Fire on the Plains (Western Fire) (2 page)

So h
e’d stayed the fortnight. It was time now to head down the pike.

“Are you feeling all right,
Brother? You look as though you ate something that didn’t agree with you.”

Ben glanced up, surprised by the concerned
expression on his sister Mercy’s face. Placing a basket of fresh picked peas on the table, she seated herself across from him.

“I feel fine.”

Which was true enough. Physically, he did feel fine. But in every other way, he felt as though he’d been caught unawares by a runaway steam locomotive. A feeling he didn’t much care for. In the army, a man knew with clear certainty what his duty entailed. This business with Lydia McCabe had left him completely bewildered.

“I expect that you’ll be
departing soon for Kansas,” Mercy said as she plied her fingers to the laborious task of shucking peas from the pod.

“
Are you trying to get rid me?” Ben teased. Although older than Mercy by fifteen years, there’d always been a close bond between them, a bond undiminished by his war-time absence.

Mercy
unhesitatingly reached across the table and placed a hand on his forearm. “I am not trying to get rid of you. Far from it. In fact, I wish you’d stay longer.”

At hearing that, Ben
raised a knowing brow. “I’m sure that’s exactly what your new husband wants, another in-law underfoot.” Spencer McCabe had already taken in his new wife’s mother, sister, and young adopted brother. Although to the man’s credit, he didn’t seem to mind the crowded household.

“
Spencer would welcome the extra help. This is a large farm and—”

“My mind is made up. I’m returning to
my
farm.
My
house.
My
land.”

Mercy
took note of the fierce look that flashed across her brother’s face – a look grounded in manly pride and dogged self-reliance. And an almost belligerent obstinacy.

When Benjamin first left Kansas to join the army, he’d been, by his own admission, a farmer dedicated to the principles of liberty and justice. He
had returned four years later a battle-hardened warrior.
A warrior with no more wars to fight
.

Needless to say, the
transformation unnerved her.

Sadly, it occurred to Mercy that in the two weeks since he
’d arrived, she’d yet to see her brother smile. In fact, his fierce visage was the reason why her husband Spencer jokingly referred to Benjamin as the ‘lone gray wolf.’ While it was disconcerting to think of one’s kith and kin in anything less than glowing terms, it was, alas, an apt description. Benjamin’s handsome features, bronzed by four years of living out-of-doors, had hardened into a rigid, implacable mask that was difficult to decipher. At first, she thought his cavalry-style mustache rather dashing. Mercy now suspected that he wore it to keep hidden any stray emotion that might inadvertently cross his lips.

And then
there was the matter of his hair.

She, and every other member of the family, had been
astounded that Ben’s raven locks were now liberally streaked with glistening threads of silver and gray. While it lent him a commanding air, he was only thirty-eight years of age, far too young for his hair to have turned. Why, she’d seen a daguerreotype of him that had been taken last year, and at that time he hadn’t had a single strand of gray in his hair. Granted, over the course of the last four years, Benjamin had been made to witness unimaginable bloodshed. Mercy could only assume that was the reason for the dramatic change in his appearance.

And
, of course, Ethan’s battlefield death, a grievous shock to the entire family, had undoubtedly played a part in Ben’s transformation. Ethan – her older sibling and Ben’s younger half-brother – had been beloved by all.

“When we received
the notification of Ethan’s death, there was no –” Mercy paused, her voice thick with unshed tears – “no mention made of where he was laid to rest.”

Ben gripped his coffee cup with both hands, a
guarded look in his eyes. “I expect that he’s buried on the same Virginia battlefield where he fell.”

“
Yes, but I thought that you might know the exact location of his gravesite, seeing as how you were with him when he died.”

Taking a deep, stabilizing breath
, Ben raised the coffee cup to his lips. This was the conversation that he’d been dreading. No two ways about it, the horror of Ethan’s death beggared description. And because of that grisly death on a cold winter’s morn five months ago, he’d been nursing a pain that wouldn’t go away, unable to stave off the gut-wrenching nightmares that still haunted his sleep.

“
Since our boys took the field that day, I’m sure Ethan was buried with full military honors,” Ben told his sister, hoping the assurance would put the matter to rest.

