The Barefoot Bride Read online

  Any second, fireworks were bound to explode.

  Molly nearly jumped out of her skin when she felt a hard tug on her sodden skirt. She looked down to see Nessie standing with her thumb in her mouth. Molly had completely forgotten about her daughter in the confusion. She reached down to lift the child into her arms. At the same time, she realized that if she held Nessie close to her, the child would get wet. She ended up holding the little girl the outstretched length of her arms.

  Seeing her difficulty, Seth took the child from Molly and seated her in the crook of his arm. “And who might this be?”

  Molly swallowed. “My daughter, Agnes. We call her Nessie.”

  “You have a son and a daughter?” Seth asked in a carefully controlled voice.

  Molly's spine stiffened. She arched a brow as she stared him down. “Yes. It appears we have three children between us.”

  “Don't marry her, Pa!” Patch cried. “That boy of hers is a danged rowdy one, for sure. And that one you're holding—why, she's still a baby! She'll drive you crazy in a week with her whining and crying.”

  Patch's argument left something to be desired, since Nessie hadn't made a sound since she'd arrived on the scene. But Molly took one look at Seth's daughter and saw the genuine distress in Patch's blue eyes at the sight of her father holding the other little girl.

  “Perhaps this isn't going to work out after all,” Molly said.

  “Why not?” Seth demanded.

  Molly's eyes slid away from his steady gaze. “I should have told you about the children.”

  “Dang right you should've,” Patch was quick to agree.

  “I was no more honest than you were/’ Seth conceded. “And the fact that you have children doesn't change things. I still need a wife. And my daughter needs a mother.”

  “Dang it, Pa! I don't—”

  “That'll be enough, Patch,” Seth said in a warning voice.

  “Send her home, Pa,” Patch begged. “Send ‘em all home.”

  Molly could see that Seth was torn. It was clear he would have walked over fire for his daughter. And Patricia—Patch—wanted them gone. But Molly needed a home for her children. If she had to fight Patch, she would do it.

  Seth saw Molly's shoulders square for battle even as her black lashes lowered onto pale cheeks in exhaustion. A strong, inexplicable need to protect rose within him. He thought of a line in her second letter. After explaining that her parents and husband were all dead, she had written, I am alone in the world now. Now he knew she had meant that she alone was responsible for the welfare of her two children. Where would she go if he decided not to marry her? And after all, he had been no more honest than she had been.

  He put a finger under her chin to lift her face up toward him. “Molly?”

  At the sound of Seth's voice, Molly's lids lifted, and she saw that his hard gray eyes had softened. She let herself hope.

  “Molly,” he repeated, as though the name were foreign and not a perfectly ordinary Irish name. “I have a preacher waiting. If you'll still have me.”

  Molly refused to look at Patch. The child wouldn't have changed her mind, and Molly felt her pain too strongly to ignore it. “Seth, I think—”

  She was interrupted by a cry from shore.

  “Hey, Doc! Pike Hardesty gunned down a man in Bassett's saloon. Better come quick!”

  Seth cursed under his breath. “I've got to go,” he said, quickly handing Nessie over. “Hardesty doesn't often miss. It'll be a near thing at best, and if I don't hurry, I'll be no help at all. I'll meet you at the hotel in town when I'm finished.”

  “Say, Pa,” Patch said. “Maybe she should go along.” When her father frowned, Patch added, “I mean, maybe you oughta find out if she's any good at nursing before you agree to marry her. After all, you don't want a wife who faints at the sight of a little blood.”

  Molly swallowed hard. “Blood?”

  Seth slanted a look at Molly, who had turned a little green at the gills. “I could use the help.” He looked at Nessie in her arms. “But I understand if you can't leave your daughter.”

  “Whit can look after her,” Molly said. Seeing the mutinous look in her son's eyes, she added, “I'll just walk them to our stateroom. I'll be back in a minute.”

  Seth watched her walk away, graceful despite the weight of the water-soaked skirt. He had taught himself to ignore women's bodies when he was doctoring them. But he hadn't been able to ignore Molly Gallagher's. He had seen the shape of her breasts through the wet cloth. Worse, the chill had made her nipples peak. He had been very much aware of her as a woman every moment he was unbuttoning her dress. Nothing with Molly Gallagher was turning out as he'd planned. How in the world had things gone so awry?

