Mail Order Prairie Bride: (A Western Historical Romance) (Dodge City Brides Book 1) (24 page)

Briggs stopped just outside the store, saw the empty wagon, then glanced up and down the street.

Her stomach in knots, Sarah watched Briggs pause while waiting for the pedestrians on the boardwalk to clear. His golden hair blew across his face. The brown fringe on his coat whipped in the misty wind.

“Will you introduce us?” Garrison asked.

Sarah shot him a glare. “He doesn’t want to meet you.”

“I doubt that. I think he’ll want to meet me, very much so.”

Just then, Briggs looked in her direction. He stood motionless, staring at her. Sarah felt as if she were choking.

“Oh, good, he’s seen us,” Garrison said, cheerfully.

Sarah wondered if she should run to Briggs before Garrison had a chance to say anything. She had to try. She could not let him find out this way.

When Briggs started toward her, she made a move, but Garrison closed his fist around her good arm and jerked her back to him. She winced in pain.

“Not so fast, love,” he breathed into her ear. “I want to meet your latest husband.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

Sarah felt as if she were standing on the edge of a cliff, teetering, about to be pushed over the side.

Setting the wooden box full of supplies in the back of the wagon, Briggs walked sternly toward them, not once releasing Sarah from his intense green-eyed gaze. Thunder rumbled somewhere in the distance and rain poured like a curtain from the slanted awning above.

Time seemed to slow down as Briggs neared. Sarah tried to take a step forward, but Garrison tugged her back again. He’d always been brazen, but this was beyond belief.

Briggs arrived with a frown, a muscle twitching at his jaw. “Sarah?”

She shook her head frantically, trying to tell him with her eyes that she hadn’t planned this, that Garrison was her enemy, and that she had not known he’d followed her all the way from Boston.

Briggs’s eyes shifted to Garrison.

She felt the grip on her arm loosen. She immediately moved closer to Briggs.

“I don’t believe we’ve been properly introduced,” Garrison said, holding out his hand. “You must be Arthur, but I hear they call you Briggs. I’m Garrison McPhee. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

Briggs glanced down at Sarah. Her heart tightened with dread. This was her worst nightmare come true.

“It seems we have a great deal in common,” Garrison remarked, lowering his hand when Briggs refused to shake it.

“I doubt that,” Briggs said. “What do you want?”

“What do
I
want? I should think that’s obvious.”

Briggs set the box down on the boardwalk and took a step forward, crowding Garrison up against the wall. Sarah had not known her husband to be a violent man, but at this moment, she saw another side of him, and wasn’t sorry, if it meant Garrison would feel intimidated. Or possibly get punched in the nose.

And yet, she feared for Briggs’s safety, because Garrison possessed no scruples. He might have a gun or a knife up his sleeve.

“Don’t worry, Sarah,” Garrison said. “He just wants to intimidate me.”

“Damn right I do.” Briggs said nothing more. Seconds of taut silence passed, until Sarah touched her husband’s arm.

“Briggs, let’s just go home. He’s not worth it.”

At first, Briggs didn’t respond. Then, thankfully, he stepped back, but not without saying his piece. “I know what you did to her, you slimy bastard, so why don’t you go back where you came from before I tear you limb from limb.”

Garrison raised a haughty eyebrow. “I didn’t travel all this way to be bullied by
you
.”

“I don’t care what you came for,” Briggs said, turning away. “You’re not to speak to my wife ever again. Do you understand me?”

The challenge between them hung in the air while the rain beat down on the overhang. Sarah’s heart thumped wildly in her chest. Her breaths came in quick, short gasps.

Sarah shot a look toward Garrison, begging him with her eyes.
Please, don’t say anything more. Just let us go
….

A slow, crooked smile played across his face. “
Your
wife? I think you’re mistaken about that, sir.”

“Briggs, let’s just
go
.” Sarah tried to drag him away, but Garrison followed.

Briggs jabbed a finger at him. “No,
you’re
mistaken, you foul piece of trash, because Sarah and I were married at the courthouse a month ago.”

Garrison shook his head. “You may have signed your name on the dotted line, but she still isn’t your wife.”

“Why the hell not?”

Garrison’s dark eyes narrowed, and Sarah feared she might faint dead away at her husband’s feet.

“Because she’s
mine
.”

* * *

Briggs felt as if he’d been struck across the back with a wooden plank.

He laughed once, thinking this conversation absurd, but somewhere beneath the denial, he knew something was wrong. He tried to make sense of it, wanting nothing more than to believe his wife over this gutter scoundrel, but all his thoughts were becoming scrambled. For some reason—and it shamed him to admit it—his instinct moved him to doubt Sarah.

“You don’t look as surprised as I thought you might,” Garrison said with interest. “No more arguments?”

Briggs felt Sarah’s uneasy presence at his side.

“Let me explain,” she pleaded.

Let me explain?

He couldn’t bring himself to look at her. He knew he should hear her out, but he just couldn’t listen right now.

“There’s nothing to explain,” Garrison said. “It’s quite simple. She married me, then perhaps a little hastily, she married you. Fickle little thing, isn’t she.”

Briggs wanted to say something. Anything. But words would not come.

He heard Sarah’s voice like a distant echo. “Briggs, please listen to me—”

He cut her off by holding up his hand and speaking to Garrison. “I have a marriage certificate.”

Garrison dug into his breast pocket. “How brilliant. So do I.” He unfolded a piece of paper and held it up. “See for yourself.”

The print blurred before Briggs’s eyes. He saw Sarah’s signature, and Garrison’s. A sickening lump settled in his gut.

“See?” Garrison said.

But Briggs could not see. He could not accept this. Sarah was
his
. They’d spent the past month together on his farm, working together, learning to trust each other, growing to
love
each other. They’d made promises….

