The Bridegroom (32 page)

With that slight, wicked grin she knew so well, he extended one hand, caught hold of the braid, and tugged at it lightly. Then he gave a hoarse chuckle and said, “For a moment there, I thought it was the laudanum the doctor gave me last night, making me see things—but you’re really here.”

Lydia laughed softly, even as tears of utter relief and bone-melting exhaustion scalded her eyes. “I’m really here,” she said. “How do you feel?”

“Would you believe me if I said I was fine?”

“No,” Lydia answered.

He chuckled again, and then winced. “I’ve—been better,” he allowed. “A lot worse, too.”

Lydia let her gaze rest on the old scar marking his right shoulder. He’d never told her how he’d gotten it, and she’d never asked, but things were different between them now. He hadn’t left Stone Creek—left
her
—meaning to keep on going.

“I was shot once,” he said, shifting slightly and then wincing again. “Around the time your aunt came and took you to Phoenix, after your father was killed. I’ll tell you about it sometime, when it doesn’t hurt to talk.”

Lydia smiled, stroked his hair back from his forehead. “Rest,” she said.

“I’d rest better if you’d lie here beside me,” he replied. And the look in his eyes was so earnest, and so hopeful, that Lydia did as he asked. Carefully, so she wouldn’t cause him added pain, she lay down on that narrow bed beside her husband, and he slept.

And, after a while, so did she.

A
FULL WEEK HAD PASSED
before Dr. Robinson declared Gideon well enough to travel, even by train, and during that time, Lydia learned a great deal about her husband. It wasn’t that Gideon was suddenly forthcoming—she’d realized by then that intimate confidences simply weren’t in his nature—no, it was Ruby who shed light on the things he’d never troubled himself to mention.

Ruby told Lydia about Gideon’s little half sister, Rose, how she’d been run down by a wagon one day, chasing a kitten into the street. Only four years old at the time, Rose had been killed instantly. Gideon, then six, had been inconsolable, blaming himself. Winter, spring, summer and fall, Ruby said, he’d gone to Rose’s grave every day, before and after school, and sometimes during.

One bitterly cold night, with a blizzard coming on, Ruby said, a full two years after Rose’s death, Gideon’s father had gone to look in on the boy and found his bed empty. Jack, as Ruby referred to her late husband, went straight to the cemetery, and sure enough he found Gideon right where he’d known he’d be. Gideon had built a little fire near Rose’s resting place, and he was having the devil’s own time keeping it going in that weather, and when Jack questioned him, he said Rose hadn’t liked the dark, and it was so cold, and he didn’t want his little sister to be scared.

Remembering, there in the saloon that had been closed for business since Sunday, Ruby’s eyes had filled with tears. “Jack kicked some snow over that fire and hauled Gideon home by the scruff of his neck,” she’d told Lydia. “Once the boy was safe in bed, Jack came and told me what happened, and he broke right down and cried. I’d only seen Jack Payton shed tears once before, and that was when we buried our little Rose.”

Ruby had said other things, too—things Lydia would always hold gently in the safest part of her heart. How Gideon used to gather wildflowers for her sometimes, when he’d been up to mischief or because Ruby had “the melancholies.” How smart he’d been in school, and how hard he’d tried to keep his marks a secret from the other kids. How he’d eaten a whole bowl of cake batter once when Ruby’s cook left it unattended to go off on some sudden errand, and been so sick afterward that he’d literally turned green.

Over the course of that week, Rowdy having gone back to Stone Creek as soon as he knew for sure Gideon was out of danger, Lydia and Ruby had taken turns sitting with their increasingly
im
patient patient, but long about Tuesday afternoon, he’d begun to get downright cranky, so they’d left him to grumble alone, at least for short intervals, and gone off to drink coffee and visit, just the two of them.

Under any other circumstances, Lydia reflected, watching her husband struggle to put on his new shirt—Ruby had bought it for him, along with a pair of trousers, since his own clothes had been ruined—because he wouldn’t let anybody help him, she might never have gotten to know Ruby—or Gideon—in quite the same way. And she certainly wouldn’t have had the singular experience of living in a saloon for a week, either, keeping company with a former madam.

Wouldn’t
that
give the aunts a wicked thrill when she related the tale.

The thought of their reaction made her smile. “We’re going to be late for the train, if you don’t hurry up,” Lydia told Gideon.

