A Lawman's Christmas: A McKettricks of Texas Novel (11 page)

“What if nothing changes?” Dara Rose broke in, feeling almost as though she needed to shout to be heard over the thrumming of her heartbeat, though of course she
didn't
shout, because the children would have heard.

“Then there'll be no harm done,” Clay said. “We'll have the marriage annulled, I'll set you and the girls up in decent circumstances somewhere far from Blue River, and we'll go our separate ways.”

No harm done?
He spoke so blithely.

Was the man insane?

Possibly, Dara Rose decided. But he was also an infinitely better bet than Ezra Maddox.

B
y the following morning, Sawyer was long gone and the snow had turned to mud so deep that folks had had to lay weathered boards and old doors in the street, just to get from one side to the other without sinking to their knees in the muck. Hardly anybody rode a horse or drove a wagon through town or along the side roads, either, but the sun shone like the herald of an early spring, and the breezes were almost balmy.

Clay considered all this as he stood in his small room at the jailhouse, stooping a little to peer at himself in the cracked shaving mirror fixed to the wall. He'd washed up and shaved, and then shaken out and put on the only suit he'd brought to Blue River—the getup consisted of a black woolen coat fitted at the waist, matching trousers, his best white shirt, starched and pressed for him at the
Chinese laundry before he left Indian Rock, a brown brocade vest and a string tie.

He hated ties.

Hated starched shirts, too, for that matter.

He'd worn this suit exactly three times since he bought it—to one wedding and two funerals. Today, it was a wedding—his own—and even though it was his choice to get married, the occasion had its somber aspects, as well.

Up home, the ceremony would have been a community event, like a circus or a tent revival or the Independence Day fireworks, drawing crowds from miles around and working the womenfolk up into a frenzy of sewing and cooking and marking their calendars so they'd know how long the first baby took to show up. The men would complain about having to wear their Sunday duds, sip moonshine from a shared fruit jar out in the orchard behind the church after the “I do's” had been said and lament that another unwitting member of their sex had been roped in and hog-tied.

Clay smiled to think of all that nuptial chaos and was glad he'd managed to escape it, though he felt a twinge of nostalgia, too. He and Dara Rose would be married quietly and sensibly, in a civil ceremony performed by Mayor Ponder at her place, with Edrina and Harriet the only guests. There would be no cake, no photographs,
no rings and no wedding night, let alone a honeymoon, because this was an arrangement, a transaction—not a love match.

Which wasn't to say that Clay didn't fully expect to bed Dara Rose when the time came, and if they got a baby started right away, too, so much the better. He figured the actual consummation of their union would probably have to wait until spring, though, when the ranch house was finished and he and Dara Rose had a room to themselves.

Fine as the weather was, spring seemed a long way off when he thought of it in terms of making love to his wife.

Resigned, and leaving his hat behind because it didn't look right with the suit, Clay bid his dog a temporary farewell—Chester had taken to curling up on the cot inside the jail's one cell whenever he wanted to sleep, which was often—and set out for Dara Rose's little house, following the sidewalk as far as he could and then crossing the street by way of the peculiar system of planks and discarded doors and the beds of old wagons.

Mayor Ponder arrived by the same means, followed single file by a thin woman in very prim garb and one of the town council members—they'd come along to serve as witnesses, Clay supposed. Clutching a copy of the Good Book and a rolled sheet of paper as he minced
his way over the swamplike road, Ponder looked none too pleased at the prospect of joining the new marshal and the pretty widow in holy matrimony.

Clay disliked the mayor, mainly because of the remark Ponder had made about not minding if Dara Rose wound up working upstairs at the Bitter Gulch Saloon, but he could tolerate the man long enough to get hitched. The rest of the time, Wilson Ponder was fairly easy to ignore.

“There's still time to change your mind,” Ponder boomed out, as if he wanted the whole town to hear, when he and Clay met at Dara Rose's front gate. “Charity is charity, but I think you might be taking it a little too far in this instance.”

Charity is charity.

The front door of the house was open, probably to admit as much fresh air as possible before the winter weather returned, and Clay had to unlock his jawbones by an act of will. What if Dara Rose had heard what Ponder said? Or the children?

He didn't respond, but simply glowered at Ponder until the other man cleared his throat and muttered, “Well, let's get on with it, then.”

