cloakroom, Asa shed his winter coat and muffler, still stunned by seeing Judith Jones. For a moment, he saw her again stepping off the boat and then looking up at him. He had not expected to recognize his bride, but he had—from a tintype he’d seen long ago. The tintype had belonged to her brother, his comrade in arms. But she hadn’t recognized him, which was a relief.
Surely she would never realize that she’d seen him twice before, never learn of their connection. The shock of recognizing her equaled the shock of seeing that his bride was not what he’d expected. He hadn’t anticipated the wave of instant attraction to her. He’d had trouble saying the few words to her that he’d managed to voice.
“Well, you have a neat-looking bride,” said the town blacksmith, Levi Comstock, slapping Asa on the back.
Asa nodded. Judith was a lot more than neat. She was trim and pretty with thick dark hair and deep brown eyes. He’d expected a woman who couldn’t attract a man and had prepared himself for someone plain. He shook his head as if trying to clear his mind of his preconception. He’d wanted someone plain, a woman who would fill the lonely hours and demand nothing from him deeper than kindness and respect. Judith Jones was not that sort of woman, commonplace, unremarkable. She was the complete opposite of those terms. His pulse sped up. He clamped down his reactions.
“Miss Jones appeared to be a pleasant and modest young woman,” said Noah Whitmore, the town preacher, leading them through the schoolhouse, where people were already gathering. The three of them went into the teacher’s quarters in the rear. The teacher had invited them to use it as a place for them to await the bride, out of the public eye.
“I don’t know how I’d handle marrying a woman I’d just met,” Levi said, buttoning himself into his suit coat.
Asa fully agreed with this. But he’d had no choice. No young women flocked to this frontier town. Out of desperate loneliness, he’d offered marriage to this woman. He could not face another winter with hours of remembering the past he yearned to erase from his mind. Women talked, and he planned for Judith’s voice to fill up the long, empty, silent days. But Judith’s large, honest eyes warned him that this woman was more than he’d bargained for.
“Sunny and I didn’t know each other very well when we wed,” Noah said, checking his reflection in the small shaving mirror on the wall and smoothing back his hair. “Being married is a special relationship. It might help to know a woman well before one weds, but many other couples have met on their wedding day.”
Asa appreciated Noah’s calm voice. He also knew that Noah was a Union veteran like himself. Asa’s deep-down worry thrust up into his throat, preventing him from speaking. He’d spent four long years during the war killing men, destroying everything in his path. He’d seen things no man should see. How did a soldier put that behind him and become a husband and maybe a father? He felt himself seize up inside as battle memories surged through his mind and his arteries pumped his blood hard. He wished he could ask Noah how he’d come to a place of peace. But men didn’t ask other men those kind of questions.
He drew in a deep breath. He’d come this far and he couldn’t back out, couldn’t jilt a sweet-looking, scared-looking woman like Judith. This was harder for her. She was putting her life in his hands, trusting him to be her provider and protector. He could do that, offer her that. But he had nothing more to offer. Did she sense that?
“The ladies are busy in my upstairs,” Ashford, the storekeeper, came in, rubbing his hands together. “Wish we had nicer weather for the wedding. But we’ll manage. We’ll manage.”
And that was what Asa must do—manage. He had gone along with Mason Chandler’s suggestion that they advertise for wives. No one had forced him. He’d done it of his own free will. He recalled Judith’s hesitant, shy letters and how he’d come to look forward to them, how he’d read and reread them. Straightening his back, he faced life. He would marry Judith today. He just wished that he was a better man for her and that his heart would stop pounding as if scolding him for not telling her what a poor husband he would make her.
* * *
Soon Mrs. Ashford knocked on the guest bedroom door and reentered. She and Emma helped Judith into the royal-blue dress with tiny mother-of-pearl buttons and hand-tatted lace at the high collar. Judith had labored over it for several weeks. She’d decided on a classic style, which, though it followed the new fashion of a slimmer profile, would indeed last her many years.
“Such fine stitching,” Mrs. Ashford remarked. “You are quite a seamstress.”
Judith managed a smile. Finally dressed, she was led to the hallway to a full-length wall mirror.
“You look beautiful,” exclaimed the young daughter, Amanda, and Emma echoed the sentiment.
Judith could only hope Asa Brant thought so. She’d never been deemed pretty, as Emma was, something people had found necessary to point out all through her childhood and teens.
“Every bride is beautiful, but Miss Jones, you do look lovely,” Mrs. Ashford agreed.
Judith finally let herself examine her reflection. She did indeed look well in her dress, but also stunned. Didn’t anybody notice that?
Soon they were layering up coats, gloves, shawls to meet the winter cold that still lingered and then walking out to the church-schoolhouse combination.
There the women paused just inside the cloakroom and shed their outerwear. After handing both twins bouquets of dried flowers that had been waiting on the shelf, Mrs. Ashford and Amanda hurried on inside to take seats, while Mr. Ashford offered to walk Judith down the aisle to her groom. He told them there would be no “Wedding March” since there was no organ or piano.
The urge to bolt shot through Judith like lightning. But she could not go back home, so she had to go forward. She mastered herself and took the man’s arm.
Emma slipped in front of them. “Ready, sister?”
Judith nodded, unable to speak.
Emma stepped into the open doorway to the large classroom, lifting her shoulders, and then she began to walk sedately down the aisle toward the front.
Mr. Ashford paused with Judith and then started after her sister.
From nerves, Judith’s vision wavered, but she was able to see the preacher holding an open book in front of the room, flanked by Asa Brant, obviously in his Sunday best. Another man stood beside him, no doubt the best man.
Emma arrived at the front and moved to one side to leave room for Judith next to Asa. Mr. Ashford squeezed her arm, released her and moved to sit with his family in the front row.
Judith’s heart was leaping beneath her breastbone. She felt a bit light-headed.
“Please join hands,” the pastor said. “Miss Jones, I am Noah Whitmore, and it’s my honor to join you in holy matrimony to Asa Brant.”
The man’s calm voice soothed her. She managed a smile but could not bring herself to look up into her groom’s face. If she did, then she might panic, so she concentrated on Noah Whitmore’s voice and Asa Brant’s firm grip on her icy kid-gloved hand.
* * *
Asa held on to his bride’s hand like a lifeline. His mind brought up the face of a woman whom he’d courted before the war and who’d sent him a letter in 1862 telling him she’d married another
