ONCE THE DECISION WAS MADE, Rowdy went to fetch the preacher, and the aunts and Helga were awakened to stand witness to the ceremony in their nightgowns, sleeping caps and wrappers.
Lydia put on her aunt Nell’s wedding gown, for the second time in one day, and Gideon allowed Lark to drape him in Rowdy’s best Sunday coat and knot a string tie at his throat.
It might as well have been a noose, considering his expression, Lydia thought, finding herself in a strange state of happy despair.
“We’ll have to hold a reception as soon as we can,” Lark fretted happily. “Sarah and Maddie will never forgive us if we don’t.”
Lydia knew that Sarah was Wyatt’s wife, though she had yet to meet her second prospective sister-in-law, and vaguely recalled Maddie as Mrs. Sam O’Ballivan. A prosperous rancher and a former Arizona Ranger, Mr. O’Ballivan had been Stone Creek’s leading citizen when Lydia had lived there as a child.
“There’ll be no fuss,” Gideon said to his sister-in-law, sternly alarmed at the prospect of a party to celebrate the marriage. “I mean it, Lark.”
Lark smiled. “I’m sure you do, Gideon, dear,” she replied lightly. “But this time, you’re not going to get your way. Fuss isn’t the word for what’s going to happen when this town finds out you’ve come home and gotten married, all in the same day and without a howdy-do to anybody.”
“I haven’t had time for a howdy-do,” Gideon snapped. “And I’ve got to be at the mine, ready to work, at seven o’clock sharp tomorrow morning. When I’m through there—after a little matter of, oh, ten or twelve hours—I’ll be turning the town upside-down looking for a place to put all these women—”
A place to put all these women.
The phrase echoed in Lydia’s mind, brought a sting of humiliation to her cheeks. Gideon made it sound as though she and the aunts and Helga were a band of unwanted horses in need of stabling.
If she’d had anywhere else to turn, any honorable way to earn a living, she would have told her clearly reluctant bridegroom to go and—well—do something else beside marry her.
The minister arrived, a plump, middle-aged man, looking sleepy and surprised, the fringe of hair around his bald pate still shining with the water he’d used to slick it down in his haste to answer Rowdy’s summons.
A license had been hastily prepared, and Gideon signed it with a bold, harsh flourish. Lydia’s own hand trembled as she penned her much less spectacular signature beneath his.
Probably anxious to get the whole thing over with, so he could return to his bed, the man of God took up his post with his back to the fireplace, and impatiently pointed to where the groom ought to stand. Lydia stood frozen for so long that Helga finally put her hands on her shoulders from behind and pushed her to Gideon’s side.
For an event of such momentous significance—neither Lydia’s life nor Gideon’s would ever be the same, after all—the ceremony went very quickly. In fact, Lydia noted, stealing glances at the mantel clock behind the minister’s right shoulder, the whole thing was finished in under ten minutes.
Lydia responded when she was supposed to—with prompting from Helga, who kept nudging her in the ribs. Gideon, she saw out of the corner of her eye, had to unclamp his jaw before every utterance he made.
Finally, the clergyman, after a nervous glance at Rowdy, who was standing at Gideon’s right side, announced loudly, “I now pronounce you man and wife. Mr. Yarbro, you may kiss your bride.”
Lydia, concentrating on getting through the wedding without fainting or bursting into tears, had not thought about the traditional kiss. She’d barely had a moment to steel herself for it when Gideon turned her to face him and gave her a brief, almost brotherly, peck on the mouth.
“Well, then,” the minister said, all but dusting his hands together. “That’s done.”
The aunts giggled like little girls and clapped their hands together, and Helga muttered, “Thank heaven!”
Lark gave Gideon a scathing look as he left Lydia’s side, without so much as a backward glance, to pay the minister for his services and escort him to the door. Then she hugged Lydia, whispering close to her ear, “Everything will be all right—I promise.”
Rowdy, clearly as annoyed with Gideon as Lark was, smiled and kissed Lydia on the forehead, welcoming her to the Yarbro family.
His words brought tears to her eyes and, seeing them, Rowdy wrapped his strong arms around her and drew her close against his chest for a long moment. “You’ve got brothers now,” he told her. “Wyatt and me. And we’ll look after you, even if that young fool yonder doesn’t.”
