by Tess LeSue
“Your father asked me to dinner,” she said, gesturing to Two Bears, who was standing over the fire, looking for all the world like he’d been cooking buffalo for hours.
“I love you,” Deathrider blurted.
“What?”
He winced. “Hell. I meant, hello. I meant to say hello.”
Her mouth fell open. “You what?”
“You’re the most annoying woman I’ve ever met.” His eyes were shining like quicksilver.
“That’s more what I expected you to say,” she said. She was reeling.
“You pose a serious threat to my life and liberty.”
“I said I was sorry for that!” She bristled. How many times was he going to punish her? Admittedly, it was a big one . . . so maybe he had a few years left of making her wear that one.
“But I can’t be happy unless you’re around,” he said. He looked flustered. “I’m mad at everyone all the time.”
“He is,” Two Bears agreed from his position by the cook fire.
“Apparently I don’t care that you’re a liar.”
“I’m not a liar!” she disagreed, slapping him in the chest. “They were all—mostly—honest mistakes.”
“I don’t care that you talk all the time . . .”
“I do not!”
“You do,” Two Bears told her regretfully.
“I don’t care about anything but being with you. Because I love you.” He took a deep breath, steadying himself after that unexpected outburst. “Well?” he said.
“Well, what?” Ava still didn’t know what to make of any of it. She was offended, but she was also trying not to cry with sheer joy.
“You’re supposed to tell me you love me too.”
“Am I?”
He scowled.
She lifted on tiptoe and kissed him.
“That’s not saying it,” he muttered against her lips.
“I love you,” she whispered. And then she kissed him again, and this time he kissed her back.
“The buffalo is ready!” Two Bears sang. He shoved between them. “Everybody sit down. I’ve been slaving over this for hours.”
“He didn’t, did he?” Deathrider asked Ava.
“No, he picked it up on the way here, from some Cheyenne woman.”
“I knew it.” He held her back when she went to follow Two Bears into the teepee. “We need to talk later.”
“I thought you said I talked too much?”
“I need to talk,” he admitted. “I owe you an apology.”
“No, you don’t,” she said honestly. “You have every right to be furious with me. But I’m still going to keep writing.”
He rolled his eyes. “Of course you are.”
“What can I say? Life is messy.”
“You’ve been meddling again,” Deathrider complained to his father as they joined him in the teepee. “Life is messy.”
Two Bears ignored him and changed the subject. “I’ve been thinking about your mother,” he told Ava. “I don’t think it’s right you haven’t seen her in so long. Where does she live? St. Louis?”
“New York.”
“You’ll need to go to New York, then. It’s important that your mother knows your husband.”
“What husband?” Ava asked, rolling her eyes. He really was impossible.
“I’ve never been to New York,” Deathrider said.
“What are you suggesting?” Her heart had lodged in her throat.
“It’s not his place to suggest anything,” Two Bears broke in. “It’s his father’s place.”
Deathrider’s clear blue gaze met hers. His eyes were twinkling. She couldn’t breathe. I love you was one thing. . . . This was something else entirely.
“Do your job, then, old man,” Deathrider told his father without once looking away from Ava.
Ava’s heart was thundering. The sound of it filled her body and seemed loud enough to echo across the plains.
“By rights, his mother should talk to your mother. But we have no mothers here. So then I should talk to your father,” Two Bears suggested.
“I haven’t seen my father for almost fifteen years,” Ava told him faintly. “He isn’t part of my life.”
Two Bears grunted.
“He doesn’t like things being out of order,” Deathrider observed, amused. “Or so he says. It seems to me though that he’s always lived his life in a disorderly fashion. Loving women he shouldn’t, fathering children who make his life a misery.”
“Not a misery,” Two Bears disagreed. “Just difficult.” He licked buffalo grease off his fingers. “Ordinarily,” he told Ava, “I would start with an offer of two ponies, and your father would push for a dozen. Then I would tell him that you wouldn’t make much of a wife unless you had a husband with as many skills and talents as my son, and I would offer three ponies. Or sometimes only one, if he had offended me by not demanding enough ponies.”
“By not demanding enough?”
“It would suggest my father is not wealthy enough to be able to pay a high dowry,” Deathrider told her, amused.
“And I can certainly afford a dozen ponies,” Two Bears said grumpily, as though Ava’s imaginary father had actually insulted him by suggesting he couldn’t. “Not that I would pay that.”
“You don’t think I’m worth a dozen ponies,” Ava said, offended.
“You’re too old.”
Ava’s mouth fell open, and Deathrider laughed.
“It’s not funny,” she snapped.
“Four ponies is my final offer,” Two Bears said firmly. “You don’t have many childbearing years left, and four ponies is generous.”
“It is generous,” Deathrider told Ava. “Most mothers only get two for their daughters.”
But Ava was looking mutinous. “I might not be young, but I come with experience.”
Two Bears looked shocked.
“Not that kind of experience,” she gasped, blushing as she realized where his mind had gone.
Deathrider grinned at her, knowing that was a stone-cold lie. “I’d pay more ponies for that kind of experience.”
