Miss Phipps and the Cattle Baron (4 page)

Young Frank Gifford looked at Priscilla, as
if at a loss for words. Then he shifted his gaze to Edith, and
said, "Ma'am, my Pa will not be happy about this. He's been waiting
for you for a while now and has the place fixed up for your
arrival. There's fresh bedding on Pa's bed and a big bath tub by
the stove so's you can bathe. Pa even took a bath in it this
morning and shaved fresh so's he'd be clean for you when he and
you... that is, when you are... together as husband and wife
tonight."

Edith stared at Frank, wide-eyed. When she
said nothing, Frank continued. "My Pa's a good man, Miss Hogan. He
never once hit Ma. And the farm's in fine shape so there aren't
many chores that need doing. Pa just wants a wife for tidying the
house and keeping him company at night and fixing his meals and
sharing his bed. And he's not mean or anything. He'd be real gentle
with you too since he knows you're still... a maiden lady."

Edith finally found her voice. "Mr. Gifford,
please tell your father that I appreciate his offer to become his
wife, but I'm looking for someone considerably younger. In fact,
I'm prepared to join the right man in securing a homestead and
being a help mate in starting a farm. I am not afraid of hard
work." Her lips curved slightly, and she added, "Perhaps we will
meet again in the near future. I'll be here working for Miss
Phipps."

Frank's smile reflected as tiny points of
light in his deep blue eyes. Then he turned to Priscilla, and said,
"I'll give my pa your message about the bank draft." He looked at
Edith, smiled again, and left. Edith stepped to the window and
watched him walk away.

Abigail started giggling. "I don't know why
you didn't jump at the chance to bed a man who was scrubbed clean
and shaved and waiting for you to join him, never mind that he was
an old hoot. Actually, young Frank was a looker. Maybe you could
just add Junior to the name on the agreement and marry him
instead."

Edith turned to Priscilla. "Could I? I mean,
would it be legal if Frank Jr. agreed?"

Priscilla eyed her in alarm. She needed all
four woman right now. Unlike the tramp type-slingers who roamed
from newspaper to newspaper, hiring for short periods of time and
moving on, women typesetters and compositors were trustworthy and
dependable, and they didn't stash bottles of whiskey around the
place. If she could hold onto all four women until the paper got
going, it would go a long way in insuring its success. "You barely
know the man," she said, "and marriage is forever. By working here,
you can take your time before settling on a man."

Edith's brows pinched together, and her mouth
drooped. "But I liked young Frank Gifford. I liked the way he was
polite, and that he talked about how good his pa was, not as a
husband for me, but just to let me know that he was thinking about
my wellbeing."

Abigail picked up her scrub brush and started
in again. "But there are hundreds of eligible young men in this
city," she said, rasping the brush against the old floorboards,
"and lots of them are rich from running cattle and mining gold. We
don't have to settle for old men like the ones we were fixing to
marry. But if you're set on getting to know young Frank Gifford,
then going to church on Sunday would be a start. I'll bet he'll be
there."

Edith smiled. "Yes, church," she said, then
she dropped to her hands and knees and continued scrubbing, a
cheerful little tune emanating from her throat, a smile fixed on
her lips.

***

From his stance across the street, Adam
watched a big Negro paint over the words, CHEYENNE SENTINEL, that
were scrawled across the face of the old building. The man stood on
the porch roof, a bucket of paint in one hand, a brush in the
other. On the porch beneath the roof rose a mound of trash and
printing equipment and discarded pasteboard boxes. He'd seen
several women, along with Miss Priscilla Phipps, step out of the
building on occasion to toss rubbish onto the growing pile.

He had not gone to the bank to pick up the
bank draft, as he had not yet given up hope of collecting his
bride. He needed a mother for his children, and he needed her fast.
He'd caught Tom Rafferty throwing dirt clods at Trudy's bedroom
window at the ranch the night before, and if he could talk Mary
Kate Burns into marrying him, he would install her and the
children, along with the children's tutor, in the house on 17th
Street, and Trudy and Tom would be miles apart. It wouldn't be long
before the young buck would find other pastures in which to
graze.

