She turned away from the inquiring gaze of the stable owner and marched down the street. It was Thursday again. She’d stop by the newspaper office and pick up the latest issue of the Willamette Valley Voice.
The instant she turned the corner onto Main Street, she saw Mrs. Benbow sailing down the board sidewalk toward her.
“Ain’t seen it yet, have ya, child?”
“Seen what?”
“Why, the newspaper, of course. The Valley Voice. My stars, that man has a sense of the ridiculous if you ask me.”
“You mean Mr. Stryker?” Sage hid her smile. Almost every Thursday she ran into Mrs. Benbow in town and they had the same conversation.
Nelda Benbow’s gray curls bobbed. “That man,” she muttered. “Every single week, it never fails. He gets the whole town into an uproar. I cannot imagine what’s got into him…. The worst part of it is, the harm’s done soon as the ink’s dry. And the embarrassment,” she added in an outraged tone. She sent Sage a sympathetic look.
“Oh? What has Mr. Stryker printed this time?”
“Now, you best set down afore you read it, Sage, honey.” Mrs. Benbow patted her shoulder and barreled on down the walkway toward Duquette’s Mercantile.
“Read what?” Sage murmured. More about the school board? Or was it another diatribe by Seth Duquette about rebuilding the jail and hiring a new sheriff?
She headed straight for the newspaper office.
“Why, good afternoon, Dr. West.” Friedrich Stryker rose from his desk and came toward her, an odd, lopsided smile on his face. “Stopped in for your newspaper, I see.”
“As I do every Thursday, Mr. Stryker. How is your knee today?”
“My knee?” The editor looked blank for an instant.
“Yes. Your sore knee,” Sage reminded him.
“It…it’s just fine, Sage, uh, Dr. West. Just fine.” He rolled up a copy of the newspaper and secured it with a length of twine. “That’s mighty effective liniment you’ve been bringing me. I must, er, return the favor in some way.”
Sage frowned. “You’ve paid me for every jar of that ointment. You owe me nothing.”
“Ah.” The silly smile was back. “I hope you will keep that in mind, that I don’t owe you anything, especially after—” The lanky editor snapped his gray-bearded jaw shut. “Here.” He thrust the rolled up newspaper into her hand.
She opened her reticule, but he stopped her from reaching into it. “Keep your money, Sage. For you, this issue is free.”
Free? How very odd. In all the years she’d known Friedrich Stryker he had pinched every nickel and penny until it squeaked.
Sage thanked him, spun on her heel and headed down the boardwalk toward home as fast as she could decently walk.
Something was going on. She couldn’t wait to find out what it was.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Sage swished through her front gate so fast her skirt fanned the overgrown dahlias into a row of nodding crimson faces. Up the steps she went, newspaper clutched in her hand. Rain threatened, but she didn’t care. The sound of thunder suited her mood exactly.
She plopped into the porch rocker, took a moment to catch her breath, and spread the front page open on her lap.
The first glance at the bold banner headline sucked all the air out of her lungs.
MARRY ME.
What an unusual headline! And in 60 point type, too, the same size the Voice used for announcements of war or edicts from the president.
“Marry who?” she wondered aloud. “Who is doing the asking?”
Below the headline an article boxed in a fancy border caught her eye. New Hospital To Be Built.
New hospital! Russell’s Landing didn’t have even an old hospital.
Her eyes scanned the type. “…anonymous donor…land at the south edge of town…old McConnell homestead, near Dr. West’s residence…”
“Well, of all the—” No one had told her anything about it.
The adjacent article was something about rebuilding the jail and hiring a new sheriff. She saw Seth Duquette’s hand in this. Would that man never give up?
But her breath caught when a name jumped out at her. “The new sheriff…Cordell Lawson.”
Now that was a piece of pure imagination on Seth’s part. She’d have to speak to him in the morning.
But what a start it gave her, to think that…
Her gaze jumped to the third story on the page. Local Doctor Engaged?
Local doctor? She was the only doctor! And of course she was “engaged.” Twenty-four hours a day she tended patients, dispensed medicines, checked on the elderly, cleaned instruments, boiled up concoctions, visited…
Unless they meant…engaged? As in to be married? She read further.
Residents of Russell’s Landing await with interest the answer to the question posed in today’s edition of the Voice. And that question is whether Dr. Sage West…
What on earth?
…and Cordell Lawson…
Oh! She leaped to her feet, letting the newspaper slide off her lap to the porch floor. If this was Nelda Benbow’s idea of a joke, she’d strangle the woman with her bare hands!
