His Magical Bride (The Brides of Paradise Ranch (Spicy Version) Book 10)

by Merry Farmer

  “Well…she…she was the one riding with him. Clearly she bewitched him.”

  More chuckles rose from the audience. Talia’s heart thumped harder. On second thought, it looked as though Howard had come up with a perfect idea after all. He certainly seemed to think so. Howard sat on a chair to the back of the dais, grinning from ear-to-ear over everything that was being said.

  “Is Athos Strong here?” Mr. Gunn asked, sitting straighter.

  “No.” Hubert stood at the back of the room. Beside him, Bebe sank lower in her chair. As soon as Talia saw the outraged expressions on Vivian and Melinda’s faces at the sight of their sister and Vivian’s baby sitting with Hubert, she knew why. “No, Pop’s at work,” Hubert went on. “But I might be able to help.”

  Mr. Gunn nodded. “Hubert, is it not true that the railroad had telegraphed ahead, stating that the influenza epidemic had reached such proportions in Rawlins and farther east that the train was held up?”

  Hubert nodded. “That’s true, Mr. Gunn. Seems they’d been having problems with ’flu for a couple of days.”

  Mr. Gunn turned his attention back to Mrs. Abernathy. “So it would stand to reason that Mr. Montgomery contracted the disease in one of the towns he stopped in to do business well before meeting Mrs. Knighton.”

  “Or that the witch brought down all of those towns with her curses,” Mrs. Abernathy railed.

  The laughter that rose in the courtroom this time was enough to shock Mrs. Abernathy to her senses. Talia cringed as the realization that she was making a fool of herself dawned in Mrs. Abernathy’s face. The woman was horrible, but even though she’d landed herself in the hot water, Talia felt bad for her.

  “She tried to seduce my husband,” Mrs. Abernathy shouted, a desperate edge to her voice.

  That set off another round of whispers and snorting from the crowd. Dr. Abernathy looked up from his newspaper at last, glaring at his wife.

  “She did, I swear,” Mrs. Abernathy rushed on. “The whole time she was working for him, poor Leonard couldn’t keep his eyes off of her. It’s sorcery, I tell you!”

  This time, the guffaws that filled the courtroom had an unkind sting to them.

  “Does that mean I’m a witch too?” one of the painted ladies sitting in the back row called out. her hair so blonde it was almost white and a bosom so large it was close to spilling over the top of her corset. “Because I’ve gotten those looks and more.”

  The audience laughed outright. Dr. Abernathy shot to his feet. He muttered something as he edged his way to the aisle. From her side of the room, Talia couldn’t make out much more than the words “insolence” and “finished.” When Dr. Abernathy reached the aisle, he marched to the door, glaring at the blonde whore with a familiarity that made Talia cringe.

  “Leonard!” Mrs. Abernathy shouted, rushing to the aisle and chasing after him. “Leonard, you get back here!” She picked up her skirts and burst into a run, fleeing through the back door.

  The crowd laughed. Talia blushed for the woman. And yet, she might have just saved herself a heap of embarrassment.

  Mr. Gunn adjusted his glasses and went on. “Do you have any more accusations?” he asked Vivian and Melinda.

  “Yes.” Vivian stood, sweeping to the center of the room and facing the audience like a singer about to burst into an aria. “I can confirm that the woman in question is a witch.”

  She didn’t thrust out an arm at Talia. She didn’t even look at her. Talia had the feeling that any attention she drew to her would take away from what Vivian considered the main attraction, herself.

  “It was a warm and sunny afternoon,” Vivian went on, striking a pose. “I had come into town to visit the fine shops of Haskell. My poor, darling baby was feeling poorly that day. Nothing I could do would appease him. I clasped the darling child to my breast, I smoothed his fevered brow, I even kissed him, but alas, no amount of affection or concern that I showed for him did an ounce of good. He was still troubled, beleaguered, distressed.”

