The Bridegroom (26 page)

Glancing back, expecting Gideon to follow, Lydia saw him set Lucy Jane down, so she could scamper into the house with the other children.

“I’ll have a word with you, little brother,” Wyatt said to Gideon, and though he probably hadn’t intended for Lydia to hear, she did. Meeting her gaze, then looking away, Wyatt spoke again. “Owen, you go on inside and have some cobbler before it’s all gone.”

Gideon stood with his hands on his hips and a stubborn set to his jaw, looking at Wyatt.

Owen stepped onto the porch, smiled affably down into Lydia’s worried face, took her by the arm, and escorted her briskly into the house.

W
YATT TUGGED OFF ONE LEATHER
glove, then the other, the ones he always wore when he rode, and stuffed them both into a hip pocket as he held Gideon’s gaze, there in front of the ranch house. “Rowdy tells me,” he said very quietly, “that he thinks you’re in some sort of trouble. Says you’ve gotten yourself snarled up someplace between the workers and the men who own the mine. Is that about the size of it, Gideon?”

Gideon felt heat rise in his neck. He
hated
feeling like a little brother, especially since he was as tall as Wyatt and taller than Rowdy, but they were both more than a decade older than he was, and a lot more experienced, and in that moment, like it or not, he
did
feel like a kid.

“That’s about the size of it,” he finally allowed.

Wyatt propped one foot against the side of the porch, put his hat back on and adjusted it slightly, so the brim shaded his eyes from the Arizona sun. “Did it ever occur to you that, being your kin and all, Rowdy and Owen and I might want to help? Sam O’Ballivan, too?”

Gideon shoved a hand through his hair. “I won’t see you putting your lives on the line like that,” he said. “You’ve got wives and kids, Wyatt, and Owen’s Shannie is in the family way, too.”

Wyatt’s gaze slid briefly to the closed door, and one
corner of his mouth tilted upward in a spare Yarbro grin. “You’ve got a wife, too,” he pointed out. “But there’s something about the way you are with her—something I can’t quite work out in my mind, not all the way, anyway—that bothers me, Gideon. I guess the closest I can get to it is to say that you seem like a man who’s only passing through, not meaning to stay in Stone Creek—or with Lydia.”

“After this—after this assignment is finished,” Gideon admitted, to himself as well as to his eldest brother, “I’m not going to be welcome in Stone Creek, Wyatt. If I’m gone, I can send Lydia money. If I stay, I might not live very long. I figure Lydia’s better off with an absent husband than a dead one.”

“You mean to
run
,” Wyatt said flatly.

Gideon colored up for certain then. Went crimson, if the heat in his face was any indication. “I wouldn’t put it like that,” he said.

“Well, I would,” Wyatt countered. “I’ve lived on the run, Gideon, and so has Rowdy. And you can take it from me—it
isn’t
a life. It’s an existence, and barely that.”

“You have Sarah and the kids, and Rowdy has Lark—”

Wyatt leaned in. “And you have
Lydia,
you thickheaded fool,” he growled. “You’ve got to stake out a claim to a piece of ground, literal and figurative, dig in the heels of your boots and
stand,
Gideon. If there’s fighting to be done, Rowdy and I will fight right beside you, but there’s not a damn thing we can do if you’re hell-bent on turning tail and running.”

“This isn’t your problem,” Gideon ground out. If Wyatt hadn’t been right, he’d have taken a swing at him—and he was tempted to, anyway. Trouble was, that would have upset the women and the kids, and on top of that, Gideon wanted to keep all his teeth.

“That’s where you and I differ in our opinions, little brother,” Wyatt said. “What concerns you concerns me, and Rowdy, too.
Damn
it, Gideon, that woman in there
loves
you. Practically eats you up with her eyes every time she looks at you. Do you have
any
idea how rare that is, and how flat-out, bone
stupid
it would be to throw her away? She might wait for you for a while, might even be content to cash the bank drafts you send her and carry on. But
I’ll
wager that one fine day some likely-looking fellow will come moseying along and she’ll get herself a divorce—it will be easy, if you abandon her like you’re talking about doing—and marry right up with him. Hell of a thing for you, if you come to your senses all of a sudden, turn up back here ready to buckle down and act like a man instead of a kid, and find her gone.”

