by Martha Hix
Elizabeth Ann Buchanan, pious Catholic lady better known as Beth, was the one who got bitten by that serpent—not Hoot Todd’s sister.
Chapter Two
It was as plain as Jon Marc O’Brien’s soap-ugly face: his bride-to-be didn’t like him.
Still hurt that she’d barely looked at him, much less smiled, he set the last of Beth’s valises in the beflowered wagon, then peered at the porch of the post office, where the postmaster—who didn’t believe in marriage, sight unseen—stewed in a straight chair while braiding rawhide into a whip, Stumpy at his side. Mostly, Jon Marc saw the medium-tall lady, neither stout nor skinny, who hadn’t accepted Liam’s offer to make herself at home in one of the chairs.
Jon Marc had stared at her tintype, now tucked in a coat pocket, times too numerous to count. With a veil covering her face in the photograph, he hadn’t been able to make out her features. In person she was more than he’d counted on. He’d gotten very lucky, just to have a chance with her. Lovely, just lovely was his Beth.
She wore a straw Gypsy bonnet tied with a ribbon beneath a sweet face of high cheekbones and a wide forehead, and the prettiest eyes and the smoothest skin in the Lone Star State. Her hat rode atop midnight black hair pulled back, tight as a tick, and skewered beneath her bonnet. Her sea green traveling suit had a prim collar, but the jacket stretched a tad snug across the bodice. Her bosom caught his attention, secondary to Jon Marc’s knowing this was a diamond of many facets.
She fit his requirements for a wife; her virtues met the standards that poets spent their imaginations praising. Her arrival on his birthday—well, it was magic. A gift. The culmination of a wish on a magic lamp, made long ago by his supposed aunt, Tessa O’Brien Jinnings.
Tessa, who had wished him a bride on this particular birthday.
Unlike his two half brothers, Jon Marc had met magic with planning. Careful planning. Knowing that today would dawn, he’d made certain, before laying eyes on Beth Buchanan, that his bride would be the cream of the crop.
Cream had never been creamier. Musical and poetic; educated in a convent, and had stayed on after her schooling was over; daughter of the noble, recently deceased Aaron Buchanan, cattle broker in Wichita. At her dying father’s behest, she hadn’t returned to the cloister.
Although it had taken quite a bit of asking for her hand, she had agreed to become a ranch wife, not long after her father’s death, and here she was.
But where was the feisty Beth of the letters, quick to debate and speak her mind? She struck Jon Marc as young, alone, and too scared to confess her heart by saying she liked neither the town nor the man.
How could he ensure her happiness?
A poet would form the right words. Jon Marc wasn’t a poet. He was a brush popper with an appreciation for verse, period. At this point in time, he wished—man alive! how he wished!—he’d gotten more accustomed to the company of ladies, as his two half brothers had done before marriage.
Considering the mess he’d made of himself, his first time out of the chute, with a certain San Antonio widow, he frowned. Persia Glennie had tutored him, amongst a host of lessons, to “take care how you kiss a lady, else you’ll stick your big nose in her mouth.”
Persia had smoothed a few of his bedroom talents, yet he remained green as grass in the areas of sweet-talking a lady. Like when he’d tried to compliment Beth. To disappointing results. He must keep trying.
Dusting his hands, he approached the porch and climbed the three steps. Beth retreated, a scant backward movement of her shoulders, as if she feared he might touch her.
“Y’all ’bout ready for the big event?” Liam asked from his chair, his brows wiggling at the bridegroom.
Jon Marc rubbed fingers across his lips. I thought you said her eyes-uz blue.
“Are you ready?” he asked her.
“Yes. Let’s do go on to the church.”
He blinked twice at Beth’s suggestion. Several times in her letters, she’d objected to being wed by a “foreign” priest. Padre Miguel had been born in this area, and had more right to call himself a Texan than most who did. San Antonio being too far to travel to exchange vows in front of an Anglo priest, the Caliente too precarious to leave, lest Hoot Todd wreak havoc on the place, Jon Marc had begged her indulgence.
Apparently his argument had worked, but he wanted to make certain. “You’re agreeable to Padre Miguel marrying us?”
She kept her head lowered while replying, “I have no objection. I want what you want.”
