Chapter 1 #3
“I have this, Finn,” Morgan said. “She doesn’t need these.
” He nudged the steps aside with the toe of his boot, released Finn, and inserted himself between the gentleman and the woman.
He used his shoulder to disengage their handclasp.
He did not reach for the woman immediately.
Instead, he raised his face so she could see past the shadowing brim of his hat. “Do you know me?”
There was no hesitation. She nodded. “You are very like your photograph.”
“You’re not, but you can explain that later.
” He glanced pointedly at the red poppies adorning her hat.
The flowers, not her features, were how he had identified her.
In her last correspondence, she had described her new hat in great detail and wrote that she would be wearing it when she greeted him.
It had been of a purpose, he supposed. He would not have known her otherwise.
Without asking permission, Morgan placed his hands at her waist and tried not to think about how insubstantial, even fragile, she felt between his callused palms. Her smile was tentative, fleeting, but she placed her gloved hands on his shoulders as he lifted her.
It seemed to him that she did not weigh much more than Finn.
When he set her down, he noticed that after making allowance for the height of her hat, the crown of her head was level with his mouth.
He was tall, but then so was she. He held onto that fact as perhaps the one thing she had not misrepresented about herself.
Finn straightened. Somehow he managed to convey surprise and skepticism, blue eyes wide as quarters beneath a deeply furrowed brow. “You know her?”
Morgan nodded, although it occurred to him that he knew her better before he met her. “I do.”
“She’s what you come to town for?” He did not wait for an answer. “Well, don’t that beat all. Why didn’t you say so?” Finn pointed to the gentleman still clutching his valise. “I thought she was with him.”
“She is with me,” said Morgan.
“I see that now. I surely do. But who is she?”
Morgan Longstreet had not planned on declaring himself on the platform of the Bitter Springs depot, and certainly not in front of Finn Collins, a gentleman whose name he did not know, and a porter employed by the Union Pacific. Still, the moment was upon him and…
The woman in his arms seized it. She removed her gloved hands from his shoulders and set them on his wrists.
Using only modest pressure, she reminded him that he was still holding her by the waist. His fingers splayed, his hands fell away, and she took a step backward.
It was not precisely a retreat, but it did reestablish a boundary.
“I am Miss Middlebourne,” she said, holding out her hand to Finn. “And you are?”
“Carpenter Addison Collins,” Finn said. He took her hand and pumped it once. “But everyone calls me Finn. I picked it for myself on account of I didn’t cotton to the idea of being called Carp.”
“A sensible notion.”
“That’s my brother over there. Rabbit. Cabot Theodore, but you see the problem, don’t you?”
“I do.”
“I’ve been speculatin’ about what Mr. Longstreet come to town for, but I sure didn’t speculate you.”
“That’s all right,” she said. “I did not speculate your existence either.”
Finn’s eyebrows pulled together as he puzzled that out. “I reckon that squares it,” he said finally. “Good to meet you, Miss Middlebourne.” His eyes swiveled to the gentleman with the large valise. “I’d sure like to help you with that, mister.”
Before the man could reply, Morgan Longstreet looked at him, one eyebrow raised.
“I’d sure like it if he helped you, too.
” He kept his eyes on the stranger while he held out a coin to Finn.
Morgan did not know if the man was influenced by the exchange of money or Morgan’s own unwavering stare, but a decision was made in favor of moving on.
The stranger stepped around Morgan and handed his valise over to Finn.
He tipped his bowler to Jane. “I hope there will be occasion to enjoy your company again, Miss Middlebourne.” He glanced at Morgan then back to Jane.
He held her eyes for a long moment. “If you should have need of me, you will find me at the Pennyroyal. Good day.” He might have said more, but Finn was already trotting away with his valise. He had to hurry to catch up.
Morgan waited until Jane stopped following the gentleman’s progress and turned back to him. “What did he mean by that?”
“By what, Mr. Longstreet?”
“Why would he think you might need him?”
“Perhaps because you are glowering at me.” She pointed to the porter still standing at his post. “He has not deserted me.”
