Читать книгу Short Straw Bride - Dallas Schulze - Страница 8

“There’s just no getting around it, Luke. We need a wife.”

Daniel McLain’s tone was grim, befitting the serious nature of his pronouncement.

“There’s got to be some other way.” Luke’s expression was even bleaker than his brother’s.

“None that I can see.” Daniel splashed a goodly measure of whiskey into his glass and then did the same for Luke. “We’ve put a lot of work into this place. If something happens to us, the ranch’ll be sold to some stranger. Neither of us wants to see that.”

Luke could have pointed out that, under those circumstances, they wouldn’t actually see the ranch fall into someone else’s hands, but he didn’t. Daniel’s logic might be slightly skewed but there was a basic truth in what he was saying.

“A son. That’s what we gotta have, Luke. One of us has to have a son to take over when we’re gone.”

“It isn’t like either one of us has a foot in the grave,” Luke said with some annoyance. At thirty, he didn’t consider himself yet on a nodding acquaintance with eternity. “We’ve got plenty of time to think about wives and sons and who’s going to take over when we’re gone.”

“Maybe.” Daniel’s expression was solemn. “But Heck Sloane was younger than both of us and Bill Parley wasn’t even thirty-five. Look at them.”

In point of fact, no one could actually look at either man. They’d both met their demise in the past six months.

“Heck was a fool to take on that shootist. Him and those damned pearl-handled Colts of his were just looking for an excuse to die young.”

“Bill didn’t have pearl-handled Colts,” Daniel noted gloomily. He was well into his third glass of whiskey and clearly feeling the fell hand of fate on his shoulder.

“No, but he had that hammerhead roan. Meanest horse this side of Julesburg. It’s a wonder he didn’t throw Bill into a wall years ago.”

“It could have happened to either one of us,” Daniel said, reaching for the whiskey bottle.

“Not unless one of us is stupid enough to get on a horse that’s half rattler and the other half just plain mean,” Luke said. But the words lacked conviction.

The fact was that it didn’t take a mean horse or overestimating your talent with a gun to get a man killed, and they both knew it. Even a good horse could step in a prairie dog hole or get spooked by a rattlesnake. A man left alone on the prairie, without a horse and far from home, stood a fair chance of dying of thirst or exposure. Hell, it didn’t even take anything dramatic to end a life. Their own father, as tough a man as Luke had ever known, had torn open his hand on a nail and died of blood poisoning a week later.

Luke frowned at the scarred surface of the kitchen table. He reached for the makings and rolled himself a cigarette, scraping a match across the tabletop. He frowned at the mark it left behind. If their mother were alive she’d have skinned him alive for leaving a mark on her clean table and then she’d have done it again for daring to smoke in her kitchen. But she’d been dead for three years now and the once-immaculate room bore evidence of its neglect since then.

The thin lamplight revealed that neglect with merciless clarity. The big iron stove was covered with a thick layer of baked-on grease, bits of food and soot. The muslin curtains that had once hung in crisp white panels in front of the windows were gray with dirt. Not that it mattered much, since the window behind them hadn’t been washed in three years. The wooden floor his mother had been so proud of, that had been brought in from Denver, was obscured by the same layer of filth that covered everything else.

Luke stirred uneasily and reached out to rub his thumb over the black streak the match had left. Erasing it left a slightly cleaner spot on the dirty tabletop. He could almost see his mother’s accusing eyes, feel her disapproval. Though the whole house would just about have fit into the ballroom of her father’s home in Virginia, Lucinda McLain had been proud of this house, proud of the work her husband and sons had put into building it for her.

The McLains might have lost almost every material possession in the War Between the States but they hadn’t lost the most important things—their pride and determination. At the war’s end they’d sold what they could, abandoned what couldn’t be sold or brought with them and moved west, chasing the dream of a new life, just as it seemed half the country was doing.

They’d lived in a soddy at first, literally building their home from the land around them.

He and Daniel had broken wild horses to sell to the army and used the money to buy cattle. Those first years had been hard. All four of them had worked from sunrise to sunset—can see to can’t see.

Before the war Lucinda McLain had never had to dirty her hands on anything outside the home, and even there, she’d had servants to help her. But she’d learned to milk a cow and use a hammer. Her hands had grown callused and her pale skin had burned in the hot sun but she’d never forgotten that she was a lady and she’d never let her sons forget that they were gentlemen. They might have been eating day-old bread and beans but there was always a linen tablecloth, even if the table was a wooden crate. And no matter how many hours she’d put in working outside, she’d still made sure her husband and sons had clean clothes, even if they were mended.

Luke frowned and picked at a three-corner tear just above the knee of his jeans. When had they last been washed? he wondered uneasily.

“Thinking about Mother?” Daniel asked, reading his older brother’s mind.

