The Independent Bride (33 page)

“Come on, Moriah,” Abby said, turning her back on the store. “I can’t stand looking at it when I can’t do anything to fix it. Let’s get what we need and go back to Bryce’s house.”

“Zeb will be glad to help you,” Bryce said.

“I will, too,” Pamela said, beaming. “I want you to stay forever.”

“Thank you,” Abby said, trying to smile, “but it won’t be necessary. I know what I have to do to salvage the situation. I’ll use the money from the beef sales to pay for repairs to the store.”

“You don’t have anyone scheduled to deliver beef tins month,” Bryce reminded her.

“I know. That’s why tomorrow I’m going to start going from ranch to ranch until I talk someone into agreeing to sell me the beef I need.”

“You can’t do that,” Bryce said. “I forbid it.”

Chapter Twenty

Abby could hardly believe what Bryce had said even though she had heard the words herself. Maybe he’d let being in control of two hundred men and their families go to his head, but he’d soon learn he had no authority over her. Maybe it was her fault for letting him become so involved in her life, for spending too many nights under his roof, but this was one of the reasons she had no intention of marrying. Aunt Emma had warned Abby and Moriah to be wary of controlling men. And who would be more controlling than a man whose job was to control everyone around him, a man for whom control had probably become so habitual he wasn’t even aware of it? By now he probably considered it his God-given right.

She would set him right on that score. He had the authority to take away her contract to operate a trading post at Fort Lookout, but he didn’t have the authority to control her actions as an individual citizen. If she wanted to ride all the way to Denver by herself, he couldn’t stop her.

“You can’t forbid me to do anything as long as I don’t do it on government property. And not one single rancher lives at the fort.”

“You’re not strong enough to make that kind of ride,” Bryce said. “You’ve worn yourself down working and worrying about the store. Now you’ve got blisters on your fingers and burns on your arms and face. You can’t even hold reins in your hands, and you’re talking about riding hundreds of miles and spending several nights in a tent. Assuming you had the strength, you don’t have a tent or any of the equipment you’d need to cook your meals.”

Abby’s anger cooled considerably. He was worried about her safety rather than trying to exercise his authority.

“I don’t plan to ride out this afternoon,” she said, “but I can’t wait long. I need the money to pay for rebuilding the store. That doesn’t begin to touch what it will cost to stock it.”

“The trading post is army property,” Bryce said. “We’ll take care of the repairs, just as we did cleaning it up and building new shelves.”

She felt stupid not knowing that, but it was an enormous relief to know she only had to come up with the money to replace the ruined merchandise. “That doesn’t change the fact that I have no money.”

“We can talk about that when you’re feeling better,” Bryce said. “I have to work. I’ll see you when you get to the house.”

“Can I help you pack?” Pamela asked.

“Sure,” Abby said. “With my hand bandaged like this, I need all the help I can get.” Abby had hoped she would find the fumes and smoke weren’t as strong as Bryce said, but they were worse. She could hardly keep from coughing. “We’d better grab a few things and run,” she said to Pamela.

“I want you to take everything,” Pamela said. “I want you to stay in our house forever.”

That was the last filing Abby needed to hear. Despite her determination to remain single, and despite her periodic irritation at Bryce’s high-handed manner, it was a great temptation. She could repeat to herself all the reasons she had for not marrying, but she would always come up with reasons why they didn’t apply to Bryce. What ultimately stopped her was his decision to wait until he got back East to look for a bride.

“I can’t stay in your father’s house forever,” Abby told Pamela.

“Why not?”

“It’s not my house. This is.”

“It’s burned,” Pamela pointed out. “It stinks, too.”

“I know, but it won’t after it’s fixed.”

“Don’t you
want
to stay with us?”

That was a much harder question to answer. “I like you very much,” Abby said, choosing her words carefully, “but grown ladies can’t five in a man’s house unless they get married first.”

“I’ll ask Daddy to marry you,” Pamela said, breaking into a smile and clapping her hands together. “That will make everything all right”

“You can’t ask your father such a tiling,” Abby exclaimed, aghast.

“Why not? Daddy likes you. He told me so.”

“Liking someone and wanting to marry them are two different things.”

“Sarah’s momma says if a man likes a lady, he ought to ask her to marry him.”

Abby decided it would be a good idea for Bryce to forbid Pamela to ever again set foot in Sarah’s house. “Sarah’s mother is talking about a different kind of like. Your father likes me as a friend, the way you like Sarah. It’s not the same as when a man and woman like each other and want to get married. Your daddy and I are just friends.”

“Sarah’s momma said if you married Daddy you’d be my momma.”

“That’s true, but—”

“Sarah’s momma said it was very important for any woman who married Daddy to like me. Don’t you like me?”

“Of course I do.”

“If you like Daddy and you like me, why don’t you want to be my momma?”

Abby could feel the ground sinking under her feet. She was certain Pamela would repeat the whole conversation to Bryce. She was also certain she would get some very important parts wrong, or leave them out, and Bryce would have no idea what Abby had really said.

“I don’t know how to explain it to you, but even though I like you and your daddy very much, I can’t marry him and be your mother. People have to love each other to want to get married. That’s a very special kind of like that can only happen between a man and a woman.”

“But I love you.”

From bad to worse. Abby wondered why she’d ever thought she could be a mother when she couldn’t explain something so ordinary as love to a child. She had to give Bryce a lot of credit for being able to handle situations like this. If he didn’t send Pamela over to Sarah’s mother for another indoctrination session, that is.

“I love you, too,” Abby said, “but that’s not the same as a man and a woman loving each other and wanting to get married. Now no more questions. I need to pack quickly.”

