Marry Me

by Susan Kay Law

He looked toward heaven for help. “Now why doesn’t that surprise me?”

  “Because you’re so perceptive?”

  “That must be it,” he added dryly. “So what’d you say about me?”

  “Oh, let me see if I can remember.” She pressed her forefinger to her pursed lips. “Educated, cultured, well-spoken, and well-dressed. Attentive to my every desire, of course.”

  He slumped back, face glum. “What else?”

  “Besotted with me—that goes without saying. Prone to break into praise of my beauty regularly,” she went on as he slid further down in his chair, until his head was level with the top rung of the back. “A poet. A—”

  “Good God, Em!” he burst out.

  “I had to make it believable that you swept me off my feet, didn’t I?” she asked reasonably. Em. Nobody called her Em. She’d always assumed she’d hate it. But she didn’t, not one bit. Odd.

  “Anything else?” he asked glumly.

  She looked at him, at the thick fringe of his hair drooping low, shielding his right eye, and his beard swallowing up his mouth, and she couldn’t resist. “Oh, just one more thing.”

  His sigh of relief only got halfway out.

  “You’re clean-shaven, of course.”

  Chapter 8

  Kate was to arrive tomorrow. Emily and Jake had managed to avoid each other completely for the last two days, a careful orchestration that allowed them to pretend to forget that they’d agreed to play at husband and wife. Only for a few days, Emily reminded herself frequently, and without a shred of real legal or moral ties.

  But it didn’t help. The idea that he was to be her husband had lodged itself under her skin, leaving her nervous, unsettled, and decidedly not herself.

  She hoped that Kate would not recognize her tension instantly and suspect the truth. Still, a new bride could be expected to suffer a few nerves, couldn’t she?

  The time had come that she could no longer ignore her impending “marriage.” Details must be settled between them before they could carry off this charade with any authority. And so she collected what she must, bundling it in a sheet, as well as all the courage she could muster, and headed for the squat little camp she’d done her best to ignore.

  Mr. Sullivan—Jake, she amended; they’d have to get accustomed to calling each other by their given names, wouldn’t they?—sat cross-legged on the ground, sorting through a pile of nuts and bolts, and didn’t look up when she approached. Considering that until now he’d never failed to watch her when she stepped out her door, his inattention had to be deliberate. Perhaps this whole idea made him as uncomfortable as she. For however false it was, even pretending a marriage seemed more intimate than she’d imagined. They’d joined this charade together; it made them partners, gave them a common goal, and bound her to consider his wishes in the days ahead.

  The day was warm and then some. He wore only a light shirt as he worked, and it clung damply to his back. She could see the play and swell of thick muscle as he reached for a bolt. He was powerfully built, wide shoulders, solid bone.

  Dr. Goodale had been old; their patients often wasted to nothing. And the carefully chosen young men she’d sometimes flirted with were just that: young. She’d no idea of Jake’s actual age, whether three years older than she or thirteen, but there was no doubt he was a man, not a boy. If she ever married in truth, she’d like a man with shoulders like Jake’s; a woman could lean on them if she had to and be assured they’d bear up just fine. Not to mention that there was a certain amount of appeal in watching those muscles bunch and shift. Fascinating.

  Kate would be appalled to find her so interested in a man’s shoulders. And surprised. She’d only tolerated Emily’s working with Dr. Goodale because she’d been convinced that there was nothing prurient whatsoever in Emily’s interest. Who could be concerned with shriveled old shoulders or shrunken chests when there was a fascinating pathology to examine?

  Nevertheless, she was to treat him as her husband for the next few days. A besotted young wife would be perfectly enthralled with her new husband’s shoulders.

  The sun brought up tiny glints of gold in his dark hair, the color of the rich mink Dr. Goodale had bought Kate shortly after their marriage. It had fascinated Emily; only six then, she’d buried her fingers in it, ran her hands through it over and over until Dr. Goodale had caught her at it. She’d never felt anything so soft; she wondered if his hair would feel the same. It didn’t seem as if there could be anything soft on Jake Sullivan.

