“Clay?”
He stood up and whirled around, searching out the source of the voice among the dissipating crowd, wondering if he had, indeed, imagined it.
“Clay!”
He shifted his gaze toward the station entrance, and saw a couple with their two children, gathering up their suitcases. As the father moved to the side, he saw Madeline behind him, sitting on an iron bench with her valise at her feet, craning her neck and looking in Clay’s direction.
She was a vision, her dark hair swept back from her face on one side, and twisted up at the back of her head, covered by her red wool bonnet. She wore her black coat with red trim, and a dress of deep blue peeked out of her coat, bringing out the lovely blue of her eyes. When she smiled, all Clay could think about was how much he wanted to kiss those soft pink lips of hers.
“You’re here,” he wheezed, crossing the platform. “I thought…I thought I was too late.” He gestured at the train disappearing around the bend.
“I couldn’t get on the train. I set one foot on the bottom step, and couldn’t go any further. I just…couldn’t.” She looked away.
“Why?” He sat beside her, searching her face for answers. “And why would you leave like that? Without even saying goodbye?”
“I’m sorry. I should have said goodbye in person. After all you did, I owe you that much.”
“Madeline, you don’t owe me anything. I don’t want you to feel like you owe me. I want you to…” he shook his head. “I just don’t understand why you’d leave so suddenly. And who is this Dalton person? You never mentioned him before. If he wanted to marry you, why didn’t you stay in Boston and marry him in the first place?”
“It’s complicated. He did want to court me, but when his parents found out I had no inheritance, they urged him to turn his attention to someone else. Someone who would make a more…mutually beneficial match.”
“So he’s one of the men who turned their backs on you?” he sneered. “And you were going to give yourself over to a man like that? Who loves money, or his parents’ approval, more than you—if he even loves you at all?”
“He does. He has for a long time. As soon as he found out I’d left Boston, he immediately regretted conceding to his parents’ wishes.”
“Oh, well, as long as he regrets tossing you aside like garbage, over money.” Clay tried not to think about the fact that Madeline herself appeared to have chosen Dalton’s money over Clay’s love. But then, when did you tell her that you loved her?
“That’s not fair, he—no. No, I don’t want to argue with you over this. It doesn’t matter. I told him to leave without me.”
“Wait—he was here? In Helena?”
“Yes. He left on the train.”
“He followed you here?”
“Yes.”
“To ask you to marry him?”
“Yes.”
“And he’s rich?”
“I don’t see—”
“But you didn’t go with him.”
“No.” She refused to meet his gaze.
“Why? Isn’t that what you wanted to begin with—to marry one of your own?”
She didn’t answer.
“Why, Madeline? Why didn’t you go? Why would you stay here, in Montana Territory, when you could be with your family and live in a big house with servants and fine clothes and…and…everything you’ve ever dreamed of?” His chest hurt with the effort to keep breathing, when his whole body wanted to stop and wait for her answer.
“I can’t…I’m sorry…maybe I just should have gone…”
“Well then, don’t let me stop you.” He stood, began to pace, eager to burn off the fury and desperation that threatened to overwhelm him.
“Why are you so angry with me? I said I was sorry for leaving without saying goodbye.”
“Because,” he threw up his arms as he passed paced back and forth, “you can’t just waltz into people’s lives, make them fall in love with you, and then waltz back out again!”
Madeline’s eyes widened, and she stood there, clutching her valise in front of her.
He froze, his words hanging in the air between them, and he wished he could snatch them back. But they were out, and nothing he could do would erase what Madeline now knew.
And he waited to be crushed.
“You…love me?” she stammered.
“Yes.” Clay looked away, hanging his head. He couldn’t make himself look her in the eyes again.
“Me?”
“Yes,” he whispered.
“How could you love me?”
His gaze swung back to meet hers, and he saw tears shining in her eyes. “Are you mad, woman? How could I—how could any man—do anything but love you? You are the most beautiful, most stubborn, most enticing, most vexing, most intelligent, and most confusing creature I have ever laid eyes on!”
She smiled, her lips trembling. “Was that supposed to be a compliment?”
Clay groaned and rolled his eyes. “Did I mention ‘most vexing’?”
“I believe you did, yes.”
He saw something then, in her eyes. She looked happy. Could it be—did she have feelings for him, too?
“Madeline,” he breathed her name, “how can you believe that I could feel anything else for you but mad, passionate, all-consuming love?” He lifted his hand and brushed away a single tear that trickled down her rosy cheek. “You have done nothing but occupy my thoughts for every waking moment since I met you. The last two days without you have been torture. It felt as if every ounce of joy had been sucked out of my life.”
“I…I don’t understand. We have done nothing but argue and drive each other to distraction. You told me that I get under your skin—and that’s about the most favorable thing about me that I’ve heard pass your lips.”
Clay shifted his eyes heavenward for a moment, cursing himself for his temper and quick tongue. “I’m sorry for that, more than you could know.” He let his hand linger on her cheek, stroking it with his thumb. “The truth is, I have been fighting against these feelings from the moment I met you. That’s probably why I argued with you so much. But it was like there was a magnetic pull, drawing me toward you, no matter how hard I struggled to stay away. I was powerless against it. Against you. And now I give up—there’s no point in denying it. I am deeply, completely, and undeniably in love with you, Madeline Barstow.”
