The Lassoed by Marriage Romance Collection

by Bell, Angela; Breidenbach, Angela; Carter, Lisa

Coral looked into the hall. Mrs. Byers left the room with a tray full of teacups, while Mr. Byers carried out the four wooden folding chairs brought in for extra seating, the pup bounding along behind them. Jack leaned against the dining room’s door frame, looking as dapper as ever in his charcoal pin-striped suit. He tapped a manila envelope against his thigh.

  “I’ll help you return the gifts tomorrow.”

  “Do you realize how much this community adores you?”

  “The gifts are kind of them,” he stated, “but—”

  “What will they think when we give them back?”

  His brow furrowed. “They will think we married to save everyone from a misdemeanor conviction—”

  “Quite selfless of us,” she murmured.

  “—and they will realize they overstepped their bounds when they brought gifts without being invited,” he finished in an irritated voice. “We aren’t the ones at fault here.” He pushed off the door frame and walked to the center table. He laid the manila envelope on Inez’s basket of preserves. “There are three copies. I filled out everything. All you have to do is sign next to my signature. I will file the documents with the court in the morning.”

  Coral picked up the envelope, unwound the string, and withdrew the papers. She skimmed the document. “When the court nullifies our marriage, it will have officially never existed, and what we sacrificed to spare our families will be in vain.”

  “No, it won’t,” he said, his voice flat. “The DA recognized his culpability and agreed not to file charges.”

  A simple solution to an unwanted marriage.

  Her parents would be pleased. Then again, even when she did something to earn their approval, they found fault.

  Coral stared absently at the pages with his signature. During the last two years, her focus had been working to earn the funds to leave Wathena. When she wasn’t working, she was sleeping. Once the court approved the annulment, she could leave without any encumbrance. She could resume her plans. No one in Cleveland would know about her utterly short marriage to Jack.

  Coral would know.

  Coral would remember standing before the judge and God and making—in free will—a vow to love, honor, and cherish Jack until death did they part.

  How could a court decision null it away?

  Her memory wasn’t a chalkboard easily erased. Or muddy socks to be laundered clean.

  Nor was her conscience.

  She looked to Jack. “Yesterday when you promised me we would try and make this work, you knew what the judge had said about our marriage being voidable. You weren’t under duress then. Why did you lie to me?”

  His face reddened. “I didn’t lie.”

  “You didn’t?” she said with a bitter chuckle. She held up the papers. “Your signature—your action—contradicts you. Not telling the truth is a lie.”

  “I wanted to tell you yesterday!”

  “Why didn’t you?” she shouted back.

  “At that time I didn’t know what the right thing to do was.”

  “Didn’t know?” That earned her a glare. Coral stared at him, shaking her head. His callousness hurt. “Jack, the right thing usually begins with a person doing what he said he would—” Her voice cracked. “In our case, it means honoring your vows.”

  “If I honor my vows,” he said in crisp, angry words, “then you are doomed to a life you yearn to escape. You made that clear.” He stopped next to her. “I am the reason we are in this mess. It’s my responsibility to fix it.”

  She shook the papers in his face. “An annulment is the only fix you can think of?”

  “What else is there?”

  “Leave with me.”

  He slapped a present, indenting the box. “My patients are here!”

  Now that was the Jack Kent she remembered, the one with the renowned temper. She’d been a fool thinking he’d changed.

  If an annulment was what he wanted…

  Papers in hand, she darted past him, through the hall, and to the secretary at the back of the living room. She found a pen. Signed her name. Dated the paper. Leaving the pen where she’d found it, she returned to Jack now standing in the reception hall with envelope in hand.

  “Here you go.”

  He took the papers she offered.

  She narrowed her eyes, unable to stop the consuming anger at him. And at herself for waking up this morning and praying God would grow love in her heart for her husband—the very man who wanted nothing to do with her. “It is not your job to make me happy, nor is it your responsibility to fix my problems. I can—and will—take care of myself.”

