The Reluctant Bride Page 9

  Barely fifteen minutes had passed when the schoolhouse door opened with a bang and Jem entered, followed by a woman Tanzy assumed must be his mother.

  “He’s to be in school every day,” the lady said, shoving him toward an empty desk and pushing him down into it. “You let me know if he’s not. Did he give you any sass this morning?” It was obvious Jem expected Tanzy to tell on him.

  “None of the students have been a problem,” Tanzy said.

  Mrs. Bridger appeared skeptical. “Well, you let me know if he does. I don’t tolerate his showing disrespect.”

  “I’m sure he wouldn’t do that,” Tanzy said.

  Mrs. Bridger harrumphed in a manner that said she didn’t believe Tanzy was up to the job and took her leave.

  “It’s your turn to read,” Tanzy said to Jem. He came to the front, his attitude still defiant.

  “Why didn’t you tell on me?”

  “I expect you were just testing me,” Tanzy said. “I hope I passed the test.”

  “We’ll see,” Jem muttered.

  A sigh of relief escaped Tanzy as the last students left the schoolhouse. “You don’t have to wait today,” she said to Tardy. “I can get back to the hotel safely by myself.”

  “But Aunt Ethel said—”

  “It’s been a whole week and everything has gone smoothly. You don’t need to watch out for me anymore.”

  “Aunt Ethel will break my head if I don’t stay.”

  “I’ll tell her I wouldn’t let you stay. Now go. If you hurry, you can catch up with your friends.”

  Tanzy pretended not to notice when Tardy blushed.

  “I don’t have any friends. The kids think I’m a half-wit. Hell, who am I kidding? Everybody thinks I’m a half-wit.”

  “I don’t,” Tanzy said, “and I’ll quite happily speak to anyone who does. You read as well as anybody in school, you know as much math as I do, and you can remember history better than anybody I ever met.”

  “People in Boulder Gap don’t care about book learning,” Tardy said. “If I had my own ranch like Mr. Tibbolt, they wouldn’t care if I was as dumb as Jem.”

  “Mr. Tibbolt’s ranch hasn’t made people like him, so maybe you’re better off just as you are.”

  “They may not like him, but they respect him.”

  Tardy’s statement surprised Tanzy. “Why do you say that? All the people I’ve met have done their best to convince me not to marry him.”

  “They respect him because he stands up for himself against Mr. Pullet, against the whole town if need be. Nobody but Mr. Tibbolt ever has. They hate him for it, but they respect him, too.”

  Tanzy understood that. Nobody likes the man who shows up the weaknesses of others, particularly when he compounds the injury by not throwing it in anyone’s face.

  “Everybody likes you,” Tardy said. “If you was to marry Mr. Tibbolt, they’d be hard pressed to turn their backs on him. Besides, everybody knows Mr. Pullet doesn’t want you to marry Mr. Tibbolt. If you stood up to him—you being a woman and all—the women would have to stick with you. That would make Mr. Pullet mad, and nobody wants that.”

  “Apparently it’s a good thing for the people of Boulder Gap I’ve decided not to marry Mr. Tibbolt,” Tanzy said with some asperity. “I’d sure hate to force them to start behaving like decent human beings.”

  Tardy laughed. “I’d sure like to see them choking on their words.”

  “Go home, Tardy. I don’t want to speak disrespectfully of the people who’ve entrusted me with their children’s education, but if we continue this conversation, I just might.”

  After he left, Tanzy sat puzzling over why a town would hate a man who seemed to be the embodiment of the western ideal. She realized she didn’t know the real history of Russ’s relationship with the town any more than she knew what caused Tardy to be perpetually late. She knew it was intentional because he had never been late for her.

  A sound outside the schoolhouse startled her. She looked at her watch, amazed to see she’d been sitting at her desk for nearly an hour without doing any of the work she’d stayed behind to do. Well, she’d have to do it tomorrow. It would be dark soon. She had no desire to be walking about town after dusk.

