Marry Me

by Susan Kay Law

  “You look wonderful,” Emily told her. Her suit was pale, trembling gray, the color of a dove’s throat, and trimmed with enough lace to dress a dining room table. The skirt was gusseted, the waist severely narrowed, and her collar swooped into a train that fluttered down her back nearly to her ankles.

  She shrugged. Of course. On to more important matters.

  “It’s a beautiful suit,” Emily went on. “However did you keep it so perfect on the coach?”

  “Everyone must have a talent,” she said, and Emily chuckled. “Excuse me?”

  “I’m sorry. It’s just…I said that very thing to Jake once.”

  “I see.” Kate tried not to let it hurt, that Emily had memories with someone else, obviously fond memories Kate could not share. It was inevitable that she would someday. Natural, and right.

  She couldn’t bear to think about it.

  She turned her attention instead to the street they were strolling down. Plain wood buildings listed in all directions. Had they had a competition to see who could build the ugliest structure? She’d vote for that one, with the sign that proclaimed it “The Gambler’s Pride.” The road could scarcely be called one, the trees were nonexistent, and she’d be persuaded to step into that unhealthy patch of grass—the only one she could see—only at gunpoint, for who knew what lurked in there?

  “So. This is McGyre.”

  “Yes.” Emily’s beaming enthusiasm encompassed it all, even the slack-jawed drunkard snoozing in the shadow of the saloon. “Isn’t it great?”

  Emily ever looked for the best and always found it, but McGyre must have strained even her considerable aptitude.

  Kate strove for her most neutral tone. “And what was it about this place that encouraged you to settle here?”

  “How could I not?” She stopped in front of a whitewashed, two-story frame building. “Here we are.”

  If she breathed too hard in its direction, Kate thought, maybe it would fall over and save her from having to go in there. “Emily, it’s been a long trip. I find my stomach’s a bit unsettled.” Please, please, get back on the train with me and let me take you home where you belong. “I am wildly curious to meet your young man. Let’s just go on to your place, shall we?”

  Unease flickered over Emily’s features. Or perhaps Kate was simply looking too closely for it, a symptom of her own rampant worry.

  “He is young, isn’t he?”

  “Oh yes. Younger than Mr. Ruckman, anyway.”

  Well, Kate thought, I opened that door, didn’t I?

  The ride was long, hot, dusty, and, to Kate’s mind, numbingly monotonous. She managed to doze through a fair stretch, whenever Emily’s merry chatter lapsed.

  Oh, sporadically Kate had tried to inject more important topics. Why Emily had considered it necessary to take this wild risk. This man she’d married on so little acquaintance. Why, oh why, did you have to run away from me? You’d never seemed the slightest bit unhappy.

  But Emily skirted the questions with ease, bubbling with tidbits of information about the territory, pointing out the plover their passage flushed, lifting her face to the sun and inviting freckles despite Kate’s best efforts to open a parasol over her head.

  “Just because you’re a married woman now doesn’t mean you can let your looks go.”

  “Oh, Jake doesn’t mind,” Emily answered with such breezy confidence that Kate might have believed her, if she didn’t have years of experience with harder truths.

  Oh, let her enjoy her newlywed glow. Later she’d be more willing to listen to Kate’s words of wisdom. For now she’d keep her mouth shut and let Emily wallow in it. Kate would be happy for her, refuse to allow a foothold to the tiny little twinge of envy. For Kate had never had that few weeks of confident bliss.

  “Here we are,” Emily said, so bright with eager pride that for the first time Kate entertained the unlikely possibility Emily had made the right choice after all.

  So Kate kept her expression carefully neutral as she surveyed the parts of the compound within plain view. Odd that they’d spread the various structures so far apart, for all she could see at the moment was a declining shed and, perhaps thirty yards away, a tent with a few crates stacked around it. Lodging for temporary workers, she concluded.

  She’d imagined that it would follow the same arrangement that Gabriel’s ranch did, where the stables, main home, bunk house, ranch house, and a variety of smaller outbuildings all clustered around a small yard.

