Fireblossom (41 page)

"No? I seem to recall that after Mr. Winslow's melodramatic exit, Fox turned to you and said something like, 'You and I are getting married Saturday, in front of your garden at one o'clock!' Do you mean
that
was the end of it?"

Maddie pointed a toe in the air, displaying an elegant leg, and gave Susan a winsome smile. "Pretty much so. He did ask me again, when he was hurrying off somewhere, did I really want to, and it was clear that he meant for me to say yes, and I did. The rest of the time, he's been building something over there on the other side of the pine trees, and we've been busy over here, and then there's been the whole situation with Sun Smile, and Saturday—today—came so quickly that I hardly have had time to think until right now."

"I think this sudden wedding has been a happy distraction for us all," Susan admitted to her granddaughter. "Even your father seems to be at a loss for a solution regarding Sun Smile. Have you noticed that Annie Sunday has been spending a good deal of time trying to draw her out of the wagon?"

"She's probably looking for a distraction of her own," Maddie remarked, with a touch of irony. "If you want the honest truth, I think that Fox decided a wife in the house might keep his mother from taking charge of his household." She slid under the water to rinse her hair, emerging with a grin. "Of the two of us, he doubtless believes I'm more manageable."

Susan felt a pang of worry. "Darling, I hope you are going into this marriage with a strong, full heart. I can understand that you might be nervous today, but not doubtful, I hope."

"Oh, Gramma"—her voice broke with the emotion that swept over her body—"I've never been more certain of anything in my life than my love for Fox. I've missed him so much since we got home that I've just ached all the time. We were so close during those weeks away, and I was so happy... and I know he was, too." She stood, dripping and glorious, and reached for her towel. "I can't deny that I find this wedding a bit peculiar, but there's nothing I want more than to become Mrs. Daniel Matthews. It's just my destiny, and I know it—to share his home and make a life with him." She paused in the midst of toweling her mass of hair to add, "I just didn't expect it to happen so soon or so easily. Fox told me he couldn't marry me; that the sort of life I need wasn't possible for him."

"Daniel Matthews
is
his real name," Susan said, as if attempting to make sense of it. "I assume he was hiding something and then Annie Sunday appeared, spoke too freely, and liberated Fox from his secret."

"I can't really talk about it, Gramma. Not yet, anyway." Damp and glowing, Maddie drew on a loose muslin dressing gown, pushed back the makeshift curtain, and approached the impressive bride cake. "I just hope that Graham Winslow can't find a way to use that knowledge against Fox. For a fellow who professes to be a refined gentleman, he can get a gleam in his eye that's positively
feral."

"Well, I think Fox can take care of himself," Susan declared.

"Gramma, I must tell you that I find this cake simply amazing! How can I thank you? If not for all your hard work, we'd be forced to consume beans and jerky following the ceremony!"

They laughed together, then Susan drew her granddaughter onto a chair and stood behind her, gently combing out her damp hair. "I am delighted to do whatever I can to help make your wedding day one you will recall fondly, my dear," she murmured.

"What comes after the icing? Can you put a little ribbon on it made of icing, or a flower? I remember that you made a birthday cake for me once when I was small, and there were little candied violets clustered on the top."

Susan's soft voice was soothing. "Well, after this I spread the sugar frosting on all three layers. Then, after I assemble the cake, I'll color the remaining icing with currant juice and squeeze it through a pastry bag. Would you like pink icing ribbons that swirl down from the edges of the layers in festoons?"

"Lovely." Maddie caught her grandmother's hand and pressed it against her cheek. It felt fragile and cool and smelled of almond paste. "Gramma Susan, you are very, very dear to me. Isn't it wonderful that we won't be separated by my marriage?"

"Indeed it is." She bent to kiss Maddie's hair, which was drying quickly in the morning air. A breeze stirred the kitchen curtains and a jay cried from the pine trees outside. "One could almost imagine that Fox planned to make you his wife before he began building that house next to ours."

"Oh, no. If anything, he meant to annoy me, not woo me!" Maddie's radiant face grew dreamy as she recalled earlier encounters with Fox. Looking back, she thought that she had not begun truly to live until the day he'd ridden up to their door to bring Benjamin home from the badlands. Fox was the most stimulating person she had ever known. The prospect of sharing her life with him made her tingle with anticipation.

