Wyoming Bride

by Joan Johnston

  She kept herself very still as he released the frayed ribbon on the end of the braid and unraveled it. His focus shifted to her blond curls as his fingers sifted through them. She shivered involuntarily, which caused him to look up and meet her gaze.

  There was something about his half-lidded eyes that held her spellbound. He met her gaze with an intensity—and a depth of feeling—she’d never experienced. It left her breathless. She began to pant as if she’d run a race, even though she hadn’t moved an inch.

  Neither had he.

  He slowly leaned toward her, and Hannah realized he was going to kiss her. She held herself very still, but the closer he got, the more difficult it was to breathe. She put a flat hand against his chest to stop him, to give her a chance to catch her breath, but he moved inexorably closer, forcing her to cede him the space.

  She could feel the heat of his body through his long john shirt. She could see the beat of his heart in the pulse at his throat and the dark auburn whiskers that were already sprouting on his cheeks and chin. He was so close she went almost cross-eyed trying to look at him, so she closed her eyes. And waited. It was her first kiss. Ever. And she wanted it to be perfect.

  Her heart pounded in her ears, and she felt her cheeks flushing with heat. She wanted to like Mr. McMurtry’s kiss, but his lips were dry and cracked, and he pressed them against her own hard enough to mash her lips against her teeth.

  Hannah felt suffocated and shoved hard with both hands against his chest, turning her head to break free. “Stop! Don’t!”

  He jerked back as though she’d slapped him. Which she had, with words. She stared at him aghast. He was her husband. It was his right to do with her as he willed. He held her life in his hands. The safety of her sisters—their escape from the despicable Miss Birch—depended on her pleasing him tonight.

  Hannah blinked back the tears that brimmed in her eyes and tried to smile. “Could you … Would it be possible … to go more slowly, Mr. McMurtry? More gently?”

  He looked disappointed. And frustrated. And worst of all, embarrassed.

  Hannah felt bad about chastising her inexperienced husband. She should be glad he was a morally upright man. They would be learning together. That is, if they could get through this first night.

  When her husband started to rise, Hannah put her fingertips on his wrist to stop him. She took his hand in hers and lifted it to her cheek, pressing it softly against her warm flesh. His hand was rough and callused and hard. He was no gentleman, nothing like the sort of man she would have married if the Great Fire had never happened. Her father would never even have allowed her to speak to such a coarse, lowborn person.

  But that life was gone, and she had to make the best of the one she had now. She forced herself to continue, leaning toward her new husband, afraid that, at any moment, he might reject her advances.

  He sat still as a post, waiting to see what she would do.

  Hannah pouted her lips out, as she’d practiced in front of the mirror with Hetty, when they’d imagined someday kissing the handsome prince who would arrive to carry them away to his castle. When her mouth finally touched Mr. McMurtry’s, she pushed her lips against his tenderly, softly. She felt his lips give under the pressure of hers, felt the surrender as his mouth conformed to her own … and something totally unexpected. A surge of desire.

  Hannah backed away suddenly and stared with awe into dark blue eyes covered by eyelids lowered in a way that told her he wanted her, too. They were both breathing erratically.

  She realized something else. She felt like prey, pursued by something savage that was capable of devouring her. She resisted the urge to flee, controlling her panic as she had many times at the orphanage, while waiting for Miss Birch to give her three hard strokes of the rod. Three only. That was the limit. Anything could be endured if one only freed one’s mind from what was happening.

  This, too, would pass.

  She lifted her gaze to the dark blue eyes staring intently back into her own. Instead of easing, the strange feelings inside got worse. Her breasts felt swollen, her throat felt raw and tight, and her womb contracted. Her body seemed not to be her own, out of her control, headed on a course toward something frightening and unknown.

  Hannah didn’t resist when Mr. McMurtry reached for the bow holding her nightgown together at her neck and pulled it free. He eased the fabric off her shoulders, but before it fell all the way down, she caught it and held it in a knot against her breasts.

  She could do this. She had to do this.

