Maverick Heart

“RAND AND I ARE GOING TO RIDE AHEAD, LADY Talbot.”

          Verity, Lady Talbot, Countess of Rushland, shifted to a more comfortable position in her sidesaddle, wishing she could race across the vast Wyoming plains herself instead of plodding along beside a wagon pulled by oxen.  Experience had stolen her freedom to do impulsive things.

          “Is it really wise to ride off without knowing what’s ahead of you, Winnifred?  You might get lost.”

          “How could we possibly get lost?  You can see for miles and miles in every direction.”

          “Freddy is right, Mother,” Rand said. “Besides, I promise to take good care of her.”

          “And I’ll take good care of Rand,” Freddy added with an impish grin.

          Rand laughed.  “Oh, I do hope so, minx.  In every way.  And very soon.  Our wedding isn’t far off now.”

          Winnifred, bless her heart, blushed a fiery red.  She always did when Rand teased her about their wedding night.

          It was easy to see why her son had chosen Lady Winnifred Worth as his bride.  Freddy had stunning red hair, and her figure made an eloquent statement in a dark green habit trimmed in military braid. But Verity wasn’t sure Rand knew what he was getting.  Freddy—imagine a young Englishwoman preferring such a name—was as wild and brazen a young lady of seventeen as the Countess of Rushland had ever met.

          Verity smiled inwardly.  That was probably why she liked Freddy so much.  The girl reminded her of herself at the same vulnerable age.  Verity had grown up, grown staid, grown careful.  Mistakes, she had learned to her regret, could be costly.

          Verity dabbed at the perspiration on her forehead with a lace-trimmed handkerchief.  It came away smudged with dirt.  “I know the wagon is awfully slow—”

          “And an utter dust bucket,” Rand said, brushing at kerseymere trousers that would have appalled his valet, if that man could have been persuaded to leave the hallowed shores of England and journey to the American West.  The toes of Rand’s hessians sported a layer of fine dust.  “It’s a good thing Robert can’t see me now.  He’d have an apoplexy.”

          “You folks better stay close to the wagon,” the teamster driving the wagon warned. “There’s Injuns hereabouts.  Sioux ain’t all sittin’ on the reservation eatin’ agency beef, no siree Bob.  Chances are we’ll butt heads with some hostiles.”

          “You’ve been threatening us with Indians ever since we left Cheyenne two days ago,” Freddy said.  “I haven’t seen so much as an eagle feather, let alone a  band of murdering savages.  Just grass, grass, and more grass.  I think you’re making it all up.”

          “Ain’t no joke, lady.  Usually don’t see Injuns till it’s too late,” the teamster said.  “Show ’em, Rufus.”

          The man riding shotgun for the teamster lifted his hat.

          Freddy gasped.  “What happened to your head?”

          “Scalped,” the man said flatly.

          Freddy reached up to smooth the thick bun of auburn hair gathered into a net at her nape, then snugged the brim of her Spanish leghorn hat, brushing at the jaunty golden plume that skimmed her cheek.  “They wouldn’t dare touch one hair on a lady’s head.”

          “Ain’t no ladies come this way much.” The teamster spat a gob of tobacco juice onto the dusty trail that led north from Cheyenne to Fort Laramie.  “You ain’t safe just ’cause you’re female, if that’s what you’re thinkin’.  That red hair of yourn is sure to catch some Sioux buck’s eye.  He’d take your scalp same as ol’ Rufus here.”

          “He’d have to catch me first.”  Freddy kicked her Thoroughbred mare into a gallop, and with a shout of excitement, Rand spurred his stallion after her.

          Verity barely managed to keep her dainty chestnut mare, the best of the three Thoroughbreds she’d brought all the way from England as breeding stock, from bolting after them.

          “Plumb crazy,” the teamster said to no one in particular.  “Giddyap there, Belle, you lazy good-for-nothing.  Move it out Henry, you dumb sonofabitch.”

          Verity winced at the bullwhacker’s language, but forbore to correct him.  Things were different in America.  There was no social structure as she knew it.  Even the lowliest bullwhacker considered himself the equal of an English lady.  The fact that she was a countess, the widow of an earl, mattered not at all, only whether she had enough in her purse to pay the fare.  Which, in her case, was becoming more and more questionable.

          That was not to say that the men she’d met in the West had not been deferential.  She was given the same courtesy—and curious attention—as any other woman in this womanless land.

          A bullwhip cracked over the team of oxen, accompanied by a plethora of expletives, but Verity couldn’t see that the enormous, lumbering animals increased their pace even a little.

          She looked worriedly toward the horizon, where her son and his fiancée had disappeared over a rise in the grassy terrain.  “How much chance is there, really, of their meeting up with Indians?” she asked the teamster.

          “It’s a gamble, lady.”  The bullwhacker spat into the dirt again.  “Maybe they will, and maybe they won’t.  Out here, the stakes are high.  Lose, and you lose your life.”

          Verity’s hands tightened unconsciously on the reins, and her horse sidestepped.  She didn’t care much for gambling.  She invariably lost.