Chapter 5
Five
The ceremony was over before it had properly started.
Kessler had wanted two witnesses. He'd taken his own clerk for one and gone out to the top of the steps for the other, and came back with a heavyset man in a good gray suit who shook Beau's hand and said something about it being a fine day for it.
"Hollis," he said to her. "Ezra Hollis. I have the pleasure of doing business with your husband."
He held her hand a fraction longer than he needed, much like the types of men her brother introduced her to.
Then Kessler read the words off a printed card in a flat voice. Della said I will at the right moment. Beau said I do, low, and cleared his throat afterwards.
There was a ring. She hadn't expected one. It was thin and worn shiny and a size too large, and Beau pushed it onto her finger with a great deal of care and no explanation whatsoever.
The clock on Kessler's wall said five minutes before four.
It had taken less time than a hymn.
The road out of Grand Springs ran east, and then north, a pale, dusty stretch laid over green. The plains fell away on both sides of it further than the eye could see.
Della sat under her parasol, looking out across the vista, without seeing it. Much as she’d been wrong about the spring, and the man, she also wasn’t prepared for the strained silence. Grand Springs had faded, as had the cattle noise.
The wheels turned. The harness creaked. Somewhere off to the left, a bird was making a noise like a rusty gate, over and over. Every so often, the wagon dropped into a rut, and her shoulder came within an inch of his arm, and carefully she moved it back again.
In their letters, she’d been brave enough to share deep feelings and thoughts, believing that honesty was the best policy.
She had written to him about her father's death.
About Peter, and the inheritance. About the loneliness of life as an old maid.
All those words had come easily whilst sitting at her family home back East.
Now she could not think of one word to say to him.
You have married a stranger, she thought. Have you taken all leave of your senses?
She lifted her chin. She could do this. She had to. Think, Della. Think of something!
"How much further is it to the ranch?"
He slid her a look. He had been doing that since they’d left the courthouse. She had been pretending not to notice, and they were both perfectly aware of it.
"Not much farther." His deep voice rumbled, and then was silent once again.
"I see," she said. "Thank you."
The bird went on with the rusty gate.
She sighed. Once. And again.
“Are you comfortable enough?”
She glanced at him. “Yes.”
He nodded.
How far was twelve miles anyway? How far had they traveled already?
Her eyes spotted the river, and she smiled. "Mr. Hawkins."
"Ma'am."
"May I ask you something, and would you not laugh?"
His hands shifted on the lines. "Reckon I can manage that."
"Where is the spring?"
He turned fully to look at her, those deep blue eyes sweeping her face. “What spring?”
“The grand spring,” she clarified. “For which the town is named.”
His mouth twitched a little, and she commended him for holding back the laughter as he’d so agreed.
"There's a seep about four miles south of town," he said.
“A seep? Like a…water leaking from a bucket?”
He had to clear his throat, nodded. "Comes up about so much." He held his thumb and finger an inch apart. "Tastes of iron. Cattle won't drink it. That’s the spring."
“The spring is a…leak?”
“That’s about the long and short of it, yes.”
"And they named a whole town for it."
He nodded, eyes twinkling.
“The grand spring,” she murmured. Della looked out at acres of nothing in particular and heard herself laugh, once, quite loudly, and put her gloved hand over her mouth.
The corner of his mouth moved. The dimple winked at her. It was not a smile. But it was closer than anything she'd got out of him yet, and her stomach turned over. Which sent her thoughts racing in a whole different direction.
In their letters, they’d spoken quite freely. Yet here, next to him, she felt as shy as a debutante at her first social ball.
She let another half-mile go by before she made herself do it.
"Mr. Hawkins, in our letters you mentioned that you were — that what you wanted was?—"
She stopped.
The words were perfectly ordinary. She had written them herself. Here and now, she couldn’t force the words out of her mouth. She angled herself a little away from him and swallowed on a throat gone entirely dry.
"That you wanted a wife in the fullest sense," she said, all in a rush.
The wagon went on.
He did not answer.
He did not answer for so long that she began, in a small flat panic, to compose the sentence she would use to withdraw the question altogether, and then she risked a glance at him.
She wished immediately that she hadn't.
He was looking at her. Not driving and glancing. Looking. Blue eyes steady under the brim of his hat and absolutely no expression on his face at all. She had the distinct sensation of a door she had opened without any idea what was behind it.
"You'll have your own room," he said.
"I—"
"There's a key in the lock. It's yours." He turned back to the horses. "I ain't ever in my life taken what wasn't offered me, ma'am, and I don't intend to start with my own wife."
The heat came up her neck and into her face and sat there.
"I was not suggesting that you would," she said stiffly.
"No."
"I was establishing terms."
"Yes, ma'am."
"There is a difference."
"I agree."
The thing that steadied her more than any amount of kindness or reassurance about her concerns over living under a roof with a man she’d known barely an hour was that he seemed irritated, almost offended, that she would question his intentions towards her.
But what she couldn’t explain without feeling like she’d want the ground to swallow her whole was just how male he was.
The man beside her took up rather more than half the seat.
His forearms were bare to the elbow and brown as a saddle.
There was a healing cut across the back of one hand that had not been attended to by anybody.
His shirt had five buttons, and no two of them matched.
There was a mend under the arm done by somebody competent and another one at the shoulder done by somebody who had clearly never held a needle before.
His trousers had been mended at the knee more than once.
She thought about the men she had grown up among.
Gentlemen in Pearl Street offices with soft hands and pomade and opinions about claret.
She thought about what any one of them would say if they could see Adele Warner sitting on the plank seat of a wagon full of hessian sacks, in her best velvet, beside a man in a shirt held together by somebody's poor stitching.
They would never stop laughing.
And then, following on so quickly that she had no defense against it: and not one of them could have lifted that trunk.
"Ma'am."
She looked across to him.
"Seems to me—" He shifted and cleared his throat. Pulled a face as he searched for the right words. "Seems to me we might get used to one another first. Before there's any talk of anything more…involved."
Della felt a little of the tension in her stomach loosen. They’d agreed to these terms. That, as strangers, she’d help around the ranch and keep the house in order. But the more physical side of a marriage could wait.
"That," she said, "sounds most agreeable."
"All right then."
She smoothed her skirts. "In that case, you might begin by calling me Della."
He glanced over. Blue clashed with her gaze, and her stomach did a long slow roll when she realized she’d be looking into those eyes every day until she died.
“My father named me Adele, and then upset Mama by insisting it be shortened to Della. My parents were very much in love, and my mother gave my father everything he wanted whilst she lived. I might be a ‘ma’am’ to everyone else.
” She met his gaze once more and smiled.
“But call me Della. I stopped being Miss Warner when we left the courthouse.”
“I suppose you did. And you’ll call me Beau.”
He smiled then. A lazy, lopsided lift. Her heart tripped over in her chest, setting off the butterflies once again.
Oh, she thought. I am in a very great deal of trouble with this man.