Gil executed a stately bow. “I would be honored, Miss Emmeline,” he replied. “Not to mention relieved to be spared my own cooking, if only for one night. Now, get yourself into that surrey and drive away before chivalry gives way to lust and I take you where you stand.”
Although Emmeline did not find the latter idea entirely unappealing, she turned and hurried toward the surrey all the same, scrambling up into the seat before Gil could offer a hand and set her senses to rioting again.
“Seven o’clock,” she said, gathering up the reins.
“Seven o’clock,” Gil agreed, and stood watching as she drove off.
• • •
As soon as Emmeline was out of sight, Gil put away his tools, saddled his nameless horse, and set out for town. By his reasoning, when a man courted a woman—even when that woman was his wife—certain refinements were called for. Soap, for one, and a decent suit of clothes for another.
His appearance at the general store inspired murmured comments, especially since Miss Emmeline had probably just driven that silly-looking surrey of hers through town at a smart pace, but he didn’t mind. Sooner or later, he’d have had to talk to folks and it was natural for them to be curious. His resurrection was probably the most interesting thing that had happened in Plentiful since the Sioux stopped taking scalps.
Gil found his neighbors friendly, if less than subtle in their efforts to find out whether or not he meant to fetch Emmeline from the judge’s house and carry her back to his cabin over one shoulder. He kept his intentions to himself, not out of reticence but because he wasn’t sure himself what he was going to do.
Emmeline was a desirable woman and, in the eyes of God and man, she was his wife. He wasn’t made of stone, nor was he particularly noble, to his way of thinking. Which meant he might lose sight of his philosophy and good intentions one of these days, and show all the restraint of a wolf mounting its mate.
He bought a wagon and a mule before he left town, and stopped by the mill to order lumber for a new roof. Although he hadn’t told Emmeline when she’d handed over the money for the stock she’d sold, probably to Montgomery, Gil had met with that banker friend in San Francisco before catching
a stagecoach north to the Montana Territory. He had enough cash to repair the house and barn and buy the beginnings of a new herd.
Back home, he stripped off his clothes and waded into the stream, a bar of hard yellow soap in hand, and scrubbed himself clean from his scalp to the soles of his feet. He’d have preferred a tubful of hot water, but after all he’d been through since the night he was pressed into service aboard the infamous
Nellie May,
a cold bath was hardly cause for complaint.
Once he’d washed, Gil climbed out of the creek and dried himself with his shirt. Then, whistling, he got into the new duds he’d bought at the general store. He’d invested in four pairs of wool trousers and four chambray shirts, and it made him feel rich, having such an extensive wardrobe. Never mind that there was a hole in his roof and his barn was leaning to one side; a man could only attend to one matter at a time.
• • •
Emmeline was standing at the parlor window when Gil Hartwell arrived promptly at seven, in a buckboard pulled by a fine-looking mule. She backed away, lest he catch her watching him, and all but stumbled over a wide-eyed Izannah.
“Great Zeus, Emmeline,” the girl whispered. “Just yesterday you were going to marry Mr. Montgomery. Now here you are inviting another man to supper!”
“Stop fussing,” Emmeline said. “You sound like an old woman. And must I remind you—again—that Mr. Hartwell is my husband?”
“Becky Bickham says her father’s going to preach against sins of the flesh tomorrow morning,” Izannah confided, following Emmeline into the entry hall and right up to the front door. “I think you should attend, since the sermon is so obviously directed at you!”
Emmeline smiled distractedly, smoothing her brown sateen dress and patting her hair, which was already threatening to come tumbling down around her shoulders. “'Sins of the flesh,’ is it? I should think a situation like mine would call for a discourse on the evils of bigamy.”
“Emmeline!” Izannah hissed, scandalized.
Gil’s knock sounded at the door, and Emmeline held a finger to her lips and waited, as though she had to come from a great distance to admit him.
His smile was utterly disarming, and he carried a nosegay of wild violets and buttercups in one hand. Emmeline stared at Gil, hardly able to credit, even now, that he was back.
Izannah finally nudged her. “Good evening, Mr. Hartwell,” the girl said cheerfully. “Won’t you come in?”
“Thank you,” Gil replied easily, and stepped past Emmeline. He offered the nosegay and she accepted it, blushing with shy pleasure, then excusing herself, in stumbling words, to go into the kitchen and put the tiny bouquet in water.
