Romancing the Bride

by Melissa Jagears

  Annie brushed her palms atop the marigolds she’d planted on Jack’s grave, loath to leave. After Jack’s birth, she hadn’t wanted to be pregnant ever again, but God had other ideas and she’d lost Augustus a year later.

  And here she was, married to a man who likely hoped for children of his own.

  He didn’t know how badly bringing them into this world could hurt.

  She looked across the small earthen mounds toward the six-foot-long one. “You don’t fault me for marrying him, do you?”

  Gregory wouldn’t blame her for trying to save his land, but if he knew how quickly she’d become attracted to another...

  She wrapped her arms around herself and closed her eyes. She could still feel Jacob’s warm hands cupping her cheeks as he’d kissed her.

  His arms had felt good and safe. But his lips against hers had made her feel vulnerable and defenseless, and yet, called like a siren’s song.

  When he’d asked her about her desires for the remainder of the evening, she could have told him yes, had even wanted to.

  “Don’t you look pensive.”

  Annie jumped at Leah’s voice. “I didn’t hear you open the gate.”

  “I could tell.” Leah put down her full basket and gracefully lowered herself beside Annie. “Want to talk?”

  Yes. No. Annie blew out a breath.

  Leah laid a hand on Annie’s knee. “Why didn’t you want to see if we could find Jacob before coming here?”

  “He might’ve been too far away, and we would’ve wasted daylight.” She grabbed a blade of grass and twisted it around her fingers. “Besides, I doubt he’d be thrilled with my reason for coming.”

  Leah’s brow furrowed. “To tend graves?”

  “No, to talk to Gregory.” She glanced at his marker and tried to summon up his image. His likeness swam before her mind—clear except for the contour of his jaw. The profile was wrong somehow. Too much like Jacob’s.

  “Ah. Because you know you should be talking to Jacob.”

  Annie squirmed, the sticks and pebbles beneath her only part of her discomfort. “I can’t talk to him about this.”

  “Why not?”

  “He wouldn’t understand.” Annie stood and brushed the dirt off her hands. “Besides, he wouldn’t want to hear.” Walking to the fence line, she countered the swirling in her stomach by wrapping her arms around her middle.

  Leah’s footsteps whispered over the grasses and stopped beside her.

  Meadowlarks hopped amidst the grasses on the other side of the fence, their bright yellow bellies scattered about like dandelions.

  Annie inhaled deeply and plunged in before she thought better of it. “I’m talking to Gregory because I know I can’t hurt his feelings.” She turned and looked at his grave. “Because I can’t tell the husband I’m falling for that I’m still stuck on a man buried beneath a tree.” She clenched the wooden railing behind her. “That’s simply something that shouldn’t be discussed—it isn’t proper, loving two men like that. If Gregory were still alive and walked into the same room as Jacob, I’m not sure who’d call to my heart more. It’s wrong. Terribly wrong. But it’s how I feel.”

  Leah placed a hand against Annie’s arm. “Not proper, maybe, but understandable. I bet he’d—”

  “No. It’s wrong somehow.” Annie swallowed hard. “Like adultery—loving two men at once.”

  Leah pushed back her slat bonnet and peered up at Annie. “It’s not adultery when one of them is dead, honey.”

  She winced. Why couldn’t Leah have said, “passed on” or “gone to the Lord” or some other euphemism? Though her voice had been gentle, the word “dead” just couldn’t be softened. “Call it emotional adultery then.”

  Leah huffed and Annie braced for a lecture.

  “Give yourself some leeway for what comes naturally—”

  “Sin is sin.”

  “It’s not a sin, and even if it was, I’d be more of a sinner than you.” Leah shook her head like an exasperated mother. “You’re too hard on yourself. Stop it.”

  Annie’s harsh laughter ripped through her vocal chords. “That’s like telling me to be someone else’s daughter. Impossible.”

  Mother would definitely be on her side about this.

  “Forgive me.” Annie shrugged. “Please, don’t allow my gloominess to ruin your joyful disposition.”

