Bittersweet Bride

by Denise Hunter

  Clay blinked. Was he, only moments before, about to kiss this woman? What in the world had he been thinking? She was the very kind of woman he had sworn to avoid. A wealthy, spoiled debutante. And now he could add lying to her list of faults. What had he been thinking? He gave a brittle laugh as he left the kitchen. That was the problem. He hadn’t been thinking at all.

  Nine

  What had she been thinking? Mara’s hands, holding the reins, still shook. She was furious with him only moments before. How had one look changed her emotions so dramatically?

  Her heart beat faster as she remembered the look in his eyes. He had been angry himself, and as Mara pumped water in the basin she was sure he was going to fire her. So, she’d reasoned, she may as well tell him the whole truth about Sadie. She had expected him to get even angrier at her deception. The last thing she’d expected was for his expression to soften. She had nearly drowned in the warm pool of his eyes.

  He had been about to kiss her. And for the first time in her life Mara thought she might have allowed it. Many had tried, but she had always played coy and turned away. She had never wanted a man to kiss her—until now. She was sure he wouldn’t have turned away if Beth hadn’t entered the room.

  How could she have wanted to kiss such an infuriating man? They had nothing in common. He worked a ranch; she enjoyed a life of luxury. He was religious; she wasn’t. He was half-Indian; she was a descendant of royalty. He had no wealth; she had—

  Well, she supposed they did have one thing in common. With their money gone, maybe they weren’t so different after all. Still, her mother would have a fit if she knew Mara had almost kissed a half-Indian man. Why, if she married the man, her mother would have Indian grandbabies.

  The thought caused a ripple of laughter to catch in her throat. Wouldn’t her mother be fit to be tied?

  The thought of marriage brought a jolt of reality. What was she thinking? As attractive as Clay might be, he was frustrating and stubborn. But, she had to admit, the man had integrity. She wondered if it had anything to do with his religion. Did his devotion to God cause him to be a man of his word, a man who treated his workers fairly, a man who commanded respect?

  She remembered how unaffected he had been toward her from the beginning. Why, even her best charms and beauty hadn’t worked on him.

  At least she’d thought they hadn’t worked. But, she reminded herself, hadn’t the man almost kissed her? Perhaps he wasn’t as unaffected as she had thought.

  She felt a moment’s satisfaction; then reason took hold. It didn’t matter if he was attracted to her. She no longer wanted him, and she had a feeling he was already regretting the indiscretion in the kitchen. He had made it clear he thought her a spoiled child. And the way he continued to call her Fancy Pants rankled her.

  She was glad tomorrow was Sunday, and she didn’t have to work at the ranch. She could sleep late, laze around the house all day and, best of all, avoid seeing one Clay Stedman.

  ❧

  The sound of a screeching voice woke Mara, and she rolled over in a haze of sleep, fighting the call of wakefulness.

  “You owe me, Lawton!” The words slurred into her ears, and she unwillingly opened her eyes.

  “I let you ’ave her—what’d I get in return?”

  It was a woman’s voice, Mara realized, and it was coming from outside. Curiosity got the best of her, and she slipped out of bed and peeked through her lacy curtains.

  The plump woman staggered in front of the house. A bottle lay on its side at her feet.

  “You don’ wanna let me in—thas fine! Whas all the townspeople gonna think o’ the way you cheated me?”

  She bellowed the words so loudly that Mara was sure the whole town had already heard. What would such a woman want with her father? She was a worthless drunk. A movement to her right caught her eye, and she saw that the church crowd was letting out. The woman saw it too.

  “See, now—’ere they come, Lawton. You don’ pay up, an’ I’m gonna tell ’em how you cheated me!” She gestured grandly and nearly stumbled backward.

  Families were mounting their wagons, and several began walking home. They would all be passing by soon. They could probably hear the drunk even from where they were. Mara slipped on her robe and ran down the stairs. Where was her father? They had to get rid of this woman or be embarrassed in front of the whole town.

