Jodi Thomas (6 page)

The woman the sheriff called Miss Bailee searched the crowd for a moment, her eyes full of question. Her gaze rested on Carter almost as casually as it had before she’d pulled a name from the hat. She knew he was the one, he had to be. He was the only man standing in the rain, not leaving.

To her credit, she didn’t flinch. She just stared at him with those deep green eyes.

He stepped onto the porch, all muddy, hairy, six feet of him, almost expecting her to scream and run inside.

But she didn’t. She just squared her shoulders and said, “I’m the last one.” Her voice shook slightly. She bit her bottom lip before continuing. “I was kicked off a wagon train last month for being unfit to travel with good folks. I think I killed a man, but they are having trouble finding his body.”

Her fingers trembled as she pressed them against her lips and forced herself to finish her list of shortcomings. “I’m twenty-five, so I guess that makes me an old maid. I’ve no money and only a few things in my wagon to bring to a marriage. But if you’re willing, I’m willing to do what you wrote.”

She lifted the paper sack where Carter had scribbled simply, “Be my wife, all my life.”

He hadn’t been able to think of anything else to write. Looking at her now, he decided she should have had a poem or something grand like Keats or Shelley would have written, not one line scratched on a paper sack.

“I’ve nowhere else to go,” she stated more than begged.

She’d told him how little others valued her, and with her last words she’d made it plain that he was her last choice, her bottom of the barrel.

“Time’s a-wasting.” Riley hurried them into his office. “If you’re both agreeable, I’ll marry you and take the fine money. I’d like to get some sleep while this rain keeps trouble away.”

Carter opened his hand, palm up to the woman. Her long slender fingers brushed across the calluses. He had the hands of a hardworking rancher. Hers were those of a lady.

Thunder shook the building suddenly, as though a stampede were just beyond the door. But all he would have felt if a hundred buffalo flattened the building was her fingers resting in his hand. She was a lady, the finest he’d probably ever see, yet she planned to give herself to him forever.

He closed his fingers in a gentle grip as Riley quickly read the necessary words. The sheriff looked as if he hadn’t slept in a week. He didn’t bother with anything except the pronouncing. The time for questions or proclamations had ended.

Carter didn’t turn loose of Bailee’s hand when he paid the fine.

The rain pounded on the roof so hard the sheriff had to shout, ordering them where to sign. “I’ll check on you two in a week. If you’re not treating her right, Carter, I’ll see there’s hell to pay. I’ll come ever’ week thereafter with the same question in mind. Has she changed her mind? The third time, if she elects to stay, I’m sending in the paperwork to Austin, and there’ll be no turning back. So you better be good to her.”

Carter raised an eyebrow. He’d known the sheriff for most of his life, and the old man had never accused him of a crime. The woman was a confessed murderer. Yet the sheriff warned
him.

“You will be good to her?” The sheriff put his hand on Carter’s shoulder.

Carter nodded, unsure what that would be.

The old lawman turned to complete the paperwork as he ordered Wheeler to carry the lady’s two bags to Carter’s wagon.

The lazy deputy groaned, but lifted the two small bags. He didn’t seem at all surprised when Miss Bailee told him to carry them carefully.

When Deputy Wheeler was gone, she turned back to face Carter. “May I have my hand back?” Bailee asked without tugging to free her fingers.

Carter released her hand, feeling foolish for keeping it so long. He watched the sheriff, checked the rain at the window, glanced at his feet. Anything to avoid her watchful eyes.

When he did look at her, his fears were grounded. She stared right at him again.

“I think we’re supposed to kiss.” She said the words with no emotion.

He knew without question that his new wife was a woman of order. Everything in it’s place. Everything right and proper. Before he could think of what to do, the woman stood on her tiptoes and touched her lips to his. He didn’t lean down, or embrace her. In fact, she probably thought he turned to stone.

In a moment the kiss was over, and she stepped away to collect her few belongings and tell the sheriff she’d be back soon for the few boxes in her wagon.