***
She could scarcely believe her ears! She was finally hearing the words she had longed to hear—Clay was in love with her!
It took all her strength to remain on her feet. The valise fell from her hands and landed on the platform with a thud as she sagged forward, against him, laying her head on his chest. His arms went around her, and hugged her close.
“Say something, please?” he murmured into her hair. “Or else I swear, I will jump onto the next train that comes by, and gladly steam away from Helena forever, to avoid the humiliation.”
Madeline raised her head, and looked around. The few people still on the platform cast curious glances their way.
“I…I don’t know what to say.” Her mind was muddled, and she struggled to form the words.
He pulled back, his hands on her shoulders. “You don’t?” His eyes searched hers. “You can’t tell me you feel nothing for me. I won’t believe it. Why else would you have gotten off the train, and abandon such a promising future, only to stay here in Montana Territory?”
Then the dam burst within her, and a flood of tears came forth. “For you!” she sobbed, leaning into Clay and grasping his shirt as if her life depended on it. “I stayed for you, Clay. I realized that I’d been standing there, on the platform, hoping that you would come running through the crowd, calling my name, and begging me to stay. But you didn’t. You didn’t, and I felt that I had no choice but to leave.”
She shuddered at how close she had come to making yet another horrible mistake. “But then…I remembered the way you talked about how love feels—how it was with Tabitha. That’s ho
w I feel about you. And I wanted that. I couldn’t live the life of a spinster, dependent on my cousins’ charity, but I also couldn’t live without love. I realized how utterly unfair it was to Mr. Ashby, to saddle him with a wife that not only had no fortune of her own, but also…didn’t love him. I didn’t. I never have. He’s a wonderful man, but I don’t love him, and after knowing love…” she glanced up at Clay, embarrassed “…after knowing how things could be…I just couldn’t live that way. I couldn’t subject him or myself to a loveless existence. So I decided to stay here. To somehow make my own way if…if…”
“If I didn’t love you?”
She nodded, unable to speak.
“I love you, Madeline. I love you, and I’m never letting you go.”
As his arms slipped around her, and held her close. Her shoulders heaved with the shudders from her cries. She didn’t care who looked on, she didn’t care what they thought. She only cared that she was in the arms of the man she loved—and who loved her, too.
After a few minutes, when her sobs had subsided, Clay patted her on the back. “Is there any chance you’ll be telling me that you love me, sometime soon?”
“Oh!” Madeline pulled back, looking up into his eyes with surprise. He must think her to be terribly insensitive! “Oh Clay…”
“I mean, you did give me that impression, but it would be nice to hear the words…”
“I love you! I do.” Then Madeline did something she never thought she would do in her entire life. She clutched his shirt and stood on tiptoes to press her lips to his in a brief, sweet kiss, right in front of everyone on the platform. “I love you, Clay Porter. Never doubt that again.”
“I think that might help me remember. But if I forget, maybe you could just remind me again…”
“Don’t press your luck.” She grinned through her tears.
He handed her a handkerchief. She dried her eyes and dabbed at her running nose, and laughed as he watched her with raised eyebrows.
“After a week of travel, plus a five-day sleigh trip, I still never saw you with much more than a few hairs out of place. Now look at you!”
Madeline swatted his arm playfully. “It’s your fault.” She sighed happily, and felt as if a huge weight had fallen from her shoulders.
“I take full blame. Now, let’s get you out of here. I brought dinner for us, but I left it sitting on Mrs. Preston’s porch. Hopefully it’s not frozen already.”
“Oh! My trunks!” She whirled around, staring off in the direction that the train had disappeared down the tracks.
“I’ll take care of it. We’ll notify the station master, and he will get a message to the next station to have them sent back. And then we’ll have dinner, and after that, I’ll send a money transfer to repay Dalton Ashby for the money spent on your ticket.”
“Oh dear. Poor Dalton! He was devastated when I told him to go on without me.” She looked up at Clay, guilt crowding out the joy she felt.
“Don’t you worry about him. As devastating as the loss of Madeline Barstow might be for him—or any other poor soul, for that matter—it is better than him living a whole life with a woman who doesn’t love him.”
“That’s true.” It eased her conscience.
“Unless he is the most selfish man alive, I’m sure he would rather be jilted after an engagement of only one or two days, than to find out someday that his wife would rather have married another man.”
“Oh my! That would be awful, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes, there you go! You’re doing him a kindness.”
Madeline giggled, and Clay bent down to pick up her valise, and offered her his arm.
“Now, let’s go see the station master about your bags, so we can go have our dinner.”
Chapter 21
Helena, Montana. February, 1888.
Madeline stood in her room at Mrs. Preston’s boardinghouse as Cara placed the last pin in her hair. “There! Perfection.”
