She stretched her left hand before him.
CHAPTER 26
D USTY STARED AT the sparkling monstrosity on Sophie’s tiny little finger. If she raised her hand and struck him with it, he would have been no less shocked. Or mad. “You got engaged?”
She pulled her hand back. “Chad announced that we were engaged last Saturday at the mayor’s party. It’s been in the paper since Monday.”
“I’ve been in Nebraska buying shorthorns. I’m gone for a little over eight days and you get yourself spoken for by another man?” He cast his eyes about the restaurant, where several people were looking at him and Sophie, no doubt putting a tale together. “That’s why the men were all actin’ strange at the ranch when Joe and me got back this morning.”
Sophie lowered her lashes until they made golden fans across each cheek. “I didn’t know you went away. I was waiting all week until I had a chance to tell you.”
Was she being charming again, or were her intentions true? Sometimes it was hard to tell. Dusty felt like the wind got knocked out of him. “How could you do this, Sophie? I thought you were going to tell Chad to leave you alone.”
She pushed her chair closer to his so that the other patrons of the restaurant wouldn’t hear them. He wished she didn’t. He smelled her clean, powdery scent and wanted to hold her in his arms. But he couldn’t do that anymore. She was truly spoken for this time, symbolized by a ring that he could never in his life afford to give her.
The server came to the table. “Can I bring you something to eat or drink, Miss Charlton?”
“No, thank you. I won’t be here long.”
The server looked at her funny, but went away. Dusty waited for her to resume as he wrestled thoughts of everything men in town had warned him about Sophie Charlton. Vain. Indecisive. Collects admirers like other women collect tea sets. He wanted for none of it to be true, but if Taylor Hastings or Wes Browman were at the table, they’d tell him the proof was staring him in the face with a pair of big blue eyes.
“Chad refused to end the courtship when I asked him.”
“That doesn’t sound right. If you don’t want him, you don’t want him.”
“It’s not that simple. He promised to slander me and my family’s name all over town if I refused to marry him.”
“He threatened you?” Dusty pushed his chair back to stand.
Sophie grabbed his hat before he could reach it. “No, you don’t.”
“Sophie, give me my hat.”
“I’m not going to let you run into that bank. He’s out of town again, anyway.” She put the Stetson on her lap. “Please, Dusty. Sit down. That way isn’t going to solve anything.”
He obliged after a long pause. “You folks have the strangest ways of doing things up here. Where I come from, if a man refuses to let a woman alone, she is well within her rights to get someone to act on her behalf.”
“This isn’t Texas.”
“I know it’s not Texas. A man like Hooper would not be able to get away with those things if he were down there. Sophie, you don’t have to put up with him.”
She played with the brim of his hat. “Yes, I do. He has money and influence just like my family. Those things can be very powerful.”
“You’d let him court you just to keep him from raisin’ a fit?” Dusty shook his head. “What’ll happen to you?”
“Nothing. He’s not a violent man, if that’s what you mean.”
“Maybe he’s not, but he is mighty spiteful. You’ll be prancin’ on eggshells.”
She covered her ring with her right hand. “I have no choice.”
“Don’t repeat that. You do.” Dusty leaned across to her. “I didn’t say a word when you first came to the ranch, but I bought twenty-five acres of land out there. I’ll have the foundation of a house built by the end of autumn.”
A bit of hope built in her eyes. “You did talk of wanting to own land.”
He reached for her, and then, remembering that they were in public, made no further effort to touch her hand. “I did it for you.”
Her small shoulders trembled. “Me? Dusty, you shouldn’t have done that. I mean, I can’t just leave my family’s house.”
“I’m not asking you to just leave. We can get married. I’ll take you away from this.”
“It’s not that simple.”
Her words wrenched painfully at his heart. “It is, if you let it be. I kid and joke all the time about bein’ sweet on you, but it’s more than that. I love you.” He wanted her to say something back. She stared at him. What was going through her mind? “It took me three years to say those words without feeling like I’d scare you off.”
She spoke. “Dusty, it is more complicated than you think. Our differences in social standing, for instance. You may not care about those things, but they are important to my family, to the town. The choices I make affect not just me.”
“But you were willing to quit Chad before he put that ring on your finger. What changed?”
“I didn’t expect you to say you could marry me.”
“You mean you didn’t think I was serious?”
She gave a small nod. “Maybe.”
“You thought I was just toying with you?” Disbelief colored his voice. “I know you heard about the ways of some cowboys, how they have a girl in every town, but I don’t play games. What did I tell you at the Rev’ren’s wedding last year? One day I intended to make you mine.”