Carter just stood in the center of the tiny office and watched her. She seemed to have no hint of how she affected him with her slight touch. He wouldn’t be surprised if gravity suddenly gave way and he fell off the Earth. After all, stranger things had happened—a woman had just kissed him.

“
A
RE YOU SURE HE’S ALL RIGHT?” BAILEE WHISPERED to Sheriff Riley as they stood on the porch and watched Carter drive the wagon through the river of mud that once was Main Street.

“He’s fine.” The sheriff added his spit to the wet street. “Strong as an ox, and smarter than most around these parts. Old Willard, over at the general store, says sometimes he gets in two or three books a month that Carter orders. Imagine that. Wonder what a man would do with so many books in such a short time?”

She stared at the lawman for any sign he might be joking.

None.

Bailee tried again. “But he hasn’t said a word. He can talk?” She was starting to wonder if she’d married the village idiot, but she was relatively sure, after a week’s stay in jail, the sheriff had the title sewn up.

“Carter can talk. He just doesn’t have much to say.” Riley scratched his head as if trying to decide how much to tell her. “He hasn’t said more than a few words since the day I found him out on his parents’ ranch twenty years ago. He couldn’t have been more than four or five that winter.”

Riley sucked on his cold pipe and mumbled as though the words bubbled unsummoned from his lips. “They were both dead, his folks. Had been for days. The cabin was freezing inside and without food or supplies of any kind. Whoever killed the couple must have taken all they could haul off, ’cause it weren’t like the McKoys not to be prepared for winter coming on.”

Bailee watched the man who was now her husband as the sheriff continued. “Somehow Carter got both his folks laid out in bed.” Riley lowered his voice as Carter pulled the wagon closer. “We found him asleep between them. He was half dead himself from cold and lack of food.”

Bailee felt a chill crawl all the way to her spine. There was no time to ask questions. Carter McKoy waited for her in the rain, and he was taking her to the very ranch where his parents were killed.

Without a word she stepped into the downpour and took his hand. He helped her onto the bare-board seat of his work wagon. The rain washed the town to muddy brown, and the few lights were blurred into hazy dullness. Bailee huddled into her coat, feeling as if this place had somehow swallowed her, and she would be forever trapped in monotones, without color, without true form, without life.

They rode past the few businesses. Two saloons, a questionable hotel, and several little stores with fronts that looked as if they might tumble in a good wind. The tinny sound of piano music clanged in the air like a cheap wind chime. Laughter, hollow and forced, crackled through the night sharp as dry lightning. Glad she was leaving this town, Bailee tried not to think about where she was going. This had been her only choice; she’d not waste time regretting it.

Without turning her head, she glanced at the man beside her. He was tall, but his coat concealed his width. His hair could have been brown, or black, but for certain it was long and wet. He held the reins in big solid hands that wore no gloves. To his credit, he drove better than most.

“How far?” she asked as a sudden wind fought to take her coat.

Carter showed no sign of hearing her above the storm.

Bailee settled back, trying not to touch him as the wagon rocked. Did her destination matter? She was already soaked, and she had nowhere else to go. This was her fate. She told herself she wouldn’t cry, but a few of the rain drops streaking down her face felt warm. She wasn’t in prison, or hanging by her neck from some tree.

She was married, and for the past year married was all she’d prayed to be. She thought of adding a few amendments to the request, but knew it was too late.

In her mind she composed a letter to her father, knowing there was no need to ever write the words, for he would refuse to open any mail from her. But in her thoughts, she wrote: I’m doing fine, Father. Killed another man, this one not so much by accident. I didn’t run this time, I confessed. My sentence was for life, not in prison, but in marriage.

Bailee closed her eyes and pushed thoughts of her father aside. He was her only relative, yet his last words to her were that she was dead to him. There was no looking back, she told herself. It was time to look forward. She glanced once more at the man who had just become her next of kin.

Carter stared straight ahead. Not because he needed to, but more from fear that if he glanced the woman’s direction, she’d talk to him.