Madeline turned and looked at her reflection in the mirror over the dresser. “Oh,” she breathed. Though her dress wasn’t the fashionable white silk House of Worth gown from Paris that she had always dreamed of, it was still lovely in its simplicity. Clay had hired the best seamstress in town to make a dress inspired by a design in one of Madeline’s older issues of La Mode Illustrée, but incorporating a few ideas Madeline had to make it more up-to-date. Yet it would still serve as an appropriate dress for social events and church services for a lady in Montana. It was their one splurge for their wedding, and Clay had insisted on it.
It was a lovely royal blue, with a small bustle in the back, and tucks of royal blue silk at the collar, cuffs, and hem. The silk was a gift from the wife of a store owner two doors down from the butcher shop. She’d been saving it for a special dress that she’d never gotten around to making, and had given it as a wedding gift when she’d heard that Clay Porter was finally remarrying. She’d also given many spools of matching silk thread, and Madeline had spent every spare moment for the last six weeks, embroidering floral designs along the collar and cuffs of the dress.
“It’s the most beautiful dress I’ve ever seen!” exclaimed Cara. “Look at you! Clay is going to scoop you up and carry you out of the church before you’ve even said your ‘I do’.
“Cara!” Madeline blushed. She smoothed out the skirt and turned sideways to admire the flounces over the bustle. “Really, Clay shouldn’t have gone to the expense.”
“As if you could have stopped him. Besides, it made him feel good to give you at least one really nice thing for your wedding. And it will be useful, too.”
“I know. I just feel awful. He spent most of his money on me. First losing the sleigh and paying off Croft, then paying back Dalton the money for my ticket, plus the costs of this wedding, even if they were modest…it’s just so much. Not to mention the modifications he had to make to the upper rooms over the butcher shop.”
“Well, it’s not like he needed that big chunk of money to buy the shop, anyway. If it weren’t for you, he might never have been able to buy the butcher shop in the first place! Herman was pretty adamant about getting that down payment. If you hadn’t come up with the arrangement with Herman, he might have sold it to someone else!”
Madeline nodded thoughtfully. That did make her feel better. When she and Clay had been brainstorming ways to improve their finances and figure out where they could live once they married, she had come up with an idea. Clay was always joking that Herman should be the one marrying her, since all he could talk about was how he should have remarried when he was still young, so he could be getting good home-cooked meals every day. And she knew that the reason Herman wanted the big down payment was to be able to take care of himself, since he was getting older and sicker.
Then one day she came up with the perfect solution—she suggested to Clay that if Herman had a place to stay, people to care for him, and someone to cook him decent meals, then he wouldn’t even need the large down payment. He could stay right where he was, and she and Clay would be his family! Clay had kissed her on the cheek, given her a bear hug, and whirled her around. He brought it up to Herman at dinner that night, and Herman was thrilled about the idea.
“No more bean stew, and a pretty face to look at every morning? I’ll take it!” he’d said, beaming.
There had been some other arrangements to make. Herman moved out of his room and into storeroom at the front end of the apartment over the butcher shop, which they’d spruced up for him. Clay took the back room, and spent his spare time making improvements to the room, and adding a private water closet for Madeline. Clay’s old bedroom would become a sewing room for Madeline…until the day it might be needed for a new addition to the family. The large, open room that Herman and Clay had used as a makeshift kitchen was re-arranged, with one end of it set up as a kitchen, the other end as a parlor, and the large iron cookstove in the middle as a sort of divider.
“I can’t believe they actually got the apartment finished,” Madeline ma
rveled. “I don’t think they could have done it in time if you and Ben hadn’t come up a few days early. Ben was a big help, and so were the boys.”
“It’s nice that they’re getting to the age that they’re big enough to carry heavier things.” Cara smiled and patted her belly, which was just starting to show. “Especially with baby number five on the way. I could use the extra help around the house.”
A knock on the door interrupted them.
“Come in,” Madeline called.
Martha’s head poked in.
“Is your father ready for us?” Cara asked
Martha nodded. “The sleigh is out front. He said to tell you to get moving.”
Cara rolled her eyes. “His need to be punctual is his least admirable quality, in my opinion.”
“If that’s his worst flaw, Cara, you’re doing just fine.” Madeline placed her matching blue hat on and adjusted it before slipping in the hat pins in among the silk flowers, where they wouldn’t be seen.
“Ready?” Cara smiled.
Madeline’s stomach flipped, and she placed a hand over her belly to still the butterflies. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
“Hey, if I can’t have morning sickness during the ceremony, you’re not allowed to get queasy with cold feet. Now let’s go!”
Madeline picked up her reticule and checked around the room to make sure she wasn’t forgetting anything. Then the two women and Martha hurried from the room, bustling down the staircase amid nervous giggles and chatter. At the bottom of the stairs, Madeline froze.
“Mother!”
Miriam Barstow stood in the front hall in an elegant silk afternoon gown and a fur wrap, her hands folded primly in front of her. “Oh, my dear!” The corners of her mouth turned upward in a ghost of a smile.
Madeline rushed forward to take her mother’s hands in hers. She knew it was the greatest expression of emotion that her mother would deem ‘appropriate’. “What are you doing here?”
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