“Ain’t that peculiar, no objection?” Liam put in. “Sorta goes with the eyes.”
Jon Marc studied the big hazel eyes that refused to meet his stare. Curious. Why had she fibbed about eye color? What stirred her to do it?
Apparently she’d rather be anywhere but here, yet she’d go through with the wedding. Why? Money, most likely.
Her father’s last illness had destroyed the Buchanan fortunes. Jon Marc had sent funds for her trousseau and stage fare. Couldn’t be much, if any, of it left. She might return to the convent, if she had the means to get there. Wouldn’t come from him. By damn, he wouldn’t spend hard-earned cash to expedite her leaving.
“It-uz me, I wouldn’t’ve changed over to the Meskin church for no gal, ’specially one I never met.” Liam squinted at Beth. “Iffen I-uz a gal, I won’t marry no feller I ain’t met afore. No tellin’ what mighta been crawlin’ under his saddle.”
“It’s Church of Rome, not Mexico City, and we couldn’t have been married in the church, if I hadn’t converted,” Jon Marc came back, peeved. “Furthermore, watch your mouth.”
“Thank you,” Beth murmured to Jon Marc.
Liam lifted his half-braided whip to the sun, squinting at his handiwork but giving the bridegroom food for thought. “Y’all got a lot to learn, be what I think. Got the cart leadin’ the horse, planning to marry afore ya even know if—”
“You do too much thinking,” Jon Marc interrupted.
He then noted a flush of embarrassment in Beth’s face, all the way to her slightly pointed chin. “Liam Short,” he demanded, the timbre lifting Stumpy’s ears to attention, “apologize to my lady.”
Rheumy gray eyes filling with contrition, Liam did as ordered. “Beg pardon, ma’am. But I think a lot of your man. I worry. ’Fraid y’all be making a mistake. Hope ya ain’t.”
Lifting her chin with dignity, Beth replied, “You wouldn’t be much of a friend, Mr. Short, if you didn’t question my presence. I trust, as time passes, that I measure up, both to your standards and Mr. O’Brien’s. Actually, I meet his. We have, you understand, been on friendly terms for a good while. By correspondence, granted. But does a couple ever really know each other until they’ve lived in marriage?”
Did she mean it, though, about wanting forever-after?
Jon Marc brushed her elbow. She started. The straw hat teetered on her head of black hair, reminding him of dark days gone by. When his mother flinched at her husband’s touch.
Georgia Morgan O’Brien had gone into marriage with a disinclined heart, which proved it wasn’t smart to push a woman in a direction she didn’t want to go. Jon Marc realized something he should have considered months ago. He ached for a willing, perhaps even eager bride.
Where the hell is that magic lamp when an hombre could use help? A purely rhetorical question, since it was common knowledge, at least in O’Brien circles, that the lantern was no more.
He proffered a forearm for Beth to lay a palm across, which she did. “Liam, if you see Hoot Todd, tell him not to look for his sister.” Jon Marc lifted her parasol to ward off the sun. “Miss Todd is with the saints.”
They quit the porch, strolling toward the buckboard with the lame dog Stumpy hobbling in their wake, two strangers about to pledge their troth to each other.
Jon Marc halted short of the wagon. Cost what it may, he couldn’t bring himself to wrest a vow from a reluctant bride.
Or was it conscience? I cannot be false to this woman.
; Taking the cowardly advance, he said, “You don’t have to go through with this.”
“I want to! We should proceed with our plans.”
Bemused, Jon Marc let the parasol tilt away. It just didn’t settle, how she said one thing while her actions said another.
Of course, he’d promised to love her, when he didn’t have the first idea what love was like. Surely it started with admiration and respect. He had those.
And a wild desire for her.
He crouched back on his heels to pet Stumpy, who snapped. “Beth, we’ve just met. We ought to get better acquainted. It could be this . . . place may not please you. Folks say God forgot La Salle County.” But God had been good to Jon Marc O’Brien, right here in the badlands. “It must look pretty bad, you being used to mercantiles and recitals and the hubbub of town life. Hope you’ll give it a second look, though.”
“I’ve been looking for days, from a stagecoach window. I am here to stay, but . . .” Beth shuffled her feet, giving him a peek at pointed shoes.