  The sound of the schoolhouse door opening caused a frisson of apprehension to race down her spine. Rather than fade when she saw Russ framed in the doorway, it transformed itself into a quiver of excitement. She didn’t like to think that the mere sight of Russ Tibbolt could instantly charge her body with surplus nervous energy, but she couldn’t find another reason for the sudden tautness that aroused her body to full alert.

  She needed him to leave. She could empathize with his plight, be angry that the townspeople appeared to be treating him unfairly because of their fear of Pullet’s retaliation, but none of that was her concern.

  “There’s nobody here,” she said. “Whoever you’re looking for has been gone for over an hour.”

  “What would I be doing looking for a student?” he asked as he came inside and closed the door behind him.

  “Since I know nothing of your affairs, I couldn’t possibly answer that question.” She wanted him to leave, not walk toward her. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’ve come to see you.”

  “Why?” She couldn’t see his expression. The sunlight coming through the window blinded her to everything beyond its reach. “Have you come to make sure I have a job so I can pay you back the money you spent on me?”

  “No.”

  She didn’t believe him. She was surprised he hadn’t checked on her before now. “I have this job until the town finds a new teacher. Since the parents seem satisfied with my work so far, they aren’t looking very hard. I should be able to repay you in a couple of months.”

  It annoyed her that he didn’t go away, that he remained in the shadows. More important, it disconcerted her that she didn’t need to see his face to feel the effect of his presence. Merely hearing his voice was enough to call forth a clear memory of the man who’d sat across the table from her that first evening, dust and blood staining his clothes without detracting from the animal magnetism that had aroused in her a sensual response unlike anything she’d ever experienced. She wanted it to stop. She didn’t want to experience it again. Nothing good could come of it.

  “How do you like teaching school?” he asked.

  “I can’t say yet.”

  “You’ve been doing it for a week.”

  “I’m still too busy trying to figure out what to do. Every student is in a different place, and I don’t have enough teaching materials to work with.”

  “Tell Ethel Peters. She’ll see you get something.”

  “Why do you speak so highly of Miss Peters? You’ve got to know she warned me not to marry you.”

  “Ethel’s feelings toward me are based on her sense of what is right and wrong. She doesn’t know the information they’re based on is all a lie.”

  “It’s a shame you can’t be as forgiving with Stocker. If you could, that might put an end to the feud.”

  “We’re not having a feud. And even if Stocker could forgive me, I could never forgive him.”

  “What did he do that’s so terrible?”

  “That’s my business.”

  She hadn’t expected him to be so blunt, but her refusal to marry him had broken the only link between them. He had no reason to share confidences with her.

  “Forgive me for being so inquisitive. I’ve always wondered why people do the things they do. I call it curiosity. Others probably call it nosiness.”

  “If you don’t want to marry me, why should you be curious about me?”

  “Nothing I’ve heard about you has led me to believe you’re given to asking stupid questions.”

  “Why is it stupid?”

  “Come out of the shadows. I don’t like talking to a man I can’t see.”

  “Do I make you nervous?”

  “No.” It wasn’t exactly a lie because he didn’t exactly m
ake her nervous. Her feeling was more like apprehension mixed with anticipation. Physical attraction she could understand, but this feeling that there was a connection between them was ridiculous as well as hard on her peace of mind. She tried to tell herself to stop being fanciful, but talking to herself didn’t do any good. She had to face the simple fact that something about this man affected her as no other had.

  “I just don’t like people hiding in the dark,” she said. “It was men hiding in the trees at night who killed my father and brothers.”

  “How many brothers did you have?”

  “Four.”

  “How many died?”

  “All of them.”

  He didn’t answer for a moment. “What about your mother?”

  “She’s dead.”

  “Any sisters?”

  “No.”

  “Why didn’t you stay in St. Louis?”

  “I discovered men there were too much like the men in Kentucky.”

