am ready for the wedding,” Charlotte informed him. She tried to make her comment tart but the tremor in her voice emphasized her failure.
The man took in her clothing, nodded with approval at the green skirt she had put on. As a concession to the heat, she’d left off the matching jacket, and only wore the pale gray blouse he’d already seen upstairs.
As she felt his gaze on her, her breath stalled. He was a handsome man, around thirty, and Charlotte had little experience in being the subject of a bold masculine inspection. It made her tingle in an odd way, in intimate places, stirring up a new kind of unease that had nothing to do with fear.
“Have you packed?” her bridegroom asked.
“No. I thought we’d be staying here for the night.”
The night. Their wedding night. The idea made a blush flare up on her skin, adding to the heat of the room. She fixed her attention on the toes of her half boots, refusing to look up, but she could hear the scrape of the chair against the floorboards as Thomas Greenwood hoisted his muscular frame out of the seat.
“We’ll leave immediately after the ceremony,” he told her. “I’ll settle the account while you pack.”
Charlotte sneaked a peek at him as he strode over to the counter and reached into a pocket on his black suit. The care with which Thomas Greenwood counted out the coins into the open palm of the innkeeper suggested that his financial situation was scarcely better than her own.
A somersault of guilt pitched in her stomach. He must have spent all his savings on a wife. Instead of the sturdy helpmate of his dreams, fate had saddled him with a woman who knew nothing about farming. Her domestic skills didn’t extend beyond embroidering undergarments or composing weekly menus with the cook.
And she wouldn’t even be able to make up for those shortcomings by showing willingness in the marital bed, Charlotte thought with dismay, another fiery blush flaring up to her cheeks. All in all, Mr. Greenwood might end up feeling that from his point of view the marriage was a very bad bargain indeed.
He turned around. “Go on now,” he said. “Get your things.”
There was kindness in his tone, kindness and patience. It might be possible for her to navigate the storms that lay ahead, Charlotte told herself as she took the stairs back up to her room. A sense of honor stirred in her. Thomas Greenwood was providing her with a sanctuary at a time of distress. During the year she remained in his custody, she would have to treat him with the respect and courtesy he deserved.
The decision eased her tension and she flitted about the room, gathering up her meager possessions. Two sets of cotton drawers and shifts hung on the back of a chair, where she had spread them out to dry after washing them last night. She folded the flimsy garments, smoothing her hands over the wrinkled fabric.
As she bent to retrieve her leather traveling bag from the floor, her eyes fell on a shadow in the open doorway. Thomas Greenwood stood watching her, arms crossed over his chest, one shoulder propped against the door frame. A dark flush tinged his suntanned cheeks.
Charlotte swallowed the lump of nerves that clogged her throat at the possessive glint in his eyes. She jerked her attention back to the task of packing her belongings. A fiery blush surged all the way from her neck to the roots of her hair at the realization that he had witnessed her handling her intimate clothing. More than likely, he’d imagined her dressed in nothing else.
Her mind scattered. She tossed the bundle of undergarments into her bag, cramming them on top of the things already there—a book, a box of personal treasures, a nightgown, a pair of kid slippers and a white blouse. She added the silver-backed mirror and hairbrush from the top of the dresser and snapped the jaws of the bag shut.
“I’m ready,” she said, even though his heated gaze rooted her to the floor.
He cleared his throat and edged inside the room. “Is this all you have?”
“Yes.” Charlotte took a deep breath to ease her constricted lungs. “I only brought what I could carry, to make traveling on the train easier.”
“Did you send the rest as freight?”
“This is all I have.” She didn’t elaborate, merely grabbed the bag by the handle and set off marching toward the door.
“Let me.” He circled the bed in a few long strides and reached for her bag. His hand curled over hers, strong and warm. A shiver rippled along her skin. The reality she’d tried to push aside broke through her senses, and the truth of the situation turned her knees to water.
She’d be married to this man before the sun finished its journey across the sky. He’d be her husband, with the rights and expectations that went with the position. She intended to keep him from consummating the marriage, but how could she make sure? Despite the honor and decency she sensed about him, Thomas Greenwood might not have the patience to wait. He might simply take what he justly believed to be his.
* * *
When they got downstairs, Charlotte followed Thomas Greenwood out through the double doors, onto the wide porch of the Imperial Hotel. At the far end of the rutted street, she could see a small church gleaming white in the sun. She stared at the cross on the roof. It seemed to be pointing up to the heavens, like the finger of God lifted in fury to warn her against the sin she was about to commit.
In her anxiety she failed to notice that her bridegroom had come to a halt at the top of the porch steps. She kept on walking and slammed smack into his broad back. He didn’t even flinch at the impact, merely reached around with one powerful arm to propel her forward, until she was positioned beside him.
In front of them, an old man with pure white hair and wrinkled features stood clutching a prayer book between his hands. He wore an odd mix of clothing, a formal black coat with dirty denim trousers. He smiled at Charlotte, a benign, absent smile as he studied her through the thick lenses of his spectacles.
“The preacher will wed us here,” Greenwood said. He wrapped his fingers around hers in a steely grip, as though to quash any lingering thoughts of an escape.
Married. They were about to be married.
The realization broke through Charlotte’s panic, like the sound of a ship’s horn breaks through a fog. She’d dreamed of marriage, of course she had, every girl, every woman did. At twenty, she’d been getting ready to start searching for a husband, and then Mama and Papa had died...
She slanted another glance at the man standing beside her. Even leaving out his imposing physique, he was attractive, with healthy skin and an even row of white teeth. The prominent cheekbones gave him a stern look, but the sensitive curve of his wide mouth softened it.
If they had met in Boston, if they had courted and fallen in love, she’d be proud to be standing beside such a man in a church, family and friends sitting in the pews behind them, the organ playing a wedding march.
But now, she stood beside a stranger, on a ramshackle hotel porch, in front of a geriatric preacher who contemplated her with a pair of myopic eyes. Evidently, her husband-to-be didn’t consider it worth the trouble to walk over to the church. She embraced the gift, not pausing to question his motives. Telling lies on the porch of the Imperial Hotel didn’t seem nearly as great a sin as voicing the same untruths in a temple of God.
“Get on with it,” Greenwood told the preacher. “And
