Chapter Six
June's hand trembled as she fastened the last pearl button at her throat. It had only been a few days since she and Seth Whitman had raced horses to that beautiful place. She’d been vulnerable with him, and she hated it.
So she’d done what she had always done since she was a little girl when she felt herself slipping into weakness. She got tough.
The small mirror in front of her showed a young face, but a weight had seemed to settle in her eyes, making her face look a lot older than she was.
The borrowed wedding dress wasn’t the finest she’d ever touched—during her time as one of Trey’s “employees,” she’d helped wealthy women into gowns worth more money than she’d seen in her entire life—but somehow, the simple elegance of this dress suited her better than all those silk and satin ones would have.
But the dress wasn’t much of a consolation. After all, she didn’t want this wedding.
She didn’t know this man.
It didn’t matter how handsome he was or how big his ranch was.
She didn’t know him. Light streamed through the dusty window, illuminating the delicate lace of her collar as she turned back and forth in the mirror.
She had been meaning to clean the window for days now, but somehow, she’d gotten swept up in the coziness of the boardinghouse.
She worried for a moment if she was losing sight of the plan: keep up the con long enough to pay Trey everything they owed him and then some—whatever was enough for him to agree to let them all go.
She was getting too comfortable not having to work like a dog.
She fingered the cross necklace around her neck anxiously as she continued to stare at herself in the mirror.
Her dark hair, usually confined in a practical braid, had been styled down in curls, Etta’s project for the better part of an hour.
It had been so long since she had worn her hair down.
It was strange, but she didn’t hate it. The soft curls framed her face in a way that made her feel pretty.
“You look beautiful,” said Ada from the doorway, and June turned around to see her beaming.
June smiled back, but her throat clenched. She wanted to cry. She was supposed to marry a man as part of a ruse?
And the worst part was that she seemed to be the only one who didn’t like it.
Ada was already looking comfortable in her role as a married woman.
It was unbelievable: Ada and Etta, both married just a few days before.
They were ablaze with happiness every time June laid eyes on them.
Part of her wondered if marriage would somehow do that to her, too; that maybe for a little while, she could let go of all her anxiety about Trey and pretend to be a happy rancher’s wife.
“I feel like I'm wearing someone else's skin,” she laughed, trying to ignore her own fears.
Ada crossed the room to stand beside her. “Maybe that’s not such a bad thing. Maybe we can all be someone else for a little while…” she trailed off.
June looked away, turning back to the mirror.
She realized that the skin by her collarbone was raw from fiddling with her necklace.
“And what if none of them fit?” she whispered, voicing the fear that had haunted her since they’d first arrived in Fort Davis.
“What if I can’t be anyone different?” “Trey isn’t going to find us—”
“You don’t know that,” June interrupted.
“But… if he did, would he even be able to do any—”
“You know what he’s done to people!” June snapped. Her voice dropped low. “You know he killed the girls we replaced.”
“That’s what people said, but—”
June held up a sharp hand to cut Ada off. Just thinking about Trey finding them made her nervous—not even for her own sake, but for her friends. Trey Bishop was not the type of man to let go of what he considered his property, and in his mind, June, Etta, and Ada belonged to him.
“Stop it,” she whispered to herself more than Ada as she caught her own worried expression in the mirror.
This day wasn’t supposed to be about Trey.
Not completely, anyway.
No. Today was about Seth Whitman. The man who had stormed into her life with his stubborn jaw and knowing eyes; the man who had infuriated her and yet completely fascinated her in equal measure, simply because she couldn’t get a read on who he was, or what he stood for.
The man who looked at her like he could see right through every wall she had built around herself, no matter how thick or tall they were.
The man who was about to become her husband.
Not because she wanted him to be. Not because she found this “marriage of convenience” convenient at all, but because she didn’t want to blow her cover. She was supposed to be a bride—here to marry a man she’d learned about from letters written by Henry Landry.
She was supposed to be a woman coming to Fort Davis to find love.
So Seth Whitman was going to be her husband. Her fake husband.
