by Merry Farmer
“Shoot. I should have asked if you wanted to freshen up and wash the road off of you before dragging you out here to the church,” he said.
“It’s all right,” she replied with a smile.
He didn’t know what to say in reply. They just stood there until he realized that his arms were still around her. He let go as if she’d suddenly gone hot. Nope, that was no way to start a marriage that would be more of a partnership than a union.
“I have a good feeling about this,” Wendy sighed.
“You two make the perfect couple,” Holly added.
“I agree. Now let’s get back over to the hotel for the second part of our party,” Eden laughed.
Eden’s word was apparently law, in spite of Trey being the sheriff. Before he could even think whether he wanted to protest, the women were dragging him and Talia over to the side of the sanctuary so they could sign all the official documents, then back down the aisle and out into the sunny afternoon.
“I can’t believe you actually went through with it,” Sam commented as they walked. He was near to Trey, but still on the outside of the ring of women and children that surrounded him.
Trey turned to reply to him, but before he could get a word out of his mouth, Wendy burst out with, “Look, there’s Travis. Travis!” She raised her voice, which raised Trey’s eyebrows. He’d never seen Wendy Montrose holler at someone. The woman was far too dignified. Yet there she was, waving her arms like a ranch hand trying to herd cattle to catch her husband’s attention. Funny that just by showing up, Talia had her friends acting like girls half their age. That was some kind of womanly magic. “Travis, come join us at the hotel. Sheriff Knighton and Talia have just been married.”
Trey exchanged a look with Sam as their party continued on. It grew more and more as they got closer to the hotel, roping in Luke Chance and Franklin Haskell—who must have come into town looking for their wives—along with both Solomon and Honoria Templesmith. So many of them pushed through the hotel’s front doors that Gunn took one look at them and told them to wait in the lobby while he shifted the food for their party from the restaurant to one of the hotel’s smaller ballrooms.
By the time they were all escorted into the ballroom, adding Gunn himself to their party, Trey wasn’t even sure who or where he was anymore.
“I’m so happy that Talia is back with the rest of us at last,” Corva said as glasses of bright red punch were handed around.
Trey raised an eyebrow as he took a sip of his. Hadn’t the women been saying the exact same thing since they spotted Talia walking up Main Street? How many times did a woman have to state the obvious?
“I can’t wait for you to get settled in,” Wendy carried on with the conversation. “You’ll be living practically across the street from Travis and I.”
“And just down the way from me and Athos,” Elspeth added.
“And Solomon and I are just a few houses behind you,” Honoria added. “I can’t wait to get to know you better.”
“It’s all so overwhelming,” Talia replied to all of them. Her poise was impressive, considering how tired she must be.
“We can leave any time you want,” he whispered to her as the women buzzed on. “If you’d like to rest and clean up, that is.”
“Oh no, I’m just fine.” Her smile was inexhaustible.
“Do you remember the time back at Hurst Home when Miriam was baking bread and forgot to add the yeast?” Eden laughed.
“Talia swooped in and showed her how to fry up the bread in rounds,” Elspeth said with a laugh as though she was just remembering the story.
“It was delicious,” Holly said. “That was my first week at Hurst Home.”
“Where is Miriam anyhow?” Eden asked.
“She’s about ready to burst with that baby any day now,” Virginia said. “So she’s staying close to home.”
“Nonsense.” Eden waved the thought away. “Even if she did go into labor during the party, Talia here could deliver her little bean. Remember that time she delivered Hetty Blair’s baby?”
The women all hummed and exclaimed at the memory. Trey felt his cheeks go hot. He glanced desperately around for male reinforcements, but Sam, George, Travis, and Gunn were standing way on the other end of the refreshment table.
“I’ll have to go visit her as soon as possible,” Talia said. “Where is she living?”
“Out next to us in a little cluster of houses we call The Village,” Eden explained.
