The Rogue and the Rose
By
Carolyn Faulkner
Copyright 2012 by Blushing Books and Carolyn Faulkner
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2012 by Blushing Books and Carolyn Faulkner.
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Faulkner, Carolyn
The Rogue and the Rose
eBook ISBN: 978-1-60968-547-8
Cover Design: by ABCD Graphics
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Chapter One:
The size of the big ranch house and the property itself belied its condition. The paddock fences were unpainted and rotting, the barn was inches from falling apart and the paint on what had once been a showplace of a home was peeling and curling in the strong Colorado sun. It was definitely suffering from the lack of a strong leader. Granted, when the Mister was healthy, it wasn’t as if he was a part of the operation, really, but he certainly wasn’t hesitant to throw money at it.
It had been a while, and the lack of attention definitely showed. There was an old saying that you could tell who was really in charge on a farm by which was better taken care of: if the barn looked nicer than the house, then the husband was in charge. If the house looked better than the barns, then the wife ruled the roost.
That didn’t work on the Circle C Ranch, because its owner had been overly concerned with appearances above all else. Both the barns and the big house had gleamed, and the place had swarmed with more hands than were really necessary.
Nowadays, though, there was barely enough money to pay a small handful of men, and everything was being done on a shoestring. There wasn’t a piece of equipment left that wasn’t jury-rigged to within an inch of its life, because there simply wasn’t enough money to replace it if it died.
Since the Mister took sick, the foreman, Cooky, had had to handle the ranch by himself while Miss Rose took care of her husband as best she could.
Which was where he’d come in.
He was doing as much as he could with what he was provided, which wasn’t much. There was too much land and too many cattle for too few hands. He wasn’t the type to shy away from a hard day’s work, and he’d known this place was a loss when he’d signed on, so he had no one to blame for the back breaking work but himself. But it was getting to the point of a diminishing return, and he really should be thinking of moving on. This place couldn’t last much longer, and he should be leaving now to beat the rush of hands that were going to find themselves out of work within the next six months.
He couldn’t seem to make himself leave, which was highly unusual for him. He’d never had any problems moving on from anywhere before – even away from his blueblood family back East. He snorted. That was the easiest move he’d ever made. At twenty-eight, he’d had more than enough of his mother’s meddling and his father’s lack of backbone in standing up to her, but the last straw had been the discovery that the respectable fiancé he’d let his parents choose for him was making absolutely no attempt to keep her liaisons with a stable boy in her parents’ employee under wraps.
He’d allowed himself to be guided into a mutually beneficial marriage agreement because he hadn’t much cared one way or the other about whether or not he got married, but it was of paramount importance to his mother and his family, as their financial fortunes were shrinking due to his father’s incompetence. Bella was pretty enough, he supposed, and he was trying to make an effort at being a better son than he had been in the past.
That was his first mistake, Quinn thought to himself.
He had heard the rumors about Bella, but kept his suspicions to himself as he investigated the matter, finally encountering the couple in the loft of her parents’ stable. He called her down immediately and broke off the engagement in no uncertain terms as she stood there shaking, hair askew and hay clinging to hastily arranged skirts.
That was his second mistake.
He should have dragged her – and the miscreant who hid like a coward in the loft – in to her mother’s front parlor and had witnesses to the incident. Instead, Bella created a vicious storm of gossip, telling her parents after he’d dismissed her and left, that he’d attacked her, and she’d feared for her virtue.
He’d snorted when he’d heard that. What virtue?
The fact that she’d been cheating on him hadn’t bothered him in the least, which should have been a clue to him that it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to marry her, but he was still trying to do the right thing, trying to be the son his mother wanted, which was a lost cause he’d refused to acknowledge at that point. But the rumors damaged the entire family’s reputation, giving him the excuse he needed to leave. Without him around as a constant reminder, the tongues would cease wagging.
His parents practically packed his bags for him, and, the moment he was out of sight of that stuffy mausoleum they called a home, he felt as free as he had when they’d sent him to his Uncle’s in Arizona in the summer, and he’d wondered why it had taken him so long to leave.