  “Oh, Annie. I’m not joy-filled because I’ve never gone through trials.” She leaned against the fence. “When I said I’d be a bigger sinner than you if measured with your measure, I wasn’t being disingenuous.”

  “How’s that?”

  Leah’s mouth flexed in amusement. “I had a life before Wyoming.”

  “And you’ve been in a situation like mine?”

  She lost her smile quicker than a rabbit disappearing down its hole. “Before I married Bryant.”

  Annie quickly tallied Leah’s age and years of marriage. “That would’ve made you—”

  “Young, yes.” Leah’s eyes twinkled. “Though I don’t feel much older than my twenty-year-old self.”

  “Nor I.” Annie grinned. “Not much.”

  Leah tilted her head toward the gate, snatched up her basket, and waited for Annie to follow.

  The cottonwood’s shadow had fallen over Gregory’s resting place, covering him in darkness. They had to head home, whether she was ready or not. Annie gathered her gardening tools and after one last look at them all, followed after Leah.

  Once Annie clicked the gate closed, Leah slipped her hand through the crook of Annie’s arm and set a leisurely pace toward the wagon. “Your love for Gregory will grow fainter in time, but it will always be there.”

  Perhaps, but that didn’t help her now.

  “I, too, am guilty of loving two men. However, both are still alive.”

  Annie stopped and cocked her head.

  Leah tugged her back to walking. “Deep-rooted feelings don’t change quickly. Whether your relationship is torn apart by an act of God or men. You can’t simply discard love because you’ve been forced to let a beloved go.”

  “So you had a beau back East who didn’t feel the same for you as you did him?”

  “No.” A faint smile lit her eyes. “He definitely felt the same for me. His proposal couldn’t have been more romantic.”

  She wrapped her arm tighter around Annie’s. “William and I planned on marrying in 1862, but he was shot in the head in 1861, during the Battle of Bethel Church. My William was in the 3rd New York Infantry, shot upon by Bendix’s 7th New York Regiment during the wee hours of the morning.”

  “I remember that story.” Annie recalled reading about the Northern troops firing in confusion upon their own. At the time, she’d believed, like most, the war wouldn’t last much longer.

  How wrong they were.

  “William came home with a ghastly gash.” Leah stopped walking and touched a hand to her forehead, as if outlining a memorized scar. “More of a divot. Right here.”

  She let her hand drop. “Strangely, William refused to believe he was no longer under a commanding officer, or hurt for that matter. If you reasoned with him, he became violent. Very violent.” Leah shuddered, gingerly touching her neck with a trembling hand. “And sometimes violent for no reason at all.”

  Annie squeezed Leah’s hand to reassure her. How often had William’s irrational rage been turned on this sweet woman?

  “He was not the William I knew.” Leah started forward again. “The doctor diagnosed chronic mania. His mother wanted to assume his care, but in his manic states, he was too powerful. She had to put him in a soldier’s home and I visited him every Saturday.” She smiled. “And every Saturday, I saw Bryant. He kept the home’s books until he joined the army the following spring.”

  “So he knows about William?”

  “Yes. If it hadn’t been for my devotion to William, I never would’ve made an impression on Bryant. Before he left for the war, he stopped me in the home’s hallway to ask if I’d consider waitin
g for him with the same faithfulness I gave a man who no longer remembered me.”

  Annie imagined herself in the same situation and shivered. Even without a war, Jacob could die as unexpectedly as Gregory.

  “Those were the longest days of my life, visiting the shell of a man I loved while waiting for another to return from the war that had stolen my first love away.”

  At the wagon, Leah placed her basket in the back, pulled out a pungent flower, and twirled it between her fingers. “I married Bryant a few months after he returned.” Her lips formed a smile, but the furrow in her brow made the expression wistful. “But I still loved William.”

  Annie chewed on a fingernail. “So how did you deal with loving two men at once?”

  “Like I do now. Time helps, of course.” She gestured toward the cemetery. “Do you still love those children buried beneath that cottonwood?”

