Fire on the Plains (Western Fire) Read Online Free Page B

maintain an agreeable disposition. Even in moments of severe duress.
     

     
    “ . . . ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one hundred.”
    Finished, Lydia carefully laid her bristle brush in its customary place on top of the marble-topped bureau. She considered plaiting her hair into a braid, but quickly vetoed the idea. The trembling in her hands had become so severe that she feared she wouldn’t be able to perform the simple task.
    Uncertain what she should do next, Lydia fidgeted with the lace that adorned the cuff on her white nightdress.
    While the earlier wedding supper had been grueling, waiting for her new husband to join her in their bed chamber was fast becoming sheer torment. Although, in all honesty, Ben seemed to have suffered through the lengthy meal with the same heightened sense of discomfort as she. Since Reverend Witherspoon had pronounced them man and wife, they’d exchanged only scant words with one another, their verbal exchanges having become more stilted and awkward as the day had progressed.
    Nervously realizing that there was too much illumination in the room, Lydia reached for the bureau lamp and inched the oil flame down several notches. Glancing behind her, she could see that the diminished light did little to dispel the flickering shadows that fell across the feather tick mattress.
    Staring at the familiar four-poster bed, Lydia suffered a pang of guilt.
    She’d shared the same bed with her first husband on their wedding night. Much to the amusement of her in-laws, when she and James migrated west, she’d insisted upon transporting the behemoth piece of furniture from Tennessee to Missouri. Now, she wished that she’d not been so insistent.
    Desperately trying to steady her nerves, Lydia rearranged the toiletries on top of the bureau, making a mental note of those items that she would need to pack for the upcoming trip to Kansas. Suddenly, succumbing to a bout of anxiety, she opened the mother-of-pearl jewelry box. Almost frantically she sorted through the menagerie of earrings and brooches, relieved when she finally found what she was searching for – the gold wedding band given to her by James McCabe. Today marked the first time in nine years that she’d not worn it.
    Since her new husband had not seen fit to buy her a wedding ring, Lydia’s left hand was now bare.
    Fondly recalling that other wedding night, Lydia slowly, reverently, raised the gold band to her lips.
    “It’s nice to finally see you attired in some color other than black.”
    At the sound of that deep, masculine voice, Lydia pivoted, startled to fin d Ben standing in the open doorway.
    “Need I remind you , sir, that I wear black—” Because I am a widow. Thinking better of the declaration at the last, Lydia clamped her mouth shut.
    For the first time in what had been an interminably long day, the ramification s of what she’d done were beginning to hem in on her. No longer could she lay claim to being James McCabe’s widow. As of this day, she was now Benjamin Strong’s wife. Even more distressing, the same marriage vows that had sealed her marriage to James, now bound her to another man. A man who, for all intents and purposes, was a stranger to her.
    ‘Until death we do part.’
    Afraid that Ben might catch her in the act, Lydia decided against returning her wedding ring to the jewelry box. Instead, she hid the ring in the palm of her hand, her fingers tightly clenched around the gold band. As soon he turned his back, she would slip the ring into the box.
    With surprising nonchalance , as though it was his nightly habit, Ben crossed the threshold, closing the door behind him. Attired in his blue uniform pants, a white linen shirt tucked into the waistband, he seemed too large, too masculine, to be sharing her lace-filled bed chamber.
    “Since you’ve not yet had time to purchase civilian attire, I could alter a pair of Spencer’s trousers for you,” Lydia offered, if for no other reason than to break the