Marianne's Marriage Of Convenience

Chapter Three

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, she acknowledged. But maybe that wouldn’t be enough.

He leaned toward her. “You want half my sandwich? It’s meat loaf.” He waved it beneath her nose. He had purchased it somewhere in Idaho, and while her stomach rumbled with hunger, and the smell of meat and mayonnaise was enticing, she knew she couldn’t eat a bite.

“No, thank you, Lance. I’m too nervous to eat anything.”

“Nervous about what?”

“About what Uncle Matty’s business will turn out to be. Maybe it’s a house full of shady ladies or a coal mine or a rowdy saloon.”

And she was extremely apprehensive about marrying Lance, but she need not mention that.

He stretched out his long legs and bit into his sandwich. She glanced at his squashed-up-looking lunch and wrinkled her nose.

“Still not hungry?”

She sighed. “My stomach is too jumpy. Besides, we’ve eaten nothing but sandwiches for the past three days.”

“I’m tired of sandwiches, too,” he said. “Eat it anyway.”

At that moment her stomach gurgled, and when he grinned at her she reluctantly accepted it. “Thank you, Lance.”

His eyes widened. “You’re welcome.” He bit into his half and chewed quietly while she studied the gray-looking bread in her hand. “Never in all my years at Mrs. Schneiderman’s have I seen a sorrier-looking sandwich.”

Lance nodded and took another bite. Things sure did seem unreal. He could understand Marianne’s feelings of anxiety. The last thing he ever thought he’d do in life was get married. A man on the run, a member of the notorious Sackler gang robbing stagecoaches, had no time to think about marriage, let alone court a woman. And the last woman he’d ever think of marrying would be Marianne Collingwood. Marianne acted more like a drill sergeant than a flesh and blood woman, and that was on her good days!

But the prospect of starting a new life two thousand miles away from St. Louis and an incriminating Wells Fargo poster was worth a gamble.

Maybe they didn’t like each other much. He didn’t want to marry her any more than she truly wanted to marry him, but she had that Wanted poster folded up in her reticule, so he figured she had him over a barrel.

After his mother died, he’d run away from Pa and joined the gang when he was just fourteen, too young to know what he was doing. But the only time he’d really done anything for them, acting as a lookout, had dictated his life from then on because his face had appeared on that poster. He’d done nothing else in his life but sweat over being found out.

Maybe the chance to get away from St. Louis and make something of himself would be worth it. And getting married looked like the price of admission. Well, so be it.

He gave her a sidelong look. “We’ll be pulling into Smoke River sometime today. What’s the first thing we should do when we get there?”

She groaned. “After three days and nights on this train, all I want to do is take a long, hot bath and sleep for twenty-four hours. After that, I want to visit the mercantile and find a dressmaker.”

“What for?” He gave her green traveling outfit a quick once-over. “You look okay to me.”

Inexplicably, her cheeks turned pink. “Um, well, a woman only gets married once in her life. I want to have a real wedding dress.”

A real wedding dress, huh? He wondered if she’d thought through all the ramifications of getting married, spending all day in each other’s company. And all night. He felt his face heat up. Actually, he admitted, it was more than just his face that felt hot.

He took a long look at the woman beside him, now gazing out the train window at a herd of grazing horses. Everything in life was a gamble, he figured; but this was sure one of the biggest.

On the other hand, he pondered, finally feeling his face cool down somewhat, maybe getting married to Marianne wouldn’t be so bad.

Maybe.

Chapter Four

With a puff of billowy white steam the locomotive engine chugged past the Smoke River station house, and the single passenger car gradually rolled to a stop. The uniformed conductor clunked down an iron step, and the first person to descend was Marianne Collingwood. She set one foot on the wooden platform, then two, and immediately spun in a circle to take in the view of her new home.

“Green,” she murmured. “Everything is so green. And the trees are so tall.” She had never seen such towers of pine and sugar maple. And the smell! She inhaled deeply and shut her eyes. The air smelled like Christmas trees!

Behind her, two elderly women in matching navy blue travel suits stepped down, followed by a tall man with a tan, weathered face wearing a wide-brimmed gray hat. A shiny silver badge was pinned to his leather vest. Only when the sheriff strode off down the street toward town did Lance step off the train, and Marianne noticed he had tipped his black felt hat down to hide his face.

“For heaven’s sake,” she whispered, “no sheriff out here in this wilderness will be the slightest bit interested in you.”

“Yeah, how do you know that?”