Even though that was pretty much what Gideon had been telling himself he
hoped
would happen—that Lydia would eventually remarry, settle down to a happy life with a man who would be good to her—the thought made him half-sick now. When he’d finally claimed her fully, it had been more than a physical bonding—it had forged him to her in deeper, less definable ways that felt sacred—and permanent.

“It’s best if I cut her loose,” Gideon insisted, but he couldn’t look at Wyatt as he spoke. Instead, he stared out over the dancing green grass, and the cattle and everything Wyatt and Sarah had built by linking their hearts together, as well as their minds and hands.

“All right, then,” Wyatt said, sounding beaten. Gideon wasn’t deceived by his brother’s tone, though—no Yarbro, at least not Wyatt or Rowdy—was
ever
beaten. Like their pa used to say, the only way to keep them down was to kill them. “What about Jacob Fitch?”

Gideon had to release his jaw before he could answer,
he’d clamped it down so hard. And he looked straight into Wyatt’s eyes now. “You said you’d look out for her. You and Rowdy.”

“We will,” Wyatt agreed. “But you’re missing the point, Gideon. Looking after Lydia is
your
responsibility. We’ll be brothers to her, make no mistake about that, but
you
are her husband.”

With all his concerns about what was going on at the mine, and all the new feelings making love to Lydia had unleashed in him, Gideon had pushed the problem of Jacob Fitch to the back of his mind. “Don’t you think he’d have done something by now, if he was going to?” he asked, but he sounded uncertain, even to himself.

“I think,” Wyatt said, “that Fitch is the kind of man who’ll wait as long as he has to, for the right opportunity to make his move and pay you back for taking Lydia away from him. Sooner or later, that opportunity
will
come—and you can be damn sure, Gideon, that he won’t miss it.”

“Looks like I’m caught between a rock and a hard place,” Gideon said, with a lightness he didn’t feel and a laugh that fell short of humor.

“You sure as hell are,” Wyatt agreed. “But you’ve got brothers, and you’ve got friends. And you’ve got a lady who would face down the devil for you. Take it from me, Gideon—I speak from experience—there is
nothing
more important than the love of the right woman.”

Gideon thought long, and he thought hard. His throat scalded, as though he’d swallowed acid, and so did the backs of his eyes. “Things might get ugly, Wyatt,” he finally said. “
Real
ugly.”

Wyatt chuckled, slapped Gideon’s shoulder and then let his hand rest there for a few minutes. “I can handle ‘ugly,’” he said. “Did I ever tell you about that gal I lived with for
a while, before I went to prison down in Texas, all those years ago? She’d have made a fine addition to Pappy’s train-robbing gang—she could have derailed the Illinois Central just by standing on the tracks.”

Gideon laughed—really laughed—and
Christ
, it felt good.

Hope flickered, somewhere in the general area of his heart, but it was a faltering flame.

“Do you love Lydia, Gideon?” Wyatt asked, his voice quiet and his eyes serious again.

“Yes,” Gideon answered. “I’m pretty sure I do.”

“You might start by
telling
her that. And while you’re at it, tell her you mean to make a life with her, right here in Stone Creek.”

“There’ll be trouble, Wyatt,” Gideon reminded his brother.

“And I’m even better acquainted with trouble,” Wyatt retorted easily, “than I am with ‘ugly.’” He paused, slapped Gideon’s back again, though with less force this time. “Now,” he said. “Let’s go on into the house and get some of that blackberry cobbler before Owen finishes it off.”

I
T WAS DARK WHEN
G
IDEON
and Lydia got back to town, and the sky overhead was spattered with bright stars. From the moment Gideon and Wyatt had entered the house, earlier that day, and claimed their shares of Sarah’s delicious cobbler, Lydia had sensed a change in her husband.

But maybe it was only wishful thinking. She’d found it all too easy, surrounded by Wyatt and Sarah’s happy, boisterous family and the sturdy walls of that house, to imagine herself and Gideon a few years in the future, with children of their own.

