Page 8 of The Prospector's Only Prospect
Ah, shit.
“My housekeeper,” Virgil admitted reluctantly, turning to follow the men’s gazes.
“You have a house?” Woodrow scoffed. “I thought you had a pile of felled trees and a carpenter who spends more time with a pan in his hand than a hammer.”
“I thought you ordered a bride?” Ed said. “Because if you’re not marrying her—”
“I’m still thinking on it,” Virgil cut in. “She owes me money and has to work it off. Not that way,” he added with a glower when all their brows went up. “She’s a proper lady from back east.”
“If you say so.” That was spoken around the pipe stem Ed stuffed into his smirk.
Virgil glanced over and saw Marigold had opened her bag and was showing its contents to the Arapahoe woman. She had already set out a packet of writing paper with a pen tucked under its binding twine and a small bottle of ink. There were three books, a hairbrush, and an apron. Now came a shawl, a housedress, anightgown, a pair ofstockings…her Goddamnedunderwear.
He strode over double-time. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Having a conversation.” Marigold sent a guileless look up at him. “I mean, she doesn’t speak English, and I don’t speak her language, either, but she laughed at my shoes, so I thought I’d show her what else we wear back east. This is my corset cover, which goes over the corset, obviously.” She demonstrated by placing the corded corset against her chest, then layering the entirely too suggestive, translucent, and lace-edged underthing atop it. “I took mine off because travel was unbearable enough without suffocating.”
Virgil was back to pressing a tent into the heavy denim of his work trousers, especially as he noticed she was endowed exactly enough in the bosom department to make his blood heat. She’d removed her hat, and her hair was falling in wavy chestnut ribbons that were approximately seven miles long, and since when did he have fantasies of a woman tickling his skin with her hair?
“Put it away,” he said through his teeth.
“I’m almost finished. This is a fresh pair of drawers. These ones button in the slit. You can imagine what a nuisance that is, so I only wear them on laundry day. Another pair of stockings, and this is my menstrual belt—”
“Nope.”
…
Virgil jerked open her carpetbag and began stuffing everything in willy-nilly.
“If women’s talk makes you uncomfortable, move along,” Marigold said. “Or take a lesson, because if more people shared information and a new perspective instead of—”
Virgil leveled a ferocious glower at her. It was so close to the contemptuous looks worn by the slavery-supporters who had spit on her in Topeka, she had to turn her face away to hide sudden tears.
“Almost finished?” Virgil asked the Arapahoe woman.
She wasn’t bothering to hide her amusement. She offered the leather slippers moments later.
“I enjoyed meeting you. I hope we’ll meet again,” Marigold said politely, pretending she wasn’t still stung by Virgil taking her to task in public. She pulled the slippers onto her feet and rose to take a few testing steps. The firm soles protected her from the poke of rough, sunbaked grass, while the upper was soft enough to hug her foot without squishing it. “Very comfortable.” She smiled with genuine pleasure at how nice they felt.
“I feel like I could run on the wind in these.” Marigold fairly skipped as Virgil led her away from the trading post. “I swear women’s fashion is designed by men to constrict us so you can tell us how useless we are.”
No response. His long strides ate up the ground, but at least she could keep up with him now that her feet weren’t weeping.
“What was I supposed to do?” she asked when his oppressive silence continued. “Invite myself into her lodging so I could show her my things? Maybe men should quit acting like a piece of cotton is an invitation to congress.”
“Do you understand how few women there are here?” He stopped abruptly, and his voice was harder than a scold. It was grave. “A lot of these men haven’t seen a white woman in years. They’re the kind of men who take what they want without asking permission. That’s what the frontieris. You’re all kinds of right about what men should be, but I’m telling you what they are. When I say don’t draw attention to yourself, I’m not trying to constrict you. I’m protecting you. Which is what you asked for.”
He walked on, nodding at a man he passed but not stopping to speak to him. The man stared at Marigold.
After a beat, she hurried to keep up, not finding a retort. She was too disgruntled by how he’d turned her own words on her. And by the fact he said he was trying to protect her when she was pretty sure he hated her.
“I only thought she’d be interested,” Marigold muttered as she fell into step beside him. “I’d certainly like to know how women in the wild manage…certain things.”
“Really? That’s your priority?”
“Shouldn’t it be? Since that’s where I am now?”
He shook his head in perplexity. “You’re something else, Marigold. You really are. What sort of name is that, anyway?”
