Free The Rascal by Lisa Plumley Page A

to do—until today.
    But now that she had, she was having none of it.
    “Proving that I’m right, I find my time being wasted right now.” She hefted her bag of baseballs with her best amateur batter’s grip, then nodded in dismissal. “Good day, Mr. Murphy.”
    “Miss Crabtree.”
    His brogue sounded more devilish than ever. His seeminglypolite tip of his hat carried a roguish charge, too. He was clearly out to needle her in any way possible.
    But not if she bested him first.
    Leaving him behind, Grace headed upstairs to plot the most sensible reprisal she could think of. Her grand exit was spoiled only in that Jack Murphy did not follow her progress all the way upward as she’d hoped. Instead he reentered his saloon with a jovial “Drinks on the barkeep!”, leaving his patron’s rowdy “Hurrahs!” ringing in her ears all the way upstairs.
        
    The only thing more challenging than keeping up with her myriad clubs, activities, organizations and interests, Grace learned a short while later, was being forced to juggle several ridiculously dogged suitors, each one intent on becoming the husband she’d never wanted.
    “Thank you for your offer,” Grace told a shaggy bullwhacker on her way from the jail, “but I wouldn’t care to ‘hunker down’ with you in a wifely manner. However, now that I’ve made your acquaintance, I would like to recommend that you visit the mercantile for a razor and strop.” She examined the man’s gnarled, windblown beard. “I daresay using them faithfully might improve your prospects with other, more malleable women.”
    He scratched his head. “More what?”
    “Malleable.” Seeing his puzzled frown, she added, “Agreeable. Agreeable women.”
    “Not so prickly as you, you mean?”
    “That’s right.” Grace smiled brightly at him. It wasn’t his fault Jack Murphy had misled him. “Remember, just tell Mr. Hofer that Grace Crabtree sent you. He’ll take care of you very well.”
    The disappointed man shouldered his whip, then trudged away in his high boots, kicking aside snow with every step.
    “This may come as a surprise to you,” Grace cheerfully informed another hopeful lumber-mill worker later, doing her best to maintain her mama’s principles of courtesy and kindness, “but I am not interested in becoming your ‘bountiful bride.’ Good luck with your next invitation, however. And do drop by the mercantile for some castile soap—perhaps a dozen cakes or so?”
    The worker looked bewildered, but nodded nonetheless.
    Encouraged, Grace continued. “Mr. Hofer stocks a powerful brand that just might improve your chances of appealing to the ladies. Particularly if you also purchase some laundry soap, dishwashing powder and cleanser and use them all.”
    He boggled. “All that? On myself? I’ll go plumb raw!”
    She offered a heartening smile. “I mean that you should use those items on your clothes, your floors and your dishes,” she clarified. “And the castile soap on your person. No woman can resist a man who keeps an orderly household and hygienic appearance—most particularly, the orderly household.”
    “Ah. I will. Thank you muchly, ma’am.”
    Beneficently, Grace waved off the aromatic young man with the trailing end of her scarf, careful to keep her distance. She hadn’t progressed more than fifty yards, though, before being beset by another proposal of marriage. How did truly alluring women manage it? Grace wondered.
    Gritting her teeth as she listened to her fifth prospective suitor of the day, she found new sympathy for her sister Molly. Molly, naturally beautiful and vivacious, had always struggled to turn away unwanted beaux—men interested more in the heft of her bosom than in the weight of her thoughts.
    “Thank you, no,” she interrupted the butcher’s apprentice,a scrawny boy less robust than Grace herself. She doubted he even had whiskers to shave yet. “I’m afraid I’m finished with entertaining marriage offers for today.