The Bridegroom

by Linda Lael Miller

  Helga was taking the tiny room under the stairs—swearing up and down it would do just fine and she liked the idea of being near the kitchen so she could keep the fire properly stoked on cold winter nights—and that meant Lydia and Gideon would have the entire second floor to themselves.

  At least until the babies started arriving, anyway.

  “Look at the time,” Lark said, peering down at the watch on her bodice. She’d had supper sent over from the hotel dining room, and now that the children, her own tribe, as well as Sarah’s and Maddie’s, had eaten, they were starting to run down. A few were irritable, and small skirmishes had broken out here and there. “We’d better go, and leave Lydia to welcome her husband home from a hard day’s work.”

  Lydia had known all along that she would be staying behind, while the aunts and Helga returned to Lark and Rowdy’s house for the night, but now that the first stage of the plan was at hand, she felt a little shy.

  “Surely there’s no hurry,” she said awkwardly, wiping her hands on her apron.

  But the work was done. The house was livable, and the women were already removing their own aprons, pulling the kerchiefs from their heads, gathering handbags and baskets, herding fractious, exhausted children toward the door.

  Helga planned to walk back to the Yarbro house, as did Hank, Julia, Marietta and Joseph, Lark and Rowdy’s brood. So the whole lot of them set out suddenly, and in a cluster, without so much as a goodbye to Lydia.

  The aunts would squeeze into the buggy with Lark, and they, too, seemed at haste to leave. After placing simultaneous kisses on Lydia’s flushed cheeks, they departed.

  Maddie and Sarah shepherded their lively offspring out next, Sarah calling back a reminder that Lydia mustn’t forget about the reception on Sunday afternoon. All the women had promised to return and help with the preparations for the delayed celebration of Lydia and Gideon’s marriage.

  Soon, Lydia was alone with Lark, her fellow conspirator, in the kitchen that would now be her own.

  “I’ll give you time to bath and change,” Lark said, squeezing Lydia’s hands in parting. “Then I’ll send Gideon over. Remember what we talked about.”

  Lydia swallowed hard, nodded. Laughed a little, albeit nervously. Coming from anyone but Lark Yarbro, the advice she’d given Lydia in that upstairs bedroom soon after they’d arrived at the house that morning, would have seemed downright scandalous. “How could I forget?”

  Lark smiled. “The pantry is stocked,” she reminded Lydia practically. She’d sent Hank and Julia to the mercantile with a list, soon after they’d turned up at the Porter house, and the food and sundries had been promptly delivered. “Make Gideon a big breakfast, and pack him something hearty to take along to the mine in the morning, too.” She paused, frowned prettily, stretched again, as she’d been doing all day, to ease her overburdened back. “You can cook, can’t you?”

  Helga had always prepared the meals, and what little Lydia knew of the kitchen arts, she’d learned by observation, not actual doing—but how difficult could it be, she asked herself, buoyed with the confidence she’d gained by a day of competent housekeeping, to fry eggs and slice meat and bread for sandwiches?

  “I can cook,” she said.

  Lark started for the door.

  Lydia trailed after her. “Lark?”

  The other woman turned, looking tired and pleased by a good day’s work. “Yes?”

  “Thank you,” Lydia said.

  Lark smiled. “What are sisters for?” she countered.

  And then she was gone, and Lydia was truly alone.

  For a long time, she simply stood there, in the middle of that freshly scrubbed kitchen, with its full larder and icebox, paralyzed with hope.

  Then, resolved, she made for the rear stairway.

  There was a modern bathroom on the second floor, and Sarah had shown her how to light a fire under the small copper boiler, so there would be plenty of hot water.

  Her husband would be home soon.

  And Lydia Fairmont Yarbro still had preparations to make.

  So she started pouring water into the huge claw-foot tub and began stripping off her clothes.

  WHILE THE BATH, HOT AND DEEP, didn’t resurrect Gideon—he still felt half-dead—it did revive him a little. He soaked for a while, then soaped himself from head to foot, and soaked again.

  A delicate knock at the door brought the odyssey to an end.