  “Coral—”

  “Stop! I am finished with talking.” She whirled around, lifted the front of her skirts, and ascended the stairs as gracefully as she could manage. She called over her shoulder, “Your patients need you more than I do.”

  Chapter 6

  It is unworthy of God to unite himself to a wretched man, yet it is not unworthy of God to lift a man up out of his wretchedness.

  BLAISE PASCAL

  Jack didn’t move, didn’t even blink as Coral fled upstairs. He hadn’t meant for this to end in an argument. He secured a way so she could have what she wanted. She should be thanking him, not yelling at him.

  “Doc, you mucked that up well,” came from the hallway.

  Jack looked left of the staircase. Mr. Byers stood with his arm around his wife’s shoulder, both looking at him as if he smelled of something foul. “You heard everything?”

  “Enough,” answered Mr. Byers.

  Jack groaned. “What did I do wrong?”

  “I can think of several things,” Mr. Byers answered before his wife could. “The two most important: you didn’t discuss this with Coral yesterday, and then you decided upon the solution today, again without discussing it with her.”

  Jack stuffed the papers in the envelope. Look where trying to discuss something with Coral led. She was too focused on always trying to find the good in a bad situation. Move to Cleveland? Wathena was where he worked. It was his home. His patients needed him. And Coral was quite clear that she didn’t need him.

  He looked around the hall for a hat rack. “Where’s my hat?”

  “You’re leaving?” said Mrs. Byers.

  “Yes,” Jack snapped. “I have no reason to stay.”

  She stomped over to him. “Don’t you dare step a foot out of this house!” She jerked the envelope from his hands. “Until the court nullifies your marriage, that girl is still your wife. I will not stand by and watch you abandon her again because of your own guilt.”

  He flinched. His guilt was why he had to walk away. This was for Coral’s good.

  “She made it clear she doesn’t want to talk to me.”

  “Then you talk,” Mr. Byers answered, and his wife added, “Give her time to hear your heart.”

  Jack looked from one to the other, shaking his head. If he went upstairs… If he stepped one foot in Coral’s bedroom…

  “I can’t go up there.” He drew his hand through his hair. “I can’t.”

  “Would it be so torturous to talk to your wife?” Mrs. Byers said softly. “Tell her how you feel. She just may well feel the same.” She laid the envelope on the bottom step. “Turn left at the top of the stairs. First door on your right after the bathroom.”

  Mr. Byers inclined his head toward the staircase. “Don’t be as fool-stubborn as she is.”

  Coral stepped out of the bathroom, hat in hand. The front door opened then slammed closed. She flinched. It was good he’d left. She didn’t want to see—

  Jack.

  Reaching the top of the stairs, he turned the corner. He stopped. “I—” His gaze fell to her bodice where she’d unbuttoned the top three buttons of her shirtwaist, exposing a good deal of flesh. “We, uhh, I need to talk to you.”

  “Good night, Jack.”

  Holding her head high, she walked to her bedroom. When she turned to close the door, she started with surprise. Jack. Head cocked to the side,
a lock of ash-blond hair across his forehead, he stared at her long enough to make her fidget. If he noticed her nervousness, noticed how she tried not to breathe deep and inhale his familiar leather and soap scent, he didn’t smile. He had the look of someone who’d been ordered to apologize and wasn’t the least bit pleased about it.

  “Say what you came to say,” Coral rushed out, “and be gone.”

  His eyes closed, lips pursed tight. After a deep breath, he looked at her with an odd expression. “You meant nothing to me. For years if your name was mentioned or I noticed you in town, I felt nothing. When I threw you in the river, I felt nothing. You weren’t a person. You were a Davies. Inconsequential.”

  Tears welled in Coral’s eyes. He didn’t have to tell her what she knew. He didn’t care about people who didn’t matter to him.

  “I was fine with being inconsequential to you, too,” he added.

  He had been—she wouldn’t argue that. Vowing to love, honor, and cherish him changed how she felt.