As for Mary Kate, he'd stay with her a few
nights a week, which should work for both of them, since there was
no love between them. Actually a rather good arrangement. He took a
last look at the photograph she'd sent to him and headed across the
street, certain she'd been one of the women who'd stepped onto the
porch earlier. Seeing the door ajar, he walked into the building
unannounced and stood just inside the doorway. Four heads looked
his way. "I am Adam Whittington, and I'm looking for Miss Mary Kate
Burns," he said. "I believe she's here."

To his annoyance, Priscilla Phipps emerged
from the back room. "I told you yesterday, Lord Whittington, that
Miss Burns will not be marrying you. Now, will you please leave. As
you can see, we are all very busy."

"I don't care how busy you are," Adam said,
"I've come to hear it directly from Miss Burns." He looked around
the room. "Which of you is Miss Burns?"

"I am Mary Kate Burns," a small, slender
woman said, her milky white skin and wide blue eyes the image of
youthful innocence. She stood slowly then, the top of her pigtailed
blond head about mid-chest to Adam, making her seem younger yet.
She stared at him with those large innocent eyes while waiting for
him to respond.

Bloody hell
. He'd be marrying a child.
And to bed the woman... He probably wouldn't even be able to
function as a man. He slipped the photograph from his pocket and
glanced at it again. It was the same woman alright, but with her
gloved hand on the back of a chair, and wearing a hat and
fashionable gown, she looked ten years older. But she wasn't ten
years older. She was four years older than Trudy. And there was no
way Trudy or the other children would look on her as a mother
figure.

He handed her the photograph. "Miss Burns,"
he said, "if you want to get out of the marriage agreement, I will
release you from it."

The woman turned worried eyes on Priscilla
Phipps, as if looking for confirmation, and when Miss Phipps
nodded, Miss Burns said, "Yes, Lord Whittington, I think it would
be best. You have three nearly-grown children, and I do not feel
competent to see to their needs. I am sorry for whatever grief I
may have caused you and your family."

He shrugged. "We will survive." He looked at
Priscilla Phipps standing in the doorway to the back room,
wondering, for the first time, what she'd be like in bed. She was
certainly closer to his age, and of a better age to mother his
children. But as a spinster woman she'd probably never had a man in
her bed, which could make things unpredictable. And she wasn't much
to look on, with her carrot-red hair a tangle of curls and cobwebs,
her freckled face smudged with dirt, her eyes rimmed in blond
lashes, and her figure—he scanned the length of her. At least she
was curved in all the right places. Very nicely so. And from the
rise and fall of her ample bosom, he knew her breath had quickened
from his perusal. Maybe she'd be passionate in bed, once they got
through the deflowering. He'd never taken a virgin before, much
less one nearing forty...

"Lord Whittington? Is there something else
that you want?" Miss Phipps asked, drawing his eyes to her face,
which, he noted, was flushed a rosy pink. There was also the hint
of prurient sparks in her eyes. And her lips were parted...

Full moist lips that looked oddly
inviting...

Hell! He was mooning over a homely spinster
with a razor sharp tongue and aspirations of starting a newspaper
in a field dominated by men. All she had going for her as a wife
was that she was curved in all the right places and would
undoubtedly be able to hold Trudy in check. "No, Miss Phipps," he
said. "We are done. I'll go to the bank now and take care of the
agreement. Good day." He turned abruptly and left.

When the door closed behind him, Priscilla
could barely catch her breath. Was the dry, high plains air getting
to her? She fanned her face. Lordy, lordy, the man did nothing but
look at her. But when his gaze moved down her chest, she could feel
it, warm and tingly, like fingers touching her
there
.
Touching her where no man had ever touched.

And he had not even laid a hand on her...

"Miss Priscilla? You alright?" Abigail's
voice seemed to come from out of nowhere. "You look like you just
ran a mile. Maybe you should sit down."

Edith giggled. "She's just reacting to Lord
Whittington. You saw the way he looked at her, eyeing her like she
was on the auction block and he was about to make an offer."

"I am
not
reacting to Lord
Whittington," Priscilla snapped, the sound of his name on her lips
bringing prickles of heat moving down her. And at the junction of
her thighs, odd things were happening. Things she couldn't explain.
Like having a rush of adrenaline in an area she'd just as soon
ignore, but couldn't.