She gave him a dark look. “I don’t need your ponies. I’m wealthy in my own right.”
“One pony,” Two Bears snapped. “You lose one for being a loose woman and one for shaming my son by suggesting you bring more wealth than he does.”
“I do bring more wealth than he does,” Ava snapped back at him. “And I won’t be bought and sold for ponies. If anyone’s doing the buying, it’s me.”
Deathrider sat back to enjoy the show. His father had definitely met his match.
“I’ll give you two ponies for your son,” she offered. “He’s not in the first flush of youth anymore, and he’s a beat-up specimen.”
“A beat-up specimen! He’s an experienced warrior!” Two Bears protested. “Every scar is a mark of honor.”
“Every scar is a dent.”
Deathrider helped himself to another serve of buffalo. This looked like it might go on a while.
“And you want to talk about looseness,” she raged. “He used to consort with whores.”
“What’s a whore?”
Deathrider choked on his buffalo meat. Then he had to explain to his father what a whore was.
Two Bears nodded. “This is proof of his virility. Very important in a husband. Six ponies.”
“Proof of . . . ,” Ava sputtered, outraged. “You called me loose and took away a pony!”
Two Bears narrowed his eyes. “You’re right. It should have been two ponies.”
Ava gasped, outraged. “That would have left none.”
“Maybe still one. But not a very good quality one.” Two Bears was enjoying himself.
So was Ava. “I’ll give you two ponies for your son, and that’s my fin
al offer.”
“His hunting skills alone are worth three.” Two Bears sat back, as obstinate as a mountain.
“I’ll give you three, but only if he never takes another wife.”
Two Bears erupted in mock outrage, lapsing into Algonquin, but Deathrider could tell he was enjoying himself mightily.
“No second wife, no third wife. And no mistresses,” she insisted.
“For a man this virile?” Two Bears cried. Deathrider just about choked on his buffalo again at that. “Five ponies!” Two Bears insisted.
“Five ponies?” She narrowed her eyes. “And I get him all to myself, for the rest of his life? No other wives, no other women at all?” Her gaze drifted to Deathrider.
“Don’t look at me,” he said, grinning. “This is his decision.”
“Since when have you ever done what I told you?” Two Bears asked him in Algonquin.
“There’s always a first time.”
“Is this what you want? This woman? Even though she’s old and talks a lot?”
Deathrider nodded. “Yes, Father. This is what I want.” He paused. “But I still think you could get seven ponies.”
In the end, he got six. Ava brought them to Two Bears’ teepee the next morning and tied them nearby. Then she sat, as Deathrider had told her to do, and waited. The tribe watched, askance. Who paid a dowry for a man? What nonsense was this?
Two Bears made her wait for most of the day, for the sake of appearances. And then he came out and inspected the ponies. She’d brought good ones. She figured Deathrider was worth it. Approving of the ponies, Two Bears untied them and led them to the other side of the teepee, where he tied them up again. Then he invited her in.
Deathrider was waiting for her, grinning from ear to ear like a fool. He was dressed in his ceremonial buckskins again, with a chest-plate necklace of porcupine quills and beads. His shining dark hair was in two braids, decorated with his usual black-tipped eagle feather, and his pale eyes were impish with delight.
Ava was glad she’d dressed up too, in her ivy-sprigged morning gown, or he would have put her to shame. She’d tied her green ribbon in her hair and tucked some late-flowering asters into its knot. Brides needed a flower or two, didn’t they?
“This is when you would wait for the mother to fall asleep,” Two Bears told Ava, taking her hands. “Once the mother is asleep, you both may leave—as husband and wife.”
“That’s it?” she said, astonished. “There are no vows?”
Two Bears shook his head. “No vows. You came in here a single woman. You leave a wife.” He squeezed her hand. “Welcome to the tribe, daughter.”
Ava found herself overcome with tears. Daughter. She met Deathrider’s gaze. It was gentle. He held his arms open, and she fell into them, laughing and crying all at once.
“Hi, wife,” he said huskily, lowering his head to kiss her.
“Wait!” Two Bears snapped. “You need to wait until I’m asleep.”
“But it’s only afternoon,” Deathrider said, annoyed.
“Lucky for you I need a nap.” He lowered himself onto his furs, muttering to himself about the ingratitude of children. He pulled the furs up over his head. A moment or so later, they heard some very unconvincing snores.
Deathrider rolled his eyes, and Ava giggled.
“Shall we?” he asked, holding the teepee flap back for her to exit.
“We shall,” she said happily, stepping through. There were people milling about, waiting for them. Ava blushed at the knowing smiles.
“Isn’t there some tradition among the whites about carrying a bride over the threshold?” Deathrider asked.
She squealed as he swept her off her feet and carried her off. But he only got a few steps, and then he stopped. “Hold on,” he said. “We don’t have anywhere to go.”
He turned back around and carried her back into the teepee. “Out,” he ordered his father. “It’s our wedding day. I want to be alone with my wife.”
His wife.
Finally. She belonged to somebody.
