Marry Me (39 page)

Rhyne watched Johnny and Molly for a moment, recognized the intimacy inherent in Molly’s quick and busy gestures. She turned to Cole and looked him over. She was not particularly surprised to find not so much as a loose thread or a hair out of place, but it was annoying because she had an itch to straighten something. He wore his single-breasted tailcoat with more ease than most of the men crowding the bar. His dress collar didn’t appear to bother him in the least, and his black cravat was folded simply and fastened with a diamond stickpin. His silver-threaded silk vest fit him as comfortably as his own skin. His trousers were pressed flat, and his shoes were still as polished as when he put them on.

Rhyne sighed. As far as she could tell he was untouched by a single crease or dust mote. “It’s not natural,” she said.

Cole politely inclined his head toward her and pointed to his ear to indicate he hadn’t heard her over the laughter and animated conversation all around.

Cupping her hand to her mouth, she raised herself on tiptoe and spoke into his ear. “You ought not to look so damn fine.”

Cole grinned. He caught her by the wrist and at the waist and brought her flush against his chest, holding her steady on her toes. He was aware of a murmur of excitement around him. “I think they expect me to kiss you.”

“You’ll get wrinkled.”

He regarded her oddly. “I have no idea what you mean by that.” Rhyne started to explain, but her parted lips presented the opportunity Cole was waiting for. He settled his mouth firmly over hers, and they both heard the swell of voices. It was a quick kiss, a stolen kiss, but it tempered the mood of the guests.

When Rhyne stepped back, she surveyed him again. Because the single hair that clung to the shoulder of his tailcoat was as black as the fabric, Rhyne almost didn’t see it. Naturally, it was her hair. Coleridge Monroe did not crease, gather dust, nor apparently did he shed. Still, her smile was practically gleeful as she plucked the hair from his coat. With a little flourish, she smoothed over the material for good measure.

“Feel better?” he asked.

She nodded. “As a matter of fact, I do.”

“Good. Let’s see if we can get something to eat.”

There was room enough for dancing in the saloon and the hotel and a sufficient number of musicians for both. People wandered from table to table among the three sites, eating and drinking their fill as they visited neighbors and congratulated the newlyweds, sometimes more than once. Eventually they divided themselves between the Miner Key and the Commodore when fiddlers and banjo players began tuning their instruments.

Will Beatty took his place at the piano in the saloon and played some scales to get a feel for the instrument. He grinned at Rose as she looked over the sheet music. “I know you favor songs with words,” he told her. “But I got something I want to play for Cole and Rhyne. Wave them over here.”

Rose raised her hand holding the sheet music and shook it to catch Cole’s attention. She could barely see Rhyne for the press of people, but when Cole began to move, the crowd parted for him. It generally took a badge to make that happen and Rose was duly impressed. He had his hands on Rhyne’s waist and was steering her forward.

Rose fanned Rhyne with the sheet music. The new bride was looking flushed and a little out of breath. “You can’t keep kissing her every chance you get,” she told Cole. “You’re going to make her faint from good fortune.”

Cole chuckled. “I wish that was the problem.”

Rhyne put out a hand to stop Rose. “It’s the crush.”

That no-account Beatty boy swiveled around on the piano stool. “Too many people suckin’ on the same air. That’s what it is. Since there’s no help for it, are you ready to dance? I figure there’s still space enough to do that. I have a song picked out for you.”

Cole looked at Rhyne. She was worrying her bottom lip and her eyes were mildly anxious. “We don’t have to dance,” he said. “If you’d rather not.”

“Oh, no. I want to.”

Nothing in her expression indicated she was looking forward to it. He knew Will and Rose saw it, too. “Rhyne?”

“I
want
to,” she insisted. Before she lost her nerve, she seized Cole’s hand in one of hers and put her other hand on his shoulder. “You better start playing, Will.”

That no-account Beatty boy didn’t miss a beat. He signaled to the fiddlers to follow his cue and then his fingers were moving lightly across the keys and the first strains of Strauss’s
Blue Danube
waltz lifted into the air.

Cole looked down at his wife. A tiny crease had appeared between her eyebrows, and her lips were moving faintly as she counted out the three-quarter time waiting for him to start. “I’m a fool,” he whispered, “but follow me anyway.”

