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  Samhain Publishing, Ltd.

  512 Forest Lake Drive

  Warner Robins, Georgia 31093

  Taming Eliza Jane

  Copyright © 2007 by Shannon Stacey

  Cover by Scott Carpenter

  ISBN: 1-59998-508-X

  www.samhainpublishing.com

  All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: June 2007

  Taming Eliza Jane

  Shannon Stacey

  Dedication

  My mother gave me a love of books, a love of cowboys—everybody from Louis L’Amour’s Sacketts to Janet Dailey’s Calders managed to sneak out of her room while she wasn’t looking—and a whole lot of love in general. A long time ago, when I was just a very little girl, we drove to Texas and that was the biggest thing I’d ever known. I had no concept of the size of a galaxy or the universe then, just that grand and huge adventure. And one day I said “Mommy, I love you more than a three day drive.”

  It’s funny now, of course. Who loves being in a car for three straight days? But at the time, that was my way of stretching my little hands all the way from Massachusetts to Texas and saying, “I love you this much.”

  Mom, I still love you more than a three day drive, and this one’s for you.

  Chapter One

  When Eliza Jane Carter stepped down from the stagecoach, every man, woman and child on the street stopped to stare.

  It wasn’t only her incredible height of almost six feet that drew their attention. It wasn’t only the combination of coal-black hair, ice blue eyes and a fine porcelain complexion. It wasn’t even her lush figure, clad in a long, black skirt and severe, unadorned white blouse.

  It was all of those things combined with a piercing, go-to-hell look that seemed to bore into the very soul of the town. With her back ramrod straight and her chin held high, she looked around the main street of Gardiner, Texas, just one more dingy cow town like the dozens she had visited before.

  Her gaze lit on a woman in a worn calico dress with five children in tow. There was a woman standing silently in the hot sun while her husband conversed with a group of men. And there was a woman, her belly swollen with child, with an infant about a year old on her hip and a toddler clinging to her skirt.

  Eliza Jane took a deep breath and gripped the handle of her valise. The women of Gardiner, Texas were about to be set free, and Eliza Jane Carter would be their George Washington, their Abraham Lincoln. She was a one woman revolution.

  “Perhaps we could travel on just a little further?” Edgar whined at her side, dragging her away from her majestic musings.

  Eliza Jane looked down at Edgar Whittemore, the man who was a constant thorn in her side. He was short, stout and possessed of a nasally voice and spectacles that refused to stay perched in their proper place, both of which drove her quite mad. But even worse was the circumstance under which he’d become her traveling companion. The insufferable horse’s hind quarters of an attorney whose job it was to oversee her trust fund would only allow her access to those funds for her campaign if she remained chaperoned by a man of his choosing—to protect her from her own foolish feminine folly, of course. And that man was Edgar Whittemore.

  “This is where Mr. Millar is sending the money, Edgar, so this is where we shall stay.” Arrangements were made in advance according to a predetermined schedule, a fact he well knew. Edgar simply never passed up an opportunity to grate on her nerves.

  Her mind made up, Eliza Jane squared her shoulders and hefted her bag, knowing Edgar would meekly follow suit. The arid inferno that was Gardiner was already draining her of energy and she wanted to find the hotel and soak in a cool, scented tub.

  She made her way up the plank sidewalk lining the main street, keeping close to the buildings for shelter from the sun and wind. Noise assaulted her from every direction. Jingling harnesses, creaking wagons and the shouts of working men were nearly drowned out by the hot wind scraping across the town. The buildings seemed to groan as shutters banged and signs slapped against clapboards. And the sand… She could already feel it sifting through her hair to her scalp.

  It was a far cry from green and lush Philadelphia, but Eliza Jane considered herself a soldier in the war to better the lives of her fellow women, and she’d trod many a battlefield as filthy and noisy as this. It would take more than an inhospitable environment to sway her from her chosen path.

  She was a soldier who chose her own battles, and she chose to fight them in towns such as Gardiner. While many women, as well as men sympathetic to the cause, fought valiantly for some semblance of equality in the world of men—voting, for example—Eliza Jane fought smaller skirmishes on the home front, urging women to fight for respect in their own worlds.

  She believed women had a fundamental right to accept or refuse intimate relations with their husbands, to bear children or not. She believed a woman should control her own money, lest she be forced to give herself to another man merely for survival should she become widowed or cast aside.

  Standing on makeshift stages, spewing rhetoric to the uneducated masses accomplished little, in her opinion. Rather than trying to change life for the many by giving speeches to the few, Eliza Jane traveled, trying to teach small groups of women to enact changes for themselves.

  But her cause was not free of personal peril. Men naturally did not care for their lives being disrupted. When their wives—little more than domestic and sexual slaves—began demanding respect, their anger invariably turned on the catalyst for the change, Eliza Jane.

  Still, she wouldn’t give up the fight. Couldn’t, really, because it was all she had. With no desire for another husband and no hope of children, the fight for women’s rights not only gave her life purpose, but kept the days from yawning endlessly in front of her.