He sighed in frustration and dropped his hands to his sides. Allowed Lydia to straighten the sleeves, guide his arms into them, and fasten the buttons. When she tilted her head to look up into his face, though, she saw that his eyes were smoldering and that damnable Yarbro grin had found its way back to his mouth.

It was obvious what Gideon wanted, but the train was leaving in forty-five minutes and they still had to get to the station and buy their tickets.

“Ruby still in back, tallying up how many cases of whiskey she has on hand?” Gideon asked, his voice a throaty rumble.

Lydia frowned at him. They
had
made love, though awkwardly, twice since Gideon had begun to recover—it would have been hard not to, since the bed he’d slept in as a boy was barely wide enough to hold both of them and that made scooting out of his reach impossible—but she’d been embarrassed. Sure that Ruby would hear, and
that
had been late at night. Now, it was broad daylight, for pity’s sake.

“Gideon Yarbro,” she said, “you will have to wait until we get home.”

He ran the backs of his fingers down the side of her cheek. “That long?”

“That long,” Lydia insisted. But she was wavering.

Gideon gave a long-suffering sigh.

Right on time, Ruby appeared in the doorway.

“I had my buggy hitched up and brought around,” she said, and she must have sensed the crackle in the air because
she smiled a wistful, knowing little smile. “I’ll drive you to the station whenever you’re ready.”

“Have we worn out our welcome, Ruby?” Gideon joked.

A brief but obvious sadness moved in Ruby’s face. “It’s going to be mighty lonesome around here without the two of you,” she conceded, with some resignation. “But you need to get back home where you belong, and I’ve got a saloon to run, so I’ll thank you to get a move on, Gideon Yarbro. There won’t be another train to Stone Creek until tomorrow, and I don’t think I can put up with you that long.”

Gideon chuckled, crossed to Ruby, placed his hands on her shoulders, and kissed her forehead.

“Remember,” he told his stepmother, “you promised to spend Christmas in Stone Creek with us. And I don’t want to hear any excuses when the time comes, either.”

“I’ll be there,” Ruby said softly. “Though I can just imagine what folks will say when
I
show up. It’s not as if people don’t know all about me, far and wide.”

“The only ‘folks’ you need to worry about, Ruby,” Gideon said, “are the Yarbros, and we’ll make you welcome. All of us. That’s a promise.”

Ruby sniffled once, looked away, looked back at Gideon. “You be careful, now,” she said. “No more damn fool stunts like the last one.”

“That ‘damn fool stunt,’” Gideon replied, “was part of
my job.
”

“Well, you need a different one,” Ruby said, jutting out her chin.

“I surely do,” Gideon agreed. He’d dictated a letter of resignation as soon as he was able, Lydia taking it down, and Ruby had mailed it off to the owners of the Copper Crown Mine.

Ruby colored up. “I’ve got a little money put by—”

“Keep your money,” Gideon told her gently. “I’m not broke yet, Ruby, and if I was, I could always hit Lark up for a loan.”

That last part, Lydia knew, was just talk. Gideon had a lot of pride, and he probably wouldn’t have accepted Lark’s wedding gift—their house—if he hadn’t needed a place to put her and the aunts and Helga. She couldn’t imagine him asking Lark, or anyone else, for money.

“We’ll get by,” Lydia assured Ruby. She’d been going over possibilities in her mind ever since Gideon had decided to give up detective work. There were plenty of rooms in the Porter house, even with the aunts and Helga taking up two of them. If necessary, Lydia had decided, though she had yet to broach the delicate subject with Gideon, they would take in boarders.

“I’m sure you will,” Ruby said, moving past Gideon to embrace Lydia. “I’ll miss you something fierce.” She choked up a little, and her eyes watered, but she rallied at once. Turning to look at Gideon, she added, “
You,
on the other hand, laying around wanting somebody to read to you, or bring you soup, or listen to you bellyaching about being stuck in bed—”

Gideon laughed. “I’ll miss you, too, Ruby,” he said.

In the distance, the train whistle shrilled. It was time to leave.

Ruby insisted on driving the buggy and, because the seat was so short from side to side, Lydia had to ride through the middle of Flagstaff sitting on Gideon’s lap. She blushed the whole time; folks kept looking at them, but she could have ignored that. No, it was the rock-hard imprint of Gideon’s manhood burning into her bottom that made Lydia dizzy with achy heat.

Since they had no baggage to speak of—Lydia had been wearing Ruby’s clothes all week and Gideon, con
fined to his bed, hadn’t required any until today—all they had to do was purchase tickets, board the train, and find their seats.

