Montana Bride

by Joan Johnston

  Hetty was afraid if she said anything at all she would babble. She wished Dennis hadn’t kissed her, especially since she’d been tempted to kiss him back.

  Even that fleeting urge to respond to a man who wasn’t her husband made her feel sick to her stomach. And angry with Dennis. And even angrier at Karl, who should have been the first man to kiss her lips on her wedding day.

  She glanced at her new husband, to see what he thought about what Dennis had done.

  His brown eyes had darkened and looked stark, but he managed a smile. “I hope Dennis didn’t embarrass you. We’ve been friends all our lives.”

  “Not at all,” Hetty said, aware that she was lying to her husband only moments after their marriage.

  Hetty turned to Grace, who was standing beside her, and saw the girl scowling at Dennis. Hetty realized that she’d better do something quick, or Grace was liable to say something to make matters worse. She turned her gaze back to Karl and asked, “What comes next?”

  Dennis laughed and slapped his friend on the back. “She wants to know what comes next, Karl.”

  Hetty saw the embarrassed flush on Karl’s face at his friend’s teasing and said, “I meant, is there something we need to sign, now that the ceremony’s over?”

  Karl cleared his throat. “The church register.”

  The register showed Henrietta Wentworth Templeton had married Karl Frederick Norwood. Hetty refused to worry about whether the marriage was legal when she hadn’t used her real last name. The point was, they’d said the words before God. She was married all right. Till death us do part.

  “What happens now?” Griffin asked.

  Dennis laughed and winked at Hetty again. “The honeymoon, of course.”

  Griffin snorted, turned to Karl, and said, “I mean, what happens to us? Me and Grace? Are we your kids now, or what?”

  “Yes, you are,” Karl replied as he settled a white woolen shawl, his wedding gift to Hetty, over her shoulders.

  Hetty was wearing the white silk-and-lace wedding gown Mrs. Templeton had brought with her, which Mr. Lin, who’d turned out to be pretty good with a needle, had altered for her during their last week on the trail. Karl’s gift, the shawl, had been delivered to her hotel room after he’d escorted her there.

  As Mr. Lin draped the shawl around Hetty’s shoulders before they left for the church, Grace had remarked that she really appreciated Hetty marrying Karl, especially when he wasn’t much to look at.

  Mr. Lin had stepped in front of Hetty, looked up at her with his dark, inscrutable eyes, and said in a quiet voice, “Confucius say: ‘Everything have beauty. Not everyone see it.’ ”

  Hetty had pondered that thought ever since. She glanced at her brand-new husband, looking for the beauty Mr. Lin had suggested was there somewhere. She didn’t see it.

  “I’m hungry,” Griffin said. “When do we eat?”

  “Right now,” Karl replied. “I’ve got dinner planned at the hotel.”

  “I wish I could join you,” Dennis said, “but there’s some business that needs to get finished if we’re going to leave for the Bitterroot first thing tomorrow morning.” He grinned at Karl. “Or rather, whenever the two of you are up and ready to get moving.”

  Hetty watched her husband flush again at such a blatant reference to the fact that Karl might want to linger in bed the morning after his wedding. She couldn’t believe Dennis was abandoning his best friend on his wedding day—for business. Worst of all, she couldn’t imagine sitting through a dinner at the hotel alone with Karl. Or rather, alone with Karl and Grace and Griffin.

  “You married good now, Boss,” Mr. Lin said.

  Hetty had forgotten about the Chinaman, who’d come to the church and sat in a back pew to watch the ceremony.

  Mr. Lin focused on Hetty, then Karl, and said, “Confucius say: ‘Whatever you do, do with whole heart.’ ”

  Easy for him to say, Hetty thought bleakly. He wasn’t the one who’d just given up any hope of ever having that fairy tale ending. On the other hand, she was entirely responsible for ruining her chance at finding love and happily ever after, so what did it matter who she married? She was getting exactly what she deserved.

  Karl’s brown eyes crinkled at the corners as he smiled. “That seems like easy advice for a newly married man to take.” He put a hand on Bao’s shoulder and added, “Thank you again for bringing my bride safely here to me.”

