Dottie was the front row.
“I’m going to see she’s married right and proper,” Dottie announced to everyone. “He asked for her, and I’m going to see he gets her.”
The other women exhibited the same grim determination, but George couldn’t decide to what end. It didn’t seem to be anything that pleased them very much. Like an avenging angel, Peaches McCloud stood in the middle of the entire group. George couldn’t figure out why she had decided to come—the Widow Hanks and Berthilda Huber were also there—unless she intended to be present in the unlikely event George changed his mind at the last minute.
The emotional temperature of the room was so highly charged that George started to wonder if the seventy miles that lay between Austin and his ranch would be enough.
“Here she comes,” someone called out. The spectators began shoving to make room for Rose to pass. George hadn’t seen Rose since she returned from her shopping.
The transformation took his breath away.
Nothing remained of the crushed, tired, worn-down woman of yesterday. The white dress had become her wedding dress, the dainty slippers her wedding shoes. The yellow ribbon had been braided into a net which supported her long hair, pulling it back from her face and causing it to cascade down her back. She wore the bunches of artificial flowers in her hair. But the smile that transformed her face made the greatest difference of all. That and her enormous brown eyes.
She looked like a bride.
Like a bride he was seeing for the first time.
He had expected to marry the woman who made his home comfortable, who was kind and thoughtful to his family, who did her share of work without complaint, who was strong and dependable, the kind of woman a man needed but so rarely found.
The Rose descending the stairs was the kind of woman every man dreams of marrying.
Her radiance was beyond his meager words to describe. It had that timeless quality he had previously associated only with the Southern beauties before the war. The elegance he had noticed from the first was given full play by the simplicity of her clothes, the starkness of the white. Her smile was the smile of a woman who knows more than she’s willing to tell.
Seeing Rose descend the stairs with angelic grace made George feel like a true bridegroom, fearful he wasn’t worthy of this extraordinary creature, nervous he would do something to mess up the ceremony, and anxious for the whole thing to be over.
Rose’s effect on the spectators was nearly as great. The rumble of whispered remarks, too-loud asides, and hissed observations continued even after the preacher began the words of the service. But George didn’t hear them any longer. He only heard the words of the preacher.
Why had he never read the marriage vows? Why had he thought he could get married and nothing would change? He had just promised to love and cherish and protect this woman. To honor her with his body as well as his mind and spirit.
George wrenched his mind away from his inner thoughts. The preacher was speaking to him.
“Do you have a ring?” the preacher repeated.
It had never occurred to George he would need a ring, not for himself or for Rose. He hadn’t thought of wedding clothes either. He had on the same clothes he’d worn all day. He felt thoroughly ashamed.
George wrenched a family ring off his finger. “Use this,” he said as he handed it to the preacher.
Somehow the act of giving the preacher his ring brought home the finality of the wedding more than the words.
He had married Rose.
He had just taken a vow he had no intention of honoring.
Chapter Fourteen
“To your bride,” a stranger said, holding out a drink to George. “May she live long and give you many children.”
“To my bride,” George repeated, accepting the drink with only a slight hesitation. There was no point in trying to decline. He must have drunk a toast with every man in Austin in the last two hours. He had retreated to a corner hoping he’d be unnoticed, but each man seemed to find his way over to his table within ten minutes of entering the saloon, a smile of congratulations on his lips and a drink in his hand.
George had come to the saloon to try to figure out how he was going to handle his desire for Rose without taking advantage of her love, her vulnerability, or her generosity. But by now his alcohol-fogged brain was having trouble remembering anything except that his body was on fire with desire.
“You can’t stay here all night,” Salty said. “This is your wedding night.”
“Goddammit, I know what night it is,” George replied, his words slurred.
They were in the Golden Nugget, one of the dingy saloons along Waller Creek near the army corrals. It was a long room with a low ceiling and dark walls. The mirror behind the bar reflected the meager light of two coal oil lanterns suspended overhead. Customers playing cards in the far corners needed to squint in the poor light.