Lydia let her forehead rest against Rowdy’s shoulder. She nodded, too overcome to say thank-you.
The celebration, alas, was as short as the ceremony.
The aunts each kissed Lydia on the cheek, and then turned to go back to their room. Helga actually shook her hand, as though they’d completed some business arrangement, and returned to the nook behind the kitchen, yawning as she went.
Rowdy and Lark each skewered Gideon with a look and then vanished, like the others. Rowdy’s supper, evidently, had been delayed long enough.
And so Lydia found herself alone in the parlor with Gideon.
Her husband.
What was she supposed to do now?
Gideon looked as uncertain as she felt.
“I guess that wasn’t the wedding you probably dreamed about, growing up,” he said, smiling for the first time since they’d all assembled in the Yarbros’ front room a mere fifteen minutes before.
He was wrong about that, at least in part, though Lydia would never have told him so. She had dreamed of marrying Gideon many, many times, as a child, as a young girl, as a woman. But in her fancies, he’d always been eager to make her his bride, and there had been church bells, and flowers, and pews full of well-wishers. And a romantic honeymoon afterward.
Speechless, Lydia simply shook her head.
Gideon shoved a hand through his hair, glanced toward the stairs. “I know I said I wouldn’t make you share my bed,” he began, “but—”
Lydia found her voice. She even came up with a shaky little smile, then finished the sentence for him. “But they’ll expect us to sleep in the same room, since it’s our wedding night.”
Gideon nodded. He looked so glum, so tired, that Lydia’s foolish heart went out to him.
She walked over to him, took his hand. “It’s all right, Gideon,” she teased in a mischievous whisper, once again taken over by a bolder, stronger version of herself. “I promise I won’t compromise your virtue.”
He laughed, and the sound heartened Lydia. “Come along, then, Mrs. Yarbro,” he said, squeezing her fingers lightly. “Let’s turn in for the night, like the respectable married couple we are.”
Lydia’s heart sprouted wings and flew up into her throat, fairly choking her, but she allowed Gideon to lead her up the stairs, in that ancient, thrice-worn wedding dress.
Putting a finger to his lips as they passed the rooms where his nieces and nephews were sleeping, he led her into a chamber at the end of the hall, under the slant of the roof. A beautiful china lamp glowed softly on the nightstand, and the window was open to the night breeze.
Lydia forced her gaze to the bed, drew in her breath when she saw how narrow it was, and again when Gideon immediately began shedding his clothes. The coat went first, then the tie, then the shirt.
“You’re not sleeping in that gown, are you?” he asked, down to his trousers and boots by then. He sat down on the edge of the mattress, and Lydia knew he was watching her, but the angle of the lamp left his face in shadow, so she couldn’t make out his expression.
She did see the scar on his shoulder, though. She wondered what had happened to him, but couldn’t bring herself to ask.
Almost saucy before they ascended the staircase, Lydia was once again her normal shy and reticent self. “Lark lent me a nightdress,” she heard herself say, “but it’s in Helga’s room, where I was supposed to sleep tonight.”
Gideon didn’t speak. His face was still unreadable, but she saw his throat move as he swallowed.
“I’ll go and fetch it,” Lydia said.
Gideon stood, crossed to her, turned her around and started undoing the many buttons at the back of her dress. “No need,” he said, his voice strange and hoarse. “You can wear one of my shirts.”
Lydia supposed that was better than sleeping in her drawers and camisole and corset, all of which were uncomfortable, but in a way it seemed even more daring than lying down next to Gideon with nothing at all on. She yearned for one of her own nightgowns, with their long, full sleeves, high necklines, and ruffled hems brushing the floor, but they had all been left behind in Phoenix.
If she went downstairs to claim the one Lark had offered, she would have to face Helga and, anyway, she didn’t think she had enough starch left in her knees to make it that far.
“All right,” she said.
Gideon went to the large mahogany wardrobe on the far wall, took out a shirt. Brought it to her.
“You keep clothing here?” she asked, knowing the question was inane but unable to bear the silence. Accepting the garment, she averted her eyes.
“I’ve been known to visit occasionally,” Gideon answered, oddly affable after the way he’d acted downstairs, before, during and after their wedding ceremony. “Lark and Rowdy set this room aside for me when they built the place.”
