“Oh, really, that’s wonderful. You’ll be putting those Page business skills to work.”
She hadn’t meant that as an insult, but Billy suddenly found his shoes fascinating. “Funny, the one girl my pa said I was too good for turns out to be the one girl too good for me.”
“Well, aren’t you lucky?”
He frowned. “What?”
“Aren’t you lucky I’m not a snob like your pa? Besides,” Hannah moved closer to him, “I don’t think you’re the snob you used to be.”
He clenched and unclenched his fingers, licked his lips, and finally rested a hand on her waist. She didn’t move away, but held his gaze. Once upon a time, Billy’s blue eyes had been able to stop all communication from her brain to the rest of her. Now, she could think past the love she saw in them and keep things in perspective.
“Hannah,” he straightened a bit more, leaned his crutch on the rail, and placed his other hand on her waist. “I love you. I want to be with you. I want to be a father to Little Billy. I want us to be a family. I want—” He stopped short, exhaled, and grinned sheepishly. “What do you want?”
She nodded slightly. “The same things.”
“Then will you marry me?”
Her lips twitched with a teasing smile. “In six weeks.”
His whole body sagged. “Six weeks?” She waited to see which way he would go with that. She knew what the old Billy would do, but what about this new man standing before her? His face fell and he sighed. “Six weeks, six months, I’ll wait as long as you want. But, why six weeks.”
“Wade took the Reverend back to town right after the ceremony so he could catch the last stage.” She batted her eye lashes. “He’s halfway to Animas Forks by now.”
He swiped a defeated hand across his mouth. “I’ve got to talk to McIntyre about getting a full-time preacher in this town.”
~~~
As nervous as she was about her wedding night, Naomi was tired of the party and truly hoped this was the last event of the evening. Giggling, Hannah gently tied a bandana over her eyes and whispered, “Now, Naomi, don’t peek.”
Rebecca came to one side of her and Hannah stayed on the other. Slowly, carefully, they walked her off away from the cabin toward the water. She could tell that by the fading chatter. The sound of the river got louder as she struggled with her wedding dress, trying to hold up her skirt and walk blind in the tall, thick grass. “What are you all up to now?” she asked, on the verge of losing her good humor. She wanted to tell everyone to please go home.
“You’ll see,” Hannah sang. “Now don’t move.”
They whispered behind her for a second. Naomi thought it sounded as if one of them walked away. The rustle of a dress faded before it disappeared altogether. “Which one of you is still here?”
“Me.”
Hannah. “So what’s happening? Tell me something.”
“Well,” her voice faded, came back closer to her ear. “I can tell you that you’re definitely going to like it.”
“You’re not doing something awful like a shivaree?” God, please, no.
“No, Mr. McIntyre forbade it.”
Naomi fell silent and tried to listen for clues but the water made it difficult. Once or twice she thought she caught the odor of a candle perhaps, and maybe heard the jingle of fading wagons, but wasn’t sure. Finally, Hannah shifted, giggled, and kissed Naomi again.
“Stand right here and don’t move a muscle.” From a few feet away, she called, “I’ll see you tomorrow, Naomi. Maybe.”
Naomi humphed. She’d already been standing here so long her feet were beginning to hurt. Suddenly, Charles’ arms slipped around her and he lifted her off the ground. She clung to his neck, excited and nervous. “I don’t remember anything about carrying the bride across the threshold blindfolded.”
He chuckled. “There’s something I want you to see all at once, not bit by bit—an unveiling, so to speak.”
As he walked, Naomi was surprised by the butterflies cavorting in her. She was deliriously happy and yet terrified. “Charles, I love you.” Saying it made her feel better.
He slowed his walk, but carried on. She was slightly surprised he didn’t say it back. What was going on here?
“Now, take off the blindfold.”