“That day can’t come now, whether I love you or not.” She stood.
“Some people say you’ve just been flirting with me. So I ask you, do you love me, Sophie?” He reached for her hand, not caring now if people saw. Better they were present, to keep him from being tempted to kiss her one last time. She was slipping from him each minute and there was little he could do to stop her if she was intent on making that decision.
“It doesn’t matter.” She bit her lower lip until it turned red.
“It does to me.”
She pulled her hand from his. The ring scratched him. “Yes, I love you, but I can’t do any more than say that.” She laid his hat on the table and departed.
Sophie left a part of herself back in that restaurant with Dusty. She had, in a sense, left the truth of her heart with him.
No grown man ever told her that he loved her before. When she was a child, boys teased and pulled her hair to show affection. When those boys became young men, they flattered and attempted to get permission to court her, but it wasn’t the same as this.
Dusty loved her. Chad did not. He may have enjoyed her company and admired her appearance, but he wouldn’t sacrifice himself for her. Dusty was willing to leave the farm peacefully after her family accused him of being dishonorable, rather than damage her reputation.
She couldn’t picture Chad taking the blame for anything.
“Sophie, do smile. No one wants to look at a dour-faced bride.”
She obeyed her mother as she stood before the dress mirror in the seamstress shop. Linda continued to pin and tuck the train of the dress behind her.
“How do you like the fit, Mrs. Charlton? I can always
adjust.”
Sophie remained unperturbed under her mother’s critical eye. She was going to be the dutiful daughter and marry whom her parents wanted. What more was there to say?
“I really don’t like how small the flare of the skirt is. Can we add more tulle?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Linda went into the back room of the store to find the fabric.
Sophie watched her mother’s face alight as her requests were granted. “I wish I had been able to afford such a gown at my wedding, Sophie. I told you about your grandparents, how I came from a family of sharecroppers. We couldn’t afford to put bread on the table each night, much less buy me a new dress to wear when I married your father.”
“Is that why you make sure Rosemarie and I are impeccably dressed?”
“I want my daughters to have what I couldn’t.”
“But you married Daddy, anyway. Out of love.”
“Yes, of course I love your father. We were fortunate enough to surpass those lean years because of our persistence. But Sophie, a marriage can’t be built on love alone. It needs a foundation of security. The man you marry must be willing to work hard to provide for you and your future children, the same as your father did for me.”
Sophie thought of Dusty and his twenty-five acres of land. The whole summer he had been acquiring property and planning for a house and she didn’t know anything about it. All for her.
“Consider yourself blessed to enjoy the fruits of your family’s labor. Chad will be able to give you even more.”
What could he give her more of? For the moment, he wouldn’t give her so much as the respect to let her say yes or no to marrying him. She wondered what the future would hold for her and her soon-to-be husband. Would he exert the same degree of control upon any children God chose to bless them with?
And what about Dusty? She knew it was going to be impossible to look upon him again without caring, without feeling any sort of affection for him. His face would forever serve to remind her of what could never be.
For the first few days after their meeting, Dusty had hope. Hope Sophie would come to her senses. Hope she would change her mind. But as the weeks passed he struggled to keep that hope from dimming.
Dusty worked on building his house over the course of August. When work on the ranch wasn’t enough to keep the ache from his heart, he took to adding more to the house’s structural foundation. The other cowhands helped him when they had nothing more pressing or entertaining to do in their spare time. By the end of the month, he had two rooms put in, and space for a stove in what would be the kitchen.
He planned to put the roof on by November, but there was no need to rush so long as he got it completed by the first winter’s snow.
After all, he often heard the wind rasp between the foundations of the house, she won’t be here when it’s finished.
The men never asked him if he planned on attending Sophie’s wedding. Dusty never told them. The Saturday arrived one cool September morning when he went out to the stables to saddle his horse.
“Where are you going?” Mr. Mabrey was there, cleaning out the hooves of a young gelding.
“Not much work to be done until this afternoon, sir. I thought I’d head out this morning.”
“You wouldn’t be thinking of heading into town to see that girl get married, would you?”
“I might be.”
The ranch owner scraped at the crevices of the gelding’s front hoof. “Don’t take your guns to town.”
Dusty understood Mabrey’s concern. “They’re locked in a chest in the bunkhouse.”
Mabrey looked at him to be certain. “Just make sure they stay there. I’m not looking to hire another worker because one got thrown into jail for shooting a bridegroom. Don’t raise your fists, neither.”
