The Bridegroom

by Linda Lael Miller

  Lydia’s spirits were dampened a little, though, when it occurred to her that the deputies might have been instructed to keep her, her aunts and Helga inside, while keeping Fitch or any strangers out.

  Helga reinforced that interpretation by declaring that, if she was going to be held captive, she might as well make herself useful, and set about putting the children and the house to rights, since some things had gone by the wayside when Lark took sick.

  The aunts seemed snug and content after they settled in the smaller of the two parlors, paging through an album of photographs and chatting quietly, and Lydia, with nothing to do once she’d looked in on Lark and the baby and found them both sleeping peacefully, wandered about, growing increasingly restless. It wasn’t that she had imperative errands to run, it was that she knew she wouldn’t be allowed to, and that chafed her increasingly independent spirit.

  She’d changed, since arriving in Stone Creek, and not just because she’d experienced ecstasy with Gideon, either. She was stronger, somehow, more inclined to take chances. More of a Yarbro.

  She had Lark, and the example she’d set, to thank for that, she supposed.

  There was some brief and blessed distraction at midmorning, when Maddie and Sam O’Ballivan arrived, just the two of them, to inquire after Lark and get a look at the new baby.

  Sam, a powerfully built man, not classically handsome but ruggedly attractive just the same, kept adjusting his string tie. Clearly, he was more at home on the range than shut up in a house, in his Sunday suit, with no one around but a gaggle of women.

  Still, whenever he looked at Maddie, the earth seemed to shift slightly on its axis. Lydia, observing this, longed yet again to be loved in the same quiet, fierce way these Stone Creek men seemed to love their women.

  How was it possible to be married, she wondered, and still feel utterly bereft, like some spirit condemned to wander between worlds, having no discernible impact on either?

  With Maddie occupied upstairs, visiting a now-wakeful Lark and admiring little Miranda, the walls of that warm, welcoming house seemed to close in on Lydia, the same way she suspected they were closing in on Sam O’Ballivan. She’d tried to engage him in conversation, and while he was friendly enough, he was clearly a man of few words.

  Suddenly, though both doors were guarded, she knew she had to get out.

  She still had no specific destination in mind; she simply wanted fresh air, a brisk walk, a chance to think with no one watching her.

  Helga was busy gathering sheets and clothing to be laundered.

  The aunts remained occupied with the album, the fresh pot of tea Lydia had brewed and served to them and their constant exchange of threadbare memories.

  Sarah had gone home to the ranch the night before, with Wyatt and Owen, to attend to her own house and children, and was thereby unavailable as a companion.

  The books in Rowdy’s study were appealing, but Lydia felt too agitated to read—she wouldn’t be able to sit still, feeling the way she did, let alone concentrate.

  When Maddie and Sam left, keeping their visit short out of consideration for Lark, Lydia felt more like a caged bird than ever.

  It would be easy enough to leave without her aunts or Helga noticing—but how could she get past the deputies? Rowdy had given them direct orders, Helga reported, that none of the women were to leave the house unescorted until he’d received a telegram from the U.S. Marshal’s office confirming that Jacob Fitch was indeed back in Phoenix, where he would not present a threat.

  As things turned out, it was little Julia, quietly helping Marietta to dress and undress a doll in a corner of the main parlor, who provided the answer.

  “If you wanted to leave the house,” Lydia ventured, settling herself on a nearby settee as if to watch the children at play, something she was sure she would have enjoyed on any day but that one, “without going out either the front door or the back, how would you go about it?”

  Julia looked up at her thoughtfully. “I’d climb out a window,” she said succinctly, as one who spoke from experience.

  “Is there another way?” Lydia asked, smoothing her skirts. She needed clothes of her own—as it was, she had nothing but the things Lark, Maddie and Sarah had contributed, and those didn’t fit properly.

  “Sure there is,” Julia said, turning her attention back to her little sister and the doll. “There’s the cellar door, and the coal chute. Hank crawled out that way once to go fishing with his friends after Mama told him he couldn’t because he hadn’t done his chores, but his clothes got all black and Papa caught him and made him copy three whole chapters of the Bible, one from Deuteronomy, one from Leviticus and one from Numbers. Hank said he’d rather take a whipping than do that again.”

