The moment dragged on, their gazes locked, asking questions without words. Finally he turned away as if to leave, and Claire reached out a hand to stop him. “Why does it matter to you, Tye? Do you believe in lucky talismans?”
He dragged a hand across his jaw and nodded. “I do. I believe in Good Luck Wedding Dresses and Magical Wedding Cakes.”
Claire glanced from him, to the dress, then back to him again. “But I don’t understand. Your attitude…well .. . it’s changed.”
Tye dipped down and snagged her corset from beneath the bed. He dangled it before her, watching her as he said, “I’ve had time to get used to the idea, and I’ve realized we might as well make the best of the situation. For your sake I had hoped for a better man for you, but now that’s no longer the question. You and I are getting married today, and I’m honest enough to recognize it won’t be any marriage of convenience. Not the way our blood runs hot when we’re alone.”
Claire’s heart hammered. “Are you saying…?”
“We’ll have a wedding night tonight. Whether we like it or not, we’ll be having ourselves a real marriage. That’s why I want you to wear Jenny’s dress. That’s why I want us both to have some of that Magical Wedding Cake.”
He pulled her to him and pressed a swift, hard kiss to her lips. “I reckon you and I can use all the good luck we can get.”
Good luck comes to those patient enough to wait for it.
CHAPTER 17
SHORTLY AFTER TYE LEFT, a second knock sounded on Claire’s door. This time she didn’t bother to say “Come in.” She couldn’t. She was crying too hard.
Her mother entered the room anyway. “Claire? Why, Claire Donovan. What in heavens has you so worked up?”
Claire lifted her tearstained face toward her mother and said, “Oh, Mama, I’m so very afraid.”
Concern dimmed Peggy Donovan’s expression. Depositing the rose bouquet she carried on a nearby table, she approached the bed. She gave the wedding gown a curious look, then shifted it aside making room for her to sit beside her daughter. Taking Claire into her arms, she said, “What happened? Why are you afraid?”
“Oh, Mama. I don’t know how to explain.”
“Don’t you want this marriage, after all? Have you had second thoughts? Last night you seemed happy to be marrying Mr. McBride. Did I read that wrong?”
“I was happy. I am happy. That’s the problem.”
Peggy Donovan reached into the pocket of her skirt and withdrew a handkerchief. She wiped the fresh flurry of tears from her daughter’s face. “Maybe you should explain.”
Claire was such a mass of confusion she didn’t know how to articulate it. The words bubbling up inside her made little sense, but she assumed her mother knew her well enough to put it all together. And maybe then she could explain it to Claire.
“He brought me a dress, Mama. Everything is for the children, of course, and I used it for what I wanted, but now it breaks my heart I all but blackmailed him, and he brought me a wedding gown and wants to have a wedding night. I know if that happens I’m doomed. It will be the end of me. The end I won’t be able to stop it.”
“Stop what, child? Does this have something to do with the partnership he formed with your father?”
Claire shook her head.
Peg Donovan’s face grew grim. “Has Tye McBride given you reason to believe he’ll be a bully in the bedroom? If so, we’ll call a halt to this wedding immediately. I won’t have my baby hurt.”
“He won’t be able to help it. It’s not his fault. It’s mine. I’m the one who…oh. Oh, my. Oh, dear Lord no.” Her entire body froze as realization swept through her like a January wind. “It’s already too late.”
“Too late for what, Claire?”
“Me. It’s too late for me.” She gazed at her mother, noting the worry and concern that dimmed the older woman’s eyes. In a 1adonn tone, she gave voice to the words that shook her to her soul. “I love him, Mama.”
Gentle amusement colored Peg Donovan’s slow-dawning smile. She smoothed the hair away from her daughter’s face and teased, “You love the man you are about to marry? What misery.”
“It’s a catastrophe.”
“Just the thing for Catastrophic Claire.”
“Mo-ther. You don’t understand.”
“Then explain it to me, dear.”