“Because I’ve been reading the newspapers. With all the murders and barroom brawls law officers in the West have to keep up with, a five-year-old robbery back in Missouri isn’t important. You are perfectly safe.”

“Speak for yourself,” he grumbled. “I feel like there’s a big sign around my neck with thief printed in big black letters.”

She drew in a tired breath of the hot afternoon air and turned toward him. “Lance, go inside and arrange for my trunk to be delivered.”

He dropped both their travel bags at her feet, propped one hand on his hip and sent her a reproving look. “Marianne,” he said firmly, “it’s not too late for you to learn how to say ‘please.’”

Out of habit she opened her mouth to berate him, but after a moment she gave a quick nod. “Oh, all right, ‘please.’”

He flashed her a grin and disappeared into the station house. She began to pace up and down the wooden platform, studying the few one-story buildings close by. Dingy, she observed with a sniff. Badly in need of fresh paint.

It was so hot she thought her shoes would melt. And there was no shade. Even with all these trees, the sun was straight up overhead, blazing down like a big copper frying pan in the sky. Her head pounded, and she could feel perspiration soaking her camisole. She fervently hoped the worst thing about Smoke River was the heat and the run-down wooden structures with dilapidated false fronts. At the moment she felt perilously close to crying.

Lance emerged from the white-painted station house and smiled at her. “Fellow inside says he’s rustled up a wagon to take us into town.”

“A wagon? Not a carriage?”

“This is the frontier, Marianne. A town this small probably doesn’t have carriages for hire.” As he spoke a wooden wagon rattled up to the platform and the driver reined a huge gray horse to a stop. He seemed very young, olive-skinned and nice-looking, with a red bandana tied low on his forehead.

Marianne stared at him. “Is that... Is that boy an Indian?” she murmured.

“Probably.” Lance hoisted her travel bag and his leather duffel in one hand and took her elbow. “Come on, Marianne. And don’t stare.”

The boy hopped off the driver’s bench and lifted both bags out of Lance’s hand. “Howdy, folks. My name’s Sammy Greywolf.” He swung the luggage up into the wagon bed. “Welcome to Smoke River.”

“How does he know we’re strangers in town?” Marianne whispered.

“Just common sense. He probably knows everybody in town by sight, and he’s never laid eyes on us before.”

The boy approached and offered her a hand. “Put your foot on the wheel hub right there, ma’am.” He guided Marianne up onto the wooden driver’s bench, then climbed up beside her. Her eyes widened. He wore moccasins that laced all the way up to his knees! He was most definitely an Indian.

The boy waited for Lance to scramble up beside her, released the brake and flapped the reins over the horse’s back. The wagon jolted forward.

Marianne clapped one hand on her feather-bedecked hat and peered at the dusty street. A barbershop. A newspaper office—no, two newspaper offices, one across the street from the other. Ness’s Mercantile, which sported a shocking fuchsia-pink storefront. Uncle Charlie’s Bakery. And, thank the Lord, right next door was a dressmaker’s shop. On the opposite side of the street she spied the sheriff’s office, a feed store, The Golden Partridge saloon, the Smoke River Hotel and a restaurant.

“You visitin’ somebody in town?” the boy inquired. “Or maybe you want to go to the hotel?”

“Hotel,” Lance said quickly. He averted his head as the wagon rolled past the sheriff’s office.

The hotel was only two blocks from the train station. My goodness, Marianne had never imagined that a town could be this small! She studied the restaurant next to the hotel with unconcealed interest. Could that be Uncle Matty’s business establishment? She caught her breath. Oh, Lordy, it couldn’t be the saloon next door, could it? What on earth would I do with a saloon?

The boy pulled the wagon to a halt in front of a white two-story building with wide steps up to the glass-paned entrance door. “Here y’are, folks.” He scrambled down, grabbed both bags and escorted them up the wooden steps into the hotel. “Got customers for you, Hal!” he called out. He gave Lance a grin and a two-fingered salute and disappeared.

The hotel foyer was minuscule, scarcely larger than Mrs. Schneiderman’s front parlor. A red velvet settee and two matching armchairs sat opposite the scarred registration desk, which was deserted. The hot, still air smelled faintly of something cinnamony. Apple pie, maybe.

Lance stepped forward and jingled the bell beside the leather-bound sign-in register, and after a long moment a short man with a shiny bald head and a startled expression popped up from behind the counter.

“How do, folks!” He slapped the book he’d apparently been reading down beside the hotel register. Marianne craned her neck to see the title. The Plays of William Shakespeare. What a surprising choice way out here in this tiny Western town!

