by Nancy Bush
“Mr. Danner?” The reverend asked. “Do you take Kelsey Garrett to be your –”
“Yes,” he answered swiftly. “I do.”
“To have and to hold?”
“Yes.”
“For richer for poorer?”
“Yes,” he answered intensely, his gaze slicing to Kelsey.
“In sickness and in health?”
Her health was deserting her, Jesse thought, watching the color drain right out of her face. “Yes, yes, yes!” he declared impatiently.
“Until death do you part?”
“Until death. Right.” He smiled tightly into Kelsey now widened eyes. “Your turn,” he said softly through his teeth.
“Kelsey Garrett, do you take this man, Jesse Danner, to be your lawfully wedded husband?”
An engulfing wave crashed over Kelsey’s head. She was drowning. Drowning, drowning, drowning. She felt a hand on her arm, hard and hurting. It was Jesse. Holding on to her to keep her from fainting.
She opened her mouth to say no. This was a ridiculous game and she had to end it. But then she caught sight of his expression. He knew she wouldn’t be able to go through with the ceremony. Pride kept her from forming the word; she couldn’t do it.
“Yes,” she whispered above her thundering heart.
“Yes?” Jesse asked sharply, amazed, before the reverend could continue.
Knowing she’d sealed her fate, Kelsey swallowed and said in a stronger voice, “Yes. I do…”
“Oh, hell!”
¤ ¤ ¤
By the time they left the chapel the heat of the day had turned the streets to baked cobblestones and dry, throat-catching dust. Kelsey was wilted. She wasn’t as good at emotional confrontations as she was at physical ones, she’d learned to her dismay. She felt wrung out, and when Jesse suddenly grabbed her, slamming her against the vestibule wall with the hard and tensile strength of his entire body, she nearly cried out from pain and surprise.
“Kelsey Garrett?” he said through his teeth. Then, softer, “Kelsey Garrett?”
“Let go of me, Jesse.”
“Not until you tell me what this is all about. You’re my wife now. You realize that, don’t you? My wife,” he muttered furiously, clenching his fists as if fighting the urge to strangle her.
“Just temporarily.”
“You’re damn right!”
He flung himself away from her, eyeing her as if he expected her to sprout devil horns. But he couldn’t rip his gaze away, as if her appearance were fascinating in some repulsive way.
Kelsey didn’t know what to say, so she kept quiet, staring back at him warily. Jesse’s temper was explosive. She wouldn’t be surprised if he tried to do her bodily harm.
He couldn’t seem to take it in. He just stared at her while the heat and smell from the street mingled with the cloying atmosphere of the church.
“I married a Garrett,” he finally said blankly.
“Just temporarily,” Kelsey repeated.
Jesse regarded her murderously. “You knew all along who I was. Why didn’t you just come out with it? Charlotte would have never been allowed to marry me if my past came to light.”
“I couldn’t be sure of that.”
“Oh, couldn’t you? You wanted this marriage for some other reason. What?”
Kelsey’s lips tightened. She tried to stoke up her anger, but she just felt too tired. Suddenly Jesse grabbed her shoulders and shook her so hard her neck ached.
As soon as he released her she doubled up her fist to slug him in the stomach, but he grabbed her wrist, glaring at her, his nose a hair’s breadth from hers. Fury simmered in those blue eyes. Blind fury.
“Answer me,” he said in a dangerously soft voice.
“I married you to turn you away from Charlotte. I know what you are, and I’m better prepared to handle you than she is.”
“What am I?” he demanded.
“You’re a wastrel. A liar, an opportunist, and a womanizer. You’ve always gotten by on shallow charm, even when you were fifteen!”
“Well, that’s a pretty detailed list, Mrs. Danner. Want to know what you are?”
“No. Let go of my wrists. You’re hurting me.”
He snorted, tightening his grip cruelly. Kelsey sucked in a breath, her mind churning in an effort to thwart him.
