An Inconvenient Bride

by Blythe Carver

  And she would gladly fight with him every day for the rest of her life so long as he was there to fight with. So long as it meant he was with her.

  She was quick to wipe a tear from her eye before it could spill onto her cheek. It seemed she couldn’t get herself under control.

  By the time they reached the wide, oft-traveled road which led to and from the ranch, she could hardly believe her eyes. The barbed wire fence on the other side told her they’d already reached Reed land.

  “My goodness,” she breathed, her heart clenching.

  Roan pointed. “Yes?” he asked.

  She nodded, her throat too tight to allow her to speak. She’d never known such joy, and such gripping heartache could exist all at once. How would she live through this when her heart seemed prepared to burst?

  Roan clicked his tongue to signal Merlyn to proceed down the road. He did this without looking back at her or even asking if she needed a moment’s rest.

  It was for the best that he did not ask. It was entirely for the best. If he didn’t care, neither did she. All she wanted was to get home.

  Even when the baby slept peacefully against her back. She wanted nothing more than to hold him, to soak him in as long as she could.

  This yearning was enough to make her consider asking if they could stop for a moment, but she’d waited too long.

  It was too late.

  A dust cloud rose in the west, ahead of them.

  A horse was on the move, and it was coming their way. She recognized it as Lewis’s in an instant.

  “Holly!” he cried out, hollering at the top of his lungs.

  He was there, which meant the girls were still there.

  Holly barely choked back a sob of relief as her brother-in-law raced toward her. By the time he brought the horse to a stop and all but leapt from the saddle, she had dismounted as well.

  “Lewis!” she wept, running into his outstretched arms. He was laughing, and so was she, and to embrace him meant she’d truly come home.

  “Who is this?” he asked, slack-jawed, staring over her shoulder to where Edward was just waking from a nap.

  “This is my good friend, Edward,” she explained through her happy tears. “His uncle, Roan, saved my life. I’ve been with him all this time, or nearly. I can tell you everything once we reach the house.”

  “Roan?” Lewis approached the stallion, where Roan was just dismounting.

  “Roan MacIntosh,” he confirmed, shaking Lewis’s hand.

  “I owe him my life,” she repeated, watching Roan carefully. His face was unreadable.

  “Well, you know your sisters will want to hear all about it,” Lewis beamed. “And you, Mr. MacIntosh, had better believe you’ll be welcome at the supper table tonight.”

  “I could not ask you to be so generous,” Roan insisted.

  Instantly, Holly felt his guard going up against Lewis’s hospitality. He was not accustomed to being with people, she remembered. It had been easy to forget that when it was only the two of them and the baby.

  “You didn’t ask,” Holly reminded him. “Unless you want my sisters invading the mountain and making themselves at home with you, you had better have supper with us tonight and let them ask the questions they’ll be dying to have answered.”

  He looked like he would rather swallow crushed glass.

  “I’ll ride ahead and tell the girls you’re coming,” Lewis decided, then took off a second later.

  She knew he was mostly happy for Molly’s sake, but that touched her just as deeply as it would if he had been happy just for her.

  She winced as she turned to Roan, who looked like he’d just been through another blizzard.

  “I’m sorry, I should have warned you,” she murmured. “They’re going to want to know all about you, and not merely because we spent a good while together in your home. They’ll be curious.”

  “I’m quite familiar with curiosity,” he grunted, cold and sullen.

  “You might at least pretend to be decent. No one is going to ogle or judge you. They will be so overjoyed. You are their new hero, though they don’t know it yet. They will soon enough.”

  “I never asked to be a hero. I don’t want to be one.”

  “It’s too late, I’m afraid.” She swung up into the saddle. “And as I am taking your nephew with me, you had better either follow me or say goodbye to him. One evening at the house will not be too much for you.”

  There was a moment when she thought for sure that he wouldn’t follow, that he would turn and leave her and the baby and never come back. She suspected he might truly be that proud, and that fearful of being in the company of so many strangers.

