The Cowboy's Cinderella. Carol Arens

Ivy, he discovered she’d been there.

      It irked him that the men were still laughing at her...at a woman thinking she could do a man’s job.

      But it worried him too. Ivy had been sheltered, had grown up under the protection of her uncle and the men on the River Queen. She didn’t know the dangers that could befall a woman alone. Sooner or later she would come upon a man who wouldn’t be laughing.

      At twilight, the rain began to fall. He reckoned he ought to seek shelter, but he’d rather be wet than sit inside warm and dry, worrying about her.

      Could be he was a fool and she was the one who had taken shelter, the one who was warm and dry.

      “Well, hell,” he muttered, riding past an inn whose welcoming fire glowed through the big parlor window.

      She might have taken shelter there, but he doubted it, given that she had left a note with her uncle, giving him all of her money and begging him to take it and not to sell the Queen.

      In Travis’s opinion, money had nothing to do with the sale. Patrick Malone, captain, pilot and owner of the River Queen, would be well set financially. But the man understood that the river life was taking its last gasp. He wouldn’t want his niece wasting her future on it.

      Travis took off his hat, shook out the water gathering in the brim. His coat was not yet soaked through, but it soon would be.

      If Ivy hadn’t taken a room at the inn, she couldn’t be far ahead of him, given that she was on foot.

      He’d ride another hour before he sought shelter.

      As luck would have it, fifteen minutes later, he spotted a campfire among the trees. He tethered his mount to a bush beside the river, then walked fifty feet through the woods toward the fire.

      Ivy sat with her back toward him, huddling under the shelter of a tarp that she had strung across some branches. She must have heard him crunching across twigs and fallen leaves, because she turned her head, glanced at him then back at the flames.

      “I’m sorry,” he murmured.

      “I reckon I was harsh on you. This isn’t your doing.”

      It felt to him like it was all his doing.

      Maybe he should go home and try once again to convince William English to marry Agatha instead. She was a Magee, just as Ivy was.

      But Agatha was not the heir. She was an invalid and not the sort of woman the neighbor needed to promote his political career.

      “I’ll take your word that she is a lovely person, Travis,” William had argued the last time Travis suggested Agatha instead of Ivy. “But as far as I can tell, she never comes out from the shadow of her balcony. The couple of times I’ve seen her she just sits in her chair watching the world go by. There is no spark of animation in her. I need a woman who is genteel, gracious—ready to get out among the people, shake hands and win votes.”

      And have children. It was William’s firm belief that a man without children was unelectable. All of Travis’s arguments ended there. No one would expect Agatha to fulfill that demand.

      “There’s an inn a ways back,” he said, crouching beside her. “It’ll be warm and dry. We can talk.”

      “I’m dry enough where I am.” She looked at him then. “But you aren’t...if I were you I’d scoot closer to the fire.”

      “All right, I reckon we can talk here. But if you start to shiver, I’m hauling you back to the inn whether you want to go or not.”

      She glanced at the dreary sky and shook her head.

      “Did my uncle change his mind about selling the Queen?” Her eyes seemed red and swollen. It cut him to the quick to know she’d been weeping. “I reckon he was threatening to sell in order to get me to leave with you.”

      “I’m sorry, Ivy. He went to the captain of the Belle this morning...they made an agreement, shook hands on it.”

      Rain tapped on the tarp. Ivy drew her knees to her chest and hid her face. When she looked up a single tear rolled over the curve of her cheek.

      “The Queen is his life.” She wiped her sleeve across her face. “Can’t imagine what he’ll do now.”

      “Look, Ivy, I spent a long time talking to your uncle the other night. The boat is not his life...you are. The decision he made, it was because it was best for you.”

      “That’s not for anyone but me to decide.”

      “As right as that sounds, sometimes life decides for us.”

      She reached across the distance separating them and squeezed his hand briefly. Maybe she forgave him...a little bit anyway.

      “Reckon you didn’t feel so in control of life when your folks died and left you alone.”

      “I wanted to crawl in the grave with my ma and pa.” Even now it was hard to think about the desolation he’d felt. “But your father was there with his big hand on my shoulder. After a while I was glad to be alive after all.”

      “Well, ain’t I a sniveling ninny?” She straightened her shoulders, flashed him an unreadable glance then wriggled her fingers at the flames. “Boohooing like a spoiled child.”

      “Not a spoiled child, Ivy. The life you wanted has just been taken from you. You’ve a right to your grief.”

      “I tried to get a job on a boat, got laughed at all the way back to shore...and all because I was a woman.”

      “I know...I spoke with the crew. I believe you could put their skills to shame seven days a week—I reckon that’s what scares them...having a woman do a better job would shame them. It’s easier to hide behind laughter.”

      “Sounds like you know something about that.”

      “Your father raised me like I was his son. There were some early on who thought I got my position because of it. Thought my job ought to have been theirs.”

      “I bet you worked twice as hard just to prove them wrong.”

      “And you know something about that.”

      She nodded, gazing quietly at the fire.

      “I have a sister?” she murmured at last. “I ought to have known it...the way I always felt a part of me was missing. Sort of like, a person standing in the sunshine and not seeing her shadow...if that makes any sense. All those years I thought it was just dreams and child’s play because I wanted a sister so badly. Now I know all along I was missing Agatha.”

      Ivy’s hat lay beside the fire, she turned it so that the pouch was away from the heat.

      “Even hearing her name...it doesn’t sound like a stranger’s name. Uncle Patrick should have told me.”

      “Right now, I guess he wishes he had. But all he ever wanted was to protect you and honor his sister’s last wish for him to be the one to raise you.”

      “Don’t see why he couldn’t have done both,” she grumbled then sighed deeply. “Can’t see the harm in telling the truth.”

      “At first, when your parents divorced, there were plenty of hard feelings. Your father wouldn’t let your mother take both of his girls. Your uncle says that your mother was afraid that if your father knew where you were, he’d take you back. He had the money and the power to do it. It was your mother’s dying wish that Patrick raise you...so he kept your past a secret from you and everyone else.”

      “All I ever knew was that my pa was a good man, a rancher who died young. How is it that you know so much when the only thing I know is a bald lie?”

      “Like I said, your uncle and I talked for a long time. Everything he did was out of love for you. Even selling the boat. He didn’t come to his decision to do it without a lot of thought. I told him all about the ranch and about William English.”