“What?”
“Even my darn dress is determined to keep me here.”
Pearl clucked her tongue. “I told you this material is very fine.”
The only thing that kept Evie from yanking herself free was the love and hope her mother had sewn into this dress. It wasn’t Pearl’s fault that Evie wanted more from life than what society dictated she could have. The flaw was in her, not her mother.
She held still as Pearl worked the delicate lace collar free.
“There.”
“Thank you.”
Over her mother’s shoulder and through the doorway, Evie could see the wedding guests smiling and talking in small groups. People who’d gathered to wish her well. People willing to disregard the disgrace that had brought her to this point and allow her a fresh start, sending all their good wishes with her. This was her wedding day and this was her mother, and as much as Pearl didn’t understand Evie, she still wanted the best for her. That love was evident in the quantity of food and richness of the decorations. Pearl had always provided the best for Evie. Because she loved her.
Evie sighed. No doubt, when looking back on this day there would be a lot of things that she’d remember and regret, but one memory she didn’t want was for this to be just another day she had argued with her mother.
Pearl was right. It was time to grow up. The life she’d hoped to lead, her dreams of going to Paris and pursuing a career as a professional artist were dead. She’d killed them when she’d agreed to marry. That wasn’t anybody’s fault but hers. As depressing as it was to know that when push came to shove, she’d chosen convention over freedom, it had still been her choice.
She caught her mother’s hand as she would have stepped back.
“I don’t want to fight.”
“I don’t either. It’s your wedding day, baby. I want it to be a happy time.”
Happiness was beyond her reach, but a smile wasn’t. Fake or not, it seemed to relax Pearl. “Thank you for everything you’ve done.”
Pearl unwrapped the cape from her arms and held it out.
Evie admired the way the satin caught the light in an iridescent shimmer, but she didn’t reach for it. “It’s still hot enough to cook an egg.”
“You don’t want to get your dress filthy before you arrive.”
Arrive where?
Brad hadn’t mentioned where they were spending their wedding night. And up until now, she hadn’t cared enough to ask, but it suddenly seemed a huge lack. “I don’t necessarily want to arrive perspiring either.”
Pearl’s lips twitched. “I don’t suppose you do.”
That smile grated on Evie’s nerves. “What?”
Pearl draped the cape over her arm. “We need to talk about what’s going to happen tonight. I would have addressed it last night, but you were tired.”
Good grief, she was not going to stand outside her reception and discuss relations between a man and a woman with her mother. “I know what goes on between a man and a woman.”
That was a lie, but her mother was no better at telling when she was lying now than she had been when she was a child. Pearl only saw Evie the way she wanted her to be.
The lightest of blushes touched Pearl’s cheekbones. “You do?”
Evie could feel heat rising in her own cheeks. “Most of my friends are married.”
“I don’t want you to be afraid.”
“I’m not afraid.” Another lie that went undetected. “And you just finished telling me that the Reverend is a good man. I would think the best a woman can hope for is to end up in her marriage bed with a good man.”
“Experienced doesn’t hurt.”
Evie blinked. The resentment bubbled over the lid she’d put on it. “I’m not sure how to take that, Ma. Which is more important, a man who knows what he’s doing between the sheets or a man of principle?”
“Evie, that’s crude.”
“I was thinking it was to the point.”
Pearl took a deep breath. Evie braced herself. She hadn’t inherited her sass and impatience from thin air. To her surprise, Pearl reached out. Her fingers slipped over Evie’s and squeezed they way they always had in the past when Evie was afraid but determined to proceed anyway.
“Just tell your husband about your fears, and I’m sure he’ll take care of them.”
Evie glanced over to where Brad chatted with Doc and Dorothy. He was smiling, but there was a tension in his shoulders, slight, but there. He looked up and caught her studying him. She was used to summing up people’s moods pretty quickly. It helped her get what she wanted, stay out of trouble. She couldn’t read her husband. She couldn’t imagine telling him anything, least of all her fears. “I think the Reverend wants to leave.”