  “You better be careful, Pa,” Patch said.

  “What?” Seth replied absently, unwilling to give up watching the widow Gallagher.

  “She looks like more trouble than she's worth,” Patch said earnestly. “And think about that whiny baby, Pa. It'll be a misery for sure having her around the house. And lord knows what mischief that boy'll start. I—”

  “She's going to be my wife, Patch,” Seth said. “And she'll be your mother. Her children will become part of our family. You'd best get used to the idea.”

  Patch shook her head no. “I won't stand for it, Pa.”

  Seth hardened his voice against the pain he saw in his daughter's eyes. “You don't have any choice.”

  “Durned if I don't!” she cried. “Marry her if you gotta, Pa. But she ain't gonna be my ma. And they ain't gonna be my kin!”

  Seth clenched his fists as he watched Patch thrust her way through the crowd on deck and scramble down the gangplank. He was doing this for her own good. Someday she would thank him for it. He shoved a hand through his damp hair in frustration.

  “Shall we go?”

  The sound of Molly's husky voice sent a shiver down Seth's spine. She hadn't taken the time to comb her hair, but she had grabbed a shawl to wrap around the bodice of her dress. He forced himself not to remember the way the wet material had clung to her figure. There would be time later to think about the hell on earth he had created for himself with this marriage of convenience.

  “Let's go,” he said tersely. “I have a bullet to dig out of a man's hide.”

  Molly extended her step to match Seth's stride. All in all, things hadn't gone as badly as she had feared they might. At least he wasn't sending them right back to New Bedford on the next steamboat. Now all she had to do was prove she could be a competent nurse. That shouldn't be so hard. Why, she had gutted fish all the time back in New Bedford. Could the sight of a little blood from a gunshot wound be so very different?

  Molly had never seen so much blood in her life. It soaked the checkered shirt of the man lying on the floor of the Medicine Bow Saloon and stained the sawdust beneath him. She swallowed down the bile that rose in her throat and stayed as close as she could to Seth's side.

  ‘Tut him up on the bar,” Seth said, setting his travel-worn medical bag down on the polished surface.

  “Aw, come on, Doc. I'm trying to sell whiskey here,” Red complained.

  “I need a place where I can see to work.”

  Red grimaced. “You boys heard Doc Ken-drick. Haul him up here.”

  Several bystanders hoisted the man from the floor onto the mahogany bar. Seth carefully pulled the fabric away from the gaping hole in the man's chest. Bloody bubbles of air surrounded the wound.

  “Am I gonna make it, Doc?” the wounded man gasped.

  “What's your name?” Seth asked.

  “Wally Flanders.”

  “Just take it easy, Wally. I'll do my best.”

  Molly wasn't sure what she was supposed to do. So at first she did nothing, just stood and watched as Seth cut away the cloth from the wound. At Seth's command she supported the wounded man's head while the bartender held a whiskey bottle to his lips, then watched him pour whiskey from the same bottle over Seth's hands.

  Seth motioned
for several men to hold the wounded man down while he probed for the bullet.

  Molly's hands gripped the smooth mahogany bar and held on as the man screamed and fainted.

  “Thank God for that,” Seth muttered. “Mrs. Gallagher,” he said, “come over here and hand me my instruments when I ask for them.”

  “I don't know—”

  “Come over here,” Seth ordered. “I'll teach you what you need to know.”

  Molly sighed inwardly with relief. She could follow simple instructions. Seth need never find out she wasn't a real nurse.

  Molly retained only impressions of the operation that took place over the next several minutes: Seth's large hands, strong and sure, yet gentle. An economy of movement and efficiency of action. The sickly sweet smell of blood. An urgency that hovered in the air around them as the country doctor fought death. And lost.

  Molly knew it was over when she saw. the slump of Seth's shoulders. He seemed to curl in around himself. His hands stopped their deft movements. And she heard the soughing death rattle as the man gave up breath and life.

