Wyoming Bride (3 page)

He grabbed her hips and pulled her down in the bed so she was lying flat, then shoved up the bottom of her nightgown.

“Wait!” she cried.

She pushed against him, but he grabbed both her hands in one of his. His hold was gentle, but inexorable. Suddenly, she was fighting him, as a drowning swimmer fights the water that threatens to swallow her, scratching and clawing.

“Easy, girl,” he soothed. “This is what happens between a man and a woman.”

Hannah felt reassured by his voice and fought her panic. But it was a losing battle. She didn’t want to be here. She didn’t want to be doing this. She reminded herself,
He is my husband. I am his wife
.

She took a deep breath and let it out, forcing herself to lie still as Mr. McMurtry unbuttoned the front of his trousers and forced her legs wide with his knees. She could feel him hard and unforgiving against her innocent flesh.

She bucked once to be free, but he answered with that same “Easy, girl,” and added, “It will all be over soon,” then lifted her bottom with his free hand and impaled her.

Hannah felt as though she’d been stabbed with a human knife. The pain was excruciating.

He pumped into her. Once. Twice. Three times. Then he groaned like a dying animal and sagged onto her with his full weight before sliding onto the bed beside her.

Was he done? Was it over?

Hannah sobbed once, but it was grief she felt, not physical pain. She was truly married now. There was no going back.

“I’m sorry.” The apology was muffled, since Mr. McMurtry’s mouth was mashed against her throat. He levered himself up onto his arms and stared down at her.

She saw the regret in his eyes and wondered at it. He had what he’d wanted. Why was he sorry?

He pushed himself away from her and slid the awful, limp pink thing that looked not at all like the knife she’d felt impale her, back into his trousers. “I wish I’d been able to make it hurt less, but …”

But he’d had no experience with women. Hannah’s heart went out to this plain man who had kept himself chaste for marriage. In that moment of understanding, she forgave her husband for the physical pain he’d caused. Nevertheless, she instinctively recoiled when he reached across her to turn out the lamp.

Hannah saw another look of remorse cross his face before it was lost in the darkness. He
was
a kind man. He
hadn’t
meant to hurt her. She felt the urge to offer her new husband comfort, but she was afraid it might make him want to do it again. Instead, she held herself perfectly still.

“Get some sleep, Mrs. McMurtry,” he said. “We have a long day ahead of us tomorrow.”

Hannah let out a silent breath of relief. It was not a wedding night to warm a young bride’s heart, but at least it was over and done. She took a deep breath, then exhaled long and slow, letting go of all the fear she’d felt of the unknown. Now she knew what to expect. She hoped her friend was right. She hoped it wouldn’t hurt as much the next time, and that someday it might even be pleasurable.

But as far as she was concerned, she wouldn’t be sorry if they never did it again.

Hannah was pregnant. She’d missed the courses that should have come two weeks after her wedding night, but several days had passed before she’d realized that fact. Even though her period had come as regular as clockwork since she was fourteen, Hannah had thought the excitement of starting on such a fabulous journey might have caused the lapse. Four weeks later, when the bleeding didn’t start for the second month in a row, she was no longer able to deny the truth.

Now, here she was two months pregnant, and she still hadn’t told her husband or her sisters about the baby. Hannah didn’t know why she was waiting. Or maybe she did. Announcing she was pregnant meant acknowledging to herself that sober, hardworking, and considerate—as well as placid, wooden, and untalkative—Mr. McMurtry would be her partner for the rest of her life.

At the beginning of the journey, Hannah had sidestepped Mr. McMurtry as much as possible, hoping to avoid her wifely duties. It wasn’t until they’d been on the trail for almost a month that she’d realized
he
was also avoiding
her
! It seemed he was shy around women, and her, in particular. That might have been endearing, except whenever she tried holding a conversation with him, he answered in as few words as possible, never sharing his thoughts or feelings.

Hannah had tried harder, choosing subjects she thought might interest her husband, with no success. She’d tried making Mr. McMurtry angry, but he refused to be drawn. She’d even tried—she cringed at the memory—flirting with him. That had caused him to visibly blush and sent him stumbling away from the campfire.

She’d given up. Marriage, she was discovering, was more about two people sharing the work than much of anything else. Maybe it would have been different if she and Mr. McMurtry were sleeping together in the same bed. But they weren’t.

It wasn’t a case of her husband not desiring her. Hannah saw the yearning, almost wistful look in her husband’s dark blue eyes in the firelight before he took his bedroll and went to sleep by himself, while she joined her two sisters on a pallet laid out under their Conestoga wagon.

It seemed Mr. McMurtry was too fastidious to couple with her unless they had complete privacy, and he wouldn’t take the risk of leaving the safe circle of wagons with her at night to get it. Hannah knew this hiatus was only a reprieve, not a release from her dreaded wifely duty. However, she had some hope her pregnancy might delay their next coupling until after the child was delivered, instead of resuming in another month, when they reached Cheyenne.

Hannah set down the long wooden spoon she’d been using to stir the venison stew she was cooking over the evening campfire, stood upright, and placed her hands gently against her still-flat abdomen. She was amazed by how much love she felt for her unborn child. And disheartened by her lack of similar strong feelings for her husband.

How did one fall in love? Hannah wondered. Could it be done on purpose? What did “being in love” feel like? Considering who she’d married, she might never experience that emotion toward her husband. Was liking enough? She already liked Mr. McMurtry, but she felt lonely imagining a future with a man incapable of holding a conversation.

