Читать книгу The Bridegroom - Linda Lael Miller - Страница 12

ROWDY BOARDED THE TRAIN the moment it pulled into the depot at Stone Creek, his face chiseled into angry lines as he stormed along the aisle toward Gideon, paying no mind at all to greetings from other passengers as he passed.

“Have you completely lost your mind?” he rasped, reaching Gideon’s seat and looming over him.

Gideon, who had been dozing for the past couple of hours, exhausted from a sleepless night and the rigors of stealing a bride over the considerable objections of the groom and his hired henchmen, grinned up at his older brother, just to piss him off further.

“I guess the law down in Phoenix must have sent you a telegram,” he said cheerfully. “Reckon it said you ought to be on the lookout for a kidnapper.”

Rowdy’s ice-blue eyes sliced to Lydia, sound asleep in her rumpled wedding dress, her head resting on Helga’s shoulder. A faint smile touched the marshal’s mouth. “Is that who I think it is?”

Gideon nodded, stretched. “Lydia Fairmont,” he confirmed. “All grown up.”

“I’ll be damned,” Rowdy said. A decade before, as the new town marshal, he’d been the one to go out looking for Lydia’s father, in the middle of a blizzard. He’d found Dr. Fairmont sitting frozen in his buggy, along a lonely road, and brought the body back to Stone Creek after spending a long night standing between two horses to keep his own blood from turning to ice.

“Are we under arrest?” one of Lydia’s aunts piped up, from the row of seats just behind Gideon’s, having spotted Rowdy’s badge, most likely. He’d be damned if he could say whether she was Millie or Mittie—the two swore they weren’t identical twins, but as far as he was concerned, they might as well have been, because he sure as hell couldn’t tell them apart.

Rowdy, ever the gentleman, at least in the presence of a lady, whatever age she might be, smiled winningly and swept off his hat. “No, ma’am,” he said. “You are most definitely not under arrest.” But when that sharp blue gaze swung Gideon’s way again, another chill had set in. “You, on the other hand—”

By then, the other passengers had disembarked, some heading to one end of the car and some to the other, but none trying to get past Rowdy, blocking the aisle like an oak tree sprung up through the floorboards. Lydia was sitting up, blinking away sleep, yawning prettily, looking confused and warm and so delectable she made Gideon’s mouth water.

“Rowdy?” she asked, looking pleased to see Gideon’s brother again. Doubtless, she remembered him as some kind of hero, which was galling to Gideon. “Is that you?”

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. “Damn.”

“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.

Rowdy spoke again. “I’d tell you to forget this mining job you’ve signed on for—I don’t know why you’d want it anyway, with your education and experience working for Pinkerton Agency and then Wells Fargo—and light out of here, pronto. But I think you did what you did because you have strong feelings for Lydia Fairmont, and that’s something a man should never run away from.”

“Amen,” Wyatt said. “I’d be dead by now, if it hadn’t been for Sarah.”

Gideon raised his head, squared his shoulders. Whatever he felt for Lydia—a desire to protect her, mostly, he supposed—it wasn’t like what Rowdy had with Lark, or what Wyatt had with Sarah.

“I’ll talk to her,” he said, after a long time, getting to his feet.

Rowdy glanced at the clock—it was a little after eight. “Don’t wait too long,” he advised. “Lydia’s had herself quite a day, and she’ll likely want to turn in soon.”

Gideon nodded glumly, started for the door.

Wyatt was fixing to leave, too, while Rowdy banked the fire in the potbellied stove. Neither of them had drunk so much as a drop of that coffee they’d set such store by, Gideon noticed.

“Sarah will be watching the road for me,” Wyatt said. Then he grinned. “If there’s about to be a wedding, though, maybe I ought to stay around and see what happens this time.”

Although nothing was funny to Gideon at that moment, most especially weddings, he still gave a raspy chuckle as he stepped out onto the sidewalk.

Rowdy whistled for the dog and caught up to him in a few strides. Wyatt had a horse waiting, so he swung into the saddle and reined toward home.

