Free Lady X's Cowboy by Zoe Archer

outrageously foreign Western clothing, and if he didn’t open his mouth to let his honeyed twang wrap around every word, and if he didn’t saturate a space with his expansive democratic personality, he might, just might, pass for an Englishman—in the fairness of his coloring and the precision of his bone structure.  But there were a lot of if s that needed to be negotiated before that hint of Englishness came through.
    She had never been overly fond of the English archetype.  National pride dictated that the women of England were to love the Anglo-Saxon sons of their home country, but for her tastes, those men often seemed delicate and retiring, a bit like Bunthorne in Gilbert and Sullivan’s Patience .  Picturing Will carrying an oversized sunflower and wearing velvet knee breeches made her smile.  Absurd; incongruous.
    Will saw her smile and must have thought she found the idea of him as an undiscovered treasure amusing.  “Yeah,” he said, slightly dispirited as he poked at his eggs, “funny.”
    “Oh, no, Will,” she said quickly, “I was thinking of....”  She didn’t know how to explain the ridiculous notion of Will, the cowboy, in aesthetic dress.  “That is, I think that you could have a great deal of Englishness in you.”
    He brightened, and she realized that in many ways, Will Coffin was rather young.  “You think so?”
    “I do, but I wouldn’t be so quick to cast off your Americanness just yet.  I think it’s rather nice.”
    Will said with a grin, “Thanks.  But I’m pure cattle pusher, through and through, and I’m glad about that.  I just wonder, sometimes.”  He shrugged and took a big bite of toast.
    “I can’t imagine what it must be like to know nothing about yourself,” she said thoughtfully.  “No father, mother, brothers or sisters.  Just an empty, clean expanse of history to shape yourself as you please.”  She thought about her own family and David’s, and a whole world that knew who she was and what she was going to be even before she had been born.  “It must be wonderful.”
    “Sometimes.”  He drank down the last of his coffee.  “And sometimes...”  Will looked out the mullioned window that faced the back garden, and there was an unguarded longing in his eyes that made her heart feel brittle.  “Sometimes I wanted to send a photo home to my folks like the other boys did at the end of the trail, but Jake moved around and there wasn’t anybody else.”
    She wanted to apologize for his solitude, even though she hadn’t been responsible.  She wanted to take that longing away from his eyes.  She wanted a lot of things, things she didn’t know she wanted until very recently.
    Instead, she suggested, “Shall we take a turn in the garden?  Most of the flowers have gone, but it’s still lovely this time of year.”
    He visibly shook off his melancholy, transforming from a man in search of something into an easygoing cowboy.  “That’s another thing I ain’t done,” he said with a grin, standing up and then pulling out her chair, “take a turn in the garden.  Sounds fine, indeed.”
    She hoped he would still think so after she waylaid him.
     
    “October in London can be rather gray, I’m afraid,” she remarked.  She ran her fingers over the glossy green leaves of a neatly trimmed hedge, and Will could see where the blossoms had withered with the coming of autumn.
    “It ain’t so bad,” he said, but he was looking at her, not the hedges.  His boots crunched loudly while her dainty little shoes—though he couldn’t see them—hardly made a sound at all.  They strolled down the narrow gravel paths of her little back garden, and though she did not take his arm, they kept gently bumping up against each other until Will was half crazy.  She hadn’t said anything about their kiss last night, and he had learned enough to know that if a lady didn’t want to talk about fooling around, she wouldn’t appreciate a body bringing it