The clerk flashed her a tentative smile. “You folks new in town?”

“Yes,” Lance answered. “We just got off the train from St. Louis.”

“Ah, I see. What can I do for you?”

“Uh...we need hotel rooms.”

“Rooms plural, as in two rooms? Aren’t you two together?” The clerk’s curious gaze shifted to Marianne. “Or not?”

“Not!” Marianne said decisively. She felt her cheeks grow warm and prayed she wasn’t blushing.

“Not yet,” Lance added.

Oh, dear, she was definitely blushing now.

The clerk’s gray eyebrows rose. “Ah.” He bent over the register. “Not together, then,” he murmured, scanning the open page.

Lance cleared his throat. “We...uh...we plan to get married day after tomorrow.”

“Ah!” He handed Marianne a pen. “Sign here, please, ma’am.”

She scrawled her name with a hand that shook embarrassingly. “Could you send a bath up to my room? I—We have been on the train from St. Louis for the past three days and—”

“Oh, sure, ma’am, I quite understand. I’ll send one up right away.”

Lance nudged his elbow into her ribs. “Thank you,” she said quickly.

The clerk grinned at her and turned to Lance. “And for you, sir?”

“Just a single room, thanks.”

“No bath?” The man studied Lance’s shadowed chin. “Maybe a visit to the barber?”

A faint flush spread over Lance’s cheeks, and Marianne stared in surprise. Was it possible that Lance was a bit vain about his appearance? She had seen him dirty and disheveled, with sweat sheening his forehead and his chin all bristly after hours spent repairing a fence in the hot sun; he hadn’t minded looking unshaven then. Or maybe, she thought with a twinge of guilt, she’d kept him too busy to shave.

The clerk coughed and turned to consult the wooden rack behind him, then presented her with a shiny brass key. Number Six.

Lance accepted a second key, Number Seven, then noticed that Marianne’s penetrating green eyes were glued to his face. Hot damn, she was staring at him like she’d never seen him before. Well, hell, maybe in all the years he’d worked for her she hadn’t really looked at him.

He had sure looked at her, though. Whenever he’d been near her he’d tried hard to shut his ears so he wouldn’t have to listen to the endless stream of commands coming out of her mouth. But he had looked at her. Couldn’t help it, if he was honest. Marianne had a lot of annoying habits, but he had to admit she was one delicious-looking female.

All at once it hit him. He had a pretty good idea who Marianne was, but she didn’t know diddly-squat about who he was. Outside of that Wanted poster she carried around with her, she didn’t really know one cotton-picking thing about him. At the moment Miss Stiffer-than-Starch-Know-All-the-Answers Collingwood was actually facing something she didn’t know anything about. Him!

For some reason that thought made him smile.

They lugged their bags up the staircase to the second floor and located their rooms. Lance took the key from Marianne’s hand, unlocked the door to Number Six and pushed it open. The room looked dim and cool, and he caught sight of a big double bed under one window. That made him smile, too.

“Day after tomorrow we’ll only need one room,” he said in what he hoped was a matter-of-fact tone.

“Oh,” she said. “Yes, I suppose so.”

And that was all? No pre-wedding jitters? No I’m glad we’re finally here? Nothing?

He set her travel bag inside the door and turned to go. “After you’ve had a bath and a chance to rest, let’s meet up for supper at the restaurant, say around seven o’clock?”

She looked up, gave him an unsmiling nod and closed the door in his face.

Three hours later, after a visit to Poletti’s Barbershop down the street for a bath and a shave, Lance walked into the restaurant and was shown to a table by the front window. The white-aproned waitress laid a menu in front of him and slid an order pad out of her apron pocket.

“You new in town?”

“Yeah,” Lance said. “Came in on the train from St. Louis this afternoon.”

“You stayin’?”

“Yeah.”

“Alone?”

“Uh...not exactly. My fiancée is upstairs taking a—She’ll be joining me shortly.”

“Fiancée, huh?” The waitress laid another menu on the table and glanced toward the entrance. “That her?”

Lance followed her gaze and half rose from his chair at the sight of Marianne. She looked so fresh and pretty his thoughts froze for a minute. “Yeah. At least I think so.”

The waitress laughed aloud. “You think so? How long have you two been engaged?”

“Three days,” he murmured.

“Not long enough,” she said. “How long have you known each other?”

He watched Marianne gliding across the dining room toward him. “Not long enough,” he said.

The woman nodded. “Most men think that after the wedding,” she said with a wink.

