<hr/><div class="floatleft">(http://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/f/f0/Marguerite_Tuerny02.jpg)</div><strong>Name:</strong>Marguerite Tuerny<br/><strong>Date:</strong>May 3, 1876<br/><strong>Time of Day:</strong>Morning<br/><strong>Location:</strong>Vigilance Ranch<br/><strong>Tagged:</strong>Nathan Hunter, Closed<br/><hr/>She went through the dresses - looking over the darling Sunday-best with a poignant twinge of loss.  None of these dresses were quite as nice as even her everyday wear before her parents died.  But even before she decided to cut herself away from the tangled financial mess and sucking whirlpool that was her father's contested estate she was reduced to wearing $100 dresses rather than the $1,500 casuals that she was used to.  The gown for her debutante ball... she hadn't known it until years after when the lawyers and accounts were seizing assets and took almost her entire wardrobe... that gown cost nearly $10,000 - she had so desperately wanted to keep it, but there was simply no way she could buy it... Buy her own dress!  from the Estate.<br/><br/>And now she was looking at the small wardrobe of a dead girl, feeling both nostalgia and a sort of gentle disdain for the lower-class attire.  She was such a horrible person!  After everything, did she really think she was better than this dead girl?  Of course she wasn't... but she still had nicer dresses!  She laid out the most suitable garment - a spring frock that was perhaps suitable for the West, though she'd jump off a cliff before being seen in such a thing among real gentry.  She was being patronizing about a perfectly cute dress while wearing filthy rags handed down by a Chinese laborer.  She had to smirk - the irony of the attitude was not lost on its audience of one.  She'd have to be careful not to insult the rancher or his wife.  They were good people.  Better people than herself, she feared.<br/><br/>She laid out the dress and a matching hat, and sourly looked down at her bare feet and the frayed rags covering her like a tent.  The Lawman was a good man - a tough man and gentleman and pretty much the real deal when it came to heroes.  He was also... awkward.  Maybe not in most situations, but certainly around women.  This was not a quality she admired.  Was she being too...<br/><br/>The knock on the door interrupted her thoughts.<strong>"Come in."</strong>She called through the door, turning as she spoke.  He was sweating, the damp plastering his hair back and giving him a bit of a glow.  He was a handsome man, she noted.  She wondered how he remained single, despite his awkward shyness.  She suspected he drove women away - perhaps even intentionally.<br/><strong><br/>"Thank you."</strong>She flashed him that dazzling smile.<strong>"Could you lead the way?"</strong>She left the dress where it was, not wanting to sully it with humidity from a bathing room, or the soil from her present attire.<strong>"Is there a robe or something I can wear back from the bath?"</strong>She asked, not thinking that such an affection was anything but normal.