It came to her then that if Lord Whittington
so much as touched her, even by accident, she was certain she'd
need smelling salts to keep from swooning. She made a mental note
to add those to her list of supplies when she went to the general
store later...

"Had you ever thought of marrying?" Abigail
asked.

Priscilla looked at Abigail with a start.
"Why on earth would you ask that question now?" she asked.
"Certainly you have no thoughts of me and Lord Whittington?"

"No, I was just wondering. Have you?"

Priscilla hated answering that question.
She'd thought about it most of her life. But her carrot red hair
did not have the deep rich tones of the heroines in her Dime
Novels, her blond brows and lashes seemed to draw attention to her
red-rimmed eyes, there was no cosmetic in existence that could
cover her freckles, and she had the kind of skin that red-heads
hated—soft and smooth, but so white, she looked like a ghost with
mud splatters on its face. Men just didn't take to women who looked
like she did.

Before her father died he'd given up hope of
seeing her wed. But he left her and her mother comfortably well
off. His dying words, the night he passed away from a burst
appendix, were, "You won't need a man to take care of you, lovey,
because you and your ma are well fixed." He shut his eyes then and
exhaled his last breath...

"Miss Priscilla? I didn't mean to get
personal," Abigail said, "I know you must have had offers from men.
Just seeing the way Lord Whittington looked at you says that much.
I was just wondering why you didn't ever get hitched."

"I might have considered it a long time ago,"
Priscilla said, even though no man had asked for her hand, "but
ever since I began reading the writings of Elizabeth Cady Stanton
and Susan Anthony, I have come to realize that marriage is a
man-made institution, inherently unjust to wives, and with this
injustice, entered into with the sanction of church and state,
husbands are given complete authority over their wives."

Abigail looked at her, bafflement on her
brow. "I never thought of it that way," she said. "I guess it's a
good thing I didn't go ahead with the marriage."

Edith stopped scrubbing and looked up. "That
may be how you look at it," she said, "but I want to find a good
man and settle down and let him make the money so I can concentrate
on keeping house and raising the younguns. The job here with you
will be fine for a while, Miss Priscilla, but I don't want to stay
working here the rest of my life. And I still want to get to know
young Frank Gifford." She started moving the brush again.

Priscilla stared at the covey of young women
on hands and knees scrubbing the floor and was tempted to tell them
a few sordid tales as a warning, but refrained. Perhaps they'd find
good men who'd love and cherish them and want only the best for
them. Then on the other hand, they could end up like so many
others... Which was precisely why
The Town Tattler
would
have a column devoted to the suffrage movement. Feeling a renewed
sense of purpose, she picked up a scrub brush and joined the women
on the floor.

***

Adam looked up at the freshly painted façade
of
The Town Tattler
building. In only four days, the place
looked functional, and the huge mound of rubbish out front was
gone. He never would have believed it could be ready for business
in less than a week.

However, Priscilla Phipps had come west with
a wagon train of homesteaders, and her paper was potentially a
rabble-rousing voice against cattlemen. That being the case, he was
anxious to learn what printing equipment she owned...

So here he was, heading across the street in
a beeline. Although he told himself he wanted to look at her
equipment, who was he fooling? He wanted to see the plain,
unadorned spinster lady who was running the place. Something about
the woman had taken hold of him, then burrowed under his skin like
a wood tick that refused to let loose.

When he entered the building, he found her
holding a crow bar while struggling to wedge open a large wooden
crate, which he assumed held her printing press. She stopped and
eyed him guardedly while waiting for him to announce his reason for
his being there.

Glancing around the large room, he was
surprised to find the plaster walls patched and freshly painted,
and the scrubbed floors holding a waxy sheen. Then he settled his
gaze on Priscilla Phipps. The unadorned brown dress she wore draped
over her shapely body in a way that indicated she wore no corset.
Although it covered her completely, the effect it had on him was
unexpected. Her small waist, softened by the lack of whalebone,
made him want to wrap his hands around it, and the sight of her
full breasts, unhampered by bones or other stays, caused things to
happen below his waist, something he didn't need right now.
Focusing on her face, he said, "I thought I'd stop by to see how
things were going."