Since then, he’d been a riverboat gambler in Mississippi, a Texas Ranger in Arizona, and an itinerant ranch hand, depending on where he was and what he wanted to do. He’d amassed a bit of a fortune gambling, and that had pretty much supported his other endeavors, which was a good thing since Rangers weren’t given much beyond the opportunity to get shot. It was a job he’d loved, but he’d decided, after a series of bad injuries laid him up for quite a long time, that he wasn’t willing to die for the job any longer, so he hired on as a hand wherever they’d have him.
Luckily for him, Uncle Remy had had a huge ranch, much to his sister’s – Quinn’s mother – disgust, and he’d spent all of those long, wonderful summers on horseback, learning how to run a ranch, and he was no lay about. If any foreman was reluctant to hire him, he always offered to work the first week for free, and if they didn’t like how he worked, he’d leave immediately. Most had begged him to stay after only a day or two.
But this ranch needed more help than any twenty of him could supply. It seemed that everything he touched was either already broken or well on its way. Quinn looked up from trying to dust off his chaps and jeans with his dingy gray hat, despite the fact that he knew it was a losing cause, and saw her carrying that man by herself again, placing him more gently into the rocker than he deserved by far, from what he understood about how he’d treated her when he was well.
That woman needed to be spanked. There was just no way around it.
He'd told her not to do it, but she'd gone and done it again, right in front of him, as if he'd never said one word to her.
Quinn's jaw set hard as stone and his chin lowered as he started towards the veranda. Anyone who knew him would recognize that look and get the hell out of his way, and several men who valued their lives did just that, even after a relatively short acquaintance.
When he reached her, she was still fussing over the old man, bent at the waist and presenting him with a wonderful view of her fine – if too thin for his liking – figure. He could smell the sunshine on her clothes, as well as whatever soft perfume she used. It was almost enough to distract him from his intent . . . but not quite.
“I thought I told you not to do that by yourself?”
The voice was unmistakable. The new man Cooky had hired hadn’t been here long, but he’d certainly managed to make an impression on everyone in a short time with his autocratic ways. Rose straightened, noting the twinge of the ever present crick in her back that she despaired of ever getting rid of, but didn’t turn around. That man had to learn that she no longer had to answer to anyone, least of all him.
“Mr. Hamilton, I’ll thank you to remember that you are employed by me, not vice versa.”
He reached out and grabbed her upper arm in a grip that he might have intended to be merely firm, but was going to leave bruises, she could tell. Rose’s lips pursed. She was somewhat of an expert on bruises, unfortunately.
It was impossible to resist being turned around to face him; he was much too strong for that. He was also inappropriately close to her, so that she could feel heat of him even through several layers of clothing. She could see the deplorable condition of his Stetson, and the angles of his dirty, tanned face. His shirt didn’t look like it was in much better condition than his hat, and his jeans were stained with things she’d rather not think about.
Still, she had to admit that her nose wasn’t burning the way it did around most of the cowboys who worked for her, and she thought she might even be able to detect the slightest hint of bay rum, which was certainly a pleasant surprise.
That was more than she could say about the look on his face, though, and she had to stop herself from taking an automatic step back when she met those cold black eyes. There was no mercy in them. None at all.
Seconds later, she found herself in the living room, draped unceremoniously over his lap, and being spanked like a recalcitrant child.
It was exactly what he’d warned her he’d do when he’d confronted her yesterday.
Since Alan had deteriorated so badly, and had been stuck in their bedroom for so long during the winter, she had taken to carrying him down to sit him on the veranda. He had long since lost enough weight that she could lift him with relative ease. He really was just skin and bones, despite all the good food she and Lilah tried to get him to eat. Rose wasn’t even sure that he knew that he was in a different place, but she figured the sun and fresh air couldn’t hurt.
No one had offered assistance – not that there was anyone, really. Lilah was pretty much the only other person in the house, and she was too old to offer much beyond advice, but she had agreed that it could only help the Mister. Rose figured that as long as she made sure that the blankets were not trailing on the floor, so that she didn’t trip, and she took the narrow stairs slowly and carefully, they’d be fine.