“Oh, Talia, you must be parched. Let me get you another punch,” Elspeth said, stepping forward and reaching for Talia’s empty glass.
Shoot. There was something else Trey should have been keeping an eye on if he wanted to be a good husband. “I’ll get it,” he said, slipping the glass out of Talia’s hand.
“Thank you,” Talia smiled up at him.
He moved over to the refreshment table and the punch bowl while the women went on talking.
“Whatever happened to Hetty and her baby anyhow?” Eden asked, continuing the conversation.
“They went back to Ohio, where Hetty had family,” Talia explained.
“I’m surprised there’s anyone left at Hurst Home at all,” Wendy said.
“Oh, there have been plenty of women who have come to live there after all of you left,” Talia explained. “Although they’re as eager as I was to come out here to Haskell and find husbands. The example you’ve all set in finding love and starting families has all of us eager to do the same.”
Trey had set his glass and Talia’s on the table and scooped the dipper into the punchbowl, but the moment he heard Talia’s words, he fumbled the dipper. It knocked against his glass, sending it crashing to the floor where it shattered into shards.
“’Scuse me,” he said, then bent to pick up the pieces of broken glass as Gunn stepped away from the other men to help. A second later, Trey cursed as he cut his hand on one of the shards. He stood up, bleeding, and instantly Elspeth and Corva gasped.
“Oh dear,” Virginia exclaimed.
“Sheriff Knighton hurt himself,” little Thomas—who had done a fantastic job of being quiet and watching out for the toddlers—exclaimed. “Look, he’s bleeding all over the place.” He jumped up and down. So much for behaving himself.
Trey was certain chaos was about to erupt and the women would start swooning at the sight of blood. He was mortified down to his boots.
“Here, let me help.” In the midst of the turmoil, Talia stepped forward, as calm as a clear lake.
“Careful,” Trey tried to caution her as she came close and grasped his hand, turning it over to get a look at his cut. “Wouldn’t want you to get any blood on your dress.”
“I’ve had worse things happen to me,” she said, half distracted. She hummed as she studied his cut, then without hesitation, took one of the napkins from the table, dipped it in a pitcher of ice water Gunn had laid out with the rest of the refreshments, and went about cleaning his wound.
Trey was transfixed as he watched her work. Not once did she blanch or flinch or look even remotely faint. She staunched the flow of blood and studied his cut with more presence of mind than anyone he’d ever seen. He found himself equally as entranced watching the intelligence in her eyes as she wound the napkin around his hand like a bandage.
“We’ll need to find you a real gauze bandage,” she said at last. “But it doesn’t look deep enough to require stitches.”
“You know how to give stitches?” Trey asked.
“Mmm hmm.” She smiled up at him. “I worked as a nurse for a time before coming to Hurst Home.” As fast as the words left her lips, Talia clammed up. Two pink patches came to her cheeks, almost like she was embarrassed about nursing folks. But that didn’t make sense.
“Haskell could always use trained nurses.” Gunn stepped in offering Talia a clean, damp napkin so she could wash her hands. “We’ve got two doctors in town, but neither of them has a trained nurse working with them.”
“Go work for Dr.
Dean Meyers,” Eden said, picking Winslow up from the corner, where he and the other toddlers were playing. “Dr. Abernathy is a pill.”
“But Dr. Abernathy could probably use the help more,” Gunn pointed out. “Seeing as he is such a pill.” He sent Talia a knowing look.
Talia laughed softly in reply, and all of a sudden, jealousy blossomed in Trey’s chest. It was ridiculous jealousy. Gunn was far too old for Talia, and everyone knew he was married to his hotel anyhow. Besides, Talia had just married him. Not that it was going to be any real sort of a marriage.
Although if that were true, why did he have such a strange, aching feeling in his chest at the thought of Talia liking any other man more than him.
“Maybe we should head home now,” he said, hoping that didn’t make him a stick in the mud or a bully. “I think I have some gauze in my apartment.”