  So she tolerated the staring, whether they were looks of curiosity or hostility. She tolerated Edgar’s whining. It’s why she tolerated sweat running down her back and sand in her scalp—maybe a few less women would suffer her fate.

  Edgar cleared his throat, and she realized they had reached their destination. The Gardiner Hotel was a plain two-story building with a false front and a small, unadorned sign announcing itself.

  A brass bell heralded their entrance, and the skinny, red-headed clerk behind the desk didn’t hide his surprise well at all. Clearly very few people stayed voluntarily in Gardiner, Texas.

  “Help you?” the clerk asked, fully meeting her expectations by addressing the question to Edgar.

  “We will require two rooms,” Eliza Jane responded, perhaps a trifle too loudly, as she stepped in front of her chaperone. “Our date of departure is as yet unknown, but I am awaiting a delivery. As the next stage will not arrive for ten days, that will be our minimum length of stay.”

  The clerk blinked, then dropped his gaze to the register. “Yes’m. I’ll just need your names.”

  “I am Mrs. Eliza Jane Carter of Philadelphia, and my traveling companion is Mr. Edgar Whittemore, also of Philadelphia.”

  The clerk’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed nervously. “I see. I…uh…”

  Eliza Jane raised a questioning eyebrow at
the man. Usually she didn’t encounter resistance until she began her work in the town. Checking into a hotel was rarely a stumbling block unless the clerk or the owner was particularly fanatic in his or her faith. “Is there a problem, Mr.—?”

  “Uh…Dan. Would you be a widow, then, Mrs. Carter?”

  She felt embarrassment staining her cheeks, but she only lifted her chin, hoping he would mistake the blush for righteous anger. “As I requested separate rooms for Mr. Whittemore and myself, I cannot see how my marital status is at all your concern.”

  How she wished she didn’t abhor lying. It would be so easy to simply proclaim herself a widow and be about her business.

  “My apologies.” Dan’s face was nearly as red as his hair, and she felt a pang of sympathy for the man. She knew she was intimidating—it was a persona she had perfected as well as a stage actress perfected the role of Desdemona. “I’ll just go get your keys, ma’am.”

  Relief tempered the sense of humiliation. She despised telling people the insufferable Augustus Carter had divorced her. Divorced! Cast out like trash because she failed to bear him a child. He had publicly declared her a failure not only as a wife, but as a woman, and the shame burned just slightly stronger than the flames of her convictions.

  And the horrible, odious Mr. Millar, who controlled her dead mother’s money and therefore Eliza Jane’s purse strings, knew it. He delighted in the appointment of Edgar as her chaperone rather than the customary matronly female precisely because it put her in these awkward situations.

  Widowhood would smooth her way slightly, but dishonesty would only undermine her personal sense of integrity. With her dignity stripped away, integrity and her cause were all she had left from which to draw strength.

  The irony of doing her work while under the boots of two men made her very nearly want to spit, but as long as she could change the lives of even a few women for the better, she would accept the legal strictures of a society slow to change.

  But change would come. The war would be won in the small battlefields of small towns like this one. When she left Gardiner, it would be a better place and Eliza Jane would get on that stagecoach with her chin held high. And the women she left behind would hold their heads a little higher, as well.

  Women, in general, were more of a pain in the ass than a lumpy saddle. And whores, in particular, could drive a sober man to go looking for the bottom of a bottle.

  The one between whose thighs Will Martinson currently knelt—a particular favorite of his by the name of Sadie—giggled again, causing her ample breasts to shake. It was more of a distraction than any man could withstand. But Sadie liked baring them, even though he’d told her time and time again he had no need to see them.

  “It ain’t supposed to tickle, Sadie.”

  “I ain’t laughin’ at no tickle. Was laughin’ at your face—so serious and businesslike.”

  Will pushed to his feet and flipped Sadie’s skirt down over her splayed thighs. “When were your last courses?”

  The amusement drained from the pretty whore’s face. “Do I gotta baby in me, Doc?”

  Will sighed and closed up his bag. His monthly health checks at the Chicken Coop were usually uneventful. Miss Adele took good care of her girls, and taught them to care for themselves. But he was especially fond of Sadie—a dirt-poor Southern farm girl who’d probably never make it to California no matter how much time she spent on her back—and her expression damn near broke his heart.

  “I think you do, Sadie.” And not the first inkling of which of her numerous customers may have fathered it. Not that it mattered. A whore’s bastard was a child only the mother would love.

  “How long can I work?”

  His fingers tightened on the straps of his medical bag. “You should get on the next stage and go home, sweetheart. I’ll pay your passage if you don’t have enough money tucked away. Tell your folks you had a husband but he got killed.”

  A look of revulsion passed over her face. He saw that look a lot if he mentioned home during his visits to the Coop. What horrors these girls had been born into that made it preferable to spread their legs for an endless stream of strange men, he couldn’t even begin to guess.

  “I asked you,” Sadie insisted, some of the sweetness gone from her voice, “how long can I work?”

