Briggs glanced down at Sarah. Her heart tightened with dread. This was her worst nightmare come true.
“It seems we have a great deal in common,” Garrison remarked, lowering his hand when Briggs refused to shake it.
“I doubt that,” Briggs said. “What do you want?”
“What do I want? I should think that’s obvious.”
Briggs set the box down on the boardwalk and took a step forward, crowding Garrison up against the wall. Sarah had not known her husband to be a violent man, but at this moment, she saw another side of him, and wasn’t sorry, if it meant Garrison would feel intimidated. Or possibly get punched in the nose.
And yet, she feared for Briggs’s safety, because Garrison possessed no scruples. He might have a gun or a knife up his sleeve.
“Don’t worry, Sarah,” Garrison said. “He just wants to intimidate me.”
“Damn right I do.” Briggs said nothing more. Seconds of taut silence passed, until Sarah touched her husband’s arm.
“Briggs, let’s just go home. He’s not worth it.”
At first, Briggs didn’t respond. Then, thankfully, he stepped back, but not without saying his piece. “I know what you did to her, you slimy bastard, so why don’t you go back where you came from before I tear you limb from limb.”
Garrison raised a haughty eyebrow. “I didn’t travel all this way to be bullied by you.”
“I don’t care what you came for,” Briggs said, turning away. “You’re not to speak to my wife ever again. Do you understand me?”
The challenge between them hung in the air while the rain beat down on the overhang. Sarah’s heart thumped wildly in her chest. Her breaths came in quick, short gasps.
Sarah shot a look toward Garrison, begging him with her eyes. Please, don’t say anything more. Just let us go….
A slow, crooked smile played across his face. “Your wife? I think you’re mistaken about that, sir.”
“Briggs, let’s just go.” Sarah tried to drag him away, but Garrison followed.
Briggs jabbed a finger at him. “No, you’re mistaken, you foul piece of trash, because Sarah and I were married at the courthouse a month ago.”
Garrison shook his head. “You may have signed your name on the dotted line, but she still isn’t your wife.”
“Why the hell not?”
Garrison’s dark eyes narrowed, and Sarah feared she might faint dead away at her husband’s feet.
“Because she’s mine.”
* * *
Briggs felt as if he’d been struck across the back with a wooden plank.
He laughed once, thinking this conversation absurd, but somewhere beneath the denial, he knew something was wrong. He tried to make sense of it, wanting nothing more than to believe his wife over this gutter scoundrel, but all his thoughts were becoming scrambled. For some reason—and it shamed him to admit it—his instinct moved him to doubt Sarah.
“You don’t look as surprised as I thought you might,” Garrison said with interest. “No more arguments?”
Briggs felt Sarah’s uneasy presence at his side.
“Let me explain,” she pleaded.
Let me explain?
He couldn’t bring himself to look at her. He knew he should hear her out, but he just couldn’t listen right now.
“There’s nothing to explain,” Garrison said. “It’s quite simple. She married me, then perhaps a little hastily, she married you. Fickle little thing, isn’t she.”
Briggs wanted to say something. Anything. But words would not come.
He heard Sarah’s voice like a distant echo. “Briggs, please listen to me—”
He cut her off by holding up his hand and speaking to Garrison. “I have a marriage certificate.”
Garrison dug into his breast pocket. “How brilliant. So do I.” He unfolded a piece of paper and held it up. “See for yourself.”
The print blurred before Briggs’s eyes. He saw Sarah’s signature, and Garrison’s. A sickening lump settled in his gut.
“See?” Garrison said.
But Briggs could not see. He could not accept this. Sarah was his. They’d spent the past month together on his farm, working together, learning to trust each other, growing to love each other. They’d made promises….
“Briggs, there’s so much more to this that you don’t know about,” Sarah said, her voice desperate. “If only you’d let me explain….”
Finally, he met her gaze. All he saw was the woman who had hidden secrets from him on their wedding day. He had asked her if she loved this man, and she had said yes at the time. Now, to learn that she had actually married him?
