The Reluctant Bride (13 page)

Tanzy was in shock. He hadn’t wanted her to come to Boulder City. He hadn’t wanted to marry her. All the heat that had been building inside her turned to anger. “Why did you let me come all the way out here knowing you weren’t going to marry me?”

“There was nothing I could do. Breaking Welt’s head—which I nearly did in any case—wouldn’t stop you. I went to meet the stage to tell you to turn around and go back to St. Louis.”

“Then you got more interested in playing the hero and capturing the bandits than saving my feelings.”

“By the time I found you at the hotel, everybody knew why you were here. I figured at that point it would be best to let you decide you didn’t want to marry me. With everybody telling you I was a lying, thieving murderer, I figured you’d head back east on the first stage.”

Tanzy suddenly realized what he’d said. “You
are
a liar! You didn’t send me the money to come out here. I don’t owe you anything.”

“I’m afraid you do. I repaid Welt.”

Tanzy was so furious, she itched to throw anything she could get her hands on. Responsibility for this whole debacle rested with Welt, but she couldn’t work up a real temper against this unknown cowhand. If Russ hadn’t been such an outcast, somebody in Boulder Gap would have married him and his cowhands wouldn’t have had to go looking for a mail-order bride. If he’d been paying attention to what his cowhands were doing, he’d have known Welt was up to no good. And if he hadn’t been so brave and handsome, she wouldn’t have liked him from the start. She was humiliated, and it was all his fault. She opened her mouth to blister him with both sides of her tongue, then abruptly closed it again.

“Why aren’t you yelling at me?” Russ asked. “I expected you’d be calling me every name you could think of.”

“I have a confession to make,” Tanzy said. “I didn’t write my letters, either.”

She expected Russ would be angry with her, but his look of surprise was quickly replaced by a grin. No sooner did that happen than his eyes began to twinkle and he started to laugh. She couldn’t see anything funny. The whole thing was a horrible mistake. And all he could do—this brave, handsome man who was so sexy sensible women would want to marry him even knowing they courted disaster—all he could do was laugh. She had to be crazy
not
to throw something at him.

“Who wrote your letters?” Russ asked when he stopped laughing.

“A girl I worked with in the gambling hall.”

“Why?”

“Both of us were too naive to realize what looked like a good job was in fact a permanent bar to respectability. When it became clear that every man who saw us figured he could have us for a price, she offered herself as a mail-order bride and encouraged me to do the same. I still wouldn’t have considered it if the owner of the gambling hall hadn’t threatened to fire me if I wasn’t more
friendly
toward the customers. Then I got a letter from my friend saying she was deliriously happy with her marriage and I decided to meet you at least.”

Two people who didn’t want to get married,” Russ said, “and look what a mess we got ourselves into.”

“I wasn’t set against marriage,” Tanzy said.

“Until you met me.”

Tanzy couldn’t characterize the look on his face. At first glance he seemed unaffected. After all, he had no reason to care what a stranger thought of him.

Yet there was something in his expression that defied her ability to characterize it. It couldn’t have been vulnerability. The man was as impregnable as the mountains around him. She’d never seen him express a soft emotion. If he’d ever had any, they’d probably been beaten out of him by five years in prison. He hadn’t put it into words, but she believed he might be trying to apologize for his part in what had happened to her.

“Not all our plans are meant to work out,” she said, pulling herself back from the brink of wanting to explain that she didn’t share the town’s feeling toward him. There was no possibility of any relationship between them. It was simpler to leave things as they were. “I’m sure you’ll find some woman who’ll make you a perfect wife.”

“Not unless I do what everyone in Boulder Gap prays for daily—go somewhere else. But I didn’t come here to talk about me. I came to ask you to teach me to read.”

“I find it hard to believe a man as intelligent and successful as you can’t read.”

“I can read the names of things I need, like flour and coffee, boots or saddles, and names of places, like the bank and the saloon. I know how to sign my name and recognize signatures. But if I wanted to buy some land, I couldn’t read the contract. I can’t read the breeding of a bull advertised for sale or the directions to the ranch where I could get a look at him.”

“What do you do?”

“I get into a discussion with people, ask their opinions, pose questions that give me the information I need.”

“Wouldn’t it have been easier to learn to read?”

“Probably, but I wasn’t wise enough to see that.”

“So why do you see the necessity now?”

“Those letters. If I’d been able to write, they’d never have been written. If I had read your replies, I’d have known you weren’t suited to be a rancher’s wife.”

“So you want to avoid anything like this again?”

“I’ll never do anything like this again, but it has shown me I can get into real trouble by not being able to read things for myself.”

Tanzy didn’t want to teach Russ to read. It was impossible to be around him for more than five minutes without wondering what it would be like to be married to him. Despite what the people of Boulder Gap said about him, there was a strength in Russ that was very appealing, very reassuring. If the hatred of the community was a barometer of his success, his accomplishments had been remarkable. She also had to admire a man who could inspire so much loyalty in his friends that one of them would do his best to find him a wife. Why didn’t the people of Boulder Gap realize there was something very important about Russ they’d missed?

She tried to imagine what it was like to live in a community that didn’t want you, to face hostility and open condemnation from nearly everyone you met. It had to take a tremendous amount of courage, a bedrock conviction you were right, and the stubbornness to hold your course regardless of what people said or did. It took courage to stand up to the slander, not to let it beat you down, to keep believing you were doing the right thing.

She had left her home rather than face her nemesis. Russ had come back home to face his every day.

“If you’re trying to figure out a way to say you won’t do it, just spit it out,” Russ said.

