A Man to Call My Own

Chapter 42

MARIAN WOULD SWEAR SHE woke up blushing. The memory of what had happened last night was immediately in her mind. Cheeks flaming, she tried not to look at Chad, who was getting his horse ready for riding.

He must have noticed the blush, though, because after a few minutes he said, "Look, you were in shock last night. I tried to help, but I'm afraid I got a little carried away. I know you'd probably rather not talk about it, but I'm sorry, Mari."

She didn't know whether to be grateful or disappointed. But he was right, discussing what happened between them would be much too embarrassing. Carried away? She should have known that's all it had been—for him.

They rode hard to reach the ranch by midmorning, only to find out that Kathleen and Amanda hadn't returned yet. They probably thought that Chad would be bringing Marian back to Stuart's place after he found her. He left to let her aunt know that she was home, and Kathleen rode in late that afternoon-without Amanda.

Marian didn't remark on her missing sister—well, Kathleen didn't give her much chance to, she was so full of questions, wanting to hear everything that had happened to her. And she assumed that with Spencer's having taken his carriage back to town again, Amanda was just waiting at Stuart's for Kathleen to send the wagon back for her.

But once she finished her own story, Kathleen began hers. "Your sister took advantage of the commotion caused by your disappearance to sneak off with Spencer without anyone's noticing."

"Sneak off with him? For how long?"

"She's still gone."

Marian's eyes widened. "Overnight? Where would they have gone?"

"To town to get hitched is my guess. I thought at first she might have talked him into bringing her home here, for whatever reason, but the carriage tracks point to town. I'll ride in tomorrow with some of the boys to let her know she's got my blessing."

Marian decided to join her aunt for the trip to town. She still wanted to buy some painting supplies, and she supposed it would be appropriate to congratulate her sister on her marriage. She wasn't all that surprised that Amanda had dumped Chad for Spencer. She had preferred Spencer from the start, his being the more debonair and citified of the two. She could have just said so, diough, instead of eloping.

They were in for another surprise, though, when they got to town the next day. Gossip was already running rampant that Amanda had spent the night in the saloon—without benefit of marriage. Marian couldn't imagine what her sister was diinking of, but she was too sore after the ride to find out immediately and elected to rest at the hotel while Kathleen got to the bottom of what was going on.

Chad caught up to Red before she reached the saloon. He'd come to town himself just to make sure he was off the hook. After hearing that Amanda had eloped with Spencer, he wanted to verify it, so he could relax again. He'd been crushed, though, to find out they hadn't married after all. Apparently, they'd intended to but had postponed the ceremony because of an argument, and they hadn't made up yet. But Amanda had spent the night in the saloon, whether in Spencer's bed or not didn't make much difference.

Red got angry, hearing this, and went off to gather some forces. It was quite a little crowd that headed to Not Here. The sheriff did his part and cleared the lower floor of all customers and employees alike. His deputies stationed themselves out front, to keep anyone from trying to see what was happening inside —as if anyone couldn't guess. And a good number of Red's crew were on hand to gather the rest of the participants.

Chad sat back and watched the show. It was as much a surprise to him as it would soon be to Spencer that Red was going to invite Spencer to his own wedding. He'd thought she'd at least talk to him first, try to persuade him to do what was "right" for a change. But she'd obviously concluded that that would be a wasted effort—and that her shotgun would speak louder than any words.

It did. Spencer didn't need to ask why his saloon had been taken over. When he was ushered downstairs, pushed and shoved to be exact, he started laughing when he saw Red standing next to the preacher waiting on him.

"You have got to be kidding."

" 'Fraid not," was all Red replied.

Amanda appeared at the top of the stairs next. At least she was fully dressed for a change, though in a pink-and-black edged getup too fancy for midday, more in line with what Spencer's female employees wore day and night, semi-evening gowns. She had apparently been willing to fit right in with the atmosphere of a fancy saloon.

She didn't laugh like he did, however. When she saw Red standing next to a man with a Bible in hand, she immediately tried to head back down the hallway to Spencer's rooms. That avenue was blocked, however, with Red's cowboys shaking their heads at her. So with an indignant huff, she marched stiffly down the stairs and straight over to Red.