  “Uncle Gideon?” a small voice called, from the other side.

  Julia, Gideon thought. Or little Marietta, the shy one. “Yo,” he answered.

  “I need to get in there, really, really bad!”

  “I’ll hurry,” Gideon replied. If he’d had a little longer, he’d have shaved, but he didn’t want to keep his niece—whichever one it might be—waiting.

  “Hurry fast!”

  Gideon chuckled, pulled the plug, rose out of the water, toweled off quickly, dragged on the clean trousers and cotton shirt he’d brought with him from his room.

  When he opened the door, Julia shot past him, making straight for the commode and already hiking up her skirts.

  He stepped out into the corridor, only to run into his eldest nephew, Hank. Blond and blue-eyed, Hank was Rowdy in miniature, though he had some of his mother’s grace, too. Thank God.

  “Mama sent me up here,” the boy announced staunchly, “to tell you you’re to get over to the Porter house right away because Lydia is there alone and that won’t do.”

  Gideon blinked. “Lydia’s still at the Porter house?” he asked. He’d expected his wife to return, with the others, and he said as much.

  Hank shrugged. “I reckon she’s planning to spend the night. When we left, she was scrubbing down the kitchen cupboards, but that was a while ago.”

  “If I give you a nickel,” Gideon ventured, bending a little and lowering his voice, “will you go over there and fetch her back here?”

  Hank looked tempted, but in the end, he shook his head, Rowdy-stubborn. “I’d better not do that,” he decided. “Mama said tell you to go.”

  “Hell,” Gideon muttered.

  Behind the bathroom door, the commode flushed.

  Julia appeared, a female version of her older brother, though smaller of course, and with a higher voice. “Uncle Gideon, you said a swearword!” she accused.

  “Nothing wrong with your hearing,” Gideon replied, resigned.

  “You’d best be getting on over to the other house,” Hank advised solemnly. “If you don’t, you’ll have Mama to deal with.”

  “Perish the thought,” Gideon said.

  He was tired.

  His joints were starting to ache again as the effects of the bath began to wear off.

  And now he was expected to traipse all the way to the other side of town because his bride was waiting.

  A weary smile broke across his face.

  His bride was waiting.

  Why was he still standing there, in the upstairs hallway of his brother’s house? He started toward his room, meaning to fetch work clothes for the morning, along with his toothbrush and some other things, and stuff them into a satchel, but Julia stopped him with a tug at his shirtsleeve.

  “You’ll catch it,” she informed him, looking up at him with those huge, cornflower-blue eyes of hers, “if you leave the bathroom looking like it does right now.”

  Stifling another swearword, Gideon went back into the room in question, rinsed the tub thoroughly, and picked up his dirty clothes and the towels he’d used.

  “Are you happy now?” he asked his niece, who was still waiting in the hall, along with Hank. The resembled a pair of small sentinels, standing there.

  Julia beamed up at him, nodding pertly, and Gideon noticed for the first time that she was missing her two front teeth.

  Right about then, Rowdy, wearing his spectacles again, appeared at the top of the stairs, a storybook under one arm.

  “Why aren’t you in bed?” he asked his two eldest children. “Like Joe and Mariet
ta?”

  “Mama sent me up here to tell Uncle Gideon to skedaddle, and I just got done doing that.” Hank eyed the book. “And I’m too old for bedtime stories.”

  “I’m not,” Julia said, sidling up to her papa.

  Rowdy’s gaze connected with Gideon’s, after he’d given one of Julia’s pigtails an affectionate tug, and the contentment Gideon saw in his brother’s eyes made him smile. The famous outlaw, the erstwhile train robber, a man once wanted in practically every state that side of Kansas, was about to read to a pack of towheaded hellions who all looked just like him.

  Gideon nodded a good-night, took his laundry and dumped it on his bedroom floor, and gathered up the things he’d need in the morning.

  When he reached the hallway again, it was empty, but he could hear Rowdy’s voice, low and full of dramatic inflection, coming from behind one of the closed doors.

  Gideon paused to listen for a moment.