It was ludicrous to be calling her husband by that title, but she couldn’t bring herself to use anything less formal. She wasn’t ready to admit this was forever. Pearl caught her hands before she could turn away.
“You let him be good to you. Follow his lead.”
“What if I don’t like where he’s taking me?”
The press of Pearl’s lips was a warning. “Telling a man
no
in bed is a delicate thing.”
It was the most intimate discussion they’d ever had and it had to be now, when there was so much turmoil between them. “Then I guess I’d better focus on saying
yes
. After all, that’s my job now, isn’t it? Saying
yes
to my husband?”
Darn, she sounded bitter when she really wasn’t. She was just afraid to hope.
Pearl blew out a breath. “You might try giving convention a chance. The rules can’t be all wrong. They work for millions of people.”
But they might just be wrong for her. No one understood that though. Sometimes, not even herself. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to be like everyone else. She just . . . wasn’t. “I’ll be fine, Ma. I’ll learn to adjust.”
Or die trying.
“Just try to fit in, Evie. That’s all you need to do.”
Evie rolled her eyes as her mother’s arms came around her waist and hugged her. A preacher’s wife. Could she have locked herself more tightly in propriety if she’d tried?
THE SEND-OFF WAS raucous and full of good cheer, and no different from the end of any other wedding, except everyone knew this wasn’t a love match, so such happiness was completely out of place. After one last wave, one last forced smile, Evie subsided back into the shelter of the buggy’s top.
“Thank goodness that’s over.”
Brad turned slightly. “I thought it was a rather pleasant wedding.”
“It wasn’t real.”
His brow rose. “Feels real enough to me.”
Evie sighed. “Please. This is not a love match.”
His expression didn’t change. “Doesn’t make it any less of a match though, and doesn’t make people’s well wishes any less sincere.”
She supposed it didn’t. Reaching up, she unpinned her hat, and stretched her arms out in front of her. “I wonder if a real bride receives so much advice.”
His lips quirked and his gaze touched her mouth, swept over her throat, and lingered in the vicinity of her chest. “I guess you’ll have to tell me what kind of advice you received before I can give you an answer.”
It was a look meant to seduce a woman, designed to throw her off balance. Brad was going to have to do better than that. Between putting on her cape and walking out the door, Evie had decided she wasn’t going to be that easy to seduce.
“Just the usual malarkey. Men are wonderful and all-knowing and I should believe everything they say implicitly.”
“Well, now, that was a fair bit of advice.”
A fair bit of horsefeathers. She placed her hat in her lap, not rising to his bait. “Why do you like to make me angry?”
“Why do you like to break convention?”
The buggy hit a bump. The cans tied behind jangled. She grabbed the side. “If you’re implying ‘because it’s fun,’ this is going to be a very long marriage.”
He steered the buggy around a corner. “Until death do us part.”
He didn’t say it with the sense of doom that she felt. The heat burned through her cape. She unbuttoned the frogs at the throat. “God help us.”
By the time she got to the third button, they’d passed the Reverend’s residence.
“Where are we going?”
The twitch of his lips should have warned her. “Someplace where you can strip in private.”
Heat that had nothing to do with the temperature burned her cheeks. She forced her fingers to keep doing what they were doing, as if she wasn’t blushing like a young miss. “That’s very thoughtful of you.”
“I try to be accommodating.”
Not that she’d noticed. And she’d noticed him a lot. From the day he’d wandered into town with the McKinnelys after their last hunt, he’d fascinated her. And not just because he was a fine-looking man with a powerful build, though that alone would have been sufficient to draw any woman’s attention. But because he was a man who commanded everyone around him, and no one seemed to notice. She would love to have that ability.
She glanced up from beneath the shield of her lashes. He did have a nice set of shoulders. Broad enough that he made her feel crowded. Broad enough that parishioners felt secure. And after the disaster of their last preacher, a man who’d hated himself, God, and everyone he came in contact with, the Reverend Brad was a breath of fresh air. Enough so that people overlooked his idiosyncrasies for the embrace of his accepting nature.
