Page 87 of Conveniently Wed
“What?”
“I’m not going. If you want to make sure Fran and Emma are protected, you go.”
He turned to Matty, but found no help there. Ricky was trying to hide a faint smile behind one hand, but not succeeding.
“I guess you’re not going either,” he said, disgusted with their maneuvering.
“I’ll just get one of the other hands to do it,” he threatened.
Seb shrugged. “If you want to be that big of a coward. She’s just one woman. Nothing to be scared of.”
“A woman who wants to talk to him,” Ricky threw in. “That can make for a dangerous creature, indeed.”
Edgar wasn’t laughing. Neither was Ricky.
He wasn’t up to seeing Fran. He was afraid she would be able to convince him of her innocence and convolute his thinking.
But he couldn’t leave Emma unprotected, either. He’d made a promise.
Fran clutched the pistol in the folds of her dress, sitting awake in the dark.
Seb hadn’t come back, and neither had Ricky.
Beside her, beneath the canvas wagon cover, Emma was wide awake too. Fran couldn’t see her, but she could hear her sister’s near-panicked breathing.
“How come one of them isn’t back yet?”
But what Fran heard was her sister’s fear. Fran reached out a hand in the darkness and Emma clasped it painfully.
“Edgar promised to take care of you,” Fran said. “And I trust him.”
Because she still did, even if he let Underhill take Fran. He’d given his word.
“Well, I don’t!”
The vehemence in Emma’s voice surprised Fran. “What?”
“When you married him, he promised to take care ofyou. If he lets that Mr. Underhill and that marshal take you, he’s breaking a promise.”
The sound of Emma’s soft sobs prompted Fran to tug her closer and put her arms around her younger sister.
“Oh, Emma. God’s going to work all this out.” She had to believe it. Otherwise what had all her effort been for? “He must’ve put Edgar right in our path, and must’ve surrounded us with all these cowboys for something, don’t you think?”
Emma quieted. “I don’t know.”
“Well, I do.”
And thinking like that made Fran realize something else, too. What if God had put her in Edgar’s path for a purpose? To open his heart from those wounds of his past?
She held Emma until the girl quieted, and then left the weapon with her sister.
She had to talk to Edgar, now, tonight, even if it meant saying her piece in front of his brother.
Hopping onto the wagon seat, she hissed, “Ricky! Seb! Matty!”
There was silence, but she had an awareness that she wasn’t alone. There was someone out there. Why didn’t they answer?
“Ricky!” she called again, this time a little louder.