  “Oh, it’s good to be home,” Emily sang out and leaped down from her seat. And just when had she learned to drive a horse and buggy, anyway, even such a placid one as this? She looked like Emily, sounded like Emily, smiled like Emily. But then she kept doing things that Kate could no longer predict. It was extremely disconcerting.

  “Would you like me to get the luggage down here? Or is it too far to carry?”

  “Carry it where?” She went up to give the horse a fond pat. “You can leave it. Jake will bring it in when he comes. I’m not sure where he is, but—” Her brows snapped together for a brief instant, and then her smile returned. “I’m sure he’ll be back soon. And what’s the use of having a husband if one can’t make him lug things about?”

  “What indeed?” Kate managed with what she considered admirable calm. This…this was Emily’s new home? She’d assumed it to be the chicken coop. Storage of winter supplies at the worst. Her home? After she, Kate, had given her a mansion and an education and every other advantage Emily so clearly deserved, things that would have been her birthright if their father hadn’t simply folded in and given up when their mother died, she’d come to this?

  “Come on, come on. Why are you still perched up there? There’s nothing down on the ground that’ll bite, I promise.”

  “Are you sure?” Kate made a show of concern—it wasn’t much of a stretch, but snakes hadn’t been what worried her, at least up to now—and peered over the side of the buggy. The grass was thick and high, gold-tipped emerald, and could hide any number of creatures.

  “Of course I’m sure. Besides, snakes are far more afraid of you than you are of them.”

  “For one thing, you have no idea how terrified I am, so you cannot draw such a conclusion.” Maybe she should just take up temporary residence in the buggy. It appeared to offer as much shelter as that hut, anyway, and she wouldn’t have to set foot on snake-infested ground. “And for another, that’s a bald-faced lie perpetrated by land speculators in order to lure softheaded, susceptible people to this godforsaken country, and you know it.”

  Emily laughed, and Kate’s tension eased, if only a notch. Emily’s merriment was a tonic, a bright and infectiously happy thing that had even worked its magic on Dr. Goodale, no small task indeed. Lord knew Kate had never been able to make him smile as Emily did. She was relieved to discover Emily’s laughter, at least, had not changed.

  “Come on, come down! I can’t wait for you to see it.”

  Kate climbed down with a fair amount of reluctance, which she refused to let show. If there were snakes anywhere within a square mile, of course she would be the one to stumble into their nest. Or wherever it was snakes lurked when they weren’t sinking their fangs into unsuspecting passersby.

  “This is really intended to be temporary,” Emily said cheerfully. “There’s so much to be done when one first takes a claim that you just throw up a house to meet the requirements and move on to other matters. Still, it’s really quite cozy. I’ve grown extremely fond of the place.”

  This time Kate had to bite down on her cheek to prevent a grimace.

  “And it’s nice not to have so much space to fuss over,” Emily went on. “I’ll almost be sorry to move into someplace else.”

  “And when might that be?” Kate asked in a carefully neutral tone.

  “Oh heavens, I don’t know. We’ve got to make the land a going concern first. A couple of years, maybe?”

  Two years, my patootie, Kate thought. Two weeks, maybe. Two months, if Emily proved st
ubborn. But she’d pry her out of there before a single blizzard threatened to topple that hovel into kindling.

  But it probably wouldn’t be particularly helpful to mention that yet. Forewarned, forearmed, and all that rot.

  Emily pushed open the door, got halfway in, and froze.

  “Emily?”

  She said nothing, just stood there in the tiny doorway as if her feet had gotten glued to the ground.

  More alarmed now: “Emily?”

  When she received no response, she hustled closer, squeezing in the sliver of space between Emily and the doorframe, and felt splinters catch and tug the lace on her sleeve. Maybe she’d already caught that horrid new husband of hers in bed with another woman. Well, at least they were far enough from civilization that no one would hear the shot.

  She peered into the gloom.

  Chaos. As if a giant hand had lifted up the shack, turned it upside down, and shaken it like a Christmas globe, letting everything inside spin and tumble before setting it back down again.

