One Texas Night (2 page)

He wasn’t sure if she talked to him or herself. “You Agnes?”

Dumb question, he thought. Who else would be out here this time of night?

“Yep,” she echoed him, but without the accent it didn’t sound natural. “I’m the old maid sister who’s being passed around. If I don’t get married here, I’m due in Austin at my oldest sister’s place next month. Kind of like a traveling sideshow. Dress me up and put an apple in my mouth.”

Hank couldn’t stop the laugh. “I’m sorry,” he quickly added. “I never gave much thought to the other side of this game.”

“Sorry for what? For laughing or for me?”

“Both, I guess.”

“My poppa sent me west before I rotted on the vine in Chicago. You see, I’m the last of five girls. The only one not claimed. As soon as I’m married, my poppa plans to take another wife. There’s not room in the little apartment behind his shop for two women. I’m delaying his plan. I’m as much in the way in my home as I am here.”

Hank smiled. He knew how she felt. “The runt of the litter, last to be picked,” he mumbled, then thought he might have offended her.

Before he could say he was sorry again, she laughed. “That’s right. I’m only half the woman my sister is.”

Hank glanced in the window and watched Dolly waddle past. He couldn’t say anything without insulting Charlie’s wife so he changed the subject. “Don’t you want to get married?”

“Not really. Do you?”

“No,” he said honestly. “I like living alone. Running on my own clock.”

“Me too.”

His eyes had adjusted to the night enough that he could make out her shadow. She appeared short, like her sister, but not as round.

“But why not marry? For a woman, it seems like the best life.” He couldn’t help but add, “Unless you hate the cooking and cleaning part?”

The shadow lifted her head with a snap. “Women do more than cook and clean.”

He’d said the wrong thing. She couldn’t even see how homely he was and she was still rejecting him. “I know, but it helps if they can cook a little.”

Agnes laughed suddenly and he liked the sound.

“You’ve been eating Dolly’s pot roast, haven’t you?”

“Trying to.” He wished she would step into the light. “What
do
you like to do . . . Agnes?” Her name stumbled off his tongue.

“Back home, I helped my father in his workshop. He was a gunsmith. Sold the best weapons in the state and repaired the others.”

“You liked working in his shop?”

“No,” she answered. “I liked repairing guns in the back. I wish I’d been born a man. I’d love working on my own little workbench all day and coming home to a hot meal. It’s always appeared to me that a wife was more an unpaid servant than a partner. I’d hate that, so I don’t see much point to marriage. If I could, I’d open my own repair shop, but I have no seed money and none of my family thinks it would be a respectable kind of place for a woman to have. So, I’m cursed to circle my sisters’ houses looking for a husband.”

Hank leaned against the building. He could hear Dolly’s voice asking if anyone wanted more pie, but he didn’t glance toward the window to see if any victims had volunteered.

“Would you marry someone if it was a true partnership? Each taking care of himself, taking turns with shared duties. Each supporting the other in whatever work.”

“No one bossing the other, or controlling?” She leaned closer, almost crossing into the light.

Hank had no idea where his thoughts were going, but for once he wasn’t talking to a woman about the weather, so he decided to keep talking. “Right. Just two partners sharing the same house. Both bring in what they can as far as money goes. Both respecting the other’s privacy.”

“No wifely duties? No children coming every year?”

Hank thought he knew what she was talking about. He shook his head, then remembered she couldn’t see him and added, “None. They’d each have their own room, their own things, their own lives.” He’d seen men who ordered their wife around as if she were a slave. On the other side, he had watched a few women bossing their man in the same tone. In truth, he couldn’t remember ever seeing a couple stand as equals.

The one memory he had of his mother circled among his thoughts, not quite substance but more than dream. A tall woman sitting by the window, ignoring all the world around her, including him. Long after she’d gone, Hank remembered asking his father why she’d left. His father had only mumbled that she didn’t want children. They’d never spoken of her again.

Hank glanced across the darkness, pushing the image aside, trying to understand the woman only a foot away.

They were both silent for a few minutes, then she whispered, “I’d marry like that. A partnership. In fact, I’d consider it heaven. But even if I found a man willing to follow those rules, what’s to make him keep his word? He could lock me in the house and beat me, and no one would stop him.”

“You’re the gunsmith, Agnes. You should be able to figure that one out. Ask for his guns as a promise. No man but a fool would stand in front of a barrel, even in the grip of a woman.”

She laughed, then offered her hand across the light of the window. “It was a pleasure talking to you, but I have to go in and turn those two down before they die of food poisoning.”

He took her tiny hand in his. “I wish you luck, Agnes,” he said, realizing how much he meant it.

Just before she shoved at the door, she whispered, “My friends call me Aggie.”

He placed his hand above her head and added his strength to hers. “Aggie,” he said so close to her that he could feel her hair brush his face as the door opened. “I like that name.”

Chapter 2

Hank blinked at the light as he stepped inside. Aggie walked ahead of him and stopped just over the threshold as if too afraid to go on.

He looked at the two men at the table. They both glared open-mouthed at her as if she were some kind of creature and not human. His fist clinched, and if she hadn’t been in front of him, he might have closed their mouths with one blow. He didn’t care what she looked like; she seemed a kind person who had a right to some degree of respect.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” she said as if she hadn’t noticed the way they stared. “One of the calves Charlie brought home from the stockyard is sick, and I had to make sure he’d eat before I came in.”

Charlie smiled a lopsided grin and shrugged as if taking the blame for his sister-in-law’s tardiness. “Once in a while they cull out the little fellows too weak to make the trip north. If I don’t bring them home, I have to bury them behind the lot.”

No one but Hank seemed to be listening.