  “You might wait a moment,” he called out, falling in step beside her. “And give the child to me. Your sisters will want to hug you, and…”

  Yes, that made a great deal of sense. She pulled up on the reins, and he did the same before bringing Merlyn up beside her and reaching out.

  “You won’t run away?” she asked just before sliding the straps over her arms.

  “Why would you—”

  “I just want to be sure. Please. Come with me.” She looked at him over her shoulder and found him scowling, though she had the impression that he was upset with her for seeing through him, straight to what he had already considered. “Roan. Please. Just one more thing for me. They’ll want to meet you, to thank you, and to find out who I’ve been with these last two weeks. They will always wonder about you otherwise.”

  This was true, all of it, and more than enough reason for her to want him to come along.

  But it was not the entire truth. It was hardly a single slice.

  Still, he agreed, nodding firmly while positioning Edward before him in the saddle. “Very well, then.”

  It sounded for all the world like he was telling her he’d warned her, and she was about to get what she wished for.

  20

  She was loved.

  If there was one thing he could’ve wished for her, it was that she be loved. Well-loved. Adored, even.

  Which was what made the sight of the young women of the house pouring out to greet her, weeping and shouting with delight, all the more gratifying.

  “Holly!” Her name became a prayer, a song, as her sisters repeated it again and again. They hardly waited for her to descend from the saddle before covering her with tears, kisses, embraces.

  And she wept with them, leaning against them and laughing and answering questions as they came at her from all directions.

  “Yes, yes, I’m just fine! No, I’m not injured. It was snowing so, yes, yes, I wanted so much to tell you I was alive and well, it weighed on me so—”

  “Who is this?” The one who looked just like Holly—they were all similar in appearance, but this one might have been her mirror image—stared up at him from the commotion.

  Which quickly brought the commotion to a halt.

  His skin crawled at the presence of so many staring, wondering women.

  “This is Roan MacIntosh, and he hates being stared at so please, refrain.” Holly joined him, holding her arms out for the child. Roan handed him to her and gladly, as Edward would take their attention from him.

  “And this is Edward, Roan’s nephew. We’re very good friends.” She showed him off to her sisters, who cooed over him and made a very large fuss in general. They asked dozens of questions. The chief of which regarding his mother, and Holly shook her head with a frown when one of them asked after Lenore.

  “We can talk about that later,” she promised.

  One of the girls leaned against her arm, sniffling into a handkerchief. “We thought you were dead and gone,” she whimpered.

  “Now, Cate,” Holly smiled. “I made it home just as quickly as I could. And let me tell all of you here and now. Do not ever climb down from the buggy while on the way to town, no matter what happens. A trio of men kidnapped me and wished to demand ransom.”

  “Ransom!” The one who had to be Holly’s twin pressed
a hand to her chest. “How dare they?”

  “What of you?” Holly asked. “How do you feel?”

  “Worlds better now,” the girl assured her. “Come inside. You are in terrible need of a bath and a fresh change of clothing, and I can imagine you want to rest after all this riding. There is so much to tell you!”

  “And so much we want to know,” another sister added, eyeing him with great interest, and, he suspected, suspicion.

  “You’ll hear it all at supper,” Holly promised. “Lewis already demanded Roan stay, and I agree.”

  It was clear he had no say in the matter. “I’ll tend to the horses,” he murmured, taking the gelding’s reins and turning toward the stables.

  “One of the stable boys can manage,” one of the girls called out, but he ignored this. The next thing he knew, they would be telling him he was in desperate need of a bath as well.

  When he reached the long, low-slung building—the plank walls were painted an attractive shade of green, he noted, and the paint was fresh and the roof well-tended—he found Lewis waiting.

  “It seemed wise to let them have their reunion.” Lewis grinned. He seemed an easygoing sort, at least. Holly had praised him to no end, most notably for having kept the ranch in good condition and behaving as if it were his own.

