The Bridegroom

by Linda Lael Miller

  Rowdy inclined his head in the cowboy version of a bow. “Miss Lydia,” he said, acknowledging that she’d remembered correctly, “you have grown up to be a beauty.”

  She blushed and lowered her eyes.

  “How’s Lark these days?” Gideon asked his brother pointedly, annoyed that Rowdy could charm Lydia so easily when he’d been the one to save her from Jacob Fitch and her own pigheaded sense of familial duty.

  Rowdy chuckled. “My wife,” he said, “is as lovely as ever.”

  Now that they were well away from Phoenix, and effectively out of Fitch’s reach, Gideon wondered what he was going to do with all these women. It had been one thing giving the aunts money, after he’d talked them into leaving home that morning, and turning them loose in the readymade section of the biggest mercantile in town. Feeding and sheltering them on an ongoing basis would be quite another, and there was Lydia, besides. And Helga.

  He surely hoped Stone Creek still had a hotel, with rooms enough to house ladies who were used to genteel surroundings—but with the mine bringing in all sorts of people from all parts of the country, it most likely had several. He’d been planning on staying with Rowdy and Lark himself, since they had plenty of room, until he could find a boardinghouse.

  Rising from the train seat, Gideon chuckled. From the look on his brother the marshal’s face, lodgings might not be a problem, for him, at least. Maybe he could talk Rowdy into putting the ladies up in adjoining cells.

  “I guess we’d best get off this train,” Rowdy joked, for the benefit of the women, “before we find ourselves rolling on toward Flagstaff.”

  Lydia smiled and stood, studiously ignoring Gideon.

  Helga and the aunts rose, too.

  Since nobody had any baggage, including Gideon, who had left his suitcase behind in the rush to leave Phoenix, there was nothing much to gather. Both the aunts had a small valise, containing what they’d referred to as their “necessities,” and Helga had packed a carpetbag with a few things of her own and Lydia’s. Taking the bag and one of the valises and shoving the second satchel into Gideon’s hands with unnecessary force, Rowdy assured the women that it was a short walk to his place, and his wife, Lark, would be pleased to serve them tea and refreshments and provide whatever else they might need. At this last, his gaze lingered a moment or two on Lydia’s wedding gown.

  “Maybe you’d like to wait for me in my office,” he told Gideon, and while his tone was cordial, the expression in his eyes was razor-sharp. “While I get the ladies settled and all.”

  Since there would be a yelling match at best, and an arrest at worst, and Gideon figured the Fairmont women and their housekeeper had been through enough for one day, he didn’t argue. He just carried the valise as far as the end of Main Street, and didn’t protest when Helga took it out of his grasp.

  Rowdy’s office and the jail were housed in a rambling brick structure, on the site of the original one-cell hole in the wall. Wyatt had gotten the first jail blown up during his brief tenure as deputy marshal, and Gideon felt a little nostalgic for the old place. As a boy, he’d slept in that lone cell often, not because he’d been locked up, but because Rowdy and Lark, newlyweds back then, still living in the tiny house provided for the marshal, hadn’t had an extra bed.

  Pardner, the old yellow dog, was long gone, a fact that made something catch in Gideon’s throat as he wandered over the threshold into Rowdy’s spacious office. He was pleasantly surprised to find another dog curled up on the rug in front of the woodstove, just the way Pardner used to do, way back when. The mutt was the same color as his predecessor, and Gideon’s eyes smarted a little as he crouched to say howdy.

  Pardner’s double licked his hand and looked up into his face with a doleful little whimper of sympathy.

  “Yep,” Gideon told him. “I’m in trouble.”

  “His name’s Pardner, too,” a familiar voice said. “Guess Rowdy just couldn’t bring himself to call a dog anything else.”

  Gideon stood, turned to see his other brother, Wyatt, towering in the doorway leading outside. Taller than Rowdy and leaner than Gideon, Wyatt was the eldest of the Yarbro brood, and his hair was dark, rather than fair like theirs. His eyes were an intense blue, and they could penetrate a man’s hide, just the way Rowdy’s lighter ones did.

  “You back to working as a deputy?” Gideon asked. In his day, Wyatt had been an outlaw, like Rowdy, rustling cattle and robbing trains. All that had changed, though, when he met up with Sarah Tamlin, the banker’s daughter.

