The Marshal Takes a Bride

by Renee Ryan

  He dropped his belongings and pulled her into his arms. “Once I…Once justice is finally served, we can start our new life together, Katherine. We’ll be free from the past. I promise.”

  And as with every promise he’d made to her in the past, he would keep his word.

  As weeks turned into months, and still no direct word from Trey, Katherine’s worry increased, putting her on edge.

  Oh, Lord, please bring him safely home to me, she prayed. Let this capture of Ike Hayes be the end of Trey’s need for revenge. Give him the freedom only You can give.

  But no matter how hard she focused on her husband, Trey’s safety wasn’t Katherine’s only concern. A few weeks ago, her body had started changing, no longer feeling like her own. The morning the vomiting had begun, she’d realized she was carrying Trey’s child. One night together—their beautiful, all-too-short wedding night—had been enough to create a baby.

  Out of her healing, and Trey’s gentleness, had come this new life. She couldn’t have asked for a richer blessing.

  Unfortunately, the morning sickness had gotten worse these past two days, throbbing with the tenacity of sharp little rat’s teeth. She lay in her bed just as dawn broke, trying her best to control the spasms of pain gripping her stomach.

  She prayed softly for strength.

  Lifting her Bible off the nightstand, she flipped to the thirty-first chapter of Deuteronomy. “Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified—”

  Another spasm cut through her. Leaning over the chamber pot, she spilled the last of the contents of her stomach. She hadn’t been able to keep food down for two days now. She was so tired, uncharacteristically weak, and her stomach ached miserably. Even now, the energy to get out of bed eluded her.

  Her throat clutched again. Unable to bear another bout of nausea, she willed the pain away and began reading where she’d left off. “For the Lord your God goes with you; He will never leave you nor forsake you.”

  In spite of the chill in the room, she started sweating. Her legs ached through to the bones, and her heart swelled with fear. Something was wrong. This pain couldn’t be normal.

  But she’d wasted too much time in bed already. Attempting to lift her head, she collapsed back against the pillow, conquered by the rush of agony. The terror, both thick and huge, ripped a single moan from her lips.

  Another spasm of pain clutched her stomach, and she dropped the Bible to the floor. Rolling herself into a ball, she prepared for the inevitable nausea, but instead another pain followed the first. The third one made her cry out.

  She expelled three more shaky breaths, then managed to stand. A hot, sticky liquid slid along the inside of her legs. Looking to the floor, she saw the red stain on her nightgown, the blood creating a small puddle at her feet.

  “Oh, Lord, no. Please, not this. Trey doesn’t even know he’s going to be a father.”

  Just as she cried out for Laney, the room spun, and Katherine’s head filled with dizzying, life-altering fear.

  “Trey,” she whispered just before her vision turned black.

  Katherine opened her eyes to find Dr. Bartlett standing over her, a concerned expression on his face. The pounding in her head made her squint against the sharp light piercing the room.

  She tried to lift her head off the pillow—someone had obviously moved her to the bed—but the effort wore her out. “What happened?”

  The fast clicking of heels to wood accompanied Laney’s soft cry. “Praise God, you’re awake.”

  Katherine opened her eyes just as her friend knelt beside the bed, placed her cool palm against her forehead.

  “We’ve been so worried about you.” The terror was there in the other woman’s eyes, in her shaking fingers, her stilted voice.

  Katherine tried to close her mind to what Laney’s fear meant and focus only on the words spoken. “We?”

  “Me, Molly, Marc, the Charity House children.”

  Giving up the fight, Katherine allowed her mind to concentrate on a memory, one that refused to let her go but wouldn’t fully materialize. Her head pounded out a series of sketchy details, then went blank. But then one painful, heart-wrenching image came into focus—the blood at her feet. “My baby?”

  Tears filled Laney’s eyes. “I’m sorry, Katherine. You lost it.”

  Why couldn’t she make her head understand what Laney was saying? Why did the terror embrace her heart?

