Her already wan face blanched further and a look of real alarm flitted into her eyes. Cam frowned. What kind of people were these that the sight of a harmless clergyman sleeping in a barn induced such anger and fear?
“Are you sure this is the one, Caroline?” the man with the gun asked.
The woman hesitated, her gaze fixed on Cam. One hand clutched and unclutched her skirt repeatedly, while the other cradled her belly protectively. “Y. . . yes,” she said, voice wavering. “That’s him.”
“Let’s get to it, then,” the farmer barked. Cam stumbled forward as the gun shoved between his shoulder blades.
The tall man, who wore a dark suit and carried some sort of book, stepped forward to meet him, eyebrows drawn together in a scowl. “You are a disgrace to the calling, brother,” he said in a funereal voice.
Cam could see now that the book was a Bible, and the dark-suited man a fellow clergyman. “I’d hardly call it a disgrace to seek shelter from a storm in a man’s barn,” Cam said. “If it’s such a grave offense in these parts, I’ll be happy to pay for the privilege.” He started to reach into his waistcoat to retrieve his money pouch, but another sharp jab from the shotgun stopped him.
“You’ve insulted me enough, preacher,” the farmer barked. “Don’t try my patience further. Now, let’s get on with it.”
The black-coated preacher looked to the young woman, Caroline. Head down, she came to stand at Cam’s side. Her whole body trembled. What did these brutes mean, alarming her this way? “Are you quite all right?” he asked.
“Please!” Her voice, though soft, rang with desperation. “Just do this. . . for me.”
“Do what? I don’t understand –”
“Dearly beloved,” The preacher opened his Bible and began to speak in a sing-song voice. “We are gathered here in the sight of God and man to unite this man and this woman in holy matrimony.”
“Holy mat–!” Cam tried to pull away, but the woman held his arm so tightly he could no longer feel his fingers, while the old man shoved the gun barrel up against his spine until he was sure he would break in two. Cam held up his free hand and did his best to quell the panic rising in his throat. “I believe you’ve made a bit of a mistake here, gentlemen. Why would I wish to marry this young woman?” He rolled his eyes toward the girl at his side. She was shaking again, clinging to his arm as if it were the only thing keeping her standing.
“By gum, you’ll make an honest woman of her or I will shoot you.” Eyes blazing with some crazed fever, the old man pulled back the trigger on the shotgun. Cam’s knees turned to jelly. He closed his eyes and tried to think of some prayer. Despite his training, he wasn’t certain he was ready to meet his maker just yet.
“Daddy says if we don’t marry, he’ll turn me out.” The woman didn’t look at him when she spoke, but her fingers tightened around his arm, and every word buried itself deep in his brain. “My baby needs a father.” She rubbed her belly again, stretching the thin fabric of her dress tightly over her swollen womb. “A child ought to have two parents to raise it up right.”
Her desperation tore at him. He knew all about being ‘turned out’ as it were, though his father had not been so coarse as to threaten him with a shotgun. Wanting to comfort her, he slipped his arm around the girl’s shoulders. She turned toward him, pressed against him, her head buried on his shoulder. She was soft, and smelled of mint and sunshine.
The other two men glared at him with eyes full of menace, but their hatred hardly seemed to matter in the face of the girl’s helplessness and pain. “Why are you doing this to her?” he demanded. “Why are you putting her through this ordeal? She should be resting.”
“You should have thought of that before you planted that baby in her.” The farmer raised the shotgun and squinted down the barrel at him. “Now let’s get to it.”
The accusation had the impact of a blow. “You think I –” He tried to pull away from the girl, but she buried her face more deeply into his shoulder.
“Please,” she whispered. “Help me out of this and we’ll work things out later.”
Something nudged him in the side. With a start, he realized it was the baby — that innocent, fatherless being who’d never asked to be a part of any of this. Heart pounding, he tried again to pray, but words deserted him. The farmer and the preacher continued to glare at him as if he were the devil incarnate, while the girl clung to him as if to the holy Savior.
The preacher seemed to take his silence for acquiescence. The man opened the Bible again and began to read: “Do you, Caroline Allen, take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband, to honor and obey, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, ‘til death do you part?”
Caroline raised her head and sniffed. “I do.”
“What’s your name, mister?”
Cam blinked. Could he really go through with this? He looked at the man with the shotgun, then at the woman at his side. Did he have any choice? “Camden Michael Worthington,” he said, accenting every regal syllable for all it was worth.
“Hmmph!” The preacher narrowed his eyes at him. “Well, Reverend Worthington, do you take Caroline to be your lawfully wedded wife, to honor and cherish, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, so long as you both shall live?”
He took a deep breath and swallowed hard. In that respect, he supposed it wasn’t much different from leaping off Magdalen Bridge at Oxford into the freezing water of the River Cherwell. He’d done that more than once and lived to tell the tale — who was to say he couldn’t do the same now? “I do.”
“Then by the power invested in me by the church and by the state of Texas, I now pronounce you man and wife.” The Bible snapped shut with a sound like a thunderclap and the preacher speared Cam with a withering look and spoke words that made his heart grow cold. “What God has joined together, let no man put asunder.”
Table of Contents
Copyright
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Epilogue
Other Books by the Author
The Runaway Excerpt
Educating Abbie: Titled Texans -- Book Two Page 29