  She clasped a hand to her heart, drawing in a ragged breath that Talia supposed was supposed to be a sob. Just as she supposed the pinched expression Vivian put on was supposed to indicate sorrow, not indigestion, which it more closely resembled. Beside her, Trey cleared his throat and clapped a hand to his mouth. His eyes danced as though he were having a devil of a time not laughing. He wasn’t the only one in the room with that predicament.

  “My poor, dear child,” Vivian went on, full of pathos. “Could nothing soothe him? Was there no way to calm him?” She sucked in another, gasping breath, then dropped her hands to her sides in fists, whole body going rigid, some sort of warped excuse for fury twisting her features. “Yes, there was!”

  She raised a single finger in the air, then pointed it straight at Talia. But not for so long that the attention would be drawn away from her.

  “No sooner had the witch flown into town on her broomstick—”

  Talia nearly choked, and clapped a hand to her mouth. There it was, the detail that would paint the whole ordeal for what it was—a ridiculous fiction.

  “—than she swooped down on my poor, dear baby,” Vivian went on, seemingly oblivious to the ripple of laughter and sniggering that was filling the room. She let out another, dramatic squeak that caused more people to burst into laughter. “The witch took my baby and…and….” Vivian blinked, as though she wasn’t sure where she would take the story next.

  “And what?” a middle-aged woman in the crowd asked. “Did she turn him into a piglet?”

  “Did she eat him?” someone else suggested.

  “Did she sell him to the gypsies?” a grey-haired man asked, laughing so much he almost couldn’t get the words out.

  “No.” Vivian dropped her shoulders and frowned at the grey-haired man. “She told me he probably had jaundice and got him to stop crying.”

  “How dare she?” the middle-aged woman shouted, then dissolved into laughter.

  The rest of the room burst into laughter as well. It got out of hand so fast that Mr. Gunn had to bang on the desk with his gavel to quiet everyone.

  “Enough, enough,” he shouted as the audience settled into silence. He turned to Vivian. “Mrs. Bonneville, is there anything else you’d like to say, or would you like to sit down now?” His expression was as kind as Talia figured he could make it, and his words were clearly designed to give Vivian a way to take the pressure of humiliation off her shoulders.

  Surprisingly, Vivian nodded meekly and sank into her seat, keeping her head lowered. Talia felt sorry for her as well. She too had realized what a fool she was making of herself, but a little too late. At least she had Melinda there to pat her back and murmur something to her, although Melinda looked a little too pleased to have escaped the same humiliation Vivian and Mrs. Abernathy had fallen into.

  “Would anyone like to speak up in defense of Mrs. Knighton?” Mr. Gunn went on.

  “I would.” Trey rose, turning to face the room. He sent Talia a warm, relieved smile, then marched out to the center of the room to speak.

  Talia’s heart fluttered in her chest, and she caught herself clasping her hands above her heart in a gesture every bit as theatric as Vivian’s. She had no idea what Trey would say, but if it were half as passionate as the love she felt for him, she wondered if it should be spoken in public.

  Trey started his speech by looking around the room, meeting the eyes of everyone there. “You all know me,” he said. “You know that my life hasn’t been easy and that I’ve worked hard to earn a position of respect in this town.”

  Several people hummed and nodded in agreement.

  “You know that when new folks come to this town and they see a man with a nasty scar, like this one on my face, they come to certain conclusions about the character of the person behind that scar.”

  More people joined the nodding, some of them looking uncomfortable.

  Trey cracked a smile. “And you also know that it took a hefty amount of arm-twisting on Howard’s par
t for me to send away for a bride.”

  The tension that had been building cracked, and several people laughed. From his seat near the back, George Pickering leaned over to whisper something to Sam. Sam chuckled.

  Trey grew serious again. “I want you all to know that Howard was right.” He twisted to face Howard and nodded. “Howard’s been right about a lot of things.” He turned back to the audience, some of whom wore goofy smiles—probably as they thought about other ways that Howard had teased or amused them all in the past—and some wore more serious looks of contemplation.

  “I also want you all to know that I love my wife,” Trey went on.

  Joy blossomed in Talia’s heart. She caught herself blinking rapidly to hold back tears. But Trey wasn’t done yet.

