6
First Presbyterian Church
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 1899
The church was filled to capacity. It had been autumn a full week, but the soft rain drizzling down the stained-glass windows, along with the filled-to-capacity interior, made the chapel warm and steamy. Clothing rustled beneath the organ music as necks craned to catch a first glimpse of the bride, poised on her father’s arm, in the doorway at the base of the aisle.
At the altar, Jake had eyes only for the bride. He stared at Jane-Ellen in wonder, thinking, Tonight. Tonight would be the culmination of all his erotic longings. Finally, to learn the feel of her without the constrictive presence of whalebone between them. Finally, to have the right to teach her the physical aspect of love. The service couldn’t be performed fast enough to suit him.
The bride, on the other hand, looked at her groom up at the altar staring at her with hot eyes and was seriously tempted to call the whole thing off. He was so dark! When had that happened? When she first met Jake, less than six months after his return home from Seattle, he’d been fashionably pale. Apparently, his time spent at the ranch this past year had weathered him, and he no longer looked tame and easygoing. No, he looked dark and dangerous.
Gracious sakes, but she wished her mother were still alive! She needed someone to talk to, for no one had prepared her; no one had told her what to expect. Well, Aunt Clara, who had come to help with the wedding arrangements, had spent a few moments with her while she was dressing this afternoon. But all she’d said about consummating a marriage was a wife must endure.
Endure what exactly? An act necessitating endurance didn’t sound promising. Aunt Clara also said the wedding night might be painful the first time, but to recite scriptures to herself and the things her new husband did to her would soon be over. No amount of cajoling, however, would elicit the information Jane-Ellen most needed to know: what exactly did a man and woman do once they were married?
Her father surreptitiously squeezed her hand on his arm, and they began their stately march down the aisle. The palpable admiration of the wedding guests turning to watch her procession helped dissolve some of Jane-Ellen’s tension. It also served to remind her she wanted to be Mrs. Jacob Murdock. Nobody was forcing her into this marriage. She was indulging in a case of the vapors; that was all. Fashionably pale or dangerously dark, she knew Jake’s basic personality wouldn’t change. She didn’t believe for a moment this perpetually laughing man would ever deliberately harm her. But she still wished someone had told her what to expect.
In the front row of the assembled guests, Hattie sat ramrod straight on the hard pew, her chin at its most imperious angle. In the ten measly weeks since Jake had announced his nuptials, she’d more or less resigned herself. She supposed it was unrealistic to think he would ever marry her. He was a grown-up man and she was just a kid. During the past two months, he’d gone out of his way to tell her—and attempted to show her—he would still be there for her, married or not. She guessed she would simply have to be content with that.
Which was all well and good, but it didn’t address the fact that she was left sitting in church surrounded by people who disapproved of her. Today even more old busybodies were in attendance than the usual assortment she saw at regular Sunday services. She hadn’t missed Miss Eunice Peabody’s comment to Miss Martha Smits earlier when she and Aunt Augusta passed their pew. Even when speaking sneakily, Miss Peabody’s voice carried. “There’s that Taylor hellion,” she’d hissed in her strident whisper. “Looks like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, don’t she? Well, mark my words, Martha, that red hair of hers signifies a wild nature.”
Hattie had thought her whispered, “Pruney-faced old harpy,” was said under her breath, but Aunt Augusta had squeezed her hand warningly. Augusta had also stopped and greeted the two old biddies with regally flawless manners, relentlessly holding their gazes until they were flushed and squirming. Once they’d been properly subdued, Augusta calmly ushered Hattie up the aisle to their front-row pew.
Hattie didn’t understand why people said mean stuff about her. She wasn’t so wild. Well, okay, there had been that one incident at school with Moses Marks. But, heck, even he had agreed he’d brought it on himself.
Just before the beginning of the school year, Augusta had decided Hattie was ready to attend the local school. John Fiske had been dismissed with glowing references, and Hattie had joined her peers in class.
On the Friday of her first week in attendance, Moses Marks, who sat directly behind her, had surreptitiously dipped her braid in his inkwell during lessons. When Hattie rose for lunch with the rest of her schoolmates, her hair, slapping against her back, had splattered the ink all over. Her dress had been ruined.
Naturally she’d tried to knock his block off; who wouldn’t have? And it wasn’t as if she’d broken his nose or anything—it had simply bled a lot. But the way people acted, you woulda thought he hadn’t had it coming.
