Page 13 of Silver Lining
"I ain't worn a dress in years," she said, lowering her gaze to the balls of biscuit dough she was forming between her palms. "But I'll do it to please your ma. Is there any other damned thing you want to change about me, or are we finished with this?"
Standing, he placed his hands in the middle of his back and stretched. "You could stop swearing and saying ain't."
Oh she could, could she? She could also give him a demonstration of some real cussing, climb on Rebecca, and head south. Marriage wasn't something she'd asked for or wanted. Already she hated having a husband.
But she did want a baby.
And having a family was the best gift she could imagine. Even if the McCords turned out as she suspected they would, lofty and judgmental, still it would be wonderful to be able to say: "My family."
"You know, I just knew it would come to this." She jabbed a fork into the bacon slab and turned it over in the skillet, not caring that grease splattered into the flames. "You want to change how I look and how I talk and I don't know what all else. And I'll do all that, to get what I want. But maybe there's a few things about you that I don't like either."
"I imagine there's plenty of things you don't like about me," he said, walking into the deepening shadows to fetch their bedrolls. He flipped hers out on one side of the fire, and unrolled his on the other side. "I'm willing to make accommodations where I can, if I can. We should both remember that we only have to put up with each other for a short while."
"Well you can start by not behaving like this situation is all my fault." She dumped a large can of beans on top of the bacon. "I didn't make you pick the green marble. I wasn't even hoping that you would."
Maybe that wasn't quite the unvarnished truth. Maybe she'd passed a thought that if she had to sleep with someone to get a baby, it would be nice to sleep with a man like him who was easy on the eyes.
"I'm not saying you're completely to blame, but no one ever imagined that you'd want a baby."
She glared through the darkness, unable to distinguish his tall frame from the surrounding pines. "You could have swallowed your pride and refused to draw from the hat." The others would have scorned him and made him feel like a welsher and about as tall as a cork but he could have done it. Of course, no man worthy of the name would have.
He stopped at the edge of the firelight and his shoulders stiffened with offense. She noticed he clenched his fist around something in his pocket.
"Without honor and integrity, a man has nothing."
A long breath raised her chest. "All right, I guess you couldn't refuse. But that's not my fault."
"No it isn't," he agreed, surprising her. But his tone plainly stated it was her fault for wanting a baby in the first place.
"Look," she said, sounding and feeling defensive, "I'm sorry things worked out that you can't marry Miss Houser." Leaning to the fire, she spooned out beans and bacon and thrust a plate in his direction. And then she said something she hadn't planned, hadn't even known she was wondering about. "Do you love her a lot?"
"I would prefer not to discuss Miss Houser." He sat on the log and balanced the plate on his knees.
"I've never loved anybody, so I don't know much about that kind of thing." And it was none of her business. But to her irritation, she couldn't back off the subject. "Did you write a letter to Miss Houser, too?"
She didn't think he would answer, but he finally said, "That would be cowardly. I need to tell her about this in person." As if he'd lost his appetite, he pushed the beans around on his plate.
Low Down pushed the beans around on her plate, too. "I guess Miss Houser is going to be mighty upset."
Then, surprising her again, he told her about the bank position that would be withdrawn now. Privately, she thought that was probably a good thing. He didn't have a banker's hands.
"There will be a scandal. You and my family will suffer for it," he said, lifting his gaze to her. "I've jilted the daughter of Fort Houser 's leading citizen less than two weeks before the wedding. I'm going to be labeled a son of a bitch, and you're going to be seen as an unscrupulous temptress. At least in the beginning."
Her eyebrows soared."Me? A temptress?" It was the most thrilling thing she'd ever heard. And the most ridiculous. When she stopped laughing, she gave him a grin and a shrug. "Hell, I don't care what people think about me."
"I care. A man spends a lifetime building a reputation he can be proud of. Then, just like that, it's gone."
He snapped his fingers. "That's a hard thing."
Tilting her head to one side, Low Down examined him across the campfire. The part of her that responded to people in need wanted to reassure him and make things right, but she didn't know how.
"The job at the bank… was it something you always wanted?" She tried to imagine him fancied up in a banker's frock coat and tall hat and couldn't pull the picture into her mind. But the way he sat on a horse and the tall lanky look of him fit her image of a rancher. She could easily visualize him bucking hay, riding fence lines, tending his land and stock.
He didn't answer, and she didn't push. "The beans are good enough," she commented after a period of silence. "But the bacon could have cooked a little longer."
They finished eating without speaking, then Max washed up the dishes in the stream beside their camp.
He did it in a way that made Low Down think his mind had traveled miles into the distance. She thought hard; then, while his back was to her, she reached up under her shirt and vest and slipped the silver spoon out of the pouch.
