Elizabeth Grayson (5 page)

As if he were eager to conclude the ceremony before anything else could happen, Reverend Schuyler rattled off the rest of the ceremony on one long breath. “In as much as Chase and Ann have spoken vows before God and this company, I pronounce them Man and Wife. Amen.”

Before Chase could try to seal their union with a kiss, Ann jerked her hand out of his grasp and turned to where her stepfather was approaching.

James Rossiter bent and bussed Ann’s cheek. “You won’t be sorry,” he promised.

Frankly, Ann doubted that, but she held her peace.

Just then, her stepbrother Boothe, the commodore’s son by his first wife, stepped up and caught Ann’s arm. Though the gesture might have looked innocuous, his fingers bit deep enough to crush wrinkles into her gown’s satin sleeve.

“It must be so gratifying,” he all but purred, “to once again prove yourself the favored child. I wouldn’t have said it was possible for you to deprive me of my first command, dear sister, but somehow you’ve managed it.”

Ann shivered at the loathing in his black eyes.

“I’m sure Ann appreciates the sacrifice you’re making for her sake,” James Rossiter put in silkily, “especially in her current situation. But you’ll get everything I promised you, if you’ll just be patient. Now congratulate your sister and wish her well.”

When the commodore stepped beyond her to offer a crisp white envelope to the Reverend, Boothe did as his father had bidden him. “May I offer you my good wishes for a long—and fecund—marriage,” Boothe said with a sneer.

Then, before Ann could respond or turn away, he lowered his head and kissed her. Though she closed her eyes and compressed her lips, the high, sharp smell of him washed over her. Her ears rang; her mouth went hot and wet. She fought to swallow the sick, sour burn of bile at the back of her throat.

Just when she thought she might disgrace herself, Chase slipped his hand around her waist and drew her to him. “Just so you know,” he interceded smoothly, addressing Boothe over her head. “I mean to take very good care of the
Andromeda
for you.”

Ann was grateful when her stepbrother turned the bright beam of his malice from her to her new husband, though Chase didn’t seem the least bit quelled by it.

“We’ll just have to see if you’re man enough to be her master,” Boothe snapped and stalked away. For a moment it wasn’t clear if Boothe meant the
Andromeda—
or Ann herself.

Though Boothe was gone, Ann couldn’t help the tremor that ran through her. “Thank you for running him off,” she managed to whisper.

“This isn’t the first time I’ve had words with your stepbrother,” Chase assured her, “and I doubt it will be the last.”

Chase’s dislike of Boothe gave the first hint that there might be some affinity between them.

She’d been at odds with Boothe, it seemed, from the moment she arrived in St. Louis. As a five-year-old, bewildered by her mother’s sudden marriage and the neverending trip West, all Ann had wanted was to make friends with the tall, dark-haired boy who lived in her stepfather’s house.

But from the moment they arrived, Boothe had set out to show her how unwelcome she was. He made her plead with him not to drop her beautiful bisque doll James Rossiter had given her down the stairwell—then done it anyway. He’d thrown one shoe of each pair she owned into the stove in the kitchen, then taunted her when she was punished. She’d never known when he might jump out at her and scare her, or hit her hard enough to make her cry.

In the six months she’d been home from Philadelphia, she’d found a dozen new reasons to detest her stepbrother. One of the reasons she’d resigned herself to this marriage was that no matter how determined her father was to keep her here, she was going to be legally able to gather her belongings and move to Chase Hardesty’s rooms in town.

“Ann?”

Chase’s voice scattered her thoughts like milkweed down.

“I’d like to introduce you to my brother, Ruben Hardesty.” He gestured to the slim, swarthy man who’d been his groomsman.

Ann noticed right off that Ruben looked nearly as battered as Chase did. His nose was swollen and the skin along his cheekbone was black-and-blue. Wherever Chase had been brawling, they’d fought together.

For no reason she could name, the notion pleased her.

“Hello, Ruben,” she greeted him and was struck by how dissimilar these two brothers seemed. Chase was big, broad-shouldered, and solidly built. His hair was a ruddy brown and his eyes were bright as bachelor buttons. Ruben was slim and exotic, dark as a Spaniard and lithe as a hickory withe. His thick, black hair curled long on his collar.

