Montana Bride (5 page)

“Oh.” Hetty stared into Karl’s brown eyes and realized the golden flecks were there again. “What a lovely thing to say.”

He kept his gaze focused on hers, and Hetty felt her empty stomach fill with butterflies. She had no idea how to respond to such a compliment. She didn’t want to lie and say she was happy with his looks, too, but it seemed she needed to say something.

His stomach growled, and Hetty was surprised into laughter.

Karl shot her a rueful look. “So much for impressing my new bride. Shall we go, Hetty? Supper awaits.”

“Of course.” Hetty refused to think about what came next. At least, not until after she’d filled her stomach. Maybe then there’d be no room left for the butterflies to take flight.

“I’m so sorry,” Hetty said.

“It was an accident,” Karl replied as he dabbed at the wine staining his vest and trousers with the red-and-white-checked napkin he’d carried away with him when they’d left the hotel restaurant and headed upstairs to their room. “The boy didn’t mean to do it.”

The problem was, Hetty was pretty sure Griffin had known exactly what would happen when he’d reached for a bowl of butter in the center of the table. She suspected Griffin had tipped over the crystal glass simply to see what reaction Karl would have. If the boy was hoping for outrage, or a punishing slap, he’d been disappointed. Karl had laughed.

“I’m glad you did that,” he’d said to Griffin as he swabbed his vest with his napkin. “I couldn’t refuse Dennis’s offer of a bottle of wine to celebrate, but I’ve never really liked the stuff.”

“Your poor suit!” Grace had exclaimed before shooting daggers at Griffin.

Karl had merely shrugged. “I don’t expect to be wearing this suit much. It’ll be Levi’s and plaid wool shirts and boots from now on.”

Hetty had seen the smirk come and go on Griffin’s face and realized she couldn’t let the boy get away with such a prank. “Nevertheless, we shouldn’t allow the stain to set,” she said. “I believe we’re all finished with supper.”

“We’re supposed to get apple pie for dessert!” Griffin protested.

“Yes, we
were
going to have apple pie,” Hetty said. “Now I think you’ll agree it would be unwise to force Karl to sit here while his suit gets ruined.” She turned to Karl and said, “Shall we go?”

Hetty could see Karl was going to relent and stay for dessert, so she rose and said, “Time for bed, children.”

“Serves you right,” Grace muttered under her breath to Griffin as she got up from her chair.

Griffin said nothing, simply made a moue in acceptance of how he’d been outmaneuvered.

Hetty realized that by making Karl’s suit a priority, she’d denied herself the opportunity to escape into the children’s room to ready them for bed, thereby postponing the start of her wedding night. She did pause momentarily by the door to their room and said to Grace, “Don’t stay up late. We have a very long day on the trail tomorrow.”

“I wish we could stay here a little longer,” Grace said, gazing wistfully at the soft, four-poster bed she and Griffin would be sharing. “I’m so tired of traveling.”

“Our journey will be over soon,” Hetty promised. “You heard Karl say our new log home will have soft beds for everyone.”

“I can’t believe Griffin did that,” Grace whispered after Karl had moved across the hall to unlock the door to his and Hetty’s room. “Or that Karl was so nice about it.”

“It seems we’ve all been very fortunate,” Hetty said. “But if you have any sway at all with Griffin, tell him he shouldn’t push his luck.”

“I will,” Grace said fervently.

Hetty hugged the girl, then turned to join Karl, who’d been waiting patiently by the open door to their room, the wine-stained table napkin pressed against his wine-stained vest.

Her heartbeat ratcheted up as they entered the room and Karl closed the door behind them. The hotel room seemed small, perhaps because so much of it was taken up by the bed. After all the weeks of sleeping under the sky, Hetty felt trapped within the four stifling walls.

She hadn’t noticed it when she’d changed out of her wedding dress before supper, but she suddenly became aware of the smell of woodsmoke pervading Mrs. Templeton’s navy-trimmed, light blue traveling dress, which the other woman had often worn while sitting by the fire. Hetty suddenly found the smoky smell unbearable.

Unfortunately, to get rid of the smell, she’d have to remove the dress, and she wasn’t willing to do that. At least, not until it was absolutely necessary.

Hetty turned away from the waiting, turned-down covers toward Karl, brushed the lapel of his suit coat, and said, “There’s wine on this, too.”

Karl shrugged out of the jacket and draped it over a nearby ladder-back chair in the corner, then began unbuttoning his vest.

Hetty realized that if Karl took off everything with a wine stain, he’d soon be standing before her in his smalls. She quickly crossed the room to the pitcher and bowl sitting on a clothes chest, poured some water, then dampened the cloth sitting beside the bowl and crossed back to Karl, who stood at the foot of the bed.

“Let me help you with that,” she said, pressing the damp cloth against his wool vest before he could remove it.

Karl took the cloth from her and threw it on a pillar table beside the door, along with the napkin he’d been using. “There’s a very good Chinese laundry in town. I’ll drop the whole suit off before we leave and have it returned to me the next time supplies are delivered to the Bitterroot.”

“But—”

“There’s something I’d much rather be doing than worrying about this suit,” he said in a soft voice.

Hetty fought the panic she felt as Karl reached out to brush a handful of golden curls back over her shoulder. She shivered as his fingertips trailed down to rest at the base of her throat.

He met her gaze with those plain brown
earnest
eyes of his and said, “I can feel your pulse racing. You don’t have to be afraid of me, Hetty. We have all night. We can take our time.”

Hetty was pretty sure all the time in the world wasn’t going to make her feel any less terrified. It would have been frightening enough to face a wedding night. But she would be spending it with a stranger she’d met that very day. Even that might have been bearable if her husband had been someone for whom she felt a spark of physical attraction. But that was not the case.

