The Independent Bride (17 page)

“That doesn’t leave room for me to make any decisions on my own.”

As far as he was concerned, she shouldn’t be making decisions on her own, but he knew she wouldn’t like it if he said so. “You don’t have to take advice or accept help just because it’s offered. Use it to help you know what to expect.”

He hoped he’d spoken diplomatically enough to keep her from becoming angry with him. He had no illusions that she would do everything he advised, but at least he would be forewarned. He’d nearly lost control of his temper today when the stableman gave him Zeb’s message. His commands, all delivered at a shout, had people moving at a run.

“That sounds reasonable,” Abby said. “But,” she added before he could breathe a sigh of relief, “it won’t work if you insist upon interfering when I don’t want you to.”

“I won’t interfere unless it affects the army’s work here.”

“But that could be anything.”

“You’ll have to trust me to know when I can give you your freedom and when I can’t.”

“That’s something else we don’t agree on.”

“Was it fun chasing rustlers?” Pamela asked. “Are they all dirty and mean-looking? Did they try to shoot you dead? Did they threaten to tie you up and do terrible things to you?”

Supper had proceeded much as it had every other night, but tension lurked beneath the surface.

“Where did you get ideas like that?” Bryce asked his daughter.

“I’m not stupid, Daddy,” his daughter said. “Everybody knows being chased by people with guns makes you frown a lot. You always tell me I don’t look pretty when I frown. They can’t be clean if they never come to the fort to wash. They wouldn’t be bad men if they didn’t shoot people and take things that didn’t belong to them. And you wouldn’t have forbidden the women to leave the fort alone if nobody wanted to do terrible things to them.”

Abby did her best to keep from smiling, but it was obvious Pamela’s common sense approach stunned her father. He apparently still believed his daughter was an innocent child.

“They were very much as you described them,” Abby told Pamela, “but they didn’t get a chance to do terrible things to me. Your father drove them away.”

“Did you shoot any of them?”

“No. We caught them in a crossfire and they ran away.”

“They’re not very good bad men if they ran away,” Pamela said, disgusted.

“You should be glad we were able to scare them off,” Abby said. “That way none of the soldiers got hurt.”

Pamela looked torn between wanting to keep the soldiers safe and her desire for a more exciting adventure.

“This way the Indians will get their beef,” Bryce said.

“And I will get the money to pay my debts,” Abby added.

It was clear from Pamela’s expression that as admirable and necessary as those two objectives might be, they ranked very low compared to bad men who put up a heroic resistance. For a young girt who’d spent the entire day indoors studying her lessons, excitement was greatly to be desired, even if a few soldiers had to get shot to provide it.

“How did it go in the store today?” Bryce asked Moriah.

“Well enough,” Moriah responded with her usual tendency to say less than people wanted to hear.

“Did anyone give you any trouble?” Bryce asked.

“No.”

“Daddy said he bet at least fifty men proposed to you,” Pamela said.

“I wouldn’t consider keeping count of something like that,” Moriah said. From her expression one might believe she thought being proposed to was a fault for which she would be blamed.

“Dorrie said she had to drive them off with a stick,” Abby said.

“It’s all because Zeb told everybody I’m a good cook,” Moriah said. “Is any man foolish enough to think a woman would marry him just for the privilege of cooking for him?”

“A lot of men believe that,” Bryce said. “There’s not a single woman who’s come to the fort or Boulder Gap who hasn’t married almost as soon as she got off the stage. Very few women are able to make a living for themselves.”

“I’ve been brought up to expect to earn my own living,” Moriah said.

Abby was beginning to realize she and Moriah were very fortunate to have been brought up with the knowledge that a woman could survive without a man to provide for her. Their father had always sent money for their support, but Moriah had helped Aunt Emma in her dress shop, and Abby had had her own job. They were used to depending on themselves, making their own decisions.

“I think he considers this habit his soldiers have of proposing to the first woman they meet as something of a joke,” Abby said.

“I wouldn’t have any less respect for you if you accepted one of them,” Bryce said. “There are some very fine men here, but your sister is right.”

“I don’t consider it at all humorous that these men propose marriage to any unattached female they meet,” Moriah said. “I consider it quite tragic.”

Abby would have to remember to tell Bryce that Moriah had no sense of humor.

“I’ll have the officers speak to the men,” Bryce said, “but I’m afraid it won’t do much good.”

“I expect the best thing to do is to politely refuse and act as though it’s of no importance,” Abby said.

“Maybe
you
can act as if it’s unimportant, but you don’t want to get married,” Moriah said to her sister. “These men must feel desperate.”

“I don’t think they’re quite desperate,” Bryce said, “but they do see marriage as a way to improve their quality of life.”

“Why don’t you want to get married?” Pamela asked Abby.

Chapter Ten

The question caught Abby by surprise. She hadn’t cataloged her reasons. She knew she’d never trust a man again after what had happened in St. Louis. She wouldn’t go so far as to say Albert’s perfidy broke her heart. So much was happening at the time—her father’s death, the scandal about the theft, the loss of her job, the decision to come West—it was difficult to know just how she felt about any one thing. Marriage seemed to hurt everyone. Her father felt rootless when his wife died. Abby felt abandoned when her father wouldn’t take her with him. Even her Aunt Emma had warned her to think carefully before marrying. All she could say for certain was that she didn’t want to have to depend on a man for her support. No, not just that. She didn’t want her happiness, her emotional well-being, to be dependent on anyone else. She didn’t want a man’s reputation to determine her own. She wanted to be valued for her own achievements, to be seen as a person in her own right, not a reflection of someone else.

