by Sharon Ihle
"And how did you treat her when you realized she was not such a female?" asked Father van der Velden. "Did you accord her the respect due a proper young lady?"
Daniel muttered something unintelligible under his breath before he said, "Well, I didn't exactly know until—"
"Daniel." The priest's tone brooked no argument. "There isn't but one thing you can do to repair the damage you've done to this woman's good name. I think you should stop wasting our time and get to it."
Inside the deep pockets of her buckskin shirt, Josie crossed her fingers.
After a long, tense moment, Daniel glared at her and said, "How'd you like to come live with me in my fine castle, princess?"
"Daniel,'' chided the priest. "Surely that isn't the best you can do."
Still glowering, he grudgingly admitted, "No, I've got the bark to do this right, if I have to, but for the life of me, I can't understand why any `lady of proper breeding' would even want an offer to tie herself to someone like me."
The priest's smile was sanctimonious, even for a man of the cloth. "Perhaps if for no other reason than the fact that she has the courtesy of a proposal coming?"
Daniel emptied his lungs with a dramatic puff of his cheeks, then stood there hat in hand and said the words Josie had been waiting to hear. "Will you do me the honor of becoming my wife, Miss Baum?"
Drawing his moment of agony out a few minutes, Josie twisted from side to side as if in the throes of indecision. Then she finally closed the jaws of her trap.
"I don't have much choice, since no other man is going to want me after what you've done. Yes, I'll dishonor myself by becoming your wife."
"What?" Daniel nearly strangled on the word. "Was that a yes?"
Josie nodded, unable to look him in the eye.
"But we can't get married—I don't want to get married."
"I'm afraid, Daniel," said the priest, "that it's not your decision to make. Miss Baum has agreed to become your wife, and I will personally see to it that you two are wed posthaste."
"Oh!" Sister lgnatius clapped her hands. "We're going to have a wedding. How wonderful."
"Indeed we are," said Father van der Velden. "How does six o'clock this evening sound to you, Miss Baum?"
Still avoiding Daniel's gaze, Josie ignored what sounded like a low growl coming from his throat and said, "That sounds perfect."
Caleb, who'd been scratching his head since Daniel's first, rather impudent proposal, finally had his say on the matter. "You sure about this, Josie, marrying up with a half-breed and all?"
"He's got a point," said Daniel, all too eager to agree. "Think about the kids. You don't want to be mother to a couple of wild Indians, do you?"
Since Josie had no intention of bedding Daniel in that way, much less bearing his children, she didn't see a problem. "It's already settled. We're going to be married tonight, and that's that."
"At six o'clock, no less," said Sister Ignatius, a sudden ball of nerves. "We have so much to do. First of all, we've got to find you something to wear, child. You can't get married in buckskin trousers."
Josie glanced down at herself, unconcerned about her apparel. She'd worn the trousers and shirt Long Belly had given her as well as the deerskin boots Daniel had made simply because they were so much warmer than her stained yellow dress. She didn't give a damn about what she wore at her wedding, especially since she didn't intend to look on the marriage as anything other than a means to an end.
"This is all I've got, Sister," she explained, hoping that would be the end of it.
"Well, don't you worry. We'll come up with something a little more suitable." Her hands flew to her cheeks, "Oh, and I'd better run get Sister Angela busy in the kitchen. We have a wedding feast to prepare."
"I kin help with that, if you like," offered Caleb.
"Come on, then. Follow me."
As the nun hurried off with Caleb, all gangly legs and teeth, Daniel said to the priest, "If you'll excuse us, Father, I'd like a few minutes alone with my fiancée. I thought we'd go outside for a walk, if that's all right with you."
The last thing Josie wanted was to be alone with Daniel, especially before the wedding. "I really shouldn't leave. The nuns will be needing me for fittings and such."
"Go ahead, my dear," said Father van der Velden. "The sisters will be a while giggling over this unexpected event before they can get down to sorting through their sewing supplies. I'm sure you two have a lot to talk about."
