Читать книгу The Proposition - Kate Bridges, Kate Bridges - Страница 8

To Travis’s displeasure, his traveling companions arrived at Fort Calgary two minutes late. Travis slid his pocket watch back to the inside of his suede-leather vest. His spurs jangled. The weight of his guns shifted at his hips. Leaning against the pine logs of the palisade gate with the horses tethered inside, he looped one worn, black leather boot over the other and watched the unlikely couple shuffling toward him. Each dragged a square leather sack.

“Hmm,” Travis muttered to himself. “Too heavy to carry.”

Morning light broke through the dark clouds. The streets were quiet, although he heard the faint hooves of two horses echoing beyond the steel bridge leading to the center of town, thudding softly beyond the store facades, restaurants and the big hotel. Another workday was beginning.

Flecks of apricot highlighted Jessica’s braided hair and puffy face, still rumpled from sleep. For the first time in years, he had the opportunity to take a long look at her.

Other men considered her pretty but she was rather plain, in his opinion. And a bit old, in her early twenties, to still be unmarried. He, on the other hand, was close to thirty. If you took away her fancy clothes, starched blouse and embroidered skirt, untwisted her hair from the fancy knots, you’d be left with an undistinguished blonde, face freckled from the outdoors and with a much-too-eager smile.

Money-bought prettiness.

But she wasn’t wearing her usual display of gold rings and necklaces. Come to think of it, she hadn’t yesterday, either. Only one thin, gold chain adorned her throat, with a cluster of ridiculous silver baubles strung through her ears. Frivolous and boring is how he’d describe her.

And it was strange, meeting a woman who wanted to work. His sister Shawna had founded the town library, and sometimes she helped at the pub, but her husband owned the pub. That was different. He sucked in a breath, wondering how on earth these two in front of him planned on riding through nearly two hundred miles of narrow mountain paths dressed like that. And their bulging bags obviously needed to be repacked. If they couldn’t balance the weight, no horse should.

He stepped out and tilted the brim of his black-felt Stetson. “Morning.”

“Fine one it is, sir,” said Giles Merriweather. “Not too hot and not too cold. Not too many bugs, but just enough to keep life interesting. Are the horses inside?”

Travis nodded and stepped aside for the old gent to enter. He was an English butler, emigrated from Plymouth thirty years ago and he’d adopted and adored everything Western since. A wide sombrero topped long gray hair, a blue-denim shirt complete with silver rivets draped a narrow chest, and tight denim trousers flanked meaty legs. Too tight to move comfortably.

Travis was also wearing denim pants, his rugged Levi’s, miner’s pants that could take the abuse of a trip like this, but his were old and relaxed.

“New boots,” Travis said as the man squeaked by in shiny brown leather.

Merriweather beamed, huffing as he passed. “I bought them yesterday.”

Blisters by nightfall, thought Travis.

“Good morning,” hollered Jessica, yanking on the leather straps of her huge bag, her impeccably pressed skirt and blouse fluttering in the soft breeze, framing her curves. And there was that eager smile, trying to win him over.

Never.

“New luggage?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, a smile dimpling her cheeks. “We bought them late last night. Luckily the mercantile was still open after I left the pub.”

“I suppose you thought when I said one bag apiece, I meant the biggest crate you could find.” He shook his head and her smile lost its dazzle.

She held out the straps, indicating that he should take over the pulling and yanking.

She had a few matters to learn about survival in the wild.

He brushed past her, snubbing her extended hand. “Funny, but I had a feeling I’d need to bring two spare saddlebags. You’re both going to repack before we leave. Congratulations, that’ll make us late. And I hate to be late.”

He heard her loud intake of breath. Then she clawed her bag through the gate’s opening. Six muscled horses, cast orange in the rising sun, stood tethered to the hitching posts.

“Let’s not make the horses wait too long, folks,” he said. “I’ve brought you each a derringer. Pack them in your bags.”

Jessica unbuckled her bag and took the small silver gun. Fifteen minutes later, after he’d helped Merriweather repack, Travis came up behind Jessica and looked down at her open bag, resting in the grass. “Problems?”

“I—I need everything in here.”

He bent down and removed two pairs of shoes. “You won’t need these. The boots you’re wearing are enough.”

“But the high-heeled ones are in case I need something a little more formal…and the buttoned red ones…I really like them and I thought just in case—”

“No.” Without mercy, Travis tossed them into the discard pile. He rummaged through her things, quickly amassing two stacks. He couldn’t understand why she found it difficult to pack. “One shawl is enough. You won’t need two belts. And not these tonics either.” He tossed out four glass bottles.