A bittersweet sm
ile briefly skated across Mercy’s lips. “It heartens me to know that you were with Ethan when he died.”

Oh, believe me,
Sister. You wouldn’t say that if you knew the truth of it.

Leaning back in his chair, Ben reached
for the coffee pot on the stove behind him. Unable to look Mercy in the eye, he busied himself with refilling his empty cup.

“Earlier today, I received a marriage proposal,” he
informed his sister, purposefully changing the subject.

Mercy’s cornflower
-blue eyes opened wide. “A marriage proposal? From whom?”

“
Believe it or not, the Widow McCabe.”

The astonished look on Mercy’s face
was near comical. “The Widow Mc— Surely, you don’t mean Spencer’s sister-in-law Lydia?”

“
The one and only. Took me by surprise as you can well imagine.”

“No doubt it did.
” In the next instant, Mercy blushed furiously. “What I mean is, um—”

“I know exactly what you mean,” Ben said, amused by his sister’s discomfiture.
“After eight years of wearing black, why would Lydia McCabe suddenly decide that she wants to tie the knot? Especially to a man like me.”

A spark of indignant anger
momentarily flashed across his sister’s face. “No doubt she wishes to marry you because you’re a brave and honorable man. One who happens to be wickedly handsome, I might add.”

“Wickedly handsome, huh?”

Mercy loudly snapped a pea pod in two. “Personally, I’m of the opinion that marriage might do the both of you some good. And, of course, Lydia’s daughter Dixie is in desperate need of a father. Don’t deny it, Benjamin; I’ve seen how you dote on the child.”

“Who wouldn’t dote on a sweet-tempered eight
-year-old with a mop of red curls? Luckily for Dixie, she didn’t inherit her mother’s starched disposition.”

“
I’ll have you know that Lydia can be quite pleasant once you get to know her.”

“Pleasant? Is that what you call that blue-blooded prattle of hers? ‘Oh, Mister Strong, have you had occasion to stroll our apple orchard? It’s quite lovely this time of year,’” Ben mimicked in a falsetto southern drawl. “
Why, that woman must know a hundred different ways to discuss the weather.”

“
Need I remind you that Lydia single-handedly managed this household during the war years,” Mercy countered in the other woman’s defense. “Since our Kansas homestead is in a shambles, you’ll need a wife to help you tend to the farm. And I, for one, happen to think that you can do no better than Lydia McCabe.”

“Marry that ice queen?
You’ve got to be kidding.” Ben muttered, surprised that his sister was actually in favor of the match.

“I admit that Lydia can be somewhat reserved in her manner
. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that she possesses a deep devotion to family. Moreover, she is endowed with unflagging moral fortitude.”

“Over
-endowed, if you ask me. I’ve never heard of a woman wearing widow’s weeds as for long as she’s been wearing ‘em.”

Clearly vexed, a brow knitted its way onto Mercy’s brow.
“It’s my understanding that she deeply loved her first husband, James McCabe. Which is not to say that she doesn’t love you.”

At hearing
his sister’s addendum, Ben derisively snorted. “Don’t delude yourself. The Widow McCabe is proposing a marriage of convenience, pure and simple.”

“And what’s wrong with that?
” Mercy retorted. “In case you haven’t noticed, she’s a comely woman.”

Oh,
I’ve noticed, all right.
A man would have to be blind to overlook a thing like that.

Momentarily lost in thought, Ben rubbed a hand over his mustache, conjuring Lydia McCabe’s image in his mind’s eye
as he envisioned her coppery tresses loose and shimmering around her unclothed body. A glorious and fiery mantle.

“You know, I always wanted me a red-headed woman.” Too late, Ben realized
that he’d uttered the impolite thought aloud. “What I mean is—”

“I know full well what you mean.”

Lord, I hope not
. Having spent four years holed up with an army of raunchy, foul-mouthed men, Ben was having a difficult time readapting to polite society. Nowadays, profane words came to mind first, passing through his lips with surprising frequency and fluidity.