Stuck in a mud pie of her own making, Josie had no choice after that but to allow Daniel to lead her out of the charming house and into the bright sunshine. Once they were alone, it took him until they'd walked all the way down to the banks of the Tongue River before he got to the point. Even then, he stood there a while, kicking at clumps of snow and staring out at the sluggish waters before he finally spoke his mind.
"Why in blue hell did you say yes to my proposal?" He turned to look at her, that blue hell he spoke of gleaming in his eyes. "I've been married once before, and believe me, once was enough. I don't want to get married again, especially to someone as worthless as you."
Josie wasn't exactly looking for romance out of Daniel, but his comments hurt. "I don't know why you're in such an uproar. It seems to me that we're about perfect for each other."
"Perfect? How do you figure that? Half the time we don't even like each other much."
"It's simple. You don't want to get married and neither do I."
Daniel looked at her as if all her brains had leaked out somewhere between the river and the mission. "Then why, if I may ask again, did you say yes?"
She supposed it no longer mattered if he knew her true motives—Father van der Velden was going to make Daniel marry her no matter how many excuses or stories he came up with.
"Because," Josie admitted. "It seemed to be the only way I could keep my claim on Sweetpea and get a start on my cattle ranch at the same time."
Daniel's expression remained the same—agog and perplexed. "Have you gone completely loco? If you marry me, the only thing you'll accomplish is keeping me good and pissed for the rest of my life."
"Not if you look at this wedding as more of a favor than anything."
Daniel took a step away from Josie, and then dramatically looked her up one side and down the other. "You really have gone loco, haven't you?"
"If you'll shut up a minute, I'll explain."
"Please do."
"The first reason for getting married is that I'm not letting that buffalo out of my sight long enough for you and that heathen brother of yours to steal her away from me. That means I have to stay at your place until springtime, which also means that I can't stay there any longer as a single lady."
He frowned, but said, "All right. What's the second?"
"When time comes for me to herd Sweetpea into town so I can convince a banker to invest in my ranch, I'll have a lot better chance of getting the money if he thinks he's bankrolling me and my husband, not a woman alone."
"Makes sense, I suppose—at least for you." Daniel hooked his thumbs in the waistband of his trousers. "I still don't see why you had to drag me into your fancy plans for the future. It wasn't my fault that Long Belly kidnapped you."
"I don't care whose fault it is. The point is that I got dragged into your life against my will. Besides," she added defensively, "I couldn't think of anything else to do but marry you."
"Damn, woman, you might have at least asked me for suggestions."
"Oh, what are you so worried about? It's not as if we'll have a real marriage. It'll just look that way until I get the loan."
He raised one eyebrow. "Father van der Velden is going to marry us tonight. How do you figure that isn't real?"
Josie rolled her eyes. "You just said that you don't ever want to get married again, right?"
"Now you're talking my language."
"Well, if you marry me but I don't live with you except on a temporary basis until I get my ranch, then you'll be married without actually having to put u
p with a wife. Best of all, no one else can trap you because you'll legally be married. It's perfect for you, can't you see that?"
Looking back out at the river, Daniel puzzled on this a minute, then shook his head. "All I know is that I can't think of anything worse than having you for a wife. Not only are you ornery as a mule with a burr in its blanket, you aren't worth your salt when it comes to wifely duties."
"But that's my part of the bargain," she quickly assured him. "I get my buffalo and a husband's name, and until spring, you get the best cook west of the Mississippi, a seamstress without equal, and the finest housekeeper in all the Territories."
"I do?" Daniel looked over his shoulder. "Where the hell is she?"
Josie slugged his shoulder. "I'm talking about me, you fool. I lied to you when I said that I couldn't cook or anything. I even had to force myself to keep from making our Thanksgiving supper any better than it was. I can also sew and keep house with the best of them."
Daniel glanced at her, a little too long and a little too speculatively. "If all you wanted out of this is Sweetpea, I don't see why you couldn't simply have made a deal with me for her before we came to the mission."