  “Surely there was at least one man in St. Louis who would have offered you a respectable marriage.”

  “No man—at least not the ones I met in St. Louis—believes a woman who works in a gambling hall is respectable.”

  “So you came west thinking we were different?”

  “Only to discover that men are the same everywhere.”

  “That must have been a disappointment.”

  “I’ll get over it. I’ve got to be going before it gets dark, so tell me what you’re doing here.”

  Russ stepped forward out of the shadows. “I want you to teach me how to read.”

  Chapter Eight

  Tanzy was tired, cranky, and feeling the stress of trying to control her reaction to Russ. “I don’t know whether you’re angry that I won’t marry you or whether you think it’s fun to bait the schoolteacher, but I’m in no mood for jokes. If your presence has a purpose, state it.”

  “I just did. I want you to teach me to read.”

  If losing her temper would have done any good, Tanzy would gladly have done so. “You had to be able to read my letters to write yours to me.”

  “I didn’t write those letters. I didn’t read them either. Welt Aldred, one of my cowhands, wrote all of them.”

  “He wrote them for you?”

  Russ looked a little uneasy. “Not exactly.”

  Tanzy was losing patience. “Then what exactly did happen?”

  “Welt read the letters and wrote the answers.”

  “You mean he wrote what you told him to write?”

  “No.”

  “If this is the clearest you can express yourself, no wonder people in Boulder Gap don’t understand you. What are you talking about?”

  “I’d better start at the beginning.”

  Tanzy sank into her chair. “Maybe you’d better.”

  “I wasn’t looking for a wife. No young woman here would have married me if I asked.”

  Tanzy had a strong feeling that more than one young woman would have gladly braved parental anger, as well as the wrath of Stocker Pullet, to have a husband like Russ. No woman could think straight when he was around. The physical attraction alone was enough to cloud a girl’s thinking. When he looked into her eyes like she was the only person in the world, nothing else mattered. When he smiled … well, there was no way to describe his smile except to say most any woman would sell her soul to have its warmth for the rest of her life.

  “Welt kept telling me I needed a wife. J didn’t pay any attention to him until he told me you were on your way to Boulder City, that he’d already sent you the money. I was mad as hell at him, but there was nothing I could do to stop you.”

  Tanzy was in shock. He hadn’t wanted her to come to Boulder City. He hadn’t wanted to marry her. All the heat that had been building inside her turned to anger. “Why did you let me come all the way out here knowing you weren’t going to marry me?”

  “There was nothing I could do. Breaking Welt’s head—which I nearly did in any case—wouldn’t stop you. I went to meet the stage to tell you to turn around and go back to St. Louis.”

  “Then you got more interested in playing the hero and capturing the bandits than saving my feelings.”

  “By the time I found you at the hotel, everybody knew why you were here. I figured at that point it would be best to let you decide you didn’t want to marry me. With everybody telling you I was a lying, thieving murderer, I figured you’d head back east on the first stage.”

  Tanzy suddenly realized what he’d said. “You are a liar! You didn’t send me the money to come out here. I don’t owe you anything.”

  “I’m afraid you do. I repaid Welt.”

  Tanzy was so furious, she itched to throw anything she could get her hands on. Responsibility for this whole debacle rested with Welt, but she couldn’t work up a real temper against this unknown cowhand. If Russ hadn’t been such an outcast, somebody in Boulder Gap would have married him and his cowhands wouldn’t have had to go looking for a mail-order bride. If he’d been paying attention to what his cowhands were doing, he’d have known Welt was up to no good. And if he hadn’t been so brave and handsome, she wouldn’t have liked him from the start. She was humiliated, and it was all his fault. She opened her mouth to blister him with both sides of her tongue, then abruptly closed it again.

  “Why aren’t you yelling at me?” Russ asked. “I expected you’d be calling me every name you could think of.”

  “I have a confession to make,” Tanzy said. “I didn’t write my letters, either.”