  “Of course.”

  “Did your love for Celia or Spencer diminish with every grave you added?”

  Annie’s throat grew tight. She’d never forget a single burial. Waiting for Gregory to dig each tiny, cavernous hole. Trying to soothe Spencer or Celia with what little assurance she could muster from the emptiness inside her. “No.”

  Leah put her hands on her hips. “If you could toss away the love you felt for Gregory in a few short months, that would be the tragedy. Jacob doesn’t want a woman who could love so fickly.” She placed her flower back in the basket and emptied Annie’s arms of her tools. “You give Jacob as much of your heart as you can, and time will grow his portion. Then one day, Gregory will be a pleasant, heartbreaking memory.”

  Annie swallowed and looked away from Leah’s penetrating gaze. The woman believed her to be better than she was—for how could a man she’d known but two months have turned her head so quickly from her husband of sixteen years?

  Had her love for Gregory been that shallow?

  “Does that help?”

  Oh, how it didn’t.

  As sad as Leah’s story was, their situations were different. Leah had not married William and borne his children. But that wasn’t what her friend wanted to hear, so Annie nodded.

  Leah climbed up onto the wagon seat. “As with Gregory, your life with Jacob will have its ups and downs. You’ll love your husband when life is good.” Leah settled in her seat and looked toward Armelle. Her expression so gloomy, it was almost like that of another woman’s. “And you’ll love your husband when it’s not.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Crack.

  Jacob dropped back down as the simultaneous report of yet another bullet echoed off the river rocks.

  For three hours, a hidden marksman up on the ridge had kept him pinned behind this infernal boulder. Whoever was shooting at him had shot at Duchess first, scaring her off into the overgrowth far from the rocky riverside that offered him no cover.

  “Arrrrrrah!” Jacob picked up some rocks and flung them. He’d sat quiet for an entire hour before lifting his hat above the boulder, only to find the marksman still there.

  He slumped but kept his pistol ready, in case whoever was shooting was circling around to confront him.

  While scouting this morning, he’d found a print that looked identical to ones he’d seen at the rustlers’ campsite weeks ago. The boot was narrow with a gouge in its leather sole, and the tracks disappeared into the river as the rustlers’ often did. He’d ridden the riverbank for hours, praying this time he’d find where the prints exited the water.

  Not far from where he was now, he’d gotten down to inspect a fresh print when the crack and echo of a bullet came out of nowhere. But there’d been no mistaking what the marksman was aiming at when a second bullet kicked up rocks near Duchess’s hooves.

  She’d hightailed it to higher ground, and he’d scrambled for cover.

  And now he was stuck. The rustlers had to be on the other side of that ridge, and a lookout was buying them time to move out whatever cattle they’d swiped, or else, why keep shooting at him?

  He was so close, and yet, so useless.

  Closing his eyes, he visualized where he was on the Laramie from memory. There wasn’t enough cover for him to approach the ridge or get away. The shooter either had to leave, come for him, or Jacob would have to wait until nightfall.

  And he’d not go home without tracking this scoundrel down. Come evening, he’d have to travel a fair piece upstream to cross the river safely in the dark so he could circle back and apprehend the man whose gun-sight was set on him.

  These criminals needed to be hauled in, but he had to do it in the wisest way possible. Going down in a firefight would do nothing but leave his wife and children abandoned once again, and the county’s cattle even riper for the picking.

  * * *

  With a shiver, Jacob stepped out of the cold river water hours later, his boots squelching. If only the nearly full moon weren’t so bright.

  Moonlight might keep him from falling flat on his face, but he stood out like a sunbathing lizard. He hunched over and stole across the rocky riverbed. Though he believed he hadn’t been shot at while crossing the Laramie, the loud rushing of the river might’ve drowned out such noises, so he didn’t stop until he was shrouded in trees.

  Quieting his breathing, he listened to the night sounds. He had about a half-mile to backtrack to the ridge.