Sage undid the top button of her blouse so she could catch her breath in the suffocating heat, then found herself skimming down the porch steps toward Mrs. Benbow’s trim white house across the road.
Before she’d gone three steps past her gate, she stopped short. A tall man moved toward her, leading a gray horse.
Sage stood as frozen as a block of salt, listening to the thunder rolling across the valley. Or was that her heart?
He dropped the mare’s lead and strode toward her, his long legs moving in that lazy, loose-limbed way she remembered.
“Close your mouth, Sage. A fly’ll get in.”
A fat raindrop splatted onto her nose. “Cord?” The word came out wobbly, as if it had been rubbed over a washboard.
He stepped close to her, so near she could see the dark stubble on his chin, smell the mixture of sweat and horse and dust that set her body trembling.
“Wh-what are you doing here?” she managed to ask over the tight feeling in her throat.
He moved in closer, until her chin brushed his open shirt collar. Lifting his hands to her neck, he began undoing the next four buttons of her blouse, spreading the white fabric open to expose her skin to the cooling air.
“Sure is hot today,” he breathed.
“It’s starting to rain,” she said in a dazed voice. In the next instant she jerked to awareness. “Cord, stop! Think of Mrs. Benbow! She’s sure to be watching.”
His fingers smoothed her bare shoulders. “Yeah.” He tightened his hands. “Let her watch. In a minute I’m going to kiss you, and she won’t want to miss that, either.”
“She’ll put something scandalous in the news—”
Sage closed her eyes. She must be hallucinating in the afternoon heat. A glass of cold lemonade would bring her out of it, but for some reason she couldn’t move a single muscle. Something held her, warm and steady across her back, pulling her forward until…
When his mouth found hers, she gave herself up to the dream. Oh, dear Lord, let me never wake up.
Her thoughts tumbled like windblown thistles. The newspaper. The headline. This must be real, after all. Inexplicably, she began to cry.
She opened her eyes, touched Cord’s unshaved cheek with her fingers. “How did you…?”
“Bribed the editor,” he said with a grin. “Wonderful invention, the telegraph. Had to ride like hell to get here in time.”
Sage stared at him. “In time for what?”
“To marry you. Hell’s half acre, Sage, don’t you read the newspaper?”
“Oh, I read it all right. Most of today’s was pure tosh, fanciful stories about a new hospital, a new sher—”
“Yeah,” Cord said, holding her gaze. “Thought you’d need one.”
Her heart jumped. “Need one what?”
The rain began in earnest, spotting
his vest, wetting her hair, her unbuttoned blouse. She watched his face through a blur of moisture, saw his grin widen and a hot light turn his eyes from soft sage into two smoldering emeralds.
“Need one hospital,” he said. “Need one sheriff. At least I hope so, since I need a job.” He paused and swallowed. “And I hope you need…me.”
Sage stared at him, opened her mouth, closed it and put her arms around him. Are you watching this, Mrs. Benbow? Cord Lawson has just asked me to marry him.
She reached up, tossed his sweat-stained hat into her dahlia bed and pulled his head down to hers. She kissed him for a long, long time.
And I’m going to say yes.
“It’s raining,” he whispered at last against her lips.
“Yes.”
“I love you, Sage. Things don’t matter a damn unless we’re together.”
“Yes.”
He turned his face up to catch the rain. “Let’s go swimming in the river before the wedding.”
She clung to him with all the strength she had. “Yes,” she murmured. “Yes.”
The ceremony took place the next evening. The air smelled sweet and clean after the rain, and the glow of candlelight washed the interior of the Methodist Church with a warm golden haze. Townspeople and farm folk crowded into the pews and listened to Letitia Halstead play Bach preludes on the harmonium.
Outside in the soft, early evening shadows, Mayor Billy West walked up and down with his daughter while she tried to calm her prewedding jitters.
“’Tain’t nuthin’ to be scared of, honey-girl.”
Sage thought her insides would float away over the tops of the maple trees. “I’m not s-scared, Pa.”
“Then stop shakin’. You already know the man physical-like, so you don’t need advice on that score. If it’s the ‘death do us part’ aspect, well, do what yer mama and I done. Jes’ take it one day at a time and don’t waste any of it.”
“My dress…do I look all right?”
Her father held her at arm’s length, his blue eyes shining. “Yer mama’s been savin’ that purty lace dress all these years, waitin’fer you to wear it. You look so beautiful it makes my eyes water.”