Potter and William bumped heads trying to stand at the same time. Both were stumbling over words.

Hank stood behind Aggie, proud of her. She timidly offered her hand to each as if these two idiots made sense. The banker started playing with his watch chain and Potter talked even faster than he had at dinner. They were both “honored” and “privileged” to meet her.

The banker pumped her hand up and down so fast Hank feared he might break bone.

Potter kissed her fingers while he mumbled something in French. Hank would bet even money that he learned the phrase in Fort Worth’s rough section called Hell’s Half Acre.

If Hank didn’t know better, he’d swear both men had been drinking.

“And Agnes, I believe you must have met Hank as you came in.” Charlie sat down, adding only, “He often does business at the stockyard when he’s in town.”

Aggie turned to offer her hand to Hank.

“Nice to meet . . .” was all he got out before he saw her face. He’d braced himself for a plain girl, maybe one with pockmarks or scars, thick glasses or a birthmark. But what he saw almost buckled his knees.

She had the face of an angel, with perfect skin and curly auburn hair tied into a mass of curls at the base of her neck. And, he noticed, the devil twinkling in her blue-green eyes.

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Harris,” she said shyly. “Would you like a slice of my sister’s pie?”

There it was again, he thought. The sparkle in her gaze—daring him—challenging him.

“If the others left a piece,” he managed to say. “I’d love one.”

He sat down and watched her as she talked with the others. He ate the pie Dolly passed him without tasting it.

Aggie asked the other two men questions, as if she’d been coached, about their life and what their plans were. Hank didn’t try to speak up. His life on a ranch would look pretty stale compared to Potter Stockton’s travels and parties, or the magnificent house Randell planned to build in the center of town. She’d probably be bored to hear the details of raising cattle in West Texas.

He
was
proud of his house though. She might consider it plain with the high ceilings and wide, uncovered windows. But if Hank could have gotten a word in, he would have told her how from every direction she could see for miles, and how when the clouds hung low, close to the ground, his home seemed suspended between heaven and earth.

The banker and Potter found their footing on her questions and began to compete for her attention. They said pretty things to her, flattering her with words Hank could never hope to put together. Within minutes both men were hinting that she should consider marrying them. William Randell seemed good-natured with the competition, but Stockton’s bragging carried an edge. He seemed a man who was used to fighting for anything he wanted, and he claimed Aggie was the prettiest girl he’d ever seen.

Aggie listened politely, without comment. It crossed Hank’s mind that she’d probably heard such talk all her life. For a woman who said she liked working alone, the idea of entertaining and the dinner parties that Randell talked of must seem frightening. Potter boasted of traveling with his work and staying in hotels across the country.

Hank seemed the only one who noticed she didn’t smile. In fact, if he was reading her right, Aggie was one step away from bolting out of the room.

Hank also noticed that the more she drew everyone’s attention, the sharper Dolly became. It must have been hard on four sisters with the baby being so beautiful. That might explain why the father kept her tucked away in the back workshop. Hank wondered if she’d stayed in back because she was naturally shy, or if the sisters had forced her to remain in the shadow. Whichever, one fact was obvious to Hank. Beautiful Aggie was afraid of people.

He watched her carefully. She wasn’t believing a word they said. She kept her hands laced tightly together over her frilly dress. He felt her loneliness more than he saw it. She was on display, something to be sold to the highest bidder, and no one stood by to help her. In fact, her sister made it plain that if she could decide for Agnes, little sister would already be packing up her things.

After an hour, Dolly ended the torture, not for her sister’s sake, but for her own. Dolly complained that her feet were tired and it was time for bed.

As the banker moved to the door, he held both of Aggie’s hands and kissed them. “I’ll dream of you this night,” he said with practiced flow. “Think of me also.”

Potter was bolder. He swore he’d fallen in love at first sight and asked for her hand in marriage. He said she was the first woman he’d seen in Texas who would be perfect on his arm, and now that he found her he saw no need to hesitate. Without waiting for her answer, he began listing his qualities and continued to do so as Charlie showed him the door.

Aggie politely said she’d consider his offer.

Both men stood at the doorway and waited to see what Hank would say, if anything. Obviously, neither considered him a threat, but they had no intention of leaving him inside with the prize.

Hank stood and put on his hat. When he walked past Aggie, she seemed so small. He hoped his height didn’t frighten her. She didn’t look up, and he wondered if she was embarrassed by all she told him in the darkness. After all, her family had made her options limited and for all her brave talk outside, she might still have little choice but to marry.

“Thanks for the meal.” Hank nodded toward Dolly. “And for the invitation,” he added to Charlie. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Miss Aggie.”

She still didn’t look up. He leaned and unbuckled the gun belt he always wore when he traveled. “There’s a train leaving Fort Worth about midnight. If you’re on it, you’ll be in Amarillo by morning.” He lifted her hands and placed his weapons in her grip. “If it’s a partnership, equal and forever that you want, I’ll pledge my Colts that it will be true.”

The silence in the room was complete for the first time that night.

Finally, Charlie whispered what everyone was trying to believe. “You’re giving her your guns?”

Hank nodded once.

When William Randell and Potter Stockton finished laughing, they yelled things like, “You don’t give a woman a gun, you give her flowers,” and “Give a ring.” One of the men even suggested that maybe this girl was the first woman Hank had ever been around. Both seemed to be rehearsing the story that they planned to tell many times over.

Dolly swore at Charlie, calling him a fool for inviting someone so crazy to their dinner. “Waste of good food,” she yelled as the men mounted.

Aggie stood in the doorway, gripping the Colts and looking up at Hank. He saw the fear in her eyes, the uncertainty, but he also caught a hint of a smile on the side of her lips.