She grabbed one. “But these are my face creams and hair soaps.”

“One plain cake of soap can service your entire body.” His look swept from her toes all the way up to her head. “Including your hair, if you must wash it in the next week.”

Her eyes narrowed. Her smile hung like a crooked picture, he thought, weak with no genuine feeling behind it.

“Let me guess,” he said. “First time in the mountains?”

She scowled. That was more like it. At least a scowl was genuine.

“Yours, too, Merriweather?”

“Ah, but I’m looking forward to the adventure, sir.”

Travis scrutinized her pack. He removed a wide-brimmed cowboy hat and tossed it up to her. “Wear this to protect your head. No sense packing it. Get rid of the bonnet.” Then he pulled out a speckled flannel cloth. “What’s this?” It looked like an infant’s nightdress.

With an embarrassed gasp, she snatched it from his fingers. “It’s private.”

He snatched it back. “You don’t need it.”

Her face reddened. She grabbed it again. “It’s…a gift for someone.”

He couldn’t believe the frivolous things she was carting. “No gifts.”

“But—”

“No gifts.”

She jumped at the tone of his voice. With her brown hat in one hand, she scrunched the flannel cloth with the other but didn’t move to put it in the discard pile.

“What’s in this compartment?” he asked.

She flew to her knees, pushing him out of the way, surprising him with her strength. “That’s my personal business.” She blushed considerably.

He moved to unbuckle the pocket but she snapped it from his hands. “Personal business,” she shouted.

The pocket was square and thick, as if it carried paper. “All right, all right. You get the idea now. If that’s your writing journal, remember, you only need to write in one. And just one pencil.”

Ten torturous minutes later, he was strapping Merriweather’s saddlebag to one of the broodmares. The butler stood twenty feet away, laughing with one of the guards.

“One more thing,” said Travis to Jessica. “You better change before we leave.”

When he turned around, he towered over her. She eyed him carefully, then looked down at her clothes, smoothing her blouse with a graceful hand. Two long braids of hair, flung over jutting breasts, sparkled in several shades of gold. A natural rouge sprang to her lips, deepening the outline of her mouth. “Why?”

“Church clothes aren’t for riding. Too much starch.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“I saw a pair of cotton pants in your pile.”

“My sister threw those in.” Her earrings dangled at the side of her head, catching a beam of sunlight. “I-I’m not taking them.”

He rearranged his Stetson. “They’re the only sensible thing you’re bringing. You won’t be comfortable in anything else while riding astride.”

“Astride? I’ll be riding sidesaddle.”

“No sidesaddle.”

Her lips puckered. “But—”

“No sidesaddle!”

They glared at each other. He didn’t have time for this. Sidesaddle was how Caroline had fallen to her death.

“Must you always shriek?” She hurled her hands to wide hips and anger found her tongue. “Have you ever thought of having your head examined?”

He leaned toward her, tightening every muscle, but she didn’t back off. “Just once when I agreed to taking you on this trip.”

“Do you have to be so domineering?”

“Yes. I’m the sergeant major, remember?”

“Roughrider. Grand. Just grand,” she whispered. Digging into her discard pile, she yanked out the ivory pants. “Wait here while I slip behind that tree. God sakes,” she muttered, stalking away, hemline flinging through the air. “If the man follows me, he’s liable to accuse me of wearing too many underthings and must I bring these stockings? And am I aware of the weight of my lacy bloomers?”

Lacy bloomers. For a moment, he fumbled at the saddle.

With exasperation, he shook his head. He’d lay ten bucks that they were made of boring linen.

At least she’d surprised him by dodging behind the tree to change. He thought she’d make a fuss and insist he find a private room inside the fort.

She came out from behind the tree while he was tightening the lines on another broodmare.

Glancing over the saddle, he froze. Whoa.

Ignore her, he commanded himself. He forced his gaze down to the saddle, but it crept back to her. The brim of his hat shadowed his eyes.

She bent over her pack and began stuffing the discarded items into her original bag, which they’d leave behind with the guard. Travis had already arranged to have them sent back to her home. Contrary to looking less feminine in pants and work shirt, she looked more. Gone was the flowing fabric that concealed her body. Ivory pants clung to well-shaped thighs. Rounded hips swelled to form an hourglass figure. Fabric clung to her smooth behind, and when she walked, the black belt cinched at her waist accentuated her bounce. A simple white blouse, oversize, folded into her waistline. The shadow of her corset hinted at what lay beneath, while the top two buttons of her collar remained open, revealing light and gold shadows illuminating a slender throat.