Morgan looked to the porter. The man was doing his best to seem uninterested, but there was no doubt he was hovering protectively. Morgan’s cheeks puffed slightly as he blew out a breath. For a moment, his tautly defined features were softened. “Miss Middlebourne’s bags, please.”
Nodding, the porter stepped back into the car.
When Morgan was certain he was out of earshot, he said, “You are not what I expected.”
“I understand. You are disappointed.”
No, not disappointed. He felt betrayed. What he said was, “Angry.”
Jane blinked. Her chin came up and she regarded him forthrightly. “Do you think I have deceived you?”
“Haven’t you? Your photograph…”
“I explained it was taken two years ago. You wrote that it was acceptable to you.”
He remembered writing exactly that. “It was acceptable. It still is.”
“But I am not.”
“I don’t know.”
“Did I mistake your intention earlier?” she asked. “Were you not within moments of making a public proposal?”
“I was. I am a man of my word, Miss Middlebourne, but I should have thought better of the time and place…and the company. I am not accustomed to being rescued, but you saved me from making a fool of myself. That counts for something.”
“You flatter yourself to think I did it for you, Mr. Longstreet. I did it for me. Perhaps I do not want to accept the proposal of a man who thinks I deceived him. Such a man will question all that follows.” She paused. “Am I wrong?”
Morgan hooked his thumbs in the pockets of his long leather coat. “Perhaps we should find out, Miss Middlebourne. I am discovering courting by correspondence has its limitations.”
“As am I. What are you suggesting?”
He shrugged. “That we sleep on it. See if twenty-four hours makes a difference in our thinking. The preacher will be there tomorrow, same as today. I don’t suppose waiting a day will matter as much to him as it will to us.”
Jane’s reply was forestalled by the reappearance of the porter carrying a valise under each arm. Another followed hoisting a small trunk on his shoulder. They looked to Jane for instruction. She looked to Morgan Longstreet.
Morgan pointed to his buckboard at the end of the platform and the porters set off.
He noticed that the Johnsons and Ted Rush had already moved on.
Finn and the stranger were pulling away.
Rabbit was holding the station door open for his pap who was carrying a leather mailbag and a wooden crate.
The pair disappeared into the station, and then Morgan and Jane were alone on the platform.
Morgan held Jane’s green eyes. Not merely green, he saw, but emerald, and startling for their radiance.
Would she blame him when she regarded herself in the mirror one day and observed the brilliance had dulled?
Hardship and isolation could do that. Could he bear to look at her, knowing he was at fault whether she said so or not?
Morgan needed to consider that. He needed twenty-four hours.
“Well?” he asked.
“You will have to pay for my lodging, Mr. Longstreet.”
“Of course.”
“All right.”
“You accept?”
“I do, yes.”
He nodded. “This way, then.”
* * *
The ride to the Pennyroyal Saloon and Hotel was filled with new experiences for Jane Middlebourne, chief among them being sitting on the thinly padded and springy buckboard seat.
After being jostled sideways against the steely arm of her companion, she gripped the seat on either side of her and gamely held on.
She expected that Morgan Longstreet would find some amusement in her efforts, but when she stole a sideways glance at his profile, she saw his mouth was set more grimly than it had been a moment before.
She could not have imagined that was even possible.
The main thoroughfare of the town was wide and open.
She had expected that from the reading she did prior to leaving New York.
She had wondered how much she could trust the descriptions in periodicals and dime novels, but this detail was right.
The town had erected itself around cattle drives and commerce, and shops of every sort lined the length of the street.
She recognized a young man from the train ducking into Johnson’s Mercantile with a couple she supposed were his parents.
Another man, this one a gregarious older gentleman who had introduced himself to her on the train as the owner of Rush’s Hardware, was engaged in animated conversation with someone sweeping the walk outside the drugstore.
Morgan Longstreet offered no narrative as the buckboard bumped along, and Jane did not ask any questions that might have invited one.
She was curious about the fighting, or the lack of it.
Her reading led her believe she could expect to witness at least one brawl and perhaps a gunfight.
The latter seemed especially unlikely since not one of the men she saw was wearing a gun belt.
The only man she thought might be spoiling for a fight was the one beside her.
Jane was unafraid that he would turn fists on her, but she felt some concern on behalf of the next man who crossed him.