Free The Rascal by Lisa Plumley Page B

However, there is a lovely young lady working at the mercantile who might enjoy your company, if you’d care to make her acquaintance while purchasing an item or two. I believe you two might suit.”
    “Is she pretty?”
    Grace lifted her chin. “She has a very beautiful character, and that is more important than mere loveliness.”
    Looking glum, the young man headed toward Main Street.
    Having accomplished that bit of matchmaking—a family hobby she hadn’t much indulged in till now—Grace hurried to the sanctity of the Pioneer Press offices. The abhorrent and doubtless underqualified Thomas Walsh had yet to arrive on the eastern train, and until he showed his pointy-nosed face, Grace wanted to accomplish a few more changes in the editorial content of the newspaper. Her papa had granted her unprecedented leniency of late, probably owing to his discomfort with the whole Walsh debacle, and she meant to take advantage.
    Blissfully, Grace shut the door behind her. The warmth and familiarity of the typesetters’ office quickly enveloped her.
    Ah . No one would dare to bother her here.
    She unwound her scarf and tugged off her gloves, dropping both to her desk beside her box of type, her composing stick and her special revolving inkstand. Feeling markedly relieved, Grace sat on her chair and closed her eyes, not even bothering to remove her coat. In a minute she would…after she recovered from her trying after-lunch trek between the jailhouse and here.
    “Uh, Miss Crabtree?”
    Grace sighed. Apparently, her moment of peacefulnesswas already at an end. She reluctantly opened her eyes to find Barney Bartleson waiting on the other side of her desk, his ink-stained apron a near match for his ink-smudged hands.
    He blinked rapidly, looking ill at ease. As one of her father’s printing press operators, he generally seemed more comfortable with equipment than with people.
    “What is it, Mr. Bartleson?” Grace kept her voice gentle, so as not to startle her meek colleague. “Is there something wrong with the printing press?”
    “No, ma’am. It’s fine. It’s only—” He gulped, looked out the window, then shifted from foot to foot. “You see, I’m nearly twenty-five now, plenty old enough to…uh…”
    He faltered and stopped. Ruddiness bloomed from his collar to his haphazard hairline. He stared at the floor.
    “Well, what I mean to say is that I sure could use me a wife, and if you’re amenable to the prospect of becoming Mrs . Bartleson, then, uh, perhaps we could, er…”
    “Mr. Bartleson. Is this a proposal of marriage?”
    He brightened. “Yes, ma’am. I guess it is.”
    “A proposal of marriage here, at my workplace?”
    “I reckon so.” He shrank back a little, hands twisting in his apron. “Ma’am, I hate to pester, but…is that a yes?”
    “No, Mr. Bartleson, it is not.” Suddenly feeling pushed to her limits, Grace grabbed her gloves. She yanked them on with aggravated jerks, then wound her scarf around her neck. “I’m sorry, but this simply won’t do. I’ve had enough.”
    “But…” He blinked at her. “You never leave your desk before the evening edition is set. You never leave when there’s work to be done.” He seemed flummoxed. “You never even leave when someone else’s work is still to be done. Where are you going?”
    Grace paused with the office door open. She felt a little likethe warrior goddess Athena, off to fight a great battle—and a lot like a beleaguered spinster suffragist, off to skirmish with a certain blue-eyed Irish prankster.
    “I’m going to end this nonsense,” she informed Barney crisply, “once and for all.”
    Then she pulled on her practical hat and set out for Jack Murphy’s saloon, every hasty step bringing her closer to improvising a plan of retribution unlike anything Morrow Creek had ever seen.

Chapter Six
    “Y ou don’t say? A whole performing troupe?” Daniel McCabe whistled, his muscular blacksmith’s frame filling more than his