“As I already apprised you,
Brother, between the rebel bushwhackers trampling the fields and the Union jayhawkers setting fire to the house, the Kansas farm is in a state of near ruin. If you intend to salvage what’s left, your work will be made easier with a wife at your side.”

While his
sister’s point had merit, Ben wasn’t particularly enamored with the idea of returning to the quiet, plodding life of a Kansas wheat farmer.
Not that I have much choice in the matter, huh?
He’d come out of the war with only one skill, and that was killing. By war’s end, it had become a sharply honed skill. Like a lot of soldiers haunted by those four years of unrelenting bloodshed, Ben wished that it was a skill he’d never acquired.

Unfortunately, w
ith no other options available to him, Ben knew that his only recourse was to return to the family farmstead and put in a crop of winter wheat. Even though he suspected that given the day-to-day tedium of farming, he’d end up plowing himself right into an early grave.

Maybe having a lush, red-headed woman to warm
my bed isn’t such a bad idea, after all.

H
is mind made up, Ben abruptly rose to his feet.

“Benjamin, where are you going?”

“To find the Widow McCabe,” he informed his sister as he rushed toward the back door. “She and I have some unfinished business.”

“I shall notify Reverend Witherspoon that the ceremony will be held at week’s end.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, sir, I must return to the house.”

The tersely worded postscript put
a scowl on Ben’s face.

With a perfunctory nod of the head, Lydia McCabe turned and walked away
from him, leaving Ben to stare at his ‘betrothed’s’ gently swaying black hoop skirt.

Like a man who’d just paid in advance for services not yet rendered,
Ben suddenly worried that he might have gotten the short end of the stick. Though he would never openly admit to it, he’d been hoping for a kiss. Or at least a hug. Something,
anything
, to physically acknowledge his presence. Even a shake of the hand would have been nice.

Of course,
the chilly reception only proved what he already knew – the Widow McCabe was a blue-blooded lady through-n-through.

So be it
. If Lydia wanted to put on airs during the daylight hours, he’d learn to live with ‘em. As long as she understood that the nighttime hours would belong to him, and that he expected nothing less than a ready, willing female in his bed.

Ladylike airs, be damned.

“
Are you sure that you want to marry this Yankee fella?”

“
Yes, I’m quite certain,” Lydia replied steadfastly.

“Well, I’ll say this much for him, he’s right manly
-looking.”

On the verge of informing her nineteen
-year-old sister-in-law, Ginny McCabe, that she hadn’t noticed, Lydia thought better of it at the last. In truth, she
had
noticed. Not that it had factored into her decision to marry Ben Strong. And not that it was of any importance, one way or the other. In thirty minutes time, the deed would be done.

Lydia grabbed
hold of the wooden bed post with both hands. “Pull tighter,” she ordered, bracing herself as Ginny yanked on her corset strings. A few seconds later, she gasped, the bone stays mercilessly pinching into her ribcage.

“So why
are
you marrying him?” Ginny asked in between tugs.

Vexed by the prying question, Lydia made no immediate reply, disinclined to adm
it that she was wedding Ben Strong because she felt like the proverbial second relation. And a poor one, at that. Since Mercy’s arrival at the farmstead, the younger woman had slowly, but surely, taken over the reins of the McCabe household. Granted, the usurpation was her right as Spencer’s wife; even as it relegated Lydia to a very awkward position, all of her former responsibilities and duties now ably handled by the
new
Mrs. McCabe.

M
arrying Ben Strong meant that Lydia could now leave the farmstead with her dignity intact.

“I am marrying Mister Strong because there are only two avenues
of employment open to a woman,” Lydia said in reply to her sister-in-law’s question.

Ginny handed her
a flounced crinoline. “Oh? And what might those be?”

“One is a school teacher. The other is
—”

“I bet it’s a fancy woman!”

Lydia gasped at the unseemly utterance. Particularly since the only other socially acceptable occupation for a female was that of a governess.

“I hear tell they don red silk stockings and parade around in their shimmies. Gosh, Lydia, you weren’t really considering
—”

“Good heavens, no!”

Much to Lydia’s dismay, eight years of instruction in ladylike comportment had done little to curb her sister-in-law’s rambunctious inclinations. At least today Ginny wasn’t garbed in her usual costume of men’s riding breeches.