  Mr. Lin shared a surreptitious glance with Hetty, then bowed his head. “Just doing job, Boss.”

  Hetty wasn’t ready to be alone with her husband. Maybe Mr. Lin could provide the buffer she needed this first evening between herself and Karl. After weeks on the trail, she knew the Chinaman far better than the stranger she’d wed. She blurted, “Will you join us for supper, Bao?”

  Mr. Lin shook his head. “So sorry. Have work. You enjoy first supper with husband.”

  Hetty watched with a sinking heart as he turned and marched back down the aisle.

  “Are we gonna eat or what?” Griffin asked.

  “Griffin,” Grace said in a soft voice. “Don’t be a brat.”

  “I’m hungry, too,” Karl said. “Shall we all go?” He gestured down the center aisle toward the door to the church.

  Griffin dashed for the door, with Grace yelling, “Don’t run in church!” as she sprinted after him.

  Hetty saw Karl was smiling as he watched the two rambunctious children charge down the aisle. It was a beautiful smile, one that traveled from his mouth, with its slightly crooked front tooth, all the way to his brown eyes, which—Hetty would have sworn—shimmered with dazzling golden flecks in the light streaming through the stained-glass window.

  A moment later Karl turned to her, the smile gone, the golden flecks gone, his face as ordinary as it had been when she’d promised to be his wife for as long as she lived.

  “Shall we go, Mrs. Norwood?”

  “I prefer Hetty.”

  Another smile flickered on his lips but never appeared there. “I wanted to hear how it sounded. Mrs. Norwood, I mean.”

  Mrs. Norwood. Married to plain Mr. Norwood.

  Hetty felt sad. Bad. Frustrated. Irritated. Why, oh, why had she agreed to marry this stranger when she wasn’t the least bit attracted to him? How was she going to allow him the liberties of a husband? And why did he have to be so nice?

  Most grown-ups would have yelled at the two kids for galloping down the aisle. Karl had smiled at them, accepting their exuberance as part of what made them Grace and Griffin. She couldn’t help liking him, even if she wasn’t attracted to him.

  Hetty hoped mere liking was going to be enough to get her through the night to come. There was no going back now. She slipped her arm through Karl’s and said, “I’m starved. I was too nervous to eat before the ceremony.”

  The smile appeared on his face again, and she found herself fascinated by that slightly overlapping front tooth. He pulled her close as he admitted, “I couldn’t eat anything, either. I was nervous, too.”

  “You were?”

  “It’s not every day a man is lucky enough to marry the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen.”

  “Oh.” Hetty stared into Karl’s brown eyes and realized the golden flecks were there again. “What a lovely thing to say.”

  He kept his gaze focused on hers, and Hetty felt her empty stomach fill with butterflies. She had no idea how to respond to such a compliment. She didn’t want to lie and say she was happy with his looks, too, but it seemed she needed to say something.

  His stomach growled, and Hetty was surprised into laughter.

  Karl shot her a rueful look. “So much for impressing my new bride. Shall we go, Hetty? Supper awaits.”

  “Of course.” Hetty refused to think about what came next. At least, not until after she’d filled her stomach. Maybe then there’d be no room left for the butterflies to take flight.

  “I’m so sorry,” Hetty said.

  “It was an accident,” Karl replied as he dabbed at the win
e staining his vest and trousers with the red-and-white-checked napkin he’d carried away with him when they’d left the hotel restaurant and headed upstairs to their room. “The boy didn’t mean to do it.”

  The problem was, Hetty was pretty sure Griffin had known exactly what would happen when he’d reached for a bowl of butter in the center of the table. She suspected Griffin had tipped over the crystal glass simply to see what reaction Karl would have. If the boy was hoping for outrage, or a punishing slap, he’d been disappointed. Karl had laughed.

  “I’m glad you did that,” he’d said to Griffin as he swabbed his vest with his napkin. “I couldn’t refuse Dennis’s offer of a bottle of wine to celebrate, but I’ve never really liked the stuff.”

  “Your poor suit!” Grace had exclaimed before shooting daggers at Griffin.

