Free Lady X's Cowboy by Zoe Archer Page B

sit, Will.  I just want to talk to you for a few minutes.”
    He took a seat gingerly, feeling relieved and also confused.  It seemed that every opportunity he managed to prove what a yokel he really was.  She continued to stand by the fountain, but at least she looked at him now.  Glancing down, he noticed that he took up the whole bench, which was probably meant for two people.  Everything here in England seemed so much smaller than back home.  He felt like a big, lumbering draft horse in a country of ponies.
    “What do women do where you live, Will?” she asked.
    He frowned.  “Do?” he repeated.  “You mean, for a livin’?”
    “Exactly,” she said, nodding.  “Do they stay at home?  Do they work?”
    He reached up to tug thoughtfully on his mustache, then realized when he touched bare top lip that it was gone.  His heart sank.  That had been one of the stupidest things he’d ever done, if Olivia’s horror-struck look had been any indication.  But he’d just wanted to start fresh, be someone different for a while.  He should have known that you can’t make a sirloin from chuck.
    “Some have jobs, I guess,” he said meditatively.  He snapped off a dead twig and began to flip it along his fingers.  “There ain’t too many women out West, so they can pick and choose what they want to do.  One lady I met ran the town newspaper, and another owned the dry goods store.  ’Course,” he added, “a lot either work at or own cathouses.”
    “They don’t mention that in Mr. Ingraham’s novels.” She gave a nervous laugh.
    “I don’t expect they would.  Don’t want impressionable ladies readin’ about soiled doves.”
    “No, indeed.”  She picked at a spot of moss on the fountain.  “But would you say that women in Colorado have freedom?  Freedom to pursue lives outside of their homes?”
    “Some do,” he answered cautiously.  He wasn’t sure exactly where she was leading, but it was starting to make him a bit suspicious.  He longed for a good piece of timber and a whittling knife.  When he got antsy, he carved, and he knew he could probably carve a whole armada of wooden ships about now.
    “I...” she said, struggling to find the right words.  “Let me put this another way...”  She braced her hands against the fountain and leaned against it.  “In those books I read about the West, there were often farmers who are being forced off their land by evil cattle barons, or bad railway men, or someone who wanted what they had.  And those bad men used whatever means they had at their disposal to get what they want, even if it wasn’t right, even if someone got hurt.”
    “I think I know what you’re talkin’ about.”  He added, “Those are just books, though.  It ain’t real life.”  He did know of a few instances where sodbusters had been run off their land, but it happened a lot less than the melodramas and dime novels made it seem.
    “But for me, it is real life.”  She came quickly around the fountain and sat beside him on the tiny bench.  She moved so fast, he didn’t have time to scoot over, and even through her layers of petticoats and skirts, he could feel her leg pressed against his.  But she didn’t seem to notice.  He almost toppled into the bushes.
    “My brewery is in danger,” she continued.  She looked at him intently and he found he could not turn away.  “Those men you beat the other night were only a small part of a bigger problem.  And I fear that the man who sent them will only become more and more desperate as time goes on.  He wants Greywell’s, very badly.”
    “Why don’t you just sell him the brewery?”
    She shot to her feet, energy and outrage crackling through her like an electrical storm.  “Because it’s mine,” she said hotly.  Pacing in the small enclosure around the fountain, Olivia reminded Will of a caged mountain lion, spitting mad and ready to fight.  “Because no one thinks I should have it.  Because