  She ran toward her parents’ room as the woman screeched outside. “They took my baby girl! And look ’ow they treat me! Won’ even let me in—”

  Mara raised her hand to knock as her father opened the door and rushed past her. “Daddy, what’s—”

  “Not now, Mara.”

  She followed her father all the way to the front door which he had left open in his haste.

  “Hush, Edith!” her father hissed at the woman.

  The crowd from church neared, and two women lingered in the street. Mara felt like sticking her tongue out at them. She could just imagine the gossip they would spread.

  “They took her away and for what?” The woman lurched unsteadily on her feet, talking to the townspeople now and ignoring her father.

  “I gave up my own seed and now look how poor they done left me.”

  “Hush, now, and I’ll give—”

  The woman spied Mara peeking from behind the door.

  Mara froze under her icy blue gaze.

  “Look! There she is! A real beauty I gave ’em and look ’ow they’ve treated me!”

  Confusion warred in Mara’s mind. What was the woman going on about? Why, to hear her talk, you would think she had given Mara to her parents.

  The thought spun crazily in her head. She was half-aware of the townspeople driving by, hearing every word the woman said. They looked straight at Mara. She slammed the door shut.

  It was the ravings of a drunkard. The woman was intoxicated; there was no doubt about that. But what if her words held the truth?

  Don’t be silly! she told herself. My parents are Clyde and Letitia Lawson. I’m the descendant of Queen Elizabeth. Practically royalty. They didn’t even know that woman.

  “Hush, Edith.” Her father’s words replayed in her mind like a buzzing fly.

  Maybe she didn’t know the woman, but her father clearly did.

  In a cloud of confusion she walked up the stairs. It couldn’t be true, could it? Her parents would have told her, wouldn’t they, if they’d adopted her? She entered the room and walked slowly to the mirror. Scanning her face she looked for proof of her parentage and settled on her blue eyes. Dread snaked up her spine as she remembered the same blue of the woman’s eyes.

  Her breath caught. No! It can’t be!

  Snatches of memories clawed at her mind. The time she asked her father how she acquired her blue eyes when both her parents had brown. The time she asked about her birth, and her mother brushed aside her question. Little things that meant nothing to her at the time—but meant everything now.

  She walked to the window. Her father had everything under control now. The crowd was dissipating. The woman staggered away, her hand clutching what appeared to be a wad of money.

  He had paid her off then—paid her to leave them alone. But the damage had been done. She saw a little girl pointing at their house. People were staring, talking.

  Mara didn’t know which was worse. That she was likely the child of a drunk or that the whole town now knew.

  The sting of it hit her hard, and her stomach clenched in knots. She blinked back tears. Everything had been taken from her. It was only a matter of time before people found out she had no wealth. And now her own parents had been taken from her.

  She was a descendant not of royalty but of a pathetic drunk.

  Sobs rose in her throat, but she stuffed them down. Everything she had ever believed herself to be was gone. Everything she had flaunted was false.

  If she had untangled the woman’s words, surely the church crowd had too. It would take no time at all for the gossip to spread through the town that
Mara Lawton was the child of a destitute, delirious, drunken woman. Everyone would laugh. How would she face the town? She wished she could stay in her room forever. Who was Mara Lawton if not a wealthy descendant of royalty?

  She peered in the mirror, wiping at the tear that had escaped. Even her beauty had been flawed by freckles and calluses. And with Sadie gone her hair would never look as it had before. Besides, other women were around who were nearly as pretty as she. Sara McClain, Cassy Cooper—she didn’t have much on them.

  And at least they were married! She was practically a spinster. True, she’d had proposals, but none she’d taken seriously. Now who would want her? Who would want a woman whose family was poor, whose mother was a drunk, and whose homemaking skills were virtually nonexistent?

  No one, that’s who. Even Doc Hathaway wouldn’t want her now that her family had lost its wealth. She would become a spinster everyone whispered about behind her back. They would laugh about how boastful she used to be about her wealth, her ancestors, and her beauty. They would laugh about how poor and homely she looked in her homespun clothes.

