Sgt. Billy's Bride

by Bonnie Gardner

  A NURSE STOPPED Bill in the hall before he and Darcy entered his mother’s hospital room, and a vague feeling of alarm shuddered through him. Bill clutched Darcy’s hand as they waited for the woman tell them what she wanted.

  “I don’t want to alarm you,” the nurse said, doing exactly what she’d said she didn’t want to do. “But I wanted to prepare you, Mr. Hays.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Go on.”

  The nurse splayed her fingers out in front of her in a gesture of supplication that Bill suspected was supposed to be calming. If it was, she’d missed the mark. “Nettie had a bad night and looks a little sicker this morning than she did last night. I didn’t want you to go in there without being warned.”

  Darcy touched his arm. “Nettie probably just had a hard time sleeping because of the strange surroundings. The first night she was sedated. Now that she’s feeling better, she probably noticed noises that kept her up.” She smiled, but Bill was quick to note that the smile didn’t reach the corners of her eyes. “I’m sure it’s nothing.”

  Bill drew in a deep breath. “Okay, you’ve told me. Now can I go in?”

  “Yes. Go ahead.”

  Bill grabbed Darcy’s hand, turned and strode into his mother’s room with Darcy in tow.

  Compared to yesterday, Momma did look ill, but certainly not on death’s door as he’d first imagined she might. She did look haggard, and blue-black circles rimmed her eyes. But when she saw who her visitors were, she perked right up, a grin brightening her pinched face. “Good morning, son. Daughter,” she said.

  Bill didn’t see the need to point out that it was afternoon, but he kissed his mother’s forehead, then took her hand as he settled into the chair next to her. “The nurse tells me you had a bad night,” he said simply.

  “Nothing new. I’m an old lady. Nothing’s as easy as it used to be.” Momma managed a chuckle. “Some nights I can’t sleep a wink, and other days I just don’t want to wake up. I just had some heavy thinking on my mind.”

  “Like what?” Darcy asked, situating herself on the other side of the bed.

  “Thinking about my past. Your future. A little bit of everything.” She sighed and managed a weak smile. “Life’s been good to me, for the most. But, I’ve had my time. It’s your time now to…” She let the words trail off, and Bill wondered if she had forgotten what she’d intended to say or whether she’d left it for him to fill in the blanks.

  Darcy gasped slightly, then seemed to regain her composure. She patted his mother’s hand and swallowed. “You still have plenty of time, Nettie.”

  Nobody in the room believed that. Bill loved Darcy for saying it. For at least trying.

  “No, I don’t. And you, of all my children, should know it better than most,” she said, directing her comment to Darcy. “My heart’s failing me. I might go tomorrow, or I could hang on for months.” She paused to catch her breath and coughed, the sound wheezy and wet.

  “Just between you and me and the bedpost, we know I didn’t have pneumonia. My body’s tired. It’s shuttin’ down.” She sighed again, her eyes bright.

  “I don’t mind goin’,” she whispered, turning back to Bill. “I really don’t. I just want to know that my youngest is happy.” She smiled, a longing expression in her eyes. “I might not be able to dance at your wedding, son, but I would surely like to be there.”

  Bill’s heart seemed to skip a beat, and Darcy drew in a quick breath. The following silence seemed to echo too loudly in his ears. What could he say?

  He wanted to tell her yes. If it were only up to him, he would shout it to the rooftops.

  It was no longer a matter of putting it off until later; it had to be done now. It was clear to him as a target in his gun sight that Momma had lain awake all night worrying about him…and Darcy…and that she wouldn’t live to see their wedding.

  Bill swallowed and glanced at Darcy. Seeming to be as uncertain as he was, she wrung her hands.

  Why hadn’t they told Momma the truth from the get-go? If they had, they wouldn’t be in this fix now. Momma wouldn’t even be thinking about whether or not he was going to get married sooner instead of later. Hell, she wouldn’t be thinking about him in terms of marriage at all. And she damned sure wouldn’t be lying awake at night making herself sicker by worrying about it.