  “I wanted to be a doctor for as long as I can remember.” His voice held no emotion. “I wanted to heal people. With all my training, all my skill, I couldn’t keep my uncle from dying.” The wrinkles in his forehead deepened; he looked so utterly broken. “I told God I wanted nothing to do with Him or with being a doctor. I took down my shingle and locked my door.”

  She didn’t remember any of this. What had she been doing seventeen months ago? Working. Saving money. Ignoring Jack and everyone else named Kent.

  He cleared his throat. “I decided if I died, no one would miss me.”

  “You didn’t try to kill yourself?” she said, mortified.

  He gave her a bland look. “No.”

  She opened her mouth then thought better of it and said nothing.

  For the longest time, she thought he wasn’t going to continue, and just when she figured he was waiting for her to speak, he said, “I looked in the mirror and saw an angry, bitter man.” He shifted his stance, leaning his back against the door frame, gaze on the floor. “I blamed God. I railed at Him, at me, and I broke a good number of things. And then I tried to fix them. I did everything I knew how, everything, and nothing worked. Nothing I could do would repair what I’d broken. That’s when it hit me: a broken table can’t fix itself. I couldn’t fix myself. I couldn’t make myself a better man. Only God could change me.”

  She’d never broken anything, but of the rest she was guilty.

  He still didn’t look back at her when he said, “I resumed seeing patients. Life was better than it’d ever been. I’d forgotten what it was like to be overwhelmed with guilt and shame until I saw you at the library benefit. Mrs. Sanderson asked you a question. You didn’t respond until she touched your arm. You hadn’t heard her.”

  Coral tensed. With the crowd and the band playing, it’d been hard to hear unless the person was speaking beside her good ear. “Have you been diagnosing me for a month?”

  His jaw tightened. His head turned, gaze found hers with startling directness, eyes glistening. He reached out and gently cupped her left ear. A tear ran slowly down his cheek. “This is my fault,” he choked out.

  Coral’s breath caught. She’d never seen a man cry, not her father when either of his parents passed, not Whit when he had to put down his dog, not Gil when his broken arm was set. She ached for his pain, and for the added guilt that wasn’t his to bear but what he bore because he was a good man. Because he had a tender heart.

  Because he cared.

  “Oh, Jack.” She drew his hand from her face and held it against her heart. “Tossing me in the river ruptured my eardrum. The subsequent infection caused the hearing loss.” She offered a tiny smile. “It took time, but I adapted.”

  “I never meant to hurt you.”

  “I know.”

  She released her hold on his hand. She leaned on the opposite side of the door frame. The side of her boot touched his, yet he didn’t move. He was looking at her with the most gentle of expressions. If they’d grown up in a different town, he could have asked to court her. She would have been delighted to accept. They could have fallen in love. They could have had babies and laughter and decades being each other’s friend.

  If their families hadn’t hated each other.

  She felt wretched.

  He looked wretched.

  “Coral,” he whispered. “An annul—” He groaned. “I can’t tell if it’s you who smells like roses, or if it’s the house.”

  Her cheeks warmed. “Both,” she murmured.

  He rubbed the back of his neck, as if he was uneasy about what to say next. “An annulment never crossed my mind until the judge mentioned it.”

  “Then—”

  He raised a hand. “Let me finish. Please.”

  She nodded.

  “Of my own free will I made my vows, and I would love, honor, and cherish you every day for the rest of our lives if you’d allow me. Yesterday I didn’t tell you we could annul our marriage because I feared you’d agree.”

  “I would have,” she absently replied as her heart soaked up what he’d confessed. He didn’t want an annulment any more than she did.

  He smiled just a bit. It was the saddest thing.

  “I should go,” he said, his voice flat.

  “Wait,” she blurted as he took a step toward the stairs.

  His brows drew close.

  They stood there looking at each other.

  He nodded, a silent go on.

  Her pulse pounded between her ears. She moistened her lips. “Before yesterday I didn’t know.”

  “Didn’t know what?” he whispered.