  How strange that the distant words of the preacher rose in her mind. It is hard to believe how the beautiful bittersweet vine could be so dangerous. How could something so attractive cause so much damage?

  Mara wiped the words from her mind. She didn’t want to think about the vine or how it sounded hauntingly like her. She didn’t want to think about what she had done to others or how cruelly they would treat her once they knew her plight. But, for the first time in her life, Mara wondered if that wasn’t exactly what she deserved.

  Ten

  All day long Clay couldn’t get Mara off his mind. He’d heard what that drunken woman had said after church. Anyone with sense could cipher her meaning. Was it just the mad rantings of a drunk, or was Mara her daughter? If it was true, he wondered if Mara had known or if it had come as a nasty surprise. Given what little he saw of her face in the doorway, he would guess it was a shock. Either way, the folks of Cedar Springs would no doubt have the juicy morsel spread far and wide within the week.

  He clenched his jaw. It was a shame folks couldn’t keep bad news to themselves. He had already heard tales of how Mr. Lawton had supposedly lost his fortune to some bad venture. He didn’t know if it was true, but if it was, Mara had a slew of unpleasant facts to reckon with.

  That had been one of the reasons he hadn’t fired her for deceiving him. It seemed inconceivable that the highfalutin Mara Lawton might need the scant sum he paid her. But if the rumors were true—

  He refused to dwell on gossip. Even if the rumors were untrue, it wasn’t as if a line of women was waiting to take her place. And he needed someone to take care of Beth until his aunt returned. He wasn’t sure how they were going to get decent food. Maybe Mara would get better with practice. He hoped sooner rather than later, or they’d all be wasted away by the time his aunt returned.

  Beth was sitting beside him and paused between bites of bread to question him. “Clay, what was wrong with that woman?”

  He took longer to chew his food. “You mean the one in front of the Lawtons’ house?”

  She nodded and took another bite.

  He sighed. “She was drunk. People act funny when they’ve had too much corn whiskey.”

  “Like Lightfoot and Blackclaw?”

  He thought of his mother’s people, many of whom had turned to the white man’s drink like a baby to milk. “That’s right.”

  “Why was she talking ’bout Mara like that?”

  “That’s none of our concern, Beth.”

  “I know, but she acted like—”

  “Mind your manners,” he said more firmly than usual. She flinched, and he softened his voice. “Enough gossip’ll be going around without us helping things along.” And that was a fact. Between the rumors of lost wealth and this latest, the town would be making Mara pay for every boast she had ever made, every heart she had strung along.

  Despite her uppity ways he felt sorry for her. She was about to get a strong dose of her own medicine, and it wasn’t going to taste so sweet.

  ❧

  Mara woke with puffy eyes from yesterday’s confrontation with her parents. She could hardly believe that everything the woman had implied was true. Snatches of the conversation came to mind.

  “Edith used to be our maid. . . .”

  “. . .out of wedlock. . .”

  “. . .left on our doorstep. . .”

  As if finding out about her parentage wasn’t distressing enough, finding out that she was given away like cast-off clothing chipped away at her pride.

  “How could you not tell me? How could you have lied to me all this time?”

  “We did what we thought best. . . .”

  “We love you as our own, Mara. . . .”

  “You’ve always been my little princess. . . .”

  Her father had said the last with tears in his eyes. Her mother had been distraught, nearly to the point of fainting, but Mara couldn’t find it in her to feel badly. They should have told her. They shouldn’t have let her live a lie.

  All the reassurances of their love did little to patch her wounded spirit. Her world was shaken—couldn’t they see that? She felt as if her whole life had been a lie: the wealth, her royal heritage. Nothing she had believed about herself was true.

  After slipping into a gown, Mara tried to arrange her hair. She knew better than to attempt to curl it, but perhaps it would look all right if she pulled the front up and secured it at the crown. She fumbled with the brush and clip. Her silky hair would simply not stay up. How had Sadie done it?

