Читать книгу Sgt. Billy's Bride - Bonnie Gardner - Страница 11

Darcy Stanton sat in the bride’s room in the chapel at Hurlburt Air Force Base and clenched her hands in her lap with a grip of death. She couldn’t believe she was really going through with it.

She wasn’t ready to be a bride. She didn’t know what she was doing in this room getting ready to marry First Lieutenant Richard Harris III, a man she’d known all her life but wasn’t sure she knew at all. At this moment, she wasn’t sure she liked Dick, much less loved him.

She didn’t want to be Mrs. Dick Harris, the daughter of General and Mrs. Harrington Stanton. She didn’t want to play the role of the prim and proper niece of Colonel John Harbeson, the commander of the Special Tactics Squadron at Hurlburt. She wanted to be just plain Darcy. Not Tracy D’Arcy Harbeson Stanton, the namesake of four decorated generals.

She wanted to know how it would feel to work for a living, not to have to worry about protocol and which fork to use and what the other officers’ wives were wearing and what they would think of her. She’d planned to put her degree from Duke University in North Carolina to good use after graduation, but Dick would hear none of it.

Darcy drew in a deep, shuddering breath and tried to still her racing heart. She was a registered nurse as of last Tuesday, and she knew the signs. She was in severe stress, verging on a full-fledged panic attack.

“Mom,” Darcy whispered, her voice coming out in short, breathy gasps. “I’m not sure I can do this.” There, she’d finally said it, she’d voiced the doubts she’d been harboring for weeks, months—almost from the moment she’d let her mother convince her that accepting Dick’s proposal was the right thing to do.

Since her parents were out of the country because of Daddy’s posting at NATO Headquarters in Belgium, Mom had transferred much of the mother-of-the-bride wedding planning duties to Aunt Marianne. However, even from long distance and via e-mail, Mom had ruled with an iron hand.

Mom had enumerated a list of reasons for marrying Dick Harris and joining the Harris family. The Stantons had had a long history of military service. Though Darcy was their only child—and not a son, much to Daddy’s dismay—her parents believed that the Stanton military tradition, if not the name, would live on if their daughter married into another long-standing military family.

But Darcy wasn’t ready for offspring to carry on the family tradition. The thought of bearing any man’s child, much less Dick’s, set her into a panic.

Her mother, just in from Europe, took Darcy by the hands and turned her away from the mirror. She brushed a flyaway strand of hair away from Darcy’s face and looked into her eyes. “It’s normal to have jitters, Tracy. I felt that way before my wedding. Once it’s over, you’ll be fine.”

Darcy just looked at her and tried to blink the tears of frustration and panic out of her eyes. How could she explain that the wedding wasn’t making her nervous? It was the prospect of marriage…that was scaring the bejesus out of her.

Swallowing, Darcy forced herself to sit still in front of the makeup mirror. She had to do something before she made the biggest mistake of her life. She moistened her lips gone suddenly dry as the Sahara and looked at her mom. “May I have a few minutes to compose myself?”

Her mother nodded and shooed the bridesmaids out, then stepped out of the small room.

No sooner had the door closed behind them than Darcy leapt to action. She shot to her feet and locked the door. She knew what she had to do.

And it wasn’t marry Dick.

Darcy rummaged through the drawers of the makeup table for paper and a pen or pencil. Finding none, she grabbed an eyebrow pencil from the new makeup case her mother had insisted she use and scrawled a note on the mirror.

She hated that she’d let it go this far, but it wasn’t too late. There would be no wedding. She removed the engagement ring that had always weighed too heavy on her hand and left it on the dressing table.

Then, leaving her mother’s bridal veil hanging on a hook on the wall beside the mirror, she grabbed the backpack that contained her wallet and her other important papers and stuffed her jeans and T-shirt inside. Then she pushed open the window.

Taking a deep breath, Darcy unhooked the screen, hiked up her long skirt and perched on the windowsill. Then she swung her legs up over the edge. It wasn’t that far to the ground, and the bride’s room was on the blind side of the chapel so nobody would see. She could be in her car, still in the parking lot from the rehearsal the night before, and on the road before anyone missed her. A quick change at an out-of-the-way gas station would remove any evidence of the wedding that wasn’t to be.

Breathing a silent prayer, Darcy lowered herself to the ground and made her getaway.