  “Talia has told me a lot of stories of her life the way it was before she came here. She told me about how her family struggled to come to America to make a better life for themselves. She told me how no matter what her father did, folks only heard his accent and saw how he looked like a foreigner. She told me about how her ma had to work twice as hard to get half as much as other nurses because people looked on her with suspicion. And the only reason why was because she came from somewhere else. Talia’s told me about how she faced the same kind of bigotry too. In fact, the first thing those biddies who were in here making such fools of themselves said about her was that she looked foreign.”

  He paused sweeping the room with a righteous gaze once more. This time, a few people had a harder time meeting his eyes when his look passed over them. When he glanced at last to Vivian and Melinda, he stopped and stared at them as he went on.

  “I’m tired of hearing stories about folks being set down a notch in other people’s estimation because of what they look like or where they come from. I’m tired of listening to women call my wife names that could just as easily be applied to them.”

  To Talia’s surprise, neither Vivian nor Melinda bristled with indignation or even looked up. In fact, they seemed to be trying to disappear into their chairs.

  “Now I know a lot of you out there will swear you’re nowhere near as big a fool as some people—” He glanced at Vivian and Melinda again. “—but I’ve seen the way you turn up your nose at Wendy Montrose, in spite of the fact that she’s the finest dressmaker in the territory. I’ve heard the way you mutter about Solomon Templesmith getting above himself by owning the bank here in town and doing so well. I’ve heard the crude things you’ve said about Domenica, and even though she’s one of Bonnie’s girls, that’s no reason to say the vile things you’ve said. And now you’re sitting there with grins on your faces, thinking it’s all fun and games to watch my wife go on trial for being a witch, when her only crime is that she was born in another country.”

  Trey took a breath, shifting his weight to his other leg. “Who here caught the influenza a couple weeks ago?”

  Several hands went up.

  “And how many of you had Talia come to your aid while you were sick?”

  Most of the people who had raised their hands kept them up.

  “All right.” Trey nodded. “Now how many of you died during the epidemic?”

  Everyone’s hands went down.

  “That’s what I thought,” Trey said. “Now, I know you weren’t the ones up here trying to convince good, sensible folks that the same woman who nursed you through a tough time is capable of casting spells and eating babies, but ask yourselves, how many of you looked sideways at my wife and I when we walked into this room? How many of you were willing to think that something must be wrong with her because a handful of ignoramuses spewed some ridiculous nonsense?”

  More people than ever before lost their grins or couldn’t meet Trey’s eyes. Talia swallowed, her heart aching for all of those searching their souls and not liking what they saw. She’d been there. She knew that kind of pain. For a moment, she met her friends’ eyes, knowing that Wendy, Holly, and Corva had experienced pain like that too. Far too many women had.

  Trey stood where he was, captivating the entire room with a hundred times more force than Vivian had managed. At last he said, “If any of you still want to turn up your noses at my wife or believe a damn thing that these women today have said, let me just remind you what the Bible has to say about beams and motes and eyes. Talia is a beautiful, kind-hearted, smart-as-tacks woman who came here to help people. I’m proud to have her as my wife, and anyone who tries to look down their nose at her is going to have to come talk to me about it first, understand?”

  A few people snapped out a quick, “Yes, sir,” as if Trey had been speaking directly to them.

  Trey let his stance relax, and nodded. “Good.” He pivoted to Mr. Gunn. “I think we’re just about done here.”

  “Agreed,” Mr. Gunn said. “I think we’re all agreed that Mrs. Knighton is not a witch. Court, such as it is, is adjourned.” He banged the gavel on the desk, then stood and stepped away from it and off the dais to shake Trey’s hand.

  The courtroom instantly erupted into noise. Vivian and Melinda shot to their feet and bolted for the exit before the rest of the room could stand and filter out into the aisles. They blew right past Bebe, not stopping to gather up the baby. Bebe started out of her chair, then flopped back to sit, exchanging a baffled look with Hubert.

  Talia stood and watched the sisters go, wondering if she was wasting her time by feeling bad for them or if it would be worthwhile to extend an olive branch in their direction. There would be plenty of time to contemplate that later. For now, she had a husband that needed a huge hug.

