?” He should have realized; she sure looked like a woman who wanted something from a man. That skinny, weasel-faced pencil pusher was surely a goner. There was the vicious bite of…something…he refused to consider more deeply. What the hell should he care whether Miss Bright prettied herself up for Longnecker?

“No.” Her cheeks colored up, like her skin had been touched by the sun. And she had been since she got there, he realized; her hair now carried streaks of gold, and the deeper tinge to her cheeks made her eyes look a brighter blue. It suited her, surprisingly well. “I just…missed dressing up, that’s all.”

She wouldn’t meet his eyes. Oh, she was up to something, all right. Which was why she still stood there, rubbing a bit of skirt between her fingers, gathering her courage.

Really, did she think he was
that
easy? That she’d turn that smile on him and he’d fall as easy as Imbert, give her whatever she wanted?

And then she did smile again, fully, bright approval that beamed prettily, and he thought, okay, yeah, maybe he was a
tad
susceptible.

“I need to talk to you.”

“Seems to me you’re doing that already.”

“Yes, well.” She nodded. “I’ve decided to accept your offer after all. Your offer to buy me out,” she clarified, and for all her lovely smile, she didn’t look the slightest bit happy about it.

He nearly dropped the tin of salve. “Not that I’m not pleased about this and all”—pleased, but awfully suspicious—“but what happened to ’never give up, never surrender’ and all that?”

“Sometimes one must yield the battle to win the war.”

She shot a longing glance over her shoulder at the pathetic excuse for a house he’d thrown together with more hope than skill, and he decided curiosity should bow to practicality before she changed her mind again.

“That’s great,” he said, and wondered why he didn’t sound happier. He
was
damn near delirious; he was getting exactly what he wanted. “I guess you’ll want to be gone as soon as possible. I’ll help you get your stuff together—”

“In that much of a hurry to get rid of me?” Wistful, but not defeated. She could be in the gutter in rags without a penny to her name and he doubted she’d be defeated. She just didn’t have it in her. And then she sighed, one final expression of regret for the inevitable. “I’m afraid there are some terms to the agreement that weren’t in your original offer.”

Oh, he’d known he needed to be wary of her. Hadn’t he warned himself of that, at least a dozen times since he’d first seen her? “Yeah?”

“Yes. Several, I’m afraid, and I’m aware they might sound a bit odd upon first inspection, but I assure you—”

“Just tell me.”

“Well, you see—” She filled her cheeks with air, pretty pink balloons, and blew it out in a gust. “I find myself in need of a husband.”

“So?”

“I’ve decided it’s best that it’s you.”

“I
t’s only temporary,” she assured him quickly.

“Well, that sure sets my mind at ease.”

“And it wouldn’t even have to be for very long.”

“Yeah?”

“No, of course not. And we wouldn’t have to—” Emily stopped, bit down on her tongue so she’d stop babbling out conditions that sounded nothing like she’d intended them. She’d known talking him into this would be a trick, and it had taken every shred of courage she could muster to blurt out her proposition. Except it was coming out all wrong, making it a wonder he was still standing there, listening. “Could you stop glowering at me? It’s making me nervous.”

“Is it?” he murmured, dangerously bland.

“Yes,” she admitted, hoping for mercy. But he didn’t move, feet spread wide, arms jammed forbid-dingly across his chest, the dark, dangerous glitter of eyes and a strong, straight jut of sun-browned nose the only features visible between his wild sprout of hair and beard.

Why had she ever thought he’d make this easy? She cast around for help until she spotted his chair. It was a topsy thing, ready to collapse into a pile of sticks beneath his weight, but he seemed fond enough of it, for all the time he spent in it.

She dragged it over and patted the seat encouragingly. “Why don’t you sit down, and I’ll explain everything?”

“I’m thinking maybe you should be the one sitting down.”

“Oh no, I couldn’t sit.” And, proof of her words, she started to pace. “Please?”

He dropped down, legs and arms sprawling wide. Heavens, but he was a long one; he stuck his legs out, crossed them at the ankle, and they seemed to stretch halfway to McGyre.

“What do you want to hear?” she asked, while her skirts
swish-swished
through the grass. He could mark her agitation by the sound, restless motion that sped up as she talked. “You just want the proposal—er, proposition? Um…” She paused, began again—faster words, faster swishing. “I have a purely
business
proposal for you, one that will benefit us both. Do you simply want the terms, or do you want the whole story?”

“I’ll take the story,” he decided, surprising them both. But it was bound to be entertaining. He couldn’t imagine what she’d have done that would force her into proposing to
him
, of all people. Even if she’d done so as a purely business endeavor, he thought, and found himself smiling. The grin felt odd, like trying on a coat that wasn’t his but didn’t fit too badly, and he let it stay.

He leaned back, suspecting it would take a while. But what was the hurry now, if he was finally going to get his claim back in the end? “Go ahead.”