And her mark. That was the most important part. It had to be. “Seth Whitman’s a good man,” Ada said softly, as if reading June’s thoughts. “I've watched the way he looks at you, June. There's something there. Something real.”
“There is nothing real in any way that man looks at me,” June retorted, turning away from the mirror.
His proposal hadn’t even been glamorous.
Their fight after the horse race had been just a few days ago, and yet he’d invited her back there the very next day, given her some sort of half-baked apology, and then had the nerve to ask her to marry him.
It was worlds away from the proposal she had dreamed of as a girl… back when she used to dream of such things.
“We still have to see this through,” she reminded Ada. “Get what we need to get out from under Trey.”
Ada shook her head. “I can’t—”
“I’m not giving up on my plan,” June insisted.
“Being married gives us legal protection against Trey!”
June shook her hand. “I’m not giving up, Ada.”
The other two had all but forgotten it, she knew. They had made their own plans, and that was fine for them, but June knew that Trey wouldn’t stop. She knew him better than any of them; she had taken the blows from him; she had taken the brunt of everything. All for them.
And she would take this from them, too. She would make Seth her mark, take from him, and get back to Trey with enough to set Ada and Etta free.
She wished she could share their optimism, but she couldn’t. Even beyond her fear of Trey, there was something deeper about the weight of the deception that was getting to her. It wasn’t just about pretending to be a mail-order bride, either.
It was about the lies she was worried she would tell herself; much like the lies Etta and Ada were now telling themselves. Every day she spent in Fort Davis, every moment she was around Seth Whitman, she knew she would be wanting things she had no right to want.
She may not have wanted him. She may not have wanted to get married, but she did want a sense of security and stability.
She would start dreaming of a future she knew she could never have.
She would start getting used to the idea of safety…
and then before she knew it, Trey would be back and it would be all over.
A knock at the door interrupted her whirling mind.
Etta poked her head in and gave a wave, her wedding ring catching the light. “It’s time. You ready?”
No. I'll never be ready.
But June nodded anyway.
There was one silver lining in all of this. She didn’t know Seth Whitman well enough to feel very guilty about conning him, and what little she did know about him made her furious. That helped quell the guilt even more.
The walk out of the boardinghouse and across the road to the small church was too short. To June’s astonishment, both sides of the street were beautifully decorated. If this had been a normal wedding, June would have been proud. As it was, the decorations made her more nervous.
“How did they do all of this in one day?” She stared around, astonished, taking in the decorations along the entire street leading up to the church.
“Mayor Klein and the Landry boys did it all,” Louise said as she followed June, plucking at her dress, fluffing up the skirt.
Of course. From June’s understanding, it was clear that Mayor Klein was the brains of this whole mail-order operation in the first place; and it seemed only fitting for the Landry boys to be the ones to pull off Seth’s wedding to her.
They practically owned the town, and they were hopeless romantics now, with their own weddings just behind them.
As much as it pained June to admit, the Landry boys were good men. They had a good name around town; a name that she would have been proud that her friends had received.
The problem wasn’t the names of the husbands. It was the names—the fake names—of their wives.
What would happen if the men found out that their mail-order brides were all frauds?
Maybe it wasn’t just Trey they would need to worry about.
That’s why we should’ve stuck with my plan. Not gotten all starry-eyed for some men. June took a deep breath, plagued with fearful thoughts. Should she call it all off, take off back to Trey? Should she stick to the plan she’d created from the start?
She was still running through worst-case scenarios when she walked into the church. Just as with Etta and Ada’s weddings, the interior of the church was decorated with the same white ribbons and wildflower bouquets.
People were filling up the seats already, and soft piano music started to play from the far corner of the room.
“Bouquets!” Louise announced in a whisper before handing June her wildflower bouquet.
She handed two others to Ada and Etta, and lined them up in front of June, along with their respective husbands.
June pressed her lips together and nodded in appreciation, a tear tugging at her eyes.
Is this really it?
She swallowed, holding her bouquet of wildflowers tight to her chest.