Texas Loving (The Cowboys) Page 12

  She had to stop thinking like this. She sounded exactly like Daphne, focusing all her attention on marrying a man with a title. She didn’t want to live in England, and she had no interest in a title. She wanted to marry a Texan and stay in Texas. Why, then, couldn’t she stop thinking about Edward?

  Because you ruined his life.

  If she could only go back and . . . go back and do what? If there were some way to change what had happened, maybe she could stop thinking about him, stop feeling so guilty. But even if she’d known where to find him, there was nothing she could do. She was the last person he would want to see.

  “I think I will go tomorrow,” she said her to mother. She took a dish from the cabinet for the peaches. If this visit didn’t help to get her mind off Edward, she’d come up with something else. She had to stop feeling guilty about a man she’d never see again.

  “I know you don’t need anybody to take care of you,” Eden said, dicing a potato and putting the pieces in a pot of boiling water, “but it’s me or my mother.”

  Suzette, a French Canadian who had married Hawk, had been pleased Eden had come to stay with them, but Josie— Zeke’s very beautiful wife—wasn’t so happy. She liked being pregnant, but she hadn’t become accustomed to being a housewife. She still cherished memories of dancing for cheering men desperate for a glimpse of a beautiful woman. Suzette had made the transition from dancer to wife without a hitch.

  “What are you supposed to do here?” Josie asked.

  The three of them were preparing supper for Zeke, Hawk, and the ranch hands, including the new man they’d hired recently. Eden had taken over any work that had to be done while standing so Suzette could sit down as much as possible.

  “Nothing in particular and everything in general,” Eden told Josie. “You know Mama. Any woman expecting one of her grandchildren has to be kept under surveillance.”

  The three women laughed. “I’m glad you’re here,” Suzette said. “I’m not doing as well as Josie, so she’s had to take on some of my work.” She had finished setting the table and had sat down to rest a moment.

  “Is something wrong?” Eden carried a bowl of fresh corn to the table. It would probably be the last of the season.

  “No. I just don’t have much energy.”

  “Is the coffee ready?” Josie asked. “I heard the men ride in ten minutes ago.”

  “Don’t get up, Suzette.” Eden didn’t pause as she removed a dozen smothered pork chops from a pan. “Josie and I have everything under control.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Josie said. “Suzette is not the only one about to contribute to the population explosion around here.” here.”

  “How are the men coping with becoming fathers at their age?”

  “They’re standing over us like mother hens,” Josie said.

  “If Hawk asks me once if I’m okay, he asks me once an hour,” Suzette said. “I was actually relieved when they hired a new hand who’s never worked on a ranch. They’ve had to spend more time with him lately than with us.”

  “Why would they do that?” Eden took the biscuits out of the oven. Hers weren’t as good as her mother’s, but no one refused them.

  “I’m not sure,” Josie said, bringing the coffee to the table. “They’ve got something up their sleeves, but they won’t tell us what it is.”

  Josie looked at Suzette and winked. Eden found it incredible that two women could get along as well as they did. It was fortunate, since their husbands had been best friends for more than twenty years. She wasn’t sure anyone could think of Hawk or Zeke without thinking of the other.

  Eden put the biscuits in a bowl wrapped in a towel to keep them warm. As she turned to set them on the table, Zeke, Hawk and the three ranch hands came through the doorway. The next instant the bowl landed on the floor with a loud clatter, sending biscuits rolling around the room.

  The third man through the door was Edward.

  Chapter Ten

  Good Lord, Eden!” Zeke hollered. “You dropped the biscuits.”

  Zeke and Hawk fell to their knees to scoop up the food, but Eden didn’t move. Her heart was thumping in her chest so hard she felt faint. She opened her mouth to speak but no sound came out.

  “Are you okay?” Josie asked.

  “Of course she’s not okay,” Hawk said. “Didn’t you see her drop the biscuits?”

  Eden didn’t answer Josie or Hawk; she just gaped at Edward, who stared back at her without expression. “What are you doing here?” he demanded.

  “You know each other?” Suzette asked, looking from Eden to Edward and back again.

  “We met when she was in England.” There was no censure in Edward’s words. He picked up a biscuit that had rolled up against his boot. It was still hot so he tossed it into the bowl Josie was holding. “She didn’t appear to like anything she found there.”

  “What are you doing in Texas?”

  Having gathered up the biscuits, Hawk turned to Eden and Edward. “If you two are going to fight, you’ll have to wait until after supper.”

  “We’re not going to fight,” Edward said. “We have nothing to say to each other.”

  “I have lots of questions,” Eden contradicted.

  “As I recall, you also had a lot of opinions.”

  Eden couldn’t blame Edward for being angry with her. She had done a terrible thing when she’d divulged the secret of his birth.

  “Let’s eat,” Hawk said. “You can work this out between you later.”

  “It’s not necessary,” Edward said.

  “It is if you two are staying here,” Josie said. “I’ve got enough to worry about without having an undeclared war on my hands.”

  “There’s no war,” Eden said. “I just want to ask Edward some questions.”

