Quench the Day (Red Wolf Trilogy Book 1)

by Shari Branning

  “Marriage is honorable. And I’m a patient man—most of the time.”

  Old Town had been built centuries ago, with stone quarried from the hills, and oak hauled in from the wilderness to the north. It had a ponderous feeling of history about it. Rowan had not spent much time there in the months since she’d come to live with her uncle and cousins. Most of the upper classes lived there, and she and Aaro led the horses past their estates with courtyards and manicured lawns. The main avenue brought them to the central square, where a fountain bubbled. A few shops lined the square, but New Town, with its marketplace, held more interest for her.

  Instead of going to the chapel, Aaro took them down a side street crowded with row houses. He handed her his reins, ducked into a narrow stone passage between two of the buildings, and knocked on a door.

  “The priest,” he explained.

  An older gentleman with wild white hair and dirt stained trousers came to the door. “D’Araines!” he said, bushy white eyebrows going up. He looked past him to Rowan. “And… a young lady.”

  She nodded, unable to curtsy while holding the horses.

  “What can I do for you? Forgive my appearance. I was just working in my spot of garden out behind the church.”

  “Never mind,” Aaro said. “We don’t have much time. We’d like you to marry us.”

  Those white eyebrows travelled even farther up the man’s face. “Well!” He turned from Aaro to Rowan. “And you’re agreeable to this? Are you of consenting age?”

  “Yes and yes.”

  “Well then… I suppose.” He still looked flustered. “I should…Well. We should go to the chapel then I suppose?”

  Aaro nodded, holding his hat against his chest. “We surely appreciate it.”

  “Well then. If you’d like to run along, I should change into something appropriate.”

  When they got to the chapel, Dustan was already waiting for them, standing at the shadowed corner of the building, shifting his weight back and forth nervously. He had a pack slung over his shoulder, which he handed to Rowan as they came up.

  “The king plans to call on you tomorrow,” he said, wiping his sleeve across his forehead. Late afternoon heat pummeled them. “He wanted to see you again before he left, but apparently you had slipped away as soon as he brought you back. No one saw where you went.”

  “Thank you, cousin.”

  Rowan slipped into the coolness of the stone building with her bundle of clothes. Past long rows of carved wooden benches she strode, her footfalls echoing back to her from the high, vaulted ceiling. She reached the altar and paused to send up a prayer. Then she found the priest’s little office at the back, and locked herself in. She unfolded the gown Dustan had brought.

  Yards of white lace bounced to life as she shook out the garment. White lace over top of white silk. Green ribbons laced the bodice in front and trimmed the waist and wide neckline. She’d brought the dress from the East and never worn it.

  “Well, I suppose you’ll do,” she said as she struggled with the row of tiny buttons down her back. It took a long time before she was able to get herself free of the old dress and slip into the new one. At least this one she could ride in. And get into and out of by herself without half an hour’s struggle. Her hair, on the other hand…She put a hand to the coil at the back of her head, and found most of it slipping loose. She’d never be able to put it up again by herself without a mirror, so she pulled the pins out and let it fall around her shoulders and down below the middle of her back. Not exactly high fashion for a wedding. In fact, it was more what she’d imagine for the wedding night.

  She let her back thump against the door, leaning on it for a moment. They would be waiting for her.

  Marriage. Not quite the adventure she was expecting when she came to the frontier. Not, at least, without a long and exciting courtship in front of it. But still an adventure. Life is only as bad as you make it, mama used to tell her. No matter what happens to you in life, you will only become a victim if you allow yourself to.

  “Right.” She put her hand on the door, squared her shoulders, and stepped out.

  Three pairs of eyes turned to stare at her. Aaro audibly sucked in his breath. Dustan strode over and took her hand, escorting her to the altar. The priest looked from one to the other of them.

  “Your witness today is…”

  “Dustan Keir.”

  “And you have no objection to this man and this woman being wed?”

  Dustan paused. “I don’t.”