  Though he really wanted to bag the shooter who’d kept him pinned for hours, the fact that he’d stolen away from that boulder so easily in such bright moonlight meant the marksman had likely moved on.

  Had he joined back in with the rustlers or was he coming after Jacob?

  He had to find him first.

  From one stand of trees to another, Jacob moved as quickly and silently as he could to the bend of the Laramie where he’d spent all day ducking and covering. At the ridge, he crept along its perimeter until he came to a section he thought he could climb without using his hands since they were busy holding his gun ready.

  The roar of the river he’d listened to all day faded as he ascended one rock after another and started traversing the backside of the ridge. The sounds of night continued with not a single low of a steer or bawl of a calf echoing faintly across the plains.

  No sounds of men. No smoke rising for miles around.

  Had he spent all day behind that rock, frozen his toes in the Laramie, and nearly beat the heart out of his chest for nothing?

  Once a half hour passed without the sound of a bullet fired, Jacob eased up on his crouch and climbed the ridge faster. Where had his marksman camped out all afternoon?

  Halfway across the top, between two massive rocks that would make an excellent lookout, spent casings glinted in the moonlight.

  Jacob picked one up and scanned the area. Seeing no movement below, he descended back down the ridge and then crept around the clearing toward the river where it bent behind a stand of rocks. The muddy areas between the shore and grasses didn’t seem disturbed by cattle. There was indication of recent activity along the riverbank, but nothing worth trying to kill a marshal over.

  With a huge sigh, he dropped down to squint at a barely illuminated print, but it was larger than the one he’d been tracking.

  Too dark to see much, seemed it’d be best to return to Duchess, depart for Armelle, and squeeze in a few hours of sleep before returning to see if he could track down his shooter.

  And if he couldn’t bring Frank along, he’d have to see who of his would-be posse was available to come back with him. A hothead or two might actually be an asset in a stand-off.

  Bryant filed the paperwork Jacob had brought in yesterday before he’d gone out tracking. His friend’s probing gaze as he’d handed him the papers had unnerved him. Did Jacob suspect something?

  It didn’t matter though. Nothing would make him tell now.

  He’d refrained from visiting the gambling hall for an entire month. If he lost no more money and his past forgeries remained undetected, Jacob would never know of his involvement.

 
Neither would Leah.

  The hallway door opened, and his boss lumbered across the room toward his office.

  Bryant slowly stopped moving. Hopefully McGill wouldn’t—

  “What have you got on the schedule today, Whitsett?”

  Seemed invisibility was not a skill he possessed. He shrugged. “Paperwork, mostly.”

  McGill dropped a map onto the counter, unrolled it, and placed a thick index finger on a spot near the southwest corner. “Look up the property surrounding the river here.”

  Bryant’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”

  “Just do as I tell you.”

  Every muscle tensed. “I’m not fixing any more books or—”

  “I only asked you to look up the property.” McGill pushed the map toward him. “Don’t get up on your high horse. You don’t deserve to be atop a noble steed any more than I do.”

  Bryant looked at the place where McGill had pointed. The land was on a bend of the Laramie near some acreage McGill owned, or rather, had stolen the first time he’d gotten mixed up in his boss’s messes.

  A likely spot to find an alluvial deposit.

  He turned to face his file cabinets but only stared at them.

  “I’m waiting.”

  McGill had nothing new to blackmail him with, so why did his insides tremble so? It wasn’t as if he didn’t look up properties every day.

  With quick movements born of filing paperwork since he was thirteen, he searched through the books for the owner, shutting out any worrisome thoughts on why he was doing so.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Surrounded by children, Annie sat across the parlor listening to Jacob’s Sunday school lesson, her eyes closed, listening to the calm timbre of his voice.

  After he’d been unexpectedly gone for an entire day and night, she’d nearly worn out the parlor’s lone rocking chair, waiting at the window for a glimpse of him.

  That chair hadn’t begun to see how many miles she could rock in it until the next day when he’d gone back out to the ridge in search of whoever had shot at him, accompanied by two impulsive Crawford men, no less.