Something about the close fit of his clothes and the ornate ruby-red stickpin threaded through his cravat hinted that he was more than a bit of a dandy. He confirmed the notion when he bowed over Ann’s hand and brought it to his lips.

“What a pleasure it is to welcome such a lovely and cultured lady to the Hardesty clan.”

Ann couldn’t help responding to the glint in those warm, brown eyes and the teasing curve of his mouth beneath his closely trimmed mustache.

Ann dipped in a somewhat graceless curtsey. “Why, thank you, Mr. Hardesty. I hope I never do anything to jeopardize your good opinion of me.”

“I doubt there’s danger of that”—he turned a wide, white grin on her—“especially in
this
family. And just so you know, everyone calls me Rue.”

Just then, Mary Fairley came to give Ann a little hug and offer champagne. “I hope your captain proves himself a good papa to the wee one,” Mary confided in a whisper before she moved on.

On the far side of the room James Rossiter cleared his throat. “I’d like to propose a toast,” he offered, “in honor of my daughter’s marriage.”

Everyone raised their glasses.

“May Ann and Captain Hardesty enjoy years of health and happiness,” he offered.

They all drank.

All except Ann, who, with a stubborn show of pride, refused to give her stepfather the satisfaction of accepting his good wishes.

They’d barely swallowed the champagne when James Rossiter went on. “Now, then, since I know Captain Hardesty is casting off at four o’clock and eager to get down to the riverfront, I have one last toast to give you.” He raised his glass again. “To Captain Hardesty, my new son-in-law, and to the
Andromeda.
May the river always lie deep before the both of you and may your troubles fall quickly in your wake.”

“Hear, hear!” everyone agreed and drank.

From the way Chase swallowed the champagne, Ann could see he was impatient to be on about his duties. But Ann had a few things to settle with her new husband before he left.

“I need to have a word with you,” she told him. “We can talk in my father’s study.”

Ann saw Chase cast a glance in the commodore’s direction. That he thought he needed her father’s permission to talk to his wife boded ill for their discussion. And though Ann’s belly fluttered with uneasiness, she refused to back down.

“Follow me,” she directed and led him down the hall.

LAST SPRING CHASE’S SISTER MILLIE HAD MARRIED SAM Seifert in the orchard behind his parents’ house, then they’d all gone up to the top of the bluffs for a picnic. When his brother Will had spoken vows with Etta Mae Hoffsteader two years ago, they’d done it on the bow of her family’s houseboat, and pretty much everybody ended up in the river.

This wedding sure as hell hadn’t been the kind the Hardestys were used to.
His
bride had stood up beside him like a spire of ice.
His
bride had refused to accept his ring, as if she didn’t think it was good enough. Now she was sweeping him down the hall toward her father’s study like a truant dragged back to school by his ear.

He supposed she had a right to be mad at him. He
had
promised her one thing and done something else entirely. But then, he’d tried to explain.

He’d come to Lucas Place three times in the last two days to see if he could make things right with her. He wanted to tell her what it was like to walk the
Andromeda
’s decks, to stand in the wheelhouse and know it was where he belonged. He needed to make her understand what captaining the
Andromeda
meant to him. But every time he’d come, the housekeeper had told him Ann wasn’t seeing callers. Which, he was sure, meant she wasn’t seeing him.

Of course, she seemed eager enough to see him now
—
now,
when he had pressing duties down at the riverfront.

She gestured him into her father’s study, into the room where James Rossiter had first made his outrageous proposition, and closed the door behind them.

Before she could call him in to account, Chase began to apologize. “When I left here Tuesday morning I swear I had every intention of keeping my word. I honestly did tell your father that I didn’t want to marry—”

“I don’t care why you broke your word to me,” Ann interrupted, gone all stiff and imperious. “That you did, says all I need to know about the man I married.”

Her condemnation of him was so complete, her refusal to consider his side of things so absolute, there didn’t seem room for compromise. But if she was willing to look at the situation logically, there were real advantages to this marriage, things that would benefit both of them—if she’d just cooperate.

“Now, Ann,” he began, doing his best to cajole her. “If you just let me explain—”

“I don’t want an explanation,” she told him crisply. “I don’t want anything from you except the keys to your house.”

