The Borrowed Bride

Judd waited for Hannah to speak. He’d promised he wouldn’t rush her but it wasn’t easy to keep still. It was as if she held his life in her strong, young hands.

“I don’t suppose you’ve heard from Quint,” she said at last.

Judd exhaled slowly. “You know I’d tell you right off if I had. I went into town and checked the mail myself. There was nothing.”

“But he’s got to be alive, don’t you think? Surely, if the worst happened, somebody would notify his family.”

“One would hope so. I’m already working with an agency in Denver. They’ve got a good reputation for finding people. But anything they can do is going to take time.”

She clasped her work-reddened hands. Her interlaced fingers flexed and twisted. “Meanwhile, there’s not much we can do except wait, is there?”

“You and I can wait. It’s the baby who can’t.”

“I know.” She turned to face him. The setting sun cast her features in soft rose-gold, like a Renaissance painting. “That’s why I’ve decided to accept your offer, Judd. Until Quint comes home, I’d be honored and grateful to be your wife.”

Chapter Four

Hannah and Judd were married by a Justice of the Peace the following Sunday afternoon. The ceremony took place on the spacious front porch of the Seavers house with Edna Seavers, Gretel Schmidt and the nine Gustavsons attending. Annie, in the pink Sunday dress she’d made over for herself, served as bridesmaid.

Hannah wore the yellowed satin wedding gown that Mary Gustavson had put away and saved for her daughters. In place of a veil, her unbound hair was crowned by a simple garland of wildflowers that Annie had picked and woven half an hour before. She carried the same flowers in a bouquet.

The mood of the little gathering might have been better suited to a funeral than a wedding. Edna sat poker-straight in her wheelchair, looking as grim as Whistler’s portrait of his mother. Gretel, in gray, stood like a granite pillar behind her. Mary, in a mismatched skirt and jacket with an out-of-style hat, wept through the entire ceremony. Soren simply looked lost. Only pretty, romantic Annie seemed to see the wedding as a cause for celebration. But she was too busy shushing the younger children to pay close attention to the ceremony.

Hannah stood beside her bridegroom, fighting tears. For as long as she’d been in love with Quint, she’d dreamed of their wedding. She’d imagined looking up into his twinkling brown eyes, clasping his hand as she vowed to love, honor and cherish him for the rest of their lives. She’d imagined their first kiss as man and wife, long and tender, filled with sweet anticipation of the wedding night to come.

Now the wrong man stood at her side, his low voice speaking vows that were more mockery than truth. “I, Judd, do take thee, Hannah, to be my lawfully wedded wife…to love and to cherish…in sickness and in health…as long as we both shall live…”

Their divorce documents lay locked in Judd’s desk, awaiting only two signatures to dissolve the marriage. There would be no wedding night, no intimacy of any kind.

Where are you, Quint? Why can’t you come home and put an end to this travesty?

“With this ring I thee wed…” Judd was sliding a thin gold band onto her finger. The metal felt cold and strange. It was all Hannah could do to keep from tearing herself away, leaping off the porch and dashing for the gate.

“I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride.” The justice was an elderly man who’d performed hundreds of weddings. Judd had taken him aside and asked him to leave out the kiss, but the old fellow had clearly forgotten.

Hannah had scarcely glanced at Judd during their vows. Now she looked up into his questioning gray eyes. Theirs might not be a real marriage, but it was a genuine partnership, bound by a spirit of cooperation. To turn away from the kiss would end the ceremony on a sour note. Hannah understood this. So, she sensed, did Judd.

Giving him the barest nod, she tilted her face upward. Her breath stopped as his hand braced the small of her back. She had never kissed any boy except Quint. Maybe if she shut her eyes and pretended…

His lips closed on hers, smooth and cool and gentle. For an instant Hannah froze. Then she found herself stretching on tiptoe, leaning into the kiss, prolonging it by milliseconds. Something fluttered in her chest. Then Judd released her and stepped aside.

She had just kissed her husband. And it hadn’t been the least bit like kissing Quint.

Little by little Hannah began to breathe again. Her mother came forward to hug her, swiftly followed by Annie. Soren pumped Judd’s hand. It was all for show. Every adult, even Annie, knew what was happening and why.