“You go on in and see to Snippet,” Gideon told her, drawing the horse and buggy to a stop in front of the Porter
house. “I’ll wait till you’re inside, then take the rig back to Rowdy’s barn and put the horse up for the night.”

Without waiting for Lydia’s reply, he secured the buggy’s brake and the reins. Jumped to the ground and then helped her down as carefully as if she were made of the thinnest glass.

He opened the front gate for her, and as she passed, he spoke again, gruffly. “Lydia?”

She stopped to look up at him, saw flecks of starlight in his eyes. “Yes?”

“I’m going to want to make love to you again when I get back, if you’re willing. And it’ll be easier on you this time, I promise.”

Lydia’s cheeks burned, not with embarrassment, but with sweet anticipation. “I’m willing, Gideon,” she said softly.

She saw wanting in his face and in his eyes as he looked at her, and sadness, too. He touched her cheek.

“There’s trouble ahead, Lydia,” he told her. “It’s of my own making, mostly, but it’s trouble just the same.”

Lydia supposed she’d known that all along. “Whatever it is,” she said quietly, “we can handle it—together.”

He nodded, then grinned slightly. “Go on in the house,” he said, “so I can get this horse and buggy back where they belong and come home to you.”

Lydia’s heart swelled with a hope she hardly dared entertain. What had passed between Wyatt and Gideon, she wondered, to bring about this change in her husband? Knowing the disappointment would be too great to bear if she asked Gideon, straight-out, if he meant to stay after all, and he said he didn’t, she locked the question away in her heart.

As soon as she’d stepped into the house and closed the door behind her, Lydia hurried to the nearest window. Watched as Gideon stood gazing after her for several long moments, then climbed into the buggy and drove away.

Once he’d disappeared from sight, she went on to the kitchen, found Snippet sitting up in his basket. After turning up one of the gaslights, she took the baby’s bottle from the counter, filled it with milk at the icebox, and put it into a pan of water. Set the works on the stove to warm up a little.

“You seem a mite stronger,” she said to Snippet, scooping him up for a nuzzle between his pointy little ears and a brief visit to the yard.

Once outside, and set on his wobbly feet, Snippet lifted one tiny leg against the bottom porch step, and his stub of a tail wagged when Lydia praised him for a job well-done.

He’d taken what milk he could manage and gone back to sleep in his basket by the time Gideon returned, entering through the kitchen door, the way he usually did.

Lydia was just washing her hands at the sink, and she smiled curiously at Gideon, over one shoulder. He looked as though he’d
run
all the way from Lark and Rowdy’s.

His eyes smoldered as he gazed at her, but there was tenderness in them, too. Having locked the door, he simply held out a hand to Lydia, and waited.

She went to him.

He took her into his arms, and mischief danced in his eyes now. “Are the aunts light sleepers?” he asked.

Lydia laughed and blushed at the same time. “No,” she said. “But Helga is.”

Gideon sighed philosophically. “Then I guess we’d better use the bed.”

“Gideon,”
Lydia scolded, though not with much conviction. “The things you say.”

Without letting go of her hand, and grinning, Gideon turned the gaslight out and strode in the direction of the stairs, pulling her with him.

“The things I say, Mrs. Yarbro,” he told her, as they
climbed the steps, “are nothing compared to the things I’m about to
do.
”

That time, she was too breathless to scold.

As soon as they’d reached the bedroom, Gideon moved to light the bedside lamp. Probably looking for matches, he opened the desk drawer.

Lydia saw him go still in the dimness.

He took the watercolor portrait she’d tucked away out of the drawer, examined it in the glow from the window, and looked up at her. Because he was facing into the darkness, she couldn’t see his expression.

“You painted this?” he asked, after a very long time.

Shyly, Lydia nodded. “It’s not very good, but—”

Still holding the picture, he turned away again, found the matches he’d been looking for before, and lit the wick in the lamp. “Not very good?” he countered. “Lydia, it practically
breathes.
”

She knotted her hands together, unsure of what to say.

“Is this how you see me?” Gideon finally asked.

She bit her lower lip. Nodded.