Mail Order Prairie Bride: (A Western Historical Romance) (Dodge City Brides Book 1) (28 page)

Garrison continued. “There’s something about her, don’t you think? Something that makes you want to protect her, even when you know she can take care of herself, better than anyone, in fact. I suppose I’m no different from you. I want her still, after everything she’s done. The thought of letting her go, well, I can’t easily live with that. Isn’t that how you feel, too? Aren’t you trying to justify all this, to figure out a way to fix it and put it behind you?”

Briggs didn’t answer Garrison, but the question flapped wildly in his brain. Sarah had deceived him from the beginning, saying that she’d never been married. Then, to trick him on their wedding night as she had….

Briggs prepared himself for the question he was about to ask. “Do you have children?”

“No. Sarah doesn’t want any, and she knows how to prevent it.”

By now, Briggs’s head was spinning…his limbs felt shaky. And it had nothing to do with the whiskey.

He tipped his glass back to empty it. Laying his money on the bar, he turned away.

“Where are you going?” Garrison asked.

“Home.”

Garrison’s hand snaked out and clasped Briggs’s arm. “What are you going to do? I won’t stand by and let you beat her. Just let her go. That’s all you have to do. Bring her back to me and I’ll take her home where she’ll be safe. You can forget any of this ever happened.”

Briggs hesitated, glaring down at this man before him.

“You’ll give me your word? You won’t mark her?” Garrison implored.

Mark
her? Briggs’s gut wrenched with disgust. “That ain’t how I handle things.”

Walking out of the saloon, disillusioned, Briggs wondered how he
would
handle this, when all he wanted to do at the moment was put Sarah on the first train back east, and never lay eyes on her again.

* * *

Walking back to George’s house, Briggs had to focus hard on not staggering around the cow patties and falling face first into the mud. In fact, in his pathetic, intoxicated condition, he wasn’t sure he could distinguish between the two.

He flipped his wet hair out of his eyes so he could see better in front of him. The rain had finally stopped but the road remained a sticky pool. With each step, he sank down at least four inches, the dark muck pulling at his boots.

And
oh, God
, his head…pounding like a drum. He should have known better than to accept that last drink. He should have known better than to take the first one. He’d never had much use for liquor. It dulled a man’s senses.

By the time he reached George’s house, it was sufficiently dark. He stopped on the veranda to scrape the mud off the soles of his boots, and paused there, gazing blurry-eyed at the lighted windows. He didn’t want to go inside. He didn’t want to do what he had to do, but the time for indecision was over. He just didn’t want to get Sarah into trouble with the law….

Nearly losing his balance, he reached out to grasp the door handle, and kicked himself again for drinking all that whiskey.

He entered the dimly-lit house.

No one came to greet him.

The silence pulsated around his garbled senses.

Standing unsteadily in the foyer, he heard a chair slide out from the kitchen table. George appeared. “You’re back,” he said softly.

“Yes. Where’s Sarah?”

“She’s resting. I’ll get her.” He made a move to go upstairs.

“No. Don’t.”

George stopped on the bottom step. “I promised her I’d wake her if…
when
you returned.”

“I don’t want you to.”

Suddenly, the room began to spin and Briggs stepped sideways. George grabbed his arm and drew his brows together. “Are you drunk?”

“No. Yes. I had a few drinks, but I’m fine.”

Wearing a disapproving frown, George went into the parlor and lit a second lamp. “It’s not like you to take a drink, Briggs.”

“I know, and believe me, I’m already regretting it.”

The room brightened and George sat down on the sofa. “Sarah was upset after you left. She didn’t eat any supper. She went straight upstairs to bed.”

Briggs leaned against the door frame and folded his arms. “Are you trying to make me feel guilty? I’m not the one who lied.”

“I know, I know.”

“Whose side are you on, anyway?”

George raked a hand through his hair. “I’m not on anyone’s side. I just think Sarah needs—”

“
Sarah
needs?
I’m
your family, George. Me. She lied to me from the beginning and you act like I’m the one to blame here, like I’m the one who’s being unreasonable.”

“I don’t think that.”

Briggs moved into the room with deliberate care, trying not to knock over the lamp on the side table as he passed it by. “Then what
do
you think?”

“You can’t turn your back on her, Briggs. She has no one.”

Briggs squeezed his eyes shut against the throbbing sensation in his head. “No one? Did she tell you the story of her poor deceased parents?”

“Yes. Why are you looking at me like that?”

“So you lent her your sympathetic ear, did you?”

“You’re not making any sense.

Briggs walked to the mantel. He leaned one elbow upon it, rested his temple on two fingers. “George, you don’t understand.”

George rose and gripped Briggs’s shoulder. “You need to get some sleep. You’re a mess. And Sarah
does
love you.”

Wincing inside, Briggs stepped away from his brother. His speech was slurred. “I don’t want to hear that.”

“But you care about her, Briggs. I know you do. You’re just gun-shy.”

“Damn right, I’m gun-shy. And you don’t know everything, big brother. You think you know her because you’ve spent some time with her, but you don’t. She’s beautiful and she uses that to get what she wants. You’re playing right into her game.”

George backed away with a frown, retreating into the dark kitchen. “You’re drunk.”

“Am I?” Briggs followed him.

George said nothing. He went to the kitchen window and pulled it closed.

“You’re always taking her side,” Briggs went on, “like I’m the one who did everything wrong. Granted, I haven’t always been easy to get along with, I’ll admit that, but hell, George, I’m your brother. We really don’t know anything about Sarah.”

