Rose's Mail Order Husband - A Historical Mail Order Bride Story (Montana Brides) (13 page)

She managed to tune in just long enough to hear the minister explaining the duties and obligations of husband and wife. How could he know? How could he know what passed between her and Jake? How could he know what their marriage would build itself on?

He
couldn’t. What he said didn’t mean a thing. No one could ever know or understand. Maybe what passed between them never happened before in the history of the world.

Finally, the minister wound up his interminable lecture. Somewhere in there, he asked if anyone knew any reason why this marriage should not take place, but no one said anything. No one mentioned anybody being guilty of Cornell’s murder. All that bluster fell by the wayside.

Then the minister glanced sheepishly around the room. “So who’s going first?”

The three grooms looked at each other, and the three brides looked at each other.

“I’m the oldest.” Violet stepped out of line into the middle of the room. “I’ll go first.”

Chuck stepped out of line to meet her with a grin stretching from one ear to the other. He
couldn’t stop himself from laughing, but his eyes brimmed with tears. From behind her, Rose saw Violet’s shoulders shaking with laughter and sobs. She didn’t need to see the inexpressible joy on Violet’s face. There it was, in full view, on Chuck’s face looking at Violet.

Then began the vows.
“Do you, Charles, take this woman, Violet, to be your lawfully wedded wife? To love, honor, and cherish, forsaking all others, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, ‘til death do you part?”

Did he really have to ask? Anyone looking at Chuck would know he did, and gladly. His voice cracked when he said, “I do,” so the words barely came out at all. He
didn’t have to say anything. And Violet? Did she take this man, Charles, to be her lawfully wedded husband? No woman ever took a man as her husband more joyfully, more gratefully. And no woman ever intended to love, honor, and obey with more sincerity than Violet.

Rose heard her sobs when Violet said, “I do.” Rose sniffed back her own tears for Violet’s happiness. No one deserved happiness more than Violet. No one had sacrificed more. No one dedicated more effort to the happiness of others and lost more sleep in her anxiety to keep them all tied together as a family.

She’d earned the most exquisite happiness for herself. She’d earned a family with a good, solid man at her side, and she’d earned the Main House as her home. Rose didn’t envy Violet one bit. She only wished she could do something to contribute to Violet’s happiness.

But
she couldn’t. Violet remained the sole architect of her own destiny. Under her anxious, fluttery exterior beat the heart of a stalwart. Violet would never give an inch when she knew what was right. She would never flinch on something she knew she deserved. She would never waver in her single-minded determination to get it, and she built an empire of goodness around her in the process.

In spite of her own assurances to her sisters upstairs, Rose grieved the loss of Violet from her own life. Violet would never be her surrogate mother again. She would move to the Bird House, and Violet would become Chuck’s wife and the mother of children. They would never be the sisters they had been up until this very moment.

Rose glanced around the room and saw everyone else in tears, too—everyone but Jake. Mick and Iris watched Chuck and Violet exchange vows with tears of joy streaming down their cheeks. Rose never saw Mick so emotional before. He stared at the newlyweds as if he couldn’t believe such happiness existed in the world, as if he didn’t believe marrying Iris would bring him the same joy.

Iris sobbed at Rose’s side. No
doubt she felt the same loss at moving out of her childhood home. The minister sniffed between passages of his service. Didn’t he see this kind of love and joy all the time? Were Chuck and Violet really so unique?

Rose stole a glance at Jake. He observed the scene with the same mild curiosity he bestowed on everything. He spotted Rose watching him and his eyes twinkled. Would he feel the same grateful joy and overflowing love for her when their turn came? Then again, none of them had the Sheriff waiting to haul him away, either. Maybe he
couldn’t appreciate the moment with that hanging over his head.

The minister instructed Chuck to kiss the bride. Chuck looked back at Violet and burst out laughing. Then he stepped closer to her, struggling mightily to keep smiling through his tears. Every time he laughed, it came out as a sob.

He lifted Violet’s veil, and Rose heard her sobbing and laughing along with Chuck. Chuck placed both hands on Violet’s shoulders, bent toward her, and pecked her tenderly once on the lips. He didn’t try to make it any more than that.

Then he took both of Violet’s hands in his. Without looking at the minister, he led Violet to the back of the room, out of view.

The minister looked around for his next victim. “Who’s next?”

Mick stepped forward, and Iris joined him. Mick didn’t wait for any invitation. He reached out and took Iris’s hand and squeezed it tight. His presence calmed Iris, and her crying faded to nothing. The minister began his service again.

When Mick
said “I do,” to the vows, his voice boomed out through the room. Rather than the rapture Rose saw on Chuck’s face, Mick’s expression looked more like a frown. He set his jaw and clenched his teeth. Then Rose realized he was determined not to cry through his own wedding.

Rose
couldn’t see Iris’s face, but she recognized the sound when she said, “I do.” Rose knew her sister well enough to know the feeling behind that voice. It was a voice of laughter, of song, of exultant triumph.

In spite of all Iris’s accusations about who killed Cornell, Rose loved Iris now. One look at Mick and Iris’s hands, clenched together so tightly their knuckles shone white, proved they belonged together. They would hold onto each other, supporting and maintaining each other through every storm.

Iris transformed herself over the last three days. She used to be a dusty, callused, chaps-wearing cattle puncher who liked nothing better than to ride the range every day. Now she was a delicate, lovely, bewitching bride who carried this man’s heart in the palm of her hand. That transformation happened when Iris met Mick McAllister. He made her what she was, and what she wanted to be.