  Her chest felt like someone was squeezing her heart. Tears formed in her eyes. Not from pain. From hope. “I didn’t know how alone I was.” She wrapped her fingers around his warm hand. “I don’t want to annul this marriage. I want to know your fears, dreams, and hopes, as well as you know mine. I want to laugh with you, and cry. I want to love, honor, and cherish you, too. Tonight, and until death do we part. I believe our marriage will be beautiful. I choose to believe God brought us together for a purpose.”

  She paused, smiled, and waited for him to return the romantic sentiment.

  “Tonight?” he said, his voice rough.

  Coral chuckled. A one-word response was nothing close to what she’d been expecting. She nodded before her nervousness could change her mind.

  “We barely know each other.”

  “You’ve known me since I was born.”

  He tipped his head a bit as if to acknowledge that as true. “We signed annulment papers.”

  “Those papers mean nothing until they’re filed with the court, right? In the eyes of God, the court, and every person in Wathena, that means we’re still married.” She released his hand. Gave him a flirtatious grin. “But if you don’t want to—”

  He was kissing her and chasing away all thoughts of what else she’d intended on saying. He lifted her into his arms.

  Coral managed, at the last moment, to kick the door closed.

  Chapter 7

  Life is made up of marble and mud.

  NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

  A month later

  Oh Jack, she’s beautiful, isn’t she?”

  Jack stopped a step inside the spare-bedroom-turned-parlor. Coral sat in the same spot he saw her last since he left this morning to deliver the Zeizer twins. Her gaze, though, languished on an abstract spot on the north wall. She tapped the mahogany edge of her quill against her bottom lip. He knew her well enough now to know when her questions were rhetorical. Since moving Coral from the Swayze house and into the second floor of his house, he was still getting used to the strangeness of having a female sharing his food, his bathroom, his bed.

  His lips twitched. Not so much the latter.

  He loved waking up to a cascade of red-orange hair on his pillow. He loved how her porcelain skin pinked when she blushed. He loved that his house and office now smelled of roses because she smelled of roses. He loved the overwh
elming rush of feelings he had every time her blue eyes met his.

  A flirtatious glance. The trailing of her fingers along his arm. A kiss.

  Love. It could be nothing else but love.

  He loved Coral.

  Even when she moved his razor to a different shelf so she could put her toothbrush and paste there. Even when her cooking skills paled next to his. Even when she insisted they discuss the pros and cons of which church they would attend and they ended up choosing his. Even when she didn’t tell him the reason she wanted him to accompany her weekly visit to the Soldiers’ Orphans’ Home in Atchison until after she introduced him to five-year-old Gracelyn Rhodes.

  “I know Gracie likes you,” Coral said in a dreamy tone. “I could see it in her eyes.”

  The little girl’s feelings had been in her eyes, laughter, and death-grip hug she’d given them before they left the orphanage yesterday afternoon. Gracie and Coral adored each other. Until yesterday, he hadn’t realize how many children lived at the state orphanage—hundreds of sad-eyed girls all looking like Gracie with their close-cropped hair, gray knee-length dresses, and black stockings.

  Orphans. Neglected. Abused.

  All needing parents to love them.

  Jack walked to the oak desk now positioned behind the couch. “Coral, we talked about why we can’t adopt Gracie,” he reminded, “or any of them.”

  She laid her quill down and looked his way. “You talked. I listened.”

  “Coral—”

  “No one could love Gracie like we can.”

  She could be right, but they’d been married a month. Thirty-one glorious days and nights of being husband and wife. They needed more time alone before they invited another into their family. That’s why Mr. and Mrs. Byers offered to train the pup for them.

  Jack wasn’t any more ready to be a parent than Coral was.

  He slid the plate of sliced apples on the desk that held more of Coral’s things than his. Typewriter. Three quill pens. Blue and black ink bottles. Waxes and seals, which he still couldn’t figure out why she had because he hadn’t seen her use them. Boxes of pens, pencils, stationery, and gummed envelopes. Four social calendar books, the leather outer covers of each dyed a different shade and with the embossed name of each of her employers.