  Wyatt stepped inside, shut the office door against the noise and dust of the street. “I’m still ranching,” he answered. “I help out once in a while when Rowdy’s shorthanded—since that copper mine started up, Stone Creek’s been right lively. I just came by today because Rowdy rode out and told me about that wire he got from the U.S. Marshal down in Phoenix. What you just told that dog, boy, was truer than you probably know. You are in trouble.”

  To show he wasn’t intimidated, and he wasn’t the little brother Wyatt and Rowdy remembered him as, either, Gideon took a seat behind the biggest desk—there were two others in the room, accommodating Rowdy’s regular deputies, probably—leaned back and kicked his feet up. “I did what I had to do,” he said easily.

  Wyatt went to the stove, picked up the blue enamel coffeepot, gave it a shake and frowned. “You might be a big Wells Fargo agent now,” he drawled, carrying the pot to a nearby sink and pumping water into it to brew up another batch, “but you’re not above the law. And the law says you can’t carry a woman out of her own home against her will and haul her away on a train.”

  “Lydia didn’t want to marry Jacob Fitch anyhow,” Gideon said, trying not to sound defensive. “She as much as said so—yesterday.”

  “‘As much as’?” Wyatt repeated skeptically. “And just because a woman says something, that’s no guarantee she means it.” He paused a moment to reflect on some private thought, shook his head. “No, sir, that is no guarantee.”

  “Got on the wrong side of your Sarah, did you?” Gideon teased.

  “Sarah doesn’t have a wrong side,” Wyatt replied. “And don’t try to change the subject. There’s a warrant out for your arrest, Gideon, and it’s federal.”

  Gideon considered his outlaw blood and wondered if it had gotten the best of him after all. “Soon as she’s had time to calm down a little,” he said, with a confidence he didn’t really feel, “Lydia will put an end to that. Like I told you, she didn’t want to go through with that wedding.”

  Wyatt did not look convinced. “According to the bridegroom’s report to the marshal down in Phoenix, she was kicking and clawing to get away from you.”

  “She was just mad because I whacked her one on the backside,” Gideon said. “She’ll be fine as soon as Lark lends her a dress so she can get out of that wedding gown. I think it was that, more than anything—traveling in a bride’s dress and everybody looking at her—that got under Lydia’s hide.”

  Although Wyatt was in profile, Gideon saw the twitch of amusement flicker across his mouth before sobriety set in again. “If Miss Lydia Fairmont presses charges,” Wyatt said, concentrating on brewing that new pot of coffee, “you could go to prison. Kidnapping is a federal offense, in case they didn’t teach you that in detective school.”

  “She won’t,” Gideon said, but he wasn’t as sure as he sounded, and Wyatt probably knew that. Lydia had been plenty mad when he swatted her on the bustle to get her to stop wriggling so he could carry her out of that house before the hired muscle was on them.

  “Even if she doesn’t throw the book at you,” Wyatt replied, “Jacob Fitch probably will. If he hasn’t already.”

  “He can’t do that.”

  “Maybe back East, he couldn’t. But this is Arizona, little brother. It’s still the Wild West. The man was as good as married to Lydia, and that will carry some weight.”

  Gideon had no time to waste lolling around in one of Rowdy’s cells. He had a job to start, at the Copper
Crown Mine, bright and early the next morning, and Wyatt knew that as well as Rowdy did. What Gideon’s brothers didn’t know was that his taking up a shovel was a ruse to get inside, win the miners’ trust, and do whatever he had to to subvert any plans they might be making to go out on strike.

  The mine’s owners stood to lose a fortune if that happened, and Gideon was being paid—well paid—to prevent that from happening.

  With the coffee started, Wyatt left the stove, walked over to the chair facing Rowdy’s desk, and sat himself down.

  “If I were you,” he said, “I’d have my feet on the floor when the marshal comes back. Rowdy’s mad enough to horsewhip you from one end of Main Street to the other as it is—and his temper is shorter than usual, what with all the trouble coming out of the mining camp.”

  “I’m not afraid of Rowdy,” Gideon replied, and that was true—so far as it went. He’d never had any reason to be afraid of his brother, and therefore had never tested the theory.

