Wyoming Bride (9 page)

She put her hands up to cover her cheeks, which had turned a fiery red.

“Hellfire and damnation! I wasn’t talking about sex.”

She stared at him, shocked, and he realized he never should have mentioned that word in mixed company. Or used profanity. Both had been mistakes, but she seemed surprisingly naive for a woman who’d been a wife.

“How long were you married?” he asked.

She hesitated, looked up at him forlornly, and said, “I don’t exactly know.”

He swore under his breath. She was too young to have been married for long. Besides, he didn’t really care about the circumstances of her first marriage. What mattered was that her husband was dead.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” he said. “But life has to go on. And I need a wife.”

“So you said.”

She didn’t seem impressed by anything he’d offered so far, so he continued, “My brother Ransom is getting married and bringing his wife here to live. You’d have another woman for company if you married me. You wouldn’t be alone at the house during the day, and you’d have someone to share the work.”

He searched her features, hoping for some sign that he was making headway. The embarrassed color had faded from her cheeks, but she had a crease between her finely arched brows that told him she wasn’t interested in buying what he had to sell.

“If women are so scarce, it sounds like I could choose any man I wanted,” she said. “Why should I marry you? What makes you so special?”

He was surprised by the question. He would have thought she’d be grateful to have somewhere to live, someone to care for her. “I own half this ranch. My brother and I run thirteen hundred head of cattle, and we’re about to get the contract to supply beef for the fort.”

“You seem pretty sure of that.”

His lips twisted. “My brother’s fiancée, Miss Emaline Simmons, is the fort commander’s only child.”

Her lips twisted with a cynicism equal to his own. “I see.”

“Besides, we grow the best beef around. We have good water from the Laramie River and plenty of tall needlegrass and bluestem and even more short grasses like blue grama and wheatgrass to fatten our stock. Even so, last year we started growing hay for feed over the winter.”

She still didn’t seem impressed, but he figured that was because she didn’t understand the difficulty of growing quality beef on land more suited to roaming buffalo.

He and Ransom were among the first to grow hay to supplement winter grass for their cattle. They’d hired men to plow and plant. They’d decided the cost was worth it, because the Wyoming winter was so unpredictable. The extra labor and seed had cut into their profit, but they’d figured that more of their cattle would survive the perilous cold, and they’d make back their investment in the long run.

Their gamble had paid off last winter. Most of their neighbors had lost stock that couldn’t forage for grass under the deep drifts of snow. He and Ransom had put out hay for their animals to eat. They’d still lost cattle in the hellacious winter of ’73, because sometimes the weather was too bad even to drop hay, but not as many as everyone else.

“I’m not interested in your ranch,” she said at last. “I’m interested in you. What makes
you
so special?”

Flint was stumped by the question. His experience with women had barely begun when he’d gone off to war. The only ones he’d known during the war were camp followers. The lack of women in the Territory necessarily meant his relationships with them—even the soiled doves in Denver, and more lately in Cheyenne—had been few and far between.

He smiled ruefully. “I’m not sure what qualities you’re looking for, ma’am. I’m not used to tooting my own horn.”

“It’s Hannah,” she reminded him. “And the usual ones, I expect. Honesty, reliability, kindness, a willingness to compromise—”

“Whoa!” he said, putting up his hands.

She cocked her head like a curious kitten and observed him. “Am I asking too much?”

“No man survives out here long if he’s not honest and reliable. As for kindness and compromise …” He shrugged. “Haven’t had much need for either over the past nine years.”

“Not even with your brother?”

“Ransom has always followed my lead.”

“Your word is law?”

He nodded.

Her face was neutral when she said, “So you’d expect your wife to do as she’s told without argument.”

Flint sensed a trap. He wasn’t sure how to stay out of it without lying. “I’m used to calling the shots,” he said at last.

“I see,” she said, in a way that made it plain she didn’t like what she saw.

Flint realized he was going to lose her if he left that statement all alone on the table. “However,” he began, “I’ve never had a wife. I suppose she would be entitled to her say.”

“That’s very generous of you.”

He heard the sarcasm in her voice and added, “Any sensible person would defer to someone with greater knowledge and experience here in this wilderness. My wife would be depending on me to keep her safe, to give her a good life.”

“You don’t think she might have a right to define what that ‘good life’ entails?”

Flint rubbed his jaw and realized from the feel of the bristles that he hadn’t shaved while she’d been in bed recovering. He knew women put great store by that sort of thing. It simply hadn’t been necessary to shave every day when it was only him and Ransom around. He realized that would probably change when Emaline showed up. He felt a stab of irritation that he was going to have to adjust his life for a woman who wasn’t even his wife.

Which made him even more determined to convince Hannah McMurtry to marry him and more frustrated by the hoops it seemed he’d have to jump through to get what he wanted.

“Sounds to me like you want a man dancing on a string,” he muttered.

“Sounds to me like you want a woman without a mind of her own,” she shot back.

She was sitting so straight she might have had a steel rod down her backbone, and her chin jutted so far forward she could have poked a hole in the wall. He’d only seen her unconscious or sick in bed. This was a different woman altogether. Stubborn. Defiant.

Willful.

Hannah McMurtry was way more trouble than he’d bargained for, if her questioning so far was any indication of what she’d be like as a wife. She reminded him of his mother.

Flint hadn’t realized it until that moment, but he’d measured every woman he’d ever met against Creighton Creed Blackthorne and found them wanting. His mother was capable, shrewd, and spirited. Most females, he’d discovered, were soft, silly things, easily led, easily cajoled, and in the case of soiled doves, easily bedded.