Sarah touched his shoulder, but he shrugged her hand away.
“Please, Briggs.”
He could not stay here. He had to leave. If he didn’t, he might say, or do, something he’d come to regret.
He hopped down into the street, his boots splashing into a puddle. He felt the cold, hard rain battering against his hat as he tried to make sense of what he’d just learned.
If this man was Sarah’s true husband—that meant the past month on his farm with her was nothing but a charade.
Truthfully, it wasn’t all that surprising. He’d been expecting something like this from the beginning. When had love ever remained? When had it not been taken away from him?
Briggs climbed into the wagon and gathered up the reins, staring straight ahead. He flicked water into the air as a damp chill invaded his clothing. Raindrops trickled from his eyelashes onto his cheeks.
As he started to pull away, he heard a muffled cry from somewhere beyond his barely functioning consciousness. He tried to block it out, but it cut through his pain and wrath like a blade.
Don’t look back, he told himself over and over as he turned the wagon toward home. But the scream punctured his resolve yet again.
He pulled the horses to a halt.
He sat there, paralyzed, water streaming down his face. He felt like he was surrounded by a thick fog and couldn’t find his way forward. The muffled screams were coming at him from somewhere outside this debilitating stupor. Sarah. She was crying for him to come back.
He swung around in the seat. Garrison was dragging her by her broken arm, pulling her along the boardwalk while she struggled and pleaded for help.
Good God—what was wrong with him?
Leaping from the wagon, Briggs sprinted toward them. His boots splashed through the mud. Rain battered his face, but he felt none of it as he flew up onto the boardwalk. Sarah was shouting and causing a scene. She turned back just as Briggs overtook them and punched Garrison in the face.
Garrison stumbled backwards, onto the boardwalk. The whole world went quiet and still as Briggs took hold of Sarah’s good hand and led her toward the wagon. He scooped her up into his arms, set her onto the seat, and in a matter of seconds, he was flicking the reins again and the horses were galloping away, mud splattering everywhere.
* * *
Sarah tried to control her tears, but couldn’t. Cold rain struck her cheeks as they sped into the wind. Sobbing, gasping for breath, she clung to the side of the wagon as they skidded around a corner. She said a silent thank you that Briggs had come back for her.
Turning her gaze toward him, she wondered miserably if it even mattered. He was staring straight ahead, all emotion absent from his dark expression. Yes, he had rescued her from Garrison, but had he lost all feeling for her in the process?
“Briggs, I’m so sorry,” she shouted over the noise of the clattering hooves.
“Why didn’t you tell me about that?” he said. “Is it true? Did you actually marry him?”
“It’s complicated,” she tried to explain. “I didn’t tell you because, at first, I was afraid you wouldn’t take me. Then, after our wedding night, I was afraid you’d send me back. Then, I just…I fell in love with you and I didn’t want you to know. I was ashamed of how stupid I was.”
“Ashamed? Feeling embarrassed or remorseful is the least of your problems, Sarah. There
’s the law to consider here. Do you not know that bigamy is illegal?” He focused on the road ahead and slapped the reins. “Yah!”
Sarah, swiveling in the seat to face him, clutched his sleeve in her fist. “You haven’t given me a chance to explain what happened. And can you honestly say you wouldn’t have sent me away after our wedding night, if you knew? You almost left me behind just now, after everything we’d been through these past few weeks. I thought we’d fixed things. I thought there was hope for us, but you almost left me behind!”
“I’m not the one who should be defending myself,” he said. “You are.”
“If you’d given me a chance to speak back there, I would have told you what really happened. Now, I’m not even sure it makes any difference.”
She saw the muscle in his jaw tighten. After a few seconds, he pulled the reins and slowed the horses to a walk, then met her gaze and studied her face. “What do you mean, what really happened?”