Marianne settled into the chair across from him and sent him a tentative smile. She wore a striped shirtwaist and a flouncy blue skirt he’d never seen before. Her hair, loosely gathered at her neck and tied with a blue ribbon, looked even shinier than molasses. And he’d never seen her wear a ribbon before. Maybe he didn’t know Marianne as well as he thought.

Her skin glowed. Even after three nights with little sleep, breathing dusty air and eating nothing but stale sandwiches and cold coffee, Marianne Collingwood looked downright beautiful.

She spread out her skirt, and Lance caught a whiff of something that smelled like lilacs. He inhaled appreciatively. She’d never worn scent before, either.

“Good evening, ma’am,” the waitress said.

“Yes, it is, isn’t it?” Marianne replied. “I hope you have steak on your menu tonight. I am positively famished.”

“This is cattle ranching country, ma’am. We have steak on the menu every night.”

Marianne smiled. “Oh, of course. I’ll have mine rare, please. With lots of very crispy fried potatoes.”

The woman scribbled something on her order pad. “And for you, sir?”

“The same,” he said. When the waitress marched off to the kitchen, Marianne leaned toward him. “Lance, I didn’t know you liked your steak rare.”

“Maybe that’s because you never asked,” he said shortly.

She gave him a long look. “I never had time to ask. I was too busy in the kitchen frying steaks for all the boarders to ask, so I fried them all the same way, even my own.”

“And I always ate last,” Lance reminded her. “After everyone else had finished.”

Marianne pursed her lips. “You ate next to last,” she corrected. “I was the one who always ate last.”

“Gosh, I never realized that. Bet you were plenty hungry by the time all the boarders and then me had finished their supper.”

“To be honest, I was too tired to be hungry,” she said quietly. “In fact, never in the last eleven years have I eaten a meal that someone else has cooked.”

Her answer stopped him in his tracks. He’d never thought about working for Mrs. Schneiderman from Marianne’s point of view. Eleven years? She’d been at that boardinghouse for eleven years? Lord God in heaven, no wonder she was so desperate to get away.

He fiddled with the pepper shaker, then began folding his linen napkin into smaller and smaller squares, but he wouldn’t look at her. “I guess there’s a whole lot of things we don’t know about each other,” he said at last. “Maybe we should spend time getting acquainted some before we, uh, get married.”

Marianne gave him a short nod. “In a civilized world like St. Louis, an engaged couple would be expected to wait at least a year before the wedding, perhaps more, getting to know each other. But out here in the wilds of nowhere isn’t exactly a civilized world.”

“Maybe not,” he conceded. “But we’re civilized, aren’t we?”

She leveled an appraising look at him. “Lance, we cannot afford to wait a year before marrying. When I call on Mr. Myers and Mr. Waldrip at the bank to take possession of my inheritance, I must already be married.”

“Oh. Right.”

“You’re not reneging on our bargain, are you?”

“Nope. You still have that Wanted poster in your pocket, and that means I’m still gonna marry you.”

She pressed her lips into a line and turned pink just as the waitress set two huge plates loaded with thick steaks and fried potatoes in front of them.

Marianne attacked her supper with a determined jab of her fork and watched the waitress march back toward the kitchen. She sent Lance an assessing look. Was it her imagination, or did he sound less than enthusiastic about the prospect of marrying her? An unfamiliar little dart of pain niggled into her heart. Was he unsure because she was forcing him into it? Or...she caught her breath. Maybe it was because she was past her prime? Was she too old and work-worn and unattractive to be of any interest to a man?

She glanced down at her bare forearm. Her skin was tan because she rolled up her sleeves and ignored the sun’s rays when she worked outdoors for Mrs. Schneiderman. But her arm still looked plump, even girlish, didn’t it? She hoped the rest of her did, too. At least it had the last time she’d had the chance to stop and really look at herself in the full-length mirror in her room. Except for her tanned cheeks and forearms, she still looked young.

Didn’t she? A paralyzing sense of inadequacy suddenly swept through her. Over the years she had made no attempt whatsoever to look closely at her appearance, let alone enhance it as other young women did. By the time she’d crawled into bed at night she was so exhausted she’d simply unpinned her hair, gave it a cursory swipe with her worn hairbrush and closed her eyes.

All at once a crushing doubt overwhelmed her. She scarcely knew who she was, other than a boardinghouse cook and housekeeper. Worse, she had no idea who this man now sitting across from her really was. She was about to jump into a life-changing venture, and she suddenly realized she was truly frightened. She grimaced and laid down her fork.