  Suddenly Bill’s head throbbed, and he rubbed at his temples, then scrubbed his hands down his cheeks. What were they going to do now? How could he and Darcy have known that their well-intentioned charade would backfire?

  Darcy got quietly up from her chair and came around the foot of Nettie’s hospital bed to stand behind Bill. She knew that what they said to Nettie in the next few moments might make the difference between her recovery this time or giving up too soon.

  She’d come to love Nettie in the past few weeks, and she didn’t want the woman to die, now, or later. But Darcy knew Nettie’s death was inevitable. And she knew that granting this one wish would make her going easier.

  She and Bill had set out two weeks ago on a course that they couldn’t change. Every moment since she’d stepped out of that Jeep, yawning and stretching after her aborted wedding, had led them irrevocably to this moment.

  They’d set the course. They’d have to follow through.

  Wherever that final destination might be.

  Darcy moistened her lips and drew in a deep breath. She didn’t know whether a marriage to Bill would be for better or for worse, but it probably wouldn’t be forever. She let out the breath she’d forgotten she was holding. If she knew it going in, it wouldn’t be so bad coming out.

  And maybe it wouldn’t end, she couldn’t help hoping. Maybe they’d figure out a way to make it work.

  To make it last forever the way Nettie wanted it to.

  She’d known Dick all her life, but it had taken her years to realize that she didn’t like him. She supposed she’d been more in love with the idea of love than with Dick.

  At least she liked Bill. She admired the way he had been so good to his mother in her declining days.

  It wasn’t the sturdiest thing on which to base a marriage, but then this marriage wasn’t going to be real for anyone but Nettie.

  Darcy drew in another long breath, and took Bill’s hand and squeezed it as she exhaled, for courage, she supposed.

  “I’ll make a deal with you, Nettie,” Darcy said, focusing on the frail woman in the hospital bed. She was surprised at how much stronger and more certain she sounded than she really felt. “You stop lying awake at night so the doctor’s medicine can do its work on you. Then, if you’re well enough, you’ll see us married on Monday.”

  Darcy couldn’t miss Bill’s sharp intake of breath. She squeezed his hand in hopes of assuring him that it would be all right.

  Darcy turned to him and forced a smile. “That is, if that’s what you still want, Billy.” She paused, giving Bill a chance to stop her. He didn’t, so she had no choice but to follow through. “Will you marry me on Monday at the courthouse? Will you have me as your wife?”

  Chapter Twelve

  Bill didn’t realize he’d stopped breathing until he found himself involuntarily gasping for air. As his lungs filled and expanded, he tried to think of something as eloquent and as touching as Darcy’s simple words with which to accept her proposal.

  He knew that Darcy was only doing this for Momma, and Momma’s happiness was the most important thing in all this. But he couldn’t help thinking that it was the beginning of something else. It was also a way to get him and Darcy closer.

  Even if he couldn’t acknowledge it out loud, or let on to anyone else.

  It was a wild idea, he was sure, but Bill couldn’t help hoping that with his ring on her finger, Darcy might let him get to know her. She would learn to like him.

  Maybe love would come later.

  “Well, son. Are you going to give the child an answer? Or are you just going to keep us waiting here?”

  Bill shook himself out of it. He had no business thinking about
anything further than the ceremony. There was going to be no marriage, he reminded himself sternly. He’d known forever that he couldn’t put another woman through what his mother had faced. This would only be a real wedding for Momma. For show. It wouldn’t be real for Darcy. It wouldn’t be for him.

  The vows wouldn’t be worth the paper he’d sign when the ceremony was over. He just had to remember that.

  He couldn’t count on anything more.

  He swallowed and moistened his lips. “Yes, Darcy,” he answered huskily. “I’ll be honored to be your husband.”

  Momma clapped her hands together, a smile brightening her wan face. “Then it’s settled. I’ll call Judge Armistead, and we’ll get it set up.”

  Darcy drew in a quick breath, but said nothing. What had she started to say? She’d already promised to marry him on Monday. She couldn’t back out on him now.