The mantel clock in the parlor chimed eleven, jolting her back to the present. "Goodness, I'd better begin to move! I'll look in on Father and see how he's faring. Do you want me to tell Benjamin to take his bath now?"

"Yes; that's a good idea, darling. Then I'll be up to dress myself, just as soon as I make some proper festoons on this cake." There was just a trace of weariness in Susan's voice. Maddie had risen and they stood looking at each other, each thinking the same thing. It was Susan who finally spoke. "Perhaps you should ask your father what he hopes to do about Sun Smile today."

"Gramma..." Maddie paused, biting her lip. "Would you think me terribly selfish and horrid if I said that I would rather not devote my thoughts and energies to Sun Smile today?"

With a reassuring nod, Susan wrapped an arm around her granddaughter's waist and walked with her to the kitchen doorway. "I understand completely, my dear. This is your wedding day! As for Sun Smile... perhaps we ought to just say, What will be will be and leave it at that. Hmm?"

* * *

A few minutes before one o'clock, the tiny group began to gather in front of the garden that Maddie had designed and tended with such care. The hollyhocks, canterbury bells, cheerful zinnias, sweet william, and forget-me-nots were all in full, fragrant bloom, and even the pansies continued to turn their little faces up to the August sun. Behind the garden was the hillside that plunged down to the rag-tag streets of Deadwood, while beyond stretched the other rock-crowned walls of the gulch.

Preacher Smith had arrived early, conferring with Fox in his house before proceeding to the Avery property. Since arriving in Deadwood that spring, the Methodist minister had spent most of his time attempting to save souls in the badlands, and a proper wedding like this seemed almost to intimidate him. Fox had invited Colorado Charley Utter, since Preacher Smith seemed to feel more at ease with a familiar face at his side.

The first person to join them was Titus Pym. "We all look like we're fit to be laid out in our caskets," the Cornish miner observed, nodding to the minister in his Sunday best and ogling Charley in his rented black suit and paper collar. "I wouldn't get trussed up like this for anyone but me good lad Fox."

Charley Utter grinned. "Your own lad Fox owes me a mighty big favor when he comes up for air after this wedding. It took all my powers of persuasion to keep Calamity Jane, Garnet Loomis, and sweet Victoria from coming with us today."

Preacher Smith's eyes widened, but he pressed his Bible to the bosom of his shirt and refrained from comment. Titus, however, had less control over his tongue.

"God's foot, if Jane had come, and those others, we might just as well have held the wedding on stage at the Bella Union Theatre!" He pumped Charley's hand. "Fox'll be grateful to you, sir."

"I'm happy that he's found love. Not so long ago, I visited him during his... retreat—those days he spent holed up above the Gem. He was the picture of despair. Fox is a rare commodity in towns like this: an honorable man who helps his friends and enjoys a laugh. It's good to witness his happiness today, and I know Bill is looking on with a smile, too, from the great beyond." This poetic speech left Charley a trifle misty-eyed, but the moment was lightened by the appearance of young Benjamin Franklin Avery.

"You let them talk you into wearing all this stuff, too, Mr.Pym?" the boy exclaimed in disbelief, tugging at his small paper collar as if it were choking him. His wheat-colored hair had been parted in the center, oiled down, and coaxed into fashionable curls at the temples. The suit, which had traveled with the family from Philadelphia, bore witness to Benjamin's growing body, for it pulled across the shoulders and the pants gapped above his side-buttoned shoes. "I
hate
this! When I grow up, I'm gonna be a pony express rider or a gambler an' I'm never gonna wear a paper collar!"

"Benjamin, dear, do try to remember that 'gonna' is not a word." Susan O'Hara spoke in tones of mild resignation as she walked up behind her grandson. "Your mother would faint if she could hear what comes out of your mouth these days."

Introductions were exchanged then, overseen by Titus Pym. Susan had dressed with care for this afternoon. She had brought one especially fine gown with her, just in case an occasion of this nature arose, and now she proudly wore a full-trained skirt and a basque made by the famous Parisian Worth. The dress was of sapphire blue silk, richly decorated with velvet, and its high ruched collar set off her timeless good looks. Sapphire combs adorned her neatly dressed white hair, and she carried a blue foulard parasol lined with white silk to protect herself against the midday heat.