  Lydia suppressed a smile. “I think I would agree with him,” she said.

  “Me, too,” Julia replied sagely. “But Papa and Mama don’t believe in spankings, so we have to copy Bible chapters when we’re bad. And we don’t get to choose something nice, either, like the Sermon on the Mount or the second chapter of Luke or Letters to the Romans. It’s most always from the Old Testament.”

  Lydia leaned forward slightly, distracted from her escape plan. “How old are you, Julia?”

  “Eight,” Julia replied.

  “You are very wise and well-spoken for your age,” Lydia remarked, and she was wholly sincere—as well as a little alarmed. She sensed that Julia was a few steps ahead of her, knew Lydia’s questions weren’t idle ones, though she’d tried to present them that way.

  “Mama says that’s the beauty of having to copy Bible chapters when you misbehave. It makes you smart. Getting spanked only makes you want to fight back.”

  Before her aunt Nell and, indirectly, Lark had rescued her from her stepmother, Mabel, as a child Julia’s age, Lydia had suffered many kicks, pinches and slaps, though never in her father’s presence. “Your mama,” Lydia said, “is a very intelligent woman.”

  “I know,” Julia agreed, and then she looked straight at Lydia with those penetrating Yarbro-blue eyes of hers, confirming Lydia’s earlier theory that the child would not be easy to fool, despite her tender years. “If you try to sneak past Papa’s deputies,” she warned solemnly, “you might have to copy down all of the Old Testament.”

  “Are you going to tattle, Julia?” Lydia asked, thinking how easily she had come to love this spirited, amazingly insightful child, and her brothers and sisters, too.

  “No,” Julia immediately answered. “Tattling means you have to write out all of Exodus.”

  “Oh, my,” Lydia said.

  “So I won’t tell,” Julia vowed, watching as her little sister stripped the doll of one dress and reached for another, “and neither will Marietta, even though she’s still too little to write out Bible chapters.”

  “Marietta won’t tell,” the smaller child echoed, “even though she’s still too little to write out Bible chappers.”

  Lydia rose, debating between the coal chute and the cellar. She’d go back home, she decided, and fetch her watercolor set and the small journal she painted in, since Helga had had the presence of mind to tuck those things into her valise before the flight from Phoenix. Painting always soothed her when she was restless.

  Since the coal chute might be a tight fit, and she didn’t want to spoil a borrowed dress, she opted for the cellar door. “I’ll be back before anyone misses me,” she promised. Then, nearly overcome with affection and guilt at drawing a mere child into a plot of deception, she added, “If anyone asks where I’ve gone, please don’t lie.”

  “I wouldn’t lie,” Julia said. “That’s Revelations, twice over.”

  Chuckling, Lydia took her leave.

  Helga was busy in the backyard, she discovered, when she returned to the kitchen, working the lever to make the washing machine agitate and chatting—almost flirting, actually—with the balding deputy manning the back door.

  After trying to talk herself out of what was probably an exercise in foolishness, and fail
ing miserably, Lydia drew a deep breath, let it out slowly, and descended the cellar stairs, batting through cobwebs as she went and squinting to see in almost total darkness. She returned to the kitchen, found a stubby candle and matches, and made a second attempt, this time with a flickering light to show her the way.

  She soon found the cellar doors, a pair of them, heavy and with daylight showing between their wooden slats, but the latch would not give, even after she’d set the candle aside and used both hands to tug at it. It must, she decided, have been padlocked on the outside, perhaps to prevent the children from rambling in uncommon hours.

  That left the coal chute, a prospect she had hoped to avoid.

  She gave herself another silent lecture, counseling patience and decorum, but that was as unsuccessful as her previous effort.

  The chute was next to the cold furnace, a great iron monstrosity of a contraption, surely equal to the task of heating an enormous house during cold northern Arizona winters. In Phoenix, it rarely snowed, but Lydia knew only too well that wasn’t the case in the upper part of the state, where freezing blizzards were not unusual.