But just because he smiled and nodded didn’t mean he was going along. His accommodation was often just an illusion as he went around behind the scenes making things happen according to his preferences. There was a relentless energy about the man. Most of it under the surface, only noticeable if one knew to look for it.
The last frog released.
“Good.” She shrugged the cape off her shoulders. The buggy continued out toward the edge of town. “And while I’m stripping, we can talk about a timely dissolution of this marriage.”
Brad flicked the reins, looking straight ahead. “What makes you think I want it dissolved?”
Another glance showed the humor was gone from his expression. “The way it came about.”
“I agree that wasn’t the most positive, but Evie, when I make a promise, I’m not in the habit of backing down on it.”
“No one can hold you to a promise made with a shotgun at your back.” She didn’t want a husband under coercion.
His jaw set. “I gave my word. ’Til death do us part.”
“Well, I’m not so stubborn about the concept of a promise.”
Again, one of those looks out of the corner of his eye that made her uncomfortable. “Good to know.”
He didn’t need to say it like that! “What I mean is, I’m reasonable enough to understand that circumstance—”
“That would be you.”
She gripped a fold of the cape in her hands, squeezing for patience. “Circumstance conspired to put us in an awkward position.”
“
You
put us in an awkward position.”
“Fine.” She slapped her hat against her thigh. “
I
put us in an awkward position. However, that doesn’t mean we have to continue this farce until ‘death do us part.’ ”
“What’s the alternative?”
She took a hankie from the cuff of her dress and dabbed at the perspiration on her forehead. At last he was being reasonable. She yanked a bunch of her skirt out from under her hip. “We stay married for a sensible amount of time and then dissolve the marriage.”
He clucked to the bay, drawing the buggy to the right, heading toward the edge of town. “There are only a couple of reasons a marriage can be dissolved, none of them ideal.”
“I thought we’d go for non-consummation.”
He made a strange sound in his throat.
“I looked it up and it seemed the least offensive.”
He pulled the horse to an abrupt stop. “The hell you did.”
She stopped tugging at her skirt and looked at him. Really looked at him. “You’re angry.”
“What gave you that impression?”
Nothing really. Certainly not his eyes, as they were shadowed by his short-brimmed hat. Not his mouth, which wasn’t any more tense than normal, and certainly not by the tone of his voice. But a lack of signs didn’t change what she knew. He was annoyed.
“It’s more than an impression. You’re angry.”
“Because you think to make me a laughingstock again by telling all and sundry that, when faced with a beautiful woman, I can’t be a man?”
“What do you mean again?”
“I know it’s been a month since the last time you threw my masculinity into question.”
A month? What had she done a month ago? A month ago she’d had her little show . . . She sat up straight, outrage spiking down her spine. “You thought my painting was an insult?”
“It sure as he—heck wasn’t a compliment.”
He hadn’t liked her painting? How dare he criticize her art? “It was an excellent painting and immensely flattering.”
It had also been the most exciting piece she’d ever worked on.
“So you told everyone who would listen.”
He didn’t sound at all pleased, which only aggravated her more. She might not be one to fit neatly into convention, and he might doubt her ability to be a properly restrained wife, but she was a wonderful artist.
“You have no taste!”
Instead of getting angrier, the tension left his shoulders and a smile tucked into the corners of his mouth. Why? The insult should have landed. He should be mad, not amused.
“Pretty much, it’s all in my mouth.”
“That’s a shame, because I can’t cook.”
He didn’t even flinch. “Then you’ll have something to keep you busy for the next forty years.”
“You think I’m so stupid, it’s going to take me forty years to learn to cook?”
The half second it took him to shake his head had her chin snapping up. She wanted to hit him, to kiss him, do anything but just sit here quietly beside him and ride to their honeymoon. The man drove her crazy with contradiction.