As much as he’d jabbered inside the jailhouse, Rowdy didn’t say a thing as he and Gideon and the dog named Pardner headed for the big stone house at the end of a tree-lined lane behind the marshal’s office. Lights glowed in all the windows, and the sight made Gideon yearn to belong in such a place, like Rowdy, to have a wife watching the road for him, the way Sarah watched for Wyatt. Maybe even a few kids and a dog of his own.

Instead, he was about to face a woman who had every reason to want him lynched.

THE YARBRO HOUSE WAS BIG, though not nearly as big as Lydia’s home in Phoenix—her former home, that is. The furnishings were simple, the ornaments few and sturdy, and little wonder with four high-spirited children chasing each other through the spacious, uncluttered rooms—and another little Yarbro on the way, by the looks of Lark’s burgeoning middle.

When Lydia had first known Lark, as her teacher, Lark’s hair had been dark, but now it was almost the color of honey. Even as an eight-year-old, with problems aplenty of her own, Lydia had sensed that “Miss Morgan” was unhappy, and running away from something—or someone. Evidently, Lark had been trying to disguise herself back then—changing the color of her hair had been a drastic measure, one no respectable woman would undertake without good reason.

The dilemma, whatever it was, had apparently been resolved—Lydia wouldn’t have presumed to ask any personal questions in order to find out, though she burned to know—with Lark’s marriage to Rowdy. Lydia had never seen such serenity in a woman’s face and bearing as she did in Lark Yarbro’s, even with a houseful of unexpected company.

Lark had immediately lent Lydia a dress, as well as a nightgown for later, since Helga had packed only her most prized personal mementos. Lark had served them all supper, keeping plates warm in the oven for Rowdy and Gideon, and graciously settled the aunts, both mute with exhaustion and residual excitement, in a guest room on the main floor.

Lydia and Helga would be sharing the double bed in a small chamber behind the kitchen—Helga, like the aunts, had retired immediately after supper, utterly worn out and still defiantly pleased with her part in the disasters of the day.

“You’re so grown up, Lydia,” Lark sighed, as they sat at the kitchen table, having after-supper cups of tea. “It’s wonderful to see you again.”

Lydia blushed. “The circumstances leave something to be desired, you must admit.”

Lark smiled at that, shook her head. Lydia had told her the story of her interrupted wedding—she’d had to, arriving at the woman’s door in a bridal gown the way she had. And what details she’d left out, Helga and the aunts had hurried to provide.

They seemed to think this was all some grandly romantic adventure.

Lydia, apparently the only one still in possession of her senses, knew it for the calamity it was.

“These Yarbro men,” Lark said. “A woman never knows what to expect next.”

“I certainly didn’t expect to be abducted on my wedding day,” Lydia said, but now that some of the panic had subsided, along with the shock, she’d admitted the truth, at least to herself. She was glad Gideon had kept her from marrying Jacob; she’d hoped all along that he would come for her, that was why she’d sent the letter in the first place.

It was purely selfish to be so relieved, given the bleak future she and the aunts and Helga would have to face, but she was relieved. If it hadn’t been for Gideon, Jacob Fitch would be doing unspeakable things to her in his bed by now, with the blessing of God and man. Instead, she was sitting quietly at a kitchen table, in a lovely house at the end of a quiet country lane, sipping tea with her former teacher.

Except for her aunt Nell, Lydia had never admired another woman as much as she did Lark.

She was just about to excuse herself and retire when the screened door opened, and Rowdy came in, with a dog trailing behind him and Gideon following somewhat forlornly behind the dog.

Rowdy approached his wife’s chair, bent to kiss the top of her head. Lark glowed, smiling up at him.

“I’ve kept your supper warm,” she told him.

“I’ll eat later,” Rowdy answered, with a twinkle in his eyes. “Right now, you and me and Pardner are going to make ourselves scarce for a little while.”

Lydia felt a jolt of something very complicated as her gaze skirted Lark and Rowdy and connected with Gideon’s face. What she felt was partly alarm, partly annoyance, and mostly a complete mystery to her.

Gideon, meanwhile, hovered just over the threshold, as if struck dumb, long after Lark and Rowdy had left the kitchen.

“I didn’t know what else to do,” he finally said. “But if you want to go back to Jacob Fitch—if that’s really what you want—I’ll take you to him myself.”