  Holding the candle, she peered into the chute, using her free hand to test for coal dust. When it came away relatively clean, she began calculating the dimensions of the steep wooden shaft.

  Although she was, of course, larger than Hank, the last known individual to attempt passage by this route, she was not a large person. Lydia once again chided herself, but found her desire not only undiminished, but on the increase. She would take a pleasant walk, fetch her watercolor set from the other house, along with her painting tablet, and return.

  Where was the harm in that?

  If Jacob Fitch had still been in Stone Creek, word would surely have gotten back to Rowdy by now? After all, the town was not large, and the comings and goings of strangers surely didn’t go unnoticed.

  And it wasn’t as if she would have to go through the coal chute twice, after all. She could return by way of either the front door or the back, enjoying the chagrin of either deputy. What was the worst thing that could happen? she asked herself. She wasn’t a child; Rowdy couldn’t force her to copy out Bible chapters.

  Extinguishing the candle, and pushing up her sleeves, Lydia crawled into the coal chute. The climb was steep, and the shaft soon narrowed.

  And she quickly discovered what the worst thing that could happen actually was, because it did.

  After making only a few inches of progress, a foot at most, she realized she was stuck. She couldn’t go forward or back.

  Lydia fought down her first inclination, which leaned distinctly toward utter panic, and concentrated on breathing. That inspired her to let out all the air in her lungs and try to scoot in one direction or the other, but that didn’t work, either.

  Her imagination, overdeveloped by years of reading, ran wild.

  In her mind’s eye, she pictured a wholesale search, everyone in the Yarbro family, especially Gideon, turning the town of Stone Creek upside down looking for her. All the while, she would be trapped in this shaft, like a bird in a stovepipe, slowly dying of thirst or starvation.

  It might take weeks to die.

  The prospect increased her panic, so she dispensed with it. Surely, if she screamed for help—

  As yet, though, her pride would not allow her to do that.

  She was far too embarrassed.

  So she lay there, considering all possible fates.

  None of them were appealing.

  When she heard Rowdy’s voice from behind her, at the opening of the chute, relief though it was, she very nearly didn’t answer.

  “Lydia?” he called. “Are you in there?”

  “I’m sorry, Aunt Lydia,” Julia piped up, “but Papa came home and asked me straight-out where you’d gone, and I had to tell him the truth or write out all of Revelations.”

  Despite her humiliating and possibly dangerous predicament, Lydia had to smile at the child’s remark.

  “I’m stuck,” she replied. Surely her voice was muffled, but since she’d heard Rowdy and Julia, she assumed they could hear her, as well.

  “I can see the bottoms of your shoes,” Julia announced.

  “Julia,” Rowdy told his daughter, “be quiet.”

  “I don’t have to copy Revelations, do I?” Julia asked her papa. “I told you the truth, as soon as you asked me.”

  Rowdy’s chuckle echoed into the coal chute. “No, sweetheart. You don’t have to copy Revelations.” Then, to Lydia he said, “Hold on. This might take a while.”

  Lydia felt Rowdy’s hands grip her ankles, and sheer mortification blazed through her. A proper lady did not allow a man to see her ankles, let alone grasp them. Unless, of course, that man was her husband.

  “Hold on,” Rowdy repeated. “I’ll give you a tug or two, and that ought to suffice, but you might get a few slivers.”

  Slivers were the least of Lydia’s concerns at the moment. Rowdy would free her from the coal chute, even if he had to tear out part of the cellar wall to achieve his purpose. But then she’d have to face him.

  Lydia’s chagrin was complete when she heard a second voice—Gideon’s.

  “What the he—devil is going on here?” he demanded.

  What was he doing in Lark and Rowdy’s cellar? Wasn’t he supposed to be mining for copper?

  “Aunt Lydia,” Julia answered cheerfully, “is stuck in the coal chute.”