And they had been. That was until the new hire decided to butt into a situation that had nothing to do with him.
Quinn had seen the mistress of the house bring her ailing husband out onto the porch only one other time, while he was on the way out to the range and couldn’t do anything about it. Yesterday, however, he was just crossing what passed for the lawn on the way to the bunkhouse and he’d seen her bump her way backwards through the door, barely able to keep him secure in her arms as she carefully made her way to a big wicker rocker that had been generously padded with pillows and an old quilt.
There was no doubt about it; that man was on his way out. But that didn’t mean he was light as a feather to lift, especially for a woman as small as Miss Rose. She was a tiny thing in well-worn dresses, with her strawberry blonde hair always piled on her head. Quinn was surprised to find himself rising at the idea of taking all of the pins out of that beautiful mass.
But right then, what made him madder than a wet hen was the fact that there were at least five other men in the yard, and not a one of them had offered her any sort of help. He didn’t even remember crossing the yard, and got there after the fact anyway, but did manage to help her straighten the man’s limp body into some semblance of an upright posture.
Startled by the deep brown hands that reached out before she could to adjust Alan into a more comfortable position, all she could think to say was, “Thank you.”
She continued to make small changes here and there, knowing that he needed to be in certain positions to avoid the bedsores that could become infected and take him so quickly. When she’d finally finished, and turned to go back inside, she was surprised to see that the new man was still standing there, his hands on his hips, looking like he wanted to break something.
“May I help you, Mr. Hamilton?” she asked softly.
“Indeed you may, Ma’am.” His mother’s years of training him to be a gentleman sometimes came in handy, such as when he quickly doffed his hat in deference to the lady. “You can help me by letting me help you. I’d be glad to carry the Mister down here any time you like. You just let me know.”
Rose’s open mouth snapped shut from astonishment, and she truly didn’t know what to say to him. She was so used to doing things alone that her first thought was one of blessed relief. To have someone assume any of the burdens she faced daily would be wondrous. But then she thought more practically and realized that that could never happen. It would be entirely inappropriate of her to allow a hired man into her bedroom for any purpose, and she had enough to do with the concerns of impropriety that had followed her from Denver. She wasn’t going to give the old biddies of Brentwell anything more to gossip about on her account.
It had been so long since she’d smiled that she could barely remember how to. Nevertheless, she bestowed a small one on him, saying, “I thank you for your kind offer, Mr. Hamilton, but I’m truly not in need of any assistance.” How had she learned to lie so glibly? Had it been her time with Alan that had made her this way?
With that, he was dismissed, and she took a step towards the door that had her running directly into him. How had he moved so fast?
“I beg your pardon, Ma’am, but I feel I must insist.” A courtly sounding sentence with underlying steel.
Her eyebrows rose. Cooky had liked this man, and had hired him without consulting her. She had complete faith in her foreman, but this oaf’s behavior was beginning to make her reconsider. Rose’s eyebrow’s rose. “Mr. Hamilton.”
“Quinn, Miss Rose.”
Nodding quickly, she tried to brush past him, but he was no gentleman to yield the way to her. Instead, she brushed up against him in the most indelicate of manners, only because he refused to move. Rose stepped back automatically, lifting her skirts so that no part of her person was in contact with him. She was barely able to suppress the shudder that threatened to set her knees trembling and her teeth chattering.
But she wouldn’t. She couldn’t show weakness in front of the men, and most especially not this one. Cooky was really the only permanent man she had. Hired hands weren’t the most trustworthy of sorts, most of them only signing on for a season or so, sometimes just for roundup, and their backgrounds were always suspect. This one more so than most, if one believed everything one heard, and he certainly looked the part of the gunslinger everyone was cackling about.
His jaw couldn’t possibly have clenched any tighter without shattering. It was obvious what she thought of him; the help wasn’t nearly good enough to be in her presence. Funny, he was usually a pretty good judge of character, and he wouldn’t have thought she’d been so much of a bluenose, but he guessed one could never tell.
Regardless, he wasn’t going to have her – or any other woman on this ranch – doing what a man should rightly be doing. And if he needed to take her in hand to impress on her how serious he was about that, then so be it. He’d certainly done worse in his time than take a stubborn woman over his knee.
