The Bridegroom. Linda Lael Miller

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СКАЧАТЬ was a sort of triumphant relief.

      Jacob shouted invective and started forward, surely intending to block Gideon’s way, but Mrs. Fitch restrained him simply by laying a hand on his arm.

      “Let her go, Jacob,” she said. “Let the trollop go.”

      The trollop? Suddenly furious, Lydia began to kick and struggle, not because she didn’t want, with all her heart and soul, to escape this curse of a marriage, but because she did want to tear into that vicious old woman like a she-cat with its claws out.

      Gideon, swinging around in an arch toward the kitchen, gave Lydia a swat on her upended, lace-covered bottom, not hard enough to hurt, but no light tap, either.

      If Lydia had been furious before, she was enraged now. “Put—me—down!” she sputtered.

      Gideon didn’t even slow his pace, much less do as he’d been told. “If I do,” he said, sounding slightly breathless now, “we’re both going to be in a lot more trouble than we are now.” They’d reached the kitchen, and Lydia tried in vain to grab at the doorframe as they went out.

      A man lay sprawled on the back porch, raising himself to his hands and knees as they passed, shaking his head as if befogged. Helga, carrying a handbag and a small reticule and wearing a hat, waited at the bottom of the steps.

      Looking down at the man on the porch, Helga put a foot to the middle of his back and flattened him again.

      Gideon’s strides lengthened, increasing Lydia’s discomfort and her ire. Helga, keeping pace, gave her a look of reprimand.

      “I can’t believe you’re doing this!” Lydia cried.

      Gideon all but flung her into the back of a buckboard. “Believe it,” he said, helping Helga up into the wagon with considerably more courtesy and then scrambling up in the box to take the reins.

      Lydia heard the brakes squeak as Gideon released the lever, probably with a hard thrust of his foot, and the rig lurched forward as he yelled to the horses.

      The ride through that alley was so rough that Lydia had to make three attempts before she managed to sit up.

      The man from the porch was running behind them; he caught hold of the tailgate with hands the size of Easter hams and started to climb inside.

      Helga fell back onto her elbows and kicked with both feet, as hard as she could, and the man screamed and let go, falling to the ground, bellowing curses after the rapidly departing wagon.

      The buckboard careened around a corner, onto a side street, throwing Lydia hard against the side. She tried several times to climb up into the box beside Gideon, but each time there was another corner, and she fell back again, bruising herself.

      If this was a dream, it was entirely too realistic for Lydia’s tastes.

      Hauling herself onto her knees, grasping the side of the wagon to keep from being hurled down again, Lydia watched in disbelief as they came abreast of the train depot. Steam belched from the stack of the huge engine, and the whistle blew, shrill enough to make her let go and cover her ears with both hands.

      Through a haze of shock and utter confusion, she thought she caught a glimpse of her aunts, smiling down at her from one of the passenger car windows. They were both wearing enormous hats, bedecked in flowers and feathers.

      Surely, Lydia thought distractedly, she was mistaken. Seeing things. Millie and Mittie hadn’t ridden a train, let alone bought new hats, since Lincoln was president.

      But she had no time to consider the matter further, because Gideon brought the wagon to a lurching stop, jumped from the box, raced around to wrench open the tailgate, and hauled Lydia out, flinging her over his shoulder again.

      This time, she was too exhausted to fight back.

      “Hurry!” Helga yelled to him, over the whistle and the rising chug of the train engine. “They’re coming!”

      The next thing Lydia knew, she and Gideon and Helga were onboard the afternoon train, Gideon carrying her down the aisle between the rows of seats as easily as if she weighed no more than his saddlebags.

      Passengers observed the scene with amused interest, to Lydia’s everlasting mortification.

      The train was already moving, quickly picking up speed, when he finally plopped her into a seat, then stood there glaring down at her, his breath coming hard.

      Across the aisle, Mittie and Millie, clad in bright blue silk dresses to match their hats, smiled winningly.

      “This is so romantic,” Mittie said. “Don’t you think so, sister?”

      Millie nodded. “It’s almost as if Major Bentley Alexander Willmington the Third had come back to life,” she replied. Then, with a wistful sigh, she added, “Major Willmington was so very dashing, you know.”

      Lydia returned Gideon’s glare. “I will never forgive you for—for—”

      Gideon leaned until his nose was almost touching hers. His lip, she noticed, had stopped bleeding. “For what?” he demanded, through his teeth.

      “For striking me!” Lydia whispered, well aware that she and Gideon were the center of attention and so embarrassed that she thought she might actually die of it.

      Gideon straightened.

      His eyes widened slightly.

      And then he threw back his head and shouted with laughter.

      CHAPTER FOUR

      ROWDY BOARDED THE TRAIN the moment it pulled into the depot at Stone Creek, his face chiseled into angry lines as he stormed along the aisle toward Gideon, paying no mind at all to greetings from other passengers as he passed.

      “Have you completely lost your mind?” he rasped, reaching Gideon’s seat and looming over him.

      Gideon, who had been dozing for the past couple of hours, exhausted from a sleepless night and the rigors of stealing a bride over the considerable objections of the groom and his hired henchmen, grinned up at his older brother, just to piss him off further.

      “I guess the law down in Phoenix must have sent you a telegram,” he said cheerfully. “Reckon it said you ought to be on the lookout for a kidnapper.”

      Rowdy’s ice-blue eyes sliced to Lydia, sound asleep in her rumpled wedding dress, her head resting on Helga’s shoulder. A faint smile touched the marshal’s mouth. “Is that who I think it is?”

      Gideon nodded, stretched. “Lydia Fairmont,” he confirmed. “All grown up.”

      “I’ll be damned,” Rowdy said. A decade before, as the new town marshal, he’d been the one to go out looking for Lydia’s father, in the middle of a blizzard. He’d found Dr. Fairmont sitting frozen in his buggy, along a lonely road, and brought the body back to Stone Creek after spending a long night standing between two horses to keep his own blood from turning to ice.

      “Are we under arrest?” one of Lydia’s aunts piped up, from the row of seats just behind Gideon’s, having spotted СКАЧАТЬ