Sarah wiped the wetness from her cheeks. “It’s not as simple as Garrison made it out to be. I didn’t just marry him and then marry you. I wouldn’t do that.”
“Are you telling me you’re divorced? Or that you had it annulled?”
She shook her head, wishing it could be so. “No. But when I married you, I honestly believed I was free to do so.”
He pulled the wagon to a stop on the edge of town. “What are you trying to tell me?”
“That my marriage to Garrison was never a true one.”
“Why not?”
“Because he already had a wife. Our wedding was a sham. He was just trying to trick me and use me.”
Briggs sat stone-still, blinking from the rain. “You mean he is guilty of bigamy?”
“Yes. But I didn’t know that when I married him. He told me on our wedding night, just after we’d…”
Briggs held up a hand to stop her. “Why didn’t you tell me this before? If you were innocent, you could have reported him. It could have been straightened out before you ever came here.”
“You wouldn’t have wanted me if you knew. And besides that, Garrison threatened me. He said if I told anyone, he’d say I knew what I was doing, that I was a con artist, just like him. Then I saw your ad and I had the chance for a decent life with an honest man. Someone I could respect and start a family with. I didn’t think I’d ever get the chance to have those things if anyone knew about my past. I thought if I could keep the whole thing a secret—at least until some time had gone by—I could straighten things out later. But I made a mistake when I got on the train in Boston. I should have used a different name, or disguised myself.”
“You make it sound as if your only mistake was in getting caught.”
She shook her head. “I don’t expect you to understand. I wish I could go back and undo everything.”
They sat in silence a moment, both of them soaking wet. Sarah couldn’t stop her teeth from chattering.
“So what does this mean?” Briggs asked, looking down at the leather lines he squeezed in his big hands. “Are we married or aren’t we?”
She didn’t want to answer that question, but she knew if she wasn’t completely honest with him now, all would be lost. The time for secrets had come to an end. “I’m not sure of anything anymore.”
He turned to her. “Why should I believe you after what you’ve kept from me?”
“Because I love you, Briggs,” she replied. “You know I do. Surely you’ve felt it. We’ve come so far together. I was just so afraid you would be disappointed in me and stop loving me.”
He bowed his head.
“In my heart, I’m your wife,” she continued. “You’re the only man I will ever love. Isn’t that what’s most important?”
He frowned and shook his head. “You tell me that you love me, but all along you knew you were lying to me. What kind of love can there be without trust?”
“Briggs—”
“No, you have to answer me. How do you expect me to respond to all this? How do you expect me to love you now, when I don’t have the slightest idea who you really are?”
Sarah shuddered at his disillusioned tone. “You say there can’t be love without trust. But I trust you. With my life.”
He tore his gaze away from her. “Maybe that’s because I never lied to you.”
With growing resentment, Sarah thought about everything they’d been through, how she’d been treated after their wedding night, how Briggs had been so punishing toward her. “Never lied to me? What about Isabelle? You didn’t tell me any of that. I had to find out from Martha!”
“That has nothing to do with this.”
“Why not?”
“Because it wasn’t the same. I didn’t lie about Isabelle. I just never mentioned her. There was no point.”
Sarah felt her blood quicken in her veins. “It was exactly the same. And yes, there was a point. She was the reason you sent for me. I was just a way for you to forget her. You were using me just as much as I was using you.”
Briggs squeezed the reins in his hands.
“I know you weren’t over her when you married me,” Sarah went on. “So if Garrison finds a way to destroy what we have, will you order another wife and forget about me, too? As if the past month never happened?”
“Of course not.” Brigg’s voice was low and controlled.
“If you were truly over Isabelle,” Sarah continued, “you wouldn’t fight so hard against trusting me or loving me.”
He dropped the reins and stood up in the wagon, towering over Sarah. “I told you—that has nothing to do with this. I am over her. I’m just not over the….” It was as if he was only now understanding the emotions he’d worked so hard to ignore all this time.
“The what?” she pressed him.