“Then by all means,” Talia agreed with a nod.
And darnit if that didn’t make him smile. He’d never had a woman willing to go along with anything he said before. Maybe this marriage thing wasn’t such a bad idea after all.
Chapter 3
As she walked down Main Street toward the jail, Talia could hardly believe it had only been a few hours since she arrived in Haskell. Considering everything that had been packed into those few hours—reuniting with her friends, catching up on their lives, and most especially getting married—it seemed more like she’d been there for years.
“How is your hand?” she asked Trey as they hopped up onto the covered walkway in front of the jail that connected it to the rest of the buildings on that side of the street. She rushed ahead of Trey to open and hold the door.
“I can do that,” he said, taking the door from her and gesturing with his chin for her to walk ahead of her. “It’s just a cut hand. I’m not crippled. I’ve had worse.”
Talia’s cheeks burned hot at the statement, and once she was through the jail door, she turned to glance up at Trey’s face. Or rather, the long scar that ran from his forehead to his cheek, just missing his eye. It looked like an old scar to her, but it was still the most striking thing about his appearance. There must have been some thrilling or terrifying story behind how he received that scar. But in spite of the way it sliced through his face, Trey Knighton was still one of the most handsome men she’d ever encountered.
“I would feel more comfortable if I could clean that cut out and bandage it properly,” she said, crossing to the corner of the room where she’d left her carpet bag earlier.
Trey let out a breath. “I can take that for you.” He marched across the room and took her bag with his good hand. His brow instantly shot up. “It’s awful light for someone who’s just moved to a new town.”
Talia shrugged and let her arms fall to her sides. “I didn’t have much before entering Hurst Home, and I didn’t have much when I left.”
Trey’s face pinched, but she couldn’t read what that expression meant. He stood still for a moment, then nodded to the room. “This here is the working part of the jail,” he said. “You can see the cell back there.”
Talia turned and acknowledged the single jail cell with a nod, clasping her hands in front of her as though they were at a museum and Trey was explaining a painting.
“We don’t get much in the way of serious criminals here in Haskell,” Trey went on. “Howard is pretty good at having his men warn off anyone who comes through looking for trouble. It’s like having a force of two dozen deputies, which makes my job a lot easier. The most we usually see in there are a few drunks when payday rolls around.”
“I see.” Talia nodded, then looked up to him.
“I’ve got that desk.” He gestured with his injured hand, the napkin still wrapped around it. “But really, I prefer to do most of my sheriffing outdoors, walking around and making my presence known, looking in on folks and all.”
“That seems like a good and noble way to go about things.”
His shoulders loosened and his face relaxed as if her words were an endorsement that meant a lot to him. “Come on, I’ll show you where we’ll be living upstairs.”
He started for a set of stairs at the far corner of the room, carrying her bag up in front of him. A zip of excitement passed through Talia’s chest as the followed him up the stairs to her new home. There were no doors separating the apartment from the jail. At the top of the stairs was one, large room complete with a tiny kitchen at one end, a fireplace in the far wall, and a bed spread with a quilt in the corner opposite the kitchen. A doorway just past the stairs led to what looked like a tiny washroom. Everything was neat and tidy, and looked snug and inviting.
“Uh, sorry it’s so small,” Trey muttered, carrying her carpetbag across the room to the table beside the bed. A bureau and wardrobe stood against the wall in an efficient line between the bed and the fireplace.
“Small?” Talia walked slowly to the center of the room and turned in a circle. “Why, it’s a palace compared to what I’m used to.”
“It is?” She swung back to Trey in time to see him blink in surprise.
“My parents immigrated from Italy,” she explained, stepping over to him and taking his injured hand. She carefully untied the makeshift bandage. “My earliest memories are of the ship on the way over. All four of us were given a space not much bigger than your bed for the entire voyage.
“Four of you?” Trey asked.