  Some princess, to hear Rowdy tell it, was in big trouble.

  Gideon smiled again as he walked away, but this time, he felt something more than amusement, a sort of lonely longing, with threads of pure envy woven through it.

  What would it be like, he wondered, to have what Rowdy had—kids, a wife, a real home?

  Taking the rear stairway, Gideon reminded himself that he had a wife, too. And she was waiting for him at the Porter house, all alone.

  The old ladies were in the kitchen, seated primly at the table, when he passed through, the pair of them wearing ruffled nightcaps, gowns and wrappers, and sipping tea. They watched him intently as he crossed to the back door, opened it, and then paused, turned to face them, realizing it would be rude to leave without acknowledging them in some way.

  “Good night, ladies,” he said.

  “You be gentle with our Lydia, Mr. Yarbro,” one of them told him, her voice a twittery chirp. He still had no idea which one was which.

  “Don’t be rough,” counseled the second sister.

  Gideon colored up. How was he supposed to respond? If he promised to “be gentle” with Lydia, they’d figure he meant to deflower her—assuming they didn’t consider that water under the bridge. If he didn’t promise, they might decide he was a brute, and fret over their great-niece the whole night long.

  He hadn’t had much experience with little old ladies, but he knew they tended to worry.

  “Lydia,” he finally replied, “is safe with me.”

  He ducked out before either of them could speak again, his clothes and shaving gear under one arm.

  Lydia was safe with him, he thought, as he made his way across the darkened yard, through the back gate, and onto the long driveway leading out to the main street.

  The knowledge should have been a comfort to him—but it wasn’t.

  LYDIA HAD FINISHED HER leisurely bath and donned the ruffled nightgown Lark had provided. She’d let her hair down, and brushed it until it crackled, and dabbed perfume—from a tiny bottle some previous resident had left behind in the bathroom cabinet—in back of her ears and on the insides of her wrists.

  She went into the bedroom she hoped to share with Gideon, her heart beating wildly, and sat down on the edge of the bed to wait.

  Lark had assured Lydia that Gideon would join her at the Porter house—she’d see to it—but suppose he’d balked? Suppose, feeling, as the aunts would have put it, commandeered, Gideon chose to remain at Lark and Rowdy’s?

  There was only one possibility more alarming than that one, as far as Lydia was concerned—that he would simply do as he was told and show up. There were lots of beds in this house—he might well choose to sleep in a different one.

  Or he might decide to set aside his confusing reticence and ravish her.

  A little thrill, partly fear and partly anticipation, rushed through Lydia as she considered that prospect.

  Last night’s episode had been pleasurable, to put it mildly.

  But being ravished might be quite another thing.

  What if it hurt terribly?

  Downstairs, and far in the distance, a door opened and closed.

  Lydia’s fluttering heart shinnied right up into her throat.

  “Lydia?” It was Gideon’s voice, of course.

  Lark had kept her promise.

  Lydia swallowed.

  “Let him come looking for you,” Lark had told her, in this very room, that morning. Eons ago, it seemed to Lydia.

  How much persuading had Gideon needed? Had he resisted, or agreed readily?

  She heard his footsteps, brisk on the stairs.

  Again, he called her name.

  She had to bite down on her lower lip to keep from responding. The old-fashioned kerosene lamp on the bedside table was turned down low, but she reached out and turned the knob, so the wick lengthened and the light grew bright again.

  “It’s good for a man to wait,” Lark had said. “And wonder a little, too.”

  The bedroom door swung open then, startling Lydia so that she jumped.

  Gideon stood in the gap, like a living portrait in a frame, the glow from the gas lamps lining the hallway walls catching in his damp, butternut hair.

  The sight of him, broad-shouldered, with golden bristles on his cheeks because he needed a shave, literally took Lydia’s breath away. Left her reeling a little, at least on the inside, where she prayed it didn’t show.

  He started to say something, then stopped as he took in her hair, tumbling free to her waist, the thin but not sheer nightgown, the covers turned back on the bed.

  Completely stricken, Lydia found she could not speak.