Showered with compliments by the men, Susan felt herself flush with pleasure. "How kind you are. I thank you. And, Reverend Smith, how good you were to come today and preside over this wedding."

"It's a pleasure, ma'am, and a welcome change," Henry Weston Smith said. "Are there any other guests we should wait for?"

"Only the mother of the groom," Susan said, with a telling glance toward Titus Pym. "She ought to be here. I know that Madeleine and her father are ready to make their entrance from the house whenever Mrs. Matthews, and Fox, of course, are in place."

"When I left Fox, he was buttoning his coat," Titus supplied.

"I'm to wave through the trees when we're ready for him." He bent over just in time to catch hold of Benjamin, who was preparing to kneel on the grass and seize a baby snake. When he straightened up, he saw that the others were staring, silent with shock, toward the pine trees that separated the houses.

Coming around the far side of the Avery house was Annie Sunday Matthews, regal in a polonaise and skirt of rose taffeta silk trimmed in cream velvet. A pearl choker gleamed at her throat, and her chestnut hair was carefully coiffed. Her appearance was no surprise, of course, but her companion was, for walking beside Annie Sunday was Sun Smile.

"Good God," Gramma Susan pronounced, squinting through her spectacles in disbelief. "Pardon me, Reverend," she hastened to add, still staring.

"Well, pickle me liver," Titus muttered, "will you look at
her."

"Who is she?" Charley Utter asked.

"My Injin sister," came Benjamin's dark reply." She gives me the willies."

Sun Smile was nearly unrecognizable. Somehow she had endured a thorough bath, which included her hair, and was now dressed up like a parody of a white woman in a simple corseted gown of myrtle green silk, gathered in back over a gingham underskirt. She walked slowly and awkwardly in a pair of narrow slippers with one-inch heels, and her clean hair shone in the sunlight, pinned into a coil at the nape of her neck and decorated with a white felt princess hat, its brim turned up on one side and trimmed with a green feather and ribbon. Only her shadowed eyes, so mournfully gray, and the downturned corners of her mouth, betrayed the farce that she was enacting.

"I hope you will forgive us for being a few minutes late," Annie Sunday was saying as she drew Sun Smile into the circle of guests. Fox's mother wore a proud smile. "I think that our tardiness must be overlooked, however. Doesn't Sun Smile look simply lovely? It took some doing, but I'm not one to give up easily, and I knew that Sun Smile's presence here today of all days would mean so very much, not only to Daniel and Madeleine, who brought her to Deadwood in the hope of giving her a more civilized life, but also to dear Stephen, who has agonized so over her welfare." Annie Sunday gave her charge a bracing squeeze that was meant to impart courage. "I'm so proud of her that I can scarcely contain myself!"

There was a pause, followed by a lot of nodding in response to Annie Sunday's speech. At last Susan took pity on the girl and gave her a warm smile. "We're happy to have you with us today, Sun Smile."

Fox appeared then, and the focus shifted from the young Lakota widow to the bridegroom. It seemed that everyone could feel his energy as he strode toward his wedding.

He wore his Civil War major's uniform which Annie Sunday had brought in the bottom of her trunk. Surprised at the sight of it, Fox had initially resisted the idea of putting it on for this occasion but slowly warmed to the idea. Now he stood tall and broad-shouldered in the navy blue dress coat with its double row of brass buttons and epaulettes trimmed with gold oak leaves. The edge of his white shirt showed above the high blue collar, setting off his tanned face. His dark hair was neatly trimmed and he had pinned a boutonniere of Maddie's red and orange zinnias to his uniform.

"Finally!" He gave the guests a distracted smile and shook Preacher Smith's hand. "Let's begin."

Benjamin was dispatched to signal the bride and her father, who came slowly out of the house's back door and crossed the yard toward the little group assembled in front of Maddie's garden.

Maddie and Gramma Susan had had less than three days to concoct a proper wedding dress, and they'd done their best. The gown, of white Victorian lawn with Belgian lace trim and long slim lace sleeves, featured a fitted bodice with a low, square neckline. She wore no jewelry beyond the locket with her parents' pictures, and under a gossamer veil, her face was radiant, her unswept curls undimmed.