  The priest cleared his throat. “Aaro D’Araines, do you vow to treat this woman, in word and in action, with love, care, and respect, to honor her and provide for her, in the best and in the worst, as the Almighty is your witness, until death parts you?”

  “I do.” Aaro seemed never to have stopped grinning since the moment she’d told him yes.

  “Rowan Keir, do you vow to treat this man, in word and in action, with love, honor, and care, to respect him and provide for him in the best and in the worst, as the Almighty is your witness, until death parts you?”

  “I do.” She heard herself say it, but felt like it had come from someone else.

  “Then by the authority of the Almighty and of the king, I proclaim you husband and wife.”

  Chapter 5

  They stood there looking at one another. Rowan’s world seemed to have shrunk down to the space of those two ice-blue eyes. Her mind felt disconnected from the rest of her. Surreal.

  “It’s customary to seal the marriage vows with a kiss,” the priest said. “If you wish, of course.”

  Aaro searched her face, silently asking permission.

  She quirked half a smile at him, and that was all he needed. He closed the gap between them and owned her lips with his burning kiss. She closed her eyes and was suddenly, ridiculously, glad that she was standing in front of an altar with this man.

  Dustan cleared his throat, raising eyebrows at them as they parted. “You two better be on your way, before someone comes looking for us.”

  Rowan backed away from Aaro and wrapped her arms around her cousin. “Thank you,” she whispered in his ear. “I’ll see you again soon.”

  “Yes, you will. Now get going.” Despite his rushing them off, Dustan followed them back to the horses. Aaro turned to him.

  “My foreman is in town getting supplies. You know Jake.”

  Dustan nodded.

  “Tell him we’ve gone ahead home, and to catch up with us once he’s done.”

  Again Dustan nodded, his eyes going to Rowan, his frown deepening. “You’re sure you’re alright with this?”

  “It’s a little late now. I’ll be fine.” She hugged him again, reluctant to let go.

  “You know where home is,” he whispered. “If you ever need to, you come running.” He pulled away and looked her in the eyes. “Promise?”

  “Of course.”

  They left him standing by the chapel and headed toward the open prairie, riding in awkward silence. Their shadows stretched further across the long grass as the evening deepened. The horses’ hooves clumped dully in the packed dirt of the wagon track. Saddle leather creaked. Aaro looked over at her.

  “I’m sorry it wasn’t the wedding you probably hoped for.”

  She waved him off. “Nonsense. We’ll have a marvelous story to tell our children.”

  “Are we having those?”

  Rowan shot him a sideways glance. “It’s assumed, I suppose. At some point. Honestly, I hadn’t given it much thought until this moment, so I don’t know.” She shifted in the saddle, her thoughts suddenly heavy with all the unknown things. The simple fact that she didn’t even know what her new home looked like.

  Aaro didn’t say anything for a long moment. “I guess there’s a lot of things neither of us had a chance to think about.”

  She snorted. “Well, we’ll have all the time we need to figure them out now.”

  “Yes…”

  She glanced over at him, his figure straight in t
he saddle, looking ahead as he rode. His brows puckered together into a frown, and he lifted his hat and ran his fingers through his hair before settling it back on his head.

  “Before we got married—this morning—I planned to ride east and see if Heymish wouldn’t do something about his brother. I hoped I could get your promise to wait for me before I went away. Now I wonder… we may both need to leave for a while. I can’t guarantee either of us won’t be in danger once Ormand learns our good news. I don’t expect he’d move against me outright. But he will certainly try to stage an ‘accident’ for us. I wish I had had time to explain everything more fully before.”

  “I knew well enough what the situation was. And now what you want to know is if I will go with you.” She laughed softly and looked over at him again, finding him watching her. “It’s not what most people do on their honeymoon, but I’ve never been like most people.”

  Aaro continued to watch her in the softening light. He drew a breath to speak, but let it out in a quiet sigh instead. The dusk deepened. He gestured to the trail ahead. “Home is just beyond that line of trees. We’ll be there in under an hour.”