Edrina and Harriet appeared in the doorway, beaming. They had ribbons in their hair, and they were wear
ing summer dresses, very nearly outgrown and obviously their best.

“Mama looks so pretty in her wedding dress!” Edrina enthused, as Clay moved ahead of the others, stepped onto the porch and immediately swept both children off their feet, one in the curve of each arm.

They giggled at that, and the sound heartened Clay. Reminded him that he'd put on that itchy suit because he was going to a
wedding,
not a funeral.

Behind him, the female witness made a sighlike sound, long-suffering and full of righteous indignation.

Once again, Clay tamped down his temper. He wanted to pin that old biddy's ears back, verbally, anyhow—he'd never struck a woman, a child or an animal, and never intended to, though he'd landed plenty of punches in the faces of his boy cousins growing up—but today was neither the time nor the place to hold forth on what he thought of nasty-natured gossips.

For one thing, he didn't want to spoil the day for Edrina and Harriet. They were clearly overjoyed at the prospect of a wedding, though with Edrina, it was partly about being allowed to miss a few hours of school.

“I'll bet your mama
does
look pretty,” Clay agreed, in belated reply to Edrina's statement. “Almost as pretty as the pair of you, maybe.”

That got them both giggling again, and Clay smiled as he set them on their feet.

And then nearly tripped over them when Dara Rose appeared, wearing an ivory silk gown with puffed-out sleeves and lace trim at the cuffs. Her cheeks were pink, her eyes bright with a combination of nervousness and hope, her hair done up in a soft knot at her nape and billowing cloudlike around her face.

The sight of her knocked the wind out of Clay as surely as if he'd been thrown from a horse and landed spread-eagle on hard ground.

Ponder cleared his throat again, and the wedding party assembled itself, with surprising grace, in the middle of that cramped front room.

Dara Rose's trim shoulder bumped Clay's arm as she took her place beside him, and he felt a jolt of sweet fire at her touch.

Ponder opened the book, and then his mouth, but before he could get a word said, a ruckus erupted out in the road.

Looking down at Dara Rose, Clay saw her shut her eyes, felt her stiffen next to him.

Outside, a mule brayed, and a drunken voice bellowed.

Clay took Dara Rose's hand and squeezed it lightly before turning to head for the doorway.

Edrina and Harriet were already there, staring out.

“Mama's not going to marry you, Ezra Maddox!” Edrina shouted to the stumbling man trying to free his feet from the deep mud. “She's taken, so you'd better just get your sorry self out of here before there's trouble!”

Clay had to choke back a laugh. He rested one hand on the top of Edrina's head and one on Harriet's, and said quietly, “Go stand with your mama. I'll handle this.”

Maddox was a big man, broad-shouldered and clad in work clothes, and his hair and beard were grizzled, wiry. Once he'd gotten loose from the mud, he practically tore the gate off its rusty hinges, getting it open, and stormed in Clay's direction like a locomotive.

Clay stepped out onto the porch, waited.

Behind him, Ponder said, “Now, Ezra, don't be a sore loser. You're out of the running where Dara Rose is concerned, and making a damn fool of yourself won't change that.”

Ezra came to a shambling stop in the middle of the path, not because he'd taken Mayor Ponder's sage ad vice to heart, Clay reckoned, but because he was used to folks clearing the way between him and whatever it was he aimed to have.

Clay didn't move.

The two men studied each other, at a distance of a
dozen yards or so, and Maddox swayed slightly, ran the back of one arm across his mouth. His gaze narrowed.

“Did you get to the part where the justice of the peace inquires as to whether or not anybody has reason to object to this marriage?” Maddox ranted. “Because that's when I mean to say my piece.”

“Let's hear it,” Clay said, in an affable drawl. He hoped the situation wouldn't disintegrate into a howling brawl in the mud, with him and Maddox rolling back and forth with their hands on each other's throats, because he didn't want that to be what Dara Rose, Edrina and Harriet remembered when they looked back on this day.

Another part of him relished the idea of a knockdown-drag-out fisticuff.

Maddox straightened, swayed again and spoke with alacrity. “I have already offered for you, Dara Rose Nolan, and you belong to me,” he said, as she stepped up beside Clay and put her hand on his arm.

A thrill of something rushed through Clay, though he'd hoped Dara Rose would stay inside, out of harm's way, until he and Maddox had settled their differences.