  Bill started to protest his mother getting too involved in the planning and tiring herself out, but he shut his mouth before voicing any objections. Already, his mother’s color appeared brighter, and maybe it was his imagination, but the circles rimming her eyes seemed to be fading. If just thinking about the wedding was enough to do that, then he wasn’t about to dampen her enthusiasm by objecting to her calling in a favor or two.

  He just wondered when his mother had become so chummy with the Judge Probate of Pitt County.

  “You know me and Theron go way back, don’t you?” she said, seeming to be reading his mind. But then Momma had always been able to do that.

  “No, ma’am. I didn’t know that,” Darcy said.

  Momma giggled like a schoolgirl. “Why, Theron thought he had the inside track on my affections at one time,” she said, her face brightened by a fond smile.

  Bill hadn’t known that, and he wondered with a brief twinge of…what?…if this had been before Daddy or afterwards.

  “He was a couple of years ahead of me in high school up at Mattison Consolidated. We dated some. He even took me to his senior prom. When he went off to college, he wanted me to promise to wait for him.” She looked off into the distant past, a dreamy smile on her face.

  “I knew it wouldn’t work. After all, he was going to be a great big lawyer, and I had just been promised a job at the Five and Dime store in Pittsville. I told him no and broke his heart.” She looked up then, a smile on her face. “It’s a good thing. If I had saved myself for Theron, I would never have met your daddy,” she said, patting Bill on the hand.

  Then she shook herself out of her memories and drew in a long, deep breath. “I know you said you wanted to keep it between just us, but I surely could tell Lou and Earline?”

  Bill, still holding Darcy’s hand, felt her stiffen. He would have to deny his mother that one wish. “No, Momma. We don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings about being left out. And you’re going to have to tell the judge the same thing. We’ll make it right in the end.”

  Bill hated saying that because, more than likely, the correction would be to end the paper marriage, not to celebrate it. But, for now, it was all he had, and he would take any morsel he could get if it made his mother’s last days easier.

  Even if it wouldn’t do much for his next few months.

  DARCY WAS QUIET on the way home. What could she say? Today, the silence between her and Bill seemed more strained than normal.

  Could she tell him that she thought she might be falling in love with him, but she wasn’t sure? And if they took their marriage seriously and actually worked at being husband and wife, she might just figure it out? She glanced Billy’s way and smiled to herself. It would not be work at all.

  Darcy turned and focused her gaze out the car window as the countryside flew by. She hadn’t taken much time to look at the small part of the world where Billy had grown up, and the sheer beauty, flanked by such unimaginable poverty, sobered her. A woman in a faded house dress looked up from the washing she was hanging on the line beside her ramshackle mobile home and waved. Darcy had to look away.

  Why did she think her life was such a mess when she had so much compared to so many?

  And she and Bill had a wedding to plan. Even if it wasn’t going to be for keeps.

  Reminding them that they had important plans to make, Nettie had shooed them off when Ray and his wife arrived. Billy had shaken his brother’s hand and introduced Anne-Lise to her before leaving. But not before Bill had given his mother a stern look of warning.

  Darcy just hoped Nettie wouldn’t let their secret slip. She sighed wearily.

  “Are you sorry you got yourself into this?” Billy asked as they turned off the main highway onto the farm-to-market road that pointed toward the long-neglected Hays farm.

  Darcy wondered if he was giving her the opportunity to voice her doubts, of which there were many. “No,” she answered slowly. “Not really.” She drew in a deep breath and tried to explain what she’d been thinking.

  She couldn’t. At least, not entirely. So she came up with something else. “It’s just sort of ironic, don’t you think? When I met you, I’d just run away from a wedding I’d been planning forever. Or, at least, my mother and my aunt had.” She managed a wry smile. “Now, I fully intend to go through with this one, and on a moment’s notice. Funny world, huh?”

  Bill said nothing for a moment, then pressed his lips into a thin, hard line. Then he smiled grimly. “No. Not that funny. I think it was more like a miracle. You came into our life at a time when we needed you. Maybe it was fate.”