  In the distance, she heard the low of cattle. Night insects were out and singing.

  “I said I was sorry, before, about the wedding,” Aaro said. His eyes were shadowed, almost invisible beneath his hat in the dusk. “But I’m not. It was perfect. Mostly you. You were—are—perfect.”

  Most of the sunlight had gone out of the sky, and the moon come up by the time they rode through the line of trees. A sprawling ranch complex, almost a small village unto itself, hunkered in the wide basin of land beyond. The trail led them through the middle of the cluster of buildings, past bunkhouses, cabins, and stables, and Rowan heard the murmur of conversation and laughter from behind lighted windows. An aging cowpoke sat on the bunkhouse porch and lifted his hand in a lazy wave. Aaro spoke a greeting as they passed. Somewhere beyond all the buildings, but close this time, another cow lowed.

  Aaro’s horse drifted to a stop of its own accord in front of a stable and corral, and Rowan’s mare followed suit. He jumped down, then turned and reached up to lift her down. It was the same gesture as King Ormand’s hours ago, when they’d arrived in her uncle’s courtyard. Except that having Aaro’s hands linger on her waist seemed sweet, like awkward budding attraction, rather than Ormand’s disregard of her dignity.

  Aaro’s eyes shone silvery in the moonlight as she looked up at him, and for a moment she though he would kiss her again. But there came a rustle of movement from the stable, and a man stepped out.

  “Boss,” he said, tipping his hat in greeting as he reached for the horses. “Who’s the lady?”

  “My wife. Rowan.”

  The cowboy’s eyebrows shot up. He started to whistle and caught himself, tipping his hat again toward Rowan. “Ma’am.” He squinted at them. “Were you planning on getting hitched today?”

  “I wasn’t, actually.” Aaro grinned and slapped him on the shoulder. “Just turned out the Almighty was smiling on me today.” He untied Rowan’s pack from her saddle before the horses were led away, then offered her his arm.

  The main house, even though it had been built with logs instead of stone, had a tower that loomed against the moon as they crossed the wide front lawn. Rowan had a hard time getting an idea of its size in the dark, but as they drew closer, it felt massive. She looked up at the tower just before they passed under the shade of the front porch, and saw a glimmer of lantern light.

  “My watchman,” Aaro explained. “You can see out of the valley to the open prairie from up there.” He led her across the wide front porch, and gave the door a thump. “Miz Emrella is persnickety about bolting the door after dark.” He shrugged.

  “Miz Emrella?”

  “My household manager. And cook. Here she comes.”

  They heard the bolt being lifted away, and the door opened to reveal a tall, thick woman with a red face scowling at them. As tall as Rowan was, she didn’t have to look down at the other woman, who barked out as soon as the door was open, “And where have you been?”

  “Miz Emrella, meet my wife, Rowan.”

  Emrella looked from him to Rowan and harrumphed, sounding a little hurt. “You didn’t tell me you were getting married. Poor excuse for a wedding supper, is that pot roast that’s all dried out now because you didn’t come home. For the second day in a row, I might add.” She sized Rowan up. “Nice to meet you dear. Welcome home, and all that. You’ll please excuse our lack of preparedness, since we didn’t know the young boss was going courting.”

  “Thank you. And any sort of dinner sounds good right now.”

  Emrella went back to giving Aaro the stink eye. “Tell me you didn’t get your new bride any dinner.”

  When they finally made it past the cook, Aaro led her though the enormous front room toward the back, taking a lantern with them. They passed the kitchen, brightly lit and loud with laughter, down a hallway and around a corner. He opened a door into a long, spacious bedroom, and set her pack down next to the door.

  “This is it.”

  Rowan stepped into the room, her boots smooshing into a braided calico rug that covered the open section of the floor. Moonlight shone through a window, gleaming on the polished wooden bedframe. She crossed slowly to the window and looked out into a moonlit garden courtyard, realizing that the house was shaped like an L. The courtyard butted up against the house on two sides, one side had a stockade style wall, and the other ended in a flash of moonlit water and shadow of trees.

