Page 25 of Mail-Order Lady

A flush of shame burned up her neck. Why was her mother like this? And now Clara had brought her retribution onto this man who’d been nothing but good.

“Robert.” She forced more strength into her voice. “She’ll make this terrible for you.”

He didn’t answer right away.

That was the thing about Robert. He didn’t fill silence to be kind, didn’t rush to reassure her before he’d thought through whether he could reassure her honestly. She’d learned to trust his pauses.

“She’ll try.” He shifted his weight. “She won’t succeed.”

“You don’t know what she’s capable of.”

“I have some idea.” A quiet certainty in his voice. Not arrogance. Just understanding. “And I have resources she doesn’t know about. Contacts throughout the Montana Territory, as well as my father’s connections in England. Men who know the territorial law better than any solicitor she’s going to find in Fort Benton. Or even Columbia, most likely.”

Bea’s hand moved in a slow circle against her back.

“In the meantime, we need to leave Fort Benton.”

Her head jerked up. Leave already?

“Today.” He said it simply, as if the matter had already been decided and he was only informing her of what his mind had worked out while she’d been trembling. “As soon as we can pack and load the wagon.”

Bea’s hand stilled against Clara’s back as if waiting for Clara to respond first.

“There’s no reason to stay.” Robert’s gaze slid to the older woman. “The license is filed. The marriage is legal. Everything else we need to do, I can handle from the ranch or through correspondence.” He shifted his focus back to Clara’s face. “Here, she can reach you. Every morning she could be in that hallway. Every afternoon she could be waiting in the lobby or the street. I won’t have that for you.”

He was right, of course. She’d felt it the moment her mother had appeared in the hallway—that old helpless sensation of being a girl in a house where the walls could close in at any moment. Fort Benton had turned into that house overnight.

The ranch hadn’t felt that way. Not once. Fear released her middle, leaving only relief.

“How soon?”

“Two hours. Less, if we’re efficient.” He glanced at Bea. “Can you manage it?”

“I managed it coming here.” Bea’s voice was dry. “I can do the same going back.”

Something almost like a smile slid across Robert’s determined expression. “All right then. Let’s move.”

CHAPTER 7

Approximately four miles outside of Fort Benton, Robert discovered the problem with marrying Clara McKinney. He was now allowed to look at her.

Except he should focus on the road—and he was—both the stretch ahead and the backtrail behind them. He had to watch for any sign of her mother or a man she’d hired following them.

But he’d much rather spend the time watching Clara.

He’d spent weeks developing the discipline not to look at her. Weeks of careful attention trained anywhere else—the fence line, the ledger, the middle distance beyond the supper table. He’d been managing it reasonably well by the time they’d left the ranch.

Now she was his wife.

By most people’s rulebook, a man could look at his wife. Turn toward her on the wagon seat, note the color in her cheeks, remark on the country they were passing through. It was expected. Most people might consider those things the bare minimum of marital attention.

But this wasn’t a normal marriage, which meant he had to force himself to look at the road.

The team moved at an easy walk, taking the hilly terrain without much effort.

Clara sat beside him on the seat with her hands folded in her lap. She’d been quiet since they’d cleared the edge of town hours ago. Mrs. Wang was tucked into the wagon bed behind them with the supplies, and from the soft sounds back there, she’d already drifted into one of those naps she took whenever a wagon was moving under her.

Past her, the road ran empty back toward Fort Benton. He’d been checking it about every quarter mile. Margaret McKinney had said she had means at her disposal, and a woman with means and an injured pride would not let a wagon roll out of town without arranging some way to follow it. He’d expected to see a hired rig on the road behind them by now.