  Frustration rose from deep within her, and she threw the clip across the room. Her hair hung straight down like curtains on each side of her face. She didn’t even know how to braid it. Noting the rising sun just outside her window, she decided to leave her hair as it was. She had no one to impress this morning.

  Still, her stomach clenched at the thought of seeing Clay again. Would it be awkward after the moment they had shared in the kitchen? Would he say anything about the drunken woman?

  She fretted all the way to the ranch. Another breakfast to prepare. Help me not to ruin it again. The words popped into her head, and Mara wondered if they were in fact a prayer.

  When she arrived, she began preparing flapjacks. She put water on to boil the eggs. Surely she could handle that. Maybe the men would be disgruntled with such a scant breakfast. She thought of the last fare. No, she was sure they would be relieved to have edible food—if she could make it edible.

  She poured dabs of batter into the frying pan and watched them spread out into larger circles. So far everything was going well. Beth skimmed the milk and set the table while Mara kept watch over the flapjacks. She would not ruin them, she resolved, even if she had to stand there and watch them every moment.

  She attempted to lift a corner of a flapjack to see if it had browned. She had to scrape against the bottom of the pan. Oh, no, they are sticking!

  She had lifted the corner enough to see that they were ready to be turned, but when she tried to pry them loose from the pan, they tore. She kept at it until all the pieces had been turned. But they were no longer circles, only torn shapes of various sizes.

  “Beth!”

  Moments later the girl approached.

  “Why are they sticking to the pan?”

  Beth looked into the black pan, now coated with a burnt layer. “Didn’t you use any butter?”

  “Butter?”

  “It keeps them from sticking.”

  Relief seized her at the easy solution. Butter! She could handle that. “Bring it here, and will you put the eggs in the water too?” Mara scraped the remnants of flapjacks onto a scrap heap. She would start over and do it right this time.

  Beth returned with the butter, and she coated the pan, letting it sizzle and pop before pouring in more batter. This time they turned easily.

  A rush of accomplishment flooded her. She could cook. It was simply a ma
tter of learning how. When she turned out the last flapjacks, the men began arriving. She looked at the stacks of golden cakes. They were perfect.

  “Are you sure the eggs are done?” she asked Beth.

  The girl shrugged.

  Mara took one and peeled away the shell. She was determined to serve only good food today. She sliced through the egg white to see a beautifully set yolk. With a smile she carried the food to the table.

  Later she realized she had been so busy that she had forgotten about her troubles.

  ❧

  That afternoon, as Clay was stringing barbed wire, his thoughts returned to Mara. He had wondered if she would sulk today, in light of what she may have learned about her parentage. But nothing in her demeanor gave that away. Clay had to admit, though, that he had been somewhat distracted as she served breakfast.

  While his hired hands complained about having no meat for breakfast, Clay could only stare at Mara. Her hair hung in a straight, silky cascade to her waist. Gone were the curls and fripperies. No jeweled clips or spray of flowers. Just beautiful, golden hair.

  It slipped forward over her shoulder as she was serving the meal, and he saw her tuck it behind her ear twice. The simplistic style gave her a look of vulnerability and youth. He hardly tasted the food, but it must have been all right.

  Their eyes had met only once. She was across the table refilling Tucker’s glass when her lashes raised, exposing her clear, blue eyes. He was taken away by her beauty. They looked at each other for a moment while Clay forgot about the others at the table. It was just the two of them.

  When she overfilled Tucker’s glass, her face bloomed in color as she dabbed at the spill on the table. She hadn’t looked at him again.

  ❧

  Mara was feeling almost chipper after breakfast. Even the thought of having to do laundry hadn’t put a damper on her mood. It wasn’t until Beth asked an innocent question that the euphoria of success evaporated.

  “Who was that lady at your house yesterday?” Beth continued wringing out the wet clothes.