“Place doesn’t look the way it did when she was alive,” Luke said.

Daniel followed his gaze around the kitchen, taking in the dirt that covered every exposed surface. The rest of the house was in slightly better shape, but only because they didn’t spend much time in any of the other rooms.

“She’d box both our ears,” Daniel admitted, looking uneasily over his shoulder as if expecting to see his mother’s shade bearing down on them.

“We could hire a housekeeper,” Luke suggested.

“We tried that. Twice. The first one drank every drop of liquor in the house and damn near burned the place down. The second was more interested in finding a husband than in cooking a meal.”

“As I recall, you were the husband she had in mind. She might have caught you, too, if you’d been a mite slower.” Luke grinned at the memory of his brother’s panicked reaction to the housekeeper’s blatant pursuit.

“You didn’t think it was so funny when she turned her sights on you,” Daniel observed. “Besides, a housekeeper isn’t going to solve the problem of having a son to leave the ranch to.”

“I wish you’d stop talking like we both had one foot in the grave,” Luke said irritably.

“We aren’t getting any younger, and having a son isn’t like ordering a new saddle. It can take a little time.”

“Nine months, last I’d heard.” Luke ground the end of his cigarette out in a plate left over from breakfast. Or was it supper the night before?

“First you’ve got to find a wife. And then you’ve got to go about the business of making babies. It took Dick Billings and his wife almost five years to have their first.”

“If I had a wife as pretty as Almira Billings, I don’t think I’d mind five years of trying,” Luke said with a grin. “Besides, all that practice must have paid off, since they’re working on their third in six years.”

“All we need to do is find you a pretty girl, then,” Daniel said cheerfully.

Luke choked on a mouthful of whiskey. During the ensuing fit of coughing, his brother pounded him on the back with helpful force, nearly dislocating a shoulder in the process.

“Find me a pretty girl?” Luke wheezed when he regained enough breath for speech. “Since when am I in the market for a wife?”

“I thought you agreed that we need a wife.” Daniel’s dark eyes widened in surprise.

“If we need a wife, why am I the one getting one?”

“You’re the oldest. It’s only fitting that you get to marry first.”

“Get to marry first?” Luke raised one dark eyebrow, questioning the privilege his brother had just offered him. “I’m not a consumptive old maid and you’re not a snake oil salesman, so there’s no sense in you trying to weasel me into getting hitched. Seems to me that you should be the one to find a wife. You’re younger, less set in your ways.”

“I’m only three years younger,” Daniel protested. “Besides, I don’t want to get married.” The thought was enough to make him reach for his glass and down a healthy shot of whiskey.

“I don’t want to get married, either,” Luke noted.

There was a lengthy silence while they considered the problem. Outside, a cricket scratched plaintively, the sound swallowed by the vast emptiness of the land.

“We could draw straws,” Daniel said. “Whoever gets the short straw has to find a wife.”

“Might work.” Luke rolled the idea around. It wasn’t ideal. Of course, the only thing that would be ideal was to forget the whole thing. But Daniel was right, they did need a wife. And since neither of them wanted a wife, it was only fair to let chance decide which of them had to be sacrificed on the matrimonial altar.

He got up and crossed to where the broom leaned in the corner. A thick lacing of cobwebs tied it to the wall and the handle stuck to his fingers. Frowning, he lifted it and broke two dusty straws off the bottom. He brought them back to the table and sat down again. Daniel watched as he measured the two straws and then carefully broke one off halfway down. There’d be no mistaking which of them had drawn the short straw.

“You sure about this?” Luke asked.

Daniel dragged his eyes upward to meet his brother’s. “I’m sure.”

Without looking at what he was doing, Luke rolled the straws between his fingers, then closed his fist around them. “You first.”

Both men looked down. The tops of both straws were visible above the tanned skin of his hand. One straw was higher than the other but there was no telling which was longer overall. Daniel studied the two straws as intently as if his life depended on it, which, Luke guessed, it more or less did. He reached out, his fingers hovering above Luke’s hand, and then quickly drew a straw, choosing the one that showed the least.

There was a moment’s silence and then Daniel drew a deep, relieved breath. His face expressionless, Luke slowly opened his hand and stared at the short piece of straw lying on his palm.

Damned if he wasn’t going to have to find himself a wife.

Eleanor Williams leaned her elbows on the windowsill and looked up at the fat yellow moon. It sat in the middle of the sky, surrounded by twinkling stars like a plump matron with dozens of servants dancing attendance. But Eleanor barely noticed the beauty of the view.