It was too late to go back now, though Gideon probably didn’t realize that. Even if Jacob was willing to take the chance that Lydia hadn’t been “compromised,” as he would undoubtedly have put it, his mother wouldn’t be. The look Lydia had seen on the woman’s face before leaving the house with Gideon was burned into her memory—Malverna Fitch was not the sort to forgive such a disgrace.

Furthermore, without Mr. Fitch to guarantee payment of the family’s many debts, the creditors would close in, possibly as soon as tomorrow morning, since word of the aborted wedding had surely spread from one end of Phoenix to the other within a matter of minutes, like the wildfires that plagued the desert.

“I haven’t the first idea what I’m going to do, Gideon Yarbro,” Lydia said presently, with what sternness she could muster. “But I most certainly won’t be returning to Phoenix.”

Gideon, standing so still for so long, finally moved. He crossed to Lydia, crouched beside her chair, the way he’d done in the parlor at home the day before, took her hand, and looked up into her face. “I’m not a rich man,” he told her solemnly, “but I work hard, and I’ve got a little money put by. I can look after you, Lydia, and your aunts, too. Even Helga, if she doesn’t mind earning her keep.”

Lydia stared at him, dumbfounded—again. She could not think of a single other person who had Gideon’s capacity for surprising her. “Are you proposing to me?” she asked bluntly, because she was simply too spent to arrange her words in any other way.

“I guess I am proposing,” Gideon said, after swallowing visibly. “Rowdy said it was the least I could do, after today.”

If Lydia hadn’t wanted so badly to cry, she would have laughed. No wonder Rowdy had squired Lark out of the kitchen so quickly, leaving the two of them alone. He’d probably ordered Gideon to make things right. “That’s why you’re offering for me, Gideon? Because your brother thinks you ought to?”

Gideon made an obvious attempt to smile, and failed utterly. His expression was one of resignation, not ardor. “He’s right, Lydia,” he said. “It’s the least I can do.”

“The least you can do,” Lydia echoed. She found herself possessed of an almost incomprehensible urge to touch his face, tell him everything would be all right. At the same time, if she’d had the strength to slap Gideon Yarbro silly, she probably would have done it.

“I’m getting this all wrong,” Gideon said, and this time he did smile, though sadly. “It won’t be a real marriage, Lydia. I won’t expect you to share my bed, that is. You’ll have a home, and so will the aunts, and Fitch won’t be able to cause you any trouble because you’ll be my wife. That’s not such a bad bargain, is it?”

It was, in Lydia’s view, a terrible bargain, especially the part about not sharing a bed. Gideon had awakened a formidable hunger in her when he’d kissed her, and now he expected to marry her and still leave that hunger unexplored, unsatisfied?

On the other hand, he made a good case.

The aunts would be safe, with food to eat and a roof over their heads, and they obviously trusted Gideon or they wouldn’t have left the house with him, let alone bought new hats and dresses and traveled all the way to Stone Creek onboard a train at his behest.

As for herself, once she’d exchanged vows with Gideon, she would be part of the Yarbro clan. Lonely all her life, she would have sisters, Lark and Sarah, and a brother, as well, in Rowdy. She would have nieces and nephews and, in time, perhaps even friends, people who liked her for herself and not because she was a Fairmont.

“But what about you, Gideon?” Lydia asked softly, after mulling over all these things. “What could you possibly gain from such an arrangement?” A dreadful thought struck her then. “Suppose you meet another woman someday, and fall in love with her and—”

And I won’t be able to bear it if you do.

A muscle in Gideon’s strong, square jaw bunched, then relaxed again. “I’ll never fall in love with another woman, Lydia,” he said. “I can promise you that.”

“How can you, Gideon?” Lydia asked. “How can you promise such a thing?”

Gideon rose to his full height then, but he still held her hand. “A long time ago,” he answered, looking directly, unflinchingly, into her eyes, “I made up my mind never to love anybody. And so far, I’ve stood by that. That’s not likely to change.”

Looking back at him, Lydia knew Gideon meant what he said.

And even as she made a firm decision of her own—she would accept his proposal, if only to protect herself, the aunts and Helga from the wrath of Jacob Fitch—she felt her heart crumble into dry little fragments, like a very old love letter found in the bottom of a dusty box and handled too roughly.