Red shoes.
Why the dickens did a lady wear such shocking shoes?
She was saying, “I can’t take accommodations when there’s no hotel or boardinghouse. I can’t stay in your home, either, not just me and you, us not wed. It wouldn’t be proper. We should proceed with our plans.”
Jon Marc had a word with himself. So what if she had a hankering for red footgear? Padre Miguel smoked cigars, brewed his own beer, and wasn’t above cheating at cards. Any of the three would have gotten him tossed out of a Protestant church. Could be, Anglo ladies of the Catholic religion, even former novices, wore whatever they wished on their feet.
Jon Marc waved his hand in dismissal. He said, “If there’s any place where you needn’t fret over gossip, it’s La Salle County. I’ll pitch my bedroll under the stars. Till you’re ready for the wedding. Or whatever. Will this suit you?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“No, ma’am.” His lips twisted into a lopsided grin as he turned his head up, abandoned Liam’s mutt, and took a long gander at the beauty fate brought him. “I’d love to make you mine, rightaway.” It might be forward, spilling wicked secrets, but if there were to be no falsehoods between them . . . “Every night I’ve fancied me and you, alone in our marriage bed.”
His blood raced even now, as it had on many occasions, not all of them at night.
Beth didn’t appear shocked. In fact a hint of a smile tugged at her heart red lips, which Jon Marc decided to take as a good sign. That she hadn’t been insulted, was there a chance that she might someday become a wanton in the marriage bed?
Put it out of mind.
“Beth, I’ve waited thirty years for a wife. I reckon I can wait a spell longer.”
“I thought you wished to be married on your birthday.”
Tired of gawking at bearded faces, sick of leading the lonely life of a bachelor rancher, Jon Marc had intended to marry her, first off. But just because the magic lamp brought a bride today didn’t mean they must marry on his birthday.
Never in his letters to Beth had Jon Marc mentioned the powerful lantern that came into Tessa’s hands in 1860, in a seaside town on the Mediterranean. And he wouldn’t. Not yet. The pagan could scare his bride away. Being devout in religion, Beth might be further put off by knowing an all-too-human genie, at the behest of Aunt Tessa, had once been able to play God.
“No marriage,” he answered. “Not today.”
This time Beth looked at him, really looked at him. Feminine shoulders drooped, then straightened, like a schoolteacher with a mission. Was it challenge in those eyes?
“Jon Marc O’Brien, are you backing out on our plans?”
“No, Beth honey. I’m not. I’m insisting on time.”
Beth honey. She liked it when Jon Marc called her an endearment. It gave her enough strength not to keep arguing for a quick marriage, which would serve only to draw more attention to how desperate she was to change her name to O’Brien.
That he had stalled in going through with the wedding had her worried, though. How long would he drag his feet? Would Liam Short’s keen old eyes spot more inconsistencies?
“Anything I can do or say that’ll make you feel more at home?” Jon Marc asked. “Or more welcome?”
Get me to the church, big fellow! Before I do or say something that triggers the truth about me.
“I—You—You have welcomed me, sir. I’m relieved to have arrived.” You can’t imagine how relieved. Or how daunted.
Filling angelic Beth Buchanan’s shoes? It would be Cinderella’s stepsister jamming fat toes into a glass slipper.
Too bad I couldn’t jam these feet into her dainty shoes.
How would Jon Marc react, should he learn what had brought Bethany to both slippers? Bethany Todd—daughter of a criminal, long-estranged sister to his enemy, discarded mistress of a double-dealing lawyer—had let Miss Buchanan talk her into this ruse, “to save Jon Marc from grieving and being lonely.”
The last full sentence Bethany recalled the tragic miss uttering: “You need him, too.”
Yes, but what if Jon Marc discovered the truth?
Imposter and prey departed the post-office grounds, setting out in a rose-bedecked buckboard of antebellum vintage for the short trip to the church of Santa Maria, where Jon Marc would tell Padre Miguel to “douse the candles.”
“Be right back,” Jon Marc said, once they were braked in front of the wooden-steepled structure.
He strode toward the tall doorway, Bethany’s eyes on his shoulders and lean hips. It was a grand appreciation she had for his form. If they ever got there, what would he be like in bed?