  She expected Russ would be angry with her, but his look of surprise was quickly replaced by a grin. No sooner did that happen than his eyes began to twinkle and he started to laugh. She couldn’t see anything funny. The whole thing was a horrible mistake. And all he could do—this brave, handsome man who was so sexy sensible women would want to marry him even knowing they courted disaster—all he could do was laugh. She had to be crazy not to throw something at him.

  “Who wrote your letters?” Russ asked when he stopped laughing.

  “A girl I worked with in the gambling hall.”

  “Why?”

  “Both of us were too naive to realize what looked like a good job was in fact a permanent bar to respectability. When it became clear that every man who saw us figured he could have us for a price, she offered herself as a mail-order bride and encouraged me to do the same. I still wouldn’t have considered it if the owner of the gambling hall hadn’t threatened to fire me if I wasn’t more friendly toward the customers. Then I got a letter from my friend saying she was deliriously happy with her marriage and I decided to meet you at least.”

  Two people who didn’t want to get married,” Russ said, “and look what a mess we got ourselves into.”

  “I wasn’t set against marriage,” Tanzy said.

  “Until you met me.”

  Tanzy couldn’t characterize the look on his face. At first glance he seemed unaffected. After all, he had no reason to care what a stranger thought of him.

  Yet there was something in his expression that defied her ability to characterize it. It couldn’t have been vulnerability. The man was as impregnable as the mountains around him. She’d never seen him express a soft emotion. If he’d ever had any, they’d probably been beaten out of him by five years in prison. He hadn’t put it into words, but she believed he might be trying to apologize for his part in what had happened to her.

  “Not all our plans are meant to work out,” she said, pulling herself back from the brink of wanting to explain that she didn’t share the town’s feeling toward him. There was no possibility of any relationship between them. It was simpler to leave things as they were. “I’m sure you’ll find some woman who’ll make you a perfect wife.”

  “Not unless I do what everyone in Boulder Gap prays for daily—go somewhere else. But I didn’t come here to talk about me. I came to ask you to teach me to read.”

  “I find it hard to believe a man as intelligent and successful as you can’t
read.”

  “I can read the names of things I need, like flour and coffee, boots or saddles, and names of places, like the bank and the saloon. I know how to sign my name and recognize signatures. But if I wanted to buy some land, I couldn’t read the contract. I can’t read the breeding of a bull advertised for sale or the directions to the ranch where I could get a look at him.”

  “What do you do?”

  “I get into a discussion with people, ask their opinions, pose questions that give me the information I need.”

  “Wouldn’t it have been easier to learn to read?”

  “Probably, but I wasn’t wise enough to see that.”

  “So why do you see the necessity now?”

  “Those letters. If I’d been able to write, they’d never have been written. If I had read your replies, I’d have known you weren’t suited to be a rancher’s wife.”

  “So you want to avoid anything like this again?”

  “I’ll never do anything like this again, but it has shown me I can get into real trouble by not being able to read things for myself.”

  Tanzy didn’t want to teach Russ to read. It was impossible to be around him for more than five minutes without wondering what it would be like to be married to him. Despite what the people of Boulder Gap said about him, there was a strength in Russ that was very appealing, very reassuring. If the hatred of the community was a barometer of his success, his accomplishments had been remarkable. She also had to admire a man who could inspire so much loyalty in his friends that one of them would do his best to find him a wife. Why didn’t the people of Boulder Gap realize there was something very important about Russ they’d missed?

  She tried to imagine what it was like to live in a community that didn’t want you, to face hostility and open condemnation from nearly everyone you met. It had to take a tremendous amount of courage, a bedrock conviction you were right, and the stubbornness to hold your course regardless of what people said or did. It took courage to stand up to the slander, not to let it beat you down, to keep believing you were doing the right thing.

  She had left her home rather than face her nemesis. Russ had come back home to face his every day.