He’d always remembered her as a spoiled adolescent, but she’d finally grown into a woman. Still spoiled, but an inexperienced, virginal woman.

Frivolous and boring is how he’d describe her, he reminded himself.

Peering at what she gripped in her hand, he gulped. Rolled into a ball, her bloomers were flaming red. Not boring linen.

“What do you want now, Roughrider?” she snarled. “What are you staring at?”

“Red becomes you.”

With a click of her tongue, she threw them over his head.

Jessica noticed things about him that a conservative woman should not. The way he yanked at his gloves when he was mad—which was almost all the time; the way he instinctively reached for his guns at an unexpected sound; how rough his knuckles were as he tugged the reins; and how forlorn and desolate he looked when he thought no one was watching.

Travis was the type of man that all good mothers in Calgary warned their daughters against. Temperamental, moody, and thought the world spun around him.

The man was trouble. Still, Jessica needed him and the thought was daunting.

For now, she considered herself fortunate that he took the lead on the trail, which allowed her and Mr. Merriweather the opportunity to fall behind, single file, and gain their bearings.

“We’ll be following the Glacier River most of the way,” Travis shouted two hours later from fifty feet ahead, speaking above the thundering of the water. Turning his huge body around in the saddle to talk, he ducked beneath pine boughs and aspen leaves. The wind lifted the needles, filling her nostrils with cool forest scents.

“Lead the way, sir,” Mr. Merriweather shouted back. “The foothills are a sight to behold.”

Jessica nodded, trying to unwind her stiffened shoulders and mask her apprehension of riding so high off the ground. It scared her to be responsible for the broodmare she was leading, with a rope tied around its neck and ponied to her mount. Travis had steered away from taking any stallions on the trip, he’d explained, for stallions too close together often fought. Travis rode a gelding but she and Mr. Merriweather each rode mares. They led compact quarter horses—or running horses or whatever name they went by—to be sold when they reached Devil’s Gorge, but Travis led a massive Clydesdale broodmare. Whenever the Clydesdale snorted, the other animals waited for its lead. She was the dominant one.

“The horses are shod only on their front feet,” Travis hollered. “That’s where they take most of the weight and strain. In case any of them kick in such close proximity, their back hooves were left unshod for minimal damage.”

Jessica didn’t like the sound of that. If the information was supposed to comfort her, it only served to glue her gaze to the back of Mr. Merriweather’s broodmare. It was the striking bay she’d noticed in the stables yesterday. Whenever the broodmare adjusted its footing on the rocky path, Jessica jerked back, thinking the horse was about to kick.

“Relax,” Travis told her around noon, leading them into a small clearing.

“Right,” she said, trying not to look too grateful to Travis for finally stopping so she could rest.

He swung off his horse, surveyed the area, declared it was time for lunch, then walked the horses two at a time to the river’s edge to drink before she and Mr. Merriweather had even removed their gloves.

Travis returned to the shady knoll. “You’re a pretty good rider, Merriweather.”

“I spent a lot of time in foxhunts with my father.” The older man clutched at his back, then limped away toward the river, leading two horses. “I’ll water these two.”

Grass swished beneath Travis’s big boots as he approached her. He didn’t look directly at Jessica, but took the reins of her horse. Still, she felt the sting of embarrassment at his soft words. She watched the tiny creases at his eyes move while he spoke. They gave him distinction, a weathered, attractive look of matured experience.

“Don’t fight her so much. She doesn’t like when you sit rigid. If you spread your arms to your sides, you can lean in tighter and she’ll adjust to your weight. Pat her neck once in a while. Maintain the contact. She’s going to be your friend for seven days.”

Then his gaze was direct and she felt her head swim.

Squinting up at him in the patch of sunlight, Jessica nodded and slid her cowboy hat to her back. Her temples were drenched with perspiration, and her legs felt like rubber trying to hold her upright.

“Let your body flow with the rhythm of the mare.”

Jessica lowered her lashes. “I’ll try.”

“We’ll rest here for two hours. Soon as the heat of the day subsides, we’ll head out again.”

He took care of the horses first, removing saddles and hitching the animals to a lush grassy spot where they could graze. Then he tended to her and her butler. Jessica felt awkward, more of an observer than assistant, knowing she was making Travis work harder on account of her and Mr. Merriweather’s presence.