  “I want to see you.”

  His voice was so low and guttural she almost didn’t recognize it. The fierce, feral sound of it sent goose bumps of fear skittering along her arms. She swallowed hard, trying to clear the thickness in her throat so she could speak. She wanted to say, All right.

  Nothing came out.

  She loosened her grip on the front of the gown, leaving it in a crumpled ball at the top of her breasts. And held her breath. And waited.

  At last, he shoved it down, pinning her arms against her sides, making her a prisoner, and revealing to his avid gaze her soft breasts, including the nipples that had turned to hard buds against her will.

  He froze and stared. “You’re perfect,” he grated out.

  Hannah was staring down, so she saw his hands cup her breasts—too hard, too tight—and lift them. Saw his head lower and felt his lips, unutterably soft and gentle, kiss first one breast and then the other.

  Her body stirred and hummed and begged her to do something. She tugged her hands free of the sleeves that were pinning them and threaded her fingers into his hair, surprised to find the curls so soft. When he lifted his head to look into her eyes, her hands were still caught there.

  She held his head close, wishing him to be gentle. Wishing him to be kind. Wishing him to be the prince that he was not.

  He leaned forward and kissed her lips again. He was gentle at first, but that didn’t last long. His hands tightened painfully on her breasts as his mouth pressed harder against hers, crushing her lips painfully against her teeth.

  She couldn’t catch her breath. She couldn’t breathe. She felt as though she were going to suffocate. She tried to draw breath, but everything was happening too fast.

  He grabbed her hips and pulled her down in the bed so she was lying flat, then shoved up the bottom of her nightgown.

  “Wait!” she cried.

  She pushed against him, but he grabbed both her hands in one of his. His hold was gentle, but inexorable. Suddenly, she was fighting him, as a drowning swimmer fights the water that threatens to swallow her, scratching and clawing.

  “Easy, girl,” he soothed. “This is what happens between a man and a woman.”

  Hannah felt reassured by his voice and fought her panic. But it was a losing battle. She didn’t want to be here. She didn’t want to be doing this. She reminded herself, He is my husband. I am his wife.

  She took a deep breath and let it out, forcing herself to lie still as Mr. McMurtry unbuttoned the front of his trousers and forced her legs wide with his knees. She could feel him hard and unforgiving against her innocent flesh.

  She bucked once to be free, but he answered with that same “Easy, girl,” and added, “It will all be over soon,” then lifted her bottom with his free hand and impaled her.

  Hannah felt as though she’d been stabbed with a human knife. The pain was excruciating.

  He pumped into her. Once. Twice. Three times. Then he groaned like a dying animal and sagged onto her with his full weight before sliding onto the bed beside her.

  Was he done? Was it over?

  Hannah sobbed once, but it was grief she felt, not physical pain. She was truly married now. There was no going back.

  “I’m sorry.” The apology was muffled, since Mr. McMurtry’s mouth was mashed against her throat. He levered himself up onto his arms and stared down at her.

  She saw the regret in his eyes and wondered at it. He had what he’d wanted. Why was he sorr
y?

  He pushed himself away from her and slid the awful, limp pink thing that looked not at all like the knife she’d felt impale her, back into his trousers. “I wish I’d been able to make it hurt less, but …”

  But he’d had no experience with women. Hannah’s heart went out to this plain man who had kept himself chaste for marriage. In that moment of understanding, she forgave her husband for the physical pain he’d caused. Nevertheless, she instinctively recoiled when he reached across her to turn out the lamp.

  Hannah saw another look of remorse cross his face before it was lost in the darkness. He was a kind man. He hadn’t meant to hurt her. She felt the urge to offer her new husband comfort, but she was afraid it might make him want to do it again. Instead, she held herself perfectly still.

  “Get some sleep, Mrs. McMurtry,” he said. “We have a long day ahead of us tomorrow.”