Hannah sighed. That was bad enough, but it was impossible to feel close to someone she was still calling
Mr. McMurtry
after two months of marriage. Would there ever be a day when he would call her anything except
Mrs. McMurtry
? Or a day when they would call each other something more familiar, like
dear
or
darling
or
sweetheart
? It was heartbreaking to realize that the only time she’d heard her husband’s first name spoken aloud was during the wedding ceremony.
Roland
.

Hannah mouthed the name but didn’t say it aloud. She stood alone at the campfire, but someone from the circle of wagons might walk past and hear her. She glanced around and saw everyone going about their business, unhitching mules or oxen, making repairs on their wagons, or tending their evening fires.

No one seemed to notice the roiling tension she felt inside as she cooked supper for her husband and sisters. She felt too many things at once, all of them mixed up together. The excitement of having a child of her own to love. The despair of knowing she would likely never see Miranda or Nick or Harry again. The sadness of lost dreams of love. And the growing acceptance of what must be.

She mouthed,
Roland and Hannah
.

Hannah wanted Mr. McMurtry to say her first name. To whisper it in her ear. To speak it with devotion. She wanted the intimacy it implied. But it was hard to imagine her plain, practical husband ever doing something so tender. So romantic.

Mr. McMurtry might not be the man of her dreams, but for her child’s sake, she had to see the good in him and make the best of her marriage. And there was a great deal of good in Roland McMurtry. He never spoke harshly to her. He shaved every day and bathed when he could. He never blasphemed, even to his stubborn oxen. And he was tolerant of her sisters, who caused him endless trouble with the wagon master.

It was time to put her girlhood dreams away. There was no handsome, dashing Prince Charming in her future, only solemn, honest, hardworking Mr. McMurtry.

She felt tears well in her eyes and brushed them angrily away. Would she ever stop dreaming and hoping and wishing for something she could never have?

Hannah had spent the entire day as she walked beside Mr. McMurtry’s wagon in the choking dust and pounding heat from the sun, pondering her life. That is, when she could hear herself think over the jangle of the traces and the rattle of pails tied beneath the wagon and the crack of the whip and the lowing of footsore oxen.

She rubbed the same hand she’d smoothed over her flat belly against the ache in the small of her back. The work on a wagon train never ended. There was always something that needed to be done—above and beyond walking on blistered feet every endless mile of the way. Luckily, she hadn’t experienced any sickness from her pregnancy, but she was more and more exhausted at the end of every day.

It was Hannah’s job to grease the axles, to milk the cow that was tied behind the wagon, to feed a ration of corn to the four oxen that pulled the wagon, to fill pails of water whenever they crossed a creek or a stream or a river and dump them in the enormous barrel tied to the side of the wagon, to cook morning and evening with the other wives on the wagon train, and to wash dishes and silverware and pots and pans and pack everything away afterward.

Last, but not at all least, it was her job to keep Josie, and especially Hetty, out of trouble. Both girls were making Hannah’s life difficult, but in different ways.

Josie’s only job was to fill a sling under the wagon with sticks and dried cow patties she collected along the trail, so they would have enough fuel for the evening fire. Instead, she spent every day walking along with her face stuck in a book. More than once they’d needed to share the fire of another family, because they didn’t have enough wood or cow chips for their own.

Still, it was hard to be angry with Josie. Her youngest sister had made friends with a former teacher, Thomas Stanfield, and his sixteen-year-old son, Micah, who’d brought two big boxes of books on the trip West. Josie was trying to get through as many of their precious tomes as she could read before they parted ways at Cheyenne, since the Stanfields were headed all the way to Oregon.

Josie seemed oblivious to the fact that Micah was romantically interested in her. Hannah knew her sister was in love with Micah’s books, rather than the tall, good-looking boy who spent every day at her side with stars in his eyes.

Hetty was another matter altogether. Hetty’s love life was creating havoc, and she was not the least bit repentant about it.

Hannah glanced sideways from the evening cook fire and saw her twin flirting with Joe Barnett, while the man Hetty had been favoring for most of the trip, Clive Hamm, scowled at them.

Hannah could hardly blame her sister for wanting to be admired by not one, but two attractive men. After all, Hetty was the prettiest unmarried woman on the train.

But Hannah saw what Hetty did not. Though both suitors were young, they weren’t boys. And here in the West, arguments between men were settled not with words, but with fists … and guns.

Last week, the two men had engaged in a bout of fisticuffs that the wagon master, Captain Hattigan, had broken up. The captain had warned Mr. McMurtry, “Control your ward, or you will no longer be welcome to travel with the train!”

After everything Hannah had seen during their two months on the trail, that threat was terrifying. The wilderness was vast, and dangerous beyond belief. She’d watched people die from stupid accidents, from drowning, from disease, from the simple act of birthing a child. Every time she’d watched families grieve, it had reminded her of the family she’d lost and left her with a terrible ache in her chest.

Hannah couldn’t imagine what it would be like for their lone wagon to travel without the support of the others. What if an axle broke? Who would help Mr. McMurtry repair it? What if one of their oxen died? How would they travel on with only three? What if Josie didn’t gather enough fuel for an evening fire and they were forced to do without one? What if they ran out of water?

Hannah had endless nightmares about what might happen. Yesterday, she’d finally shared them with her twin, hoping it would make a difference in her behavior.

“Captain Hattigan would never make us leave the train,” Hetty had said, laughing at her fears.

“Please, Hetty. I’m begging you. Don’t flirt with
both
men.”

“I know what I’m doing,” Hetty said defiantly. “Clive has hinted that he’s going to propose, but he wants to wait until the end of the journey. I don’t. I’m just flirting with Mr. Barnett to make Clive declare himself.”

“It’s only a matter of weeks before we reach Cheyenne,” Hannah argued. “That’s not so long to wait. And since when do you call Mr. Hamm
Clive
?”