"I thought I told you that you have no say over what I do," Amanda said haughtily to her aunt. "I remember saying it. Others heard me say it. So just what do you think you're going to do here— aside from making a fool of yourself?"

That brought a few gasps. If anyone had been feeling sorry for Amanda by that point, they no longer did. Red didn't take the bait, though, didn't even blush. She didn't get angry again either. It might have been a hard decision to make, but having made it, she had the backbone to stick with it.

Her tone was quite placid when she answered Amanda. "I'm correcting a wrong, sweetie."

"There's been no wrong done," Amanda tried to insist, but Red wasn't finished.

"Correcting a misconception as well," she said. "When your father made me your guardian, he put the decision of whom you could marry on my shoulders. In no way conceivable did he intend for the decision to be left up to you. Now we could have accomplished this in one of two ways. You could have taken some time and reviewed your possible choices of a husband, and we would have eventually agreed on a man suitable for you, or I could have gone through all possibilities willing and able and made the decision for you. Either way, the decision was still mine in the end, and circumstances have forced me to make it without any further consideration. But at least I have taken your preference into account."

"You haven't!" Amanda cried. "Did you ask me? No, you didn't! Or I would have told you that no one around here meets my standards. So go home, Aunt Kathleen. You will accomplish nothing here."

Red still didn't get angry. Chad was feeling some inklings of disgust himself. Spencer was gritting his teeth over being included in the reference to Amanda's standards. But Red wasn't going to be goaded into backing down.

"You can say it as long as you like, as loud as you like, or until someone puts a gag in your mouth," she told her niece. "You did state your preference when you came to town with Spencer Evans and moved right into his bed. No ifs or buts about it. Not a single person here, myself included, doubts that you made a choice. Now we'll make it legal."

"Speaking of legal, you know this won't work unless one of us agrees to it, Red," Spencer pointed out. "She obviously won't, and I sure as hell won't now. It's been amusing, but you might as well take her home with you. She's more trouble than she's worth."

"How dare you!" Amanda glared at Spencer.

"Someone have that gag? I'll be happy to do the honors," Spencer said.

Amanda blushed furiously. Spencer had obviously taken serious offense over her "no one ... meets my standards" remark. There were a few snickers and coughs over Spencer's rejoinder, but most eyes turned back to Red for her answer to the legal issue that he'd raised.

Were it the girl's father standing there with a gun in hand, there'd be no doubts, but "guardian" was an Eastern term most of those present couldn't relate to because most of them had grown up in Texas, where things were much simpler. A gal either had her folks or other relatives to look after her or she was on her own.

Red was a relative, but a female one, and no one had ever heard of a female leading a shotgun wedding before. When it amounted to "say yes or the," it usually took a man to enforce such a threat. And Red wasn't even angry! If she was at least angry, then maybe ...

"I'll be speaking for my niece, Spencer."

"I'll speak for myself, thank you," Amanda huffed.

"You already did," Red replied. "No further response is required of you."

"Well, then, thank God he isn't going to agree to this farce," Amanda said, nodding toward Spencer.

"Oh, but he will," Red returned with a firm degree of confidence as the shotgun she'd been pointing at the floor now rose toward Spencer's chest. "He'll either say his 'I do' normally, or he'll say it between screams, but he'll get around to saying it."

Spencer didn't take her seriously, even chuckled. "You aren't going to shoot me, Red, and you know it."

"Well, yes, I would," she disagreed. "I'd try not to kill you though. You have my word on that. But a few holes in your hide won't bother me too much. Let's hope this buckshot doesn't shatter any bone beyond repair.

She said it too casually. Spencer actually didn't know her well enough to determine if she was bluffing or not. That she wasn't bluffing at all was moot. It was whether or not he believed her that would determine his answer.

But in Spencer's case, there was one other determining factor. He was much too fond of his hide to want any holes in it. No matter how remote the possibility, any possibility was enough, especially when a marriage to his way of thinking could be easily ended.

But he kept them all waiting for nearly five minutes before he snarled, "Get this over with. And the lot of you can find a new saloon to frequent, because Not Here will have much more meaning for you after today."