“You belong to me,” Maddox reiterated.

“I belong to myself,” Dara Rose informed him. “And no one else, except for my children. I want nothing to do with you, Mr. Maddox, and I'll count it as a favor if you leave, right now.”

“All right,” Maddox erupted, flinging his beefy arms out from his sides with such force that he nearly fell over sideways, “you can bring the girls along, and I'll marry you straight off—today, if that's what you want.”

“You are too late, Mr. Maddox,” Dara Rose said, in a clear and steady voice. “Please be on your way so we can get on with the wedding.”

Clay wondered distractedly if Dara Rose had ever seriously considered taking up with a lug like Maddox. He couldn't imagine her parting with her children.

Maddox just stood there, evidently weighing his options, which were few, and broke the ensuing silence by spitting violently and barking out, “This feller might have a badge, Dara Rose, but he ain't Parnell come back to life.”

He turned partially, as if to walk away, but he jabbed a finger in Dara Rose's direction and went right on running off at the mouth. “I'll tell you what he is, this man you're so dead set on marryin'—he's a
stranger,
a lying drifter, for all you know—and when he moves on, leavin' you with another babe in your belly and no way to feed your brood, don't you come cryin' to me!”

Clay's restraint snapped then, but before he could take more than a single step in Maddox's direction, Dara Rose tightened her grip on his arm and stopped him.

Maddox spat again, but then he whirled around and
headed for the gate and the waiting mule, every step he took making a sucking sound because of the mud.

Dara Rose let go of Clay's arm and walked, with high-chinned dignity, back into the house, leaving Clay and Mayor Ponder standing on the porch.

Ponder's gaze followed Maddox as he mounted the mule to ride away. “I'd watch my back if I were you, Marshal,” he said thoughtfully. “Ezra's the kind to hold a grudge, and he's got a sneaky side to him.”

 

I
NSIDE
, D
ARA
R
OSE
was shaken, but she made sure it didn't show.

Mayor Ponder's wife, Heliotrope, was a scandalmonger with nothing better to do than spread gossip, heavily laced with her own interpretation of any given person or situation, of course, and thanks to Ezra Maddox's unexpected visit, she'd have plenty of fodder as it was.

Dara Rose wasn't about to give her more to work with.

Besides, the children were watching her, and they'd follow whatever example she set. She wanted them to see strength in their mother, and courage, and dignity.

So she straightened her spine, lifted her chin and once again took her place at Clay McKettrick's side.

Mayor Ponder opened his book again and began to
read out the words that would bind her to this tall man standing next to her.

The mayor's voice turned to a drone, and the very atmosphere seemed to pulse and buzz around Dara Rose, making her light-headed.

She spoke when spoken to, answered by rote.

After three weddings, she could have gotten married in her sleep.

Questions plagued her, swooped down on her like raucous birds.
What if Ezra had been right? Suppose Clay was a liar and a drifter—or worse?
Was
she marrying him because some deluded part of her had him confused with Parnell?

“I now pronounce you man and wife,” Mayor Ponder said, slamming the book closed between his pawlike hands. “Mr. McKettrick, you may kiss the bride.”

Clay looked down at her, one eyebrow slightly raised, and a grin crooked at a corner of his mouth.

On impulse, and to get it over with, Dara Rose stood on tiptoe and kissed that mouth, very lightly, very quickly and very briefly.

“There,” she said. “It's done.”

Clay merely chuckled.

She could still back out, Dara Rose reminded herself fitfully. She could refuse to sign the marriage certificate, ask Mayor Ponder to reverse the declaration that they were now man and wife.

Was that legal?

For a moment, Dara Rose thought she might swoon, just faint dead away right there in her own front parlor. But Clay slipped a strong arm around her waist, effectively holding her up until she signaled, with a furtive glance his way, that she could stand without help.

Thoughts still clamored through her mind, though, and her hand shook slightly when she signed “Dara Rose McKettrick” on the line reserved for the bride.

What had she
done?

Suppose Clay was really a rascal and a drunk, instead of the solid man he seemed to be? Suppose he already
had
a wife tucked away somewhere, and he'd just made them both bigamists? And what if this stranger had spoken falsely when he promised not to exercise his rights as a husband unless and until she declared herself ready and willing?