Marry Me

by Susan Kay Law

  “He’s gone now, and I’m grown, and I thought that finally, finally, she’d be able to have a life of her own. Why shouldn’t she? But I—she thinks I should go back to school. Is determined that I go. But Dr. Goodale left all of his fortune to his children. Apparently it was their agreement from the start; she’d gambled on him living awhile. And now she’s seeing Mr. Ruckman, and he’s even worse than the doctor. She’ll do it, I just know she will, if that’s what she thinks it’ll take to protect me.”

  And then she stopped, right in the border of sun and shadow, half in, half out. “It wouldn’t be fair to her. I couldn’t stand it, to think that she just did it for me. Again. It wouldn’t be fair.”

  “But do you want to go to school?

  “Of course not. I—” She grimaced, clearly torn. “That’s not true. All else being equal, I’d love it. But it’s not all else equal, is it? I couldn’t be happy there, knowing that she’d married Ruckman to ensure it.” She shook her head. “Oh, not that I haven’t been happy, all these years. Very much so. Even her being married to Dr. Goodale, for all I hated what it did to her, for me, well, he taught me so much. But it’s time for me to take care of myself. She’s given up fifteen years; that’s plenty.”

  “Can’t you just tell her that?”

  She laughed, a short burst that dismissed his crude male thinking. “You can’t tell Kate anything. She’ll do what she thinks best no matter what I say about it. No, the only way I could think to finally set her free was to be well settled myself, no longer in need of her care.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t want to be free.”

  Her head snapped up. “Then she’d just better get used to it.”

  “Okay.” Apparently Emily was just as sure of what was right for Kate as she claimed Kate was for her.

  She glared at him for a second longer before her smile broke through. It seemed her natural expression, that sunny grin, everything else a temporary aberration; her face fell easily into the lines, her teeth white and even, her lips curving up as effortlessly, inevitably, as a flower opening to the sun. “I’m sorry. I’m not angry. It just…matters to me, very much.”

  “Yeah.” His father had died before he could remember him, and he’d never had brothers or sisters, but he’d worried over his mother more than she liked. “I can understand worry making you a little…emphatic where family is concerned.”

  Her smile softened with empathy. “Yes, I suppose you do.”

  Nope. She might be happy to spill all her secrets, but he wasn’t coughing his up. To distract her he prodded: “How’d you end up here?”

  “Oh! I knew the only way she’d ever stop arranging her life for my benefit was if she knew I was entrenched in a life of my own. This seemed the best opportunity.”

  “It did?” He looked around them, at the stark land, its promise well hidden to an unfamiliar or unimaginative eye, and the small, ugly building that he’d pretended was a home. Her rose-colored glasses must be two inches thick if she thought this was her best opportunity. “Here?”

  “Of course.” Her eyes shone, excitement coloring the soft curve of her cheeks. “A home of my own, on land of my own, that no one could ever take from me. I’ve never had that—we’ve never had that—a place that was just ours. I don’t know if you could understand—”

  “I could understand,” he said flatly. He didn’t want to understand. Didn’t want to find this common ground with her, didn’t want to know why this was more than an impulsive lark to her. But oh, that tug of wanting, needing, a place that you could call yours and no one could deny you…it had driven him for a long time. Maybe, in an odd way, it still did.

  She beamed at him, delighted with his agreement. “There, then. I wrote her when I got here, so she wouldn’t worry. I told her how well everything was going.”

  “And you thought she would just let it be?” He knew nothing of her sister but what she’d told him, but even he could have guessed it unlikely. Not to mention that if the situation were reversed, Emily herself would have been hog-tied before she’d have left Kate alone, something that he sort of…reluctantly…admired about her.

  “I’d hoped.” She made a face. “I suppose I should have known better. But hoping tends to work out well for me.”

  “How fortunate you are.”