She did as he commanded and removed the cloth. Positioned in front of their cabin, she immediately saw the dozens of glowing candles that lined the stone path on both sides, trailed up the porch stairs and down the porch in both directions, and led into the house. Full-on dark now, the glow was warm, inviting and … she frowned. There were a lot of candles, dozens and dozens of candles, maybe hundreds.
He carried her into the cabin where candles sat in the windows and in groups on the small table, lined the hearth, mantle, cook stove and dry sink, and formed a wide ring around their massive, pencil-post bed. The cabin, their home, Spartan and in need of a woman’s touch, glowed with the warm, inviting light. Surveying the large, one-room structure, her gaze traveled up the bedposts to the roof’s beams where she realized her new home had no roof! An infinite host of stars twinkled and shimmered above them. A shy quarter moon peeked between the rafters.
“We ran out of time, but it will have a roof soon.”
She brought her gaze back to him and her heart started pounding. All the trouble he’d gone to make this night so special … so pure. In a little while he would be all hers and she blushed at the promises of romance and passion. “It’s beautiful.”
“There is a candle burning for every day that I have known you.” In the glow from these lights, the tender look in his eyes had the power to make her weep or faint. She wasn’t sure which might happen first. “You are the light of my life, Naomi, and you pointed me to the eternal Light.” He kissed her lightly. She tightened her grip on him and their hunger deepened. After a moment, he pulled away. “Can you believe,” he asked, laughing, “that I am nervous?”
She rubbed her cheek along his beard, kissed his neck, nibbled on his ear. “Is that going to be a problem, Mr. McIntyre?” She felt a shiver shoot through him.
“Ohhh, no, Mrs. McIntyre.” A wry grin tilted his lips as he reached back with his foot and shoved the door closed. “No problem at all, your ladyship.”
“I’m going to hold you to that.”
“I expect you will.”
~~~
Epilogue
A horse’s impatient grumbling filtered into McIntyre’s dreams and his eyes fluttered open.
The open roof overhead and slate gray sky streaked with orange bewildered him for an instant. He lifted his head and remembered with delight that the luscious, naked creature partially wrapped around him was his wife. Their bare limbs were entangled wildly with each other as well as the sheets. And somehow they’d wound up at the opposite end of the bed.
Then it all rushed back. White satin slipping to the floor, soft caresses, and tantalizing sensations, a wondrous night of pleasure. The mere memory started his heart pounding.
Grinning like a love-struck fool, he lightly kissed the top of Naomi’s head and dared to recall a night so perfect and pure he had no words to describe it. Naomi’s surprising zeal had left him speechless and enthralled. She’d wanted him, and wanted to please him. She’d loved him with a passion and abandon that had ignited almost insatiable fires within him—
A horse whinnied, snatching his thoughts back to earth. He hadn’t imagined the sound after all. Apprehensive, he quickly but carefully, worked his way out of the bed, rummaged through a jumbled pile of clothes on the floor, and came up with his long johns. Hopping across the floor as he dressed, he grabbed his gun from the holster hanging beside the door and lurched to a window. One hand feverishly worked his underwear up to his waist while the other used the revolver to move the lace curtain aside.
Relief swept through him.
Chief Ouray sat atop a sorrel and stared stoically at the cabin door, as if time had no meaning. Beside him, a young boy, not much more than ten or twelve,
dozed fitfully on a pinto’s back. Sensing McIntyre, the chief’s gaze moved to the window. The men nodded and McIntyre dropped the curtain. He looked back to make sure Naomi hadn’t stirred, deposited his gun in its holster, and slipped outside.
“Chief. It’s good to see you,” he said, stepping down off the porch to reach his friend. The two shook hands, but McIntyre was instantly taken aback by the great sadness in Ouray’s face. Lines that told many stories had deepened noticeably since their last meeting and his leathery brow puckered with misery. His coal black hair had gone gray and he looked thinner, his shoulders more bent. He and the boy both looked exhausted, as if they’d been riding for days. “What is it? What’s happened?”
“Hopping Bird is dead,” Ouray answered solemnly. The boy’s head jerked up. Unveiled rage flared in his young, dark eyes when they lit on McIntyre.