Today had been her birthday. She was now twenty years old and, according to her cousin, Anabel, could consider herself practically an old maid. The catty remark was the only acknowledgment there’d been of Eleanor’s birthday and Anabel had only mentioned it because it gave her an opportunity to say something unpleasant. Unfortunately, in this case, Anabel’s nastiness was nothing more than the truth. She was practically an old maid, Eleanor admitted with a sigh. And likely to remain that way as long as she was so completely overshadowed by her younger cousin.

Anabel had just turned sixteen and had every expectation of being a wife before her next birthday. How could she not be, pretty as she was? Her hair was the color of just-ripened wheat, all soft and golden, and when it was tied up in rags, it turned into perfect ringlets that set off Anabel’s pink-and-white complexion like a gilded frame.

Unlike Anabel’s obedient golden locks, Eleanor’s waist-length hair was a mass of thick, soft curls that refused to be completely tamed. Even now, when she’d just braided it for bed, tiny curls had already sprung loose to lie against her forehead. And instead of being rich gold, it was a plain brown—dirt brown Anabel had told her when Eleanor first came to live with her aunt and uncle six years ago.

With a sigh, Eleanor released the heavy braid, letting it fall back over her shoulder. It wasn’t just Anabel’s golden hair that made her so lovely, Her eyes were a beautiful clear blue, the color of a summer sky, as one smitten swain had told her. No one was going to wax poetic about plain brown eyes. And Anabel was tall. Not too tall, Aunt Dorinda would have quickly pointed out. Just tall enough to display the elegant slenderness of her figure.

Thank heavens her Anabel wasn’t a little dab of a thing, Eleanor had once heard Aunt Dorinda say, with a pointed glance in her niece’s direction. At barely five feet tall and with a figure that was neither elegant nor slender, Eleanor couldn’t even attribute the remark to Dorinda Williams’s acid tongue. She was a little dab of a thing, and there was just no getting around it.

His little chicken, her father had called her. Always fussing over him like a mother hen with only one chick, he’d tease. Every night he’d come to her room wherever they were staying and she’d solemnly inspect his person. Always, there’d been some small flaw for her childish fingers to adjust—a tie not quite properly tied, a lock of hair slightly out of place, a loose button to be quickly stitched onto the crisp white linen of his shirt.

The memory made Eleanor smile. It was only after he was gone that it had occurred to her that those little flaws had been deliberate. Nathan Williams had understood his daughter’s need to be needed. If they’d had a settled home, she could have fussed with the cooking and cleaning. But he was a gambler and they rarely stayed in one place more than a few weeks at a time. Since he couldn’t give her a house to fuss over, he’d given her himself.

Eleanor’s mother had died when Eleanor was six, and for the next eight years she’d traveled with her father. Nathan Williams had been a gambler by profession. He’d started out gambling on the Mississippi riverboats before the war. When he married Emmeline St. Jacques, he’d purchased a store in St. Louis and settled down to try his hand at being a tradesman. Eleanor had vague memories of a high-ceilinged room, with sawdust on the floor and goods piled high on every side.

But after Emmeline’s death Nathan hadn’t been able to stay in one place, and he’d gone back to his old profession. He’d brought his young daughter west and they’d traveled from town to town, staying in each only a short while, until he judged it time to take his skill with the cards and move on. It hadn’t been a conventional upbringing and Eleanor knew there were those who’d say that he’d had no business dragging a child all over the country the way he had. But she’d never minded the travel as long as she could stay with her father.

It had been six years since he was killed by a stray bullet in a barroom quarrel between two cowpunchers, and she still missed him. Eleanor’s eyes grew wistful, remembering her father’s quiet smile and the gentle warmth of his laugh. There was rarely any laughter in her Uncle Zebediah’s house. When she’d first come here, newly orphaned and almost paralyzed with grief, one of the first things she’d noticed was how seldom her aunt and uncle smiled.

At first she’d thought it was because they were sorry about her father’s death, but it hadn’t taken long for her to realize that Zebediah had sternly disapproved of his older brother’s profession. Gambling was an activity steeped in sin and, as far as they were concerned, Nathan’s death in a common barroom brawl was confirmation that God punished all sinners, even if it did occasionally take Him a little longer than Zeb would have liked.

Eleanor might have been offended on her father’s behalf if she hadn’t already begun to realize that there wasn’t much that Zeb and Dorinda Williams didn’t disapprove of. Where her father had always made it a point to find pleasure, even in small things, his younger brother and his wife seemed to try to do just the opposite. They could find fault with anyone and anything, no matter how small. Over the past six years Eleanor could almost count the number of times she’d seen a real smile from either of them, and she couldn’t ever remember hearing them laugh.

Anabel smiled and laughed, but her smiles were well practiced in front of her mirror and her laughter was generally at someone else’s expense. Her parents doted on her, and they’d spoiled her terribly. Anabel had only to express an interest in something for them to leap to get it for her, whether it was a new pink ribbon for her golden curls or watercolor lessons to show off her refined sensitivity to the finer things in life.