“You still haven’t told me wh
y you’re fixin’ to get married,” Ginny needled.

“
I would’ve thought that quite obvious. Given the dearth of opportunities available to women, I am compelled to marry. Although I had briefly considered the teaching profession,” Lydia said as an afterthought.

“You? A school marm?” Ginny rolled her eyes. “That’ll be the day. The only thing you’re cut out to be is a fine southern lady.”

Unable to meet Ginny’s gaze, Lydia absently plucked at her crinoline ruff. With the cream of southern manhood dead and gone, there wasn’t much demand anymore for ‘fine southern ladies.’ Sadly, the world in which she’d been raised – with the balls and fancy supper parties – no longer existed. Elmwood, her ancestral home in Tennessee, was now little more than a distant memory, the mansion having been razed to the ground by marauding Union soldiers.

Although, in truth,
she’d given up her claim to that privileged life years before when she’d gone against her family’s wishes and had married her first husband, James McCabe. While respectable, the McCabes were hardly in the same class as the landed Chadwick family. Those distinctions, however, had been of little concern to her. James had given her something that none of her gentrified beaux had ever been able to offer. That something was love. Pure, passionate, romantic love.

Belatedly
realizing that Ginny had spoken to her, Lydia said, “Forgive me. I was wool gathering.”

“I asked if you love him.”

“Who?”

“Why, Ben Strong, of course.”

“Certainly not!” Startled by her own vehemence, Lydia hastened to soften her tone. “Which is not to say that I don’t respect Mister Strong.” Plying her fingers to the ties on her crinoline, she intentionally avoided Ginny’s pointed gaze.

“If you’re not in love with the man,
then why marry him?”

Although s
he didn’t want to rain on Ginny’s romantic imaginings, Lydia thought it best to answer truthfully. “People do not always wed for love,” she quietly, albeit, firmly intoned. “More often than not, they wed for more prosaic reasons. Mister Strong has generously agreed to provide a home for Dixie and me. That is reason enough to marry him.”

“
Well, since you are marrying him, do you know the story behind Ben’s hair?” Ginny next asked in a gossipy tone of voice.

Lydia opened
the armoire and removed her black kid boots. “His hair? Whatever are you talking about?”

“I heard that he want gray
–” Ginny loudly snapped her fingers – “just like that.”

“And how, pray tell, did you come by this bit of knowledge?”
Usually not one to encourage her sister-in-law’s loquacious ramblings, Lydia found herself unwillingly curious. Other than the fact that Ben had served for four years in the Union army and that he owned a farm in Kansas, she knew precious little about her betrothed’s background.

“I overheard him tell his sister Mercy that he woke up
a few months ago, looked in the shaving mirror and, lo and behold, he’d sprouted a thatch of gray hair.”

A
dmittedly troubled by Ginny’s disclosure, Lydia made no reply. In her experience, only those who’d suffered a terrible emotional shock went prematurely gray in so swift a manner. She could only wonder at the calamity that had befallen the stoic Ben Strong.

As Lydia removed her
frock from the armoire, Ginny groaned loudly.

“
On today, of all days,
please
me that you’re not really going to wear
that
!”

“That is
precisely what I intend to do,” Lydia replied as she laid her silk glacé day dress across the bed. Fitted with velvet-banded pagoda sleeves, it was one of her favorites.

“But it’s
black
,” Ginny whined, disappointment writ large on her face. “Seeing as how today is such a special occasion, I just thought that—”

“There is nothing special about today,” Lydia interjected. “Men and women get married all the time. I doubt that Mister Strong is making such a fuss over the occasion.” She lifted the dress above her head, the glossy fabric sliding over her und
ergarments with a loud rustle.

A few moments later, finished
with fastening the row of tiny jet buttons, Lydia stepped over to the bureau and opened her inlaid mother-of-pearl jewelry box. Scanning the contents, she selected a large silver brooch that showcased intricately woven strands of her late husband’s hair behind a smooth piece of glass.

Once she’d secured
the brooch to her dress collar, Lydia turned toward her sister-in-law. “How do I look?”

