Marriage For Sale

Ever since he’d bought his ranch six months ago, Linc had heard that the best livestock in the region was found at The Community’s annual auction, held every spring before planting time. His purchase today of the prize Appy filly and fifty head of mixed-breed cattle proved his sources of information were right. But that didn’t explain how supposedly God-fearing people could justify selling one human being to another.

The auctioneer’s staccato chant sped up as gray beard raised his hand again. Linc didn’t hesitate in answering. But he did hesitate when a wizened old lady shuffled forward from the crowd and rapped the tall edge of the auction block with her cane, drawing the auctioneer’s attention with her high bid, called out in a loud, gravel-edged voice. Linc had assumed all the women were little more than servants to the men.

The forcefulness of the old lady’s manner surprised him, too, especially when he bid again. She spun around and wagged the knobby-headed cane in his face. “You are an outsider, sir,” she hissed. “I’d advise you to stay out of our business.”

Linc didn’t bother to give her the courtesy of tipping his hat, and he exaggerated his West Texas drawl into sarcasm. “Well, howdy-do to you, ma’am. I may be an outsider here, but I pretty much do what I damn well please whether it’s my business or not.”

“And what I’m saying to you, young man,” she retorted, peering at him through crescents of wrinkles, “is that you don’t have the faintest idea what you are getting yourself into. All I can say is, I hope you’re a bachelor.”

“A bachelor? What for? So when you have me drawn and quartered for interfering in your so-called business, I won’t be leaving a widow?”

She snorted and thrust the cane at the middle of his chest, ruffling the leather fringe of his buff suede cattleman’s jacket. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Linc ignored her and raised his next bid considerably, proving his contempt. Clearly unimpressed, the old lady rapped the auction block again, upping her bid.

Linc tugged his hat brim again. “You’re going to lose. I don’t care what I have to pay.”

“Our laws regarding women of Rachel’s age are very specific,” she informed him while keeping the bidding alive. “You’d do well to heed my words. We take care of our own.”

Linc spoke through gritted teeth. “Is this how you take care of your own? Selling a defenseless young woman? No way can you justify this.”

She waved her cane at him in dismissal. “Yet you are bidding for her. You are participating in what you call unjustifiable.”

“I’m buying her for one reason and one reason only—to give the lady her freedom.”

“Freedom, hmm?” Her wrinkled-raisin eyes brightened in renewed consideration. “Perhaps you are not as high and mighty as you appear.”

Linc iced her with one glare. “Don’t count on it.”

“You are angry. That is good. Rachel knows how to handle anger and the single-mindedness of a beast obsessed. Instead of freeing her, perhaps you should consider keeping her for your own use.”

“My own use? What kind of people are you?”

“Simple people. That is our motto. We began as a collection of dreamers and doers, and became The Community. It is the way we choose to live.”

Linc stabbed his finger toward the auction block. “Does Rachel have a choice?”

“Of course she does. She asked to be sold in this manner. It is her right.”

“Then she must be even more brainwashed than you are.”

The old lady cackled with glee. “You speak your mind as does she. I have reconsidered. The two of you will be well matched.”

Linc shook his head in disgust at the crazy ramblings of the old woman and, determined to bring an end to this charade, signaled a huge jump in the size of his bid. The auctioneer incorporated the amount in his chant, and the audience gasped.

“Going, going, gone!” the auctioneer announced, pointing at Linc. “Sold to the clean-shaven outsider in the black cowboy hat.”

It sickened Linc to breathe the same air as these people as he pushed his way to the auctioneer. The women in their bonnets and the men in their straw hats parted before him in apparent awe.

Linc didn’t understand them. He didn’t want to understand them. All he wanted to do was pay his money and get the woman named Rachel out of here.

Rachel watched her buyer come forward to claim her.

She had noticed his tall, imposing form previously during the livestock sale. Dressed in a fringed, Western-cut cowhide coat and crisp black felt cowboy hat, he wasn’t the only rancher to visit the auction this day. Yet he stood out from the others like a rogue stallion, content to stay aloof and alone. He ignored the tables of farm produce and canned goods and the friendly overtures of the sellers who made them.

Rugged and rangy, he moved toward her with economy, the way a skilled cowboy would move, which heartened her. Appreciation of the vast land and its creatures was an important attribute in a man. If the cattle he’d bought this morning were any indication, he had a good eye for quality. His worndenim jeans and silver belt buckle also spoke of an experienced cattleman. Trim and fit, he carried himself with the authority of a substantial landowner. Another point in his favor was the three-year-old Appaloosa filly he’d bought earlier—the finest prospective cutting horse in the lot.