“Oh, Mama.” Claire dropped her chin to her chest. “I can’t.”
Her mother placed a finger beneath her chin and forced it back up. “Try.”
Claire shut her eyes for a moment, gathering her thoughts. How could she put this confusion into words? Maybe it would help to compare her feelings for Tye to her mother’s life with her father. Claire took a deep breath, then asked, “You love Da, don’t you?”
“Yes, very much.”
“That love you feel for him has changed who you are. I don’t want to change like that, Mama. I’m still trying to figure out me, who I am. I don’t want to be Mrs. Tye McBride. I mean, I want to be his wife, but I don’t want to be his…his…”
“His what?”
Twenty-odd years’ worth of unexpressed objections and observations baled out from her mouth like accusations. “You love Da, so you iron his underwear and cook his favorite foods. You read the books he wants you to read and make friends with those he wants you to befriend.”
“Now, Claire.”
But she pressed on. “You let him pick out the new stove for the kitchen at home—your kitchen. You let him pick out the names of your children. You became a baker when you wanted to be a teacher.”
Peggy frowned. “This is a fine way to be speaking to your mother, young lady.”
Claire saw the hurt in her mother’s eyes and she winced. “I’m not trying to be mean, Mama. I just don’t understand. Because you love Da, you gave up who you are. How could you do that, Mama? How could you let him do that to you?”
“Oh, Claire,” her mother said with a sigh. “Is that what you think?”
“What I think is that loving someone shouldn’t make a woman toss away her own dreams and desires. It shouldn’t steal her freedom. That’s not right. It’s not. But it’s reality. It’s the way of this world, and it’s why I didn’t want to fall in love. I don’t want to lose who I am, and who I am becoming, to Tye McBride.”
“My dear child. And to think I’ve always considered you my bright one. How can you be so blind?”
Claire didn’t know her mother considered her bright. She certainly had never said so. At the moment, fresh on the heels of self-revelation, Claire didn’t feel exceptionally intelligent. But neither was she stupid.
“I’m not blind, Mama. My eyes are very much open. I’ve seen the lengths to which we go for the sake of love. You’ve been cooking on that stove you hate for three years now.” Tears overflowed once more. “And now I love Tye. Oh, Mama, I love him so much. What lengths will I go to for him? Who will I become? Will I end up just like you?”
“Perhaps,” Peggy replied, a razor’s edge to her tone. “If you are very, very lucky.”
Her words brought Claire up short. She was horrified and ashamed at the things she had said.
“Do us both a favor and listen to me, please?”
Drying her tears, she met her mother’s gaze, offering a silent apology. Never before had she been so…impolite with her mother, but today of all days she felt she had to be completely honest. She had no energy for anything else. Softly she said, “I’ll listen.”
“I never realized you labored under these misconceptions. If you had mentioned them earlier, perhaps we could have avoided much of this. So you think I threw away my wants and wishes for John, hmm?”
“Mama…I…well, yes. Yes, I do.”
Her mother sighed. “I cannot believe I have raised a daughter who thinks falling in love means the end of a woman’s dreams and the loss of her sense of self.”
“But that’s what I have seen at home,” Claire defended.
“Is it? Or is it what you only tho
ught you saw?” Before Claire could comment on that, her mother said something that left her all but speechless. “Of all my children—and despite your gender—you, Claire, are most like your father.”
“What?”
“Yes. You are brave and courageous and independent and loyal. You’re willing to do absolutely anything for those you love. But sometimes, Claire, you are truly dense.”
Claire reared back, but her mother pressed on. “For example, it is true I give up the idea of being a schoolteacher when I married your father. And haven’t I suffered for it?”
She said it such a way that Claire knew she meant exactly the opposite.
“Instead of teaching dozens,” Peggy continued, “I’ve been forced to concentrate my educational efforts on a handful. God blessed me with two boys and a girl. Now, what kind of job did I do? Not too shabby, I would think. Texas has a pair of strong, young, learned men to help lead it into the next century. And the girl, well, up until today I’d thought I’d done a masterful job teaching her. Apparently I missed a few important lessons.”
