Western Spring Weddings. Lynna Banning

agreed to come out to Oregon and marry Arness? You had no money and no home?”

      She was quiet for a long minute. “Emily, why don’t you go upstairs and bring me my shawl.”

      When the girl’s footsteps faded, Clarissa leaned toward him. “Part of being, well, overprotected all one’s life is that it makes one naive. I realize now how foolish I was to accept Mr. Arness’s offer of marriage. All I could think about was making a home for Emily.”

      “Even if it meant marrying someone you’d never met? Clarissa, seems to me that’s more than foolish—that’s downright stupid.”

      Her face changed. “But thousands of women travel out West every year as mail-order brides. Surely you are not saying that all of them are—”

      “Stupid. Yeah, I am sayin’ that. Marryin’ anybody, even someone you’ve known all your life, is—”

      Her eyes got big. “Stupid?”

      “Yeah. Why tie yourself down to someone whose guts you’re gonna hate in a few years?”

      She bit her lip. “Did that happen to you?”

      At that moment Emily clattered down the stairs. “Here’s your shawl, Mama. Are we havin’ any dessert?”

      Clarissa looked blank. “Oh. Dessert. How about we have, uh, some cookies with our tea later? After I consult a cookbook,” she added under her breath.

      “Okay. Can I go play with Maria? She has a dolly.”

      “That’s news to me,” Gray said when Emily had streaked out the front door. “Well, it’s turning out to be a real interesting day, wouldn’t you say?”

      He rose, gave Clarissa a grin and strode out the back door.

      * * *

      “Señor!” Ramon waylaid him on his way to the barn. “Where you go?”

      “Town.”

      “Why because? We need to fix all that fence that was broke last night.”

      “Later,” Gray said.

      Ramon caught his reins. “But, boss, cows will get out.”

      “Yeah, I know. We’ll chase ’em in the morning.”

      Ramon shook his dark head. “You do things your way, always. Not always best way, señor.”

      Gray chuckled. Ramon was right most of the time, but he’d always done things his own way, and Ramon or no Ramon, Clarissa needed that cookbook. He started to rein away.

      “Señor, why you not listen to Ramon?”

      “Because I like to do things my way.”

      “I think you are wrong.” Ramon doggedly pursued him.

      Gray leaned over the saddle horn and stared down at him. His foreman had a point. Over the years of struggle to keep this ranch going, maybe he’d become too convinced he was the only person who knew best. Or maybe he was just stubborn. But he wasn’t wrong about riding into town. He hadn’t been able to stomach the chicken Clarissa had roasted to within an inch of its life, but he’d liked even less the bereft expression on her face. A woman in tears made his belly hurt.

      He spurred Rowdy forward and trotted over the cattle guard and through the Bar H gate.

       Chapter Seven

      Now, Clarissa reflected some days later, how difficult could it be to bake a cake? Some flour, a little sugar, an egg or two and...what? She could ask Maria, but after her roast chicken disaster she was hesitant to admit to an even greater lack of knowledge about what she’d been hired to do.

      She studied the woodstove in the kitchen and let out a deep sigh. She prayed that Emily was right—she could learn to cook, couldn’t she? And she must do it as quickly as possible.

      She flipped over the page of Mrs. Beeton’s Household Hints. Aha! A recipe for something called Plain Yellow Cake. “Take two good handfuls of flour...” What, exactly, was a handful? Would it be a large hand, like Gray’s? Or a small one, like hers? What if Emily wanted to bake a cake with her tiny little hands?

      She gazed out the window over the kitchen sink into the grove of willow trees behind the house. In the clear spring sunshine the new leaves looked like green glass, but now the light was fading. Face it, Clarissa, you don’t belong out here on a ranch in the West. She felt inept. Foolish. Out of place in this godforsaken land, and what was even worse, she felt a kinship with no one. At least she didn’t feel at odds with the man who had rescued her from Caleb Arness, or with down-to-earth, understanding Maria. But everything else out here was like being on a different planet.

      With a groan she tried to focus again on Mrs. Beeton’s book. She simply must stop feeling sorry for herself. She’d gotten herself into this pickle, and she would have to get herself out of it. Besides, thousands of women were surviving—even thriving—out here in this rough, untamed country. A month ago she’d even thought she might become one of them, but one look at Caleb Arness had told her how wrong she had been. Now she realized how foolish and misguided it would be to be any man’s wife, mail-order or not.

      Back in Boston she’d been an acknowledged spinster at twenty-four. “On the shelf,” everyone said. But even so, she had a life in Boston. She had fit in. There were concerts, afternoon teas, even happy hours spent in the library. On fine days people walked along the streets and in the lush, green parks, stopping for a soda at the candy store or the creamery. She missed it all.

      She marveled that Emily was not lamenting the lack of ice-cream sodas. But her daughter seemed to revel in every new and exciting thing she found in the West—horses to pet, Maria’s cornhusk dolls to play with, spring wildflowers to pick, even the nightly tall tales Gray spun to lull her to sleep. Even now she could hear his low, gravelly voice coming from the parlor where he sat with her daughter cradled on his lap.

      “And then,” he continued, “I left home. Well, to tell the truth, I ran away from home.”

      “Why’d you do that?” Emily queried. “I’d never run away from my mama.”

      A long silence fell. Instead of measuring out flour for the cake she was determined to bake, Clarissa found herself listening intently.

      “Well, it’s like this, honey,” Gray continued. “My ma and my pa didn’t like each other much. They yelled and screamed at each other every day for fourteen years, and finally I’d had enough.”

      “What’d you do?”

      Another silence. “Not sure I should tell you, Squirt.”

      “Yes, you should tell me!” she persisted. “I won’t tell anyone, I promise.”

      Clarissa heard a low chuckle and then his voice continued. “Well, let’s see, what did I do? What do you think I did?”

      “I bet you found a horse and a lot of money and you ate lots and lots of strawberry ice cream.”

      “You like strawberry ice cream, huh?”

      “Uh-huh. I like it better than anything.”

      “Better than...scrambled eggs and bacon?”

      “Yes!”

      “Better than...roast chicken?”

      “Way better! Especially when Mama bakes it.”

      Clarissa’s lips tightened.

      “Better than...Maria’s molasses cookies?”

      “Yeah!”

      “Guess that settles it, then. Gotta churn some ice cream one of these days.”

      “Strawberry!” she shouted. “But first you have to finish my