“To my house?”

“To your house, your rooms. To wherever it is you stay when you’re not piloting a riverboat.”

Chase considered the riverfront hotel where he and Rue had been bunking for the best part of a week. The place was cheap, but barely habitable. The other boarders weren’t the kind of folks Ann Rossiter was used to spending time with.

“I don’t keep a place in town,” he told her.

“But you must!” she insisted.

He shrugged and shook his head. “I don’t need rooms during the shipping season, and I spend the winter upriver with my folks, cutting trees for their woodlot.”

She stared at him openmouthed. “But—but where do you expect me to live while you’re away?”

“Live?” he asked. “Your father said you could stay on here. I told you that.”

“Here,” she repeated, something terrible and destructive going on behind her eyes. Something that turned the clear, bright hazel dark and impervious. “I can’t stay here.”

It was a complication Chase hadn’t foreseen. That he’d need to find her someplace to live hadn’t once occurred to him. If it had, he’d have done his best to make provisions for her, though he didn’t have the faintest idea where he might have found her suitable lodgings or how he would have paid for them.

“You’re bound to be more comfortable here where there are people to look after you,” he offered reasonably. “Besides, there isn’t time to find you someplace else. The
Andromeda
’s pulling out this afternoon.”

Ann drew herself up straight as a carpenter’s rule. “I won’t stay here!” she told him, her mouth gone tight.

He supposed Ann had her reasons for wanting to leave. If she was angry with him about agreeing to marry her, she was probably even angrier with her father for buying her a bridegroom. And anyone could see the enmity between Ann and her stepbrother.

Chase’s duties aboard the steamer gnawed at him. He ought to be down at the levee meeting his passengers, supervising the loading of cargo, and checking the
Andromeda
over one last time.

“Please, Ann,” he urged her. “Stay on with your father while I’m gone. We’ll find a place of our own when I get back.”

With luck, he’d have wages by then and the captain’s share of the
Andromeda
’s profits at the end of the trip. According to the agreement he and the commodore had signed just before the ceremony, full title to the steamer would come to him when he completed the last run of the season.

“And when exactly will you be back?” Ann asked him.

She sounded calmer and somewhat resigned. Chase began to breathe easier. “I’ll be back in July.”

The room went silent; it was the hollow, roaring kind of silence that followed a clap of thunder.

“July?”
she echoed incredulously. “How can a packet run to Sioux City take four months?”

Chase could see for all that she was the commodore’s daughter, she didn’t understand a thing about the shipping business. “On the first run up the Missouri River in the spring,” he explained, “the packets are contracted all the way to Fort Benton.”

“In the Montana Territory?”

At least she knew her geography.

“The water isn’t deep enough most of the year to accommodate steamers as big as the
Andromeda,
but we can navigate upstream on the spring flood and come home on the summer snowmelt. Even at that it’s a long, hard trip.”

“If shipping as far as Fort Benton is so difficult,” she asked, diverted for the moment, “why on earth do you do it?”

“Money,” Chase admitted, weighed down all at once by his new responsibilities. “It’s the single most profitable trip any of the boats make all season.”

She stood for a moment staring past him, her eyes unfocused and her mouth pursed. Something about her abstraction made him uneasy.

Then, all at once, she smiled. “I guess I’ll just need to resign myself.”

As soon as he got back from Fort Benton, he promised himself, he’d find her as nice a place to live as he could afford, someplace where they’d be able to start their life together. Someplace big enough to accommodate the baby and maybe a child or two of their own when the time came. It was good to know Ann could bend, that she could see things his way.

He turned his attention to more practical matters. “There’s a small account in my name at Boatman’s Bank you can draw on if you need money,” he told her, beginning to wish he was leaving her better off. “If you need more than what’s there, I’m sure your father would be willing to advance you—”

“I’ll be fine,” she assured him hastily.

Chase nodded; it was time to go. For a moment he stared down into his new wife’s soft face, focused on the sweet, rosy fullness of her mouth. Her beauty moved him, filled him with a simmering sensual warmth. He and Ann had just spoken their vows, he reasoned, so what could it hurt if he took her in his arms and kissed her good-bye?