The Bridegroom (20 page)

He kept his arms folded, tapped one foot.

He’d been called worse things than stubborn in his time.

After what seemed like the passing of a season, instead of just a few minutes, the females were all inside Rowdy’s house.

Gideon didn’t exactly
run
to the mine, but his strides were long.

“’Tis lucky you are, young Yarbro,” Mike informed him, when he set aside his lunch pail and grabbed a shovel. “Wilson’s ailin’ today—somethin’ about his nose—and kept to his bunk this mornin’. If he was around, you’d be headin’ right back down the road, with what little pay you have comin’ and all the free time a man could want.”

Gideon began shoveling ore into a waiting cart. “You know, O’Hanlon,” he said, “I don’t
feel
all that lucky.”

Mike gave a snort at that. “Wife trouble,” he diagnosed. “I’d know that look anywhere.”

“What look?” Gideon snapped.

“Peckish,” Mike said, leaning on the handle of his own shovel. “Tight around the mouth, and hollow-eyed, too. The little woman has turned you out of the marriage bed, hasn’t she?”

Gideon heaved a double-load of ore into the cart. “O’Hanlon?”

“Aye?”

“Shut up.”

Mike laughed at that, a great, booming shout of a laugh, loud enough to bring the support beams down on all their heads. When he’d regained his composure, he proceeded to dispense advice. “What you do, young Yarbro, is you show the little lady who’s boss, and lose no time doing it, or she’ll henpeck you till you bleed.”

Gideon rolled his eyes, but kept working.

“It worked with my Mary,” Mike said, joining Gideon at the ore pile and keeping up with him easily. “You go straight to Paddy’s after the shift ends today, and you don’t turn up at home until you’re sure she’s good and sorry for treatin’ you poorly.”

“Sorry,” Gideon said, tight-jawed and shoveling faster. “I don’t happen to have another twenty-dollar gold piece in my boot, Mike.”

“Well, we’re not goin’ to Paddy’s to
drink,
are we?” Mike countered, swelling with pretended indignation.

“Why else would you go there?” Gideon retorted, sweating. He was starting to get used to the hard physical labor, but he still ached all over.

Mike paused in his work, stepped closer, and lowered his voice. “Because there’s a meeting,” he said. “In the back room.”

Gideon stopped, rammed the head of his shovel into the pile of raw copper. “What kind of meeting?” he asked, with suitable impatience. In truth, his heart was beating a little faster, and not because he’d been chucking ore into a mine cart at twice his usual pace.

This might be the chance he’d been waiting for.

“If you want to know,” Mike said, every trace of his formerly jovial manner gone, “you’ll just have to join the rest of us at Paddy’s after the whistle blows, now won’t you?”

L
YDIA MET WITH GOOD NEWS
when she entered the Yarbro house that morning, having taken herself firmly in hand on the doorstep and set aside her annoyance with Gideon—for the time being. Rowdy immediately reported that Lark, though still weak, appeared to be out of danger, and baby Miranda, small as she was, thrived. Considerably reassured, the marshal of Stone Creek returned to his duties, though he promptly sent his deputies, one posted at the front and one at the back, in case Mr. Fitch should return.

Lydia’s spirits were dampened a little, though, when it occurred to her that the deputies might have been instructed to keep her, her aunts and Helga
inside
, while keeping Fitch or any strangers out.

Helga reinforced that interpretation by declaring that, if she was going to be held captive, she might as well make herself useful, and set about putting the children and the house to rights, since some things had gone by the wayside when Lark took sick.

The aunts seemed snug and content after they settled in the smaller of the two parlors, paging through an album of photographs and chatting quietly, and Lydia, with nothing to do once she’d looked in on Lark and the baby and found them both sleeping peacefully, wandered about, growing increasingly restless. It wasn’t that she had imperative errands
to run, it was that she knew she wouldn’t be
allowed
to, and that chafed her increasingly independent spirit.

She’d changed, since arriving in Stone Creek, and not just because she’d experienced ecstasy with Gideon, either. She was stronger, somehow, more inclined to take chances. More of a
Yarbro
.

She had Lark, and the example she’d set, to thank for that, she supposed.

There was some brief and blessed distraction at midmorning, when Maddie and Sam O’Ballivan arrived, just the two of them, to inquire after Lark and get a look at the new baby.

Sam, a powerfully built man, not classically handsome but ruggedly attractive just the same, kept adjusting his string tie. Clearly, he was more at home on the range than shut up in a house, in his Sunday suit, with no one around but a gaggle of women.

Still, whenever he looked at Maddie, the earth seemed to shift slightly on its axis. Lydia, observing this, longed yet again to be loved in the same quiet, fierce way these Stone Creek men seemed to love their women.