  The bedclothes trailed across the floor. She identified, with some effort, a shredded nest of white scraps piled just inside the doorway as having once been Emily’s best petticoat. Chairs were side-turned. Long strips of colored paper had been torn from the wall, curling down like pencil shavings. Every box, every crate, every canister in the place had been upended.

  Crushed crackers spread in an odd-shaped carpet beneath the table. Dried beans rivered from a side-turned crate. Partially smashed coffee beans scented the air, and flour and sugar sifted over it all like the remains of a healthy snowstorm.

  “Heavens, Emily, I know you’re accustomed to having a housekeeper, but don’t you think—” And then Kate shrieked so loud Emily’s ears buzzed long after the sound faded away. Kate pointed one elegant, shaking finger at the corner that housed the kitchen.

  A small creature peered out from behind the blue flowered curtains. Fur the color of chocolate surrounded bright eyes and a twitching, flat snout.

  “Smithie!” Emily scolded. “You come out of there!”

  Surprisingly, he obliged, chewing frantically. The bright orange of a dried apricot peeked out from each fist.

  “It’s a…monkey?” Kate murmured, dazed.

  “Oh yes.” Emily sighed in resignation. Her only hope had been to put as good a face on the place as possible. And now her house resembled a zoo cage that hadn’t been cleaned in weeks and her “husband” was missing. Which was maybe for the best, she thought glumly; the way her luck was running, Jake would show up looking like a mountain man who’d crawled out of his cave in the spring, having foregone baths since the snow flew.

  “He’s a cute creature, isn’t he? But oh, what a mess.” She tsked. “And I was so pleased with the decor, I—”

  By now Kate, never at a loss for long, had recovered her equilibrium and bent a frown on her sister. “Oh yes. I’m sure it rivaled Goodale House before the monkey had his little party, didn’t it? So spacious and sturdily built.” Emily resigned herself to the inevitable. She’d avoided Kate’s lecture as long as she could; there was no hope for her now. “Snakes and coyotes and other such wild creatures are bad enough, but now there are monkeys in the larder.” She shuddered. “Can you imagine what vermin are in your flour? And if there’s a monkey here, what else might there be? A crocodile in your well?”

  “Now, that is the most interesting story, how he came to be here, I—”

  “Emily, darling, when has distraction ever saved you? Truly, I don’t know what got into you, this wild aberration of hieing off to the far reaches of the country, but enough is enough, don’t you think? I won’t even say I told you so, because, of course, you didn’t think to ask me my opinion and so I did not have the opportunity to offer it. Let’s just go back to Philadelphia where we belong. Norine has agreed to let us stay at Goodale House for another few months until we can settle what to do together. We can probably even get you enrolled for the fall term.”

  “And how are we paying for that fall term?”

  Kate blinked at her. Emily had never questioned her about such things in the past. Perhaps if she had done so before, Emily reflected, things never would have gotten into such a tangle. But she’d always deferred to Kate’s competent authority, never wanted to appear ungrateful for all her sisters had done for her.

  “Now, don’t you worry about that. You just leave the details up to me. Haven’t we always managed just fine?”

  Emily opened her mouth to protest, then shut it just as fast. What was she going to do? Accuse Kate of selling herself for Emily’s future? She couldn’t say that. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

  “And when have you ever known me to forget something?”

  “My husband. I don’t think he’s going to want me to go running back home, Kate. Not,” she added hastily, “that I would want to, so don’t jump on that.”

  “Oh. Him,” Kate said with easy dismissal, as if discussing a temporary houseman rather than a spouse.

  “Well now,” drawled a low voice behind them, “is somebody talkin’ about me?”

  Chapter 9

  “Jake,” Emily breathed in relief and trepidation, and turned.

  And then she stared. She couldn’t help it.

  Heavens. Oh heavens.

  “Jake?” she asked, uncertain.

  “I apologize for not being here when you got home.” There was an awkward beat while her tongue and her brain scrambled to catch up with her eyes. And then he bent down and brushed a kiss over her temple.

  The room whirled. Unthinkingly she reached up to the spot he’d kissed, sure it had to be as hot to the touch as it felt.

  “I assumed you’d be staying in town to eat,” he went on, easy conversation, as if they’d done this a hundred times. “Or I’d have come home earlier.”