Setting his hat back just a little, he made sure to catch her eye before saying unwaveringly, “Miss Rose, I won’t have you doing this when you could trip or fall or drop the Mister on your way. Call me the next time you need him moved, or I’ll blister you bottom so that you’ll wish you had.”
He was halfway across the yard before Rose could calm down enough to even think of a response. Her open mouth was fit to collect flies. That was one of the strangest conversations she’d ever had in her life. None of the men but Cooky had spoken to her since Alan had been overcome, and even before then, Alan’d certainly never said anything that showed any care or concern for her. He just barked orders and screamed at the top of his lungs, red faced and fists balled to strike out with lethal accuracy at the least provocation.
It was strange to think that someone was watching out for her. It had been so long . . .
Regardless, someone needed to take that man down a peg or two. She didn’t know who or how or when, but she knew she needed to speak to Cooky about him right away. She wasn’t going to have an employee of the ranch acting like he owned it, and threatening her with – well, with physical harm if she didn’t comply with a rule of his own design. It wasn’t supposed to work that way. She was his boss, not the other way around.
After a quick glance at Alan, she flung open the squeaky screen door and marched through the foyer and into the dining room, breaking out the silver to polish it so furiously it was a wonder she hadn’t whittled it down to a nub by the time she was finished.
She had to admit that it was actually a very nice offer, originally. It was a very gentlemanly thing to do, and one that no one else had seen fit to make since Alan had taken sick. She – with some help from Lilah – had seen to his every need since that terrible night, unflinchingly and uncomplainingly. But by the end of the conversation, he’d somehow decide that he could dictate to her what she could and couldn’t do, and that was where she drew the line.
No one was ever going to tell her what to do again. No one. Certainly not a stranger in her employ.
Just who did he think he was?
That next day, with both ends of her burning bright red, she screamed the same question at him, not that he bothered to answer, and not caring that the windows were open and both her castigations of him as well as her irate screams of pain were being carried outside to anyone who cared to cock an ear.
And it seemed there was quite an audience gathering.
Cooky, who had been in the barn and hadn’t heard any of the commotion, was just about to open his mouth to yell at the men, who were all standing in the front yard, gazing towards the house with prurient interest, when they all heard an ear-piercing scream from the house. Unlike the rest of them, that set him to running, hell bent for leather, into the house.
It was Miss Rose herself, and she sounded like she was in trouble. No one tried to stop him, but no one came with him, either, as he bolted and took the porch steps three at a time, guided by her screams, until he found himself in the front parlor. The scene before him was just about as bizarre as it could get. Quinn, the newest man he’d been able to hire, was sitting on the faded settee, looking like the cat that swallowed the canary while Miss Rose did her best not to hop around clutching her severely scorched bottom. Cooky’d known the woman for more than five years, and he’d never heard her so much as raise her voice.
But now she looked fit to spit nails, directly at the man looking so self-satisfied on the divan.
Rose didn’t know how she was going to live through this moment. She’d never, ever been that embarrassed in her life. Everyone had heard what had just gone on. Everyone. And she knew that everyone in town would know about it within the next day or so, as if the town didn’t already have enough to gossip about in her case.
Barely keeping a hold of the slim thread of her control by consciously taking a deep, slow breath, Rose turned to Cooky and said in a deathly calm voice, “I want that man off my ranch. Now.” She didn’t wait for a response but walked slowly and deliberately into the foyer and up the stairs, leaving Cooky standing there scratching his head and wondering how he was going to keep the ranch afloat when the boss lady had just told him to fire his best man.
He swiped his hat off his head and rubbed the sweat off his forehead and onto his dirty sleeve. “Well,” he began, jamming the hat back where it belonged, “I reckon you’d better get to the bunkhouse and grab your gear.”
Quinn rose slowly. “Cooky, you and I both know that I do the work of four men around here, and I know almost as much about ranching as you do.” Quinn was careful to give the older man his due. He probably knew more than Cooky, but he wasn’t going to point that fact out to him while he was trying to keep his job here. “You can’t afford to lose me.”