How was it possible to be married, she wondered, and still feel utterly bereft, like some spirit condemned to wander between worlds, having no discernible impact on either?

With Maddie occupied upstairs, visiting a now-wakeful Lark and admiring little Miranda, the walls of that warm, welcoming house seemed to close in on Lydia, the same way she suspected they were closing in on Sam O’Ballivan. She’d tried to engage him in conversation, and while he was friendly enough, he was clearly a man of few words.

Suddenly, though both doors were guarded, she knew she
had
to get out.

She still had no specific destination in mind; she simply wanted fresh air, a brisk walk, a chance to think with no one watching her.

Helga was busy gathering sheets and clothing to be laundered.

The aunts remained occupied with the album, the fresh pot of tea Lydia had brewed and served to them and their constant exchange of threadbare memories.

Sarah had gone home to the ranch the night before, with Wyatt and Owen, to attend to her own house and children, and was thereby unavailable as a companion.

The books in Rowdy’s study were appealing, but Lydia felt too agitated to read—she wouldn’t be able to sit still, feeling the way she did, let alone concentrate.

When Maddie and Sam left, keeping their visit short out of consideration for Lark, Lydia felt more like a caged bird than ever.

It would be easy enough to leave without her aunts or Helga noticing—but how could she get past the deputies? Rowdy
had
given them direct orders, Helga reported, that none of the women were to leave the house unescorted until he’d received a telegram from the U.S. Marshal’s office confirming that Jacob Fitch was indeed back in Phoenix, where he would not present a threat.

As things turned out, it was little Julia, quietly helping Marietta to dress and undress a doll in a corner of the main parlor, who provided the answer.

“If you wanted to leave the house,” Lydia ventured, settling herself on a nearby settee as if to watch the children at play, something she was sure she would have enjoyed on any day but that one, “without going out either the front door or the back, how would you go about it?”

Julia looked up at her thoughtfully. “I’d climb out a
window,” she said succinctly, as one who spoke from experience.

“Is there another way?” Lydia asked, smoothing her skirts. She needed clothes of her own—as it was, she had nothing but the things Lark, Maddie and Sarah had contributed, and those didn’t fit properly.

“Sure there is,” Julia said, turning her attention back to her little sister and the doll. “There’s the cellar door, and the coal chute. Hank crawled out that way once to go fishing with his friends after Mama told him he couldn’t because he hadn’t done his chores, but his clothes got all black and Papa caught him and made him copy three whole chapters of the Bible, one from Deuteronomy, one from Leviticus and one from Numbers. Hank said he’d rather take a whipping than do that again.”

Lydia suppressed a smile. “I think I would agree with him,” she said.

“Me, too,” Julia replied sagely. “But Papa and Mama don’t believe in spankings, so we have to copy Bible chapters when we’re bad. And we don’t get to choose something nice, either, like the Sermon on the Mount or the second chapter of Luke or Letters to the Romans. It’s most always from the Old Testament.”

Lydia leaned forward slightly, distracted from her escape plan. “How old are you, Julia?”

“Eight,” Julia replied.

“You are very wise and well-spoken for your age,” Lydia remarked, and she was wholly sincere—as well as a little alarmed. She sensed that Julia was a few steps ahead of her, knew Lydia’s questions weren’t idle ones, though she’d tried to present them that way.

“Mama says that’s the beauty of having to copy Bible
chapters when you misbehave. It makes you smart. Getting spanked only makes you want to fight back.”

Before her aunt Nell and, indirectly, Lark had rescued her from her stepmother, Mabel, as a child Julia’s age, Lydia had suffered many kicks, pinches and slaps, though never in her father’s presence. “Your mama,” Lydia said, “is a very intelligent woman.”

“I know,” Julia agreed, and then she looked straight at Lydia with those penetrating Yarbro-blue eyes of hers, confirming Lydia’s earlier theory that the child would not be easy to fool, despite her tender years. “If you try to sneak past Papa’s deputies,” she warned solemnly, “you might have to copy down
all
of the Old Testament.”

“Are you going to tattle, Julia?” Lydia asked, thinking how easily she had come to love this spirited, amazingly insightful child, and her brothers and sisters, too.

“No,” Julia immediately answered. “Tattling means you have to write out all of Exodus.”

“Oh, my,” Lydia said.

“So I won’t tell,” Julia vowed, watching as her little sister stripped the doll of one dress and reached for another, “and neither will Marietta, even though she’s still too little to write out Bible chapters.”

“Marietta won’t tell,” the smaller child echoed, “even though she’s still too little to write out Bible chappers.”

Lydia rose, debating between the coal chute and the cellar. She’d go back home, she decided, and fetch her watercolor set and the small journal she painted in, since Helga had had the presence of mind to tuck those things into her valise before the flight from Phoenix. Painting always soothed her when she was restless.