  Hannah let out a silent breath of relief. It was not a wedding night to warm a young bride’s heart, but at least it was over and done. She took a deep breath, then exhaled long and slow, letting go of all the fear she’d felt of the unknown. Now she knew what to expect. She hoped her friend was right. She hoped it wouldn’t hurt as much the next time, and that someday it might even be pleasurable.

  But as far as she was concerned, she wouldn’t be sorry if they never did it again.

  Hannah was pregnant. She’d missed the courses that should have come two weeks after her wedding night, but several days had passed before she’d realized that fact. Even though her period had come as regular as clockwork since she was fourteen, Hannah had thought the excitement of starting on such a fabulous journey might have caused the lapse. Four weeks later, when the bleeding didn’t start for the second month in a row, she was no longer able to deny the truth.

  Now, here she was two months pregnant, and she still hadn’t told her husband or her sisters about the baby. Hannah didn’t know why she was waiting. Or maybe she did. Announcing she was pregnant meant acknowledging to herself that sober, hardworking, and considerate—as well as placid, wooden, and untalkative—Mr. McMurtry would be her partner for the rest of her life.

  At the beginning of the journey, Hannah had sidestepped Mr. McMurtry as much as possible, hoping to avoid her wifely duties. It wasn’t until they’d been on the trail for almost a month that she’d realized he was also avoiding her! It seemed he was shy around women, and her, in particular. That might have been endearing, except whenever she tried holding a conversation with him, he answered in as few words as possible, never sharing his thoughts or feelings.

  Hannah had tried harder, choosing subjects she thought might interest her husband, with no success. She’d tried making Mr. McMurtry angry, but he refused to be drawn. She’d even tried—she cringed at the memory—flirting with him. That had caused him to visibly blush and sent him stumbling away from the campfire.

  She’d given up. Marriage, she was discovering, was more about two people sharing the work than much of anything else. Maybe it would have been different if she and Mr. McMurtry were sleeping together in the same bed. But they weren’t.

  It wasn’t a case of her husband not desiring her. Hannah saw the yearning, almost wistful look in her husband’s dark blue eyes in the firelight before he took his bedroll and went to sleep by himself, while she joined her two sisters on a pallet laid out under their Conestoga wagon.

  It seemed Mr. McMurtry was too fastidious to couple with her unless they had complete privacy, and he wouldn’t take the risk of leaving the safe circle of wagons with her at night to get it. Hannah knew this hiatus was only a reprieve, not a release from her dreaded wifely duty. However, she had some hope her pregnancy might delay their next coupling until after the child was delivered, instead of resuming in another month, when they reached Cheyenne.

  Hannah set down the long wooden spoon she’d been using to stir the venison stew she was cooking over the evening campfire, stood upright, and placed her hands gently against her still-flat abdomen. She was amazed by how much love she felt for her unborn child. And disheartened by her lack of similar strong feelings for her husband.

  How did one fall in love? Hannah wondered. Could it be done on purpose? What did “being in love” feel like? Considering who she’d married, she might never experience that emotion toward her husband. Was liking enough? She already liked Mr. McMurtry, but she felt lonely imagining a future with a man incapable of holding a conversation.

  Hannah sighed. That was bad enough, but it was impossible to feel close to someone she was still calling Mr. McMurtry after two months of marriage. Would there ever be a day when he would call her anything except Mrs. McMurtry? Or a day when they would call each other something more familiar, like dear or darling or sweetheart? It was heartbreaking to realize that the only time she’d heard her husband’s first name spoken aloud was during the wedding ceremony. Roland.

  Hannah mouthed the name but didn’t say it aloud. She stood alone at the campfire, but someone from the circle of wagons might walk past and hear her. She glanced around and saw everyone going about their business, unhitching mules or oxen, making repairs on their wagons, or tending their evening fires.

  No one seemed to notice the roiling tension she felt inside as she cooked supper for her husband and sisters. She felt too many things at once, all of them mixed up together. The excitement of having a child of her own to love. The despair of knowing she would likely never see Miranda or Nick or Harry again. The sadness of lost dreams of love. And the growing acceptance of what must be.

