Weddings Under a Western Sky: The Hand-Me-Down BrideThe Bride Wore BritchesSomething Borrowed, Something True

by Elizabeth Lane

  If she was, Everett decided as he got to his feet to go to her, then she was doing a mighty convincing job of it. Because as he took Nellie’s hand and led her away from the firelight, he could feel the heat and need between them. He could feel the unusual strength of their bond, as tenacious and surprising as the fast-growing wildflowers along the road to town. He could know, in his heart, that providence had brought her to him.

  All he had to do now was make her his forever.

  And because he was man enough to do so, Everett drew Nellie into the same space near the barn door where he’d first kissed her. He caught hold of her dewy flower garlands, then smiled.

  “Pretty,” he said. “But not half as beautiful as you.”

  He kissed her, hungrily, the way he’d dreamed of doing while watching her “prepare” for their wedding. Then Everett delved his hands in her hair and kissed her again. He needed to feel her mouth against his—needed to sweep his tongue against hers and steal the same breath and give her…everything he had.

  “I guess they work, then,” Nellie said when he raised his head at last. Playfully she dragged her strands of flowers over his chest, his neck, his face. “They’re supposed to make me irresistible to you, so that you want to have the wedding.”

  “Oh, I want to have the wedding.” He kissed her again, letting her know with every thrust of his tongue that he spoke the truth. He pinned her against the barn’s rough exterior wall, heedless of the raucous celebrating still going on near the campfire. He roved his hands over her sides, her waist, her derriere. “I want to have you, Nellie. I want you so much.”

  “Yes.” Breathlessly she caressed him, too. Her hands touched his back, his nape and then his hair with what felt like wickedly seductive intent. “Oh, Everett. If only you knew!” Eagerly she kissed him. “Marybelle told me it would be ‘la torture’ to wait for our wedding night. Edina warned me as well. But I never dreamed it would be like this! I wish—”

  Gasping, Nellie stopped. She tossed her head while Everett pressed his lips to her neck, her earlobe, her waiting mouth.

  “I wish we were getting married tomorrow!” he said roughly.

  At the same time, Nellie blurted the very same thing.

  In unison, they laughed, the spell of their kisses momentarily broken. This had been happening between them, too—this eerie synchronicity that suggested something more.

  “See what just happened there?” Nellie pointed out with an elfin look. “Now do you want to discuss whether we’re truly meant to be together, the way the marriage bureau claimed?”

  “Shysters,” Everett judged. “Fraudsters.” He kissed her again, lightheartedly this time, but he couldn’t help being reminded of her question to him days ago, after they’d shared their first kiss on this very same spot. Knowing she would persist—another quality he loved about Nellie—he shook his head. “I can’t rightly say. I don’t have my philosophy book.”

  And she, most likely, would expect erudition from him—scholarship and wisdom he would have stolen from one of Oscar’s many books—as patently false as his need for eyeglasses.

  Why in tarnation had he hatched this plan at all? Everett wondered. Right now, it was only separating him from Nellie. He couldn’t truly be her man, and he wasn’t sure he was helping her with her blasted newspaper story, either—despite all the note-taking and writing she’d done so far. That had impressed him, too—her dexterity with words. But for some reason, her fluent ability to describe her thoughts wasn’t evident just then.

  “Oh. You can’t say? All right then,” Nellie told him with her usual sprightliness. “Maybe you’ll tell me later.”

  It was her customary rejoinder—one that, Everett had learned, signified disappointment as much as resignation. He wished the two didn’t come so automatically to Nellie.

  He wished harder that she wouldn’t feel them at all.

  He wasn’t sure what he’d done to upset her—and the tempting curve of her mouth prevented him, quite reasonably, from delving into the matter any further. Driven by craving and passion and a need to assure Nellie that he did care for her, even if he didn’t have the fancy authorial words to say so, Everett kissed her again. He held her close. He let his actions speak as best as they could, in the darkness surrounding his barn and his land and his poor woebegone heart, and if gestures had meanings, then his kisses meant everything. They were promises. And entreaties.