He took another look at Hannah. Physically, she was nothing like his mother, who was taller than most men, with almond-shaped gray eyes, straight auburn hair, and a face that had suffered through sun and wind and trouble. Hannah barely came to his shoulder. Her blue eyes were direct, and her hair was a mass of wild blond curls around what he suspected was going to be a peaches-and-cream complexion once the effects of sunburn had gone away.

Hannah’s hard questioning reminded him of nothing so much as his mother in an argument with his father, in the years before Jarrett Creed had died at Gettysburg. From what little Flint had seen, his mother, whose nickname was Cricket, was equally stubborn with her second husband, that son of a bitch Alexander Blackthorne.

Having found one positive similarity to his mother, he looked for others. Was Hannah as hardy as his mother? She was smaller, slighter, but she’d survived in the elements when a lesser woman might have succumbed. He knew from having undressed her and washed her and taken care of her bodily needs that she was very much a woman, with generous breasts and a narrow waist and good, child-bearing hips.

And she was beautiful.

If he had to have a wife—and he did—she fit his needs perfectly. He wished he knew what appeal would work with her.

Flint glanced at Hannah and saw that, instead of finishing her breakfast, her arms were folded defensively across her breasts. “You need to eat,” he said.

She stared at the eggs on her plate. “There are more important things for us to discuss than food.”

“I promise to answer whatever questions you ask if you’ll finish your breakfast.”

She eyed him, then picked up her fork and took a mouthful of eggs. She watched him while she chewed and swallowed, then said, “I want to be courted.”

He laughed in surprise. “I have no idea how to court a woman.”

“Then you’d better figure it out, because that’s my price for considering your offer of marriage.”

“You mean you’ll consider it?” he said, surprised by her seeming acquiescence.

“I’m not agreeing to marry you. I’m agreeing to be courted by you.”

“I hear you,” he said. “If you agree to marry me, I want us to be married on the same day as my brother’s wedding. That’s a month off. Will that be enough time for you to make up your mind?”

“I think I can take your measure by then. But I want your assurance that if I decide we don’t suit, you won’t do anything to try and force me into marriage.”

“Done.”

“And I want you to introduce me to other eligible men in the neighborhood who might be prospective husbands.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Can’t? Or won’t?”

“I told you, I have to stay close to the house while my brother’s gone.” He wasn’t afraid of the competition, except maybe for his neighbor, Ashley Patton, who had more money and a finer house to offer a wife. However, Flint wasn’t going to allow Hannah to be tempted by a wealthy husband before he’d had the chance to win her for himself.

“You’ll have to make up your mind to take me or leave me without seeing what else is out there,” he said.

Hannah smiled.

He felt his heart jump when her dimples reappeared.

“I suppose if I choose you, at least I won’t be getting a pig in a poke,” she said.

Flint laughed and told himself his heart had jumped like that because he wasn’t used to talking with a pretty woman across the breakfast table. “Eat, Hannah. Get strong. You may not have realized it, but you’ll also be giving me a chance to see what sort of wife you’ll make.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was speaking of your ability to sew and cook and make this house a home.”

She blushed and lowered her eyes.

Flint found himself feeling … enchanted. He attributed the feeling to the oddity of the situation. Still, it couldn’t hurt, he thought. He should appreciate his wife, even if he never loved her.

“Very well,” she said. “I like the idea of a marriage where both parties are satisfied with the bargain they’ve made.” She reached a hand across the table, and he put his out to shake hers.

“One month,” he said.

“One month,” she agreed.

Flint shook her hand, aware as he did so that he was going to do whatever it took—short of lying, cheating, or stealing—to convince Hannah McMurtry to marry him. Being married, even to a woman he didn’t love, was his best defense against doing something dishonorable where Ransom and Emaline were concerned.

Because he knew no way to stop coveting—or loving—his brother’s bride.

“I don’t understand,” Ransom said. “I thought every woman wanted children.”

“I don’t,” Emaline said.

They were riding side by side ahead of the wagon that carried Emaline’s aunt Betsy, who’d come along on the journey from Fort Laramie to Denver as chaperon. They planned to leave the wagon at a livery in Cheyenne and take the Denver Pacific Railroad to their destination. They’d need the wagon on the way home from the depot in Cheyenne to haul the trousseau and furniture Emaline intended to purchase in Denver.

Although he’d been courting Emaline for six months, they’d never discussed the topic of children. Ransom had simply assumed they would have a large family, like most folks did. Today, in passing, he’d asked how many children Emaline hoped they’d have. He’d been shocked by her answer: “None.”

“One of the reasons I’m marrying you is to have children to inherit the ranching empire I’m working so hard to build,” Ransom said.

“I know I should have mentioned my feelings sooner, but—”

“You’re damn right you should have said something!” he interrupted. “You didn’t think it would make a difference to me?”

Emaline glanced at him from beneath lowered lids, her big brown eyes liquid with tears, then focused her gaze on her hands, which were knotted tightly on the reins. “I thought you loved me for myself, not for my potential as a brood mare.”

If she’d sounded angry, instead of hurt, he might have been able to continue his rant. He’d fallen head over heels in love with Emaline Simmons the first time he’d laid eyes on her, and he’d believed there was nothing he wouldn’t do to make her happy.

But he’d never considered the possibility that loving Emaline would mean giving up the hope of ever having children of his own. He decided to point out the flaw he saw in her position.

“You must have known it would matter,” he said. “I’ve talked about working on the ranch with my sons and about you working in the house with our daughters. Why didn’t you say something then?”

She shot a guilty look at him. “I just … didn’t.”