"We were looking for you to get here sooner, Mr. Kincaid," Ruth told him. "They left without you. Tessa said they didn't dare wait any longer."
"Who left without me?" Lee asked.
"The whole family."
"Where did they go?"
"To the church in Cheyenne. Tessa said that if you got here I was to tell you to hurry."
Lee thought for a moment, mentally counting the days. "Today isn't Sunday, it's Tuesday. What's everybody doing at church?"
"They're at Mary's wedding."
"What did you say?" The blood seemed to roar through Lee's brain.
"Everybody is at Mary's wedding except those of us who stayed to prepare the wedding breakfast and a couple of the older boys."
"Mary? Mary Alexander?" He managed to get her name out.
"Yes."
"Christ!" Lee swore, glancing over his shoulder at Judah and Maddy in the hired buggy. "What time is the wedding?"
"Nine-thirty."
He pulled out his pocket watch and flicked open the lid.
If he hurried, he could make it to the church in time, but not in the buggy. He turned back to Ruth. "I need the fastest horse on the place and somebody to drive the buggy for the old man."
Ruth looked
over at the elderly man and the child. The little girl was crying, while the gentleman tried awkwardly to comfort her. "They can stay here until you get back."
Lee shook his head. "They have to go with me."
Ruth shrugged. "My son, Daniel, is in the stables. He can drive the buggy. I'll get some sweet bread for the little girl."
Lee leaned over, placed his hands on either side of Ruth's face, and kissed her. "Thanks, Ruth," he said as he sprinted toward the stables.
"The fastest horse on the ranch is Reese's white stallion, Pegasus," Ruth called after him.
As he galloped toward Cheyenne on Pegasus' back, Lee called himself ten kinds of a fool for even considering doing what he was about to do. It was a crazy idea. And Lee knew he would never had thought of it if he hadn't been desperate and suffering from the effects of too little sleep.
He couldn't really be riding into Cheyenne for the sole purpose of asking Mary Alexander to marry him. He didn't want to marry again. He had been married once before for a few idyllic months before the war had intervened—before the war had cost him his beloved wife.
And although he occasionally toyed with the idea of marrying again and settling down, of raising a family of tow-headed children, when the demands of his job had become too much to tolerate. Lee knew he wasn't ready for the responsibility. It had taken him years to come to terms with his wife's senseless death. It had taken him years to recover from the heartache. Jeannie's death had nearly killed him. And Lee knew he couldn't withstand another loss like Jeannie.
He'd be better off to keep to himself, and to his bachelor ways. He didn't need a wife or a little girl. He couldn't risk losing his heart again. And Lee was very much afraid that Mary Alexander and little Madeline Gray might work their way inside that vulnerable organ before he had a chance to stop them.
It was crazy. He was crazy. He ought to turn Pegasus around and head back to the Trail T. He ought to wait for Tessa and David there. He had no business riding hell-bent for leather toward the Catholic church in Cheyenne… no business at all. But, Lee reminded himself, lately all his plans had been derailed by unexpected events. What was one more?
He gripped the reins tightly, then squeezed his eyes shut, muttered a heartfelt expletive, loosened his grips on the reins, and let the white stallion have his head, praying all the while that he'd make it in time to stop the wedding.
* * *
Chapter Four
"Do you, Mary Amanda, take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband?"