Cooky was agog. Yes, they needed him. Quite desperately, in fact. But the big man had spanked the wife of the man who owned the ranch, who was, because of his incapacitation, the de facto boss of the operation, and yet expected to keep his job?
Quinn knew that the foreman agreed with him, whether or not he was willing to admit it, but all Cooky did was clench his jaw and stalk out into the yard. Quinn followed, snatching his disreputable hat from where it lay on the settee and pausing at the bottom of the staircase to glance up once, quickly, then he, too, entered the yard.
Jenson, the loudest and laziest of the men, confronted him immediately. “What you go and do that for? The Missus done nothin’ to deserve a whuppin’, especially not from you.”
Quinn took one step towards the lout, and that was enough to make him take several steps back. Jenson wasn’t the only man who felt like that.
“Where were you these past months when I wasn’t here?” Quinn demanded. The accusatory tone in his voice was more of a promise than a threat. Scorn dripped from every word as he met every man’s eyes, shaming them into staring at their boots. “There’s not a man among you who noticed that that poor woman’s been carrying a man who, even wasted away as he is, is two-thirds her size, up and down stairs like that? And not a one of you offered her a lick of help? Not even you, Cooky?” he raised his voice to include the man who was just inside the barn, trying to figure out how the hell he was going to manage roundup with so few men.
Quinn turned and stomped into the barn himself, his snort of disgust disbanding the would-be mob. He stopped short next to Cooky, not deigning to look at the man. “I’m not leaving, and you can tell Miss Rose that yourself.”
Chapter Two:
That’s exactly what the foreman tried to do as soon as he saw her hanging clothes in the backyard less than an hour later. Approaching slowly, reluctantly, hat in hand, he couldn’t really see her through the sheets she was hanging, but knew she’d seen him and Cooky figured she’d be just as happy not to lay eyes on much of anyone right now.
“Is he gone?” she asked abruptly, her tone fit to give him frostbite.
“No, Ma’am,” he admitted reluctantly. Cooky heard an extremely unladylike curse from behind the linens.
“Why not, Mr. Latieri?” He was only a mister when she was unhappy, and those occasions had been blessedly rare until now.
Cooky swallowed hard. “Dead truth, Ma’am, we can’t afford to lose him. We need all the hands we can get. He works harder than any five of ‘em, and he knows what he’s about.” He didn’t add that, before all the ruckus, he was going to ask her to promote the newcomer to assistant foreman, or at least hire him on in a permanent position.
He barely caught her next words, they were uttered so softly, almost hissing with anger. “I thought I made myself very clear. I want that man off my land.”
“He won’t go, Ma’am, and there’s no one here fit to force him.” He didn’t feel it necessary to mention that the man in question was already back hard at work.
“Then go to town and get Sheriff Meade,” she snapped back.
“Sheriff’s in Barstow this month. He won’t be back for at least three weeks or so.” He thought he heard a raw sob, but he must’ve been mistaken. He’d never heard or seen the Missus break down – not never, despite the good reason the Mister used to give her several times a week.
“What about the deputy?”
“Harley?” Cooky snorted. “You know he’ll be more than half in the bag and buried between Miss Lily’s – Uh, he’ll be indisposed.”
Rose’s teeth clenched until she thought the lot of them would break. Sending Cooky to town to look for the sheriff was a last ditch effort, and a double-edged sword. The sooner anyone went to town, the sooner all of the bored matrons would have another reason to cackle about her from behind their lily-white reputations.
It must be a wonderful thing never to have been in a situation where one had to choose between disgrace and starvation. She’d hoped that moving out West would allow her to leave behind some very unpleasant memories, but it seemed they’d followed her here, and festered into something she didn’t want to consider, but that everyone else wanted to dwell on.
Biting back tears, she sighed, knowing that she was caught in an untenable situation. That position was becoming depressingly familiar. Bending down to the wicker basket full of the soiled bed linens Alan produced daily, she sighed and said, “You might as well go back to work, Cooky.”
He’d never felt so relieved in his life. He’d rather stare down the barrel of a Winchester than deal with this situation, but he felt obligated to say, “I’m sorry, Ma’am. I’ll try to keep him as far away from you as I can.”