Edna Seavers did not join in the congratulations. While Gretel hurried off to fetch lemonade and dainty apricot tarts, Edna sat in her wheelchair as if she were carved from granite.

Let her be, Hannah thought. But Judd, it seemed, was determined to have things his way. Seizing her elbow in an iron grip, he steered her toward his mother’s chair. “Aren’t you going to welcome Hannah into the family, Mother?” he demanded.

Edna’s gaze remained fixed on her hands.

“Mother?”

She sighed. “I’m getting one of my headaches, Judd. Please take me to my room.”

Judd’s eyes flickered toward Hannah. “It’s all right,” she murmured. “Go on.”

She stood watching as he opened the front door and eased the chair over the threshold. This, Hannah sensed, was just a small taste of things to come. How could she face living in this house with a woman who hated her so?

Come back, Quint, she pleaded silently. Come back and take me away from here.

Judd wheeled his mother to her room at the rear of the house’s main floor. The door opened to whitewashed walls hung with black velvet draperies that blocked the light from the tall windows. After the brightness of afternoon sunlight, Judd could barely see the narrow bed with its black canopy and coverlet and the photograph of his father that sat on the nightstand in a blackedged frame. The room was like a crypt for the living.

It was the gloom of existence in this house, as much as Daniel’s urging, that had driven him to enlist in Roosevelt’s Rough Riders. He’d returned carrying burdens of his own. Now, after three months, it was as if he belonged here, one more shadow in a house full of shadows.

His mother’s bones were weightless, like a bird’s. Judd lifted her in his arms and lowered her to the bed. She lay propped on the pillows, waiting for him to cover her legs with the merino shawl she kept folded on a nearby chair.

In her younger days, Edna Seavers had been a beauty, with chestnut hair and laughing dark eyes. But grief over her husband’s death had transformed her into a husk of her former self. Judd couldn’t imagine what it must have been like, loving someone that much. Seeing what it had done to his mother had taught Judd an early lesson. Love walked hand in hand with devastating loss.

“You’ve always prided yourself on your fine manners, Mother,” he chided her. “You had no call to be rude to Hannah and her family.”

Edna made a little sniffing sound. Her jaw remained stubbornly set.

“Hannah’s your daughter-in-law. She’s a fine girl from an honest, hardworking family. Since she’ll be living under this roof, the sooner you accept her, the easier it’ll be for all of us, including you.”

Edna glared up at him. “A fine girl, is she? Then why is she strutting around with one man’s ring on her finger and another man’s child in her belly?”

“Mother, that’s enough—”

“I won’t abide her, Judd. She took Quint away from me. Now she’s taken you, as well!”

“I need to get back to our guests. I’ll have Gretel bring you some tea.” Judd turned and walked out of the room. He loved his mother and did his best to be a respectful son. But sometimes the only way to deal with her was to leave.

Quint was their father’s son—handsome, charming, impulsive and generous. Maybe that was why Edna loved him so much. But Judd had come to realize that it was mostly Edna’s nature he’d inherited—brooding, melancholy and as stubborn as tempered steel. When the two of them clashed they could remain at odds for weeks, even months.

Now he’d unleashed the devil, marrying Hannah and bringing her home. But it was done and Judd wasn’t backing down. For the sake of Quint’s child, this was one battle he was determined to win.

He could only hope Hannah was up to the challenge.

Forcing his face into a cheerful expression, he stepped out onto the porch. The festivities had moved to the grassy lawn, where the younger Gustavsons were enjoying a spirited game of tag. Hannah stood with her parents and the old man who’d performed the ceremony. The ivory satin gown was too large for her, but it draped her slim curves with a softness that Judd found oddly becoming. With her flowing corn silk hair crowned by its wreath of flowers, she looked like a creature from another age, a pagan nymph poised at the edge of a meadow.

“Come and play with us, Hannah!” A little boy tugged at her skirt. “It’s more fun with you! You can be ‘it.’”

She glanced down at her wedding dress. “I’m sorry, Ben, but I really don’t think…”

“Please!” His eyes would have melted granite. “Just for a minute!”

She hesitated, then laughed as she set her glass on the porch step. “Why not? Here I come!”