As much as he wanted to teach Chad a thing or two about coercing Sophie, he wasn’t about to ruin her day by engaging in a fistfight. “Rest easy, Mr. Mabrey. I don’t intend on getting myself into a fix over a woman today.”
“Then what do you plan on visiting the church for?”
Dusty grabbed his saddle off the rack. He wanted his will to have as much bravado as his words. Folks said he could never quit Sophie. “To see if she actually goes through with it.”
“And if she does?”
“I’ll let her be.”
“You sure about that?”
“Don’t have much choice.” He readied his horse and rode from the stables.
On the way to town, Dusty noted the starkness of the landscape. Wide open, as empty as his soul felt at that moment. Dirt blew off the road and into his face in grainy pebbles that stung his eyes.
Today was the last day he’d see Sophie Charlton as an unmarried woman. Let the town laugh at him a final time as he watched her give her hand over to another man. In a few hours, he’d be back at the ranch and on his way to forgetting about her for good. He hoped.
“Do you, Sophie, take Chad to be your lawfully wedded husband, to honor and cherish, for as long as you both shall live?”
Sophie turned away from Reverend Winford to glance at the wedding guests seated in the decorated pews behind her. Almost every citizen of Assurance was present to attend what should have been the happiest day of her life. Instead, uncertainty and dread filled the spaces in her mind where elation was supposed to be.
She suppressed a cough in her dry throat as she caught the eyes of the groom’s parents. Newly reelected Mayor Hooper and his wife sat across from her own mother and father. All of them looked at her with gazes fixed and expectant.
An arranged marriage. That’s all it was, and she knew it.
Reverend Winford cleared his throat. Chad squeezed her white-gloved hand to bring her attention back to the altar. But just then she spotted him. At the rear of church, standing in the open doorway, was someone that Sophie thought would never show.
Dusty leaned his long and lanky frame against the door. He hadn’t bothered to change out of his scuffed boots and faded work shirt that had more or less been his uniform since she had first met him. His hair was uncombed. More blond today than brown.
“Dusty,” Sophie whispered beneath her veil.
He didn’t hear her. She didn’t expect him to, but he could see her. He stared as though she were the only living being in the sanctuary. Sophie became locked in the target point of his eyes.
Reverend Winford repeated the question louder. “Sophie, do you take Chad to be your lawfully wedded husband, to honor and cherish, for as long as you both shall live?” Dusty’s look challenged her. He didn’t move any further into the church. Crossing his arms in front of his chest, he awaited her response to the question that would seal her to Chad Hooper forever.
One day.
She remembered Dusty’s words to her a year ago at the wedding of Reverend Winford and Marissa Pierce. A promise that she would be his at a future time. One day you’ll see, Miss Sophie. He followed that promise with an assured, almost rakish smile and continued to pursue her, no matter how many times she turned him down.
Sophie scoffed at Dusty then, but a peculiar sensation washed over her now as she stare
d at him. She could have been more insistent that he leave her alone, but even in those earlier times, somewhere deep inside, she didn’t want him to. Her skin tingled and warmed as though he’d touched her. Her breathing sped as it did when she tried to keep from laughing at his antics.
That boyish charm would no longer be reserved for her if she became Mrs. Chad Hooper today.
“No!” She turned back to her groom, voice and hands trembling. “I’m sorry, Chad . . . but I can’t!” Sophie pulled away from his grasp and ran down the aisle.
She felt a tug on the train of her dress as it ripped from the hands of Linda, her maid of honor. Linda’s squeal reached high up to the church rafters. Commotion ensued as Sophie hiked up the full skirt to her ankles and dashed after Dusty. Outside the prairie wind wrenched the veil from her face and tore her hair loose from its pins. “Dusty!”
His long legs took one stride for her every three as he walked away from the church. In one fluid motion, he swung into the saddle of his horse. “You went and did your choosing, Sophie. It wasn’t me in that church standin’ beside you.”
“But I’m not going to marry Chad. Didn’t you hear?”
He pulled on the reins as she ran toward the horse. “I heard, but that has nothing to do with me.”
The horse’s tail flicked across her dress when he turned the stallion in a different direction. Sophie tried to speak, but the words stuck like glue to the roof of her mouth. Dusty never turned her down before. Never. Finally, she was able to call out. “I know who I want. It’s you.”
“You’d better talk to your parents about that. They might change your mind.”
“Dusty, I’m sorry. You believe me, don’t you?”
“I’ll be seein’ you, Miss Sophie.” Dusty rode away without so much as a second glance.
A Windswept Promise Page 25
