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  COURTING A COWBOY

  Patricia McLinn

  ~

  Published by Patricia McLinn

  Copyright 2012 Patricia McLinn

  ~

  License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your e-book retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Also by Patricia McLinn

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  Watch for more at Patricia McLinn’s site.

  ~

  Dear Readers: If you encounter typos or errors in this book, please send them to me at:

  mailto:[email protected]

  Even with many layers of editing, mistakes can slip through, alas. But, together, we can eradicate the nasty nuisances. Thank you! - Patricia McLinn

  ~

  Table of Contents

  COURTING A COWBOY

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  EPILOGUE

  A Note From PATRICIA McLINN

  PROLOGUE

  St. Louis, 1888

  “Oh, Sophie, did he make you an offer? What did he say? What did you say? You didn’t – Oh, you couldn’t have –”

  “Alice, cease peppering Sophie with questions,” scolded Louisa, though her expression was quite as questioning as Alice’s. “You sound as skittish as one of the students.”

  Rather than answer her fellow instructor’s questions in order, Sophie responded to the unspoken one that gathered in all the others.

  “Yes, I refused him.”

  Alice emitted a squeak.

  Louisa’s gasp was controlled, and quickly followed by her own question. “Again? But, Sophie, you are not in a position to refuse respectable offers of marriage – whatever will you do?”

  The last was a question she had been contemplating when Alice Drenner and Louisa Scroggins returned to the garret room they shared.

  Sophie Vandercook did not flinch from facts.

  She knew herself to be neither beautiful nor pretty. Her dark hair was plentiful and glossy. Her features regular,
if undistinguished. She presented a neat and pleasant figure, and one attired in good taste.

  She had a good understanding of literature, a rudimentary knowledge of French, a native ability at arithmetic. She had no pretensions to being as talented a watercolorist as Miss Drenner or as practiced a musician as the widowed Mrs. Scroggins, although she had passable skills in both pursuits.

  Indeed, in assessing her accomplishments, Sophie held chief among them to be her willingness to scrupulously assess a situation, then to marshal her weapons and form a plan.

  The first element of her assessment was that Louisa Scroggins was not entirely accurate in saying that Sophie was not in a position to refuse respectable offers. Although fairness noted that it was not Louisa’s fault for drawing an erroneous conclusion, since Louisa did not possess all the information.

  Sophie was fully aware of how fortunate she was to have inherited a satisfactory sum from her mother. Fortunate in comparison to her fellow instructors at Mrs. Forestell’s Academy–indeed, even in comparison to the redoubtable Mrs. Forestell herself–and fortunate in that her father had been unable to squander that sum as he had all others he had encountered.

  That Walter Vandercook had been unable to obtain dominion over her inheritance was thanks to the foresight of the maternal grandfather Sophie had met precisely once – and, as that occasion occurred in her infancy, she had no recollection of it.

  As a result of the prosperous Philadelphia merchant’s visit to St. Louis to meet his highly unexpected son-in-law, Bertram Boynton had tied up his youngest daughter’s inheritance entirely for her support and for the education and support of her children.

  As it happened, Sophie remained Viola Boynton Vandercook’s only child. Sophie’s strongest memories of her mother were of a woman continuously in a decline, right up until she faded into death in Sophie’s twelfth year.

  Walter Vandercook had immediately adjusted Sophie’s status at Mrs. Forestell’s Academy for Young Ladies from day student to boarding student, freeing himself for what he termed business pursuits, as well as freeing himself from maintaining a home for Sophie. To Sophie’s knowledge the only business he had ever pursued had been trying to break Bertram Boynton’s will.

  He had achieved no progress in that endeavor when he passed away shortly after Sophie reached her seventeenth birthday. That left her not only an orphan, but in possession of precisely one living relative she had met: her half-brother, Gerald.

  Jerry Vandercook, some dozen years older than Sophie, had figured little in her life since he had departed St. Louis – under circumstances not entirely clear to her – when she was almost nine years old.

  She did not receive a reply from him to her missive communicating their father’s death until a year and a half had elapsed. His letters that followed had been stilted and sparse – not unnatural, considering they had barely known each other when he left. Of late, however, that had changed, and a correspondence had grown between them that had become quite ... remarkable.

  “Sophie,” Alice said, still squeaking, while her kind, blue eyes filled with tears, “two offers of marriage – what if you don’t receive another?”

  “I don’t seek the domestic life you hope for, Alice.”

  “But then do you plan to stay here forever, like Miss Stanley?”

  Sophie looked at the packet of her brother’s letters, neatly tied with a piece of rose ribbon left over from trimming her best summer hat last year. With crisp movements, she replaced the packet in the wooden box that slid precisely into the trunk at the foot of her bed.

  “I don’t believe I’m suited to a life devoted solely to teaching.”

  Upon the death of her father, Sophie had taken her immediate circumstances in hand without hesitation. She had approached Mrs. Forestell with the suggestion that she change her status at Mrs. Forestell’s Academy for Young Ladies once more, this time from student to instructor.

  Mrs. Forestell had not only been agreeable, but also much relieved, as Sophie later learned from a recounting by Tad, the boy who ran errands for Cook and Mrs. Forestell.

