Shotgun Bride (23 page)

S
ome folks might be good at minding their own affairs, but Mandy had never been one of them. She’d gone straight to the Sussex house after seeing Becky safely back to the hotel, where Sarah Fee was looking after Emmeline, and she’d been there with Doc, doing what she could to help, ever since.

Mamie Sussex, the mother of the brood, was in no state to be effective, and the brides, with the exception of the one called Abigail, had fled the place, bag and baggage, afraid of taking sick. Since they hadn’t been at the hotel when Mandy was there earlier, she could only assume that they’d been taken into various homes around the town or had gone to the mercantile to sit on their trunks and valises, waiting for the next stage out of town.

Mandy was too busy to care what they did, as long as Kade wasn’t a factor in their doing. Like Doc, she’d been awake all night and all that day, and she was running on pure obstinacy. Every nerve in her body seemed to be fluttering on the outside of her skin, bared to the elements.

There were six Sussex children, all with their mother’s rich auburn hair, but otherwise so dissimilar of face and feature that no two could possibly claim the same father. Five of them had been prostrate with fever when Mandy got there, their little bodies soaked and shuddering, their eyes rolled back in their heads.

“There’s been enough death around here lately,” Mandy had said to God, right out loud, at one desperate point somewhere in the wee hours, “the least You could do is let these children live!”

Doc, kneeling next to another child, in another bed, bathing him with cool water to bring down his temperature, had smiled at that. “You tell Him,” he’d said.

Abigail, busy at the same task, with yet another child, had pursed her lips at first, but then relented. “Amen,” she’d said.

The hours stretched on while the Almighty made up His mind. Darkness dissolved into daylight, then twilight was gathering again. Diphtheria was a swift and savage killer, and Mandy had seen whole families wiped out by it between morning and evening. She didn’t have much hope, truth be told, but they hung on, those little devils, and they hung on tight. They were accustomed to scrapping, like Mandy herself, and would not give up easily.

Long after sunset, she was sitting on the front step with Harry, keeping him company and trying to catch her breath, when Kade rode up and swung down from the saddle. Mandy was so glad to see him that she had to stay herself from jumping up, running to him in the street like a hussy, and throwing her arms around his neck. Harry rushed to his side, and Mandy felt her heart turn over behind her breastbone, watching as Kade squeezed the boy’s shoulder.

“They’re all down with the diphtheria,” Harry said in a burst of words, “all of them but me.”

“So I heard,” Kade replied gently. His gaze found Mandy. “Any news?”

She shook her head, all but overwhelmed by the things she felt. Oh, there was grief for John Lewis, and of course for Emmeline and Rafe, but there was ever so much more, too, and all of it seemed to have its beginnings in this irresistible, hardheaded man. She’d given herself to him without reservation night before last, and she supposed she ought to regret that, but she didn’t. Just because something was impulsive didn’t mean it was wrong.

He came to sit beside her on the step, clad in his trail clothes, his long gunslinger’s coat, and his weariness. Again, she knew a woman’s desire to comfort in a woman’s way, and it made her blush, remembering how it felt to have his hands, his lips, on her bare flesh.

He smiled, just as if he’d read her mind, and maybe he had. They were crafty, those McKettricks; Mandy had been around them enough to know that for sure. “The padre is in town for John’s funeral,” he said. “I was thinking we could get him to marry us tonight.” His gaze touched her in places he’d already explored in much more intimate ways. “Wouldn’t want any scandals to arise.”

Mandy swallowed, and heat rushed through her. She wondered if she wasn’t too old, after all, to come down with the plague that was ravaging Mamie’s children. She certainly seemed to be running a fever. “Tonight?”

“I didn’t reckon you’d want our wedding anniversary to fall on the day we buried John,” he said reasonably, letting nothing of his hopes, whatever they might be, show in that unfairly handsome face of his. “I’ve already spoken to Father Herrera, and he’s agreeable if you are.”

All manner of joy rose up in Mandy at his words, in spite of everything.
Fool,
taunted a too familiar little voice inside her,
get on a horse and ride out of here, like you planned.
“Yes,” she said, as much to spite the voice as anything. “Yes.” She could no more have stopped the smile that came to her mouth than she could have kept the moon from rising. “But I still want those fifty horses and the money. And you’d better not stop me from riding with you next time the posse goes out.”

“You drive a hard bargain, Miss Mandy,” he said with another grin. “But a deal’s a deal, and you’ll have what I promised you.”

Her mind was racing. “I don’t have a proper dress,” she fretted. “Or a ring to put on your finger.”

“There are dresses aplenty at the mercantile,” Kade said with a small smile, “and we can worry about the rings later.”

“Can I go to the wedding?” Harry asked with such eagerness that Mandy nearly wept for him. “If Ma will let me, I mean?”

“Sure,” Kade said. “I couldn’t get married without my best deputy there to make sure everything went all right.”

“Will there be cake?” the boy asked.

Kade smiled again. “I reckon. The cook was building one when I left the hotel, on orders from Becky.” He turned back to Mandy. “I stopped there on the way, looking for you.”