  “Come away with me, Nellie,” he urged in a husky voice. “Just for the night. Come away, right now. No one will know—”

  “Everyone will know. Your household is overflowing!”

  Everett shook his head. “If we slip away now, no one will see. They’re busy weaving Russian flower garlands.”

  “I saw Ivan give one to Edina,” she said chattily. “Do you think they’ll be next to be engaged?” Then, looking up at him, Nellie seemed to realize how inadequate her attempts to distract him were. “Not that we’re truly engaged, but you know—”

  “Please.” He sweetened his request with another kiss. In his arms, Nellie was pliant and warm and breathless, and he knew she was close to agreeing. “We’ll be alone all night.”

  “Alone? Together?” Her gaze looked tremulous. “But I—”

  “Say yes, Nellie. I can tell that you want to. I—”

  I want to, too! Everett meant to say, but before he could, Nellie sharpened her gaze. She pulled back abruptly.

  “You can’t tell that about me. You can’t! Even if I am outside a barn kissing you, I’m a good woman, Everett,” Nellie insisted. Sudden tears swam in her eyes. Her chin wobbled. “I am! Maybe not exactly the kind of woman you said you wanted—”

  “Precisely the kind I wanted,” he swore, feeling his meager powers of volubility deserting him like dandelion fluff on a seedtime breeze. “You’re the woman I want, Nellie! Why else—”

  Why else would I be wearing spectacles and a suit? Everett wanted to shout. Why else would I carry around books and sleep with apples under my head? But again Nellie cut him short.

  “If this is a test, I hope I’ve passed,” she said.

  He boggled at her. “A test? Of what?”

  Nellie crossed her arms over her chest, making him miss the feel of her arms around him. A long moment passed. The balmy April breezes lifted her skirt hem and ruffled Everett’s shirt. A coyote howled. In the gloom, Nellie’s face turned downcast.

  “I have a great deal of work to do,” she declared. “Our ‘wedding’ is just days away, and I’ve scarcely written enough material to fill a single column inch at the Weekly Leader.”

  “You’re thinking of work? Now?”

  “Well.” With a single backward step, Nellie seemed to put a mile’s worth of distance between them. “That’s what I’m here to do, isn’t it? Although we ought to discuss how to break off our ‘engagement,’” she went on in a reasonable-sounding tone. “I think you should be the one to do it, on account of your—”

  “I won’t do it!” This time, it was Everett’s turn to fold his arms over his chest. He glowered at Nellie, hoping she could sense the depth of his dislike of that notion. He wasn’t ready for this. “Are you saying you don’t want to get married?”

  “Are you saying you do?”

  Caught, Everett frowned. He wanted to cast aside his pretenses, show himself for the man he was…be loved for the man he was. If he was honest with himself, that was all he wanted.

  Despite that, fear held him silent.

  Fear held him silent, stubborn…and woefully alone.

  No right-thinking woman wants to live on a hardscrabble ranch with a burly, unrefined oaf for a husband, Everett, he remembered Abbey O’Neill telling him all those months ago.

  Honestly. Did you think I would settle for this? For you?

  He couldn’t ask Nellie to make the sacrifice that Ab
bey had refused. Nellie was better than Abbey—better than anyone he knew. Everett couldn’t ask her to throw away her work, her talent, her dazzling life in the city, all for his sake.

  What he could do was sacrifice, this night, for her.

  “Let’s see this through a few more days,” he said. “That will be enough time—” to get a return train ticket, savor our last few hours together, stamp your memory on my heart, where it can never be erased “—to put things as they should be.”

  At that, Nellie’s wounded gaze swerved to his. She gave him an unsteady smile. She reached for his hand. Her touch felt more necessary than the air Everett breathed…more heartbreaking than all the moments leading up to this had been or ever would be.

  “Gentlemanly to the end?” Nellie said with a faint nod of approbation. She inhaled deeply, then nodded. “I understand.”

  Everett didn’t want her to understand. He wanted her to come away with him, to be with him…to love him. But if this was what he got instead, he vowed to make the most of it.