  “They must have been terribly worried,” Roan observed. “Holly was concerned for them. Especially for Molly.”

  “I won’t pretend it was easy to keep her calm, which was what Doc Perkins told me to do above all other things,” Lewis admitted with a rather wry expression. “The girls did their best. You can’t imagine how many rumors went around about where she might’ve gone, what she might be doing.”

  “She was kidnapped,” Roan explained before going into the details of their time together. It was easier to speak to just one person, especially as this Lewis seemed a kindly, trustworthy sort. They discussed the blizzard and Lenore and how much of a help Holly was with her, and with Edward. “I admit, I cannot imagine what I’ll do without her,” he concluded.

  Was he wrong to say it?

  Lewis did not appear to find anything wrong with it. “Raising a boy on your own. That won’t be easy. I know Mr. Reed had his hands full with me, but I was older when I lost my folks. And he already had the house here, the bedrooms. Plenty of space and no children to fill it once his wife took the girls away.”

  Once they’d finished tending to the horses, they walked out to a fenced-in paddock. “She’s going to foal any day now,” Lewis explained, pointing to a heavily pregnant chestnut mare walking to and fro as if fretful, uncomfortable.

  “She might be prepared to foal now,” Roan observed, already on his way to examine the horse before propriety stopped him. He so easily forgot the rules of social behavior.

  “Please, go ahead,” Lewis encouraged. He followed Roan as he approached the mare, who both looked and sounded miserable. He suspected he’d feel the same way if he’d been carrying a foal for a year.

  Once he’d gained the animal’s trust, he crouched beside her. “The teats are waxing,” he murmured, stroking her flank. He tested the milk. “It’s turned white. She’s going to start laboring soon.”

  “You’ve spent a good deal of time among horses, then,” Lewis observed, standing to the side.

  “I took to them from a young age,” he explained, leading the mare to the stall which Lewis indicated was hers. “Has she been eating well?”

  “From all reports, yes, though a bit less today.”

  “She’s very uncomfortable.” He stroked her forehead, scratching between her ears.

  “What is it you do to make your living?” Lewis asked.

  “Fur trapping.”

  “Ah. I should have known from your clothing. Every trapper I’ve ever met has worn the same type of buckskin coat and carried a bag like yours.”

  “You’ve met a great many trappers?” He glanced up at Lewis, wondering what the man was getting at. He seemed to have something on his mind which he had not yet come out and stated.

  “Certainly. In town, quite a few of them. I’ve always found them to be honest and hardworking, and I appreciate those qualities very much. It seems that if you were kind and unselfish enough to save Holly and give her someplace to live until you could come down from the mountain, you’re a good man as well.”

  He was not accustomed to this. Rarely had the men he’d encountered on his trips into Carson City spoken to him so plainly, so openly. As if they were equals.

  In that spirit, Roan couldn’t help but ask what had been on his mind since first meeting the man along the road. “How do you manage living under one roof with so many women?”

  Lewis burst out laughing. “It isn’t easy, I’ll tell you that much. It was especially challenging when the girls first arrived. They didn’t know the first thing about living on a ranch and were more than a bit perturbed to be here at all. I admit, I can’t say I would’ve handled it much better were I in their place.”

  He appeared to size Roan up, a crooked smile revealing his thoughts. “Did she drive you to distraction? It’s all right. I know what it means to need someone to talk to when a Reed sister makes them half-mad. I’ve been outnumbered here for quite some time.”

  Roan continued to stroke the mare’s flank as he recalled the many times she’d done just as Lewis described. “I’m unaccustomed to the presence of others,” he mused. “Women, especially.”

  “It was the same for me. Truly,” he added when Roan cast a skeptical eye. “Just because there are a few dozen hands working here doesn’t mean I’m always with them. I spend much of the day by my lonesome, in the saddle. Checking on the condition of the fencing, going out to find a calf who wandered. I could ride all day out and back and not see another living soul.”