“My father and mother, my brother Albert—Alberto before Papa changed all of our names—and me.”
Trey blinked again. “Your father changed your names?”
A cold tremor spread through Talia’s gut. She led Trey to his kitchen, looking around and assessing what she had to work with, then pouring water from a jug next to the sink into a bowl she found on a shelf.
“People immigrating to this country aren’t welcomed as warmly as I was welcomed to Haskell today,” she explained, setting about cleaning Trey’s cut properly. “We arrived first in New York City. But New York is overflowing with people who are new to this country. The tenement where we found ourselves living could only be described as squalid.” She sighed at the memory—at the stink that wouldn’t leave the halls no matter how hard her mama scrubbed, at the crying of babies and arguing of their neighbors.
“Bandages are in here,” Trey said, looking guilty for having interrupted her. He reached for a wooden box on the shelf beside the counter and took out a small roll of gauze. “That’s where I keep all my doctoring supplies, if you ever need anything.”
Talia managed a weak smile as she took the roll of gauze. “Thank you.” She dabbed Trey’s cleaned hand with a towel that had been folded on the counter, then went to work rolling the bandage tightly around his hand, lost in her work and her thoughts.
“So, when did your father change your names?” Trey asked when the silence had stretched on for a while.
Talia glanced briefly up at him, at the concern and curiosity in his eyes, then focused on her nursing. “When we left New York. I was six by that point. Papa had trouble finding steady work. He’d been a clerk in Torino, you see, but he was slow to learn English. So the only work he could find was on the docks. But the competition for those sorts of jobs was fierce. After three years, Papa made the decision to move us farther west, to a city with less competition.
“But Pittsburgh wasn’t much better,” she went on. “They were even less used to foreigners there. So we went from being Lamberti to Lambert, and I changed from being named Italia, after our homeland, to plain Talia.”
“Italia’s a pretty name,” Trey said. She’d finished bandaging his hand, but he still rested it in hers. “Do you want me to call you that?”
“No.” Talia laughed, pulling her hands away slowly. “I’ve been Talia for so long that it’s who I am now.”
He nodded. A brief silence fell between the two of them until Trey said, “What about your brother? And where are your parents?”
Talia took a further step back, lowering her head. “I don’t know where
Albert is. As soon as he was old enough, he set out on his own to find work. He started out sending money back, but that money stopped, and we never learned why. Albert may not be alive anymore.”
“Oh. I’m sorry about that.”
Talia swallowed hard and shook her head. “It’s been so long since I heard anything from him, more than ten years, that the pain of the wound is light now.”
“But…but what about your parents?” Trey shifted to lean against the counter. He started to cross his arms, but stopped when he came close to pinching his injured hand under his arm.
Talia sighed. “Papa continued to find work only on docks and along the rivers. Mama started out by taking in washing, like many other women, but she brought knowledge of healing from the old world with her. She used the cures her mother and her mother’s mother taught her to heal small wounds, like yours—” She nodded to Trey’s hand. “—as well as sicknesses. She also acted as a midwife.”
“Is that where you learned your skills?” Trey asked.
“It is.” Talia brightened a bit. Those had been happy times. “She taught me the way her mother taught her. But knowledge like that comes with a price.”
Trey frowned. “How so?”
Talia sighed and lowered her eyes again. “People are grateful to be healed when they are sick, but when they are well, any foreigner with skill is considered suspicious. Some even call the skills they see demonstrated magic or witchcraft.”
“Witchcraft?” Trey balked. “That’s plum silly.”
Talia shrugged. “Silly or not, people think things, say things.”
Trey’s frown deepened. “So…so did something happen because of that?”
“In a way.” Talia bit her lip. Trey pushed away from the counter and crossed to the small table, pulling a chair out and gesturing for her to sit. Talia took a seat gratefully. She hadn’t realized how weary she’d gotten until she was able to take the load off her feet.
“You want coffee or something?” Trey asked.