  Dr. Bartlett’s melodious, soothing voice drifted over her. “I’m sorry I didn’t get here soon enough.”

  What sort of cruel twist was this? She and Trey had made a baby together, but it was dead. How would he accept this new loss? How would she?

  Overwhelmed by too many fierce emotions, she simply stared at Laney and Dr. Bartlett.

  Oh, Trey, why aren’t you home yet?

  She needed his strength, his arms around her. She needed him to tell her it wasn’t true. But it was true; she saw it in the concerned eyes that watched her. Her baby was dead, and Trey hadn’t even known of its existence.

  For weeks, she’d spent her days worrying about Trey, about the harm that could come to him both physically and spiritually if he didn’t let go of his drive for vengeance.

  It hadn’t occurred to her that she might be the one in danger. Had her ignorance killed her baby? Had she neglected some detail? Had she been so consumed with worry that she’d killed her child?

  Laney sighed, the sound cutting through Katherine’s terrifying thoughts. “I’m so sorry.”

  Although she heard the words, knew them to be true, Katherine couldn’t make her mind focus on the fact that she’d lost her child.

  The doctor moved slowly into view. “We nearly lost you as well.”

  Laney gripped her hand and squeezed. “You’ve been very ill, unconscious for four days now. We’ve all been praying for you.”

  “Four days?” The headache gripping the inside of her brain twisted to her eyes. She reached up to rub her temple, shocked at the shake in her hands. “The last thing I remember is calling for you.”

  “I found you in a heap on the floor. Marc carried you to the bed, then sent Johnny for the doctor.”

  Making prayers out of her wordless sighs, Katherine tried to call up the details of the past few days. She got nothing. “I never woke?”

  Dr. Bartlett shook his head.

  Laney squeezed her hand again. “Katherine, I know you’re weak right now, but Molly has been…in a state.”

  Molly. Oh, her poor little sister must have been petrified. “Go get her, Laney. Hurry.”

  Laney looked to the doctor.

  Dr. Bartlett nodded. “Go ahead.”

  Once she was alone with the doctor, Katherine’s fears twined inside her sorrow and guilt. “What did I do wrong?”

  Shaking his head, he looked more tired than usual, as though he’d lost a lot of sleep. Over her? Had she truly been that ill? “This wasn’t your fault,” Dr. Bartlett said.

  Words backed up in her throat. “Then why did my baby die?”

  “Sometimes these things happen.” He brought a cup of water to her lips and lifted her head. As she drank, he continued. “I know that doesn’t bring much comfort to you, but there are mysteries of the human body we just don’t understand. As the Lord says, ‘My ways aren’t your ways.’ But Jesus will give you comfort if you turn to Him.”

  Katherine shut her eyes. She was aware that Dr. Bartlett was watching her reaction to his words, but she ignored him. Comfort, it seemed, wouldn’t come with a few well-placed prayers this time.

  She spread her hand across her stomach, not quite able to believe that her baby—the one she’d only just started to get to know and love—was no longer living inside her.

  Oh, how she’d wanted this baby, more than she’d understood until now. She couldn’t help but feel that she’d lost a part of Trey with their child.

  Would this loss haunt her always? Would she never be free of the ache?

  Guilt ate at her. Was this the so
rt of pain Trey had suffered these past four years? She finally understood a part of what drove him, but at a far too painful cost.

  The door swung open, and Molly inched into the room. The terror on the little girl’s face forced Katherine to push her own grief aside.

  Reaching out a hand to her sister, she said, “Come here, Molly.”

  Molly tiptoed forward, looking once more like the little girl Katherine had met in the mining camp, instead of the vivacious child of the past few months. Where was the childlike energy, the infectious laughter Katherine had come to associate with the five-year-old?

  Katherine swallowed past the pain in her head, the aching in her bones. “It’s all right. You can come closer.”

  Molly’s eyes widened, and she took a step backward.

  Katherine called on every scrap of her strength, sat up and forced a smile on her lips. “See? I’m fine.”