  She’d never have recognized him. Never.

  A mountain man, Emily? More like a prince, the kind in fairy tales and storybooks and a young girl’s gilded dreams.

  He’d cut his hair. Not much, and a little shaggily, but it swept back from his forehead—high and noble, of course—and waved low against his collar. Without the shadows of that thick fall, his eyes weren’t quite as dark as she’d thought, not so deeply set, bits of gold sparking here and there in the brown.

  She’d assumed his chin was weak, his mouth thin. Why else be so determined to hide it? Instead his jaw was cleanly sculpted, set at a pleasing angle, and his mouth looked like it had once known how to smile easily and often. And how to kiss even better than smile.

  His shirt was clean and pressed and very white against the brown of his throat, his hands. She remembered washing it for him, putting in that stiff starch, and she felt herself flush. It seemed suddenly an intimate thing, washing the clothes a man would pull over his bare skin. A wifely thing.

  She’d never before seen the pants he now wore, deep gray with a simple cut. Plain clothes that, on him, looked anything but.

  “You cut yourself shaving,” she murmured. “Here.” And then she fumbled to pull a kerchief from her handbag. She reached up and pressed it against the tiny nick on his cheek—his skin was pale there, and on his chin, where the beard had shielded it from the sun, a contrast to the skin above on his cheek. His beard had been thick, and the stubble he hadn’t managed to scrape off completely left a black shadow on his jaw and pricked her fingers.

  “Thank you.” His hand covered hers, holding it in place. My, my, my. He had the nicest hands, big and warm, not the slightest bit soft, but gentle when he touched her. This—him—had been but a few feet from her door all this time and she hadn’t realized?

  But thank goodness. He would have had her spun around, and up and swindled her land before she got tired of looking at his handsome face.

  “I always seem to be doing that, don’t I?” he said in the quiet, private tones of a man sharing remembrances with his wife. “And this time I don’t even have the excuse of you to distract me.”

  “Harumph.”
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  “Oh!” Flustered—and even more so because she truly was so instead of merely acting that way for Kate’s benefit; she’d forgotten completely about Kate’s presence. Thank goodness she hadn’t blurted out something that would alert her sister to their charade. She jerked her hand away, leaving Jake with her frilly, feminine bit of handkerchief looking completely out of place in his very masculine hands. “I’m sorry, Kate. I forgot myself for a moment.”

  “I could see that,” she said darkly. She crossed her arms—a swish of dove-gray silk, the flutter of rare lace—and Emily could see the hem of her skirt twitch, betraying the impatient tap of her toes. When Kate was annoyed and wearing heels it sounded like a drum corps.

  “Let me introduce the two of you. Kate, this is my husband. Jake. Jake Sullivan.” The words sounded strange. Impossible. Husband. Jake. Mine.

  Jake turned then, for the first time looking directly at Kate, and she had to laugh. Oh, he hid it better than most, but he gawked, wide-eyed, openmouthed.

  Kate merely leaned over, placed one delicate, gloved hand beneath his chin, and pushed his jaw up. “Stop that,” she snapped.

  He shot a quick, apologetic glance at Emily. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to stare, I just—” He gave up, knowing there was no excuse, and shrugged.

  “Heavens, darling, don’t worry about it. I’ve never met a man, even a newly married one, who didn’t have that reaction the first time he saw Kate. It’s as automatic as, and no more meaningful than, your sneezing if I blew pepper into your face.”

  “Thank you ever so much for that comparison,” Kate said dryly.

  “In fact, I’d be a bit worried about your taste if you hadn’t, and since you married me, I’d just as soon not have cause to question your taste.”

  He recovered quickly. “Why don’t you let me take care of our unwelcome visitor, and then we’ll introduce ourselves properly?”

  He turned and assessed the situation. “Oh, you’ve been a busy boy, haven’t you, Smithie? Play-time’s over, though. Time to go home.” Over his shoulder: “Why don’t the two of you wait outside?” He cast a skeptical eye toward Kate’s hat. “Wouldn’t want him to suddenly decide that your hair is the best nest around.”