The Sunstone Brooch : Time Travel Romance Katherine Logan (no david read aloud TXT) 📖

“Henry Cabot Lodge?” Ensley asked.

TR nodded.

“Do you plan to tell him how you risked your life to save the herd during a stampede?”

TR laughed. “I thought I’d tell him I’ve had a good deal of fun since I came out here. That I’ve had my hands full working night and day without taking off my clothes but once during the week of the drive.”

She looked at him, grinning. “I’m sure after reading your letter, Mr. Lodge will picture you as a ruffian riding hell-for-leather through the wilderness.”

TR stared with narrowed eyes and pursed lips, and then after a moment, he gave her a full grin. “That’s an apt description, and I could say the same for you, Mrs. Fraser. I should write to your husband and tell him about our adventure.”

“He’s probably sitting on the veranda at MacKlenna Farm sipping mint juleps and discussing Thoroughbred breeding and racing with his relatives. He’ll think we’re both nuts for galloping through the Badlands in the middle of the night chasing a stampeding herd.”

As soon as she said that, another chill hit her, and she shuddered. She seemed to be having them quite regularly today.

“Are you all right?” TR asked.

“What? Oh, I was just thinking about James Cullen. I miss him.” She gave TR a nervous smile. “Now, what were we talking about? Ruffians, right? Well”—she scratched her neck—“no one would believe that of me. You maybe,” she teased. “But not moi.”

“Dressed as you are, they might. But if you dressed for an outing in society, no one would believe it.”

She knew it was true. People she met in New York City were always shocked when she mentioned growing up on a ranch in North Dakota. She glanced at her right hand, noticing a new blister on her palm from swinging a rope while wearing ill-fitting gloves. It would have been much worse without them, though, so she wasn’t complaining. Calluses and blisters used to be normal for her.

“What you just said about society and me reminds me of something I should have mentioned earlier. You probably shouldn’t tell your friend Henry or your family about me. People in the East would think my presence here without my husband would be highly inappropriate. And you don’t want rumors spreading through New York City that you have a paramour in the Badlands.”

His cheeks flushed, and then the tips of his ears turned pink, too. “Henry wouldn’t think that. He knows what I’ve been through.”

“Maybe Mr. Lodge wouldn’t, but there are other people in society who would. So let’s keep what happens in the Dakotas in the Dakotas.” If her name appeared in TR’s journals, it would perplex future historians. Or if she and JC had to live in this time, society would shun them.

“Your husband wouldn’t appreciate rumors spreading, either,” TR said.

She felt horrible lying to TR about her relationship with JC. But she didn’t know how TR would react to the truth. And if she told TR that she and JC weren’t married, then what was their relationship? Brother and sister? That was a lie, too. And what would TR think of her if she told him she and JC were just friends? Wasn’t it better to stick with one lie than compound it with several more?

She sighed and pondered her dilemma, falling back again on the plots of her clients’ books and not wanting to fall into the kind of idiotic trap so many genre heroines fell into.

So she continued the lie instead of trying to squirrel out of it.

“Knowing my…husband, I’m sure JC must have considered that when he left me in your care. He can’t complain about it now, can he?” She went for an innocent tone, but it sounded flat to her ears. “Besides, my nickname is Annie Oakley.”

“You mentioned her before. You said she’s a sharpshooter.”

Ensley was almost positive Oakley was in the Wild West Show by 1885. “She’s in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show.”

“I thought his sharpshooter was Captain Adam Bogardus.”

“He was, but a steamboat carrying the show’s performers sank to the bottom of the Mississippi River. The passengers survived, but the captain lost his prized firearms and couldn’t adjust to new guns, so Mr. Cody hired Annie Oakley.”

“You must spend as much time reading newspapers as you do reading the classics and regular fiction.”

“Anything and everything I can get my hands on. But the point of mentioning Annie Oakley is that I fit in here with you better than I do with JC’s wealthy relatives. And on top of that, I’ll have enough research to write a great story when I get home.”

“I suppose you’re right,” TR said. “I won’t mention you or your husband in my correspondence to Henry and my family.”

“And no mention in your diary either. I don’t want future historians to scour your notes and journals for your thoughts and feelings and come across my name. What will they think?”

He stiffened, his mouth opened slightly. “No one will want to read my journals.”

“Don’t historians read everything written by Washington, Adams, Madison, Jefferson, Hamilton, Lincoln?”

“Those men are worth reading about.”

“And so are you. You wouldn’t be writing books if you didn’t believe you had something important to say. And don’t you have political aspirations?” Ensley asked, going for an innocent tone again, which didn’t sound quite right this time, either. “I can see you running for Congress or even president someday. You’re a charismatic person, Teddy, and you’ll introduce charisma into the political equation. I bet voters would cast their vote for Roosevelt the man, not Roosevelt the Republican.”

“Where’d you get such an idea?” he asked. “I have no such aspirations. I’m a Republican living in a state that Democrats control. I’m not likely to win a general election.”

“Based on our conversations the past few days, it’s obvious to me that you’re a progressive who believes government should serve as an agent of reform for the people.”

“I consider myself nothing more than an independent Republican reformer,