pinned her with penetrating blue eyes. “You really want to go to Oregon? I hear it’s a pretty wild frontier out there.”
“Yes, I most certainly do want to go to Oregon. And,” she added quickly before she lost her nerve, “as I said, I must be married to claim my great-uncle’s business.”
He planted himself in front of her and stuffed both hands in the back pockets of his jeans. She waited, holding her breath until she thought she would pop.
Finally, finally, his lips opened. “The answer is no.”
Her breath whooshed out. “But—”
He moved a step closer and gave her a look that was definitely not friendly. “Why,” he asked in a strained voice, “would I want to marry a bad-tempered, bossy woman who hasn’t appreciated one damn thing I’ve done around here for the last four years?”
“But—”
“Marianne, I guess you didn’t hear me. I said no.”
She stared up at him for a full minute. “Well,” she said, her voice quiet. “In that case I have something to show you that may change your mind.”
“Oh, yeah? What is it?”
She reached into her apron pocket and unfolded the poster she’d kept hidden in her bureau drawer. “This.” She thrust it under his nose.
Lawrence Burnside Wanted For
Wells Fargo Stagecoach Robbery
There was a picture of him at the top.
He took one look at the yellowed sheet of paper, and his skin turned pasty under his tan. “Where’d you get this?”
“From 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,