  “Shouldn't have wasted my time,” Seth said in disgust. “Must have nicked the lung. Thought so when I first saw him, but I hoped …”

  “You did the best you could,” Molly offered.

  “What I did wasn't worth spit.”

  Molly recoiled at the anger in his voice, the rigid tension in his body. “Was it something I did—or didn't do?”

  Seth shook his head abruptly. “No. You did fine. A doctor couldn't ask for a more competent nurse.”

  Molly breathed an inward sigh of relief. Her deception had done nothing to contribute to a man's death. But she couldn't take the chance that next time she wouldn't be so lucky. She took a deep breath and confessed, “Doctor Kendrick, I haven't ever assisted in an operation before.”

  “I know.”

  “You do? What made you suspect—”

  “You didn't stop shaking the whole time,” he said with a wry twist of his mouth. He took her hand and held it up between them. It was still shaking. “But you did everything I asked, when I asked. If you can follow instructions that well from now on, you'll do just fine.”

  Molly pulled her hand from his and clasped it with the other in an attempt to still the tremors. She was appalled and amazed when she realized everything she had just done. Now she stood beside a dead body. She had been exposed to nothing so grim in New Bedford; it was going to be a very different life in Montana.

  Seth turned to the men who had already resumed their various occupations in the saloon and asked, “Anybody see what happened here?” There was a restless shifting, but no one spoke. “Red?”

  Red shrugged. “Didn't see a thing.”

  Seth's eyes found Pike Hardesty, who had never left his seat at the poker table in the corner. He sat with his back to the wall, his thumbs tapping a rhythmic tattoo on the table. The hand of cards the dead man had played still lay scattered on the green felt. A chair stood awry some distance from the table as though it had been shoved there. A trail of blood led from the chair to the spot where the unarmed man had fallen in the sawdust.

  Molly read the truth of the matter, just as she was sure Seth had. For a terrified moment she thought Seth might say something to provoke the man at the table, whose left cheek was sunken and scarred as though skin and bone had once been crushed. He had a thick moustache that flowed beyond the edges of a narrow mouth. His shaggy brown hair hung over his brows, half-masking snakelike eyes that were simply black, with no distinction of pupil or iris.

  Abruptly, the scarred man stood. Molly saw he was both taller and heavier than Seth and wore a gun tied down low on his right hip. His fringed buckskin shirt and leggings were stained and slick from wear.

  Casually, as though he hadn't noticed the scarred man's actions, Seth turned his back and began wiping his medical instruments clean and repacking them in his bag.

  Molly stared at Seth, a frown growing between her brows. What sort of man was this? James would have stood toe to toe with the scarred man and welcomed the fight. Many was the time she had nursed James's bruised and swollen face and bathed his bleeding knuckles after a barroom brawl. She wasn't averse to Seth not fighting, just surprised by it.

  However, in the west it seemed a man didn't have to go looking for trouble. It found him wherever he was.

  To Molly's horror, the scarred man sauntered over, leaned back against the bar, and hooked his bootheel on the footrail. “You got something you want to say to me, Doc?”

  “Nope.”

  “He was cheating,” Hardesty said. “Got what was coming to him.” He surveyed the room, daring anyone to contradict him. No one did. He turned his attention to Molly. “Haven't seen range calico like you around here in a long while. Name's Pike Hardesty. Who would you be, purty lady?”

  Molly shrank back until she came up against a solid wall of muscle. Startled, she glanced over her shoulder and saw the rigid line of Seth's jaw.

  “She's no business of yours,” Seth said in a quiet voice. “Come on, Mrs. Gallagher. I shouldn't have brought you in here.”

  “Hold on just a minute,” Hardesty said, stepping in front of Molly. “I asked this here lady a question. I expect an answer.”

  “You got the only answer you're going to get,” Seth said.

  For a “patient man who tried to understand the other fellow's point of view,” Seth's voice held a decided edge to it. Molly quickly said, “My name is Molly Gallagher. I came here to marry Doctor Kendrick.”

  There was a stunned silence in the saloon, and all eyes turned to stare at them.

