Page 26 of Texas Glory
“I’ve got a gentle horse you can ride, and if you don’t want her, you can ride with me.”
Quickly she shook her head. “The gentle horse is fine.”
“Good. Then I’ll see you before dawn.”
He spun on his heel and stomped down the stairs. Cordelia slipped back into her room, closed the door, and leaned against it. She pressed her fingers against her mouth. He had made her brothers take the hideous coach away!
Tomorrow, she was going to start riding a horse around the countryside.
She wrapped her arms around herself. He had said he’d see her in the morning. Did that mean she would be safe tonight? She could sleep alone?
She walked to the bed. It wasn’t until she reached up to pull the blankets down that she noticed the flowers resting between the pillows.
Wilted now, their fragrance still wafted over the bed. She picked up a yellow flower and trailed her finger over the fragile petal. They grew over the prairie. Easy enough to find. Not much trouble to pick.
Yet tears welled in her eyes. So simple a gesture. She wanted to believe Amelia had left them for her, but somehow she knew they had been a gift from Dallas.
She walked to the far side of the room, drew the heavy draperies aside, opened a door of windows, and stepped onto the balcony.
In the distance, she saw the silhouette of her husband sitting on the top railing of the corral, his shoulders hunched, as he gazed in the direction of the moon.
CHAPTER
FIVE
Cordelia lay in the massive oak bed listening for her husband’s footsteps. Several minutes past midnight, she finally heard them on the stairs. She followed the sound along the hallway until she heard him stop outside her door. She held her breath, waiting for the click of the turning doorknob, the echo that would announce he was coming to claim her as his wife.
But all she heard was the fading tread of his boots as he walked away.
She rolled to her side and watched as the shadows played around the room. Her room.
She wondered how long he would give her before he insisted on making it “their” room.
She slept fitfully through the night and finally crawled from the bed in the early hours of the morning to prepare herself for her first ride on a horse. It was then, in the quietness before dawn, that she noticed the many things she’d overlooked the night before.
She washed her face using the water that filled the heavy oak washstand. She gazed at her reflection in the oval mirror that hung on the wall. She imagined Dallas usually shaved here. His shaving equipment rested on a small table beside the washstand. She knew he was skilled with a razor. His chin and cheeks had been smooth and carried no nicks or scars, save one small one just below his left eye, but she didn’t think a careless razor had created it. His mustache had been evenly trimmed.
Using one of the two towels he had set beside the washstand, she patted the moisture from her face. Then she walked to the mirrored dresser, sat in the straight-backed chair, and unraveled her braid.
On the dresser, he had placed a small bottle of bay rum. Her brothers often doused themselves with it, yet it had smelled different on Dallas’s tanned skin. He owned this ranch, but she didn’t think he spent nearly as much time in his office as her father did. Dallas’s features were too brown, too weathered.
She swept up her hair, then quickly donned her red riding habit. She’d only worn it once. The day Mimi St. Claire had delivered it to her, a gift from Cameron in hopes he could convince their father to let her ride. She had admired the woman for traveling to the ranch, unescorted, in a buggy. She had envied the woman the freedom she had to come and go as she pleased because she was not shackled to a man.
Cordelia had asked her father if perhaps she could do the same, but he had forbidden her to travel unescorted, as though he didn’t quite trust her to return. No one had found the time to escort her to town after the day Dallas had set aside the land.
She had devoted so many years to caring for her mother that staying at home had become a way of life that she had seldom questioned. She had grown up with her father’s adage, “A woman’s place is in the home, tending her menfolk.”
Cordelia jumped at the rapid-fire knock. Taking a deep breath, she crossed the room and opened the door. She was struck once again with the handsome shape of Dallas’s chiseled features. His gaze slowly traveled from the tip of her hat to the tips of her toes.
“We need to go,” he said in a voice that sounded as though he were strangling.
She followed him down the stairs and into the early morning darkness. He had tethered two horses to the front veranda.
“This is Beauty,” Dallas said as he placed his hand on the mare’s chestnut rump. “She’s about as docile a horse as you’ll ever find. Pull back on the reins to stop her. Give her a gentle nudge in the sides to make her go. For the most part, she’ll just follow my horse.”
“Sounds easy enough,” Cordelia said.
Dallas looked at her and squinted. “You’ve never ridden?” he asked as though he thought he’d misunderstood her the night before.