  “That’s the curse of theYarbros,” Wyatt said, mock-somber. “None of us has the sense to be scared when we ought to be.”

  “Once I explain—” Gideon began, and then stopped himself, because he didn’t want to sound like he was apologizing for what he’d done. If he hadn’t wooed the aunts away and then taken Lydia out of that house, she’d be Mrs. Jacob Fitch by now.

  And this would be her wedding night.

  The thought of Fitch or anybody else stripping Lydia to the skin and having his way with her made Gideon shudder. God knew, she’d grown into the kind of woman a man would want to handle, but another part of Gideon, a big part, still saw that lost, terrified little girl he’d known a decade before, whenever he looked at Lydia.

  “I’m not sorry,” he avowed, lest there be any misunderstanding on that score.

  “No,” Wyatt agreed easily, “I don’t imagine you are.”

  Bristling, Gideon decided it would be best to change the subject. “How are Sarah and the kids?” he asked.

  Wyatt gave one of those spare Yarbro grins, as if they were in short supply and thus hard to part with. They’d gotten that trait from their famous train-robbing father, Payton Yarbro. There were three other brothers, too—Ethan, Levi and Nick—but Gideon had never made their acquaintance, so he didn’t know if they had the same way of hoarding a smile.

  “Sarah’s fine,” Wyatt said. “The kids are fine. The ranch is fine, since you were probably going to ask about that next. And we’re not through talking about that stunt you pulled down in Phoenix today, Gideon. If it hadn’t been for Rowdy, that train would have been stopped and you’d have been dragged off and handcuffed. That’s how powerful this Jacob Fitch yahoo is.”

  The crimson heat of indignation throbbed in Gideon’s neck, and the backs of his ears burned. “Will you stop talking to me like I’m some kid about to be hauled off to the woodshed for a whipping? I’m twenty-six years old, I went to college, and I’ve worked for the Pinkerton Agency and Wells Fargo.”

  Wyatt gave a low whistle, causing the dog to perk up its ears and pricking at Gideon’s already flaring temper. “Twenty-six,” he marveled. “You have attained a venerable age, little brother. At the rate you’re going, though, you might not get much older.”

  Wyatt, Gideon figured irritably, was around forty-three. Evidently, he thought that made him a wise old man, with the right to preach and pontificate. “Stop calling me ‘little brother,’” he bit out.

  Wyatt merely grinned.

  And right about then, Rowdy walked in, slammed the door shut behind him. “Get your feet off my desk,” he growled, after raking his gaze from one end of Gideon’s frame to the other.

  Gideon took his time, but he did comply, and that nettled him further.

  “Lark’s feeding the women supper, and we’ll put them up for the night,” Rowdy said, heading for the coffeepot. He frowned when he realized the stuff was just beginning to perk—both Rowdy and Wyatt liked their coffee, Gideon remembered distractedly. Drank the stuff like tomorrow had been cancelled. “By morning,” he added, “Fitch will probably be here to get them.”

  “What?” Gideon shot out of Rowdy’s chair, which might have been exactly what his brother had intended to happen, though by the time that idea came to mind, it was already too late to spite him by staying put.

  Wyatt and Rowdy exchanged grim glances.

  “There’s only one way out of this one,” Rowdy mused, after a few moments.

  “Afraid so,” Wyatt agreed.

  Gideon waited, too cussed to ask what that way might be, as badly as he wanted to know. He’d been a sort of lawman himself, until he’d taken a leave of absence from Wells Fargo to work for the mine owners, and yet he hadn’t considered any of the ramifications of his actions, legal or otherwise.

  All he’d wanted to do was get Lydia out of Jacob Fitch’s reach.

  “You’ll have to marry the girl,” Rowdy said slowly, like he was explaining something that should have been obvious even to an idiot. “Tonight.”

  “Of course, there are other choices,” Wyatt allowed thoughtfully.

  “Like what?” Gideon snapped.

  “Well, you could go to prison for kidnapping,” Wyatt said.

  “Or hand Lydia over to Jacob Fitch when he gets here,” Rowdy speculated.

  “I’ll be damned if I’ll do either one of those things!”

  “Then you’d better get yourself hitched to her,” Wyatt said.

