Chapter 4
Four
Beau hadn't counted on her being pretty.
Not just pretty, either.
She was young, for one thing. Twenty-six, she’d said in her letters, though that hadn’t been much of a consideration for him.
At thirty-two, he was older than most when considering marriage.
And she was fine. Fine-boned, fair-haired, with a straight, narrow nose and bright hazel eyes that could almost be green.
She stood out on that platform in dark green velvet among all the cotton dresses, work shirts and brown suits, like a jay in a bare tree.
He wasn't the only man who'd noticed. Two cowhands by the freight house had stopped talking.
A fellow waiting beside a stack of crates had turned clean around to watch her pass.
Beau didn't much care for that.
He'd asked for a sensible woman. That was the sum of it. A sensible woman with a strong back and a quiet mouth. Somebody to run the house, put a meal on the table and maybe sit across from him of an evening when the work was done.
He hadn't pictured this.
"Yes, ma'am. I'm Beau Hawkins."
She didn’t say anything to that. She considered him, and Beau found that he had to shift his feet, uncomfortable with the direct attention from someone as pretty and put together as she was.
He had picked her out of the whole bunch of replies because she’d been the only one to ask how far the nearest doctor lived.
The woman before him looked like she belonged in one of those fancy hotels he’d walked past on his travels. Perhaps in a salon with a fancier man on her arm.
Not in the kitchen of Silver Sage.
Not for the first time, doubts slithered into his mind.
Stronger now that he’d seen her in person.
Pledging himself to a woman who looked like her, cooking at his Mama’s range, dealing with rough ranch hands and rougher Montana winters.
The wind getting through the north windows.
Mud in spring and dust in summer and miles of nothing much in any direction.
And the bank notes sitting in his desk drawer.
He should tell her.
Right here, before they went a step further. Ma'am, there's a payment falling due I can't meet and another one behind it.
He had the money for her ticket home. Near enough anyway. She could turn right back around, climb on board that train and head back home.
He drew breath to say it.
"Mr. Hawkins?"
He blinked. "Ma'am?"
"I wonder if we might move things along."
That knocked him clean out of it. "Ma'am?"
"It has been a very long journey." She gave a tired little breath, pressed gloved fingers to her temple. "It feels as though I haven’t slept in a month, though it’s only been four days. It feels as though I have the whole of North Dakota in my hair. I am at the point where I would trade a close relation for a hot bath and a soft bed. I’ll head to the hotel first, if you don’t mind. "
Beau rubbed the side of his jaw, smooth after he’d shaved. Looking at her now, he was glad he’d done so.
"Ma'am," he said slowly, "I'm not sure you've took stock of where you are."
Her brows met.
“Look about you, Miss Warner,” he drawled softly. “This isn't New York. There's no fine hotel waiting up the street. And Silver Sage is twelve miles out."
She looked beyond him then, at the dusty street and the false-fronted buildings, the cattle pens and wagons and men moving freight off the train.
The mountains in the far distance. Four hundred head of cattle bawling in the pens and not one thing in sight that a woman in velvet had any business standing next to.
He tipped his head up the street. "There's the Grand. That's a saloon with eight rooms over it, and I wouldn't put my horse in one of them, so I surely ain't putting you in. There's a bath house back of the barbers for men coming off a drive. They change the water on Saturdays."
"Ah," she said.
"Yes, ma'am."
"I see." She swallowed. The composure slipped a moment, and she looked younger, almost vulnerable. "I was so concerned with getting here safely that I did not think much beyond the getting here.”
"And there's the wedding."
Her gaze came back to his.
"We talked about it in the letters," Beau said. "What we were both expecting. How it’d be between us in the beginning. I don’t intend to go back on that. But I don't reckon the middle of a railroad platform is the place to go over all of that again."
"No," she agreed. "Probably not."
"How about we get your things first?”
Beau found the trunk where the porter had left it. He got it up on his shoulder and walked it out to the wagon and came back for the two cases.
By the time he set the last one beside the trunk, he'd spoken to Marsh from the livery, answered Pruitt about fall shipping, and caught another stranger taking a long look at his wife-to-be.
He shut the tailboard harder than he needed to.
When he turned, she was waiting beside the wagon. Pretty Miss Warner didn’t seem aware of the attention she was getting.
He wiped his hands down his thighs, offered her a gentle smile to try and ease the obvious unease that rolled off her.
"Mr. Hawkins."
"Ma'am."
"I think we covered matters well enough in our letters."
Beau's head went back a little. Waited.
"Let us just get married."
Beau settled his hat further back on his head, waited until she looked up at him. “Silver Sage isn’t a fancy place that you’re used to -”
“I know.”
“There’s an old iron bath, of course, but it’s in the outhouse. And it’s a working house. It's solid, course, but it’s been a while since anybody kept it.”
"I know." She stopped, then softened it. "Or rather, I suppose I don't know. Not really."
Beau gave her a moment.
She drew in a breath. “I do know I don’t want to go back to New York.”
She said it flat. As though the words had been waiting to be aired. And he wondered about what she was leaving behind to come here. She’d mentioned a brother and an inheritance. Was there more to it? Did she have secrets of her own?
“The train is still here,” Beau said gently. “You have time to return if you so wish, Miss Warner.”
"You kindly sent me the money to come here," she said firmly. "I made my choice when I accepted it. I don't want to waste your time or mine by pretending otherwise."
Beau’s mouth moved. He looked at the wagon, at the town behind him. Then back at her again. He would bet his herd that she didn’t know one end of the horse from the other.
She also had the look of a determined woman.
Tell her. Now.
Maybe she needed him more than he needed her. And a man shouldn’t give his troubles to a woman within ten minutes of meeting her. Besides, Duke said this year would be better. They’d turn it around.
“All right then," he tugged his hat back down. “If you’re certain.”
“I am.”
“Then it’s this way.”
She fell into step beside him. He offered her his arm because it seemed like the thing to do. There was a small pause before she took it. Her hand settled on his sleeve, and he felt a little swell of pleasure knowing that she was about to become his.
They went up the street past Vance's mercantile with the sacks stacked out front, past the harness shop and the barber's and Ketchum's drug store with the glass jars in the window, and past the bank with its new brick front that had gone up the summer before last while the rest of the town went on being timber.
Beau shortened his stride to hers and looked straight ahead.
Tell her.
There were three hundred yards of boardwalk between the depot and the courthouse steps.
“We have to see Kessler. He's the county clerk.”
“And then the Justice of the peace?”
“Just Kessler,” he confirmed. “We both have to stand in front of him and swear it out before he'll issue the license.”
"He does both?"
“Grand Springs is a small town, Miss Warner,” he said, glancing down at her, enjoying the feel of her next to him already. "And he shuts that office at four. Not a minute after."
"Then we had better walk quickly."