  Gideon shook his head, as though he thought he might be seeing things that weren’t really there, but did not move from the doorway. “Didn’t you hear me calling you?” he asked, at some length and very quietly. He looked utterly confounded—so much so that Lydia wanted to laugh, and would have, if she hadn’t been so deliciously frightened.

  “I heard you,” she confirmed.

  “Then why didn’t you answer?” Gideon sounded curious, but not impatient.

  “Because,” Lydia said, drawing now on her own relatively limited personal resources and not the things Lark had told her, “a lady does not yell.”

  Gideon absorbed that. Then, to Lydia’s utter surprise, he threw back his head and gave a single and wholly masculine shout of laughter. When he met her now-widened gaze again, he countered very gruffly, “Doesn’t she?”

  Lydia blinked. No suitable answer came to mind.

  Gideon finally entered the room, though just far enough to close the door behind him. “Last night,” he said, “if I hadn’t kissed you at exactly the right time, you would have yelled fit to raise the roof.”

  Lydia opened her mouth, then closed it again.

  “But, then,” Gideon continued easily, “you weren’t exactly behaving like a lady, now, were you?”

  Lydia blushed, watched in stubborn, flummoxed silence as Gideon walked across the room, not toward her, but to take a seat in an old rocking chair. As calmly as if he’d strolled into this bedroom every night of his life, he pulled off his boots, first one, then the other, and tossed them aside.

  “Lady or not,” he said, raising his head to take her in with a slow, sweeping glance that left her feeling as though he’d removed every stitch she was wearing, “you are beautiful.”

  What did one say, in such circumstances? “Thank you” didn’t seem quite proper. And where was the wanton hussy, now that Lydia needed her?

  Gideon stood, unbuttoned his shirt, shrugged out of it.

  His chest, though scarred, looked Grecian to Lydia, perfectly chiseled, dusted in hair the color of his beard.

  Lydia searched her mind for some tidbit of conversation, uncomfortable with the silence, wanting to turn the topic in another direction, but once again came up dry.

  She squirmed a little, perching there on the edge of the mattress.

  “I like your hair down,” Gideon said. He was very near by then, turning down the lamp until the wick
sputtered and the flame went out. Moonlight spilled through the nearby window.

  Gideon stood silently for a long time, just looking at her.

  Then, still without a word, he went back to the door, opened it and stepped out. The gas lamps in the hallway went dark.

  A little shiver of—of something scurried through Lydia on millions of tiny, silvery feet.

  Gideon returned. “Shall we test your theory, Mrs. Yarbro?” he asked.

  Lydia finally found her voice. “W-what theory would that be, Mr. Yarbro?” she countered.

  He didn’t reply right away.

  But he came to stand directly in front of Lydia, so close that his legs brushed her knees, and cupped a hand under her chin, raised her face to make her look at him.

  “I promised two old ladies I would be gentle with you,” he told her, “and I will.”

  Lydia swallowed, full of joyous terror.

  His hands shifted to her shoulders, and he eased her gently onto her back. Leaned to taste her mouth, nibble at her lower lip, trace the length of her neck with a single, unbearably light pass of his lips.

  “I won’t hurt you, Lydia,” he said, once he’d set her trembling in earnest. “But I do intend to prove you wrong about one thing.”

  Staring up at him, brimming with crazy hopes and frenzied trepidations, Lydia managed to murmur, “What?”

  Her legs were still dangling over the side of the high bed.

  Gideon knelt between them, took her ankles gently into his hands, and set her heels on the mattress. Not in a hurried way, but firmly, he pushed her nightgown up, inch by inch, until she was bared to him, from her shoulders to her toes.

  “A lady does yell,” he murmured, parting her most intimate place, putting his mouth where his fingers had been the night before.

  And feasting upon her.

  Like something wild, seized with the instinct to mate, Lydia arched her back and cried out as Gideon alternately suckled and teased.

  She felt his chuckle move through her, a vibration riding bolts of purest fire. And then he devoured her, the way a hungry man might devour a ripe and juicy peach, with relish and no little greed.