With that, he turned his back, allowing Lydia time to step out of the gown she’d been clutching to her, shed her corset and underthings, and scramble into the shirt. The tails reached past her knees, and the cotton fabric smelled pleasantly of Gideon—soap, aftershave and, oddly, since she hadn’t seen him on or near a horse, saddle leather.
“W-what will you sleep in?” she asked. She still hadn’t moved from the center of the room, and Aunt Nell’s cherished gown lay in a pool at her feet. Hastily, Lydia stepped out of the billow of yellowing lace and silk and gathered it up, clutched it to her.
Gideon laughed, low and quiet, surely mindful, as Lydia was, of the children slumbering in nearby rooms. “Normally, Mrs. Yarbro,” he replied, still keeping his back to her, his arms folded, “I don’t sleep in anything at all. Can I turn around now?”
Lydia bit her lower lip, nodded, realized that he couldn’t possibly have seen that gesture, and said, “If you must.”
He approached the bed, threw back the lovely faded quilt and top sheet beneath. “Which side do you want?” he asked, before yawning expansively.
Lydia managed to move far enough to lay the folded wedding dress down carefully on top of an old steamer trunk in one corner of the room. From what she could see of that bed, it was barely big enough for Gideon, let alone the both of them. And he expected her to choose a side?
“Maybe I should sleep on the floor,” Lydia said.
“You’re not sleeping on the floor,” Gideon countered immediately, and with a touch of impatience. A pause followed. “And neither am I.”
Lydia realized she had to make a decision and act upon it. “You sleep next to the wall, then, and I’ll have the outside.”
Gideon, still wearing his trousers and nothing else, executed a sweeping bow, and when he straightened, the lamplight splashed across his face and Lydia saw that he was grinning. “A wise choice, Mrs. Yarbro,” he said. “That way, if I decide to ravish you in the middle of the night, you have at least a fighting chance to escape.”
“I wish you’d stop calling me ‘Mrs. Yarbro,’” Lydia said, embarrassed because Gideon had guessed exactly why she’d chosen to sleep on the outside. Thank heaven he couldn’t suspect how strenuously another part of her had argued for the inside. “It sounds so—formal.”
“Formal or not, you are legally my wife. That makes you Mrs. Yarbro.” Gideon unfastened the top button of his trousers as he spoke, causing Lydia to turn around again, this time with a whirling motion. And making Gideon laugh again, a throaty rumble that struck a corresponding note deep inside her. “Some husbands would wonder if they’d married a virgin or not. I’d say there’s no doubt about that where you’re concerned.”
Lydia heard the creak of bedsprings and knew Gideon had finally reclined, leaving her with nothing else to do but climb in beside him or curl up on the hooked rug like a dog settling down for the night.
When she could make herself meet Gideon’s gaze, she found that his face was in shadow once more—except for the flash of his white teeth. He was grinning again, apparently amused by her discomfiture.
“For God’s sake, Lydia,” he said, “get into bed before I change my mind, break my word, and have you right and proper.”
“That,” Lydia responded pettishly, “is hardly reassuring.” But she drew nearer, reached for the ornate key that would turn the wick and extinguish the china lamp.
“Leave that,” Gideon said gruffly.
Although she had neatly skipped over the word obey in the vows she and Gideon had so recently exchanged, Lydia found herself doing as she was told, leaving the lamp to spill light over them both, squeezing into bed next to him.
The warmth and steely hardness of Gideon’s body were hard to ignore, pressed against her like that, but Lydia was determined to notice as little about her husband’s anatomy as she could. She shifted onto her back, thinking it was a good thing neither of them were any bigger than they were.
She’d almost convinced herself that she could close her eyes and sleep lying next to a naked man, when Gideon stretched across her, his arm brushing her suddenly sensitive nipples as he reached to turn the lamp key.
Lydia felt like a patch of tinder-dry sagebrush in the path of a wildfire.
Gideon was almost on top of her, and if he so much as kissed her or stroked her hair, she knew she would ignite and be consumed. The wanton hussy, barely under control even now, would surely assert herself.
But Gideon did not kiss her.
After passing over her again, having plunged the room into darkness by turning the lamp, he lay down, and within a few moments, Lydia knew by his breathing that he’d gone to sleep.
