Train Station Bride by Holly Bush Page B

small glass before sitting down across from Julia.
    “Yeah, work out. What we do here on the farm. What’s expected of you. What you can expect of me.” His bride’s hands were shaking, and she was eying his glass of sour mash. “Would you like some?” Jake asked as he lifted his glass.
    “Yes, please.”
    Jake handed her a glass of whiskey. “I’m usually up by four or four-thirty. Not much to be done in the fields till harvest, but me and the boys work getting the barns and silos ready. Mend fences, that sort of thing.”
    “I was hoping to talk about something of a more personal nature,” Julia said.
    Jake hoped this wasn’t going to be a list of things he was supposed to do like wearing a tie to church and dabbing a napkin on his mouth when he got egg yolk on his chin.
    “Like what?” he asked.
    “I was wondering why Flossie and Gloria didn’t put my things in your bedroom.”
    Of all the things Julia could have said, Jake expected this question the least. He had conceded to Flossie’s wishes and agreed to get to know his new bride before bedding her.
    “I thought maybe we could take some time getting to know each other.”
    “Are you,” she said and stopped to clear her throat, “are you saying you think we should wait?”
    Julia was looking at the wall just past his left shoulder. “You’re a beautiful woman, Julia. I’ve already told you that. But considering how things began,” he trailed off.
    She looked him in the eye. “I think we should consummate the marriage.”
    Jake stared at his glass and swirled the amber liquor. “I’ll admit, I wouldn’t mind, but I was figuring …”
    “My family doesn’t know I came here to marry. They think I’m visiting my Aunt Mildred. I’m not a virgin.”
    Jake leaned his forearms on the table, hands clasped. He knew something was behind a woman this beautiful leaving her rich Boston family for the prairie and Jacob Snelling. He wanted to know now rather than later exactly the kind of woman he’d married. Maybe it was too late to forestall a visit from a lawman out of Boston.
    “S’pose you could elaborate, Julia. On both things if you don’t mind.”
    “What do you want to hear about first?” she asked.
    “Either,” Jake said.
    “My family thinks I left four days ago from Boston to visit my Aunt Mildred. My father’s mother’s sister. I left letters for my family. Eustace, our maid, is going to hand them out next Friday and then, well, then they will know I didn’t go to Delaware.”
    “And in those letters you tell your family you came to South Dakota to marry Jacob Snelling.”
    “Yes.”
    “What’s going to happen when your family finds out you’re not in Delaware?” Jake asked.
    She stared at her hands folded around her glass of whiskey. “My mother and father will be very unhappy.” She looked at Jake. “I imagine my father will send someone immediately to take me back to Boston.”
    Jake linked his hands behind his head and tilted his chair back. There was some deceit going on here, of that Jake was sure. “So if we go to bed now, I won’t let him take you.”
    “Something like that,” she said.
    This woman had as many layers as an onion, and if he wasn’t careful, he’d end up with tears in his eyes. He’d didn’t give a rat’s ass about her family sending someone after her. She was his wife, now, for better or for worse. And after a long time without a woman, he wasn’t inclined to turn down her offer. Regardless of what her reasoning was. In either case, they were married. He’d made his bed by dragging the minister to the train station that morning.
    “And the other?”
    Her lips were quivering. “Well, I imagined you’d figure the second thing out if we went ahead with the first and I didn’t want to be dishonest.”
    “What did you tell Snelling?” he asked.
    She dropped her head. “That I was a widow.”
    Jake poured himself another glassful of whiskey and refilled Julia’s. “You lied to him.