He heard her snort as he turned away. Neither of them had much hope of him being able to keep that promise.
Rose had done every chore she could think of, some of them twice, just to keep herself and her mind occupied. If she sat and thought about what had happened this morning, or worse than that, her life, she’d spend the rest of the day crying. She ended up in the kitchen, taking out her frustrations on the dough she was kneading.
“My goodness, Miss Rose. What did that bread ever do to you?” Lilah Cunningham was at least old enough to be Rose’s mother, but defiantly spry enough to keep the large house running almost single handedly. Rose helped, of course, but her priority was her husband’s care, so Lilah did the lion’s share of the rest of the work, lately for less and less of a paycheck, bless her heart.
Someone who hadn’t heard of the depth of her shame? Rose wondered. “Where’ve you been?”
Tying on her ever-present apron, Lilah answered, “Why, I was down to see Miss Esther. I brought her some of what we had canned last year. She’s about ready to burst with that child, and I know she doesn’t feel like cookin’ for all those mouths.” She didn’t mention Esther Holbrook was only about twenty-seven or so, but she already had eight children, and the ninth had been due almost a week ago. She had a wastrel husband, and there wasn’t much in the one room cabin even if she’d felt like cooking.
Rose bit her tongue, not wanting to chastise Lilah’s charitable tendencies, but they were in such a financial pickle themselves that she wanted to say that it should be Miss Esther bringing food to them! Instead, she added that problem to the ones she was trying to work out of the helpless mound of dough, not that she was having any success at it.
Knowing Lilah was going to hear about it sooner or later, Rose decided to forestall the inevitable gossip mill and tell her outright. She didn’t necessarily want to blurt it out all at once, but that was how it came out. “Mr. Hamilton spanked me.”
Lilah’s usually busy hands stilled in the act of getting a cup of sugar from the hoosier. “What was that?” She turned, noting Rose’s deep red cheeks and just barely catching the repetition of her amazing declaration.
“Mr. Hamilton . . . spanked me.” It was almost harder to say than it had been to endure, especially the second time. She barely breathed the words, and her bottom began to throb again, in time with the way her heart was banging in her chest.
Lilah set the measuring cup down and met Rose at the counter where she was attacking the bread dough. “You don’t mean he—” The other woman nodded, unable to say anything more. “Are you all right?”
The silence was broken only by the sound of one tear after another smacking damply onto the floury top of the dough. “Ohhhhh,” Lilah crooned, pulling Rose into her arms and hugging her tightly. But Lilah broke the hug relatively quickly, and began checking the other woman over carefully but couldn’t find any obvious bruises elsewhere. “He spanked you, you said?” she asked, clearly puzzled. “Did he do anything else to you, lass?” Her Irish accent sounded especially sharp when she was angry.
Rose snorted. “What else would you have him do?”
“You know what I mean, Miss Rose. Did he take his fists to you?” Like the Mister used to, she added, but only in her head.
“No, no, he didn’t,” she whispered.
“So what happened?” She guided the other woman over to the small table in the corner of the kitchen to sit. She was shaking so badly Lilah was worried she was going to fall down.
Rose wasn’t particularly eager to divulge the details of such a shameful event, but she knew Lilah.
Once she got her teeth into something wasn’t going to give up until she got the full story. “Well, he saw me carrying Alan down to the veranda yesterday, and offered to move him any time I wanted, rather than me having to lift him myself.”
Lilah, who was expecting some sort of lurid tale, was taken aback at the gentlemanly reason the ruffian had for administering her comeuppance, but wisely held her tongue.
Rose swallowed hard, her fingers fidgeting with the fringe on a crocheted placemat. “He told me then that if I didn’t comply, he’d – he’d – well, he’d spank me.” Lilah really didn’t need to know the shamefully embarrassing way he’d put his threat. “I didn’t think much of it, except that it was a kindly thing to offer which he then ruined by threatening me.” In the interests of being as honest as possible, though, she had to amend that statement. “Well, he did seem awfully firm about it, and he said plainly that he wouldn’t have me doing it when he was around.” Replaying his words made her squirm in her chair, which relit the fires he’d begun in her bottom. “This morning, I brought Alan down to his usual seat myself; I frankly had forgotten my exchange with Mr. Hamilton. But when I put Alan into his chair and turned to go back into the house, there he was.