  “That was beautiful,” she said, crossing to Trey and stretching out her arms. “Thank you so much.”

  She reached Trey and would have hugged him, but he swept her into his arms and spun her in a circle before she could. When he put her down, he planted a kiss on her lips, right there where everyone could see.

  “I wasn’t about to let anyone leave this room with even a flicker of a doubt that you’re the finest woman in this entire town,” Trey said.

  “I think a few people might have something to say about that,” Mr. Gunn said, nodding to one of the aisles where Sam, Wendy and Travis, Holly and George, and Corva and Franklin were approaching them.

  “Thank you so much, Trey.” Wendy reached them first, taking Trey’s free hand. “I feel as though you stood up to defend me and Talia both.”

  “He did,” Travis said with a nod, shaking Trey’s hand when Wendy was done. “And for that, I will be eternally grateful.”

  “Looks like sending away for your bride wasn’t such a bad idea after all, eh?” Sam said, thumping Trey on the back and nodding respectfully to Talia. “In fact, you might just have convinced me to take a chance and send for one of my own.”

  “Oh, yes.” Talia laughed. “I can think of at least three women off the top of my head who would be delighted to come out here to make a life with you.”

  Sam blanched as if he’d been joking and Talia had taken him at his word. “Uh, well, we’ll see.”

  “This calls for a celebration,” Mr. Gunn said. “Why don’t you all come over to the hotel and have lunch, on me.”

  A swell of agreement and thanks rose up from the group. They agreed to take Mr. Gunn up on his offer. Together, they started for the door.

  Trey held Talia back, though, drawing her into his arms.

  “I just want you to know that I meant every word I said just now,” he said.

  “I know you do.” She smiled up at him, settling into the warmth of his arms.

  “I will always fight for you and defend you, Talia,” he went on. “But I’m always going to worry that something will take you away from me too.”

  “You don’t have to worry,” she said, brushing her hand against the side of his face. “I’m yours, now and forever, and it would take something far greater than both of us to split us apart.”

  “Good,” he said and kissed her. “Because you’ve cast quite a spell on me, Talia Knighton, and I’ve never been happi
er.

  Epilogue

  All of Haskell was close to melting in the late-summer heat. All through town, folks were fanning themselves on their porches, sipping lemonade, and doing everything they could to keep cool. Trey was doing his best too, although it was hard to take it easy and rest in the shade when he had a job to do.

  “All right, is that the last of them?” he asked Sam as they rounded up a table of drunks. The poor men had gone to the saloon to beat the heat and enjoyed a few too many cold whiskeys.

  “Yep,” Sam said, wiping his hands on his bartender’s apron. “Sure you don’t want to lock them up for the night? You’ve got all that space in the jail, since you and your lady wife moved into that house south of the tracks.”

  “I’m not leaving anyone alone in that jail until I hire a deputy,” Trey said. He nodded at the retreating backs of the last two drunk cowboys. They were singing and swaying as they stumbled along the road.

  Sam shook his head, thumping Trey on the back. “You two were crazy to move into that house before it was finished.”

  Trey shrugged. “I couldn’t stomach the idea of Talia living in some tiny apartment above a jail anymore.” He turned his head to Sam. “And what about that house you’re building?”

  Sam flinched, looking suddenly suspicious. “Who said anything about me building a house?”

  “Rupert Cole.” Trey chuckled, elbowing his friend in the ribs. “He let it slip accidentally while we were going over some of the details of our place.”

  Sam muttered something unrepeatable, which only made Trey laugh harder.

  “So you decided to send away for a bride for yourself then?”

  Sam took a long time replying. He rubbed a hand over his face, then let out a long, ragged sigh. “Her name is Julia. But don’t go telling nobody that I jumped off that cliff along with the rest of you.”

  “I won’t.” Trey slapped his friend on the back.

  He was just about to step away and continue his daily patrol when he spotted Talia walking around the corner from Elizabeth Street. She had a hand on her stomach and was walking with too-slow steps. Instantly, Trey launched into a panic.