She immediately felt guilty for wishing Karl was more good-looking. Or even a little good-looking.
Oh, Hetty, how can you be so shallow?

If that had been the extent of it, Hetty might have made it through the night. But she was mortally afraid Karl would discover that she couldn’t possibly be the parents of those two children because she was a virgin. Could a man always tell? Was there any way to keep him from finding out?

The whole point of this mail-order marriage had been to save those two precious children from abandonment. Hetty had no choice except to bluff her way through her wedding night. She tried to smile and felt her mouth wobble. She tried again and didn’t think she’d done much better until Karl said in a low, rumbling voice that sent a shiver down her spine, “I love your dimples.”

Hetty lowered her gaze, unable to look at the man she planned to dupe—if he could be duped. Maybe he had no more experience than she did. Maybe he wouldn’t realize she was a virgin. Hetty blurted, “Have you ever…uh…” She felt her throat tightening but swallowed over the knot and continued, “That is, do you know much about…I mean, have you…”

Karl looked more and more uncomfortable, and Hetty realized there was no way to ask what she wanted to know.

“Have you ever been in love before?” she finished.

She saw the flare of surprise—and relief—in his eyes before he said, “As a matter of fact, I haven’t. Have you?”

Hetty hadn’t expected him to turn the question back on her. Tears immediately filled her eyes as she thought of Clive Hamm, of his beautiful blue eyes, of his powerful shoulders, of his flashing smile. And of his last words of love to her as he lay dying in her arms, the victim of a gunshot wound he’d received in a confrontation with the man Hetty had been flirting with in order to make Clive jealous enough to propose.

“That was foolish of me,” Karl said. “Of course you’ve been in love.”

Because she’d supposedly been married. Only she hadn’t. How different her life, and her sisters’ lives, might have been if only she’d been willing to wait patiently for that proposal from Clive, instead of provoking that showdown. Mr. McMurtry and the Wentworth sisters would never have been forced to leave the wagon train, with all the disaster that had followed.

And Hetty wouldn’t have ended up married to a man she didn’t love. She sobbed and pressed her fisted hands against her mouth to keep from wailing aloud. She had no one to blame but herself for her current predicament. And the only way to make amends for all the harm she’d done was to be as good a wife to this man, and as good a mother to those children, as she possibly could.

“Please don’t cry,” Karl said, reaching for her fisted hands and opening them and taking them in his.

She blinked her eyes to force back the tears. “I’m sorry to be such a crybaby,” she choked out.

“I know this must be difficult for you.”

Hetty could see Karl was torn between exercising his rights as a husband and leaving the consummation for later. Hetty knew she ought to give in. Time wasn’t going to change anything. She was still going to be a virgin a month from now. But wouldn’t it be safer not to give Karl an excuse to leave her and the children behind in Butte when he discovered the truth?

She had to give him something. It was his wedding night, too, after all. She decided to offer kisses. That seemed safe and surely wouldn’t be as difficult to bear as allowing Karl the more intimate rights of a husband. Hetty decided to speak before she lost her nerve.

“Would you kiss me, Karl?”

For once, what Karl was thinking wasn’t revealed in his eyes, which remained focused steadily on hers.

Hetty closed her eyes, pursed her lips as she’d practiced in the mirror growing up, and waited.

She felt Karl’s fingertips frame her face and then tilt it slightly sideways. She quivered in expectation when she felt his warm breath against her skin.

A moment later, the warmth was gone, and she heard him say, “Open your eyes, Hetty.”

Hetty’s eyelids felt heavy, and it took a great deal of effort to lift them. When she did, she found Karl’s face close to her own. Why hadn’t he kissed her?

The question must have been there in her eyes because he said, “How long since your husband died, Hetty?”

Hetty felt the flush start at her throat and steal onto her cheeks as she formulated the necessary lie. “It’s been…uh…”

“It isn’t important how long ago you were widowed except—”

“He died after Griffin was born,” Hetty blurted. “Of cholera,” she added, because she’d watched Hannah’s husband, Mr. McMurtry, die of cholera and could describe the symptoms if Karl asked.

“I’m sorry for your loss.” Karl cleared his throat and added, “So it’s been a great many years since you’ve…been a wife.”

What a tactful substitution for
had intimate relations,
Hetty thought. She cleared her own throat and answered, “Yes, it has.”

“Perhaps we should wait a while. What do you think?”

Hetty couldn’t imagine any other man being so considerate on his wedding night as to offer his bride the option of forgoing the whole thing. If that was, indeed, what Karl was doing. “What are you saying?”

Karl let go of her and took a step back. “I’m proposing we postpone the wedding night.”

Hetty felt enormous relief. And a startling amount of disappointment. What kind of man didn’t want to make love to his bride on his wedding night?

A weak one.

A considerate one.

The warring thoughts led her to ask, “Is there something wrong with me?”

“Lord, no!” he said. “I want to take you in my arms and—”

“Then why don’t you?” Hetty interrupted.

Karl looked taken aback, but that only lasted a second.

Hetty found herself encircled by astonishingly confident arms. She felt Karl’s large hand—she’d noticed he had very large hands—on the back of her head, angling it for a kiss, and then felt his mouth capture hers.

She wasn’t sure what she should feel, how she should act, so she followed Karl’s lead.

It was a kiss that presumed experience. A kiss filled with need. A kiss that demanded a response.

Hetty fought panic as a frisson of desire skittered up her spine. Her body felt taut and ached with wanting…something.

Clive is barely cold in his grave. I shouldn’t be feeling so much pleasure. I don’t deserve a good man and a good marriage and a happy life.

Her arms were caught between their bodies, which made her feel trapped. She resisted the urge to struggle free, but her body mirrored the tension she felt in Karl’s.