She let herself lean against him for a moment, taking an improper pleasure in his nearness and his strength. “I’ll have to come straight back here afterward,” she said. “Doc and Abigail have their hands full with these kids.” Harry was already banging his way into the house, no doubt to ask his poor, distracted mother if he could go to the wedding, where there would be cake. “These little ones are in a bad way, Kade,” she added when the boy was out of earshot.

He took her hand and squeezed it, and they sat like that, in companionable silence, for several moments. When Harry came back outside, Doc was with him, looking three years older than dirt.

“My mother told me to take up the law instead of medicine,” he said. “I should have listened.”

“We’d be in a hell of a snarl if you had,” Kade observed, getting to his feet. “I need to speak with Mamie. Is she in a fit state for a visit?”

“She’s sitting in the kitchen,” Doc said. “As for the state she’s in, well, I couldn’t rightly say that she’d notice if a cannon went off in the next room.”

Kade nodded grimly at that, stepped past Doc, and walked into the house. Mandy burned with an unholy curiosity, but she did not allow herself to follow.

In a few hours, she would be somebody’s wife. Tarnation.

T
he wedding party was necessarily small. Just Kade and Mandy, Becky, Father Herrera, and Harry were there, clustered at the front of the raw-wood church. Sarah Fee had lit the candles, and she and Becky had scared up a dress somewhere, hastily basted to fit Mandy. Harry kept peering this way and that, probably hoping to catch a glimpse of the cake.

Kade reckoned his pa and Concepcion would be considerably put out when they learned that they’d missed the ceremony, but he wasn’t inclined to wait. Once the idea of making Mandy his wife had lodged in his head, it had gained depth and breadth until it possessed the whole of his being. Besides, now that he’d bedded her, it was the only honorable thing to do.

He didn’t know if he loved her; he had no frame of reference for such sentiments, since he’d never felt this way before. Besides, life was an uncertain proposition; the proof of that was all around him.

Mandy, standing beside him in front of the padre, pretty as an angel in her borrowed dress, was visibly nervous, and more than once, Kade had half-expected her to call the whole thing off and bolt right out of there.

The marriage license had been signed, and Father Herrera opened his wedding book. “Shall we begin?” asked the Jesuit in his precise English.

Kade gave a solemn nod.

The words were said, the promises exchanged. Kade felt himself growing taller with every vow he made, and by the time he got to “I do,” he figured he was about to knock out a few ceiling beams with the top of his head.

“I now pronounce you man and wife,” Father Herrera said, and closed the book on all the days and all the nights gone by. “You may kiss the bride.”

Kade would have done that even without the padre’s permission. He took Mandy in his arms, tilted her chin up with one finger, and lowered his head to place his mouth firmly on hers. There was something different in this kiss, though the preceding ones had been powerful, and it left Kade shaken and Mandy flushed to her ears.

“Where’s the cake?” Harry piped up.

Mandy laughed and leaned down to kiss the boy on the forehead. “Back at the hotel. Let’s go have some.”

Kade and Mandy left the church arm in arm, and a small and unlikely crowd, made up of half-drunk cowboys and prim ladies in stays and bonnets, had collected outside to throw rice. Except for the remaining brides, that is—they seemed more inclined to throw rocks.

Kade wanted to start the honeymoon straight off, carrying Mandy upstairs like the spoils of a hard-won victory, but it wasn’t to be. The Sussex kids were still under the weather, and damn the luck, he was still the marshal of Indian Rock.

While Mandy went to change out of her finery and back into practical calico, Kade lingered downstairs, watching Harry devour his fourth piece of cake. Kade thought of Mamie Sussex, and how she’d wept when he’d told her Davy Kincaid was dead, and marveled that such a man could arouse so much sorrow in the heart of any woman. Only when she’d raised her face from her hands, after those first few minutes had passed, had he known it was relief making her cry like that, not bereavement.

Mandy descended the stairs in a hurry and caught Kade’s hand in hers as she blew past. “Come on, Marshal. We’ve got work to do.”

D
oc was outside again, smoking his pipe this time, when Mandy got back to the Sussex house, and he reacted elaborately to the sight of her, pretending to be stunned, though a glint of tired amusement was in his eyes. “What are you doing here?” he demanded. “Land sakes, it’s your wedding night! And where’s your bridegroom?”

Mandy drew a resolute breath. “He stopped by the jailhouse, and you know damn well why I’m here.”

He laughed at her audacity; she was a little pleased by it herself, truth be known. “Well, you just get yourself on out of here,” Doc said. “The kids are still mighty sick, but they’ve turned the corner. I think they’ll be all right in time.”

Mandy was unprepared for the rush of emotion that brought tears to her eyes and weakened her knees. “Thank God for that,” she whispered.

“I reckon God owed us one,” Doc allowed. “He’s been a mite heavy-handed of late, to my way of thinking.”

Abigail came to the door, put her head out, and looked Mandy over, maybe to see if she’d changed in any visible way, now that she was married to the man she’d expected to have for herself. Doc tapped his pipe against the rail of the stoop, turned, and went back inside, easing past Abigail.

“It’s done, then,” Abigail said.