  She mouthed, Roland and Hannah.

  Hannah wanted Mr. McMurtry to say her first name. To whisper it in her ear. To speak it with devotion. She wanted the intimacy it implied. But it was hard to imagine her plain, practical husband ever doing something so tender. So romantic.

  Mr. McMurtry might not be the man of her dreams, but for her child’s sake, she had to see the good in him and make the best of her marriage. And there was a great deal of good in Roland McMurtry. He never spoke harshly to her. He shaved every day and bathed when he could. He never blasphemed, even to his stubborn oxen. And he was tolerant of her sisters, who caused him endless trouble with the wagon master.

  It was time to put her girlhood dreams away. There was no handsome, dashing Prince Charming in her future, only solemn, honest, hardworking Mr. McMurtry.

  She felt tears well in her eyes and brushed them angrily away. Would she ever stop dreaming and hoping and wishing for something she could never have?

  Hannah had spent the entire day as she walked beside Mr. McMurtry’s wagon in the choking dust and pounding heat from the sun, pondering her life. That is, when she could hear herself think over the jangle of the traces and the rattle of pails tied beneath the wagon and the crack of the whip and the lowing of footsore oxen.

  She rubbed the same hand she’d smoothed over her flat belly against the ache in the small of her back. The work on a wagon train never ended. There was always something that needed to be done—above and beyond walking on blistered feet every endless mile of the way. Luckily, she hadn’t experienced any sickness from her pregnancy, but she was more and more exhausted at the end of every day.

  It was Hannah’s job to grease the axles, to milk the cow that was tied behind the wagon, to feed a ration of corn to the four oxen that pulled the wagon, to fill pails of water whenever they crossed a creek or a stream or a river and dump them in the enormous barrel tied to the side of the wagon, to cook morning and evening with the other wives on the wagon train, and to wash dishes and silverware and pots and pans and pack everything away afterward.

  Last, but not at all least, it was her job to keep Josie, and especially Hetty, out of trouble. Both girls were making Hannah’s life difficult, but in different ways.

  Josie’s only job was to fill a sling under the wagon with sticks and dried cow patties she collected along the trail, so they would have enough fuel for the evening fire. Instead, she spent every day walking along with her face stuck in a book. More
than once they’d needed to share the fire of another family, because they didn’t have enough wood or cow chips for their own.

  Still, it was hard to be angry with Josie. Her youngest sister had made friends with a former teacher, Thomas Stanfield, and his sixteen-year-old son, Micah, who’d brought two big boxes of books on the trip West. Josie was trying to get through as many of their precious tomes as she could read before they parted ways at Cheyenne, since the Stanfields were headed all the way to Oregon.

  Josie seemed oblivious to the fact that Micah was romantically interested in her. Hannah knew her sister was in love with Micah’s books, rather than the tall, good-looking boy who spent every day at her side with stars in his eyes.

  Hetty was another matter altogether. Hetty’s love life was creating havoc, and she was not the least bit repentant about it.

  Hannah glanced sideways from the evening cook fire and saw her twin flirting with Joe Barnett, while the man Hetty had been favoring for most of the trip, Clive Hamm, scowled at them.

  Hannah could hardly blame her sister for wanting to be admired by not one, but two attractive men. After all, Hetty was the prettiest unmarried woman on the train.

  But Hannah saw what Hetty did not. Though both suitors were young, they weren’t boys. And here in the West, arguments between men were settled not with words, but with fists … and guns.

  Last week, the two men had engaged in a bout of fisticuffs that the wagon master, Captain Hattigan, had broken up. The captain had warned Mr. McMurtry, “Control your ward, or you will no longer be welcome to travel with the train!”

  After everything Hannah had seen during their two months on the trail, that threat was terrifying. The wilderness was vast, and dangerous beyond belief. She’d watched people die from stupid accidents, from drowning, from disease, from the simple act of birthing a child. Every time she’d watched families grieve, it had reminded her of the family she’d lost and left her with a terrible ache in her chest.