  “What do you want?” He didn’t look up, just hurled the question at her without a hint of graciousness while he squinted at the threads of another bolt.

  “I thought that—” Her carefully constructed speech scrambled. “I don’t know what color your eyes are.” Dark, she knew. But blue, or green, or…

  That brought his head up. “What the hell?”

  “Or hardly anything else about you. I thought that we should—” Brown, she thought hazily. Deep, dark brown. She’d always thought of that as a nice warm, fuzzy sort of color. Chocolate, fur. This was darker, colder, water over dark rocks. And infinitely more intriguing. “Kate is bound to ask questions. A lot of questions. It’d be odd, don’t you think, if we don’t know the answers?”

  He shrugged, completely unconcerned. “It’s not like we’ve had months of courting to fill up with chatter.”

  “Yes, but don’t you think that we’d have talked about a few things? I mean—”

  “If we’ve only been married for such a short time and haven’t had better things to do than talk, well, there’d be no reason for us to be rushing into marriage so fast, would there?”

  “But…ooh!” Against her best efforts, she felt her cheeks heat, knew they must be glowing like a hurricane lamp. “But surely there’d be some opportunity. I think we should exchange the basics.” Not bad, she thought. Barely a quaver in her voice; they could have been discussing the price of lumber.

  “I should hope not.” He sounded very sure. Very sure. “You don’t want her thinking I just married you for the land, do you? Better I married you for your body.”

  She gaped; she couldn’t help it. She’d thought her medical experiences had made her far more worldly than most. But it was extremely different, she’d just discovered, when it was one’s own intimacies one was pondering. Even if those intimacies were imagined. And they were imagined, suddenly, in the kind of fuzzy detail that was all that her not exactly limited, but certainly impersonal, knowledge could summon. Even that was enough to soften her knees.

  His beard twitched. Was he smiling at her, beneath that thicket? Laughing at her? She didn’t know whether to be provoked or pleased.

  “Just in case you didn’t note it earlier,” she began, deciding it was best to simply ignore him, “my other sister’s name is Anthea. Her husband is Gabriel. Their children are Will, James, and—”

  “Cripes. You’re set on this, aren’t you? Write down whatever you figure I need to know. I’ll study like a good little boy.”

  “Kate’ll ask questions,” she warned him again.

  “Afraid I won’t hold up my end of the bargain?”

  “I didn’t mean to impugn your honorability. I simply prefer to have the bases covered, if at all possible.”

  “Yeah, like you did when you ran away to Montana?” he said, with just enough sneer to make her bristle. And then, “All your bases? You like baseball?”

  “Yes,” she admitted. “Not terribly ladylike, is it? I told everyone that I must have some topic to discuss with our male patients, but truly, I’d rather go to a ball game than the opera any day. You enjoy it?”

  “Yeah,” he said, voice warmer and less guarded than she’d ever heard it. “Used to sneak into games every chance I got when I was a kid in Chicago. Even paid a few times after they moved to the West Side Grounds. Not quite as big a thrill as sneaking in, though.”

  “A Colts fan?”

  “You bet.”

  “Did you play?”

&nbs
p; “Sure. When I was a kid. Third base, mostly, sometimes first. Always wanted to pitch, but had a tendency to find batters’ heads more often than the plate.”

  “There, you see!” She beamed at him. “This is what I meant! It’s exactly the sort of detail I need about you to keep Kate from getting suspicious.”

  “Yeah. Wouldn’t want to give old Kate suspicions.”

  There was just enough surly edge in his voice to make Emily go back over her words to see how she’d offended him. Heavens, but men were a touchy species. “I wasn’t listening just to glean details for Kate. I was interested, too. In fact—”

  “Make me a list,” he told her once again. “Just the high points. I imagine you’ve got all kinds of high points.”

  Her arms tightened around her bundle, and it gave softly. Talking to him was like walking through a marshland, never knowing when you put your foot down if it would hit safe, solid ground or sink into the morass. “I’d really prefer to discuss it. That way you can ask questions if something occurs to you.”

  “The list,” he said, making it clear it would do her no good to argue. “I won’t be asking any questions.”