"I told you—I want my own ranch, and to do that, I have to get money from the bank. To do that—"
"I know, I know, but you're such a damn good liar, why couldn't you just lie to a banker about having a husband?"
It wasn't that Josie hadn't thought of that—she had. She also knew that if she'd played that card before showing her hand to the priest, Daniel would have found a way to ruin everything.
"Are you saying," she asked cheekily, "that you would have agreed to let me go back to your ranch to stake my claim on Sweetpea if I'd asked?"
Daniel's hesitation was good enough answer for Josie. "I didn't think so. And that's why you and I are getting married come six o'clock tonight."
"Just one more thing," he said, looking grim. "I have to know—that story you told me about catching a pox. Is it true?"
Josie burst out laughing. "Of course it's not true. I overhead some of the girls at Lola's talking about how worried they were about such things, but I don't even know what a pox is."
Daniel smiled then, really smiled for the first time since she'd sprung her scheme.
Then he brought up a subject she'd given little, almost no thought to.
"In that case, I guess I'm trapped, no matter what," he said, still smiling. "Since you're so gee-whizzley smart, you must have figured out by now that means you are, too."
Chapter 15
Marriage.
The full implication of what she was about to do didn't actually hit Josie until Caleb walked her down the chapel's short aisle and she found herself standing before her husband-to-be and a priest. In fact, she didn't think about much of anything as the sisters draped her body in a pair of bedsheets they'd tacked together to form a reasonable substitute for a wedding gown, then topped her off with a veil made out of a lace altar cloth. Now all she could do was think—and fret about whether she was making the right decision.
Josie stole a glance at her groom, noting that he was the model of composure, his expression as solid and impenetrable as a pair of new barn doors. In profile, Daniel's strong, straight nose and serious brow gave his Indian heritage the dominant edge over his features, making him look the part of a full-blooded Cheyenne warrior. He'd tied his shoulder-length hair at the nape of his neck with a leather thong sporting stone arrowheads and a single eagle feather, a hurried bit of grooming that did nothing to lessen the image.
Someone—the priest, Josie assumed—had lent Daniel a clean white shirt and a long black coat that reached to mid-thigh. In keeping with his Cheyenne name, Daniel Two Skins, he wore his buckskin trousers and beaded moccasin boots beneath the jacket. No longer an invalid, he stood straight and tall, his two feet planted firmly on the floor, the picture of potent masculinity. Never before had Daniel struck her so profoundly as the product of two nations—or as a man. The very thought that soon she would call him 'husband' made Josie go weak in the knees.
Marriage.
She heard Father van der Velden say the words, "Dearly beloved," then caution that the vows of marriage were sacred, not to be taken lightly or frivolously. Josie immediately saw in that statement the opportunity to back out of this idiotic plan and take her chances in Miles City, without benefit of Sweetpea. She hadn't forgotten Daniel's insinuation that she was as trapped as he by this marriage.
"Do you, Josephine Baum, take Daniel McCord as your lawfully wedded husband?"
"Josephine?" Daniel whispered, laughing under his breath. "Josephine?"
His amusement over her given name rattled Josie so that she completely forgot she was having doubts about going through with the wedding. Before she realized what she'd done, she'd promised to love, honor, and obey Daniel McCord until death did them part. Surprisingly enough, he made those same vows to her in return, all without so much as a whispered protest.
It didn't seem real, this long religious ceremony with constant references to God and blessings and children, and yet when it finally drew to a close and Daniel was invited to kiss his bride, Josie's were the lips he brushed with his own. A moment later, when the priest christened her Mrs. Daniel McCord, she almost fell over in a dead faint. What in the world had she gotten herself into?
Josie did manage to recover well enough from the shock of hearing herself addressed as the wife of a half-breed to enjoy a wedding supper of roasted antelope and squash. She even took a perverse pleasure in Daniel's sour expression when Father van der Velden explained that the mission did not have facilities for married couples—which meant they would have to spend their first night as man and wife in separate quarters. It wasn't until she and Daniel took a private stroll around the mission grounds that the reality of what she'd let herself in for kicked her in the gut, good and hard.