“You’re an empty, envious, mean-spirited woman who would rather sell herself to a man like a whore than risk winning a husband on her feminine qualities.” His voice rasped in her ear. “Don’t be hurling the first stone, Mrs. Danner. Lest you want to be buried under a rock fall.”
She hated him. She hated the way he said, “Mrs. Danner,” as if it tasted bad on his tongue. She hated the way he looked. She hated his touch!
“I paid for this marriage with my inheritance,” she told him in a tight, flat voice that warned of her escalating temper. “We made a bargain. So take your dirty hands off me and let’s get on with it. You want respectability, start acting respectable. You’re a social disaster, Jesse, and unless you change, and change quickly, you’ll be laughed out of Portland’s elite circles before you’ve even begun!”
His eyes narrowed. “You don’t know everything about me,” he declared cryptically, releasing her so suddenly she nearly lost her balance.
He strode into the baking sunlight. Kelsey glanced down at her wrists, which were red and hurting, the skin still burning where he’d twisted it. She thought of her derringer. She’d never shot a man in the back but, my Lord, she itched to take out her gun and blast him.
Drawing a calming breath, she followed her new husband to the dust-shrouded black buggy, a niggling worry taking root as she realized the truth to his last statement: She didn’t know everything about this Jesse Danner. Her opinion was based on what she knew of his past. She knew next to nothing about his present.
But, she thought with renewed panic and desperation, she was about to find out.
Chapter Six
The apartment was swept clean, but that was it’s only saving grace. It was small and the noxious scent of it was enough to make Kelsey gag. She stood in the center of the living room, trying desperately to hide her alarm. This was where Jesse intended her to stay?
He disappeared through the doorway to another room. The bedroom, she presumed. She didn’t have the courage to follow him. Bedsprings groaned. What was he doing?
Kelsey hands were like ice even though the air was so stale it seemed to have the substance of pudding every time she took a shallow breath. She could taste the squalor. Her mind was too jumbled to think why he’d brought her there; this was hardly the place to start scaling the heights of society. But she’d be damned if she’d pose a question. He’d been silent since the chapel, deathly silent, and she’d shared that silence with relish. She could outwait him, outplay him. She had no doubt.
His booted footsteps rang across the plankwood floor and she realized the sound of the bedsprings was only from him flinging her valise on the bed. Small comfort.
He stopped short, about six feet to one side of her. Keeping a rigid posture, Kelsey slowly turned to confront him.
“Lovely,” she said.
He didn’t make any response, either verbally or by the merest flicker of expression. His gaze seemed to move past her, to the window, as if his mind were elsewhere.
That irritated her. She didn’t believe anyone could be so supremely unaffected by the events of the past few hours. He looked, she realized belatedly, totally nonplussed.
“I have to leave,” he said. “I put your valise in the bedroom.”
“Where are your clothes?”
“I haven’t brought them here yet. I’ll go get ‘em.”
“No, wait.” Kelsey moved between him and the door. “You really intend for us to live here? Where are your clothes? Do you have some other residence?”
“I’ll be back.”
“If you leave without answering some questions, don’t expect me to be here when you return,” she declared imperiou
sly.
His gaze sliced to hers. A smoldering fury turned those aquamarine eyes a chilling blue, and Kelsey straightened away from him in spite of herself. “Suit yourself,” he told her icily. “But don’t meddle in my plans. You bought me, and I bought you.”
Kelsey’s mouth dropped open in outrage.
“Consider the twenty thousand your dowry. It’s the only way any man would have you.”
Kelsey couldn’t answer him. His cruelty shouldn’t surprise her, but it did. And she was supremely aware of how pathetically weak her defenses were against that kind of hurtful remark.
He gazed at her a few nerve-stretching moments longer. Without another word he quietly shut the door behind him, but there was more suppressed emotion in that gentle closing than if he’d slammed the thing so hard it’d rocked off its hinges.
Kelsey walked into the bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed. Because she had nowhere else to go, she decided not to leave. Closing her eyes, she thought about how Charlotte would take the news of her recent marriage. A bubble of hysteria rose in her chest, and she had to gulp several times to keep it down.