  Eden didn’t have any appetite, and it irritated her to see Edward eat like he didn’t have a worry in the world. As the meal progressed, she felt increasingly frustrated. She wasn’t used to being unable to do anything about a situation. She reminded herself it had been her penchant for doing something about a situation that had gotten her into this mess in the first place.

  “How long have you been here?” she asked, unable to wait until after supper. She could keep her mouth closed about as well as she could stop breathing. It was becoming more apparent every day she was her mother’s child.

  “We moved back while you all were in England,” Zeke answered.

  “I think she was talking to me,” Edward said.

  “We’ve only been back a month,” Eden said. “You must have left the same time we did.”

  “I don’t know when you left.”

  “Will you go back to Worlege?”

  “I have no reason to go back.”

  “I get the feeling there’s something I don’t know,” Josie said.

  “It’s not important,” Edward said. “A matter of a misrepresentation, but it’s all been set right.”

  “How—” Eden began before she realized he couldn’t answer that question without divulging his secret. “Never mind.”

  “What did you boys do today?” Josie asked. Her look said she was tired of a conversation in which she could have no part.

  The ranch hands remained silent while Hawk launched into a discussion of their horses, the various qualities each of them exhibited, and how they hoped to capture these qualities in future foals or breed them out. “Edward thinks we ought to concentrate on speed. He says Thoroughbreds are where the real money will be in the future.”

  “The Thoroughbred is the ultimate horse,” Edward explained. “His sole purpose is to run faster than his competition.”

  “Will many people want such a horse?” Josie asked. “I haven’t heard of much racing in Texas.”

  “There were some great North-South match races before the war,” Eden said. “Now that Texas has recovered from Reconstruction, people are interested in racing once again. I’m entering Black Cloud in the race in San Antonio next month. Dad says she’s the fast
est horse in Texas.” Eden noticed that Hawk and Zeke were looking at Edward rather than at her, and Edward was studiously ignoring her. “What?” she asked. “Did I say something wrong?”

  “No,” both of her brothers replied, but the way they looked at Edward implied they knew something she didn’t.

  “Come on, what is it you know that I don’t?”

  Edward lifted his gaze. “I plan to enter Crusader in the same race.”

  Edward’s hands traveled down Crusader’s legs, looking for swelling, or any indication the horse wasn’t in perfect health. Training a race horse in the Texas Hill Country wasn’t like training one in England. There were few straight stretches here and the ground was littered with stones and cut by depressions from rainwater runoff. But his horse needed to learn to handle the rough terrain to have any chance at defeating horses that had been bred and raised in this area, horses like Eden’s Black Cloud.

  Edward wasn’t sure how he’d made it through the meal without losing control of his tongue. He had known he’d run into Eden one day—he’d planned on it—but he’d intended it to be after he’d had time to become acclimated to this new country . . . after he’d won the race. Seeing Eden when he walked into the kitchen had nearly caused his legs to go out from under him. He’d never been prey to such contradictory emotions. Despite the conflicts that had enveloped him from time to time, he’d always been in control of himself. He didn’t feel that way now.

  He knew it wasn’t fair to be angry at Eden. Though she’d been the one to tell him about the circumstances of his birth, she had done it to free him, to give him a chance to live his own life. He was deeply and profoundly angry at his so-called father. When the viscount had decided to substitute one child for another, he hadn’t cared how this might someday affect everyone else. His only concern had been his own pride. He would prevent a distant and despised cousin from inheriting the title after him. And he would force everyone to bow to his will.

  Crusader nudged Edward’s side. “Looking for a treat?” he asked. He took some sugar out of his pocket. “No apples until later in the year. No carrots at all. The ground is too rocky to grow them.” Crusader seemed satisfied with the sugar. Edward couldn’t say the same for his one and only meeting with his mother.

  Even before he’d visited her and endured her copious tears of remorse, he could understand her dilemma. An unwed mother with a meager dowry had stood no chance of a decent marriage. He could also appreciate the pressure her brother had brought on a frightened and lonely woman to lend herself to his plan. Having then made a successful marriage and being possessed of a growing family of her own, she would have jeopardized her future and the future of her family to recognize Edward now.

  So he had sent a letter to the earl renouncing the title and had left England. As far as everyone was concerned, he’d simply disappeared. Only Patrick knew the reason. His brother had been so angry, he’d threatened to expose his own father, but Edward had made him see that wouldn’t do anyone—including Edward—any good.

  He didn’t blame his nurse for revealing the secret. She’d always loved him, had been the one to comfort him when he couldn’t understand why he was never allowed to be with his father, why he was always hidden away while Patrick was taken everywhere. She’d invented many fanciful reasons, some of which he’d actually believed, until he was old enough to accept that his father wanted nothing to do with him. Now he understood why the old woman had turned to gin. It was the only way she could endure seeing how the viscount treated him and knowing she could do nothing to change it.

  Edward moved away from the shadows of the barn, a flimsy structure compared to the stable at Worlege. Made of wood rather than brick and stone, the stall walls were only head high to allow air to circulate. He was certain snow would blow in during the winter. He intended to build much more substantial stables when he had his own ranch.