Shy to his toes, when Mighty Duke arose.
The minutes ticked by, one after another. Bethany fidgeted on the wagon seat. Why was it taking this long to tell that Miguel fellow to douse the candles?
“I can’t let anything go wrong,” she whispered to her wringing fingers. “Just can’t.”
She sprang from the wagon and started toward the church, but hesitated. This was a Catholic place of worship. Such had been the final ruin of her drunken father, when he’d broken into one in the Red River town of Liberal, thought it wasn’t liberal at all, despite its watering hole, the Long Lick Saloon.
Bethany didn’t want to think about Pa or how he’d broken her heart. Why she’d accepted his sole possession of worth, a gold timepiece, was another thing she’d best not mull.
“Señorita?” a small voice asked, causing Bethany to glance down to the right. “Are you the bride?”
The question came from an olive-skinned girl of about eight with hair the color of tea, her eyes every bit as hazel as Bethany’s. She held an orange in her grubby hand.
Bethany had no problem understanding the child. She’d learned Spanish from the other hired girl at the Long Lick, before Hortensia gave up cooking and dishwashing chores to move to the upstairs section. Where bedsprings sang, day and night.
Bethany bent at the knees to get closer to this child. “Good afternoon, little one. Yes, I am the bride. Who are you?”
“I am Sabrina.” Frays at her sleeves, she offered the orange. “This is for you, pretty bride. For your wedding. Padre Miguel says I must give something for your special day.”
Although Bethany hadn’t eaten for two days, nervousness having brought that about, she searched for a way to honor and nourish Sabrina. She thanked the child, then began to peel the fruit. Tearing a section open, she took one bite and offered a large portion to the giver. “We will share this.”
Sabrina beamed. “Thank you, señorita.”
The child devoured the rest of the orange. A smile on her streaked face, she rubbed her tummy. “I am glad you have a special day. That was very good.”
“Where did you find such a lovely piece of fruit?”
“Señor Hoot brought it from Mexico. He gave it to my mother. Terecita is his friend. At the cantina.”
Hoot Todd gave oranges to his “friend”? How sweet, Bethan
y thought snidely. “I don’t see a cantina around here.”
“It’s not far up the river.” Sabrina pointed northwest. “Señor Juan Marc won’t allow a cantina near his land.”
Good for Jon Marc. The farther Bethany was from saloons, the better.
“Where do you live?” she asked, not liking the idea of this child being exposed to a tavern.
“I live here. At Santa Maria. Padre Miguel watches over me and the orphans, Ramón and Manuel. He is very nice, the padre. He lets us take care of his pigs.”
That was a relief, knowing Sabrina had been spared what Bethany knew too much of.
“I must go now. It is time to take care of the little ones. Jacinta, she has many babies.” Before she took off, Sabrina said, “My mother would like to marry your novio. She told me so. But Señor Juan Marc will not marry her.”
That so? Hmm. Jon Marc banished the cantina to the far side of Fort Ewell, but Bethany figured he knew a lot about the inside of it, as well as Terecita herself. That he had baldly asked Miss Buchanan about morality spoke volumes. He was typical of men. He expected chastity but hadn’t practiced celibacy.
If worse came to worst in the marriage bed—should they get there—Bethany could counter his arguments with that Bible quote, so popular with Mrs. Agatha Persat, about “thou who art without sin, cast the first stone.”
Albeit, Mrs. Persat had led the pack, chasing Bethany out of Liberal. So be it.
Bethany smoothed her skirts and entered the church. Dark, it was dark in here. Several moments slipped by, time in which she heard muffled male voices, before her eyes adjusted to the low light. Not only from those cloaked, unearthly sounding speakers—one a tenor, the other a baritone that had to belong to Jon Marc—she felt out of place, as well she should, in this peculiar place, banked by an altar lit with candles and a statue of a woman holding a baby.
Where was the church organ, or its piano?
Surely no one had stolen their keyboard, like Pa did the poor box at Our Lady of Perpetual Help.
Her experience being limited to a few Protestant services that Mrs. Persat had taken her to, Bethany wondered how to bluff her way through religion. They had all sorts of odd rituals in the Catholic faith, she knew from Miss Buchanan.