  Looking down into her pretty hazel eyes, framed by a mass of golden curls, he almost offered to marry her. She’d make a right sweet wife and she could be a proper mother to her baby. And if the people of Gardiner took issue with their doctor marrying a whore, why they could deliver their own babies and set their own goddamn broken bones.

  He took a deep breath and settled his hat on his head. But, hellfire, he couldn’t save them all.

  “I guess until the men ain’t willing to pay for you anymore,” he replied in a voice heavy with regret.

  Will walked out of the Chicken Coop with an aching heart and a gut churning with frustration. The last person he expected to see waiting for him was the sheriff, who usually gave the only whorehouse in town a wide berth.

  Adam Caldwell was damn near the best friend Will had ever had, but he could be as much a pain in the ass as the whores at times. He wasn’t sure he had the patience for him right now.

  The sheriff fell into step beside him on the plank sidewalk. Will knew they made a noticeable pair. Adam was dark and forbidding. Over six feet of sun-darkened muscle, black shirt and a black hat covering long black hair, with unforgiving eyes almost as dark. They all figured there was some Indian in him somewhere, but no man had yet had the balls to ask him outright.

  Will himself was as tall, but he was leaner, with an open, friendly air about him. White shirt with cuffs rolled to the elbows tucked into denim pants. His battered, brown Stetson covered sandy hair he kept trimmed off his ears and neck. And the ladies sure did tend to go on about his blue eyes.

  The only other things they had in common were the tin stars—Will liked to pin his on his doctoring kit—and the holsters low on their hips. Will Martinson had sworn to preserve life, but he was also the only man Adam trusted to back him up. The sheriff’s reputation went a long way toward keeping the peace, but when there was need for a deputy, Will just told himself there was more than one way to preserve a life.

  “Trouble?” Adam finally asked when Will didn’t talk just to fill the silence as he was wont to do.

  “Sadie’s with child.”

  Adam shrugged. “Can’t help those who don’t wanna be helped, Doc.”

  Hell, he knew that. But he wasn’t in the mood to hear it just yet. “Heard at the Coop some woman got off the stage and stayed off.”

  It was a rare event for a woman to stay in town, unless her intention was a room at the Chicken Coop. Word of her had spread through Gardiner like wildfire.

  “Yup. Ain’t good.”

  Will waited for his friend to go on with a growing sense of aggravation. Hellfire, he’d had easier conversations with mules. “Why ain’t it good? She somebody you’ve heard of?”

  “Yup. Eliza Jane Carter. Likes to ride into town, get the women all riled up about demanding their rights and shit, then she skedaddles.”

  “She stayin’ a while?”

  “Looks like.”

  Will knew his friend was mulling over the woman’s unwelcome presence in his town and her potential for troublemaking, but all he could think about was how the woman could maybe talk some sense into Sadie. Tell her there were better ways for her and her child to make it in the world.

  Adam sighed and pushed his hat back on his head. “If the women gettin’ riled up gets the men riled up, we could have us some trouble.”

  Damnation. He didn’t need spectacles to see where Adam was heading with this. “Dammit, Adam, I’m a doctor, not a nanny.”

  “Better job for you than me. I ain’t so good with diplomacy.”

  “Diplomacy? You? Shit, they say you shot a man for calling your horse ugly.”

  The sheriff shrugged. “He lived. And my horse ai
n’t ugly.”

  Fact was, Sheriff Caldwell’s gelding was the ugliest son of a bitch to ever stand on four legs. A sane man would have shot the creature just to save his own eyesight. But that horse had speed and stamina the likes of which Will had never seen, and he would run until his heart exploded for Adam. He was loyal in a way Will hadn’t come across even in a good dog, and certainly never in another person. Didn’t change the fact the beast was damn ugly, though. Folks had just gotten real quiet about it.

  “I ain’t asking you to marry the woman, Doc. Just keep an eye on her.” When Will hesitated, Adam shrugged again. Hell, he hated that—made Will want to shove the sheriff’s head so far down his neck he could never shrug his shoulders again. “I’d hate for her to cause trouble. Seems a mighty shame to shoot a woman.”

  Will laughed at the blatant attempt at blackmail, some of the tension easing from his body. “Even you wouldn’t shoot a woman, you ornery son of a bitch.”

  He looked up in time to see a damn fine looking woman step out of the hotel. She was tall and thin, but not so thin she didn’t have rounded breasts and hips that like to make a man’s mouth water. “Is that her?”

  “Must be.”

  Will smiled and pushed his own hat back a little further on his head. “It would be a damn shame to have to shoot her.”

  “Yup.”

  She liked to get women all riled up about their rights, did she? “Could be she starts causing too much trouble I’ll have to put her over my knee and spank some sense into her.”

  And damned if he didn’t get so riled up himself he had to walk down the sidewalk with his bag held in front of his crotch like a schoolboy.

  Chapter Two

  Eliza Jane felt immeasurably refreshed after her scented bath. The effects wouldn’t last long now that she was back on the street, but at least she’d washed the grime of the stagecoach ride away and she looked her best for her first foray into the town.