When she returned to the front of the house, Gil and Izannah were in the parlor. The girl sat at the piano, waiting for an invitation to play, while Gil stood beside the polished instrument, smiling down at her. Emmeline felt a surge of jealousy and was instantly ashamed. Izannah was a shameless flirt—she’d batted her lashes and flashed her dimples at Mr. Montgomery many a time—but she was only seventeen, after all, a mere child.
“Perhaps you wouldn’t mind favoring us with a song,” Emmeline said to her cousin, to make up for uncharitable thoughts. “Izannah is my most promising student.”
There was a smile in Gil’s eyes as he looked at Emmeline.
“I’m going to make some man a wonderful wife,” Izannah chirped.
Gil didn’t laugh at this announcement, and Emmeline would be forever grateful.
“I should think you’d want to make some sort of life for yourself first,” she pointed out mildly, though her first instinct was to grab the girl by the throat and throttle her. Emmeline met Gil’s eyes as Izannah began to play a Mozart sonata. “We have relations in the East,” she said, as if he didn’t know all about them. “Our great-aunt Margaret has offered to take Izannah to Europe next spring.”
“It wouldn’t be half so interesting as Plentiful,” Izannah chimed, over the delicate notes of her favorite recital piece. She turned that dazzling, dimpled smile on Gil. “What would you have done if you’d come back and found Emmeline married to Mr. Montgomery?”
Gil took the little imp’s hand, lifted it from the keyboard, and kissed it lightly. “That’s easy,” he replied smoothly. “I’d have turned right around and courted you, Miss Izannah.”
W
ILL YOU BE IN CHURCH TOMORROW
?” E
MMELINE ASKED AT THE
end of the evening as she said good-bye to Mr. Hartwell on the front veranda. Even though the steps were hidden by climbing roses on one side and a lilac bush on the other, she wouldn’t have dared to do or say anything untoward. The neighbors were simply too vigilant, and there was enough gossip going around as it was.
Gil stood with his hat in his hand and one foot on the bottom step, looking up at her. “Just think how disappointed folks would be if I didn’t turn up,” he said, and his mouth tilted upward at the corners in the slightest of grins. “I don’t have the heart to let them down.”
Overhead, a canopy of stars glinted, undimmed by the feeble glow of light that was Plentiful. There was a weighted feeling in the air, as if a violent storm was coming, and yet the warm breeze promised a hot day tomorrow. Emmeline wanted to ask if Gil was sleeping inside the cabin, with its
gaping roof, but she didn’t dare raise such a subject with Mrs. Dunlap surely bending so far over the garden fence that she might impale herself on the pickets. The old meddler was bound to be taking in every word.
“Well, good night then,” Emmeline said clearly, so her neighbors would know Gil had gone home directly after supper.
Gil reached out, took her hand, and brushed his lips across her knuckles in a feather-light kiss that left Emmeline trembling. “Good night, Miss Emmeline,” he said, with equal clarity, and turned to stroll, whistling, toward the open gate at the end of the limestone walk. His mule and buckboard awaited on the other side of the fence.
It was all Emmeline could do not to call him back, and damn the neighbors and their clacking tongues. But she had not survived seven difficult years by weakness, and her determination held against an onslaught of physical longings. Lifting her skirt slightly with one hand, her spine as straight as a broom handle, Miss Emmeline turned and swept back inside the house with her chin high.
Nobody besides Gil would have guessed that her heart was pounding against her rib cage like a Sioux war drum and her breathing was so quick and shallow she feared she would swoon.
Emmeline took a long, tepid bath in the kitchen that night, but the indulgence did nothing to settle her jumping nerves. There was only one thing, unfortunately, that would do that.
Resigned, Emmeline dried herself, put on her nightgown and wrapper, dragged the tub to the back door and across the mud porch, emptied it, and hung it on its peg on the outside wall. Then, carrying the lamp, she climbed the rear stairway and went to bed. Miraculously, she fell into a heavy, dreamless sleep.
The next morning, Emmeline awakened with puffy eyes, feeling thoroughly unrested. The weather was strange, the air heavy and charged with some sort of elemental anticipation. The sky, a fierce and brittle blue, looked as though the flight of one sparrow might shatter it like an eggshell and bring it tinkling down over all their heads in the tiniest shards and splinters.