“I like my independence,” she said to Pamela.

“Don’t you want to have babies?”

“That’s not a suitable question to ask a guest,” Bryce said. “Apologize to Miss Pierce.”

“I’m sorry it’s not a suitable question,” Pamela said, “but I still want to know why you don’t want to have babies.”

“It’s not an apology when you repeat your question,” her father said.

“I like children,” Abby said to Pamela, “but I’d have to have a husband.”

“You can have Daddy. He’s not married.”

That remark nearly unsettled Abby, but Bryce looked so stricken she immediately felt better. His reaction made her wonder if he might not like her a little more than he wanted to. That thought kindled an unwelcome response in her. Bryce was almost exactly the kind of man she would have wanted for a husband if she hadn’t decided she didn’t want a husband at all.

“If you can’t stop asking personal questions, you’ll have to leave the table,” Bryce said to Pamela.

“But that wasn’t a question, Daddy.”

“She’s right,” Abby said. “But you can’t go around offering to give your father to any woman who wants him.”

“I don’t,” Pamela said. “I only want to give him to you.”

“I’m afraid you can’t do that,” Abby said. “Getting married is a complicated thing.”

“Why?”

“Lots of reasons,” Abby said. “After all, you’re talking about living with a man for the rest of your life. He’s responsible for taking care of you and supporting your children. Two people have to have a special kind of liking for each other to get married.”

“What special kind of liking?” Pamela asked, her brow creased.

“They have to love each other.”

Pamela’s frown disappeared, to be replaced by a brilliant smile. “Daddy told Zeb he’d love to see you married to a man who’d keep you locked up until you learned how to keep from killing yourself. Is that the kind of love you’re talking about?”

“Not at all,” Abby said, shooting Bryce a baleful glance. “That is the kind of love that will keep me single.”

“I don’t understand,” Pamela said.

“You will when you get older.”

“That’s what Daddy says all the time.” Her disgust was plain to see.

“One tiling you have to learn is not to repeat everything you hear,” Bryce said. “It seldom sounds the way it was intended.”

“But you told it to Zeb. Why can’t I tell it to Miss Abby?”

“You’ll understand when you’re older,” Abby and Bryce said in unison.

“Did your momma say that to you when you were a little girl?” Pamela asked Moriah.

“My mother died when I was five, but I wasn’t a very curious child.”

“Is it bad to be curious?”

“No, but curiosity can often lead you to ask things that are difficult to answer. Everything is more complicated for adults. If I’d had a choice, I’d never have grown up. I was much happier as a child.”

“Daddy says he can’t wait for me to grow up. Does that mean he doesn’t want me to be happy?”

“Of course he wants you to be happy,” Abby said, “but men don’t understand little girls. They keep wanting them to grow up because they think that will make everything easier. Of course it doesn’t. Men understand women even less.”

“I’d rather our dinner conversation be about something we’ve done during the day,” Bryce said, “not issues I consider unsuitable for children.”

“Pamela is the one asking the questions,” Abby said. “Maybe you’re not providing the answers she needs.”

“She’s seven. How much can she need?”

Bryce sounded angry, but Abby decided he was as much worried he wasn’t a good parent as he was uncomfortable. He was used to being in command. Hundreds of men jumped when he spoke. He probably didn’t understand why his daughter couldn’t do the same.

“Children are naturally curious,” Abby said. “They need answers to their questions, but the answers don’t have to be complicated.”

“I’m aware of the phenomenon of childlike curiosity,” Bryce replied with some asperity, “and I make a practice of answering Pamela’s questions honestly. It’s just that we didn’t have these kinds of questions until you came.”

“I imagine that’s because Pamela has been surrounded by men.”

“There are nearly two dozen women at this fort.”

“I don’t like them, Daddy.”

“I think she means she doesn’t feel comfortable with them,” Abby said, intervening before Bryce could chastise his daughter. “They have their own homes and families. We invaded your home and invited Pamela to be a part of this invasion. She’s been a great help in telling us what you like to eat.”

“You’ve been choosing meals because I like them?”

“Why would we cook something we knew you
didn’t
like?”

“I never thought about it that way,” Bryce confessed with a vestige of a smile. “Everything tasted so good, I took for granted I’d like anything you chose to cook.”

“We only seem like good cooks in comparison to Zeb,” Abby said. “As for Pamela’s trying to marry you off, did she talk about your marrying any of the female servants you had before Zeb?”

Bryce’s expression cleared. “Both of them.”

“It’s only natural for a little girl to want a woman in the house.”

“I like you better than anybody,” Pamela said.

“And I like you,” Abby said to Pamela. “You’re a very special little girl.”

“I’m a big girl,” Pamela reminded her.

“Big girls know better than to hog the conversation at the table,” her father said.

“Miss Abby talked a lot more than I did.”

“That’s because you asked so many questions.”

“You can have my share of the conversation,” Moriah said. “I’d rather work.”

“Speaking of that,” Bryce said, “tell us more about your day at the store.”

“We don’t have a lot of things people want,” Moriah said.

“Don’t let them talk you into ordering everything they want,” Bryce advised. “Half the time they end up not buying it once it’s here.”

“You mean having to pay for it makes them sort out their priorities better?” Abby said.

“Something like that,” Bryce said. “The men only make sixteen dollars a month, and they’re paid in script. By the time you discount the paper fifteen to forty percent, they can’t buy much. An industrious laundress can earn close to forty dollars. And she’ll get paid in gold or silver. Now you see why every unmarried soldier proposes to you. The officers and their wives will provide most of your custom, but they can be fickle sometimes.”