“My hair is still damp,” Sage murmured.
“Been swimmin’ again, huh? Lord, that man is a peculiar mix. Who’d want to get wet in a river when water’s already pouring outta the sky?”
“He does. I do. It’s…something he taught me.”
“Plumb tetched, the both of ya.” Billy dropped a kiss onto her forehead. “Come on, honey-girl, take my arm. I hear Miz Letitia playin’ that wedding march she’s so fond of.”
When they entered the church, a gasp went up from the congregation. Skirts rustled, pews squeaked as everyone stood up. Then Sage and her father took a step forward.
She looked down the aisle and saw Cord waiting for her, tall and straight-backed in a dark suit and vest. His hair was damp, too; she could tell by the unruly wave that poked up on one side. Even from here, his eyes warmed her.
She passed Mrs. Benbow, perched on the edge of the pew next to Friedrich Stryker, who surreptitiously blew his nose, while his wife, Flora, clucked beside him. Arvo and Cal Ollesen sat with Cal’s wife, Ruth, between them. Arvo had never married, but his brother’s two sons tumbled over him with unconscious abandon until Ruth reached over and settled them down.
There were newlyweds Sarah and Elijah Ramsey, holding hands, and Natasha Petrov, steadying her ailing husband’s trembling fingers within hers. Next to them sat Joshua Duquette and his son, Seth, dry-eyed despite the death of Mrs. Duquette two weeks earlier.
Sage’s mother sniffled in the first pew, next to Aunt Cissy and Uncle John and her cousin, Matt, who’d arrived on the train earlier in the day. Sage’s eyes filled at the sight of them, all the people she loved here in this room.
And Cord, waiting to make her his wife.
Her father laid her hand in Cord’s extended palm, coughed and stepped back to join her mother.
“Dearly beloved…”
Sage scarcely heard the minister’s words. Her heart, under the ivory silk, swelled and hammered until she was sure it would burst.
“Who gives this woman into the estate of marriage?”
She heard a pew creak behind her, and then her father’s voice. “Her mother, Henrietta West, and William West, her father, give this woman to be married.” His voice broke on the last word.
Tears clogged her throat. She’d bet Mama had coached him.
Why am I crying? Within an hour she would belong to Cord for the rest of their days on earth. She wanted to laugh out loud, sing, throw her arms around him—around everyone—dance barefoot on the cool grass. This is the happiest day of my life!
“Do you, Sage Martin West, take this man…”
Within an hour they would climb the stairs to her bedroom and he would take her into his arms.
“I…yes, I do.”
“Do you, Cordell James Lawson, take…”
She couldn’t look at him as he slipped a gold band over her finger, and then she lifted her head and met his gaze. She couldn’t see his face clearly for the tears blurring her vision.
His voice was low and calm. “I do.”
Yes. Yes, yes, yes!
And then Cord surprised her. He took her hands in his and said some words that weren’t in the ceremony, his steady green eyes glistening with moisture. “You have my heart, and all that I own, and all that I am. Always.”
There was a moment of stunned surprise, and in that silence he kissed her, his mouth warm and gentle on hers.
“I love you,” he whispered against her temple.
And then it was over.
Or perhaps, Sage thought as they walked hand in hand down the aisle, perhaps it was just beginning.
Epilogue
September 1, 1884
Sunday evening at the Methodist Church, Sage Martin West, of Russell’s Landing, Douglas County, was joined in marriage to Cordell James Lawson, lately of Arizona. The bride wore her mother’s wedding gown of ivory peau de soie fashioned with a wide sash and deeply flounced hem ruffle.
The bride was given away by her father, Mayor William Martin West. Attending the ceremony from St. Louis was Mr. Matthew Montgomery, the bride’s cousin.
After the ceremony, the couple departed on an extended wedding journey into the Bear Mountain Wilderness.
Upon their return, Mr. Lawson will take up his duties as the new sheriff of Russell’s Landing, while his wife will resume her medical practice on Maple Falls Road, where the couple will reside.
June 17, 1885
Born to Dr. Sage West Lawson and Sheriff Cordell Lawson, a daughter, on June 15. Christened Constance Henrietta, the baby has the honor of being the first child born at the new Lawson-West Hospital on Maple Falls Road.
*
All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.
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First published in Great Britain 2008 Harlequin Mills & Boon Limited, Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road, Richmond, Surrey TW9 1SR
© The Woolston Family Trust 2004
ISBN: 9781408901144
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