Page 66 of Conveniently Wed
She looked at the cowboy askance. “What’s this?”
“Ed says it’s time for your second riding lesson. He wants ya to put that on.”
She held up the trousers between two fingers. “I can’t wear this. It’s not appropriate.”
“Maybe not in a big city, but my ma’s been seen wearing trousers a time or two workin’ on certain chores on the ranch.”
How peculiar. Heat rose in her face just thinking of it.
“And I’m going to…ride? Dressed as a cowboy?” She was having trouble understanding this plan of her husband’s.
“Exactly.” He tossed his cowboy hat to Emma, beneath the canvas cover of the wagon. “Ed wants you to tuck your hair up in that hat as best you can. Wants you to try and pass for a cowboy.”
“But…won’t anybody looking at me know that I’m not an accomplished rider?”
He shrugged. “The horse is a pretty well-trained cutter. All you gotta do is hold on, and he’ll do the work for you. ‘Sides…Ed thinks someone looking for two women won’t be paying too much attention to a greenhorn cowboy.”
“So they’ll only find one woman in the wagon. Emma.”
That didn’t comfort her at all.
But Matty was grinning. Widely.
And someone else was approaching from the herd. Not Edgar, much to her disappointment. A closer look revealed Seb.
“Nope. Someone lookin’ at the wagon’s gonna seetwowomen.”
She exchanged a wide-eyed look with Emma. “Seb?” she gurgled, barely able to get the word out.
Matty chuckled. “Yep. He ain’t too happy with Ed’s idea. But it’s just until we get the cattle into the holding pens at the rail station. After that, the boys’ will be free to escort you ladies to the hotel and keep an eye on ya. Just in case.”
Well. This plan was either ingenious…or insane. She didn’t know which.
“Shouldn’t Emma ride out, and I’ll keep driving the wagon?”
He shook his head. “It’d work if she could ride at all, but two men riding double might raise questions and merit a secondlook. Seb’s a good shot, and the rest of us’ll be keeping an eye on the wagon, anyways.”
Fran didn’t argue that she hadverylittle more experience than Emma. She’d left Tennessee and vowed to do whatever she had to do to keep her sister safe.
And if this was it, she would do it. No matter how foolish she looked or felt.
And she did look foolish, she concluded a quarter-hour later as she descended from the wagon dressed like a cowboy. They’d given her Seb’s boots and left him to go barefoot. Even with a sock rolled and stuffed into the toe of each boot, she felt clunky and awkward in the men’s footwear. Maybe it would be better on horseback.
Her neck was exposed beneath the cowboy hat.
And she thought that probably anybody who took a look at her would be able to tell she was a woman. Wouldn’t they?
She’d passed her dress out of the back of the wagon while Emma had helped her put on the cowboy garb. Now Seb appeared from behind his horse, where he’d donned the dress over his own trousers.
Lanky as he was, his shoulders still stretched the fabric of the dress. She sincerely hoped he didn’t tear it, or she’d have nothing left to wear at all.
He didn’t look happy, stomping in bare feet back to the wagon.
Matty looked like he was barely suppressing his laughter behind lips clamped together until they were white.
“Well, Fran here might pass for a cowboy, but you sure don’t make much of a girl. You’d better stay in the back of the wagon.”
“Then who’s going to drive?”