  A sob burst from Molly’s lips, and she vaulted across the divide between them, then halted abruptly at the foot of the bed. “You look so sick,” she said, her voice barely more than a squeak.

  Katherine wanted to soothe her sister’s fears, but she couldn’t lie to her. “I am sick. But I’m not going to die.”

  Molly’s face scrunched into a frown. “But, Katherine, sick people die.”

  “Not always.”

  Blinking back tears, Molly scuffled around to the side of the bed. When she got closer, tears started spilling.

  “I’m sorry I worried you.” Katherine patted a spot on the bed. “Come. Sit with me.”

  Molly shook her head, her gaze darting to the doctor, over to Laney, to the doctor again, then finally back to Katherine.

  “It’s all right. You won’t hurt me.”

  “Really?”

  Katherine lifted her arms. “Absolutely.”

  Leading with a knee, Molly edged one leg onto the bed.

  Ignoring her own pain, Katherine wrapped the little girl in her arms and tugged her tightly against her. “See? I’m completely alive.”

  Molly wiped her cheek on Katherine’s shoulder. “You scared me, Katherine.”

  “I scared myself.”

  Sniffing, the little girl pushed away. “Promise you won’t get sick again.”

  If only she could make such a vow. “I’ll certainly try not to.”

  “I would have been a good big sister.”

  For a shocking moment, Katherine feared she was going to break down and sob, unable to stop for days. She hated that her innocent little sister had been subjected to the cruelty of another loss, hated that the loss had occurred. But she couldn’t give in to the weakness of her grief now. With her chin trembling, she forced a bright smile on her face. “I know, Molly. The best.”

  “I miss Mr. Trey. I mean…Daddy.” Molly’s crestfallen expression mirrored the emotions in Katherine’s heart.

  Katherine dragged her little sister back into her arms. “Oh, Molly, me, too.” She allowed a single tear to fall before she blinked the rest into submission. “Me, too.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Trey arrived in Denver hungry for blood. With leaden feet, he trudged up the back stairwell of Miss Martha’s boarding house. The cracked paint on the barren walls did nothing to improve his mood. He’d intentionally chosen this place to live because it left him cold. At the time he’d only needed somewhere to rest his head at night. In truth, it had felt wrong to commit time and money to a house when Laurette could no longer help him turn the brick and mortar into a home.

  Thoughts of his dead wife still plagued him, heightened by his recent defeat. Thus, when he reached the top step, white-hot anger swirled up so fast, so completely it clogged the air in his lungs.

  He forced the emotion down, took a deep breath and entered his room. Deadly silence slammed into him. The space felt foreign. Unwelcoming.

  Empty.

  He hadn’t realized how solitary and lonely his life had become in the years since Laurette’s murder. All his goals, all his dreams had been reduced to the sole quest for revenge.

  He was tired of the pain. Tired of the burning hatred.

  Trey suddenly wanted Katherine and Molly. Just seeing them would lift his mood and make him forget, for a time, the defeat he felt so strongly now. But first he needed to clean off weeks of trail dust and defeat.

  While he washed, his mind kept running through the infuriating events of the past two months. By the time he and Logan had arrived in Cheyenne, Ike Hayes had escaped custody. Although Marshal Roberts had wounded Ike in the scuffle, the outlaw still lived.

  Trey’s jaw clenched with the effort to hold back his fury.

  Ike. Still. Lived.

  Those three words had driven Trey in his ruthless pursuit of the outlaw. He’d tracked Ike all the way from Cheyenne to Nebraska City. At each town, Trey had been no more than a day or two behind the killer. A week ago, the trail had dried up completely. Trey had been forced to return to Denver and to his original plan of waiting for Ike to come to him.

  Looking out the window, Trey noticed the bustling activity on the street below. How could everyone act so normal?

  Absently, he mixed shaving cream in the bowl he cupped in his palm. Ticking off the past weeks, one by one, his mind returned to the morning after his wedding night. The last time he’d seen Katherine.

