we sailed,” she told Nick. “Amelia said if it had been a generation ago, he would have challenged Gerald to a duel. Even Richard told me he was disappointed in me,” she added, referring to their other brother, who was vicar of Westfield. “But, Nick, Gerald never did anything improper—on my honor, he didn’t! We only just kissed....” She felt herself blushing, remembering how close she’d come to ruin after Edward had stopped them from eloping to France. They’d get married in a little chapel in Paris, Gerald had promised, and it would be so romantic. Once they crossed the channel, her brother could do nothing to keep them apart, for she would be his wife. A widower, he’d had many love affairs before her, but Gerald insisted she was the love of his life.
“We’ll have plenty of time to talk about that, little sister,” Nick told her. “For now, let me thank Raleigh.”
She released him and watched as Nick strode over to Masterson and shook his hand.
“Much obliged to you for bringing them here, Raleigh,” she heard him say. “How’d you manage that? We weren’t sure when they’d arrive.”
“Happy to do it, Nick,” Raleigh assured him. He shrugged. “It just so happened I got to town right after that rascally stagecoach driver from Lampasas refused to take them to the ranch. Well, I’d better get going—I’ve got chores waiting.”
She marveled at their informality. Nick was a ranch owner, and Raleigh merely an employee at the neighboring ranch, but there was no standing on ceremony in Texas, no order of precedence to worry about. No “my lord,” and “my lady.” Yes, she was going to like it here.
“Goodbye, Miss Brookfield,” Raleigh said, fingering the brim of his hat again. “Reckon I’ll see you around, too, bein’ as we’re neighbors and all. Maybe you’ll be at church come Sunday?”
She blinked in surprise. This handsome cowboy attended church? Her own churchgoing consisted of listening to the local vicar droning on and on from the raised pulpit in the centuries-old Norman chapel at home. Gerald boasted of never attending divine service, preferring to sleep late after nights at card parties and balls during the Season. She could not imagine Raleigh in a fancy frock coat and hat such as gentlemen wore in England when attending church.
“Perhaps,” she murmured, wondering if Milly and Nick rode all that way from the ranch to the small church she’d seen in Simpson Creek every Sunday.
“And you’ll have to meet the ladies of the Spinsters’ Club. They’re nice, and they’ll enjoy making your acquaintance, too.”
It would be nice to make some friends while she was here, Violet thought. “I look forward to meeting them,” she told Raleigh. And seeing you again. If Raleigh was half as good-looking in a frock coat as he was in everyday cowboy clothing, he would provide quite an inspirational figure for her novel.
That wasn’t being disloyal to Gerald, was it?
Chapter Three
Raleigh was thoughtful as he drove the wagon back into town and retrieved Blue from the livery. The Honorable Miss Violet Brookfield—he grinned at the fanciful title—was certainly the most beautiful lady he’d ever clapped eyes on, from the tip of her dainty laced-up boots to the fetching hat atop her golden hair.
He wondered how long she’d be visiting the Brookfields, and whether her dragon of a brother was staying as long as she was. The oh-so-proper Englishman sure hadn’t liked his sister talking to the likes of him. Not that he blamed the fellow. If he had a sister as beautiful as Miss Violet, he reckoned he’d watch her like a hawk, too. He knew there were plenty of men who’d be so tempted by her that they’d do anything to possess her, even for a little while.
On the trail to Abilene and back, Nick Brookfield had never mentioned his privileged background or put on airs, but it had been obvious from the viscount and his sister’s clothing and speech that the English Brookfields were as wealthy as they were aristocratic. But Miss Violet had that same lack of pretentiousness that Nick had, Raleigh thought. Just look at how she had come right up to him in town, smiling at him as if he was some knight in shining armor when he’d agreed to help them.
He glanced down at his clothing and chuckled. Even considering his new shirt, his clothing was about as far from shining armor as it could get.
With her wealth and beauty, Violet Brookfield would be a prize for some lucky gent back home in England. She’d probably left a string of beaux there, if not one special suitor. Yet she was no flirt. Raleigh sensed an innocence about her that was very appealing to him.
It didn’t matter, though, because they were of completely different worlds. He was just a cowboy, even if he had risen to trail boss and foreman of Colliers’ Roost. He got a little more pay than the rest of the Colliers’ Roost cowhands, but he slept in the bunkhouse same as they did.
A lot of cowboys never married, and the only women they were comfortable around were the ones in saloons and worse. But Raleigh had decided those women weren’t an option for him—not after that stampede just before they reached Abilene. The Lord had been trying to get Raleigh’s attention for quite a while—during the turmoil and danger of the war, in which he’d fought for the Confederacy, and in that incident when he’d nearly been hanged for something he didn’t do in Blanco. But He’d finally succeeded in the midst of the stampede that had changed Raleigh’s life forever.
Violet Brookfield would return to England one day. In the meantime, he’d have to be content to see her at church, or on the rare occasions that the Brookfields visited their neighbors, the Colliers. It would have to be enough.
And yet he longed to have a wife and children and a piece of land to call his own. His brushes with death had given him a hunger for something more permanent than the life he’d been living.
Maybe someday he could find a Texas version of the Englishwoman. But in the meantime, he thought about what Miss Violet had said about her love of riding.
She’d need a horse for the time she was here, and from what he knew of the Brookfield horses, none would suit her. It was a well-known fact that Milly’s Ruby wouldn’t let anyone on her back but Milly. But he thought he might just have the solution to her need—and it would be the perfect excuse to see her again.
* * *
“Edward, your letter troubled me, of course,” Nick said that night after Violet and Milly had gone to bed, and the two men were alone in the comfortable parlor. “I wanted to sail to England and beat the fellow into a bloody pulp. He’d already begun this sort of behavior when I was on furlough from India, as I recall.”
“Yes...but these are modern times, and one can’t merely get out the dueling pistols, select a second and show up on some patch of green at dawn to blow a hole in the cad,” Edward said.
“Pity,” Nick agreed, knowing his eldest brother’s dry wit was a shield for the protective fury he felt because the scoundrel had come close to ruining their innocent younger sister.
Nick began, “You don’t think—”
“That the blasted roué had already seduced her?” Edward finished for him. “No, I don’t, though it was a close thing. Violet’s incensed at me, of course, for making her give back the hunter and separating the two of them by an ocean.
“I’m sure she thinks I’m worrying over nothing,” Edward went on, “as she firmly believes Gerald Lullington’s blather,