Hips swaggering with a hard-muscled cockiness she hadn't noticed in him before, Daniel slipped his arm around Josie's waist as he guided her around the windmill and toward a copse of trees between the mission and the White House. The night was still and quiet, made for lovers without so much as a wispy cloud overhead. Clusters of sparkling stars filled the inky sky and the moon was bright, casting giant elongated shadows of Josie and Daniel as a couple in the path ahead. Mesmerized by the way their phantom selves blended together so smoothly, his hard edges melting into her rounded curves until they seemed one, Josie's mind wandered to mergings of another kind.
"I want to head back to the cabin at first light," said Daniel, disrupting her indecent thoughts. "Make sure the nuns wake you in plenty of time."
"What's the hurry?" she asked, glad for the distraction. "I was kind of looking forward to a nice leisurely breakfast tomorrow morning, and maybe a nap afterward. I haven't gotten a whole lot of rest lately."
"You can rest when the next storm hits. Before that happens, I've got to deliver supplies at the reservation. I live smack between the mission and Lame Deer, so we can easily make the ride in one day."
"We?"
"I want you to ride along with me."
Pausing near a barren cottonwood tree, Josie considered the request. She had no interest in visiting the home of a bunch of no-account savages, or of making sure that a group of murdering Indians had their bellies full when her own father and brother lay dead in their graves, never to feel hunger again.
"I'd just as soon you drop me off at the cabin," she said, sure that Daniel's invitation was simply a courtesy. "I want to check on Sweetpea, then I've got a lot of cleaning to do in that house."
Daniel braced himself against the tree just above her head. He was so close she could smell their wedding wine on his lips and the lingering scent of the alkaline soap the nuns had given them for their baths. She felt rather than saw his eyes on her, hot and inquisitive.
"I'll help you with the buffalo," Daniel said, still urging her for no reason Josie could think of, to join him. "And the cabin can wait. You'll probably enjo
y the ride out to Lame Deer. The deeper you get into reservation land, the thicker the forest. We might even scare up some game. You'd like that, wouldn't you?"
He lowered his head and leaned into her then, confusing Josie so, she wasn't sure what the question referred meant. She only knew that she wanted Daniel to kiss her, to hold her in his arms and kiss her until she couldn't think at all anymore.
She said, "Yes," giving him permission for just about anything he had in mind.
As if sensing her hunger, apparently sharing it too, Daniel raised Josie's chin with the tip of his finger, bringing her mouth within inches of his. He looked at her for a long moment, brooding and reflective, and then slowly ran his tongue along his bottom lip. Sure her torment was about to end, Josie closed her eyes and let her head fall back.
"Then it's settled," Daniel said in a whisper. "I haven't gotten around to training The Black for dragging a travois yet, and I doubt he'd take too kindly to it, so we'll haul most of the load behind your mount. Think you can handle it?"
Disappointed, feeling robbed and embarrassed, Josie opened her eyes again. "'I can handle about anything, I guess, but what about that poor mare? How's she going to feel about having a big load like that strapped to her hips?"
Daniel grinned, blue eyes glittering. "About the same way you're going to feel with me strapped to your hips, I expect—thrilled to be of some use for a change."
Josie felt her cheeks grow hot. Never had he spoken to her so blatantly, not even when he thought she was a whore.
"Bedding you is not a part of our bargain," she said, her tummy doing a slow, sensuous roll at the memory of the pleasures his touch could ignite. "I said I'd cook, sew, and clean. Nothing else."
"Bedding me became an unspoken part of our bargain the minute you took your vows." Still grinning, he ran a finger down the front of her dress, lingering there at the sensitive juncture of her thighs. "Why are you so worried about that part of our deal? You already know that you won't be the least bit disappointed."
Daniel had the audacity to wink at her then, irritating Josie even as he turned her insides into a kettle of hot mush. She tried to think of something equally glib in reply, but before she could, he pulled her close and lightly kissed her forehead.