  Until the moment when he’d stared into her frightened, dejected eyes, Trey hadn’t truly understood how much his quest for vengeance hurt her. By allowing grief to rule his every move, he’d kept Laurette’s memory alive in his heart—and prevented Katherine from truly becoming his wife.

  But after four years of seeking vengeance, he’d become comfortable in his bitterness. He didn’t know how else to live. Nevertheless, he couldn’t continue on the same angry path. He owed it to Katherine and Molly to break the cycle of pain and hurt.

  Trey swallowed. Hard. If he never brought Ike to justice, if he never took revenge, could he truly commit his life, his heart and his future to Katherine and Molly?

  How could he just let go of Laurette without finishing the quest to avenge her murder? How could he continue hurting Katherine and Molly?

  He hadn’t counted on finding love again. Katherine, with her goodness, and Molly, with her childlike devotion, had broken through his defenses. And the more they took over his heart, the less he hated.

  Trey didn’t believe God’s plan for his life had included losing Laurette and their unborn baby, but he couldn’t deny that their deaths made finding Katherine and Molly that much more precious to him.

  He had the strongest urge to take both woman and child into his arms and tell them how much he cared.

  He’d figure out the rest later.

  Impatient to get to Charity House, he quickly shaved and finished dressing. But the moment he slammed his hat on his head, a sick feeling of dread navigated along his spine.

  Something wasn’t right.

  He knew it in his gut.

  Trey left his room in a haze and rushed down the street, toward Charity House.

  As he drew up to the front of the house, the lack of activity struck him first, convincing him to stand on his guard. At this hour, the children were usually at their loudest, with an adult voice or two raised over the chatter.

  Looking around him, a dark premonition shot through him, sending a shiver across his soul. The deadly stillness enveloped him. In response, an ache started in his gut, wrapped around his heart and then turned into the same twisting agony he’d endured when he’d ridden onto the ranch four years ago and found Laurette dying.

  Pushing through the front door, he tossed his hat to the nearest chair. He only had time for impressions as he searched for human life. The ticking of the clock. The lemon oil Laney used on the furniture. The candles and lanterns blazing, casting their light into the room.

  Where was everyone?

  Trey raised his voice, surprised at the shake in it. “Hello. Anyone here?” He glanced around him, then swallowed several times. “Anyone?”

>   Mrs. Smythe shuffled into the hallway. The look on her face confirmed his worst fears. “Oh, Marshal Scott, I’m so sorry. She just didn’t have the strength.”

  “What do you mean?”

  A myriad of emotions flickered across the woman’s face. “It’s Katherine.”

  A gut-wrenching fear twined into guilt and finally settled into self-recrimination for leaving his wife alone for so long.

  “What about Katherine?” Trey didn’t realize he’d shouted until he saw Mrs. Smythe step away from him.

  She pointed over his shoulder. “Upstairs.”

  The way she said the word sent a shiver of terror racing along the back of his neck.

  “The doctor is with her.”

  Doctor? Stifling the panic that rose in his throat, Trey spun around and took the stairs three at a time. Katherine was in trouble, and just like with Laurette, he hadn’t been here for her.

  Guilt mingled with panic pushed him faster as he headed straight for her room and burst through the door.

  His gaze sought and found his wife. Pale and small in her bed, she looked like a woman who had given up on life. Molly sat next to her, gripping her hands in hers while tears ran down her face.

  Katherine was dying. And he was too late to save her. Just like Laurette.

  He sensed others in the room, but Katherine and Molly were all that mattered to him now. Molly sprang from the bed and vaulted into his arms. “Daddy, you came home.”

  Trey hugged her tight against him, his eyes never leaving Katherine’s blank stare.

  “I always come back, kitten.” Just never in time.

  No, he wouldn’t allow death to defeat him, not this time. This time he would fight harder.

  He settled Molly on his hip and then made his way across the room. He kept his gaze centered on Katherine, forcing his own fears aside as he recognized the loss of will in her. He’d always thought of Katherine as a woman full of sparkle. But now she looked dull, lifeless.