The Bridegroom. Linda Miller Lael

I’m twenty-six years old, I went to college, and I’ve worked for the Pinkerton Agency and Wells Fargo.”

      Wyatt gave a low whistle, causing the dog to perk up its ears and pricking at Gideon’s already flaring temper. “Twenty-six,” he marveled. “You have attained a venerable age, little brother. At the rate you’re going, though, you might not get much older.”

      Wyatt, Gideon figured irritably, was around forty-three. Evidently, he thought that made him a wise old man, with the right to preach and pontificate. “Stop calling me ‘little brother,’” he bit out.

      Wyatt merely grinned.

      And right about then, Rowdy walked in, slammed the door shut behind him. “Get your feet off my desk,” he growled, after raking his gaze from one end of Gideon’s frame to the other.

      Gideon took his time, but he did comply, and that nettled him further.

      “Lark’s feeding the women supper, and we’ll put them up for the night,” Rowdy said, heading for the coffeepot. He frowned when he realized the stuff was just beginning to perk—both Rowdy and Wyatt liked their coffee, Gideon remembered distractedly. Drank the stuff like tomorrow had been cancelled. “By morning,” he added, “Fitch will probably be here to get them.”

      “What?” Gideon shot out of Rowdy’s chair, which might have been exactly what his brother had intended to happen, though by the time that idea came to mind, it was already too late to spite him by staying put.

      Wyatt and Rowdy exchanged grim glances.

      “There’s only one way out of this one,” Rowdy mused, after a few moments.

      “Afraid so,” Wyatt agreed.

      Gideon waited, too cussed to ask what that way might be, as badly as he wanted to know. He’d been a sort of lawman himself, until he’d taken a leave of absence from Wells Fargo to work for the mine owners, and yet he hadn’t considered any of the ramifications of his actions, legal or otherwise.

      All he’d wanted to do was get Lydia out of Jacob Fitch’s reach.

      “You’ll have to marry the girl,” Rowdy said slowly, like he was explaining something that should have been obvious even to an idiot. “Tonight.”

      “Of course, there are other choices,” Wyatt allowed thoughtfully.

      “Like what?” Gideon snapped.

      “Well, you could go to prison for kidnapping,” Wyatt said.

      “Or hand Lydia over to Jacob Fitch when he gets here,” Rowdy speculated.

      “I’ll be damned if I’ll do either one of those things!”

      “Then you’d better get yourself hitched to her,” Wyatt said.

      “If she’ll have you,” Rowdy added. “After today, that seems pretty unlikely to me.”

      Rowdy and Wyatt were, for all practical intents and purposes, the only blood relatives Gideon had left, not counting his many nieces and nephews. His father had perished in a shoot-out, years before, and his mother had died before he was a day old, so he had no memory at all of her—not even a tone of voice or a scent. He wouldn’t have recognized Ethan, Levi or Nick if he’d met them on the street, and the sibling he’d truly loved—his half sister, Rose, born to his father and a madam who called herself Ruby—had been killed in an accident when she was just four years old, and he was six.

      Gideon had witnessed that tragedy—seen Rose run into the street in front of Ruby’s Saloon over in Flagstaff, pursuing a scampering kitten, seen her fall under the hooves of a team of horses and the wheels of the wagon they’d been pulling. He’d grieved so long and so hard for Rose that he’d sworn never to care as much about anyone or anything again.

      And he never had.

      Still, what his two older brothers thought mattered to him, with or without the sentiment plain folks and poets called love. They’d been outlaws, Wyatt and Rowdy, desperate men with nothing but a hangman’s noose in their future, and yet, somehow, they’d turned their lives around. Married good women, fathered children, earned fine reputations and accumulated property.

      It was because of them, and the examples they’d set, both good and bad, that Gideon had gone to college when he would have preferred to stay in Stone Creek, playing at being a lawman. He’d worked hard at his studies, kept his nose clean even though the Yarbro blood ran as hot in his veins as it had in theirs.

      For that reason, and a few others he couldn’t have put a name to, he stayed in that office, on the night of the day he’d stolen another man’s bride, and did his best to keep a civil tongue in his head while his brothers basically called him a fool.

      “Fitch could take Lydia back to Phoenix and marry her? Even if she didn’t want to go?” Gideon asked, the fight pretty much gone out of him now.

      “He couldn’t legally force her to leave with him if she didn’t want to,” Rowdy reasoned quietly. “But there’s no telling if he’d give her a choice in the matter—any more than you did.”

      For the first time since he’d carried Lydia out of that mansion, tossed her into the back of the wagon, and forced her onto a departing train, Gideon squared what he’d done with the excuses he’d made for doing it.

      “Damn,” he muttered.

      “Yeah,” Wyatt said. “Damn.”

      “You can still make this right, Gideon,” Rowdy said. “I ought to throw you straight into one of those cells back there, keep you in custody until the marshal in Phoenix either gives me leave to release you or sends a deputy to fetch you back to give an accounting to some federal judge. But you’re my lit—you’re my brother, and I don’t want to see you head down the wrong road, especially after you buckled down and got through college and worked a man’s job after that. So I’m giving you a chance, Gideon. You go and talk to Lydia. If she’s willing to throw in with the likes of you—and again, I’ve got my doubts about that, since she seems like the sensible sort—the two of you could be married tonight. That would prevent Fitch from taking her anywhere.” He paused—for Rowdy, this was a lot of talking to do at one time—and huffed out a weary breath before finishing up. “There’s one other thing, Gideon. After what happened today, and never mind that it was through no fault of her own, Lydia will be the subject of some gossip down in Phoenix, thanks to the scandal you started by stealing her that way.”

      Since he wasn’t overly concerned with propriety himself, Gideon hadn’t thought about that any more than he’d thought about the possibility of being charged with a crime. But he’d created a scandal even by the standards of a scrappy, boisterous cow-town like Phoenix—which made him wonder if Jacob Fitch still wanted Lydia for a wife, or if he just wanted to punish her for making him look the fool.

      Gideon sat down in one of the other chairs, braced his elbows on his thighs, and put his face in his hands. He’d had the best of intentions, and look what had come of it. Still, what could he have done differently? He’d approached Fitch at the tailor’s shop, after talking to Lydia, and asked the man to give her more time.

      Fitch had refused adamantly, and without a second thought.

      Gideon felt a hand rest briefly on his shoulder, knew it was Rowdy standing by his chair even before he heard his brother’s voice.

      “If it’s any consolation, Gideon,” Rowdy said gruffly, “I’d have done the same thing in your place, most likely.”

      “Me, too,” Wyatt admitted.

      Rowdy spoke again. “I’d tell you to forget this mining job you’ve signed on for—I don’t know why you’d want it anyway, with your education and experience working for Pinkerton Agency and then Wells Fargo—and light out of here, pronto. But I think you did what you did because you have strong feelings for Lydia Fairmont, and that’s something a man should never run away from.”

      “Amen,”