“He grabbed my arm and dragged me into the front parlor, threw me over his knee and spanked me.” Rose couldn’t keep her hands from wandering towards her bottom to rub it reflexively at the memory. “All the windows were open, of course, so the everyone heard—” It was too much for her to retell without breaking down. She covered her face with her apron and wept openly.
Lilah pulled her into a big hug, rocking and murmuring soothingly. “There, there, now, Miss Rose. Cooky’ll take care of the lout.”
Cooky had never taken care of Mr. Caldwell when he’d beaten her senseless regularly, so she supposed she shouldn’t have had much hope that he’d help with this situation.
“He can’t,” Rose wailed plaintively. “I wanted him to go for the sheriff, but Meade’s out of town, and Hamilton won’t leave on his own, which is really a good thing, because we need him for roundup. We don’t have enough men as it is, and Cooky says he’s does the work of five men.”
She was well and truly stuck. Both of the women thought that, but, of course, neither of them said it. The ranch had to survive above all else, because without it, none of them had anywhere else to go.
Rose had grown up beyond poor in the Midwest; the youngest daughter in a family of seven children. A flu epidemic had claimed her parents when she was fifteen, and the family had pretty much dissolved from there. Her older sisters were already married but not able to take in another mouth to feed. She was lucky enough to spend some time with her favorite Aunt Mimi right after her parents’ deaths, and almost had a taste of what a life without constant want would be like. Her aunt was a frustrated schoolteacher whose husband wouldn’t allow her to work, so she taught Rose everything she could – reading, math, and a small amount of French. But her aunt’s husband wasn’t particularly welcoming towards the newcomer, so Rose had left as soon as she could, but long before she wanted to.
At the age of eighteen – almost nineteen – and long since considered an old maid, alone with no prospects, she responded to a newspaper ad for dancing girls needed in Denver. It wasn’t as if she had a ton of skills, and beggars couldn’t be choosers. She knew it wasn’t the right thing to do, but she was literally down to her last dollar, and they would pay the price of her trip out there.
Luckily, it had seemed at the time, she actually only spent one night as a dancer. Alan Caldwell had been in the audience that night. As it happened, he’d come to Denver for the specific purpose of finding a wife. He’d acquired and built up his ranch until it was one of the best in the state. But he was getting on in years, and had no one to leave it to. Alan wanted a wife who would produce sons, but one he could stash on the ranch who wouldn’t cramp his style when he wanted to go to Denver and whoop it up.
Dynastically speaking, he should have been looking to catch the daughter of one of the founding families in Colorado, but, beyond the fact that none of them would give him the time of day, that would take years of courting and he would be more likely to find himself with buttinsky in-laws than if he married a nobody. As much as he would have liked to advance his standing within the community – Alan had dreams well beyond his station that included a possible political career – he decided that would take entirely too much work for what he convinced himself would be entirely too little reward, overall.
So when he found himself staring up at the tiny redheaded young woman who was dancing badly on the big stage of the Honeysuckle Theatre, he decided that she would suit him just fine. He’d always had a bit of a weakness for redheads, and that was a nice bonus. She was wearing makeup, which he wouldn’t tolerate in any way, shape or form from his wife, and she was a bit thin, but overall very pleasing to his eye – and other parts of his anatomy.
He knew the owner of the dump, who, in essence, owned the dancing girls. Most of them would never dig themselves out from under the debt they owed him for the trip out there at first, but then there were the exorbitant charges for room and board that would keep them dancing for him – basically for free – until their legs fell off or they became too worn and ugly, at which point they were then sold down the line to lesser and lesser establishments, basically ending up as prostitutes.
But Alan knew that Manny had just gotten a fresh crop in, and he’d been promised first pick. At around two in the morning, after they’d just spent all night dancing and being groped by various patrons, Manny had the girls rounded up and presented to Alan. They had no idea what was going on, but lined up quickly and quietly once he backhanded the first of them for giving him any backtalk.