Since the coal chute might be a tight fit, and she didn’t want to spoil a borrowed dress, she opted for the cellar
door. “I’ll be back before anyone misses me,” she promised. Then, nearly overcome with affection and guilt at drawing a mere child into a plot of deception, she added, “If anyone asks where I’ve gone, please don’t lie.”

“I wouldn’t lie,” Julia said. “That’s Revelations, twice over.”

Chuckling, Lydia took her leave.

Helga was busy in the backyard, she discovered, when she returned to the kitchen, working the lever to make the washing machine agitate and chatting—almost
flirting,
actually—with the balding deputy manning the back door.

After trying to talk herself out of what was probably an exercise in foolishness, and failing miserably, Lydia drew a deep breath, let it out slowly, and descended the cellar stairs, batting through cobwebs as she went and squinting to see in almost total darkness. She returned to the kitchen, found a stubby candle and matches, and made a second attempt, this time with a flickering light to show her the way.

She soon found the cellar doors, a pair of them, heavy and with daylight showing between their wooden slats, but the latch would not give, even after she’d set the candle aside and used both hands to tug at it. It must, she decided, have been padlocked on the outside, perhaps to prevent the children from rambling in uncommon hours.

That left the coal chute, a prospect she had hoped to avoid.

She gave herself another silent lecture, counseling patience and decorum, but that was as unsuccessful as her previous effort.

The chute was next to the cold furnace, a great iron monstrosity of a contraption, surely equal to the task of heating an enormous house during cold northern Arizona winters. In Phoenix, it rarely snowed, but Lydia knew only too well that wasn’t the case in the upper part of the state, where freezing blizzards were not unusual.

Holding the candle, she peered into the chute, using her free hand to test for coal dust. When it came away relatively clean, she began calculating the dimensions of the steep wooden shaft.

Although she was, of course, larger than Hank, the last known individual to attempt passage by this route, she was not a large person. Lydia once again chided herself, but found her desire not only undiminished, but on the increase. She would take a pleasant walk, fetch her watercolor set from the other house, along with her painting tablet, and return.

Where was the harm in that?

If Jacob Fitch had still been in Stone Creek, word would surely have gotten back to Rowdy by now? After all, the town was not large, and the comings and goings of strangers surely didn’t go unnoticed.

And it wasn’t as if she would have to go through the coal chute
twice
, after all. She could return by way of either the front door or the back, enjoying the chagrin of either deputy. What was the worst thing that could happen? she asked herself. She wasn’t a child; Rowdy couldn’t force her to copy out Bible chapters.

Extinguishing the candle, and pushing up her sleeves, Lydia crawled into the coal chute. The climb was steep, and the shaft soon narrowed.

And she quickly
discovered
what the worst thing that could happen actually was, because it did.

After making only a few inches of progress, a foot at most, she realized she was
stuck.
She couldn’t go forward or back.

Lydia fought down her first inclination, which leaned distinctly toward utter panic, and concentrated on breathing. That inspired her to let out all the air in her lungs and try to
scoot in one direction or the other, but that didn’t work, either.

Her imagination, overdeveloped by years of reading, ran wild.

In her mind’s eye, she pictured a wholesale search, everyone in the Yarbro family, especially Gideon, turning the town of Stone Creek upside down looking for her. All the while, she would be trapped in this shaft, like a bird in a stovepipe, slowly dying of thirst or starvation.

It might take
weeks
to die.

The prospect increased her panic, so she dispensed with it. Surely, if she screamed for help—

As yet, though, her pride would not allow her to do that.

She was far too embarrassed.

So she lay there, considering all possible fates.

None of them were appealing.

When she heard Rowdy’s voice from behind her, at the opening of the chute, relief though it was, she very nearly didn’t answer.

“Lydia?” he called. “Are you in there?”

“I’m sorry, Aunt Lydia,” Julia piped up, “but Papa came home and asked me straight-out where you’d gone, and I had to tell him the truth or write out all of Revelations.”

Despite her humiliating and possibly dangerous predicament, Lydia had to smile at the child’s remark.

“I’m stuck,” she replied. Surely her voice was muffled, but since she’d heard Rowdy and Julia, she assumed they could hear her, as well.

“I can see the bottoms of your shoes,” Julia announced.

“Julia,” Rowdy told his daughter, “be quiet.”

“I don’t have to copy Revelations, do I?” Julia asked her papa. “I told you the truth, as soon as you asked me.”

Rowdy’s chuckle echoed into the coal chute. “No, sweet
heart. You don’t have to copy Revelations.” Then, to Lydia he said, “Hold on. This might take a while.”