She felt both relief and disappointment—she’d expected him to at least try to seduce her. After all, agreement or no agreement, it was their wedding night, and given the incendiary nature of the kiss they’d shared the day before—had it really been only yesterday?—she’d thought he might succumb to temptation.
Not that she’d tried to tempt him in any way, of course.
She’d been the very soul of modesty.
Maybe she should have, though, she reflected fitfully, feeling hot and achy and oddly moist in the private place between her legs. As sheltered as she’d been, she knew that men were by nature lusty creatures and could not be expected to control their impulses in certain situations—the aunts had warned her about this on numerous occasions, usually after they’d had too much sherry.
Lydia knew Gideon wanted her—they were in such close proximity in that narrow bed that no amount of naïveté would have allowed her to delude herself in the matter—but it seemed he was quite able to control his masculine appetites, because he was most certainly asleep.
A deep and sudden stab of loneliness struck Lydia then, and that was indeed strange, given that Gideon was lying not just beside her but against her.
Tears stung her eyes; she blinked them back.
Although she’d dreaded having relations with Jacob Fitch, she imagined the worst would have been over by now if she’d gone through with the first wedding of the day. Having sated himself, Mr. Fitch would probably have lapsed into near-unconsciousness long since, leaving Lydia free to creep out of bed, wash herself thoroughly, and find a private place to cry.
As much as she abhorred the idea of submitting her body to Mr. Fitch night after night, she knew she would have gotten used to it eventually, learned to endure what happened in the marriage bed by thinking of other things until it was over. Millions of women did just that, didn’t they? According to Helga—who had been unhappily married at one time, before her husband had had the good grace to run off with a dance-hall girl, never to be seen again—the first experience was painful, the next few merely uncomfortable. After that, though, it was something one simply waited out, and invariably quick to end.
Yes, it was true that Mr. Fitch had made her feel revulsion and not much else, and Gideon inspired desire instead. But at least if she’d stayed and married Mr. Fitch, she and the aunts and Helga would still have their home and their own things around them—the books in the library, the garden full of hardy flowers they’d worked so hard to coax from the earth, the dour but blessedly familiar portraits dominating virtually every wall.
What would happen to the flowers now, with no one to carry water to them? The thought of them waiting in vain and then wilting deepened Lydia’s sorrow, made it nearly unbearable.
Now, suddenly, she was a guest in another woman’s house, sleeping in a man’s shirt because she didn’t own a nightgown and didn’t want to traipse through dark rooms to recover the one she’d borrowed. She had a husband who did not want to be married to her.
The tears came again, and this time, Lydia couldn’t hold them back.
Some inner sense must have alerted Gideon; he shifted behind her, rested his arm across her waist, though not heavily.
Lydia bit her lip to keep from sobbing aloud.
She felt the backs of Gideon’s fingers brush her wet cheek.
He drew her closer, if that was possible, so they lay tucked together like spoons in a drawer, and that comforted her a little. At the same time, it made her want him more.
“Don’t be afraid, Lydia,” Gideon murmured. “Don’t be afraid.”
“I’m n-not,” Lydia lied.
Gideon drew her around to face him, wrapped her in a loose embrace. He was hard everywhere, his chest, his shoulders, his arms and thighs—and, of course, there.
“We’ll find a house of our own tomorrow,” he said. “Then you can have a room all to yourself.”
A room to herself.
That was what he thought she wanted.
And she didn’t know how to tell him how wrong he was, because she wasn’t at all sure what she did want, beyond release from the physical need he’d aroused in her.
What such a release would be like she couldn’t say precisely, but she knew instinctively that it was part of the reason Lark glowed the way she did, especially when Rowdy was around.
Lydia cried all the harder.
Gideon sighed. He’d told her he had to work in the morning; he was growing impatient because she was keeping him awake. “What is it?” he asked, very quietly.
She hadn’t meant to say what she did next, it simply came out. “The way Lark is—”
“Pregnant?” Gideon prompted, with a tinge of amusement in his voice.
In for a penny, Lydia thought, in for a pound. The darkness gave her courage—or just made her reckless. “The way she is with Rowdy—”
“Ah,” Gideon said. “That.”
“That?”