  Oh, just write the darn list! she scolded herself. Why did she keep expending time and energy wrangling with him?

  “Fine. On yours, however, I’d really like as much detail as you can manage. Kate’s not the sort to take things at face value.”

  He gave her a hard, long look. “Tell her whatever you want. I’ll go along with it.”

  “You want me to invent your past? Your likes, your dislikes?”

  “What do I care? Make up whatever you want. You’re good at that.”

  It stung. She tried not to let it, but it did just the same, a quick needle prick to a tender area of her pride. “I just don’t want to get caught unaware, that’s all. If you tell Kate something, I don’t want to contradict it through my ignorance.”

  “Why the hell would I tell your sister any damn thing at all?”

  “Kate’s curious. And very good at prying things out of men that they never intended to tell her. She’s bound to be extraordinarily curious about you.”

  “And I’m very good at keeping my mouth shut.”

  Yes, she knew that well. She wondered at her need to keep prodding at this topic. Oh yes, Kate must believe in her marriage. But she was afraid that there was more to it than that neatly allowable reason.

  She didn’t want to be interested in him, his past, his dreams. But she wondered. He looked like a farmer, strong-muscled, rough-fingered. But sometimes he spoke like a professor, smooth-voiced, careful words—and then he’d turn around and swear like a sailor. He’d homesteaded, in that bare, simple place, like a man with little money and no future other than the one he’d wrest for himself. And yet there were those books, the wide-ranging collection of a man of thought and leisure.

  He returned to his work, focusing on the metallic innards she’d seen before, gears and pulleys, his head bent and shoulders hunched, ending the conversation by closing himself off from her. He seemed to want nothing more than to be left utterly alone.

  But he’d had a wife.

  “Another thing—”

  He growled something she was glad she couldn’t catch, sprang to his feet, and hurled a gear so hard it flew over his tent and disappeared on the other side of the rise.

  “What now?” he shouted at her, loud enough to make her flinch.

  “Well, that, for one thing. You should have risen the moment I came over. I’d never marry someone with such abysmal manners. It’d be a dead giveaway.” It was a low blow and Emily knew it, but he deserved it.

  “Oh, I’ll mind my manners, don’t you worry your little head,” he said, low and dangerous.

  She chose to ignore the warning. “You haven’t shaved yet.” She smiled into his glower. “Just a helpful suggestion. I know how committed you are to this venture. How much you’d hate it if something happened so the land doesn’t get handed over to you as we planned.”

  “Emily…”

  “Oh well, we’ll just have to go with the ‘love is blind thing.’” Then she sobered. “I brought you something.” She thrust out the bundle. “I thought that you could use your clothes.” She’d spent all day preparing them, washing and starching and pressing until she dared him to find a wrinkle. “I should have brought them sooner, I suppose. Everything’s been in such a rush that I really hadn’t thought of it until now.”

  He lifted his shoulders as if to say, What do I care about clothes?

  “Anyway.” She cleared her throat. “They’re clean now.”

  “Good enough for Kate?”

  “Well, Kate has unusually high standards. Good enough for me. And you, I hope. Let me know if you don’t like them. If there’s too much—oh, I don’t know. Too much starch. Whatever.”

  “Oh, I will. Don’t you worry, I will.”

  “There’s—” It got harder, now. “Her…There are dresses. In the pile.” She peeled back the sheet and pushed aside a pair of blue pants, exposing a wedge of bright green silk. Oh heavens, where were the right words when she needed them. Were there right words for this? “I didn’t wash them. I didn’t know—I didn’t want to ask.”

  His hands, which had been reaching for the clothes, stopped in mid-air. He pulled them back, rubbed them hard down the front of his pants. She thought she detected a small tremor as he reached forward again and took the stack of clothes. He brushed his fingers over the vivid fabric, once, lightly, before lifting his eyes to meet hers.

