Jed waited. He knew what he was going to hear and it tore him up worse than a knife in his belly. “Vera. Oh, yeah, I guess I owe you for that, too. You want to call it a draw, we’ll work out the finances.”
Pete shot him a wary. “Finances?”
“For the kid’s upkeep.”
“Why the devil you want to do a thing like that? Did she mean that much to you?”
Jed knew in his heart she hadn’t, not even back when they were going at it hot and heavy most every night, but he felt like a dog admitting it. Whatever had happened all those years ago, it was Pete’s wife they were talking about now. “She was…well, hell, you knew her,” he said lamely.
“Me and half the men in the valley. The Gillikin boys, that I know for sure, and I’m pretty certain Amos Scott’s foreman was getting into her bloomers that same summer. You just happened to be the one she got caught out with.”
Jed stiffened away from the fence. “Whoa, back up. You telling me she—Vera—she was messing around with somebody else? When the hell did she have time? She was with me three nights a week all that summer. Up until we got caught, at least.”
“She was with me at least two of those other nights. That’s why I felt so damned bad when you were the one got caught when the old man saw her climbing out her window and had her followed. Maybe it even had something to do with…ah, hell, you know what I mean. What happened—guilt can make a man do crazy things.” He took a deep breath, raked his hand through his hair and said, “Look, Blackstone, I needed that job. All my folks had was what I sent ’em, else they’d have ended up in the poorhouse, sure’s the world.”
“You just said you quit.”
“Yeah, I quit. Got drunk, stayed that way until Stanfield tracked me down a couple of weeks later with a proposition. Offered me a big bonus and said I could bring my folks back here with me if I’d marry Vera and come back to work.” He spread his callused hands in a gesture of helplessness. “What would you have done?”
It was an hour or so after dark when Jed got back. Eleanor had spent more time at the front door watching for him than she had in the kitchen helping put supper on the table. Zach stood beside her, looking, too, for a while. He asked if she was looking for a shooting star.
“I suppose I am,” she said, forcing a smile.
He nodded, looking more than ever like his father. “Mama says if you see one, it don’t mean God’s shootin’ at us. She says it means good luck. Do you believe that?”
“Zach-y, come finish your supper and quit bothering Miss Eleanor.”
Standing beside her, arms crossed, feet planted apart, the little boy looked up at Eleanor. His face was in shadow. Fortunately, hers was, too, else he’d have seen the tears in her eyes and wondered why she was crying when everyone else was celebrating. “You coming to supper?”
“I’m not hungry tonight.”
“Good thing. Pa cooked, and he can’t cook worth a damn.”
“Worth shucks, you mean,” Eleanor admonished gently.
“’S what I meant. I’ll save you a potato. They’re okay.”
Eleanor had gathered up the scattered parts of her wedding gown, folding them away out of sight. The light wasn’t good enough to work at night, and besides, with all the talking and celebrating, work of any kind was the last thing on their minds.
“You stay downstairs,” she told her hostess. “I’ll get the children settled and then I think I’ll go to bed, too. All that crawling around on the floor today…”
She managed to escape before the tears fell again. She even managed to fall asleep after hours of lying awake and wondering what had happened to destroy her shiny new dream.
They were having breakfast the next morning, the two women and the children, when two people rode up to the house. Leaning back in her chair, Eleanor reported, “It’s a man and…a little boy.”
Zach slid down from his chair and raced to the door, with Lorly calling after him to come and finish his oatmeal.
“There’s no more children left in the valley, if you don’t count Vera and Pete’s boy.”
“Why not count them?” She was coming to be more and more curious about everything pertaining to the woman Jed had once loved.
“Well, for one thing, we’re not on visiting terms with any of the Stanfields, not even the children.”
“Didn’t Vera come just the other day?”
“Looking for Jed.”
“Well, this is a man, not a woman.”
By that time, Lorly had dragged herself to a standing position and was staring out the kitchen window. “That’s Pete Marshall,” she murmured. “Now what in the world do you think he wants here? I reckon that’s his boy with him, I haven’t seen him but once in his life when the Gillikins were leaving. George and I went to say goodbye and he was hanging off his granddaddy’s gate, looking lonesome.”
“They’re out in front of the barn talking. George and Jed and Mr. Marshall. The boy’s over near the paddock fence where…”
Suddenly, she let out a shout and ran out of the house, waving her arms. “Get away from there! Jed, for Lord’s sake, do something!”
The three men turned to gawk at her. The towheaded boy looked from the horse to her and back again. Eleanor yelled, “McGee, you bite that child and I’ll rip your ears off! Now behave yourself!”
And then the stranger swooped up his son and Jed headed for the small paddock. By that time, a breathless Eleanor had joined them. “You shouldn’t have left him where the children could reach through the fence.”
“Sorry about that. Zach knows he bites, and the girls don’t come out here that much, but you’re right.” He was grinning as if it were a great big joke. She felt like swatting him, and not just for breaking her heart. Insensitive clod.