She did. It seemed to Rhyne that her feet hardly touched the floor as he made her part of the waltz’s lilting melody. After three turns, she even stopped counting and looked away from his diamond stickpin and into his eyes. She ventured a smile. The crowd faded, the room opened up, and for as long as the music played it was just the two of them moving as though they were one.

Cole didn’t want to let her go. When the waltz ended,

he would have liked to spirit her away. There was no one present that was going to allow that to happen, and he reluctantly gave Rhyne over to Henry Longabach as Will changed tunes. Cole invited Estella to dance. He took a turn with Rachel when Wyatt claimed Rhyne. It was Ann Marie Easter who warned him he’d be lucky to get another dance with his bride, and he knew she was right when Digger Hammond left Whitley’s side long enough to partner Rhyne in one of the reels.

Rhyne laughed a trifle breathlessly as she was spun from Artie Showalter into another pair of arms. She expected to be twirled or tipped or taken up in a bear hug, but none of those things happened. Her new partner remained rooted to the floor, holding her almost at arm’s length, steadying her when his immobility caused her to finally stumble.

“My God,” Elijah Wentworth whispered. “You really are just like her.”

Rhyne looked up into gray eyes not so very different from her own.

“Delia,” the judge said. “You’re Delia reborn.”

Chapter 13

Cole pulled the stickpin from his neckcloth and placed it in the black lacquered box on top of the chest of drawers. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Rhyne at the small vanity that they had moved together from her bedroom into the one they shared. She was sitting on the velvet tuffet with her back to the mirror and staring at nothing in particular on the far wall. Her fingers trailed idly along the buttons of her cuirass bodice, but she hadn’t opened a single one thus far.

She’d been vaguely distracted since leaving the social and had started forcing a smile before that. He was the one that suggested leaving. Music and laughter followed them all the way home, and even now when he moved toward the window, he could hear Abe Dishman’s energetic fiddling above the sound of chatter and song. He imagined it would be nearing dawn before the last of the revelers wandered home or fell asleep where they dropped.

“Whitley enjoyed herself this evening,” said Cole. “I don’t think she was without a partner all night. Even the Morrison boy asked her to dance, and I don’t think Digger liked it.” Rhyne nodded, but Cole wondered if it wasn’t simply a response to the sound of his voice. She was still pensive. “Ned Beaumont told me that the Show alters took delivery of a two-headed calf yesterday.”

“Mmm.”

Cole shrugged out of his tailcoat, hung it in the armoire, and closed the door with just enough force to cause Rhyne to start. She turned her head and stared at him, her dark eyebrows drawn.

“Is something wrong?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I just told you the Showalters have a two-headed calf and you took it in stride.”

“You said that?”

He nodded.

“I’m sorry.” Rhyne began to unbutton her bodice. “Did you notice that Whitley danced all night? Digger looked fit to be tied when the Morrison boy took a turn with her.”

“You don’t say.”

She didn’t miss his wry smile. “What?” she asked as she shimmied out of her dress.

“Rhyne, I said the very same thing to you moments ago.”

“You did?”

“I did.” He stooped to pick up her gown when she stepped out of it. “Do you want to tell me what happened that you’re so preoccupied? Will says I should assume I’m at fault, but you don’t seem angry, just absent.”

“You were talking to that no-account Beatty boy about me?”

“No,” Cole said patiently. “Credit me with a little more sense than that, please. That was Will’s advice to me after the wedding. He seemed to think it was important that I knew. Apparently it was something Wyatt passed on to him, and he set great store by it.”

Rhyne rolled her eyes. She sat on the tuffet again to remove her shoes and stockings.

“Well?” asked Cole.

She didn’t look at him. “Judge Wentworth told me I was my mother reborn.”

Cole laid Rhyne’s gown over the back of a chair. He hunkered down in front of her and helped her with her kid boots. She’d only managed to fumble with the laces.

“It was startling,” she said. “He’s never spoken to me before. I didn’t know he even knew who I was, and then he says that. Why did he think he could say that to me?”

“Perhaps he thought he was complimenting you.”

“It didn’t seem like a compliment, and I didn’t thank him for being kind enough to say so. It seemed like he couldn’t help himself.”

