Judith Stacy - Cheyenne Wife

That foolish notion left a moment later when Jacob Tanner squeezed through the crowd in the trade room and walked over to her.

Embarrassment heated her cheeks. Jacob was a nice young man, and he’d been present for her humiliation. He looked as uncomfortable as she when he stopped next to her.

“They had no right, saying those things and talking to you the way they did,” Jacob said softly, nodding toward the trade room. “It ain’t right, but… Well, that’s the way it is around here.”

Lily nodded, comforted and mollified somewhat by his compassionate words.

“Why do people stay here, Jacob?” she asked. “Why do you stay?”

He gazed thoughtfully across the plaza. “Came out here a couple of years ago with my ma and pa, my sister. We all got sick. They died.”

“Oh, Jacob, that’s so sad,” Lily said, feeling a new kinship with him. “But why do you stay? Why don’t you go back home?”

“Got no home to go back to,” Jacob said with a shrug. “My pa sold our farm in Tennessee when he decided we needed to come out here.”

“Don’t you have any family back there?”

“Yes, some. But I haven’t heard nothing from them in so many years now—” Jacob stopped abruptly as North walked out of the trade room. “You take care now, Miss Lily,” he said, and hurried away.

“They can’t do this,” Lily insisted to North, her anger flaring again. “They can’t force me to stay under those—conditions. Where is the sheriff of this territory?”

“They’re the law around here,” North told her and jerked his chin toward the trade room. “They can do whatever they want.”

Her boiling anger cooled slightly because she knew he was right. Jacob had told her the same thing.

“Why are you helping me?” she asked North. “You heard what the other men said about me. I’m of no value to anyone here.”

He eased a little closer. “I think you’re perfect,” he said softly.

Her anger dissolved and an odd tingling took its place, deep inside Lily.

Then his gaze dropped to the hem of her dress and rose slowly, deliberately over her waist, lingered on her bosom, and finally rested on her face.

“For what I have in mind for you, Miss St. Claire,” he said, “you’re perfect.”

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