“If I show you what makes Lark shine like she swallowed every streetlight in town, will you go to sleep?”
A thrill of sweet terror went through Lydia. “That depends,” she said, suddenly breathless.
Gideon rested his hand on her lower belly, began easing the shirt upward, baring her thighs and then more of her, and still more. With a low, sleepy groan, he nibbled at her earlobe, sending fire racing under every inch of her skin, making her quiver.
“Depends on what?” he asked lazily.
“I’m—I’m not sure,” Lydia admitted.
He chuckled at that. “I’m going to hate myself for this,” he said.
Lydia squirmed as the unnamed need intensified with every featherlight pass of his fingers over her bare skin. Gave a little gasp when Gideon suddenly parted the nest of curls between her legs and began to caress her in earnest, though very slowly.
“Oh,” she whimpered, stunned by the delicious sensations launching themselves from that tiny nubbin of flesh to race skyward like Chinese rockets. “Oh.”
“Umm-hmm,” Gideon affirmed, his fingers making circles, going around and around. Moist before, Lydia was wet now, and the slickness of her skin increased the rising, panicked pleasure with every movement of his hand, however slight.
“Ooooh,” Lydia gasped.
“Shh,” Gideon said, teasing her now, plucking at her, drawing a strange, silent music from the very core of her body, leading her, note by note, toward some shattering crescendo.
Lydia’s hips began to move, with no prompting from her mind, causing the bedsprings to squeak slightly.
Gideon chuckled into her hair and worked her harder, and yet with a tenderness that opened new places inside Lydia, revealed a world of fierce desire she’d never dreamed was there. “Easy,” he mumbled. “You don’t want to get there too soon.”
Lydia had no idea where “there” was—all she knew was that she wanted more of what Gideon was doing to her—much more. That she would surely die if he stopped caressing her.
“Oh—Gideon—” she pleaded “—Gideon—”
He slowed his fingers, nibbled at her neck and the edges of her ear, sighed again.
“Faster—oh—Gideon, faster—”
“Shh,” he said again.
She tried to part her legs farther, but there was no way to do that, in such a confined space, and Gideon seemed to find the dilemma amusing, because another hoarse chuckle escaped him. Finally, he left off stroking her toward madness to run his hand along the quivering flesh of her thigh to her knee. He grasped it, though gently, and lifted and, again by instinct alone, Lydia caught her foot behind Gideon’s calf.
When he went back to plying her with his fingers, she couldn’t keep quiet anymore. She turned her face into the pillow, to muffle the ragged, involuntary cries of ecstatic desperation.
Gideon continued to pleasure her with his hand, groaned again as he brushed his lips across her nape.
Lydia was feverish by then, mad with need—and with curiosity. “What is—oh, dear God—what is happening to me—?”
“You’re about to find out,” Gideon drawled, increasing the pace.
Lydia’s hips wanted to fly now, but Gideon had somehow pinned her against him, making it impossible to move. When a low, steady moan poured from her, one even the pillow couldn’t stifle, he shifted her to lie flat beside him and covered her mouth with his.
When his tongue passed her lips, all of Creation splintered into a blinding light, full of color and fire.
Lydia bucked wildly under Gideon’s hand, and he contained her cries by deepening the kiss. And even as she came apart in his arms, he didn’t stop making those slow, fiery circles with his fingers.
That first release was so calamitous in scale that it nearly consumed Lydia and yet, as she descended from the heights, Gideon continued his leisurely pleasuring. Every few seconds, she’d catch on another, softer peak, and then soar helplessly, and then fall again.
When he’d coaxed her body through the last spasm of surrender, never letting the devastating kiss end, he somehow knew she was finished, and slid his hand to her lower belly, let it rest there.
“That,” he said, “is why Lark lights up when she’s around Rowdy.”
Lydia’s face burned in the darkness. It was a long time before she could breathe well enough to answer. “But there’s more—isn’t there?”
“Yes,” Gideon answered. “There’s more. But that isn’t going to happen—not tonight—so go to sleep.”
“But what—what about you?”
“I’ll survive,” Gideon ground out in response. “I think.”
“Gideon?”
“What?”
“It was—wonderful. I never—I never guessed—”
“Neither did I,” Gideon said. “Neither did I.”