“Mama, I—”
Peggy ignored Claire’s interruption. “Apparently I forgot to teach her about compromise. No marriage can exist without it.”
“Compromise?” Claire scoffed. “You don’t compromise with Da.”
“You don’t think so? Then you, my dear, haven’t been paying attention. You should have noticed the give and take on financial matters concerning brands of stoves and expensive family holidays to resorts like Lake Bliss.”
Oh. Claire winced as her mother drove that point home.
Peggy wasn’t through yet. “Of course, you were at a disadvantage because I relegated many such discussions to the privacy of your father’s and my bedroom. I am a firm believer that it isn’t right and proper for parents to argue in front of their children, and I always made it a point to save my stiffest backbone and hardest head for behind closed doors.”
Claire was in shock. “I never realized that happened. I always thought Da’s word was law.”
“Your Da’s word is loud, not necessarily law,” Peggy replied dryly.
Claire thought back to all the times she’d assumed her mother had given in to her father’s wishes. Had they fought behind-doors battles every time? “You make it sound so…difficult.”
“Oh, no. Don’t think that. Love is nothing to dread or fear. It is the sun and the moon and stars and the sky all wrapped up in a wondrous gift.”
Watching the blissful smile on her mother’s expression, Claire saw that for Peggy, it surely was true. But couldn’t her mother understand that her needs might be different? “Mama, I don’t want the moon and the stars. They were fine for you, but I need something different. These last few months on my own have been wonderful. I want the freedom to be myself—whoever and whatever I want to be.”
“Oh, Claire,” her mother said, shaking her head. “What do you think true freedom is?”
“Independence.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. True freedom is not independence, not really. It’s choice.”
“Choice?”
“Yes. True freedom is the ability and opportunity to choose how you live your life. It’s what loving your father gave to me. The choice.”
“I don’t understand.”
Peggy drew a deep breath, then sighed. “All my life I had wanted no more than to be a wife and mother. The teaching was a substitute for what I truly craved— a family of my own. Loving your father didn’t curtail my freedom; it gave me my freedom.”
Claire thought about that a moment “So you are saying you chose to give up teaching?”
“And I chose to allow him the honor of naming our children. Those things you mentioned—all of them— were choices I made. Your father never forced anything upon me that I didn’t choose to allow.”
“Even the stove?”
Humor lit her mother’s eyes. “Perhaps the stove wasn’t my choice, but it was my compromise.” She reached for her daughter’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “Your father and I have a partnership, a good, strong, healthy partnership that is rooted in mutual respect and, most important, in love. Can you see that honey?”
It took effort for Claire to speak past a lump the size of a raisin muffin lodged in her throat. “I guess so. But Mama, Tye and I don’t have that.”
Peggy smiled. “It takes time, child. A marriage is a partnership that takes time and effort to develop. It doesn’t happen overnight, not like this partnership between your father and your husband-to-be. Give yourselves some time. Listen to your Mama. Don’t be afraid of love.”
Then, all business, she stood and reached for the wedding gown. Holding it up, she clicked her tongue. “A beautiful design. Simple but elegant. You’ll be the most beautiful bride Texas has ever seen. And here I was, afraid that the cake might outshine you.”
Claire glanced toward her mother with anxious eyes. “You saw the cake?”
“Don’t ask me to admit it to your father, but you, darling daughter, have baked the prettiest Donovan Magical Wedding Cake I’ve ever seen. That magnolia blossom you used for the top is truly spectacular.”
Pleasure melted like meringue through Claire. She had worked so hard on that cake. It held a special place in her heart.
While she bathed and dressed, she reflected on the conversation with her mother. Maybe love wasn’t automatically a sentence to a life of servitude and drudgery like she had feared. Maybe with the right man, marriage would mean freedom of choice for her like it had for Mama.