He must have gone mad for a day, like someone given opium. Or like a man he heard about once who was kicked in the head by a mule he’d tried to shoe. The poor fellow didn’t know where he was for days and thought his mother-in-law was his wife. Luckily, he suffered another blow during an argument with his not-so-willing bride, and recovered.

The idea of marriage had sounded good to Carter this afternoon, and the fine he paid seemed a fair price. He hadn’t thought about what would happen after the lottery. He couldn’t just take her home, bed her, and wait for children to pop out. Somewhere in between, he’d have to talk to her.

He ventured a quick glance.

To his surprise, she looked as frightened as he felt. When his leg brushed against hers, he could feel her shivering even through the wool of his trousers. Carter wondered if it was from the cold, or from the thought of going home with a man she didn’t know.

He tried to tell himself that no one forced her to marry him. She’d done so of her own free will. But he wasn’t sure that was true. If marrying him was her best choice, what had been the alternative?

Carter could never remember having to consider another person’s feelings. He liked his aloneness. Among the few men in town he dealt with, he knew where he stood. And, except for an occasional saloon girl greeting him on the street, Carter didn’t remember ever having said anything to a woman, much less worrying about how one felt.

Fighting down a growl of frustration, Carter reached behind the bench and pulled out a tarpaulin he had used to cover the peaches that morning. He draped the stiff material over them both, cocooning them together.

“Thank you,” his new wife whispered as she leaned against his side and folded into the tarp.

He had opened his arm to cover them, and now he left it resting hesitantly across her shoulders. She shivered for a few minutes more, then stopped as the space they shared grew warmer.

Carter wanted to pull away, telling himself he needed both hands to drive, but in truth the horses knew the way as well as he did. With the storm clamoring and the horses splashing through the mud, he could hear little. The night was so black they might have been moving through a river of ink, but he could feel her breathe. And the feel of her against his side made all else minuscule.

At the sheriff’s office she’d looked tall, but, with his arm around her, she was hardly enough to hold. He felt as if he gripped a sparrow, all feathers and hollow bones.

She didn’t say a word when they finally pulled up to the house. He wasn’t surprised. In truth, all they could see of the place came in flashes of light muted by the rain. She couldn’t tell that the barn was solid, or that a tack room stood next to it. She probably wouldn’t even notice the small bunkhouse he and old Samuel built one year, more for Sam to stay in than anything else. She couldn’t see that he kept up his mother’s flower garden as well as a vegetable garden out back.

The three yard dogs poked their heads out from under the porch, but they didn’t bother with a greeting.

He offered to help her down, but she seemed determined to manage on her own. Her skirts were so wet he didn’t know how she walked in them. He grabbed both her bags with one hand and hurried to open the door for her.

Except for a few thin rays of watery light drifting through the windows by the kitchen, the house was dark. To its solid credit, the large room held warmth from a long dead fire and a silence from the storm that Carter always found comforting. His father had built the house, and Carter had been grown before he realized the fine workmanship that had gone into its design and building.

He set her bags down just inside the door to the bedroom, the only other room in the house. Crossing through the blackness of the large living area to the fireplace, he kindled a blaze to life.

When he finally turned around to face her, his new wife had disappeared. For a moment he almost believed she’d been a dream and nothing more. But then he saw the closed door leading to the bedroom and knew she was very much a reality. A reality he’d have to deal with. If she ever came out.

He didn’t have time to stand around guessing, or waiting. There was work that had to be done. Carter crossed the room in long strides and opened the front door. The cold wind was almost a relief. He’d deal with his new wife after he brought in a few boxes of supplies and took care of the horses.

Carter stepped into the rain.

From the shadows of the darkened bedroom, Bailee watched Carter step off the porch and head toward the wagon. The man didn’t seem to notice the pounding rain.

She felt her way to a table and found a candle and matches.

The light formed a tight circle around her, allowing little view of the room, but lending enough comfort to steady her hand. She moved slowly, trying to see through the darkness to what would be her new home.