The minister told Mick to kiss the bride. Mick glanced at him, just to make sure he
hadn’t heard wrong. Then he moved closer to Iris and lifted her veil.

When he saw her face, his resolve melted, and his mouth twisted up into a mask of emotion. His lips quivered, and his eyes overflowed the tears he held back during the ceremony. Iris’s shoulders jerked once in laughter, and then she burst into tears, too.

Mick squeezed Iris’s hand tighter than ever. He laid his other hand on her cheek and kissed her, but his lips wouldn’t behave. As soon as they touched Iris’s lips, they jerked away from her, and he broke down in wracking sobs. He threw both arms around Iris and wept on her shoulder.

Iris held him up with her slender arms around his ribs, patting him on the back between her own sobs. At last, she pushed him up and
off of her, took him by the hand, and led him to the back of the room where Chuck and Violet waited for them.

And
there they were, Jake and Rose, alone, staring at each other across the room.

The minister waited for them to move up, but neither moved a muscle.

Jake’s eyes bored into Rose’s brain, obliterating all awareness of everything else. Nothing remained in the world except him. She didn’t know if she could move with him looking at her like that. A rabbit caught by the mesmerizing gaze of a wolf must feel this way. Her every fiber screamed for her to break that iron stare, but she couldn’t move.

The minister affected to cough nervously to get their attention. Jake’s eyes pierced her across the gulf. He tilted his head slightly to one side as if shrugging off the tension of the moment. Then he stood up from his chair.

With a sweeping motion, he moved the chair forward. Using the back of the chair like an improvised crutch, he hopped into the space left vacant by the other two couples.

Still she
couldn’t move. Only when he held out his hand to her did she find herself freed from her trance. She reached out her hand and grasped the life line he threw to her. He rescued her from drowning in the abyss and pulled her to the safety of the place in front of the minister.

As soon as they got into position, the minister examined the couple for a moment. “Aren’t you going to take your hat off, young man?” he asked Jake.

Jake chuckled. “I suppose I could.”

The minister scowled at him, and Jake lifted his hat off his head.

The other couples probably couldn’t see well enough from the back of the room, but Rose saw the thick black thatch of his hair combed back from his forehead and down behind his ears.

He took the hat off with his left hand and set it on one of the side tables at his elbow, right next to one of the vases of daisies. Sheriff Maitland moved out of his place in the corner and stepped up toward Jake, staring hard at him. His eyes flashed, and he pressed his lips together.

“Is everything all right, Sheriff?” the minister asked.

The Sheriff glanced at the minister. Then he gave Jake one last hard stare and moved back. He nodded to the minister. “Carry on.”

Rose didn’t hear much of what the minister said. Something extraordinary was happening to her. She was changing again.

Just when she
thought she was finished changing into a completely different person, now she experienced another transformation. Her mind seemed the same, but her body shifted and morphed into something completely alien to her.

She was becoming Mrs. Jacob Hamilton. Did she really want to become that? Just a few nights ago, her sisters asked her if she really wanted to go through with this wedding, and she insisted that she did. Only now did she really understand.
Was this wise? Could a person undergo such a massive upheaval, such a fundamental alteration to their identity, and survive it? Would she fall apart into her component pieces?

Violet and Iris
couldn’t have gone through a similar experience when they said their vows. They were too happy, and they married men who acted as bedrock for their identities.

She stood alone with this feeling. Jake certainly
didn’t feel any uncertainty about getting married. He just asked her, not two hours ago, if she was his, and she said
Always
. Was she still his now?

Rose shuddered. Then she heard the minister addressing her. “Rose?”

“What?” she answered.

“Rose?” he repeated. “Did you hear me?”

“Hear what?” Rose reached up to brush something out of her face, but found her way blocked by her veil. Then she realized the thing she wanted to brush away
was
the veil, and she lowered her hand to her bouquet again.

“I read you your vows,” the minister told her. “We’ll start again.
Don’t drift off, because it’s important you know what you’re agreeing to. Do you, Rose, take this man Jacob, as your lawfully wedded husband, to love, honor, and obey him, forsaking all others, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, ‘til death do you part?”

“I do,” she replied.

The minister stared at her. “Are you sure?”

“Of course, I’m sure,” Rose shot back. “You just heard me say I do, didn’t you?”

“Okay,” the minister replied. “I just wanted to be sure. You didn’t hear me the first time, so I just thought I’d check. If you’re sure, that’s all that matters.”

“Why wouldn’t I be sure?” Rose snapped.

“Very well,” the minister answered.

He prattled on about something or other, and then he told Jake, “You may kiss the bride.”

What an anti-climax! They’d already kissed a dozen times in stolen moments like this morning in the Bird House and this afternoon in the canyon. And here they were, supposed to kiss in front of her sisters and their new husbands and Sheriff Tom Maitland, as if they would put their passion for each other on public display!

Jake acted so self-assured. But when he stood before her, his lips twitching one way and another under his moustache in their approach to her mouth, she saw the hesitation in his eyes. That was never there before.

Just before he kissed her, he glanced toward the back of the room, toward the Sheriff.

He kissed her, a casual, platonic, Aunt Polly sort of kiss that meant nothing. Then he stepped back and chuckled. Rose’s mind spun in confusion. Should she be horrified or relieved that it was over? And now there was nothing stopping the Sheriff from dragging him away. But there was no backing out now. The deed was done. They were married.

She felt him take her hand, and they turned away from the minister toward the others. Rose scanned their faces and burst into tears all over again.

Her sisters surrounded her, comforting her, misunderstanding her tears for tears of joy. They embraced her and wept along with her, while their men slapped each other on the back and shook each other’s hands.