  Aaro followed her into the room and set the lantern on top of the unlit fireplace, illuminating a door leading out to the courtyard, and another to a darkened side room. Probably a closet or sitting area. The house was luxurious in a rustic, frontier way, without the imported elegance of the nobles’ houses in town.

  She wanted to ask: Is this my room—or our room? But she wasn’t ready to face the answer. Not yet. Probably not by the time bedtime rolled around either. Again, it wasn’t him she feared, rather the part of herself that she struggled to squelch. That she was unreasonably already in love with her husband, and part of her would be disappointed to have her own room. On the other hand…

  “Do you want to eat?”

  “Yes!” She spun back from the window, grateful to escape her thoughts. “I’m starving!” Which had to be why her stomach felt like it was trying to crawl up her throat.

  Emrella and several others joined them at the small kitchen table, easing some of the awkwardness as they plied Aaro with questions. Had he been planning on getting married today? Why didn’t he tell them? Why such a hurry? What news from town? Had Ormand done anything else horrible? And where was Jake?

  “As it turns out,” Aaro explained, “Ormand was planning on forcing this lovely lady to be his queen. Fortunately, I sent her uncle my proposal a full half day in advance of him.”

  “Fortunate is not a word I would have chosen in regard to anything that’s happened this day. Though for you, perhaps, Providence was smiling.” She gave him her best saucy look. “There were a dozen other less arrogant young men bidding for my attention, any one of whom I could have been with on this most unfortunate day.”

  Emrella gaped at her.

  Aaro’s eyes twinkled. “Indeed. Fortunate for me. Unless I am mistaken though—which I never am—none of your other young men submitted a marriage proposal which your uncle could show the lesser king in evidence that your hand had already been claimed. However, I would dearly love to know why you did choose me over the others. You aren’t the girl who would pick a man based solely on his looks.” He grinned at her. “Unless your uncle made the decision for you.”

  Rowan could feel her face growing hotter by the second. “No man makes my decisions. Of all the people in this insufferable, suffocating place, you were the only one who made any indication that it was I who must be convinced, and not my guardian. I’d take an arrogant man any day over one who thought he could own me. That was why I chose y
ou. Though whether I was right remains to be seen. I have made mistakes before—unlike you, apparently.” She set her fork down and pushed her plate away, suddenly remembering that she had started the day tired and out of sorts, and realizing that she was still tired. Plotting against a king, getting married, the possibility of still having her life in danger very soon… it was a lot to process, even for her.

  She stood from the table. “Thank you for supper. It was wonderful. And my apologies for my outburst. It has been a long day. If you’ll excuse me.”

  Back in the bedroom, she dropped the bolt across the door. Whether it was her room or their room, she was claiming it for the night.

  The lamp still burned above the unlit fireplace, adding its warm yellow light to the cold, white light of the moon. She sat down on the edge of the bed and flopped backward, her red curls splayed out around her, and covered her face with her hands. She groaned and shook her head. “What have I done?” She sat up again slowly, and went to retrieve her pack from where Aaro had left it beside the door, emptying it onto the bed.

  Dustan had packed her a set of his clothes, of all things, along with a day’s worth of dried travel rations, her boots, and her little jeweled dagger, which she’d been too flustered to put back on when she changed that morning. She found her extra set of throwing knives as well. But no nightgown.

  Apparently, her cousin was more worried about if she decided to run away than if she decided to stay. She snickered. At least he’d packed her hairbrush. Granted, her hair was not something easily forgotten about, since it was just as outspoken and unmanageable as she.

  She slipped out of her gown and stood in front of the mirror in her light summer shift, taking a swipe at her hair with the brush. Coppery-brown eyes stared back at her.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” she told her reflection. “You’re a married woman now, so you might as well own it. It’s not as though you were repulsed by him.” She aimed the brush at her mirror image, accusing. “Admit it. You wanted him.”

  Her reflection rolled its eyes at her.