“It’s not that. It’s—”

“Are you afraid you’ll lose your job?”

She hadn’t even thought of that. “Would they fire me for teaching you?”

“They might.”

“They don’t have anybody else to teach their children.”

They may hate me so much they won’t care.”

Tanzy’s hesitation vanished without a trace. “I’ll do what I can to help, but I can’t do it while the children are here. You would be too much of a distraction.”

“Their parents would run us both out of town before they’d let me have that much contact with their daughters.”

She hadn’t thought of that. If other women felt as she did, and she was certain they did, it was probably wise for parents to keep their daughters well away from Russ Tibbolt. She didn’t believe he would take advantage of a young girl’s innocence, but there was no assurance the young girl would be equally restrained.

“Why didn’t you ask Welt to teach you?” She couldn’t imagine why she hadn’t thought of that in the first place. It just went to show she couldn’t think clearly when she was near him. “He’s right there on your ranch. He could work with you every day without your having to ride so far.”

Russ’s face stiffened, the light in his eyes became hard as stone. Even the muscles in his jaw seemed to tense and bulge. “Welt doesn’t know I can’t read,” he said. “Nobody knows.”

Only then did Tanzy begin to understand how much courage it had required for a proud man like Russ to admit he couldn’t read. “What made you decide you couldn’t keep your secret any longer?”

“You.”

“Me! How?”

“It took a lot of courage to come out here to meet a man you didn’t know, to subject yourself to his approval, to know you’d be on your own if things didn’t work out.”

“Not half as much as it must take to face this town every day.”

“I’d like to keep this secret. Admitting I can’t read will give folks a real reason to look down on me.”

“I imagine there are others who can’t read either.”

“It doesn’t matter, because they’re solid citizens. I’m an ex-con. Any fault they can find in me will just prove they were right to despise me.”

“You’re too smart for it to take long to learn to read. No one will have to know.”

“How will you explain my coming to the schoolhouse?”

“We can meet at the hotel.”

“Where? In your room? That would be even worse.”

She racked her brain, but she couldn’t think of a solution off hand. “We can think of something.”

“Don’t worry about it. Secrets always manage to leak out. This one will, too, especially if we have a chaperone.”

“Why would we need one?”

“Your reputation would never survive being alone with me.”

He moved for the first time since stepping out of the shadows and came closer. Tanzy could practically feel the heat generated by his presence. She had to make a conscious effort not to get up so she could put more space between them.

“I don’t care about that.”

“You will. When is the best time for me to come?”

After school would have been the logical time, but that would assure that everyone would know what he was doing. “I think coming before school starts would be best.”

“Get me out of sight before the students show up?”

“I was thinking of your comfort rather than mine.”

He seemed to feel admonished. Maybe he wasn’t as impregnable as he appeared.

“I’d hate for you to have to get up so early.”

“I prefer it.” She laughed suddenly. “I wonder if Tardy will, though.”

“What’s he got to do with it?”

“He’ll be our chaperone unless you prefer someone else.”

“When can I start?”

“Why not now?”

“What about a chaperone?”

“A single visit isn’t likely to cause comment.” She handed him a reader used by the younger children. “Show me which words you recognize.”

“Where’s Tardy?” Tanzy asked when Russ entered the schoolhouse alone the next morning.

“Archie said he took sick last night,” Russ said. He walked briskly to the front where Tanzy sat waiting at her table. He put down a piece of paper with some writing on it. “He had his head hung over the back fence throwing up his dinner, but Ethel expects he’ll be okay by tomorrow.”

“Why did you come?”

“I was already here. Besides,” he said pointing to the paper, “I wrote something.”

It had taken just one lesson for Tanzy to realize Russ knew a great deal more than he thought. He could puzzle out many sentences with only minimal help. He had an excellent memory, and in only two lessons had learned enough to read simple sentences. She hoped he wasn’t memorizing the words rather than sounding them out.

“When do you find time to study?” she asked, knowing he didn’t want his cowhands to know he couldn’t read.

“I assign myself lookout duty twice a week. That means I’m stuck in the mountain pass with nothing to do but watch for rustlers.” He grinned. “For the past three weeks my horse has been doing more watching than I have.”

She was no more immune to his smile now than she had been in the beginning. The fact that Tardy commented last week that it was the first time he’d ever see Russ smile made it even more significant.

He smiled because of her.

She was probably the only woman in Boulder Gap who didn’t screw up her face into a frown when she met him. He could relax and be more like himself with her. And that was part of the problem. She liked the man she’d seen in her classroom the last three Wednesday mornings. He got angry when he couldn’t master everything the first time, but he also laughed at his mistakes. He even relaxed enough to let Tardy work with him. When Russ finally allowed Tardy to help him, the boy’s chest swelled with pride. The look in his eyes was almost hero worship. Tanzy knew Ethel wouldn’t approve, but she was glad for Tardy.

She was less glad for herself. She was a little jealous, a little peeved, and quite disgusted she should feel either of these emotions. She shouldn’t be jealous of the time Russ spent with Tardy. The excuse she’d made up for coming to school so early was that she needed to prepare for her students. If Tardy helped Russ, that would give her time to do exactly that. Now she had Russ all to herself and she was wishing Tardy hadn’t been so foolish as to fall sick. She wasn’t going to be happy either way, apparently

“Here,” he said, pointing to the paper he laid on her desk. “Read what I wrote.”

Correcting it would give her something to take her mind off the fact that she was alone with Russ and that her reaction was alarming.