Free Miss Phipps and the Cattle Baron by Patricia Watters Page B

cupped Priscilla's chin and
raised her face so she could study her skin more closely. Brows
pinched in deliberation, lips pursed in dismay, she sighed, and
said, "You do have quite a crop, but I can have cook make up an
infusion of parsley juice, lemon juice, red currant juice and
orange juice. If you apply it to your skin under your facial cream,
it will help make the freckles less noticeable while getting rid of
them."
    Feeling utterly unattractive, tears misted
Priscilla's eyes. And to her mortification, she saw Adam standing
in the doorway. She had no idea how long he'd been there, but the
look on his face could stop an advancing army. He crossed the room
in three long strides. Glaring at Lady Whittington, he said, "What
the bloody hell are you doing, Mother!?"
    Lady Whittington looked at Adam in shocked
surprise. "Do not use that language with me, Adam," she clipped. "I
am helping Miss Phipps with her toilette."
    "Miss Phipps is fine just the way she is. Do
not impose your standards on her. She is fresh and pretty and does
not need the aid of infusions and dyes and all manner of female
fripperies that will make her look like a clown!"
    Lady Whittington's eyes darkened with
awareness. "I do not believe you are in a position to dictate what
is best for Miss Phipps. You are not her husband nor her father.
And I would ask you to leave this room at once."
    "No, I will not leave. You're causing Miss
Phipps distress when there's no reason for her to feel anything but
satisfaction with her fresh, natural appearance. She's perfect the
way she is."
    When Priscilla looked at Adam's reflection in
the mirror and saw the resolve in his dark eyes, she realized his
words had not been hollow praise. He actually believed what
he was saying. The idea that Adam thought her pretty brought tears
of joy welling, and when she blinked, they brimmed over her eyelids
and trailed down her cheeks.
    Lady Whittington glared at Adam. "Do you see
what you've done! You have upset Miss Phipps and made her feel
miserable about herself, when most of her problems can be overcome
with a few simple remedies."
    "She has no problems!" Adam bellowed,
"except the incorrect notions about beauty that you and others like
yourself have put into her head. She is beautiful the way she
is."
    Unable to sit any longer without breaking
into sobs, Priscilla shoved the dressing-table stool back and
rushed out of the room and down the hallway. Hearing footsteps
close behind, she hurried down the stairs, ran out of the house and
rushed toward her buckboard.
    Adam grabbed her arm as she attempted to
climb up. "Where are you going?" he asked.
    She swiped a finger beneath each eye. "To The Town Tattler ."
    "Why? Because of my mother?"
    "No, because that's why I moved to Cheyenne
in the first place. But I seemed to have gotten distracted of late.
Now, I want to get back to the reason I'm here." She shrugged off
his arm and climbed onto the box, and he didn't try to stop
her.
    His hand on the buckboard, he looked up at
her and said, "Don't take to heart the things my mother said. They
mean nothing."
    Priscilla took the reins. "The things your
mother said were nothing less than what I have heard all my life.
And it really doesn't matter because The Town Tattler is
what's important to me, not trying to fix myself up so I can
attract a man who will try to run my life." She gave the reins a
jiggle and the horse started forward.
    Until now, she had accepted the fact that she
was unappealing to men and would never know love. Or if she did, it
would be unrequited. But after Lady Whittington's close scrutiny,
all of her mother's fretting and fussing about her appearance came
rushing back. But for some unexplainable reason, Adam did not see
her the way everyone else did, and it was baffling and disturbing
and confusing. It was also heartbreaking. She had at last found a
man who looked at her through rose-colored glasses, but if he
aligned himself with her, he'd be laughed at and ridiculed by