George sank into one of the kitchen chairs. Leaning both elbows on the table, he said, “I’m sorry, Briggs. I just can’t accept what you’re saying.”

“I know that—because you were taken with her the moment you saw her at the train station. Weren’t you?”

George shook his head. “No. She’s
your
wife.”

Briggs laughed bitterly. “Funny, you were the one trying to convince me not to marry her in the first place. You wanted me to get to know her first.”

George leaned back in his chair. “I remember. I had a bad feeling about everything.”

“And you were right. You have no idea what I learned tonight.”

George inclined his head, curiously. “Well? Are you going to tell me?”

“I sure am.”

A half hour later, George sat back in his chair and sighed. “Do you believe him?”

“I don’t know what to believe,” Briggs replied. “I’m just starting to have the feeling that this marriage was never meant-to-be. I thought I was avoiding trouble by getting myself a mail-order bride. I thought it would be simpler.”

“What are you going to do?”

Briggs rested his forehead in his hand and squeezed his eyes shut. “I should do what any man in my position would do. But the idea of it…”

George looked up. “The idea of
what
?”

“The idea of….” He couldn’t believe this was happening. “God, George, I do care for her. I’m practically obsessed, because I can’t stop thinking about her every damn minute of the day. But that’s crazy, and I can’t let how I feel about her change what has to be done. I know it’ll be hard, but I gotta do the right thing. I gotta protect myself, and I’m going to need your help.”

George exhaled heavily and sat back in his chair.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Sarah lay awake in the darkness staring at the ceiling. The pain in her arm had woken her an hour ago, and she’d tip-toed into the hall only to find herself alone in the house, which was odd because it was past midnight.

Her mind had already created an alarming number of unpleasant scenarios. What if Briggs and George had gone out to find Garrison? What if something terrible had happened to them? What if they’d reported everything to the sheriff?

Back in bed now and turning onto her side, she rested her cheek on the back of her hand. If only she could sleep through this physical pain and emotional uncertainty.

About a half hour later, she heard a wagon pull up in front of the house. She leaped out of bed and hurried to the window.

They were back. A sigh of relief escaped her. She stood at the window, one hand resting on the sill. George and Briggs spoke for a moment. Then George hopped down from the wagon and came to the door.

Briggs drove off.

A sick feeling crept into Sarah’s stomach. Where was he going?

She wrapped her shawl around her shoulders and hurried downstairs where she met George in the kitchen. “Where were you?” she asked, unable to hide her fear and desperation.

George laid some papers on the table, and seemed to have some trouble meeting her eyes. His tone was cool as he spoke. “You’d better sit down, Sarah.”

Her heart began to thump inside her chest. “Why? What happened? Where did Briggs go?”

“Please sit down,” George suggested more insistently as he pulled a chair out for her.

Sarah hesitated, then slowly made her way into it. She sat there waiting while George flipped through the papers. “Would you like a cup of tea before we begin?” he asked as he put on his spectacles, hooking the wires behind his ears.

“No, I don’t want anything,” she replied, feeling confused and anxious, “except for you to tell me what’s going on.”

George folded his hands on top of the papers in front of him. “I’m afraid it’s not good news.”

A jolt of fear left her paralyzed.

“I’m sorry, Sarah, but Briggs has decided to seek an annulment.”

Everything seemed to grow dark around her as George’s words settled into her mind. An annulment? Had she heard him correctly?

“He feels very strongly about it, and he hopes you’ll understand.” George took a deep breath. “He doesn’t want to see you again.”

Tears flooded her eyes. She swallowed hard, trying desperately not to cry. “Did he tell you why, exactly?”

“I’m not at liberty to discuss that with you, Sarah, but I will say this much—it’s on the basis of fraudulent misrepresentation. You may want to seek your own counsel if you wish to contest it, as I am representing Briggs now.”

The chill in her brother-in-law’s voice wounded her deeply, for she’d always felt that George thought highly of her. Now it seemed as if the whole world was turning against her.

“Does he still love Isabelle?” she asked, her voice cracking.

“As I said, it’s not my place to discuss that with you.”

But she could not back down, because this made no sense. “Did Garrison say something to him?”

George picked up the papers and ignored her question. “Everything’s right here. You should read it over carefully. Briggs has already signed it.”

Staring in disbelief at what George held in his hands, Sarah felt a sudden burst of anger. When she made no move to reach for the documents, George offered her some information.

“It may come as a relief for you to know that it doesn’t implicate you as a bigamist. We discussed it at great length, and he doesn’t want to see you go to jail. His just wants his freedom. So we came up with a phrasing that would—”

“I don’t care about that,” she blurted out. “I just want to know what his reasons were. Because everything was fine this afternoon. I still believed he loved me.”

George cleared his throat awkwardly. “It says you misrepresented yourself. That you led Briggs to believe things about yourself that were not true.”

She shoved her chair back and stood. “This annulment won’t make me go back to Garrison if that’s what Briggs thinks. I’ll make my own way. I want you to tell Briggs that.”

George stared at her, his face pale. “I will.”

“And if Briggs can walk out on me knowing how much I love him, and how much I wanted to be his wife, then I welcome this annulment. If he’s incapable of trusting me—or of loving me—then I’m better off without him.”

Heart racing, she turned and walked out of the kitchen, but stopped at the bottom of the stairs.
The papers.
She hadn’t signed the papers….

She squeezed the railing. Should she do it? Should she let Briggs go so easily, without a fight, or without an explanation on his part?

Sarah’s anger quickly became a scalding fury.
After all they’d been through together, how could he leave her without even saying goodbye?
He’d sent his brother to do it for him.