It was no wonder she was so bone-deep selfish.

Anabel had been only ten when Eleanor came to stay, but she’d already been well versed in getting her own way. At the suggestion that she might share her big, sunny bedroom with her cousin, Anabel’s pretty pink complexion had flushed an ugly shade of red and she’d begun screaming. Eleanor could still remember her cousin standing in the middle of the parlor, her hands clenched into fists at her sides, her body rigid with anger as shriek after shriek issued from her perfect Cupid’s-bow mouth.

Eleanor, dazed by the abrupt changes in her life, had waited in vain to see one of Anabel’s parents slap her to stop her hysteria. Dorinda’s pale blue eyes had filled with tears and she’d quickly promised her daughter that “Mommy’s precious” wouldn’t have to share her room with her cousin. After all, Dorinda had told her husband, without regard for Eleanor’s presence, there was no telling what kind of manners they could expect from a child raised in saloons. Best not to risk Anabel’s delicate sensibilities by subjecting her to bad influences.

Eleanor could have told them that she’d never been in a saloon in her life and that she certainly had better manners than her young cousin, but it hadn’t seemed worth the effort. She’d been grateful for the privacy afforded by the boxy little room at the rear of the house—the maid’s room, Anabel had pointed out with a smug smile the first time they were alone together—and the more she got to know her cousin, the stronger her gratitude had become.

When she’d first come here her aunt had explained that she undoubtedly had a great deal to learn about proper living. Raised as she had been, she’d no doubt picked up many improper notions, and such notions wouldn’t be tolerated in the Williams household. Six years later, Eleanor still didn’t know what ‘improper notions’ she might have had, but she did know that if this was “proper living,” she was not impressed. Zebediah and Dorinda Williams might be proper but they were also smallminded, parsimonious people who took no pleasure in life.

She sighed again and rested her chin on the hands she’d propped on the windowsill. She could leave, of course, but she had no money and no way to earn a living. Though her father had done his best to shield her from the more sordid realities of life, she’d seen enough to know just how difficult the world could be for a woman on her own.

She might be able to wangle a job as a schoolteacher in some remote area. There was always a crying need for such. Or she could marry Andrew Webb and become a mother to his four small children. She could do worse. Andrew was pleasant enough and, as owner of the general store, considered a good catch, particularly for a young woman of no real beauty or expectations, as her aunt Dorinda had pointed out when Mr. Webb began making his interest in her niece obvious. It isn’t as if Eleanor can simply have her pick of beaux, after all. Not like dear Anabel. This last had been said with a fond look at her daughter, who’d managed to blush and look modest, no mean feat for a girl who spent nearly every waking moment in front of a mirror.

Aunt Dorinda was right, of course. She could do worse than to encourage Mr. Webb. It was just that…The thought trailed off as a cloud drifted across the face of the moon. A light breeze blew through the open window, its chill cutting through the light cotton of her nightgown. Shivering, Eleanor rose from the trunk where she’d been sitting and lowered the window.

It was just that she was a silly, romantic fool, she told herself as she climbed into her narrow bed and pulled the covers up around her shoulders. She was still clinging to the childish idea of a handsome knight who’d ride into her life and fall instantly under the spell of her negligible charms.

It was past time to put away such foolish notions, she told herself briskly. She was twenty now, no longer a girl. Unless she wanted to prove that little cat Anabel right and end up an old maid, it was time to stop looking for a handsome knight and start thinking of marrying a good man with whom to build a solid, dependable foundation for the future.

An image of Andrew Webb’s thin face and watery blue eyes rose in her mind’s eye and she felt her determination falter. She wasn’t clear on just what intimacies being married entailed, but whatever they were, it was difficult to imagine sharing them with Mr. Webb. Still, his first wife had clearly had no difficulty doing so, as witness the four children she’d given him before falling victim to consumption.

Eleanor set her chin with determination. Tomorrow was Sunday and she was sure to see Mr. Webb at church, since he attended the services as regularly as the Williams family. When she saw him, she’d do her best to discreetly indicate that his attentions were not unwelcome. If she was not mistaken in the strength of his feelings, she could find herself Mrs. Andrew Webb before the summer was out.

She used the edge of the sheet to dry a tear from her cheek. It was the sensible, mature thing to do. If it wasn’t the love match of her childish dreams, it would certainly be better than spending the rest of her life as Aunt Dorinda’s unpaid housekeeper.

Closing her eyes, Eleanor forced back tears that threatened to spill over. Despite the turmoil of her thoughts, she was soon asleep. Through her dreams drifted images of a dark-haired man with a dazzling smile who swept her up onto the back of his horse and carried her off to a castle that sat incongruously in the middle of the prairie.