Rachel resisted the urge to smooth back her hair or fuss with her dress. She was through making herself conform to the needs and desires of others. Either he accepted her as she was or she would find another path to the life she was determined to set for herself.

Her buyer shook hands with the auctioneer, and Rachel examined his lean-jawed face. Harsh prairie sun and wind had burnished his skin and etched squint lines around his eyes. Thick lashes and thicker brows were as black as his hat. His straight nose matched the uncompromising lines of his mouth while day-old whiskers shadowed his cheeks. He seemed a fine specimen of a man.

But when he introduced himself and lifted his hat to her, his flint-green eyes remained cold and he didn’t smile. “Hello, Rachel. I’m Lincoln Monroe.”

He had the kind of low and dusty voice that led people to listen closely. Tremors traveled up her arm as she pumped his swallowing hand. “Pleased to meet you, Lincoln Monroe.”

“Linc is fine.”

“Linc.” Accustomed to the biblical names the people of The Community favored, his name felt foreign on her tongue. The tremors she felt were also foreign to her and traversed across and down her body, flushing it with unfamiliar warmth. She tried not to show it, acting natural as could be, but he must have sensed the power of her feeling, for his jaw tightened and he questioned her with his gaze.

She did not move. He possessed the penetrating gaze of a hunter—ever hungry and ever searching. The direct force of it pinned her in place as surely as if she were his prey.

Confusion hit her—she refused to be prey for anyone or anything. Yet the danger she felt emanating from him exhilarated her. Instinct told her he was different from everyone else, that he was worthy of trust. In spite of the fact that she was a stranger to him, he had bid for her, confirming the fact that she truly wasn’t as strange and ugly as so many claimed.

She met his gaze for a long, wordless moment before he broke it off, his jaw set more tightly than ever.

Attuned to his changing mood, Rachel straightened her backbone and watched him turn to the cashier as the people surrounding them witnessed in hushed silence. She wasn’t surprised by their reaction. No other member of The Community, man or woman, had ever been sold for such a high price.

She expected Lincoln Monroe to examine her before paying his money, as was his right, but he didn’t ask her to read anything or test the strength of her arms. Instead he pulled out his wallet and paid in one-hundred-dollar bills. That might be a problem, breaking those bills into lesser currency, she thought.

“Follow me,” he said curtly, cutting his way through the throng. She barely had time to accept her selling price from the cashier and pocket the roll of money in her skirt.

He should have ordered her to walk before him, so all in The Community could see, at last, that she was worth coveting. But he was unfamiliar with her customs and striding fast, as well, and because her legs didn’t match the long length of his, she had to trot to keep up. Some folks snickered, but she kept her gaze focused straight ahead and concentrated on the comforting solidity of her buyer’s broad back.

The denim he wore fitted his legs with little material to spare, hiding his cowboy boots down to the well-worn heels. His cowboy hat offset the thick coalblack hair at his nape. The length was trimmed neatly compared to most men she knew but Rachel decided that his matched the angular lines of his body and no-nonsense strides. The trim of his forelock in front had done little to soften the rather grim expression he had greeted her with, but she no longer cared about that. She knew how to gentle any soul, human or otherwise.

Just thinking about her future with him made her heart beat like a tiny bird’s. She had learned long ago that a person’s appearance wasn’t nearly as important as the content of their character. But when it came right down to lying together and the business of making babies, she couldn’t imagine how it might be done if the man and the woman didn’t see some sort of beauty in each other.

He halted at his rig, and Rachel had a moment to examine the large black truck, taking in the fat wheels and metal frame. It was the outsider’s version of a wagon, made for hauling heavy loads, only it roared like a bear and spewed noxious-smelling smoke. Rachel told herself to prepare to get inside it. The marriage ceremony would only take a few minutes. Then she would be his and he, hers.

She was glad to see that the horse trailer behind the truck was clean and in good repair. The filly, raised free on The Community’s pastures, deserved fine quarters and the best of care. Fortunately the truck was parked close to her corral. She already had plenty of opportunity to familiarize herself with such a modern contraption.

“Where’s your stuff?” Linc asked.

Rachel broke from her reverie. “Stuff?”

“Bags, luggage—whatever it is you want to take with you,” he replied.

“My trunk contains most of my possessions.” She pointed to a large trunk close by. “The rest I will fetch myself.”