the Wells Fargo office. I’ve kept it hidden since soon after you came to work here.”
“Why?”
“Because I didn’t want Mrs. Schneiderman to see it. And because I didn’t really believe you were a stagecoach robber.”
He frowned again. “Why not?”
She sent him a long, level look. “Because you have never shown the slightest interest in all the money the boardinghouse residents leave lying around. If you were a thief, you would have taken it, but you never did. Instead, you’ve worked hard and kept your head down.”
His eyes narrowed into hard blue slits. “Why are you showing me this Wanted poster now?”
She laughed. “I should think that is obvious. How else can I get you to marry me so I can go to Oregon and claim my inheritance?”
His mouth tightened. “That, Miss Marianne, is blackmail.”
Her cheeks grew warm. “Well, yes, I suppose it is.”
“Blackmail!” he repeated firmly.
After an awkward silence she glanced up at him. “Oh, all right, I admit it’s blackmail,” she said quietly. “Is it working?” She sucked in her breath and held it.
For a long, long moment he just looked at her. Then he lifted his hands out of his pockets and leaned toward her.
“Yeah,” he murmured. “It sure as hell is.”
The train rounded a curve and picked up speed, and the passenger car began to sway from side to side. Marianne watched grassland flash by outside the window, admired the drifts of red and yellow wildflowers and studied placid-looking cows dotting the meadows. This was Oregon. It seemed the territory had no people, only cows and wildflowers.
She caught her lower lip between her teeth and tried to tame the cadre of butterflies in her stomach. Am I doing the right thing? Giving up my safe, secure life at Mrs. Schneiderman’s and haring off into the unknown? And am I crazy to do it with Lance Burnside by my side?
With fingers that were slick with perspiration, she folded new creases in her green bombazine travel skirt, smoothed them flat and then carefully re-creased them again. What would the Oregon frontier be like? Were there bears? Wolves? Outlaws?
What would it be like living in a small town after the hustle and bustle of St. Louis?
Her heart gave a little skip. An even more unnerving question was what would it be like to marry Lance Burnside, a man she didn’t really know anything about other than that he was a hardworking, reliable, entirely predictable man who may or may not have been a stagecoach robber. At least he had been predictable and honest at Mrs. Schneiderman’s. How he would be in Oregon she couldn’t begin to guess.
She clenched her hands together in her lap and breathed in the stale, cigar-smoky air of the coach. There was only one thing she knew for sure; for the rest of her life she would be grateful to Great Uncle Matty for naming her his heir. From what her father had said, Uncle Matty thought the Collingwood women were flighty and frivolous. That must be why his will stipulated she had to be over twenty-one and married in order to inherit.
She ran her hand over the maroon velvet upholstery she sat on and closed her fingers into a tight fist. She could scarcely believe what she was doing, traveling to a remote corner of Oregon with this man. With a twinge of guilt she thought about the blackmail she had resorted to. But when she recalled the desperation she’d felt for the last eleven years, she had to admit she wasn’t that sorry. She was willing to do anything to start a new life on her own, away from Mrs. Schneiderman’s boardinghouse. Anything, she thought with a gulp. Even join her life to Lance Burnside’s.
At odd hours of the night, when she tried to get comfortable in the train seat, she wondered at her audacity. But every morning when she woke up things were once again clear; she knew exactly what she wanted. Independence. She wouldn’t have done one single thing differently.
She cast a surreptitious glance at Lance in the seat next to her, calmly eating a sandwich. He was a good man. At least she hoped he was. When she took the time to look at him, really look at him, she had to admit he was quite attractive with dark, slightly wavy hair that usually flopped into his eyes. And those eyes were such a dark, smoky blue they looked like ripe blueberries. Sometimes the expression in them gave her pause.
She knew he was not really a thief, no matter what any Wanted poster said. The sheriff in St. Louis said Wells Fargo was always printing up such posters. Every time they lost someone’s luggage they claimed it was a robbery.
But what else Lance Burnside was she hadn’t a clue. One thing she knew for certain; he was as anxious to leave Mrs. Schneiderman’s and St. Louis as she was. “I have no future here,” he admitted. “Might as well gamble that Oregon will be better.”
And, Marianne thought with a stab of conscience, he was gambling that marrying her would not turn out to be a disaster. They were both gambling. They might not like Oregon. They might discover Uncle Matty’s business was something awful, like laying railroad track or running a slaughterhouse. Worse, after they were married, they might find they didn’t really like each other, at least not in the married sense. She already liked what she knew of Lance, she acknowledged. But maybe that wouldn’t be enough.
He leaned toward her. “You want half my sandwich? It’s meat loaf.” He waved it beneath her nose. He had purchased it somewhere in Idaho, and while her stomach rumbled with hunger, and the smell of meat and mayonnaise was enticing, she knew she couldn’t eat a bite.
“No, thank you, Lance. I’m too nervous to eat anything.”
“Nervous about what?”
“About what Uncle Matty’s business will turn out to be. Maybe it’s a house full of shady ladies or a coal mine or a rowdy saloon.”
And she was extremely apprehensive about marrying Lance, but she need not mention that.
He stretched out his long legs and bit into his sandwich. She glanced at his squashed-up-looking lunch and wrinkled her nose.
“Still not hungry?”
She sighed. “My stomach is too jumpy. Besides, we’ve eaten nothing but sandwiches for the past three days.”
“I’m tired of sandwiches, too,” he said. “Eat it anyway.”
At that moment her stomach gurgled, and when he grinned at her she reluctantly accepted it. “Thank you, Lance.”
His eyes widened. “You’re welcome.” He bit into his half and chewed quietly while she studied the gray-looking bread in her hand. “Never in all my years at Mrs. Schneiderman’s have I seen a sorrier-looking sandwich.”
Lance nodded and took another bite. Things sure did seem unreal. He could understand Marianne’s feelings of anxiety. The last thing he ever thought he’d do in life was get married. A man on the run, a member of the notorious Sackler gang robbing stagecoaches, had no time to think about marriage, let alone court a woman. And the last woman he’d ever