  “I understand you lived in the house with the owner. Mr. Reed.”

  “I did, and if you think he was a pleasant character, you’re sadly mistaken,” Lewis grimaced. “I respected him a great deal, and I owe him everything. He might easily have disposed of me when my parents died in the fire. But we barely said more than a few words to each other every day that didn’t have to do with the ranch. And once he passed on, it was just me in that house until Molly arrived.”

  “I suspect that was a shock,” Roan chuckled, knowing all too well.

  “For both of us. She arrived to find the place exactly as they’d left it, except I was living here, and I’d lived here longer than she ever did. It was much more my home by then, than it was hers. Naturally, she didn’t see it that way. She didn’t know how things were, how Mr. Reed took me in and treated me like a son. The worst part came when the rest of the girls arrived a week after she did. I had to prove myself worthy all over again.”

  “You lived here alone, together?”

  “Certainly.” Lewis raised an eyebrow. “As you and Holly did. She drove me to distraction, always asking questions, always determined things ought to be done to her standards. It meant nothing that we’d been doing things a certain way for fifteen years. And did she ever raise a fuss when it became clear I had no intention of leaving the house to suit her modesty. The fights we got into.” He whistled, rolling his eyes at the memory.

  This sounded very familiar. It granted Roan a measure of peace knowing he was not the only one who’d resorted to fighting with his unexpected guest.

  “And what did you do about it?” he asked.

  Lewis grinned. “I married her.”

  21

  “He’s darling,” Cate smiled, bouncing Edward on her knee. It was her turn with him, and Phoebe was beside herself with impatience while she waited for her own turn.

  “Let me hold him,” she insisted, reaching out.

  Cate was hearing none of it. “Wait your turn, the way the rest of us did.”

  For his part, Edward enjoyed the attention. Holly guessed he sensed his importance in the room, surrounded by doting women who wanted nothing more than to admire him. His charming temperament and winni
ng ways had already captured their hearts.

  Molly turned to her, eyes full of understanding. “I expect you’ll miss him terribly.”

  “More than I can explain,” she admitted, a bit tearful at the sound of his giggles while Cate tickled him. “I could never have expected this. Any of it.”

  “Ooh, how I wish we could find those men who took you,” Rachel snarled. “What we wouldn’t do to them.”

  “Fine talk from a deputy’s wife.” Cate chortled.

  “I am a sheriff’s wife, and I completely agree with her. To say nothing of the men, who I’m sure will agree when they arrive and hear of this. That is enough,” Phoebe added, taking Edward under the arms and pulling him close. “You’ve taken twice as much time with him as the rest of us had.”

  “Is this what I have to look forward to?” Molly asked with a tired smile, one hand over her belly. “The poor child won’t know who their mother is by the time you’re all through with him or her.”

  “I’d think you’d be grateful for the assistance,” Cate pointed out, falling back onto the bed. They’d gathered in Holly’s room, where she sat propped up on pillows at her sisters’ insistence.

  “How will Roan do this on his own?” Phoebe asked. She placed Edward on the floor and held his hands as he took one joy-filled, uneven step after another.

  “I don’t know,” Holly admitted. “It has been on my mind endlessly, as I’m certain it has been on his. Though I’d have better luck pulling his teeth out than I would of getting him to admit it. It’s so frustrating. I know how nervous he is and would like nothing more than to ease his mind somehow.”

  “I think he’s a fool,” Molly announced, shrugging when the rest of the girls turned to her in surprise. “I do. He has no business raising a small child on his own, in a shack on the mountain where anything might happen. What if he were to be caught in a storm like the one Holly wandered into? What if Edward was with him?”

  “What if he wasn’t?” Rachel pointed out. “What if he was in the little house, alone, and Roan was unable to make it back to him?”