“Honey, I want you to meet some people,” Jed said, slipping an arm around her waist. “This is Pete Marshall and this is his son, Petey.”
Pete Marshall? But wasn’t he Stanfield’s foreman as well as his son-in-law? Puzzled, Eleanor nevertheless extended her hand to the man and smiled at the boy, who seemed more interested in McGee than in her. “I hope I didn’t scare you, but you see, that horse is rather infamous.”
Jed, with a fatuous grin, said, “Infamous. You can tell right off she’s a schoolteacher, can’t you? Even talking about starting a school right here in the valley, once we’re married. Her and the Reverend Pepperdine.”
It never even occurred to her to correct his grammar. Once they were married? Then the wedding was on again? Since when?
“Where’d you get him? How long you had him? He ever bite you?” the boy asked. He was a smaller edition of his father, with the same pale hair, the same widow’s peak. Blue eyes instead of gray, like his father’s, and with a look of bright expectation instead of one of defeat, but definitely a chip off the old block, as the saying went.
Jed said, “I met McGee about eight years ago. We had a lot in common about that time and decided to team up.”
“I got a pony, but he’s already too little. Pop says I can have me a real horse for my next birthday. I’ll be seven years old then. How old is he?” He looked toward Zach, who was showing off by poking hay through the fence at McGee.
“’Bout the same age you are,” George reported.
“I’m bigger,” Petey boasted.
“You’re not, neither, I am,” Zach shot back, and the two boys squared off, glowering at each other until Pete Marshall called a halt. “’Mon, son, time to go home.”
“Can I come back and play sometime?”
“We’ll see,” his father promised, meeting Jed’s eyes in silent understanding.
All debts were canceled, the future still to be written.
By the next morning, the front parlor was off-limits again, the floor spread with ivory sateen and ecru lace. On her knees pinning together various parts, Eleanor was entertaining the two little girls with a story while Zach and the three men, Pepper included, were outside surveying the ruins of the tool s
hed and discussing whether to build it back on the same location or farther away from the house.
Lorly, propped up with bed pillows on the sofa, said, “I hate to tell you this, but I’m afraid you’re going to have to set your sewing aside again. Call George in to help me to the bedroom and then get the children out of the house, it frightens them when I yell.”
Three days later, the wedding between Jedediah Blackstone and Eleanor Scarborough Miller took place in front of the fireplace in the Dulahs’ parlor. Guests had not been invited, and so it wasn’t important that the flowers that had been gathered by the three Dulah children—weeds, for the most part—were wilted now. They’d been lovingly arranged in various jars and tumblers.
It wasn’t important that the groom wore Levi’s and a borrowed necktie, nor that the bride wore a gown that was partly basted and partly pinned together. With red shoes.
Nor that her two-inch-long curls were covered by a lace overskirt that doubled as a veil.
The three eldest Dulah children were suitably solemn, the youngest, Laura Eleanor, belched noisily once or twice, but for the most part, behaved with suitable decorum.
“Dearly beloved,” Pepper intoned, and Eleanor squeezed Jed’s hand tightly.
“Finally,” he mouthed.
And before they quite realized it, he was instructed to kiss the bride. Which he did, with rather indecorous enthusiasm. The girls threw handfuls of rice; Zach threw a handful of cracked corn. Lorly scolded, “I told you to wait until they were outside,” but it didn’t matter. It would be swept out anyway, for the yard chickens to scratch in.
While the men toasted the occasion in white liquor that could have come all the way from Alaska’s still, for all anyone knew, Eleanor took the baby up in her arms. “I’ll miss you, you precious thing. Don’t do too much growing before I get back, will you?”
“Not likely,” Lorly said dryly. “You’ll be gone what—three days?”
“As long as it takes. Probably no more than that.”
The plan was to borrow money, from a legitimate bank this time, against the forty or so acres left over from the railroad purchase, and use it to build a house at the far end of the Dulah farm. George needed help; Jed needed a place to settle. Where better than where both his parents were buried—where he had grown up, made any number of mistakes, and learned from each one.
Jed came up from behind her, slipped his arms around her waist and said, “Trap’s ready. If we leave now, we can be in Asheville by suppertime.”
Looking from Eleanor to Jed and back and seeing the melting look of love on their faces, Lorly sighed. “Don’t forget what you’re going to town to accomplish. Have you got your shopping list, El? Don’t forget the books.”
“I won’t. We won’t. Tell Pepper to remember to take his medicine before he goes to bed, and tell Zach—”
“Go,” Lorly said, laughing. “Just go, will you?”
And they went. Hands clinging, touches lingering, eyes speaking without words of a lifetime commitment to family and friends, to a future filled with riches more valuable than gold.
ISBN: 978-1-4592-4315-6
BLACKSTONE’S BRIDE
Copyright © 2003 by Dixie Browning & Mary Williams
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*The Passionate Powers
†Beckett’s Fortune
Blackstone's Bride Page 26