EPILOGUE
Utopia, Oregon, 1853
LOOK WHAT I got,” Matt Slater said. He came in from the snow like a bear, his dark hair and beard spotted with snowflakes. He was carrying a package wrapped in brown paper.
“Matt,” Emma wailed, snapping a tea cloth at him. “Leave your boots out on the porch! I only just bought that rug, and I don’t want your great big boot prints on it!”
“Why didn’t you come in the back door like a normal person?” his wife asked him, lifting on tiptoe to greet him. “You know Emma makes everyone come in through the kitchen.”
They were all at Tom and Emma’s for a not-so-quiet wedding celebration. It was deep in December, close to Christmas, and already thin on light, even though it was the middle of the day. The wedding was being held in the house, rather than down in the small church in town, because of the bride’s checkered past. The groom would have fought like a lion if anyone had questioned his bride’s right to a church wedding, but the bride preferred a private family affair, surrounded by people who loved her.
There were so many of them there that they wouldn’t fit at a dinner table, so it was a stand-up affair. Emma had turned the front two rooms into a wonderland; there were festoons and bunting and candles galore to brighten up the dull day. She’d moved all the furniture to the edges of the room. “So there’s room for dancing,” she said. “It’s not a wedding without dancing!”
“Matt wouldn’t dance at our wedding,” Georgiana had sighed.
“Good thing too,” her sister-in-law, Alex, had laughed. “He’s all left feet.”
“He danced with me once,” Georgiana said, “out on the trail. But he’d had a lot to drink.”
“Well, there’ll be dancing today!” Emma exclaimed.
The three of them had spent the day decorating the house, hanging the festoons of weeping spruce and the lacy ribbons. Emma and Anna had cooked up a storm, and they’d brought the wedding cake up from Seline’s, their bakery in town. In the afternoon, the men ambled in, bringing the hordes of children with them. It was a fight to keep them away from the food.
“After the wedding!” Emma scolded, shooing them away. “Go do backflips off the stairs or something. But if you break anything, you’ll be washing dishes all night!”
Outside, the bitter winter winds rattled the windows and blew gusts of snow into drifts against the side of the house, but inside the fireplaces were cheery with dancing flames and snapping with pinecones, and the candles flickered merrily. There were ale and cider, lemonade and ginger beer, and even two bottles of champagne on ice, which Emma had ordered especially for the occasion.
The house was full to bursting with people and ringing with the sound of children’s laughter.
“This is exactly what I pictured when I bought this place,” Emma said happily as she sailed past Tom. He snagged her by the hand and pulled her into the kitchen, where he kissed the life out of her.
“Not in the kitchen!” Anna scolded, whacking them with a wooden spoon. “There’ll be enough time for that nonsense later.” She pushed them back out into the chaos.
Emma shrieked when she saw Matt was still standing on her rug in his outside boots. “Out!” she yelled, pushing him out onto the porch.
He was unperturbed. “You were much friendlier when you were a whore,” he said mildly.
Georgiana scowled at him from the doorway.
“You deserve everything you get after that,” Emma told him. “Now, get your shoes off and hurry up! We’ve been waiting for you!”
“Victoria and Ned still aren’t here either,” Alex called. “You can’t start without them!”
“Don’t you people know that you can’t be late for a wedding,” Emma grumbled, heading back inside.
“Doesn’t anyone care what I’ve got he
re?” Matt asked his wife, holding up the brown paper package.
“A wedding present, I presume?”
“I’m so sorry we’re late!” They were interrupted by Alex’s sister and her husband and their brood, who came tumbling out of the weather and up the porch stairs. “The baby needed feeding.”
“There’s always a baby that needs feeding in this family,” Matt said.
“No!” Emma blocked the doorway with her body. “No one comes in until they’ve taken their shoes off.”
“She has a new carpet,” Georgiana explained to Victoria, reaching out to take the baby so Victoria could take her boots off.
Now that Victoria and Ned had arrived, the rooms were full.
“Doesn’t anyone care about my package?” Matt asked.
“After the wedding,” his wife soothed him, leaning into him and jiggling Victoria’s son on her hip. “If we don’t get this done soon, Emma’s liable to explode.”
“You’d think it was her getting married.”
Georgiana laughed. “That will be the day. Tom keeps asking and she keeps saying no.”
“That’s because she’s smart. Look at him. The more she says no, the more he’s under her spell.”
“Is that so? I should have said no to you, then?”
Matt looked horrified. “Bite your tongue. It was bad enough waiting all those years! I would have died if I’d had to wait any longer.”
“She says no because they’re already married,” Luke told them, appearing with a glass of ale for Matt.
Matt rolled his eyes. “Sure they are.”
“They are. I did it myself.”
“You what?”
Luke grinned. “It was my first task as mayor. Seline . . . I mean, Emma . . . came barreling into the room the minute I’d taken my oath, dragging Tom with her, telling me to get the damn thing over with because she was sick of him pestering her.”
“She didn’t drag me,” Tom corrected, joining them. “I wanted to be there.”
“Why wasn’t I invited?” Matt was outraged. He thumped Tom. “How come Luke got to go?”