“I’m not sure where to begin.” She reached down and plucked a blade of grass, shredding it into long green threads as she walked, as if she needed more release than the pacing afforded. “I’ve got a sister. Well, two of them, but only one that enters into this. Kathryn. She’s older than me by a fair amount, and she’s pretty much mothered me since my mother died. She’s good at it.”

She glanced up at that, her face earnest, as if it were important to her that he understood her sister’s place in her life. The sun dipped behind her, and her hair was loose, clouds of gold-tipped silk, and he wondered what it would feel like to plunge his hands deep into that mass and grab on.

He reached out and snagged his old black hat off the top of the empty valise where he’d left it and jammed it low on his brow. “The sun,” he excused himself. In truth the brim allowed him to watch her unnoticed.

“You have to understand—I don’t even remember my mother; I was too young. And my father died when I was five, but he’d been grieving so much before that I barely knew him, either. My sisters were everything for me, and they made sure I never felt the slightest lack.”

“Lucky for you,” he said because she seemed to want a comment.

“It was!” Emily said with more than a little heat. “Except when my father died, it turned out he’d managed to grieve away every dollar he’d had, too. And it was a lot of dollars.”

Emily wished she could see his eyes. Get some hint of what he was thinking, feeling. But that darned hat threw shade across his face, the shadow disappearing into his beard. As if he couldn’t give her even that much, a hint of himself.

“Anyway, she worried about me. How to take care of me. I don’t know…I was so young, everything seemed just fine to me. Oh, we had to leave our home, but I was five, what did it matter to me?”

Heavens, he could be dead asleep for all she knew. Maybe her story bored him. He didn’t seem the type to be curious about other people’s pasts. She thought he’d even deny much interest in his own—but if it really didn’t matter to him, he wouldn’t have come back here.

“Mr. Sullivan?”

“Hmm?”

“Oh. I—never mind. Well then, I imagine Kate decided the simplest way to ensure I’d have everything I needed, everything she wanted me to have, was to marry well.”

“She’s not the first to use that tactic.”

“No, I suppose not. She’s a beautiful woman. I mean, a
really
beautiful woman.” She waved her hand up and down, gesturing from her own head to her toes. “Not like me, nice enough if I put some work into it.”

Jesus. In another woman, he’d take that as his cue to praise her beauty. But Emily seemed completely unconcerned and went right on without giving him an opening.

Could she really not realize? He must have known prettier women in his life. But at the moment he was having a damn hard time coming up with a single one.

“She’s—oh, wait till you meet her. You think you’re prepared—men always do—but then you—” She shook her head, her smile fond. “Anyway, she didn’t have much trouble marrying for money. And heavens, did she. And only money. I know it doesn’t sound nice but it was no more romantic on his side. I don’t think she even tried for a compromise, someone with reasonable prospects
and
someone she might have liked as well. No. There’d be nothing to soften it for her. Talk about a business arrangement! She got a comfortable life for both of us and Dr. Goodale got the loveliest ornament in Philadelphia for his wife.”

Her motions grew jerky, her arms gesturing against her sides, her steps uneven, so at odds with her usual grace that he recognized it for the first time in its absence. Yes, she was supposed to be sure, fluid.

“She lived up to her side of the agreement—oh, how she lived up to it! I’m not—” She pressed her mouth together, the lush curve of her lips subverting into a severe line. “Kate is a strong woman in all other areas of her life. Determined. But she did every single thing he ever asked—no, not asked, told!—every last thing he commanded her without a murmur. And he commanded her a great deal.”

The sun had dropped behind the tent. As she walked, she moved in and out of the shadow. In light, in dark, and light again. It fascinated him, how different she looked in each. Open and sunny and warm, then shadowed, mysterious.

“He’s gone now, and I’m grown, and I thought that finally,
finally
, she’d be able to have a life of her own. Why shouldn’t she? But I—she thinks I should go back to school. Is
determined
that I go. But Dr. Goodale left all of his fortune to his children. Apparently it was their agreement from the start; she’d gambled on him living awhile. And now she’s seeing Mr. Ruckman, and he’s even worse than the doctor. She’ll do it, I just know she will, if that’s what she thinks it’ll take to protect me.”

And then she stopped, right in the border of sun and shadow, half in, half out. “It wouldn’t be fair to her. I couldn’t stand it, to think that she just did it for me.
Again
. It wouldn’t be fair.”

“But do you want to go to school?

“Of course not. I—” She grimaced, clearly torn. “That’s not true. All else being equal, I’d love it. But it’s not all else equal, is it? I couldn’t be happy there, knowing that she’d married Ruckman to ensure it.” She shook her head. “Oh, not that I haven’t been happy, all these years. Very much so. Even her being married to Dr. Goodale, for all I hated what it did to her, for me, well, he taught me so much. But it’s time for me to take care of myself. She’s given up fifteen years; that’s plenty.”

“Can’t you just tell her that?”