  “Oh, I am!” she said with such fervency that no one could doubt she believed it. And yet, in the bits of her past she’d told him, she’d lost as much as most and more than some. “And, too, I was sort of counting on the fact that she’d rather have every hair on her head plucked out one by one than come out here.”

  “Not fond of the country, is she?”

  “Goodness, no. My other sister, Anthea, lives in Colorado with her family. Kate goes to see her—of course she goes; it’s her sisterly duty, and heaven knows she would never shirk that. But she drags along more luggage than a duchess, frowns the entire way there, and waves a scented handkerchief under her nose until we cross back over the Mississippi again,” she said with far more fondness than exasperation. “Kate is not what one would call pioneer stock.” Her gesture encompassed all of Montana. “She’ll hate it here. Maybe she won’t stay long,” she added hopefully.

  “But you…don’t hate it?” She should. A woman with her air of refinement, her pretty manners and clothes: this place should have sent her screaming for home the first night.

  “Oh no.” She spun like a child, arms spread. “I don’t hate it at all.”

  And he believed her. Damn. It’d be so much easier if he hadn’t believed her. “So that’s it. She’s coming, and then she’ll take you home.”

  “Nope,” she said cheerfully. “That’s why I need a husband.”

  Husband. He’d forgotten it. Or conveniently pushed it aside while he allowed her to distract him with her story. She was easy to listen to, easy to watch while she talked. But now the word roared back, a dark, echoing refrain, throbbing painfully in his head. Husband, husband, husband.

  He couldn’t be a husband. He already was a husband.

  But he wasn’t, he remembered, and allowed the pain to roll over him, spear up through his gut and into his chest, to bite there, a savage throb, making no attempt to mute it because it was only what he deserved.

  “You didn’t forget, did you?” she went on.

  “I—”

  “Are you all right?” Quick as a blink, she dropped to her knees beside his chair, put her hands on each side of his head to hold it steady while she peered into his eyes. “Hmm. Hard to tell if your pupils are clear when your eyes are so dark.” Her hands were impersonal, ruthlessly efficient as she examined him, brushing his forehead, probing beneath his ears. Yet he felt every point of contact, the smooth heat of her palms, the cooler, rougher pads at the tips of her fingers. Had she really no idea? It was all he could do not to grab those hands and drag them down his body. He wanted them hot and eager; the fact that she could touch him and be completely unaffected infuriated him.

  She was close enough that he could smell her. Lord, was there ever such a good-smelling thing in the world as a clean woman? Not flowers, not baking bread, not perfume. Her.

  He grabbed her wrists. So fragile; he could snap them with a squeeze.

  “It’s all right,” she told him in a soothing voice that made him want to snarl. “If you’ll just let me—”

  “I’m not a horse,” he snarled at her.

  His tone would have warned off a thug in the meanest saloon. She didn’t even flinch. “I’m even better with people than horses,” she told him, coolly confident.

  “I’m all right.”

  “You didn’t look all right. You looked like you hurt, and goodness knows I’ve seen enough people in pain to recognize the signs. You’ve no fever, I grant you, but—”

  “Stop.” He was still holding her wrists, he realized; why hadn’t he put her away from him yet? He was sure that he’d meant to. He could feel her pulse beat against his thumbs. He stayed like that for a moment, dragging air in
to lungs that suddenly seemed like they couldn’t get enough before he jerked her hands away from him and released her. “Don’t touch me again.”

  “I won’t promise,” she told him. “If I can help you, I’ll do so. You’re not the first who’s begun by telling me to stop. But I’ve yet to have one who wasn’t grateful to be healed, when it came right down to it.”

  He swore, a profane suggestion that should have horrified any true lady should she even recognize it.

  “No thank you,” she said calmly, and rose to her feet, whacking dust off her skirts with complete nonchalance.

  Damn it. He would not smile at her. He would not.

  But it was hard. Oh, it was hard.

  “Now then.” Having beaten up a satisfactory cloud, she folded her hands before her. “Are you ready to begin negotiations?”

  “Negotiations?”