His tone softened. “The fact that the people I care about always get taken away. They leave, or they die.”
He sat down again and his expression was completely open. “I watched my family die, Sarah. Right in front of my eyes. My mother, my father, my baby sisters and little brother. There was nothing I could do to stop it, and I thought I was going to die, too. I don’t know why I was spared.”
Fighting tears, Sarah covered his hands with hers. “Oh, Briggs.”
“I didn’t want to love you,” he said. “I worked hard not to, but then I gave myself permission to hope, and now I find out that you were never mine to begin with.”
“I am yours, Briggs,” she said. “I’ve been yours since the moment we walked into the courthouse and you made me feel safe and cared for, as if everything was going to be all right.”
He bowed his head. “But you were Garrison’s before you were mine. You spoke vows. You promised to love him until death parted you. Did you really believe you would? Did it mean anything to you when you said it?”
Ashamed, she tried to find a way to answer him. But how could she, when she didn’t even know the answer herself?
“Did it?” Briggs pressed.
Unable to look him in the eye, she nodded. “I wrongly believed in him. And perhaps, if he had turned out to be a good man, I would still be with him.”
“You promised him a lifetime.”
She quickly looked up. “And you promised me one, too, when you didn’t know me at all.”
Briggs did not respond. He simply stared at the gray horizon, blurred with rain and mist, while he considered everything.
“Please, believe me,” Sarah said. “I thought I was free to marry you. I was certain my marriage to Garrison was not valid, and over the past month I’ve grown closer to you than I ever was to him. To anyone.”
“The past month….” Briggs gazed up at her, despondently. “In all that time, I never really knew who you were.”
His tone sent a chill down her spine. “But you know now,” she said. “I promise, you know everything.”
“Maybe so,” he said, uncertainly.
Panic shot through her as he picked up the reins and flicked them against the horses’ broad backs, turn
ing them around.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“Back to see George,” he replied. “He’s a solicitor, and I want to know what’s real and what isn’t—at least in the eyes of the law.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Each of them drenched to the core with rain, Sarah and Briggs pulled into George’s yard. They had not spoken a word since Briggs had turned the wagon around. Without waiting for him to assist her, Sarah climbed down and hurried toward the front door to escape the downpour. Her arm ached and throbbed with every move she made, but the pain in her heart was worse by a long shot.
She pulled the front door open, and shivering, entered the warm, dry house. George met her in the front hall. “Sarah, you’re soaked. Come in by the stove.” He led her into the kitchen. “Where’s Briggs?”
The front door squeaked open and she heard her husband’s boots tap against the step. George immediately went to meet him. “What’s wrong with you?” he demanded. “Sarah could have caught her death out there.”
As much as she could tell from the kitchen, Briggs didn’t answer. She wondered if he even cared. He walked into the room and didn’t waste a single second on civilities. “George, we have a legal problem and we need your help.”
George followed behind Briggs and gave Sarah a questioning glance. “Maybe we should go into the parlor.”
Briggs gestured for Sarah to lead the way. She went in and sat on the sofa in front of the window, and George handed her a blanket that was draped over the back of a chair. He helped her wrap it around her shoulders.
“I suppose you should be the one to explain it,” Briggs said. “You know what happened better than I do.”
Sarah hesitated, wondering how she would ever get through this. Her stomach felt like it was bleeding fire. “It’s something very private, I’m afraid,”
George removed his spectacles. “You may be assured of my utmost discretion.”
“Thank you.” This was proving more difficult than she expected. She kept her eyes lowered. “I…I made a mistake before I married Briggs, and now I’m afraid it’s going to ruin everything.”
“What sort of mistake?”
She stood and walked to the unlit fireplace, staring numbly at the white china bowl on the mantel. How could she say this to George, her brother-in-law, who had always made her feel so welcome? But if she was going to set things right with her husband, she had to find a way.
Mail Order Prairie Bride: (A Western Historical Romance) (Dodge City Brides Book 1) Page 18
