opened, and lowered it in his hands. He took out a small card from his coat pocket and read from it. “Do you, Thomas Greenwood, take this woman, Maude Jackson, to be your lawfully wedded wife?”
“I do.” The reply resonated clear and firm.
Charlotte swayed on her feet as she realized how close she’d come to being exposed. She hadn’t known the first name of Miss Jackson. If her bridegroom hadn’t furnished the preacher with the information in advance, she might have been caught in a lie before the marriage ceremony was even finished.
Behind them, the porch timbers creaked with heavy footsteps. Charlotte glanced back over her shoulder. A squat man in a long canvas duster had arrived. Another man climbed up after him, a battered hat clasped in his hands. Then a third appeared, a dark-complexioned man with a patch over one eye and a neatly trimmed beard.
“How much?” the first man grunted.
“Get it done,” Greenwood said to the preacher.
“Two hundred.” The reply came in an insolent voice Charlotte recognized. She whirled around and saw the lanky innkeeper lounging against the door frame. An amused expression brightened his narrow features.
“Three hundred,” said the man in a long canvas duster.
“Four,” one of the others called out.
Greenwood took a step toward the preacher, tugging Charlotte along with him. He scowled at the ancient reverend. “If you don’t finish it quick, there’ll be trouble.”
The preacher squinted past Charlotte at the gathered crowd of men, nodded and speeded up his words. “Will you, Maude Jackson, take this man, Thomas Greenwood, to be your lawfully wedded husband?”
Charlotte stole another glance behind her. The number of men had grown, and the amounts they were shouting had escalated to a thousand. She couldn’t understand the cause of the fracas, but she was left in no doubt about the urgency with which her bridegroom wanted the ceremony completed.
Instinct told her to stall.
“Excuse me.” She raised her chin and addressed her words to the preacher. “Is it really appropriate to ask him first?” Her eyes flickered to Greenwood, who stood by her side, bristling with impatience. “Shouldn’t you ask me first?”
“What does it matter?” The words rumbled out of her bridegroom in a harsh growl, as if they were his heart and guts yanked out. “The end result will be just the same.”
A solitary burst of laughter vibrated along the porch. Charlotte turned around and spotted the innkeeper chuckling on the doorstep. “What exactly about my situation do you find so amusing?” she asked, irritation overcoming her anxiety.
The man jerked his chin to take in the crowd of spectators. “You don’t get it, do you?”
She frowned at him. “Get what?”
“They are bidding for you.” He shook his head in wry amusement. “It’s like a cattle auction, and you are the cow on the auction block. Greenwood could sell your marriage contract to the highest bidder. If he had any sense at all, he’d make a profit on you and order another bride for himself.”
Charlotte spun to her bridegroom and tipped back her head to look up at his face. “Is it true?” she demanded..
His fingers tightened around hers. “Say your vows now, before I have a chance to consider what a thousand dollars might mean to me.”
Alarm soared inside Charlotte. She surveyed the group of men gathered on the porch and recognized the pair who had alighted from the train with her. One sent her a bold grin, his grimy fingers fondling the moustache that decorated his upper lip.
She spun back to the preacher and blurted, “I do.”
“With the powers vested in me by the Territory of Arizona, I declare you man and wife.” The preacher completed the ceremony in haste and invited two of the spectators to act as witnesses. Charlotte watched the strangers scratch their names on the piece of paper, and shivered with the knowledge that she had now become the property of Thomas Greenwood.
Another ripple of laughter came from the porch.
Charlotte darted a sour glance at the innkeeper. “What is it now?” she asked him tartly.
“Of course, if you’d had your wits about you, you could have taken charge of the auction yourself. You could have accepted a thousand, paid Greenwood back his two hundred and kept the rest. You could have taken your pick, married any one of these men.”
Charlotte swung her attention back to her new husband.
Greenwood finished passing a handful of silver to the preacher. “Let’s get going,” he said and turned toward her, but he was refusing to meet her eyes. From his reaction Charlotte understood the innkeeper had been telling the truth.
Thomas Greenwood had tricked her.
It occurred to her it was not out of laziness that he had chosen to have the wedding performed on the hotel porch, but that he had wanted to get it over with quickly, to minimize the time she would be bombarded with competitive offers.
Resentment unfurled in her belly at being treated like a fool, but another thought broke through her anger. Could it be that her new husband lacked the understanding of his own worth? Could he not see that she would have chosen to marry him a thousand times before any of the other men clustered on the porch of the Imperial Hotel? And if that was the case, should she enlighten him?
* * *
Unable to make sense of his turbulent feelings, Thomas tugged his dainty bride down the porch steps behind him. She was totally wrong. Small hands, delicate frame and a face that could make a man lose his sanity.
Considering she was wholly unsuitable, why had he been in such a hurry to marry her, instead of making a profit on the transaction? He could have accepted a thousand dollars for her and sent for another bride, someone better equipped for life on his isolated homestead. A plain woman would tolerate poverty more easily, would be grateful for the love and protection he could offer her.
A plain woman. The tintype photograph he carried in his coat pocket weighed on his mind. He’d taken the picture out for a good look while he drank his coffee in the lounge of the Imperial Hotel, waiting for his bride to come downstairs.
He’d turned the image this way and that, studying it close and squinting at it from afar, but however hard he’d tried, he hadn’t been able to reconcile the homely woman in the picture with the enchanting creature in a frothing white petticoat.
And what about the baby on the way? Even now, with the heavy wool skirts padding out her waist, his bride was slender, but Miss Jackson had to be with child. Why otherwise would a woman like her consent to marry a stranger? Without the disgrace of an unwed pregnancy she’d be fighting off suitors.
Thomas halted by the cart where the chestnut gelding whinnied and beat its hooves against the dusty ground, eager to start for home. He lifted his wife’s bag over the side of the cart and turned to her. “If you like, you can lie down on the wagon bed, instead of sitting up on the bench. I’ve made a bed with straw.”
She craned up on tiptoe to inspect