  Karl had merely shrugged. “I don’t expect to be wearing this suit much. It’ll be Levi’s and plaid wool shirts and boots from now on.”

  Hetty had seen the smirk come and go on Griffin’s face and realized she couldn’t let the boy get away with such a prank. “Nevertheless, we shouldn’t allow the stain to set,” she said. “I believe we’re all finished with supper.”

  “We’re supposed to get apple pie for dessert!” Griffin protested.

  “Yes, we were going to have apple pie,” Hetty said. “Now I think you’ll agree it would be unwise to force Karl to sit here while his suit gets ruined.” She turned to Karl and said, “Shall we go?”

  Hetty could see Karl was going to relent and stay for dessert, so she rose and said, “Time for bed, children.”

  “Serves you right,” Grace muttered under her breath to Griffin as she got up from her chair.

  Griffin said nothing, simply made a moue in acceptance of how he’d been outmaneuvered.

  Hetty realized that by making Karl’s suit a priority, she’d denied herself the opportunity to escape into the children’s room to ready them for bed, thereby postponing the start of her wedding night. She did pause momentarily by the door to their room and said to Grace, “Don’t stay up late. We have a very long day on the trail tomorrow.”

  “I wish we could stay here a little longer,” Grace said, gazing wistfully at the soft, four-poster bed she and Griffin would be sharing. “I’m so tired of traveling.”

  “Our journey will be over soon,” Hetty promised. “You heard Karl say our new log home will have soft beds for everyone.”

  “I can’t believe Griffin did that,” Grace whispered after Karl had moved across the hall to unlock the door to his and Hetty’s room. “Or that Karl was so nice about it.”

  “It seems we’ve all been very fortunate,” Hetty said. “But if you have any sway at all with Griffin, tell him he shouldn’t push his luck.”

  “I will,” Grace said fervently.

  Hetty hugged the girl, then turned to join Karl, who’d been waiting patiently by the open door to their room, the wine-stained table napkin pressed against his wine-stained vest.

  Her heartbeat ratcheted up as they entered the room and Karl closed the door behind them. The hotel room seemed small, perhaps because so much of it was taken up by the bed. After all the weeks of sleeping under the sky, Hetty felt trapped within the four stifling walls.

  She hadn’t noticed it when she’d changed out of her wedding dress before supper, but she suddenly became aware of the smell of woodsmoke pervading Mrs. Templeton’s navy-trimmed, light blue traveling dress, which the other woman had often worn while sitting by the fire. Hetty suddenly found the smoky smell unbearable.

  Unfortunately, to get rid of the smell, she’d have to remove the dress, and she wasn’t willing to do that. At least, not until it was absolutely necessary.

  Hetty turned away from the waiting, turned-down covers toward Karl, brushed the lapel of his suit coat, and said, “There’s wine on this, too.”

  Karl shrugged out of the jacket and draped it over a nearby ladder-back chair in the corner, then began unbuttoning his vest.

  Hetty realized that if Karl took off everything with a wine stain, he’d soon be standing before her in his smalls. She quickly crossed the room to the pitcher and bowl sitting on a clothes chest, poured some water, then dampened the cloth sitting beside the bowl and crossed back to Karl, who stood at the foot of the bed.

  “Let me help you with that,” she said, pressing the damp cloth against his wool vest before he could remove it.

  Karl took the cloth from her and threw it on a pillar table beside the door, along with the napkin he’d been using. “There’s a very good Chinese laundry in town. I’ll drop the whole suit off before we leave and have it returned to me the next time supplies are delivered to the Bitterroot.”

  “But—”

  “There’s something I’d much rather be doing than worrying about this suit,” he said in a soft voice.

  Hetty fought the panic she felt as Karl reached out to brush a handful of golden curls back over her shoulder. She shivered as his fingertips trailed down to rest at the base of her throat.

  He met her gaze with those plain brown earnest eyes of his and said, “I can feel your pulse racing. You don’t have to be afraid of me, Hetty. We have all night. We can take our time.”