Emmeline prepared herself carefully, because today, for the first time since her thwarted wedding day, she would face the whole town. She wore her most conservative dress, a brown serge trimmed in cocoa-colored braid and adorned only by Gil’s brooch, pinned circumspectly to her bodice. To complete the somber ensemble, she added a bonnet to match her frock.
Izannah looked up from her oatmeal as Emmeline entered the kitchen by way of the back stairs. Normally, Emmeline would have eaten a substantial breakfast, for the Sabbath was a long day in Plentiful, beginning with two hours of preaching and singing and another of fellowship on the shady side of the churchyard. But today she did not trust her fretful stomach to contain even the simplest food.
“You look quite ghastly this morning,” Izannah said with exuberance.
“Thank you,” Emmeline responded, tugging on her gloves. She’d be the center of attention today, along with Gil, of course, and she dreaded the inevitable looks and questions with all her heart, for she was by nature a quiet and private person, happiest when left alone to mind her own affairs. “Could you hurry, please?” she asked Izannah pettishly, frowning at the clock. The mechanism inside wound itself audibly, preparing to strike the hour. “It is nearly nine, and only the vain and feckless keep the Lord waiting.”
Izannah rolled her mirthful brown eyes and carried her
cereal bowl to the sink. “It isn’t the Lord that’s waiting
this
morning,” she pointed out. “I don’t imagine
He’s
in any suspense at all.”
“Hush,” Emmeline scolded, aware of a sudden warmth in her cheeks. “It’s not fitting to speak so flippantly of holy matters.”
“Oh, fuss and bother,” Izannah muttered, arranging the skirts of her Sunday dress. A blue sateen with puffed sleeves and understated ruffles at the bodice and hem, it was the most sedate garment the girl owned. “Every day but Sunday, you let the Lord go His own way with hardly a nod, while you go yours. If you ask me, you’re nothing but a hypocrite, carrying on about being late to church.”
Emmeline gave her cousin a none too gentle push toward the back door. “Reverend Bickham’s sermon will be sufficient unto the day,” she said briskly. “I do not require an additional one from you.”
They walked through the rear garden to the alley, proceeding down a rutted road toward the white clapboard church at its end, converging with other families, small and large, as they went. Greetings were exchanged, as usual, but Emmeline did not miss the sidelong glances or the whispers behind gloved hands.
A cluster of men had gathered, as they did every Sunday, in the shade of the row of poplar trees planted to protect the church from harsh Montana winds. As subtly as she could, Emmeline searched the group for Gil. Instead, she found her gaze locked with that of Neal Montgomery.
Blast him, Emmeline thought uncharitably, lowering her head a little and hoping the wide brim of her bonnet hid her flushed face from prying eyes. Mr. Montgomery was no believer; that was why they had planned to marry in her garden, rather than before Reverend Bickham’s pulpit. He
was present only to nettle Emmeline and to fuel the fires of speculation.
Emmeline shot him a skewering look, and he tipped his hat and smiled benignly. She wondered why she hadn’t noticed the man’s ornery streak before.
“Do you think Mr. Montgomery would marry me, now that it turns out you’re taken?” Izannah teased, making no effort to speak in a moderate tone. She was plainly enjoying the melodrama as much as anyone else in town.
Emmeline’s response was tight-lipped. “No doubt he would,” she replied. “And I must say, such a union would serve you both right.”
A twitter went up from the women and girls; the men, fortunately, were too far away to hear. Or so Emmeline devoutly hoped.
The church bell began to ring, drowning out any response Izannah might have been brazen enough to offer, and the congregation moved in a swell toward the open doors of the church.
Emmeline swept down the aisle with her chin held high and took her place in the same pew she always did. Members of her family had sat right there ever since the judge had come to Plentiful in pioneer days, a new-minted lawyer with a young bride and a surplus of high hopes. A little modesty on her grandfather’s part then might have saved Emmeline some difficulty now, for she was smack in front of the church, where everybody could see her. Worse, she hadn’t seen Gil, and wouldn’t know whether or not he’d kept his promise to attend until after the services were over, since she wasn’t about to turn around and scan the congregation for him.