  “You won’t want this later,” Nellie said in a confusingly wry and self-deprecating tone, “so I’ll give it to you now.”

  Still holding his hand, she levered upward. She looked into his eyes, brought her mouth to his, then kissed him. Softly. Slowly. Sweetly. He’d have sworn her heart and soul was in that one point of contact between them…but as soon as Everett had that fanciful thought and opened his eyes to verify it, she was gone. All he could glimpse in the darkness around him were shadows and faraway flickers, too hazy to make out or hold on to.

  Then the darkness filled with sound of a strumming

  guitar. A dozen hoarse male voices raised in song. Everett knew then that fate had recognized Nellie’s departure, too. The song on the air was one his vaqueros had written specifically for her on the day of her arrival in Morrow Creek. They played it now like a love song. Like an epic ballad. Like one of the sonnets that Everett had tried—and bungled—reading to Nellie himself.

  Inhaling a fortifying breath, Everett joined in, too. After all that Nellie had given him, it was the least he could do.

  At least it was…for now.

  Chapter Eight

  From the night of the campfire onward, Nellie’s course of action was plain. She couldn’t spend any more time laughing with Everett, exploring his ranch hand in hand, or learning about esoteric wedding customs and the quirky traditions of his vaqueros’ diverse homelands. As much as she’d loved getting to know Everett and his life in the West, she had to move on.

  The strain she’d been under—and the way she’d cracked under that strain when Everett had asked her to slip away with him that fateful night—had made that truth more than evident. She wasn’t cut out to be a rancher’s compliant wife. The effort of pretending she was was devastating, both to her and to Everett.

  Nellie knew, in retrospect, that he hadn’t been disrespectful of her. Likely he’d felt the connection between them, too…and had wanted to deepen it by being alone together.

  In her heart of hearts, Nellie had wanted that, too.

  But then, as now, she hadn’t been able to face that. She hadn’t been able to let Everett throw away his future on an impulse fueled by a single tender moment and a moonlit spring night. Everett deserved more than that. He deserved more than a tomboyish wife who loved his ribald jokes more than his sonnet readings, his rolled-sleeve Henley shirts more than his neckties and suits, and his wide-open lands

  more than his tidy library. He deserved…everything. Everything Nellie couldn’t give him.

  Everett would never be happy with a hoydenish wife like her, Nellie knew. And she couldn’t change her ways—not lastingly, at least. It gave her too much pleasure to tramp through the fields, twirl her heavy borrowed lasso and watch the mustangs run. She didn’t want to make either of them miserable; that’s what staying together would accomplish. Yet, contradictorily, Everett refused to end their engagement.

  He had to be the one to do so! In the same way that he’d categorically refused to discuss canceling their wedding, Nellie refused to humiliate him the same way Miss O’Neill had. She refused to run. She refused to toss him away heartlessly.

  The only thing to do was to make Everett reject her. And the only way to do that was simple to discern.

  Nellie had to let him see her. The real her.

  The unconventional, boots-wearing, unacceptable her.

  So, when Everett happened upon her practicing her new lasso-twirling skills with his ranch hands’ help, Nellie spun that hank of braided leather with twice her usual vigor. When she accompanied Everett to their next round of engagement parties and traditional soirees and prewedding activities, she strode ahead of him with stamina and enthusiasm. When dining, Nellie shunned delicate pastries and pies in favor of spicy dishes full of chilis; when dancing, she moved with abandon; when relaxing in the evenings, she forewent her earlier attempts at ladylike needlework and substituted pen and paper instead.

  “Read to me what you’ve written,” Everett said on one of those nights. And because Nellie was trying to make him see how unsuitable she truly was for him, she went ahead and did so.

  When she’d finished, she lowered her paper. “Well?”

  “You have a knack for detail and an evocative turn of phrase. You’re even more talented than I thought, Nellie.”

  Flabbergasted, she stared at him. “You’re supposed to say, ‘Those are silly scribblings,’ or ‘Describe the dresses more.’”