  She couldn’t have said exactly how his expression had changed. Had his eyes narrowed, his mouth tightened, his brows lowered? Infinitesimal changes, certainly, that added up to grief, a deep dark welling of it, spilling up and over from that place inside him he’d contained until now. Oh, her heart hurt, just seeing it, an ache in her chest that made her rub her breastbone in a futile attempt to ease it.

  “Thank you,” he said, though she could tell what it cost him to say it.

  “Jake.” Inevitably drawn, she took a step toward him, unsure of what she meant to offer but comfort. And for that brief instant, she thought he would accept.

  And then it was over. He turned away, big hands crushing the bundle of clothes she’d pressed so carefully, giving her nothing but the wall of his back.

  “Tell me when your sister gets here.”

  Montana had never seen the likes of Mrs. Kathryn Virginia Bright Goodale. She stepped off the stage in McGyre with the carriage of a queen descending from her royal carriage. Her head dipped briefly, to ensure the safe passage of the great, curving white plumes of ostrich feathers that frothed from her soft, silk-covered toque, the rhinestone buckle glittering like diamonds.

  Two old cowboys, ambling out of the nearest saloon at their usual, decrepit shuffle, stopped dead in their tracks, rheumy eyes bulging from their sockets. Across the street, Wilber Bunku came bursting out of his store to get a better look, the chicken he’d been butchering still swinging from his fist. A wolf whistle split the air, and Kathryn acknowledged its source, bending a serene smile on the thin young ruffian who leaned against the post in front of the livery.

  The instant her foot hit the platform, three men appeared to offer assistance. She declined them all in such delicately flattering terms that they blushed and went away as puffed up as if she’d given one her favor. She raised the fashionable little lorgnette that she would never admit was more than an accessory and scanned the street.

  “Kate!” Emily pulled the team and old buggy she’d borrowed from Joe and May Blevins to a stop, threw the brake, and vaulted off, showing enough ankle to, under normal circumstances, earn a firm rebuke from her sister. But today Kate couldn’t bring herself to care. She spread her arms wide and waited for Emily to tumble into them.

  “Oh! You feel good. I’ve missed you.” She tightened her arms, then grabbed Emily by the shoulders and pushed her back to arms’ length. “Here, let me look at you.”

  She inspected her from
head to toe, prodding once to check the flesh over her ribs while Emily stood docilely and allowed it. There was no avoiding it, and she figured she owed Kate a little for worrying her so.

  “Hmm. You seem healthy enough.” She didn’t frown; it made for unattractive lines. “A little thin, but healthy. No broken bones, and you’re still on your feet.”

  “No oozing sores, even.”

  “Emily! What a thing to say.” Suddenly she dug through her confection of a handbag, drew out a snowy square of linen, and dabbed at the corners of her eyes.

  Emily gawked. Kate did not cry. Not ever. Guilt lumped cold and hard in her belly. “Kate, I am so very sorry if I made you worry. Truly, if there’d been any other way—there was so little time to decide, and I…” I wanted to come, she thought. I didn’t want you to marry Mr. Ruckman. And they both seemed like weak excuses compared to the sight of her sister’s damp eyes.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake! There’s some pollen out here that doesn’t agree with me. I’ve been sniffling since about a hundred miles west of Chicago.” She dabbed delicately at her nose and tucked the kerchief away. Then she looked pointedly at the buggy in which Emily had driven up. “So? Where’s this husband of yours?”

  Emily had practiced for the question a good chunk of the way into town. She didn’t think her expression wavered. “Getting the place ready for you, of course.”

  “Hmm.” Kate’s usual response when she disagreed but didn’t want to discuss the matter outright. She rarely used it on Emily, but she’d “hmm’d” Dr. Goodale at least a dozen times a day. “Now then, young lady—”

  “Oh, Kate, not now!” She chose to ignore the “young lady.” Not cowardice, but picking her battles. “I am much too happy to see you to spoil it with arguing right this minute. Let’s get you some tea; the restaurant in the hotel is nearly reliable. And then we’ll go back home, and you’ll rest up a bit, and you’ll have ever so much more energy for a lecture in the morning!”

  “Hmm.” She linked her arm with Emily’s, strolled in a swish of silk toward the building Emily indicated.