  The person standing in the way of that goal was Eden.

  He couldn’t imagine why the nurse had revealed to Eden a secret she hadn’t divulged to anyone else in twenty-five years. It must have been a shock to Eden to realize he was illegitimate. Not that she could throw stones, considering her own mother’s birth. Still, she probably looked down on him. He knew everyone in England would, which was part of the reason he’d left. He had done nothing wrong, but would spend the rest of his life suffering because others had.

  And he wasn’t the only one who’d suffer. He hoped to have a family someday. If he’d stayed in England, it would have been impossible to protect his children from the jibes of friends who didn’t understand how deeply such things could hurt. Dammit, why couldn’t Eden have left things as they were?

  He supposed he ought to be thankful to her. If he had stayed in England as the heir, he would have become a sleepwalker in his own life, going through the motions without feeling or caring. Eden had told him the truth to free him from his father’s tyranny. What she hadn’t been able to do was offer him another life. She’d destroyed the person he was without helping him create a new one.

  So he had come to Texas to do it himself.

  He walked over to the corral. More than half a dozen horses stood in a loose group along the fence, their heads hanging low, sleeping standing up. Zeke had explained that these horses had spent much of their lives out in the open, where they were prey to wolves and cougars, a kind of large cat Edward had never seen but imagined was something like a lion without manes on the males. These horses couldn’t afford to sleep lying down. The time it would take them to get to their feet might mean the difference between life and death. This was just one of the many differences he had to get used to.

  The women here were different, too. Though he thought they were allowed so much freedom it was virtually impossible to remain ladylike, he was attracted to the character the women developed as a consequence of that freedom. Despite her amazing energy and forceful personality, Eden remained remarkably feminine.

  That was the crux of his dilemma. While he was angry at Eden for destroying his life, he was strongly attracted to her. He tried to convince himself it was purely physical, but he knew he was fooling himself. After having unwittingly spent his life living a lie, he was determined to stick to the truth regardless of how unpalatable it might be. And liking Eden Maxwell was very unpalatable.

  He turned at the sound of footsteps to see Eden approaching. He would have preferred to avoid her a little longer, but this meeting was inevitable.

  “I didn’t expect to find you here,” he said when she joined him at the corral fence.

  “You couldn’t have been any more surprised than I was. I’ve never come so close to fainting.”

  “I can’t believe that. You’re a very strong woman.”

  “The kind of woman you don’t like.”

  “I never said that.”

  “You didn’t have to. You were brought up in a society that values women only for their looks, wealth, social standing, and their ability to produce an heir.”

  “That doesn’t mean I feel the same way.”

  She turned her gaze to the half dozen horses congregated in the shade of a large maple with heads down, their swishing tails the only movement. The quiet calm of the evening was at variance with the turmoil showing on her face. “I suppose not, or you wouldn’t have refused to marry Daphne.” She turned back to face him. “But you don’t like strong women.”

  “English women aren’t weak. They have to know how to manage a large household, be responsible for the welfare of an estate’s tenants, and take the lead in civic activities.”

  “All suitable activities for a woman, but suppose she wants to own and manage her own property, wants to run the estate herself.”

  “She wouldn’t know how.”

  “Because men like you would have kept her confined to doing fancy needlework and learning how to paint or play the pianoforte.”

  “Why are you attacking me?” Edward asked, surprised by the force behind her word; the angry spark in her eye
was visible even in the fading evening light. “You’ve never had to put up with such restraints.”

  “No, Americans don’t believe in imprisoning their women.”

  “So you think letting a woman do anything she wants, think anything she wants, is preferable.”

  “We have minds as well as men. Why shouldn’t we be allowed to use them? It’s preferable to being a piece of prop erty owned by your husband.” She leaned back against the corral fence and faced him. “Daphne’s father expected her to accept the first offer she received from a titled gentleman. In exchange for the title, that gentleman will get Daphne’s money. What does Daphne get?”

  “A husband, a position in society, and the allowance her husband gives her.”

  “Her husband gives her,” Eden repeated. She kicked an offending rock into some brush. “You make her sound like a child.”

  Edward was trying to control his temper, but it was getting increasingly difficult to moderate each word before it came out of his mouth. Eden had always been independent, but now she was acting like the entire English social structure, which she obviously despised, was his fault. Didn’t she remember he’d disliked it, too? Besides, he was the one with the right to be angry. Nobody had destroyed her life. She was back in Texas as sassy and independent as ever. And just as pretty.

  “If anyone here has a right to be angry, I do,” Edward declared. “If anyone here has a right to be angry, I do,” Edward declared. “I’m not the one who divulged a secret that had been kept for a quarter of a century.”

  “I didn’t do it to hurt you,” Eden insisted. “You were miserable. Your father was forcing you into a marriage you didn’t want and making you feel responsible for Worlege, all in the name of duty. I figured if you knew you weren’t really his son, you wouldn’t feel duty-bound to do everything he wanted. I had no idea you’d disappear.”