Although he already knew who it was that he was going to choose, Alan wasn’t one to pass up an opportunity to feel up some titties, which was exactly what he did. He allowed no quaint demurring, and frankly enjoyed the girls’ discomfort as he reached into their barely there bodices and boldly handled the merchandise.
Rose was in that line, second to last, but she could smell him coming. He was obviously a rancher of some sort, because there was manure caked on his boots and he smelled to high heaven of sweat, cows, and booze. She spent the moments before he got to her praying that he wouldn’t do to her what he was doing to the others, and somehow, it worked. He’d groped every one of them but her, but to her surprise, she was the one singled out of the line to follow the owner and his guest.
“Go upstairs, girl, and gather yer things,” the owner ordered around the frayed stubble of what had once been a cigar. He had his hand half cocked, just in case she gave him any trouble. With the new ones, you could never really tell how they were going to react to things. They weren’t beaten down yet, and some of them had too much of a spark of life left in them to know what was good for them.
She wanted to ask what was happening, but just then Arlene walked past her on her way up, and Rose could see the livid weal his hand had left on her cheek. She thought better of staging any protest.
She’d only been able to keep one small bag’s worth of her things – barely a change of clothes – so she was back downstairs more rapidly than she would have preferred. The big, overweight man who had manhandled all of the other women grabbed her wrist and pulled her through the door, out into the night air. He bundled her into what appeared to be a rented coach, and that was the last moment of ease Rose felt until after he’d had his seizure.
He spent their coach ride to his room at a cushy hotel downtown berating her and listing too many rules to remember, although Rose did her best. She was too skinny by far, too awkward, too everything. She was to speak only when spoken to, never disobey him, never sass back . . . the list went on, with the threat at the end already quite unnecessary. She’d seen how he’d treated the girls who’d tried to resist his groping, and had no interest in being beaten black and blue. Her virtue had already been compromised in most of the ways that counted – except in that one remaining way, and Rose didn’t have any hopes that that was going to last much longer.
Her innocence had been one of the first casualties of her fiscal misfortune, and she had truly thought that her naiveté was a thing of the past, but what happened at the end of that short coach ride had her realizing that she’d still managed to remain relatively sheltered.
He’d grabbed her elbow hurtfully while supposedly helping her out of the coach, and practically dragged her up to his room while managing to look as though he was doing the gentlemanly thing and escorting her to their room. Rose could see the way those in the lobby turned away from her shame. No one would meet her eyes, and she knew that if she screamed for help, no one would come to her aid, so she didn’t bother.
The wedding ceremony – if that was actually what it was, and Rose had her doubts – was performed almost immediately, right in his suite, buy a nervous little man who allowed himself to be as bullied by the big man as she did. Everyone around him – including the dance hall owner – seemed to defer to this man, she realized, wondering exactly who it was that she found herself bound to for eternity.
He didn’t give her any time to dwell on the fact that she was married, but hustled the official and the two required witnesses, who were hotel staff, out of the room. Rose found herself flat on her back on a big bed before she knew it, with the huge man pressing himself down on top of her so that she could barely breathe. She had counted herself lucky to get away with not being fondled backstage at the Honeysuckle, in front of everyone, but she was beginning to realize that she’d gotten the worst end of the bargain, by far.
He had managed to shift her legs apart, reaching up to tear at her bloomers and stockings. Rose began to struggle, not so much in defense of what there was left of her virtue, but because she only had one pair of stockings and two of bloomers, and she could hear that he was ripping them apart for some reason.
The first blow rocked her head back against the feather mattress, and made her forget entirely about defending her meager belongings. She was dizzy and seeing stars, barely able to draw a breath for the pain in her cheek, and her head was so fuzzy she wasn’t at all sure what it was that he was trying to accomplish. He’d succeeded in divesting her of her drawers, but now he seemed to be rocking his midsection against hers for no particular reason that she could fathom. If he continued to do that, she was going to have no choice but to throw up her meager dinner all over him, and she had to learn to grab a breath on his backswing, or not at all.