  He shouldn’t have taken the chair when she’d offered it. It was a weak position from which to bargain. It mitigated the advantage of his height. Not to mention that no man’s wits were sharp when his nose was breast-high.

  He sprawled back in his chair and contrived to look relaxed. “Negotiate away.”

  “Kate said she was coming as soon as possible. It’d be different if she’d given me some time to get things together, but patience has never been one of Kate’s finer qualities. And the truth is, as fond as I am of this place, if she sees this”—she gestured toward the claim shack—“she’ll never let me stay here alone.”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  She made a face at him. “I’m aware of that. Not, however, to me. But she won’t rest easy until I’m well settled, and so I decided to beat her to the punch. I told her I was married.”

  She said it calmly, as if her words were entirely rational. “Let me see if I understand this. You wanted your sister to stop worrying about you so you lied to her.”

  “It sounds bad when you say it like that.”

  “This is a habit of yours?”

  She lifted her chin. “We’ve always all been willing to do whatever’s necessary in order to protect each other.”

  “Uh-huh.” Her hands had left their imprint, warm and soft, against his face, and he had the most absurd and sudden need to find out how his own would feel on her. “And you thought that telling her you were married—to someone you’ve known, what, a couple of weeks at the outside?—would ease her mind?”

  “We have a long and successful history of precipitous marriages in our family,” Emily informed him.

  He stared at her, face carefully wiped clean of expression. And then he laughed, great, rusty whoops of it that bent him over at the waist and nearly toppled him out of his chair.

  Emily knew she should have been insulted. He was laughing at her; there was no way to dress it up and pretend he was laughing with her. But she couldn’t deny that, stated baldly, it sounded a bit…outlandish.

  And there was his laughter. Such a sight he was, the corners of his eyes crinkling, his thin, sculpted cheeks rounding up above his beard, the sound gusting out of him as if it’d been dammed up for half his life and was just now erupting in one great rush.

  She was tempted to embellish the story. See if she could amuse him some more. She doubted there’d ever been a man on earth who needed it more than he did, and being the one who gave it to him made the region of her heart go soft and warm. Oh, there was nothing she liked so much as being able to make someone feel better!

  He finally quieted. Two last, small hiccups before he swiped at his eyes with the flat of his hands.

  “Are you finished?” she asked.

  “Maybe. Yeah, I think so.” He braced his hands on his knees and leaned toward her. “Unless you want to tell me we’ve got three kids already, too.”

  “Oh heavens, no.” She pretended to look appalled. “How silly do you think I am? There’s only the one on the way.”

  “Good God!” he exploded, but then caught sight of her smile. “Oh. You’re teasing.”

  He looked put out at that, his brow knit in confusion.

  “Forgive me, Miss Bright, but I still find it hard to credit that you marrying someone you scarcely know would ease your sister’s concern.”

  “Call it desperate measures.” She sighed. “First off, convincing her not to worry is an impossibility. She’ll worry. I’ll be eighty years old and tottering around on a cane and she’ll still be worrying. I only hoped to delay her arrival long enough to give me a chance to prove that she doesn’t need to marry someone she doesn’t wish to in order to provide me with a home.”

  “So you think she’s going to arrive, take one look at me, figure you’re in good hands, and go trotting back to Philadelphia? I’m flattered.”

  “As I said, desperate measures.”

  He blew out a breath and scrubbed a hand through the thick, unruly mass of his hair. “Up until meeting you, Miss Bright, I’d considered myself a relatively logical and intelligent man. What, exactly, do you expect to happen when your sister arrives and finds you married to me?”

  “Once she sees me taken care of, she’ll go back home, and she won’t have to marry Mr. Ruckman. Then I’ll have until spring to get things in order—there’s no way she’ll venture out here again until it warms up. She hardly sticks her nose out of the house when it’s cold. By spring, when I’m still okay, she’ll have to admit I can take reasonable care of myself and we’ll both go forward from there.”