  Tad had repaid Sophie for her gift of a peppermint stick by relaying an overheard conversation in which Mrs. Forestell had told her visiting sister that by adding Sophie to the Academy’s staff, she had acquired a competent instructor and had avoided a potential dilemma. For she had greatly feared that Sophie might have contemplated hiring out her services as a governess.

  Mrs. Forestell had seen arising before her the unwelcome choice between denying a recommendation to a young lady she felt an unusual degree of fondness toward or producing a recommendation for a young lady she felt was singularly unsuited to the position of governess. Mrs. Forestell had sufficient experience of the subdued and pliant role a governess would be expected to play and of Sophie Vandercook to know that they were not suited.

  Better, far better, for Sophie to remain at the Academy, where she was one among several. Mrs. Forestell herself could head off any potential troubles that arose from Sophie’s … forthrightness. Yes, forthrightness, which was an admirable quality, in some circumstances. Although not in Sophie’s.

  Far from feeling any of the pangs at that assessment that Tad had apparently expected, Sophie concurred. She had considered and discarded governess as an occupation for many of the same reasons.

  Sophie found instructing pleasant, if not a passion. That, and other considerations, made her current position satisfactory for now, though not for a permanent role.

  Mrs. Forestell’s Young Ladies’ Academy was not, perhaps, the first choice for the very best St. Louis families. But it sat solidly amid the respectable options. The young instructors at the Academy mixed not only with their charges, but not infrequently with their charges’ families. Four instructors over the years of Sophie’s time at the Academy had married after such an introduction. (Others had also married, but much more prosaically, and those marriages were seldom recited as talismans of hope among the remaining staff.)

  Sophie’s first offer of marriage had come three years ago from an acquaintance of her father’s, and had occurred not long after official mourning had ended for that gentleman. Sophie, applying in her own mind Tad’s colorful vocabulary, considered that the old toad had come sniffing around because he’d had an inkling of Sophie’s inheritance.

  If the man had understood exactly how much that inheritance would be on her twenty-first birthday, he would no doubt have been more persistent. But on the advice of her grandfather – contained in a letter written to his daughter that Sophie had found among Viola’s possessions – Sophie had allowed no one to know the extent of her inheritance, including her father.

  Without that knowledge, Miss Vandercook’s first suitor had been disinclined to pursue the matter after her decidedly sharp-tongued response to his proposal.

  Even without any knowledge of Sophie’s inheritance, her more romantic-minded colleagues had understood her brisk refusal, because that individual was neither handsome nor young. But as they made clear now, they could not fathom why she had refused Harry Jenkins, the elder brother of a student and the scion of a most respectable family.

  “He was far too young,” Sophie said.

  “But, Sophie,” Alice pointed out, “he’s your age. And you cannot say he is not handsome.”

  “And he most certainly has read a book,” added Louisa, in reference to a charge against Sophie’s previous suitor, “Consider that lovely bound book of poetry he presented to you.”

  “Precisely,” said Sophie. “He’s a very nice boy, but his thoughts all come from poetry, and none from sense.”

  She, on the other hand, had enough sense to see that not only would his family disapprove, but that Harry and she would not suit. Her refusal had been entirely different from the first. Indeed, she had tried to turn him away before he proposed, but he did not heed her hints. So she had provided a gently-worded but unmistakable refusal.

  It was a fortunate circumstance that Mr. Jenkins had chosen Sunday after
noon on which to make his offer.

  For three hours every Sunday evening, all three of the Academy’s youngest instructors were free of any duties. Each had a small amount of additional time free during the week, as well as one whole Sunday afternoon each month, but those were rotated so at least one remained available to Mrs. Forestell. Thus, Sunday evening was the only time when the three friends could be assured of an opportunity to converse together.

  When summer provided enough light, they walked in nearby Lafayette Park. Other times, they attended concerts or lectures. But on a blustery, rain-soaked March evening, they were happy to sit at their ease in the small attic room they shared. Quickly changing to wrappers to spare their dresses, they huddled together like schoolgirls, under a quilt Sophie’s mother had made for her birth.

  Alice sighed now. “I was afraid you had refused him, because he appeared so romantic and tragic when he departed, looking back at the house in such despair.”

  “You shouldn’t have been peeping out the window,” said Louisa.

  “If one were to have a husband, one of a romantic and tragic nature would make for a very uncomfortable home,” Sophie said with decision.

  “But Sophie, don’t you want a husband? Someone to take care of you?” Alice asked.

  Sophie’s most vivid early memory was of her father barreling out of her mother’s sitting room just as Sophie, guided by her nurse, approached. She and Nurse had stepped back against the wall to prevent being trampled. After he clattered down the stairway with imprecations that Sophie could only be grateful she had not recognized at the time and thus could not recall now, Nurse tightened her hand on Sophie’s and led her into Viola’s room.

  Mama had dabbed at her eyes with a scented handkerchief. She was a slender form reclining on a chaise, saying in her soft, thin voice, “All I ever sought was a man who would look after me, and cherish me. I was sadly mistaken in your father, Sophie. So sadly mistaken.”