Marriage For Sale

She literally ran off. Linc examined the trunk. Bright brass rivets stretched the leather over the wooden frame. New leather, not dyed. It hadn’t had a chance to age like the one that had been passed down to him from his great-grandmother. But in every other way it was identical.

Rachel returned, lugging her saddle with both arms in front of her, with her most precious possessions tucked into the parfleche slung over one shoulder. Linc got one look at her and wrested the saddle from her. “This is way too heavy for you to carry.”

“I’ve been carrying it for most of my life,” she replied, her tone milder and more pliant than she intended. She had heard rumors about how outsiders often took their women for granted. He must not feel he had dominion over her.

Linc threw the saddle alongside her trunk in the bed of his truck. “You’ve been treated like a beast of burden. That’s not going to happen anymore.”

“Hard work soothes my soul.”

“Yeah? Is that why you agreed to be auctioned off like a piece of meat?”

“My last relation died last year.” She shrugged. “Obviously, I could not live alone.”

“Obviously.” Although he had been called a male chauvinist more than once in his life, even he understood the misogyny implied in her statement. It was one more strike against this supposed utopia, The Community. “Let’s go,” he said in a clipped voice. “The sooner we get out of here, the better.”

“I thought Granny Isaacs explained our customs to you during the auction. You and I must be married first.”

“Excuse me?”

“An unmarried man and an unmarried woman of similar age are not allowed to live together.”

He took her arm, hurrying her toward the truck. “Don’t worry. We won’t be living together.”

“But—”

The old lady who had given him such a hard time separated from the watchdog crowd and pushed her way between them. She stabbed a gnarled finger at the middle of Linc’s chest. “Are we of The Community, who have had Rachel with us for her whole life, supposed to take you at your word?” she demanded.

“You of all people know what my intentions are,” Linc retorted.

“Do I? You are little more than a stranger to us.”

“Please, Linc,” interrupted Rachel. “Granny Isaacs is right. Unless we are wed, you will not be allowed to take me with you. It is for my protection should I be ill-treated.”

“You have got to be kidding.” Tempted to just pack her into the cab of his truck, Linc realized that strong-arming her was precisely why these people were insisting on the commitment that marriage implied. “What if I’m already involved with someone else?” His casual relationships with various women didn’t exactly qualify, but he wasn’t about to back down. Not when his freedom was at stake.

“Rachel will be sold to another.”

Linc appealed to Rachel. “Look, you and I are on the same side here. I wouldn’t have spent my money if I wasn’t going to take good care of you.”

“Money is not enough of a guarantee,” interrupted Granny Isaac.

“I can’t believe this,” he said. “If the granny’s bid had won over mine, you wouldn’t have to marry her.”

“The commitment The Community requires is the same,” Rachel explained. “Both parties must pledge to treat each other with respect.”

Granny Isaacs chimed in. “Certainly we can require no less from you.”

Linc wheeled on her. “Yes, you can. You have my word.”

“We require more than your word,” she replied. “We require you and Rachel to be legally wed.”

“How in hell can this be legal? There’s no blood test, no waiting period.”

“The federal laws of this country waive such requirements when they violate certain religious practices.”

“You can’t force me to get married,” Linc said. The no-promises, no-demands, confirmed-bachelor part of him wanted to throw his hands up and leave the place. But he refused to walk away, not when a human being’s freedom was at stake.

“There is nothing forced about this marriage,” Granny Isaacs informed him. “Rachel gave her consent when she agreed to be sold at the auction. You, on the other hand, are free to refuse.”

Their little discussion was drawing quite a crowd. Linc folded his arms over his chest in disgust. “What’s to stop me from going through with this idiotic marriage bit, then annulling the thing the minute we hit the nearest town?”

“An annulment requires both your consent. If it is granted, there is nothing I can do to prevent it.”

The noise of a sharply rude whistle ripped through the air. “Rachel Johnson!” yelled a woman, her face sneering. “He doesn’t want you, after all.”

“Give ’im back his money!” another woman screamed.

Linc grabbed Rachel’s hand and tugged her toward the truck. “I’m taking you away from this crazy place.”

Rachel twisted from his grasp. “I won’t go unless we are married. Please, Linc. It is our law.” Desperation shadowed those extraordinary eyes.

He pulled her aside, out of earshot of the others.

“If I have to marry you to get you out of here, then we’ll do it. But I want an annulment as soon as we hit town.”

Faced by his clear reluctance, Rachel shook her head. “It is unfair to hold you to traditions that were unknown to you at the time of the auction.”

“That isn’t what I asked you. Do you want to marry me or not?”

Rachel didn’t have to check the curious expressions of those witnessing to know that she, too, wished to understand what made him bid for her in the first place. That was what she wanted. “Of course I want to marry you.”

“Good.” To shut up the rude naysayers, he sealed the bargain with a sudden kiss.

Surprise dropped Rachel’s mouth. Amused, he brushed the hair off her forehead and flashed his first smile, brilliant white in the sun. “Everybody is watching us, but I don’t think they’re convinced of my sincerity. Why don’t we give them a show?”

He then kissed her with far more intent. He shaped her mouth, parting her lips, causing tingles to shoot down her legs. Caught off-balance, she clutched at his arms. The tip of his tongue teased her and all sense of equilibrium fled. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she clung to him.

He ended the kiss abruptly, searching her expression. The wariness in his gaze made her instinctively hold her breath, and she wondered what he might do next. Hunger underscored his wariness, hunger far sharper and raw than what she had witnessed earlier. And she had aroused it, Rachel realized.

The arousal went both ways. The heady yearning she felt must have been transparent, for his wariness flared into warning. “The deal is,” he said softly so only she could hear him, “marriage, then annulment. Don’t expect anything more.”

He faced the murmuring onlookers, giving her no time to argue. But she wouldn’t argue in front of these people. She’d been singled out and ridiculed at one time or another by most of them, and she had no intention of giving anyone reason to talk about her now.

As a young child, it was her supposedly albino hair they commented on. Positively ghostly, they’d said. When her parents replied that she was simply light blond, the focus shifted to the uncanny color of her eyes. Even her father declared them unreal. Once she started school, she didn’t know how to defend herself when other kids called her “spooky” for seeming to look right through them.

Contributing to the problem was her habit of staring out the windows, daydreaming. Many times she was forced to sit in front of the class with horse blinders on, big black square ones that kept her focused straight ahead. She supposed the punishment was intended to teach her a lesson. It simply gave the other children more reason to call her names.

After she’d grown up and left school, she learned to forget her old hurts by roaming the range lands for hours at a time. When questioned by her parents about what she was doing out there, she described a band of wild horses roaming the hills. Her plan to tame some of those horses and sell them at auction did not go over well. To her family, it was an impossible task because her help was needed at home on the farm. Even the few friends she’d managed to make said she needed to improve her dismaying lack of cooking skills and learn a trade rather than waste her time running around the countryside. After all, as an adult member of The Community, she was expected to do her share of the work.