  “Female plotting.” He shook his head while she bristled. “I assume we’re not really going to be married.”

  “Of course not!”

  “Then how—supposing you get to spring in one piece—are you going to explain what happened to your husband?”

  “Oh, there are lots of possibilities. You could die tragically—at which point, of course, it would be impossible for me to remain on the claim; I’d be too heartbroken, explaining why I’ve had to move to another.” She pressed the back of her hand to her head as if preparing to swoon.

  “Yeah, that’d put her mind at ease about your welfare.”

  She frowned at him; the man had no talent for banter. “All right. We’ve divorced; I misjudged you, and you ran off with the local bar dancer, you heartless wretch.” She tucked her tongue in her cheek. “Or maybe even with the handsome bartender. Such a shock.”

  He narrowed his eyes at her warningly.

  She struggled not to smile. “Honestly, by then I’ll probably be able to tell her the truth. Likely Mr. Ruckman will have found himself some other interest by then. And, considering I’d survived that long, even Kate will have to acknowledge that I don’t require her to mother me anymore. At least not to the same degree.”

  “Or she’ll commit you to the nearest asylum, where you clearly belong.”

  “You have no imagination.”

  “Thank God, if this is where it leads one.”

  “Do you know, you have the most remarkable ability to strain my sympathy?”

  “And whatever gave you the idea that I wanted it?”

  There was clearly no help for the man. She would do far better, she reflected, if she could ignore her natural instincts and just let him wallow in his gloom.

  “So? Will you do it?”

  Sound rumbled in his chest. “Why me?”

  Despite her resolution, that was simply too good to pass up. “Why, your charm and sunny nature, of course. Whyever else?”

  She smiled sunnily into his glower.

  “Leverage, then,” she admitted.

  “Leverage?”

  “I’ve something you want. I’m confident we can come to a reasonable and simple agreement.”

  “I’m pretty sure you got somethin’ Longnecker wants, too. I’m sure he’d be rock-damn delighted to play house with you for a couple of days.”

  Now, that was uncalled for. “That would be…complicated. I’d much prefer to keep this simple.”

  “You’ll have to give up the land, though.”

  “I know.” She shot a longing
gaze at the little shack she’d grown surprisingly fond of. “Some things can’t be helped. And I’ll find another.”

  “If you’d have handed it over when you should have, you’d have been settled by now, and all this wouldn’t be necessary.”

  “And if you don’t stop hammering about such things, I’m going to go ask Imbert after all and you can just sit over here and sulk until winter comes and you freeze in your chair.”

  “Aw, but that wouldn’t be fair to him, remember?”

  “I imagine I could make it up to him,” she said in a silky voice, which earned her a quick, hard glare. “So? Will you do it?”

  “Why not?” he said, with surprising good cheer.

  “Oh, and not that I would ever suspect you of such designs, of course, but I think it’s best that we’re clear on all the details, don’t you? Such as, if you should happen to, oh, get cold feet at the last minute and back out just as Kate arrives, I won’t be leaving with her, no matter what she says. She’ll hate it, but she’ll stay, and we’ll both be digging in for the winter.”

  “It never occurred to me,” he said, too quickly to be convincing.

  “You do ease my mind.”

  “Happy to be of service.”

  “So we’re agreed?”

  “The instant she gets on the train home, you’re gone, too.”

  “Fine.” She’d been completely reasonable about the entire thing. Friendly, even. And yet he had to go and make it clear that he didn’t want her there one second longer than necessary.

  And so she felt no compunction to make this easy on him.

  She stepped back, put her hands on her hips, and eyed him as critically as Dr. Goodale had ever evaluated his prized horseflesh.

  “What?”

  “It’s just—” She tilted her head, pursed her lips as if considering. “I described you to Kate. Or rather, I described my husband to Kate. In some detail.”

  “So?”

  “Well…I took a few liberties there as well. Since I didn’t think she’d ever actually meet you.”