The corners of Ginny’s mouth lifte
d in rueful smile. “Like a widow woman.”

A lady must always comport herself with calm composure.
A lady must never give in to extremes of emotion. And no matter how trying the circumstance, a lady must always endeavor to exude a courteous demeanor.

As
Lydia wended her way to the parlor, she silently repeated the familiar phrases. Admittedly, she’d always found a measure of security in following those deeply ingrained precepts. From an early age, she’d been taught that for every occasion, every social situation imaginable, there was an appropriate code of behavior. Even marriage, that most respected of institutions, had a set of rules intended to smooth the way between husband and wife.

Now, only moments from exchanging marital vows with Benjamin Strong, she
had every confidence that those deeply-rooted principles would serve her well in the coming days.

Entering the crowded parlor, Lydia’s eyes automatically sought out
the prospective groom. Taken aback by the intensity of Ben’s gray-eyed stare, she experienced a sudden, unwanted flutter of nervous apprehension. While brides were wont to suffer from pre-wedding jitters, there was no reason for
her
to be so agitated. Unlike her first marriage, this was not a love match. Instead, this was to be a working partnership between two mature adults.

Infatuation
. Passion. Romance.
She had been blessed to experience those heady emotions with her first husband and could not conceive of experiencing that type of love with the second.

Unwilling to dwell further on the matter,
Lydia, instead, noted that in lieu of a formal suit, Ben wore his blue captain’s uniform. Over six feet in height, his erect soldierly posture was, admittedly, impressive. Clearly, he’d taken great care with his toilette, his hair neatly trimmed, his face, save for the swooping mustache, cleanly shaved. Beneath the mustache, she could discern the shape of his lips. Firm, masculine lips from the looks of them.

What
will his kisses be like? Will his mustache feel soft against my skin, or bristly and unpleasant?

The instant
the wanton thought crossed her mind, Lydia inwardly berated herself.

A lady must never,
never
, entertain wayward thoughts.
Purposely directing her gaze away from her intended spouse, Lydia smoothed a nonexistent wrinkle from her skirt.

Between her family and Benjamin’s, the parlor was filled to capacity, the room enlivened with animated
conversation and boisterous laughter. A little too boisterous, perhaps. To Lydia’s dismay, her betrothed’s half-sister, fifteen-year-old Prudence Hibbert, could not stop herself from uproariously giggling at a remark made by Spencer’s younger brother Dewey. Moments later, Ginny loudly joined the fray. Under normal circumstances, Lydia would have gently reminded the youthful trio that such gregarious behavior was highly inappropriate.

But this was
not a normal circumstance. This was her wedding day.

And so
Lydia kept silent.

Alt
hough they had often tried her patience, she would dearly miss Dewey and Ginny. Orphaned when they were still young children, they’d been left in her charge. Having reached the age of maturation, Ginny now nineteen and Dewey almost seventeen years of age, they no longer looked to her for maternal counsel. As she glanced at the pair, Lydia felt a surge of loving pride tempered with a twinge of mournful regret. In betrothing herself to Ben Strong, she’d committed herself to another family, another life.

Though that was the fate of every bride, was it not?

A lady must persevere through life’s challenges without complaint.

Moreover,
it was important to bear in mind that this marriage was not for her sake only. Her daughter Dixie would undoubtedly benefit from having a stepfather in her life.

After all, a lady’s first and foremost responsibility was to her family’s well
-being.

Granted, no marriage came without its trials. But
Lydia felt confident that the transition to wedded life would be made easier by virtue of the fact that her intended spouse seemed every inch the sturdy, unprepossessing Kansas farmer. And because of that, there would be no unpleasant surprises waiting for her on the horizon.

“Are we ready to
commence the ceremony?”

Startled, Lydia realized that Reverend Witherspoon’s question had been directed at her.

Self-consciously aware that every eye in the room was upon her, Lydia took a deep, fortifying breath before giving an affirmative nod. “Yes, I am ready to begin.”

The Reverend motioned
for Lydia to stand beside the groom. Then, with an air of solemnity befitting the occasion, he said in a deep baritone, “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here in the sight of God to join this man and this woman in holy matrimony.”