Abby kept Pamela’s attention engaged by asking her what clothes she thought Abby ought to take, but she couldn’t derail her own thoughts so easily. Pamela’s questions had raised the lid of a Pandora’s box. Now that the questions had been voiced, Abby couldn’t ignore the answers.

Yes, she did want to be Pamela’s mother. Yes, she did want to marry Bryce. Yes, she did want to move into his house.

But admitting she’d fallen in love with Bryce didn’t change any of the hard realities. He didn’t love her and he didn’t want to marry her. The sooner he went back East, the better.

“You asked Abby what?” Bryce tried to speak calmly to his daughter, but he was afraid it came out as a shout.

“I asked her if she’d marry you and be my momma, but she said you didn’t love her. I love Miss Abby. Why don’t you?”

“Your loving Abby and wanting her to be your mother is not the same as my loving Abby and wanting her to many me.”

“That’s what she said, but I don’t understand.”

The question flummoxed Bryce. What his daughter didn’t understand was that it didn’t matter what he felt for Abby. She didn’t love him and she didn’t want to marry him. He had to put a stop to Pamela’s imaginings. He was deeply sorry Pamela had grown to love a woman who didn’t want to be her mother. He was just as sorry Abby didn’t feel anything more than a physical attraction for him.

“I’m not sure I can explain it so you’ll understand it, either,” Bryce said. “Abby and her sister are going to stay here and run the store in the trading post. You and I will soon move to Philadelphia.”

“I don’t want to go to Philadelphia. I want to stay here. Don’t you like it here?”

Yes, he did. More than he had expected. He’d taken for granted that he wanted to go back to Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., because that was the natural way to pursue the career he’d envisioned for himself. But recently he’d begun to realize it was his family’s dream, not his. Though he found the situation on the frontier frustrating, he also found it challenging. He liked being his own boss. He preferred being active to sitting behind a desk. And though the plains couldn’t compare to the beauty of the Pennsylvania woodlands, Pennsylvania had nothing to compare to the majesty of the Rocky Mountains.

Since Margaret’s death, his family had been telling him he had to marry again because he needed a wife to help in his career and to be a mother to Pamela. But recently he’d realized he wasn’t anxious to leave Fort Lookout. That feeling had grown stronger after Abby arrived.

“I do like it here,” Bryce told his daughter, “but I have to go where the army sends me.”

“Are they sending you to Philadelphia?”

Blaming everything on the army would probably satisfy Pamela, but Bryce didn’t make a practice of lying to anyone. He certainly wasn’t going to begin with his daughter.

“No, but Grandmother has been trying to get the army to give me a job back East.”

“Will she stop if you tell her you don’t want to go there?”

He doubted it. His mother had always believed she knew what was best for everyone. A desire to rebel against his mother’s control had been part of the reason he’d married Margaret. He wasn’t foolish enough to do that again, but neither would he ask his mother’s approval before he chose a wife.

“Grandmother wants us back East so she can see you more often.”

“If she comes here, she can see me all the time.”

Bryce smiled at the notion of his mother living at Fort Lookout “Grandmother wouldn’t want to leave Granddaddy and all your uncles, aunts, and cousins. And they couldn’t all come out here,” Bryce said, answering what he was certain would be his daughter’s next question.

“Miss Abby said she would stay with us until her house stopped stinking. Can you make it stink for a very long timer?”

Bryce picked up his daughter and sat her on his lap. “You can’t make Miss Abby stay with us.”

“Sarah’s momma said if you married Miss Abby, she would have to live in our house forever. Please, will you marry her?”

“Miss Abby doesn’t love me.”

“Miss Abby said everyone at the fort loves you.”

“Miss Abby means they don’t want a new commander. That’s not the same as Abby loving me enough to marry me.”

“If I loved her enough, would she marry you?”

The look on his daughter’s face was enough to break Bryce’s heart. The one thing she wanted more than anything else in the world and he couldn’t give it to her. “It’s not enough for you to love Abby. She would have to love me, and I would have to love her.”

“Do you love her?”

“No.” He was telling the truth, wasn’t he? He liked her a lot, wanted to be with her, dreamed of making love to her, but that wasn’t love, was it? It wasn’t the crazy kind of passion he’d felt for Margaret. Falling in love with her had been like being in a daze and discovering after it wore off that he didn’t feel the way he’d thought.

“Why not?” Pamela asked.

“There’s not always a reason. It just happens. Or it doesn’t. You can’t make yourself fall in love.”

But could you stop yourself from falling in love? Did lining up all the reasons why you shouldn’t love someone make any real difference in the end? Knowing why he should keep his feelings for Abby under tight control hadn’t stopped them from growing stronger. Was it true love this time, or was he doing what he’d done with Margaret? If Abby ever decided to marry, she’d make a good wife and mother, but what about him? Would his feelings for his wife remain constant, grow stronger? He couldn’t say. He’d failed in his one attempt.

But he wanted another chance, and he meant to have it even it if entailed changing his plans.

“You don’t have to go with me,” Abby said for the two dozenth time. “I can take Orman and the boys with me.”

“No.” His refusal was blunt and clearly not up for discussion.

After Orman, Hobie, and Larson had sobered up, they’d been so apologetic about trying to attack Abby and her sister, Abby had felt guilty about keeping them in prison. She’d convinced Bryce to let them out each day to work for her, but Bryce would never let them be alone with her without at least one soldier present to guard her.

“Any one of your soldiers would do just as well,” Abby said.

“I like to believe I’m more capable than an ordinary soldier,” Bryce said. “Besides, things are so quiet nobody will notice I’m gone.”

Abby’s efforts to convince Bryce to let one of the enlisted men accompany her on her trip were rooted in her fear of being alone with him for more than a few minutes. Thinking of being alone with him for several days was causing her to break out in a cold sweat.