All that came after bidding Ruby farewell, though, and that was the difficult part. Lydia cried, thanking her friend repeatedly, and Ruby finally shushed her and told her to ‘get on that train and go home.’

“I’ll see you both at Christmas,” Ruby said, in parting.

T
HE TRAIN RIDE BACK TO
Stone Creek seemed endless to Gideon; he wanted to get home, make sound and thorough love to Lydia in a bed wide enough to hold the both of them without their being stacked like cordwood, and sleep. He’d stopped taking laudanum as soon as he could stand to, and the slash in his right side hurt like hell, since he wasn’t used to sitting up. The stitches itched, too—he’d been tempted, in fact, to take them out himself, and the doctor’s order be damned, but Lydia and Ruby wouldn’t have it.

The two hours the trip took up—counting stops in Indian Rock and a wide spot in the road where a mail-rider was waiting to exchange pouches with the conductor—finally passed, and the engineer blew the steam whistle, announcing the train’s imminent arrival in Stone Creek.

They’d barely stepped onto the small platform, with the few other passengers stopping there, when an earsplitting boom literally shook the wooden planks under their feet.

Smoke and dust billowed skyward and then descended like an early twilight.

Rowdy, who’d come to meet them, reacted immediately. “The mine!” he yelled unnecessarily. Like everybody else—including Gideon—he ran in that direction.

“Gideon!” Lydia screamed. “Wait! You’re hurt—you can’t—”

He looked back over one shoulder. “Go home, Lydia,” he told her.
“Now.”

Instead, she caught up with him. She might love and honor and cherish, his spirited bride, but she clearly came up short in the “obey” department. “Everybody’s always telling me to go home,” she sputtered, waving a hand in front of her face because the dust was even thicker now, “and I’m sick of it!”

Gideon shook his head and moved faster.
Hardheaded woman
, he thought, loving her more than he’d ever thought he could—and that was plenty.
Let her keep up if she can
.

He and Rowdy were among the first to reach the mine entrance, which was crisscrossed with fallen timbers and still belching puffs of dirt and smoke.

Wilson, the foreman, his nose bruised and a little crooked but no longer bandaged, since Mike O’Hanlon had broken it with his fist, hurried over to Rowdy and then just fidgeted, evidently unable to talk.

“Is anybody in there?” Rowdy demanded. It was Sunday, after all, and the mine was closed, but the question had to be asked.

Gideon could have answered it. Breathless and grasping his side, he saw Mike O’Hanlon rise up in his mind’s eye as clearly as if the Irishman had been standing right in front of him. Heard O’Hanlon’s warning, verbatim, in his head.

“When you speak to the owners, young Yarbro, you tell them we’ve taken all we’re goin’ to take. You tell them we’re tired of seein’ our children go hungry and our God-fearin’ wives ashamed. You tell them, Mr. Yarbro, that we’ll
bury
their precious ore, and ourselves with it, before we’ll crawl before them like whipped dogs one more time….”

“Christ,” Gideon groaned. And then he headed for the opening of the shaft, knowing he oughtn’t to do what he was going to do, but bound to anyway.

Rowdy, left behind, yelled his name.

He didn’t stop. He
couldn’t
stop.

He climbed down into that pit, making his way from fallen beam to fallen beam, pain searing his side, probably tearing the stitches loose, only too aware that other collapses were inevitable, now that the support structure had been compromised.

Still, something drove him on. Mike O’Hanlon hadn’t been his friend, hadn’t trusted him. With good reason. Gideon had been squarely on the wrong side of the trouble between the workers and the owners, and just then, he’d have given just about anything to go back and do things differently.

“Gideon!” Rowdy called, from high above, his voice echoing through the dusty gloom.

“Shut up,” Gideon called back, once he had the breath. There was blood seeping through his brand-new shirt; his wound was open again. “You want to bring the rest of this goddammed hole down on top of me?”

What Rowdy did next didn’t surprise Gideon in the least, because he’d have done the same boneheaded thing. He felt a rain of pebbles, knew his brother was following the same treacherous path he’d taken.

The belly of that mine was as dark as a back closet in hell when Gideon reached it, but there was a faint, flickering glimmer of light down one of the side shafts, and he followed it, drawn like a moth to a candle.

He found O’Hanlon half-buried in timbers and rubble, with a kerosene lantern burning on the ground nearby.

“Young Yarbro,” O’Hanlon said, after gathering his inner forces, “fancy meetin’ you here.”