“Briggs, there’s so much more to this that you don’t know about,” Sarah said, her voice desperate. “If only you’d let me explain….”

Finally, he met her gaze. All he saw was the woman who had hidden secrets from him on their wedding day. He had asked her if she loved this man, and she had said yes at the time. Now, to learn that she had actually
married
him?

Sarah touched his shoulder, but he shrugged her hand away.

“Please, Briggs.”

He could not stay here. He had to leave. If he didn’t, he might say, or do, something he’d come to regret.

He hopped down into the street, his boots splashing into a puddle. He felt the cold, hard rain battering against his hat as he tried to make sense of what he’d just learned.

If this man was Sarah’s true husband—that meant the past month on his farm with her was nothing but a charade.

Truthfully, it wasn’t all
that
surprising. He’d been expecting something like this from the beginning. When had love ever remained? When had it
not
been taken away from him?

Briggs climbed into the wagon and gathered up the reins, staring straight ahead. He flicked water into the air as a damp chill invaded his clothing. Raindrops trickled from his eyelashes onto his cheeks.

As he started to pull away, he heard a muffled cry from somewhere beyond his barely functioning consciousness. He tried to block it out, but it cut through his pain and wrath like a blade.

Don’t look back
, he told himself over and over as he turned the wagon toward home. But the scream punctured his resolve yet again.

He pulled the horses to a halt.

He sat there, paralyzed, water streaming down his face. He felt like he was surrounded by a thick fog and couldn’t find his way forward. The muffled screams were coming at him from somewhere outside this debilitating stupor.
Sarah
. She was crying for him to come back.

He swung around in the seat. Garrison was dragging her by her broken arm, pulling her along the boardwalk while she struggled and pleaded for help.

Good God
—what was wrong with him?

Leaping from the wagon, Briggs sprinted toward them. His boots splashed through the mud. Rain battered his face, but he felt none of it as he flew up onto the boardwalk. Sarah was shouting and causing a scene. She turned back just as Briggs overtook them and punched Garrison in the face.

Garrison stumbled backwards, onto the boardwalk. The whole world went quiet and still as Briggs took hold of Sarah’s good hand and led her toward the wagon. He scooped her up into his arms, set her onto the seat, and in a matter of seconds, he was flicking the reins again and the horses were galloping away, mud splattering everywhere.

* * *

Sarah tried to control her tears, but couldn’t. Cold rain struck her cheeks as they sped into the wind. Sobbing, gasping for breath, she clung to the side of the wagon as they skidded around a corner. She said a silent
thank you
that Briggs had come back for her.

Turning her gaze toward him, she wondered miserably if it even mattered. He was staring straight ahead, all emotion absent from his dark expression. Yes, he had rescued her from Garrison, but had he lost all feeling for her in the process?

“Briggs, I’m so sorry,” she shouted over the noise of the clattering hooves.

“Why didn’t you tell me about that?” he said. “Is it true? Did you actually
marry
him?”

“It’s complicated,” she tried to explain. “I didn’t tell you because, at first, I was afraid you wouldn’t take me. Then, after our wedding night, I was afraid you’d send me back. Then, I just…I fell in love with you and I didn’t want you to know. I was ashamed of how stupid I was.”

“
Ashamed
? Feeling embarrassed or remorseful is the least of your problems, Sarah. There’s the law to consider here. Do you not know that bigamy is illegal?” He focused on the road ahead and slapped the reins. “Yah!”

Sarah, swiveling in the seat to face him, clutched his sleeve in her fist. “You haven’t given me a chance to explain what happened. And can you honestly say you wouldn’t have sent me away after our wedding night, if you knew? You almost left me behind just now, after everything we’d been through these past few weeks. I thought we’d fixed things. I thought there was hope for us, but you almost left me behind!”

“I’m not the one who should be defending myself,” he said. “You are.”

“If you’d given me a chance to speak back there, I would have told you what really happened. Now, I’m not even sure it makes any difference.”

She saw the muscle in his jaw tighten. After a few seconds, he pulled the reins and slowed the horses to a walk, then met her gaze and studied her face. “What do you mean, what
really
happened?”

Sarah wiped the wetness from her cheeks. “It’s not as simple as Garrison made it out to be. I didn’t just marry him and then marry you. I wouldn’t do that.”

“Are you telling me you’re divorced? Or that you had it annulled?”

She shook her head, wishing it could be so. “No. But when I married you, I honestly believed I was free to do so.”

He pulled the wagon to a stop on the edge of town. “What are you trying to tell me?”

“That my marriage to Garrison was never a true one.”

“Why not?”

“Because
he
already had a wife. Our wedding was a sham. He was just trying to trick me and use me.”

Briggs sat stone-still, blinking from the rain. “You mean
he
is guilty of bigamy?”

“Yes. But I didn’t know that when I married him. He told me on our wedding night, just after we’d…”

Briggs held up a hand to stop her. “Why didn’t you tell me this before? If you were innocent, you could have reported him. It could have been straightened out before you ever came here.”

“You wouldn’t have wanted me if you knew. And besides that, Garrison threatened me. He said if I told anyone, he’d say I knew what I was doing, that I was a con artist, just like him. Then I saw your ad and I had the chance for a decent life with an
honest
man. Someone I could respect and start a family with. I didn’t think I’d ever get the chance to have those things if anyone knew about my past. I thought if I could keep the whole thing a secret—at least until some time had gone by—I could straighten things out later. But I made a mistake when I got on the train in Boston. I should have used a different name, or disguised myself.”

“You make it sound as if your only mistake was in getting caught.”

She shook her head. “I don’t expect you to understand. I wish I could go back and undo everything.”