Mandy nodded. She wished she had a ring to show, but only briefly. Horses and shotguns and calico dresses mattered to her, but jewelry didn’t mean much, in the scheme of things. “There are plenty of other men around here wanting wives,” she said quietly, because she wasn’t without sympathy for Abigail, or any of the other brides. They’d come a long way, all of them, just to be disappointed at the end of their journey, and that was a hard thing to reckon with.

Abigail smoothed her hair with one graceful hand and gazed off into the distance. “Not ones named McKettrick,” she said.

Mandy couldn’t refute that. “What will you do now?” she asked gently. “Go back home?”

“I don’t have a home to go to,” Abigail replied with an utter lack of self-pity. “Guess I’ll make the best of things right here. Mamie could use some help getting this boardinghouse to pay.”

Mandy was silent for as long as she could manage. “You know,” she began cautiously, and in a low voice, “that Mrs. Sussex sees men for money?”

“I’ve been living under this roof for a while,” Abigail said sensibly. “I couldn’t help knowing that.” She looked solemn for a while, then she smiled, and it transformed her face. “With a little work on my part, she could turn this into a respectable place.” She inclined her head toward the street. “Here’s your husband, Mandy. If I were you, I’d go to him.”

Mandy turned her head, and sure enough, Kade was walking toward her. Her heart skipped right out to meet him and tarried there.

Reaching Mandy’s side, Kade nodded slightly to Abigail.

“She must make good pies,” Abigail said.

There was a beat of silence, then Kade laughed. “I don’t know if she can cook a lick, but the way she rides and shoots,” he allowed, “she might make a pretty fair deputy.”

“I still think you’re three kinds of a scoundrel, Kade McKettrick,” Abigail responded, leaning against the rail in much the same way Doc had done earlier, “but I wish you well. Both of you.”

Mandy felt Kade’s hand close around hers. Tighten. “Thanks,” he said.

Abigail nodded, a mite stiffly, and went back into the house.

Kade looked down at Mandy, a question in his eyes.

“Doc says the kids are better,” she said. “He as much as told me to go straight back to you.”

“Funny,” Kade said with a quirk of a smile at the corner of his mouth, “Jeb said something similar when I went by the jailhouse. He and three soldiers are standing guard over Curry, and they’ve got a poker game going.”

Mandy ducked her head, and they started back toward Becky’s place, and the little room at the end of the upstairs hallway.

Kade didn’t once let go of her hand.

Reaching the hotel, they walked into the light spilling through the open front doors. Clive was at the desk, but the place seemed deserted otherwise, and Mandy was grateful. This thing she and Kade had found together, whatever name it bore, was precious and private.

They climbed the stairs, Kade remembering to take his hat off as they went, and once they were inside their secret place, Kade closed the door, turned the key in the lock.

“My shotgun bride,” he said huskily, taking her in with a sweep of his gaze. “You are so beautiful.”

She didn’t know what to say to that.
Thank you
didn’t seem precisely right, and protesting the compliment probably wouldn’t do, either.

He took a seat in the one chair the room boasted. “Come here.” He was in shadow now, and she couldn’t read his expression, but his voice was low and a little hoarse.

She hesitated, then went to him, unable to do otherwise, and he drew her down onto his lap, ran one hand along the length of her arm. Goose bumps rose, even with the sleeve of her dress making a barrier between her flesh and his.

He touched his mouth to hers.

“Wait a second,” Mandy interjected, placing her palms against his chest.

He sighed. “What?”

“The other night, when we made love the first time, you said something.”

“Women,” he marveled.

“You were surprised that I was a virgin.” There, it was out, but Mandy was as anxious as she was relieved, awaiting his response.

He traced the side of her cheek with an index finger, pondered her awhile. “I guess I couldn’t credit my good luck,” he said at long last. “A woman like you…” He paused, no doubt seeing the storm gathering in her, and started again. “You’re like a wildflower, Mandy. You’re lovely to look at, and you smell like heaven, but your roots are shallow. You haven’t led the most sheltered life, from what little you’ve said about your past. If some sweet-talking man had noticed you before I did, well, he might have put everything he had into persuading you.” He searched her eyes, and she wondered if he saw the passion there, with all the other things she felt, desperate and beautiful, every one of them. “I don’t mind saying I’m glad to be the first, and I sure as hell mean to be the last.”

In the short time she’d known Kade McKettrick, she’d never heard him say so many words at once; they flung a thousand doors open inside her, and light poured through them all.

She put her arms around his neck. “Hold me,” she said. “Hold me tight.”

They sat like that for a long time, with their arms around each other, and then the kissing started again, and that led to the inevitable.

She dreamed, yearning for him, but too sated and spent to go in search of him. Then he was back; she heard him moving across the room.

“Amanda Rose.”

Not Kade.
Who then?
Her heart seized in her chest.

She sat bolt upright, clawing the covers up to her chin, too startled to make the smallest sound, never mind scream.

“You married yourself a McKettrick,” the intruder said. “You did good.”

Her breath caught in her throat, and she leaned forward slightly, blinking, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. Her voice was a ragged whisper, sawing at her throat.

“Cree?”