  “Well, now, Molly Gallagher,” Hardesty said with a lurid grin. “You don't want Doc Kendrick. Why, he's got guts slack as old fiddle strings. Don't even wear a gun. Probably scared he'll shoot himself in the foot.” Hardesty laughed at his own joke. “Why not try a real man instead?”

  Molly had thought nothing of the fact that Seth Kendrick wasn't wearing a gun. No one in New Bedford carried a gun. In fact, anyone carrying a gun would have been highly suspect. But apparently things were different in Montana.

  She wasn't sure afterward exactly how it happened. But Pike Hardesty took a step toward her, and the next thing she knew, he was lying flat on his back in sawdust.

  “Sorry,” Seth apologized, reaching down a hand to help Hardesty up. “Thought you saw my foot there. Didn't mean to trip you.”

  Hardesty knocked Seth's hand away and scrambled to his feet. Red-faced, he began brushing himself off. “If I didn't know you better, Kendrick, I'd say you did that on purpose.” His voice was vicious as he finished, “But you being yellow-bellied clear through to your backbone makes that purely unlikely.”

  Molly watched as Seth's face paled. A muscle in his jaw jerked. Yet he made no move to strike the scarred man. He said nothing to defend himself. She was appalled and confused. Surely no man could tolerate such an insult and hold his head up high. But if anything, Seth's shoulders had squared more firmly. What manner of man was this who did not regard another's slander? Was he the coward Pike Hardesty had named him? She looked at Seth, and there was nothing in his face that told her one way or another.

  “Let's go, Mrs. Gallagher,” Seth said at last.

  When Hardesty moved to intercept her, Red's shotgun barred his way. “Leave them be, Pike. You can be replaced. We only got one doctor hereabouts.”

  That explained their tolerance for a man with no backbone, Molly thought. In a land as violent as this was turning out to be, a doctor seemed a dire necessity.

  Seth's hand at her elbow urged Molly out of the saloon. She walked beside him, her head held high, looking neither right nor left as they headed back to the levee. She felt the speculative stares of the townsfolk. What did they really think of Seth Kendrick? she wondered. Did everyone believe him a coward? How would they treat the wife of such a man? He had promised her his protection. But what was to keep someone like that awful scarred man from accosting her in the street if no one feared her hu
sband's retribution?

  Neither spoke until they reached the door to her stateroom on the Viola Belle. Then Seth turned to her and said, “Pike Hardesty is a bully and a braggart. I should never have taken you where you'd meet up with a man like that.”

  “Why did you let him get away with saying those things about you?”

  “Maybe because they're true.”

  Molly frowned. “Are they?”

  A bitter smile tilted his lips. “That's for you to decide.”

  “Were you afraid to fight him because you aren't wearing a gun?” she asked, the crease between her brows deepening as she sought to understand him.

  “Let's just say that fighting wouldn't have proved me right, or him wrong.”

  “So you stepped aside.”

  His lips curled cynically. “That's certainly a kind way of describing what I did.”

  “You're an unusual man, Doctor Kendrick. I don't know what to make of you.”

  “Does that mean you've changed your mind about becoming my wife? Say so now, and I'll make arrangements to get you back to New Bedford.”

  Watching him closely, Molly saw him tense as if for a blow. She was tempted to take him up on his offer. She was frightened of what lay ahead of her. Seth Kendrick was so different from James, such a mass of contradictions. Strength and gentleness. Decisiveness and restraint. And though she didn't want to think him a coward, he had admitted he wouldn't willingly choose to fight. Would he be able to keep her and her children safe in this wilderness to which they had come?

  She had to pray he could, because going back offered no solution to her problems. She must keep Whit away from the sea. And Nessie needed the security of a home.

  It dawned on her that perhaps Seth hadn't made the offer of release out of consideration for her feelings. Perhaps he wanted out himself. That shocking thought gave her pause. “I haven't changed my mind,” she said. “But now that you know you'll have two extra mouths to feed and care for, perhaps you've changed yours.”

  “Your boy looks like he'll make a fine man. And I won't mind having the little one around,” Seth said. “Are you willing to be a mother to my daughter?”