The question remained whether Tye McBride was the “right man.” She didn’t dare forget that while she might be marrying with love in her heart, Tye certainly was not. For him, lust was as close as it got.
But could lust be nurtured into something deeper?
Claire viewed her reflection in the bedroom mirror and said softly, “Perhaps.”
If she acted bravely and showed him at least through her actions, if not her words, how much she cared, then perhaps this marriage could succeed. If she made him happy—truly and deeply happy—then perhaps this marriage could grow into a partnership like her parents’, one filled with strength and joy and laughter. And love.
Hope sparked a flame in heart. She’d do it. She’d do her best to make him happy, and maybe given enough time and effort, lust would grow into love. “It could happen,” Claire murmured, slipping her feet into her shoes. She stood and took one last glance in the mirror.
A bride looked back. Rosy cheeks and glittering eyes. Hopeful. Almost even confident. She’d make Tye forget about that Constance woman and the trouble she had caused. She’d redefine his entire perception of what he now considered a four-letter-word: wife. “I’ll make him happy, I will.”
She walked into the parlor where her father had joined her mother, waiting to escort them to the hastily reserved church. It wasn’t until she climbed into the waiting buggy and smoothed her skirt around her that she realized what she had said. I’ll make him happy.
Dear Lord, she’d become her mother, after all.
But this time, for the first time ever, that didn’t seem such a bad thing.
***
EMMA AND her sisters lay on their bellies in their favorite Sunday dresses, peering through the choir loft railings at St. Paul’s Methodist Evangelical Church. At one end Maribeth kept hold of Ralph, who chafed at the unaccustomed leash. Spike the fortune-teller fish acted the opposite bookend. In honor of the occasion, yellow roses adorned both Ralph’s collar and Spike’s bowl. The added touch had been Emma’s idea, and even Uncle Tye had appeared pleased at the results.
He certainly didn’t look too happy at the moment.
Five minutes earlier, Miss Claire’s siblings and the friend she loved, that pretty Mr. Sundine, had shown up at the church with scowls on their faces and threats in their voices, asking for a few moments alone with then-future brother-in-law. Tye sent Emma and her sisters outside. They chose to hide in the choir loft instead. Now they watched
and listened in wide-eyed amazement as the Donovans took their uncle Tye to task.
“What the hell is this all about?” Tye demanded, his hands braced upon his hips as he scowled at the men surrounding him. “Last night y’all were all for this wedding. What happened since then? Did you rob the bank overnight to get the money for your factory or something? You figure you don’t need my cash anymore?”
Patrick Donovan snarled. “We did a bit of thinking, McBride.”
“Now, why does that surprise me?”
Lars Sundine narrowed his eyes. “I don’t like his attitude.”
“Yeah, me neither,” agreed Patrick.
Brian brushed his knuckles on his sleeve. “I say we hit him a time or twelve. Just in case.”
Above the tableau, Maribeth armed herself and her sisters with a stack of hymnals to bombard the Donovan brothers if needed.
“Just in case of what?” Uncle Tye looked seriously dose to losing his temper.
Patrick answered. “Just in case there is more to this hurried wedding than you and our sister let on last night.”
“More? More what?”
Brian took over the conversation after that. “Have you touched our sister, McBride? Is that the reason for this haste? Is her belly fixin’ to pop?”
Tye frowned and shook his head. “Her belly? What are you fellows talking about?”
As one, the men shouted, “Have you gotten our Claire in a family way?”
The echoed resounded through the church. In the choir loft the McBride Menaces shared a scandalized look. Emma knew about making babies. Mama had explained about it not long before she and Papa left on their trip, when she sat Emma down and talked to her about monthly courses. At the time Emma had been too appalled at the idea of bleeding that she’d hardly paid attention to the rest of it. The one thing she had remembered when she, being a good sister, related the tale to her younger siblings was that the husband put his boy part inside the wife to give her a baby.
So the Donovan brothers and Mr. Sundine thought Uncle Tye had done that to Miss Donovan even though they weren’t married yet? How rude.
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