Moses himself hadn’t held it against her. They had hissed insults at each other as they’d stood with their noses pressed in the middle of the two circles the teacher had chalked on the blackboard. But his face had crumpled with genuine distress when she’d arrived at school the following day with her hair a noticeable three inches shorter. He swore he hadn’t realized the ink wouldn’t wash out and gave her a cookie come lunchtime by way of apology. And that was that.
So why couldn’t everyone else forget about it?
Hattie swallowed a lump in her throat as she watched Jake and Jane-Ellen exchange vows. What was it that caused a person to like another above all others, the way she liked Jake? Was it because he was so affectionate, always tussling with her or hugging her or kissing her nose? Was it because he was always laughing? He alone in the whole town, it seemed, had found her problem with Moses amusing—and applauded the way they’d worked out their differences.
She experienced such a surge of pleasure every time she caught sight of Jake. And something inside ached as she watched him pledge his troth to Jane-Ellen Fielding, even though Jane-Ellen had always been nice to her and Hattie actually liked her a great deal.
Not until the ceremony ended did Hattie breathe easier. Now all she had to get through was the party at the Buchannan.
No one appeared to enjoy the wedding reception quite as much as Jake Murdock. He drank champagne, danced with all the ladies, joked with the men, and through it all, he never stopped laughing. His happiness and high spirits affected everyone, including Jane-Ellen, despite her growing nerves over the upcoming wedding night.
At one point in the festivities, Jake found himself standing momentarily alone. He watched his mother waltz by with Doc Fielding, her face politely blank when Doc trod on her toes. Over in the corner stood Roger Lord, stiff and aloof as usual. A strange man, Roger—arrogant and difficult to warm up to. He’d been their family lawyer for several years now, and Jake had worked with him for almost a year—yet he felt as if he barely knew the man. As soon as Jake and Jane-Ellen returned from their honeymoon, Jake planned to set up his own practice, and he looked forward to creating a work atmosphere more congenial than Roger’s offices.
A flash of red caught his eye, and his mouth curved in a smile against his champagne glass as he observed Hattie. She was trapped in conversation with Aurelia Donaldson, one of Mattawa society’s guiding lights. A favorite affectation of Aurelia’s was an old-fashioned lorgnette, which she wielded to great effect. As he watched, she alternated between peering fiercely through the lenses at the bristling little redhead standing before her and tapping the frame against Hattie’s arm to underscore a point in her conversation. Hattie was clearly struggling to remain polite, but she looked seconds away from snatching the mounted glasses and snapping them in two.
Before Jake could push away from the wall to go to her rescue, Jane-Ellen swept up, exchanged a few remarks with Aurelia, and deftly whisked Hattie away.
Hattie’s flaming mop reminded Jake of his going-away party at Mamie Parker’s establishment the evening before announcing their engagement. Not that Mamie’s hennaed hair compared with the natural brilliance of Hattie’s, but it was dyed in a close enough approximation to elicit a small synapse of remembrance. Mamie had lamented Jake’s upcoming marriage, swearing over the tinny piano music that her girls threatened to don black to mourn their favorite customer’s passage from bachelor to husband. She’d grinned around the black cheroot clenched between her teeth and told him his next visit was on the house.
“Thank you kindly,” he’d replied. “But as of tomorrow, my heart belongs to Jane-Ellen.”
“Honey, she can have your heart,” Mamie had replied with a dirty laugh. “What I want is a whole lot farther south.”
Jake had grinned and left it at that. But he had every intention of being a faithful husband. He had a whole lot of love to give, and he’d merely been whiling away the hours with Mamie’s girls until Jane-Ellen was his. He wouldn’t have gone to them at all if Jane-Ellen had allowed him to express his love with a little more freedom than a few openmouthed kisses.
He’d rather hoped that once engaged, Jane-Ellen wouldn’t find it quite as necessary to adhere so rigidly to the rules. But she was highly moral, his Jane-Ellen. And the few times he’d tried to touch her breasts, she’d frozen in shock and indignation.
Well, hallelujah, they were legally married. In a few short hours, his very own wife would supply everything he’d formerly obtained from Mamie’s girls. More, because he loved Jane-Ellen.
Jake grinned broadly and straightened from his indolent slouch against the wall. Slipping his empty champagne glass onto a passing waiter’s tray, he spied his wife in the crowd. He swooped down on her, laughing, and swept her onto the dance floor for a waltz around the ballroom.