“Maybe he couldn’t.” Cole removed Rhyne’s boots and began to roll down her stockings.

“He stared at me, and kept on staring even when I stared back.”

“Did you ask him how he knew your mother?”

Rhyne shook her head. “I wanted to. I wanted to in the worst way, but it wasn’t the right place, not with the music swirling around my head and folks singing and drinking. It wouldn’t have been right to talk about her there, not for me, and I don’t think for the judge, either.” She took her stockings from Cole’s hands and clutched them in her lap. “I reckon I’m being fanciful, but it seemed to me that the judge wanted to pretend he was dancing with Delia.”

“Maybe it’s not a fancy.” Cole wrestled with what he should tell Rhyne about his conversation with Elijah Went-worth at Miss Adele’s, and whether he should mention it at all. At the time, he’d thought it was the judge’s story to relate, that Rhyne needed to hear it firsthand, especially when Wentworth was on his way out of town and unavailable to answer any of her questions. Cole tried to imagine how she might react to his silence but saw the trap in that soon enough. The truth was, he couldn’t let what she would do sway his decision either to continue his silence or break it.

He stood and went over to the bed to sit. His cheeks puffed a little as he exhaled deeply. He was aware of Rhyne studying him, already alert to some shift in his manner that he hadn’t quite contained.

“Do you recall that I invited the judge to dinner a while back?” he asked.

“Yes. You wanted Whitley to hear what he had to say about female lawyers.”

“That’s right.” He pushed his fingers through his hair, ruffling it for the first time all evening. “But that was more of an afterthought, not the purpose.” He continued his explanation, watching Rhyne’s features still until they were as impenetrable as a mask. When he finished speaking, her knuckles showed whitely against the stockings. “You were hardly talking to me at the time because I’d gone to Miss Adele’s, but that had nothing to do with why I didn’t tell you. I thought it was his place, not mine.”

“So you let him ambush me in public.”

“Do you really believe that?”

Rhyne lowered her eyes and stared at her hands. She finally shook her head, shamed by her accusation.

“I never saw the judge tonight until he was dancing with you. I certainly didn’t expect he’d lose himself that way. Had he been drinking?”

She shrugged. “He didn’t smell for it, or at least no worse than anyone else.” After a moment, she looked at Cole again. “Do you think he really loved my mother? More than just as an admirer, I mean.”

“I don’t know. It’s one of the things I hoped he would tell you privately. He sought me out, Rhyne. There was intent, I believe. He wanted to learn something about Delia’s daughter.”

“I never heard anyone say that he had a curiosity about me when I was Delia’s son.”

“Perhaps because he couldn’t see the resemblance.”

She considered that and admitted, “Runt
did
make it a practice to avoid the judge.” “Any specific reason?”

“General principle.” She made a swipe at her cheek with her fingertips and then held them up for Cole to see. “Do you know it can still surprise me to discover they’re clean? I don’t suppose there’s a reason the judge should have seen through Runt Abbot’s grime when no one else did.” More thoughtful now, she smoothed the stockings in her lap, folded them, and placed them on the vanity behind her. “Do you suppose he’ll remember your invitation?”

“We can ask him again. It might be better if it comes from you.”

She nodded. “I’ll ask Whitley to help me compose a proper one.” Her eyes brightened a fraction. “And I can finally use that scented paper she gave me. It’ll smell real nice.”

Gunpoint couldn’t have persuaded Cole to explain that scented paper was not used for dinner invitations, at least ones that weren’t intended to be intimate. “I cannot speak for his honor,” he said diplomatically, “but I’d appreciate one like that.”

She got up and walked over to him. His legs parted immediately, making room for her between them. She put her hands on his shoulders while he settled his on her waist. “Maybe I’ll send you one, too.”

“That’d be fine.”

“Could be it’d be for something besides dinner.”

“Ah, then may I suggest that you compose it on your own?”

She chuckled. “Whatever ideas your sister gets, she won’t be getting them from me.”

Cole’s mouth flattened. “Digger.”

“More likely she’s giving that boy ideas. They spent a lot of time at Miss Adele’s tonight.”

“The desserts were there.”

“They certainly were.” “You don’t think they–”