  Even through the tops of her high-button shoes, Lydia knew Gideon’s grip from Rowdy’s. She’d felt it before, when he’d arranged her feet wide apart on the edge of their mattress, so he could—

  Lydia’s blood heated, and it seemed to make her whole body swell, lodging her even more tightly in the narrow chute.

  “Do you need any help?” she heard Rowdy ask his brother, over the pounding of blood in her ears.

  Gideon’s response was wry. “I think I can handle it,” he said.

  She heard Rowdy and Julia leaving the cellar, mounting the stairs.

  And then Gideon pulled.

  Lydia felt a splinter pierce the plumpest part of her bottom, and bit her lower lip to keep from crying out.

  Gideon tugged at her again. This time, she moved a little, and there were no more slivers.

  “Are you all right, Lydia?” he asked, with mingled concern and amusement.

  “Just let me smother,” Lydia responded wretchedly.

  Gideon chuckled. “You’re not getting off that easy, Mrs. Yarbro.”

  He gave her another wrench, harder this time, and dislodged her further.

  Her skirt and petticoat had ridden up as he pulled, since the space was so tight.

  Her legs were free with the next tug, and then her bottom.

  “What an opportunity,” Gideon drawled. “Fortunately for you, Mrs. Yarbro, I am a gentleman.”

  He took her by the waist then, and hauled her the rest of the way out.

  Stood her unceremoniously on her feet and turned her around to face him.

  Her face flamed, even though her skirt and petticoat had righted themselves by the power of gravity.

  She must have looked a sight, covered in dust, if not soot, with her hair coming undone from its pins. Operating on pure bravado, she asked, “What are you doing here?”

  Gideon chuckled. “I was about to ask you the same question,” he said. “Good God, Lydia, what could possibly have possessed you to try to climb out through the coal chute?”

  The enterprise did seem even more ridiculous in retrospect than it had at its inception, but something in Lydia, pride perhaps, demanded that she brazen this through. She hiked up her chin, glared at Gideon, and refused to answer.

  “Are you all right?” Gideon asked again, taking a gentle hold on her shoulders. And although he sounded quite sincere in his concern for her general well-being, even in the near darkness she could see the twinkle of merriment in his eyes.

  He was enjoying this.

  “I have a splinter,” Lydia said, quite without in
tending to.

  “Where?” Gideon asked matter-of-factly.

  “Never mind where,” Lydia retorted. “Get Helga. She can take it out.”

  Gideon chuckled at that. The candle was still flickering on the nearby crate where Lydia had left it, and he bent to take hold of it. “Let me see,” he said.

  “No,” Lydia replied.

  He looked her over, even turning her around once. When she faced him again, she saw a wicked grin on his face.

  “I think I know,” he told her. “Hold your skirts, and I’ll take a look.”

  “You will not ‘take a look’!”

  But he’d already turned her away from him again. With one hand, he hoisted her skirts up, with the other, he tugged her bloomers down. Seeing the splinter, he let out a low whistle of exclamation.

  “That’s a dandy,” he said.

  Lydia closed her eyes, bit her lower lip, resigned to her lot, and yelped a little when Gideon dislodged the splinter in one deft motion.

  Having met the emergency, he patted her bare bottom once, pulled her bloomers up again, and let her outer garments fall back into place.

  “Go away,” Lydia said, keeping her back to him. If she had to look into Gideon’s face, and see the laughter she knew would be dancing in his eyes, she would die.

  “Not a chance,” Gideon answered.

  And he turned her about again, cupped a hand under her chin.

  “Look at me,” he said, when she didn’t open her eyes.

  “I can’t,” she answered.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I know you think this is funny.”

  “Hell, Lydia, it is funny.”

  She opened her eyes, glared at him. “If you hadn’t asked Rowdy to hold me prisoner in this house—”

  The light of that single candle, now standing on the crate again, played over the handsome planes of Gideon’s face, but the light coming from inside him, glowing in his eyes, was brighter still. It was partly amusement, yes, but there was a certain bafflement there, too, and some realization dawning, quite against his will, if his expression was to be believed.