“You’ve made a mess of everything,” she told herself dismally, and the words seemed to echo back at her like some hellish prophecy for her future.
¤ ¤ ¤
Portland’s waterfront was seamy, smelly, dangerous, and full of the kind of people the Women’s Temperance Society tried its futile best to save. Jesse wandered among them, drawing curious stares because of the elegant black suit he wore. He was out of place, and might have been the recipient of pickpockets and thugs except for the controlled look on his face and the coiled fury that emanated from him like a supernatural force.
The waterfront scum left him alone. Only one whore even dared approach him, and his terse words of rejection were enough to send her scurrying back to the safety of her friends.
At ten o’clock that evening Jesse had found his way to a noisy tavern called Briny’s. He sat at the bar, oblivious to the fights and colorful language that swirled around him. Smoke hovered like a cloud. The bottles behind the bar were coated dark gray with it. The bartender wore an apron stained with God knew what. He kept refilling Jesse’s glass with his own particular brand of rotgut whiskey and silently signaling the group of men playing poker at a relatively quiet nearby table against the rear wall.
The bartender, who called himself Sal, was proud to declare himself a personal friend of the establishment’s owner, Briny himself. He’d seen all kinds come in for a drink, seamen and waterfront scum, dirty whores and fashionably dressed women, gentleman seeking a little anonymity. But he’d never seen a man show up in such an elegant suit before, and he wasn’t quite sure how to read the man inside the clothes, drinking with such blatant determination. Drowning his sorrows, probably, the poor fool. Except he didn’t look like a fool, and he sure as hell wasn’t poor. Too much arrogance, and not enough desperation. A businessman, maybe. Or a preacher? Or maybe even a groom, Sal decided, judging the man by his choice of clothes rather than by his personality. It was easier. The man wearing the suit was just a bit too tricky to pigeonhole.
“Ya got a good reason to drink, fella?” Sal asked, showing unusual concern by swiping down the scarred bar in front of Jesse.
Jesse glanced up at Sal, assessing him with a pair of the sharpest, bluest eyes Sal had ever seen. It unnerved him slightly.
“How bad do you want to know?” Jesse asked.
“Huh?”
“How bad do you want to know the reason why I’m drinking?” he repeated patiently. Glancing at the table of poker players, he added, “Bad enough to keep your dogs off me?”
Sal didn’t answer.
Jesse emptied his pockets. There was about fifteen dollars and some coin there, a relatively inexpensive pocket watch, and a crumpled piece of paper that bore an address. “That’s all I have with me. I went to the bank today and deposited twenty thousand dollars, my bride’s dowry. But I didn’t bring any with me, so you can beat me up if you want, but it’s not gonna change anything.”
Sal looked at the money, then at the man. “What’s your name, fella?”
Jesse smiled thinly. “Call me Duped.”
“Duped?”
“I’ve been duped for about eight hours now.”
Sal grinned, showing off an incredible set of beautiful teeth. He was one of those lucky people who never faced cavities and who’d been providential enough to hang onto those choppers through all the fights of his boyhood.
He poured his newfound friend another shot of whiskey. “It weren’t be the bride with the dough, would it?”
“Yes, it would.” Jesse tossed back the whiskey.
“Boys, leave this here Mr. Duped alone. He ain’t got much money on him. If’n we treat him right, he might come back with more though. Lots more!” Sal laughed heartily, his great belly shaking beneath the soiled apron.
Jesse suddenly found himself surrounded by “friends.” They weren’t menacing, but they felt bound and determined to let him buy them all drinks. He was glad to help. Whiskey flowed and talk grew bolder, and through a haze of self-indulgence Jesse felt the grip on his anger loosen a little.
“Wha’d she pay so much to get the likes of you for?” someone asked, clapping him on the back.
“She needed a husband. I was available.” It took a great deal of effort to keep from slurring. Jesse was proud of himself, until he fell backward off the stool. His friends picked him up and plunked him back down on it.
“She ugly?” one asked, leaning forward to send reeking, whiskey-sour breath into Jesse’s face.