  “Your article is an exposé of mail-order marriage bureaus,” Everett said mildly. “It’s not about dresses.”

  “But a tidbit about fashionable reticules could probably be worked in someplace,” she retorted. “Isn’t that correct?”

  With big hazel eyes, Everett gazed at her as though she were mad. “Are those the kinds of things you usually hear?”

  Defensively she jutted her chin. “Sometimes. Of course.”

  “The only ‘of course’ thing about that is that you’ve been listening to the wrong people,” Everett told her. Then he adjusted his spectacles and went back to reading his book.

  “German philosophy isn’t usually read upside down,” Nellie pointed out huffily. “And your eyeglasses are on crooked.”

  But Everett only smiled at her and went on reading.

  Her other efforts to make him end their engagement were similarly futile. Nellie kissed him in the upstairs hallway, late at night after everyone else had gone to sleep, hoping to prove how horribly unladylike she was…and had nearly succeeded in starting a house fire with her own body heat for her trouble. She took to showing off her muddy boots, loudly proclaiming her ineptness at cookery and boldly feeding the mustangs carrots.

  Everett only watched her with an implacable expression and said, variously, “My boots are muddy, too.” Then, “Edina would bawl if you tried to take away her biscuit-making bowl.” And finally, blithely, “Watch your fingers. That one bites.”

  In despair, and with only days left until their “wedding,” Nellie finally snatched up a bottle of Old Orchard from the hidden stash in the kitchen, marched out to the eastern barn and proceeded to make herself unavoidably, unfemininely drunk.

  Unfortunately Everett found her before she got very far.

  “You might have invited me here for a drink yourself,” he said as he sauntered inside, limned by the afternoon light from the window in the hayloft, looking handsome and broad-shouldered and breathtakingly necessary for her overall happiness, “rather than leading me on this wild-goose chase.” He put his hands on his hips. “Marybelle told me you were down by the creek.”

  “Aha!” Wild-eyed, Nellie pointed the whiskey bottle at him. “That’s what I told her to tell you! It was a clever diversion.”

  “Well, I can’t say you weren’t thorough.” With something akin to admiration, Everett cam
e nearer. He sat on a hay bale beside her, close enough that she could smell his intoxicating shaving soap. “Edina claimed you were at the telegraph office in town. Ivan insisted you were hiding bizcochitos in the attic. Oscar said you’d gone to become a dance-hall girl at Jack Murphy’s saloon.” He grinned. “His was the most entertaining.”

  “I see.” After taking another bitter swig from her bottle, Nellie hugged it to her chest. Inside she felt hollow and desperate—but also a tiny bit hopeful, too. Did Everett’s continued pursuit of her mean he cared…a little? “Is that all?”

  A chuckle. “Not by a long shot.” Squinting roguishly at the bunting and ribbons overhead, Everett recalled more details for her. “Several men pointed me toward the mountains, claiming you’d found a gold strike. Pedro challenged me to a duel, simply for asking about you. He said he would fight for your honor.”

  “That’s sweet. And Casper?”

  “Casper confessed everything in five seconds flat. Then he spent the next fifteen minutes begging forgiveness for deceiving me in the first place.” A sardonic grin. “That boy hasn’t got a sneaky bone in his body.”

  “Humph. I guess that’s how you found me in here, then?”

  “No.” Shaking his head, Everett gazed fondly at her. His face was clean-shaven, his hair unmussed, his suit rigorously tidy. She longed for the Everett Bannon she’d first met—rugged, straight-talking and a little bit wild. “I saw you go in here.”

  “Then why did you question everyone else?”

  “I wanted to see how far their loyalties went.”

  “Oh.” Nellie considered that. “How far did they go?”

  “All the way to defying me and back.” Everett seemed put out by that—and a little bit amused, too. “I never thought I’d see the day. I told you—they all love you.” Illustratively he angled his head toward the barn door. “I’ll have you know, there are six horses, one cat, one dog and a hungry stray bunny outside right now, all waiting for you to come out.”