Finally, as Travis was preparing the horses to leave, she jumped up from her spot by the boulders where they’d eaten their smoked beef and coffee, and met him on the other side of his beautiful bay. The horse he’d avoided looking at yesterday.

“What’s her name?” she asked.

Jessica’s voice startled him. He’d been deep in concentration, sliding on his work gloves. He stared at the mare for a length of time before tackling its gear. The other horses were ready; he’d left this one for last.

“They’ve got names, don’t they?” Jessica repeated.

“My broodmares do. But the Mountie workhorses, the ones we’re riding, don’t. There’s too many to name.” He yanked on his large left glove, opening and closing his fingers. He seemed so slow with this horse compared to how he’d been with the others. And his face was flushed. “The one you’re leading, the roan,” he said, nodding behind her shoulder, “is called Seagrass. My Clydesdale goes by Coal Dust.”

“Ah, because of her black color. And this one?”

She noticed a drop of sweat rolling down his forehead. “…Independence.”

“Independence.” Jessica stood in awe at the size of her. “May I help you with her?”

His expression changed. His white sleeves rustled in the wind, outlining the muscles beneath. “She’s got a burr in her mane. If you put on your gloves, you could comb through it with your fingers and then I wouldn’t have to…. Much obliged.”

“I…I don’t mean to sit idle.” She tugged on her brown-leather gloves. “It’s just that I’m unsure how to help.”

He nodded and heaved a saddle blanket on top of Independence.

She grabbed the other side. They worked tranquilly together. She was making headway with him, Jessica thought, and wondered if and when she should tell him some of her allegations against Dr. Finch.

“What happened to the perfume you always used to wear?”

Her responding smile came gently.

His mouth tugged upward in kind.

That wasn’t so hard, she thought, was it? He looked much better in a smile than a scowl.

“I didn’t think the horses would appreciate it.”

“That showed good judgment.”

“Go ahead and say it. It’s the only good judgment I’ve used today.”

He inclined his dark head. The brim of his hat concealed his eyes. “Not the only. Your choice of shoes was good. Unlike your friend over there.” He motioned to Mr. Merriweather, who was massaging his sock feet. “Will he be all right?”

“Sure.”

“What about his back?”

“He’s…he’s not used to riding. It uses a lot of muscles you forget you have.”

“I’ve seen him pull out those binoculars a few times. What’s he looking at?”

With his mouth open in amazement, the butler had his collapsible binoculars aimed above the fir trees.

“A rusty-colored hawk,” she answered. “See it circling? It’s got a wingspan of four-and-a-half feet. The largest hawk in North America, they tell me.”

“They?”

She turned back to Travis. “He’s the president of the Birdwatchers Society.”

Travis grumbled. “I suppose that’s harmless enough. But it better not get in the way of anything I’m doing.”

Spoken like the controlling man he was.

Jessica reached out and timidly patted Independence’s shoulder. The mare stirred and took a step backward.

“Easy,” Travis said to her. “She senses your fear.”

“Sorry. I’m trying to maintain contact.” Summoning her courage, she plunged forward and grabbed the horse’s mane where she saw the cluster of burs.

The horse startled at the jab.

“Whoa,” Travis warned her.

Jessica gulped. “Just this one last burr.” When she yanked on the hairs, the horse lifted its hind leg.

“Be careful,” said Travis, looking somewhat overwhelmed. He gripped the bridle and the mare settled.

“But she seems so mild mannered.”

He peered down at her, eyebrows drawn together, facial muscles tensed. “You still need to be careful.”

His mood shifted to one of stormy anger. What on earth had she done to cause it?

“You need to be gentle on her.” His eyes sparked with a stab of emotion. Whatever was bothering him, it seemed to suddenly deepen. “She’s in foal. The mare’s…pregnant?”

“How far along?” she whispered.

The mare didn’t look pregnant. With a shiny coat, she had just enough fat on her so her ribs were slightly visible.

His voice rumbled as he turned away, she swore to hide his face. “About two months.”

“How do you know when it’s not visible on the mare?”

“A good breeder keeps track of dates when his mares are bred. And I also did a thorough manual examination.”

He nodded, lowering his eyes to the saddle.

Her hand fell to rest on the horse’s neck. With a moan of empathy, Jessica recalled her own months of confinement in the Montreal house, stepping out for fresh air to trim the backyard hedges, watching her figure grow while in a torrent of mixed emotions. Then feeling the first tiny kick in excited anticipation with no one to share it with, only to have lost it all.