  Darcy shrugged. She drew in a deep breath and settled back against the seat. “I just don’t know whether it’s good or bad.”

  Maybe it wasn’t exactly what Bill would have preferred to hear, but Darcy had to face it. This marriage would not be real for them.

  It was for Nettie. Period.

  And if she managed to convince herself of that, she knew about a bridge in New York City she could probably sell someone. Darcy sighed. She knew darn well that there was something in this marriage for her.

  Billy.

  She just wasn’t sure how he felt about her.

  If they’d met under different circumstances. If they really had met in North Carolina and fallen in love as they’d led everyone to believe, all this would be so much simpler. She wouldn’t feel so guilty about tricking a sweet old woman, and she wouldn’t be wondering why she was falling in love with Nettie’s son.

  FEELING AS RESTLESS as a caged tiger, Bill paced the confines of the small living room on Sunday afternoon. They’d been to see Momma, but she’d run them off, telling them that they had a wedding to get ready for and that she’d have plenty of visitors without them underfoot.

  He was getting married tomorrow, and Bill was having a hard time getting a handle on that.

  Now that Darcy had agreed to go through with it, the prospect of the wedding, even one as phony as a three-dollar bill, had him on edge. It didn’t help that a summer storm was raging outside and he couldn’t work off his tension.

  Not that there was much work to do on a nonworking farm at this time of year. But, he could have gone off to run or something.

  Anything to take his mind off tomorrow.

  “Have you given any thought to what you’re going to wear for the wedding?”

  Bill looked up, startled at the sudden intrusion into his chaotic thoughts. He hadn’t even heard Darcy enter the room. Hell, the way he was acting, you’d think he didn’t want to go through with this. “No,” he said, realizing that figuring out what to wear would give him something to do. If only for a little while.

  He felt so damned helpless. And he wasn’t sure what he was helpless about. Getting ready for the wedding? Helping his mother?

  Convincing Darcy to…what?

  “I hadn’t given it much thought,” he said slowly. “I guess I should, huh?”

  “The wedding might be taking place in the judge’s chambers, but somehow I don’t think jeans and a T-shirt will do,” Darcy said dryly.

  Bill frowned. Darcy was holding
a rumpled, off-white suit in her hands. Was she planning to wear that? He felt a vague surge of disappointment that she wouldn’t be in the traditional white dress and veil. Had he, somehow, been expecting it?

  But why should she wear the customary wedding dress? And where would she get one? Why did he keep having to remind himself that the wedding tomorrow wasn’t going to be for keeps?

  “I don’t know. Do you plan to wear that?” he said, jerking his head toward the suit. He had to say something to fill the awkward silence.

  “Yes, what do you think?” Darcy said brightly as she held the jacket up against her to show it off. “They say it’s bad luck for the groom to see the bride and the wedding dress before the wedding, but I guess, since this is not the traditional situation, we’ll just forget about that one.”

  Hell, yeah. They’d ignored most of the other customs. And now that he’d seen it, Bill knew that the simple suit would be perfect. Darcy possessed such a sweet and simple beauty that she needed no ornamentation, no distraction from the glow that seemed to shine from within. “You’ll look beautiful,” he said thickly.

  Darcy looked at him, a strange expression on her face. “Thank you,” she finally said. “I need to get the ironing board out and press this. If you find something, I’ll iron it for you, too.”

  He had forgotten that this conversation had started because she’d wanted to know what he was wearing to their wedding in the morning.

  It was ironic, he supposed, that they were standing there in the house like an old married couple discussing what they were going to wear. They might as well be going to someone else’s wedding, not their own. Then tomorrow night, unlike the married couple they’d be, they’d go to separate rooms to sleep.

  Funny, he had no trouble thinking of Darcy as a bride, but the concept of groom connected with him was a real problem. He wasn’t ready for this.

  And he didn’t know why he was panicking.

  It wasn’t as if this marriage was going to be forever.