  Hetty was pretty sure all the time in the world wasn’t going to make her feel any less terrified. It would have been frightening enough to face a wedding night. But she would be spending it with a stranger she’d met that very day. Even that might have been bearable if her husband had been someone for whom she felt a spark of physical attraction. But that was not the case.

  She immediately felt guilty for wishing Karl was more good-looking. Or even a little good-looking. Oh, Hetty, how can you be so shallow?

  If that had been the extent of it, Hetty might have made it through the night. But she was mortally afraid Karl would discover that she couldn’t possibly be the parents of those two children because she was a virgin. Could a man always tell? Was there any way to keep him from finding out?

  The whole point of this mail-order marriage had been to save those two precious children from abandonment. Hetty had no choice except to bluff her way through her wedding night. She tried to smile and felt her mouth wobble. She tried again and didn’t think she’d done much better until Karl said in a low, rumbling voice that sent a shiver down her spine, “I love your dimples.”

  Hetty lowered her gaze, unable to look at the man she planned to dupe—if he could be duped. Maybe he had no more experience than she did. Maybe he wouldn’t realize she was a virgin. Hetty blurted, “Have you ever…uh…” She felt her throat tightening but swallowed over the knot and continued, “That is, do you know much about…I mean, have you…”

  Karl looked more and more uncomfortable, and Hetty realized there was no way to ask what she wanted to know.

  “Have you ever been in love before?” she finished.

  She saw the flare of surprise—and relief—in his eyes before he said, “As a matter of fact, I haven’t. Have you?”

  Hetty hadn’t expected him to turn the question back on her. Tears immediately filled her eyes as she thought of Clive Hamm, of his beautiful blue eyes, of his powerful shoulders, of his flashing smile. And of his last words of love to her as he lay dying in her arms, the victim of a gunshot wound he’d received in a confrontation with the man Hetty had been flirting with in order to make Clive jealous enough to propose.

  “That was foolish of me,” Karl said. “Of course you’ve been in love.”

  Because she’d supposedly been married. Only she hadn’t. How different her life, and her sisters’ lives, might have been if only she’d been willing to wait patiently for that proposal from Clive, instead of provoking that showdown. Mr. McMurtry and the Wentworth sisters would never have been forced to leave the wagon train, with all the disaster that had followed.

  And Hetty wouldn’t have ended up married to a man she didn’t love. She sobbed and pressed her fisted hands against her mouth to keep from wailing aloud. She had no one to blame but
herself for her current predicament. And the only way to make amends for all the harm she’d done was to be as good a wife to this man, and as good a mother to those children, as she possibly could.

  “Please don’t cry,” Karl said, reaching for her fisted hands and opening them and taking them in his.

  She blinked her eyes to force back the tears. “I’m sorry to be such a crybaby,” she choked out.

  “I know this must be difficult for you.”

  Hetty could see Karl was torn between exercising his rights as a husband and leaving the consummation for later. Hetty knew she ought to give in. Time wasn’t going to change anything. She was still going to be a virgin a month from now. But wouldn’t it be safer not to give Karl an excuse to leave her and the children behind in Butte when he discovered the truth?

  She had to give him something. It was his wedding night, too, after all. She decided to offer kisses. That seemed safe and surely wouldn’t be as difficult to bear as allowing Karl the more intimate rights of a husband. Hetty decided to speak before she lost her nerve.

  “Would you kiss me, Karl?”

  For once, what Karl was thinking wasn’t revealed in his eyes, which remained focused steadily on hers.

  Hetty closed her eyes, pursed her lips as she’d practiced in the mirror growing up, and waited.

  She felt Karl’s fingertips frame her face and then tilt it slightly sideways. She quivered in expectation when she felt his warm breath against her skin.

  A moment later, the warmth was gone, and she heard him say, “Open your eyes, Hetty.”

  Hetty’s eyelids felt heavy, and it took a great deal of effort to lift them. When she did, she found Karl’s face close to her own. Why hadn’t he kissed her?

  The question must have been there in her eyes because he said, “How long since your husband died, Hetty?”

  Hetty felt the flush start at her throat and steal onto her cheeks as she formulated the necessary lie. “It’s been…uh…”