  “If she’ll have you,” Rowdy added. “After today, that seems pretty unlikely to me.”

  Rowdy and Wyatt were, for all practical intents and purposes, the only blood relatives Gideon had left, not counting his many nieces and nephews. His father had perished in a shoot-out, years before, and his mother had died before he was a day old, so he had no memory at all of her—not even a tone of voice or a scent. He wouldn’t have recognized Ethan, Levi or Nick if he’d met them on the street, and the sibling he’d truly loved—his half sister, Rose, born to his father and a madam who called herself Ruby—had been killed in an accident when she was just four years old, and he was six.

  Gideon had witnessed that tragedy—seen Rose run into the street in front of Ruby’s Saloon over in Flagstaff, pursuing a scampering kitten, seen her fall under the hooves of a team of horses and the wheels of the wagon they’d been pulling. He’d grieved so long and so hard for Rose that he’d sworn never to care as much about anyone or anything again.

  And he never had.

  Still, what his two older brothers thought mattered to him, with or without the sentiment plain folks and poets called love. They’d been outlaws, Wyatt and Rowdy, desperate men with nothing but a hangman’s noose in their future, and yet, somehow, they’d turned their lives around. Married good women, fathered children, earned fine reputations and accumulated property.

  It was because of them, and the examples they’d set, both good and bad, that Gideon had gone to college when he would have preferred to stay in Stone Creek, playing at being a lawman. He’d worked hard at his studies, kept his nose clean even though the Yarbro blood ran as hot in his veins as it had in theirs.

  For that reason, and a few others he couldn’t have put a name to, he stayed in that office, on the night of the day he’d stolen another man’s bride, and did his best to keep a civil tongue in his head while his brothers basically called him a fool.

  “Fitch could take Lydia back to Phoenix and marry her? Even if she didn’t want to go?” Gideon asked, the fight pretty much gone out of him now.

  “He couldn’t legally force her to leave with him if she didn’t want to,” Rowdy reasoned quietly. “But there’s no telling if he’d give her a choice in the matter—any more than you did.”

  For the first time since he’d carried Lydia out of that mansion, tossed her into the back of the wagon, and forced her onto a departing train, Gideon squared what he’d done with the excuses he’d made for doing it.

  “Damn,” he muttered.

  “Yeah,” Wyatt said. “Da
mn.”

  “You can still make this right, Gideon,” Rowdy said. “I ought to throw you straight into one of those cells back there, keep you in custody until the marshal in Phoenix either gives me leave to release you or sends a deputy to fetch you back to give an accounting to some federal judge. But you’re my lit—you’re my brother, and I don’t want to see you head down the wrong road, especially after you buckled down and got through college and worked a man’s job after that. So I’m giving you a chance, Gideon. You go and talk to Lydia. If she’s willing to throw in with the likes of you—and again, I’ve got my doubts about that, since she seems like the sensible sort—the two of you could be married tonight. That would prevent Fitch from taking her anywhere.” He paused—for Rowdy, this was a lot of talking to do at one time—and huffed out a weary breath before finishing up. “There’s one other thing, Gideon. After what happened today, and never mind that it was through no fault of her own, Lydia will be the subject of some gossip down in Phoenix, thanks to the scandal you started by stealing her that way.”

  Since he wasn’t overly concerned with propriety himself, Gideon hadn’t thought about that any more than he’d thought about the possibility of being charged with a crime. But he’d created a scandal even by the standards of a scrappy, boisterous cow-town like Phoenix—which made him wonder if Jacob Fitch still wanted Lydia for a wife, or if he just wanted to punish her for making him look the fool.

  Gideon sat down in one of the other chairs, braced his elbows on his thighs, and put his face in his hands. He’d had the best of intentions, and look what had come of it. Still, what could he have done differently? He’d approached Fitch at the tailor’s shop, after talking to Lydia, and asked the man to give her more time.

  Fitch had refused adamantly, and without a second thought.

  Gideon felt a hand rest briefly on his shoulder, knew it was Rowdy standing by his chair even before he heard his brother’s voice.

  “If it’s any consolation, Gideon,” Rowdy said gruffly, “I’d have done the same thing in your place, most likely.”

  “Me, too,” Wyatt admitted.