Puzzled by the glare, McIntyre took a step back and let Ouray’s loss sink in. He hadn’t given the chief’s daughter any serious thought in years. She had been his squaw for a short time, before he’d had enough sense to realize the path to destroying One-Who-Cries could not go through Ouray, not if he called the man his friend. The girl had been a pawn, another woman to use and throw away. McIntyre had made amends with her father for that, but not with her. Until this moment, it hadn’t occurred to him he should even try.
“I am very sorry for your loss, Chief. She was a good woman.”
McIntyre let his gaze drift to the boy. He reminded him of Hopping Bird. Slender, black hair cropped at his shoulders, he had soft, round features like his mother, near as McIntyre could recollect. But gray circles smudged the skin under his eyes. He was clearly weary from travel. And, yet, the lad held on to that venomous scowl. Trying to shake off a sense of foreboding, McIntyre motioned toward his cabin. “Come down. I’ll fix us all some breakf—”
“I have come because of your promise.”
There was much history between the chief and himself. And he owed the old man. No matter what he was about to ask, McIntyre knew he couldn’t refuse. He tightened his jaw, furled and unfurled his fingers, but in the end, nodded, freeing the chief to continue.
“White Mountain is a bad place now for the Utes. More trouble is coming. The new agent Meeker fusses like an old woman and only causes hardship for my people.”
“One-Who-Cries is dead, Chief.” The old man’s eyes darted to the boy, as if looking for a reaction. The child didn’t flinch or waver in his hate-filled stare. A little unnerved by its steadiness, McIntyre shrugged. “Maybe things will settle down without his rabble-rousing.”
The chief sighed, the sound weary and hopeless. “Others will rise up to take his place. There will be no peace on the White Mountain Reservation. In the end, there may be no Utes.” He turned to the boy, who still hadn’t taken his eyes off McIntyre. “This is my grandson, Two Spears … so named,” Ouray swung back to McIntyre, “because he comes from two worlds.”
The intensity of the Chief’s somber gaze explained his meaning … and the favor. McIntyre felt light-headed.
Surely, he’s not asking—
“I cannot lose any more to the blue coats. I want my grandson to live—” Ouray, his voice strangled, clenched his jaw until he regained control. “Hopping Bird did not want this, but it is my decision now. If Two Spears is to live, I fear he must do so as a white man. I give him to you to raise in your world, Charles McIntyre. He is your son.”
~~~
Dear Reader, if you were moved by the story of my sisters and their men in Defiance, I humbly ask if you would consider leaving me a review on Amazon? Authors live and die by your words. I would be more grateful than you can imagine. You can click here to share your thoughts: http://www.amazon.com/Hearts-Defiance-Romance-Rockies-Book-ebook/dp/B00MR11OPA/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1408192515&sr=1-1&keywords=hearts+in+defiance
More importantly, I hope you’ve come to realize nothing can separate you from God’s love. So accept it, ask His forgiveness for your sins, and move on. His mercies are new every day!
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Final thoughts:
To craft a story, sometimes an author plays with the facts a bit. For example, I take a few liberties with Colorado geography. But I wanted to mention a bit more about Chief Ouray, a real Ute chief who worked hard to protect his people from extinction. As a result, some Utes loved him and others hated him.
A dismal failure, the White River Reservation did, indeed, breed unrest and a rebellion broke out in September of 1879. Indian Agent Nathan Meeker and ten male employees were killed by renegades and Meeker’s daughter and wife were kidnapped for ransom. Ouray and his wife Chipeta negotiated their release. If you’d like to learn more about this event and the pivotal role Chipeta played, please check out my blog at http://ladiesindefiance.com/2014/08/06/like-a-phoenix-queen-of-the-utes-rose-from-the-ashes/
And thank you for reading about all the Hearts in Defiance!
Hearts in Defiance (Romance in the Rockies Book 2) Page 35