She laughed, a short burst that dismissed his crude male thinking. “You can’t
tell
Kate anything. She’ll do what she thinks best no matter what I say about it. No, the only way I could think to finally set her free was to be well settled myself, no longer in need of her care.”

“Maybe she doesn’t want to be free.”

Her head snapped up. “Then she’d just better get used to it.”

“Okay.” Apparently Emily was just as sure of what was right for Kate as she claimed Kate was for her.

She glared at him for a second longer before her smile broke through. It seemed her natural expression, that sunny grin, everything else a temporary aberration; her face fell easily into the lines, her teeth white and even, her lips curving up as effortlessly, inevitably, as a flower opening to the sun. “I’m sorry. I’m not angry. It just…matters to me, very much.”

“Yeah.” His father had died before he could remember him, and he’d never had brothers or sisters, but he’d worried over his mother more than she liked. “I can understand worry making you a little…emphatic where family is concerned.”

Her smile softened with empathy. “Yes, I suppose you do.”

Nope. She might be happy to spill all her secrets, but he wasn’t coughing his up. To distract her he prodded: “How’d you end up here?”

“Oh! I knew the only way she’d ever stop arranging her life for my benefit was if she knew I was entrenched in a life of my own. This seemed the best opportunity.”

“It did?” He looked around them, at the stark land, its promise well hidden to an unfamiliar or unimaginative eye, and the small, ugly building that he’d pretended was a home. Her rose-colored glasses must be two inches thick if she thought
this
was her best opportunity.
“Here?”

“Of course.” Her eyes shone, excitement coloring the soft curve of her cheeks. “A home of my own, on land of my own, that no one could ever take from me. I’ve never had that—we’ve never had that—a place that was just ours. I don’t know if you could understand—”

“I could understand,” he said flatly. He didn’t want to understand. Didn’t want to find this common ground with her, didn’t want to know why this was more than an impulsive lark to her. But oh, that tug of wanting, needing, a place that you could call yours and no one could deny you…it had driven him for a long time. Maybe, in an odd way, it still did.

She beamed at him, delighted with his agreement. “There, then. I wrote her when I got here, so she wouldn’t worry. I told her how well everything was going.”

“And you thought she would just let it be?” He knew nothing of her sister but what she’d told him, but even he could have guessed it unlikely. Not to mention that if the situation were reversed, Emily herself would have been hog-tied before she’d have left Kate alone, something that he sort of…reluctantly…admired about her.

“I’d hoped.” She made a face. “I suppose I should have known better. But hoping tends to work out well for me.”

“How fortunate you are.”

“Oh, I am!” she said with such fervency that no one could doubt she believed it. And yet, in the bits of her past she’d told him, she’d lost as much as most and more than some. “And, too, I was sort of counting on the fact that she’d rather have every hair on her head plucked out one by one than come out here.”

“Not fond of the country, is she?”

“Goodness, no. My other sister, Anthea, lives in Colorado with her family. Kate goes to see her—of course she goes; it’s her sisterly duty, and heaven knows she would never shirk that. But she drags along more luggage than a duchess, frowns the entire way there, and waves a scented handkerchief under her nose until we cross back over the Mississippi again,” she said with far more fondness than exasperation. “Kate is not what one would call pioneer stock.” Her gesture encompassed all of Montana. “She’ll
hate
it here. Maybe she won’t stay long,” she added hopefully.

“But you…don’t hate it?” She should. A woman with her air of refinement, her pretty manners and clothes: this place should have sent her screaming for home the first night.

“Oh no.” She spun like a child, arms spread. “I don’t hate it at all.”

And he believed her.
Damn
. It’d be so much easier if he hadn’t believed her. “So that’s it. She’s coming, and then she’ll take you home.”

“Nope,” she said cheerfully. “That’s why I need a husband.”

Husband
. He’d forgotten it. Or conveniently pushed it aside while he allowed her to distract him with her story. She was easy to listen to, easy to watch while she talked. But now the word roared back, a dark, echoing refrain, throbbing painfully in his head.
Husband, husband, husband
.

He couldn’t be a husband. He already was a husband.

But he wasn’t, he remembered, and allowed the pain to roll over him, spear up through his gut and into his chest, to bite there, a savage throb, making no attempt to mute it because it was only what he deserved.

“You didn’t forget, did you?” she went on.

“I—”

“Are you all right?” Quick as a blink, she dropped to her knees beside his chair, put her hands on each side of his head to hold it steady while she peered into his eyes. “Hmm. Hard to tell if your pupils are clear when your eyes are so dark.” Her hands were impersonal, ruthlessly efficient as she examined him, brushing his forehead, probing beneath his ears. Yet he felt every point of contact, the smooth heat of her palms, the cooler, rougher pads at the tips of her fingers. Had she really no idea? It was all he could do not to grab those hands and drag them down his body. He wanted them hot and eager; the fact that she could touch him and be completely unaffected infuriated him.