“Stupid?” another voice suggested. “Dumb as horsemeat?”
Jesse considered. “Nope. Not ugly or stupid.”
“What’s wrong with her, then?” a voice by the door bellowed.
“She’s ornery. And she’s uppity. And she hates men.”
There was a moment of silence, as close to a prayer for their brother as these men ever came to. Jesse half expected to hear choir music.
“You’re a sorry bastard,” someone commiserated.
“You know what ridin’ her’s gonna be like, doncha? Better check out Mamie at the boat.”
“Mamie’ll treatcha right. Or one o’ her girls.”
“Don’t go back to that tight-legged bitch tonight. You need some fun.”
“Mamie?” Jesse asked foggily.
“Best damn madam. this side of the Willamette. All the way to the coast. None better.”
There was a general consensus that this was true, although a lone voice in the corner insisted a woman named Patricia Lee could give Mamie a run for her money. This created a ruckus that left three men with broken teeth and blood-smeared mouths. Since Jesse had no interest in Mamie or Patricia Lee, he decided not to get involved.
“What’s ‘er name?” a skinny guy in a black bowler asked. He was leaning over the bar, clinging to it for support.
“My wife? She’s Mrs. Duped. She duped me. I duped her.” Jesse grinned.
“Ya did? How?”
“Don’t know yet.” Jesse staggered off his chair, swaying slightly. His friends plunked him down once again, none too gently, but it was more from lack of finesse than any malevolence on their part.
“Get this fella ‘nother drink!” Skinny demanded. “He ain’t goin’ home to that ornery bitch sober!”
Jesse, who rarely let himself get so shit-faced that he couldn’t see danger coming, decided he owed himself this belated bachelor party.
“Keep ‘em comin’, Sal,” he suggested with a dopey grin. “I’d rather be drunk than married.”
“Looks like you’re a little of both,” said Sal, breaking out a bottle of his best whiskey in a magnanimous gesture to toast the new groom.
¤ ¤ ¤
Kelsey managed to wait decorously for Jesse the space of exactly one hour – well, almost an hour. That was long enough for her to swallow back her melancholy and then decide there was no earthly reason to do anything h
e said.
She slammed out of the apartment and clambered down the narrow stairway to the street, where she walked ten blocks before she felt safe enough to keep her hand outside of her reticule and away from the protection of her gun.
She hailed a carriage for hire and directed the driver to Chamberlain Manor. It was evening and Agatha and Charlotte should both be home by her reckoning. Unless, of course, some other young swain was squiring Charlotte around. She wished she could encourage Charlotte to wait for romance, but given the fact that everyone – Jesse Danner included – felt Kelsey was eaten up with jealousy over the fact that she couldn’t land a husband, Kelsey felt her advice would fall on deaf ears.
“Miss Simpson, you’re home!” Cora Jean declared in delight. “We’ve been sorely missin’ you these past hours. Lady Chamberlain is powerful worried.”
“I’m sorry. Where is Lady Chamberlain?”
“In the drawing room, ma’am.”
Kelsey walked down the hall, her footsteps slowing with dread. What she was about to tell Agatha and Charlotte weighed heavily on her mind. She’d never been the kind of woman who stole another’s man, and the enormity of what she’d done was nearly unbearable.
Grimacing, she let herself into the drawing room. Agatha’s head turned at her approach. “Orchid!” she exclaimed in relief.
Charlotte whipped around, Kelsey hadn’t seen her at first, for her green brocade gown was nearly the exact shade as the curtains she’d been standing next to her while she stared out the windows. She was tense, her blue eyes filled with a nameless anxiety.
Kelsey drew a deep breath. “Agatha, there’s something I have to tell you.”
“Is it about Jesse?” Charlotte asked quickly.
“Mr. Danner hasn’t called here all week,” Agatha explained as Kelsey crossed to the fireplace.
Kelsey looked down at her fingers. No wedding band. Jesse hadn’t bothered to buy her one. “I know. I’m the reason. I made a bargain with him.”
Charlotte stared at her uncomprehendingly.