Secondhand Bride by Linda Lael Miller

over rough ground behind a fast horse.
    “Well?” Angus half bellowed.
    Holt gripped the rail with one hand as he came down the steps. He was pale, and there was a fevered light in his eyes.
    “I didn’t know,” he said, without looking straight at any of them. “Goddammit, I didn’t know .”
    “She’s yours, then?” Angus pressed.
    Holt shook his head, a man in a daze, but he finally looked the old man in the eye. “Yes,” he said. “She’s mine, all right.”

13
     
     
    C hloe was drawn to the schoolhouse, against her better judgment, and made her way there soon after little Lizzie Cavanagh, attended by Becky and Emmeline, had been fed, soothed, and tucked into bed at the Arizona Hotel. Had she stayed, Chloe feared she would have been sucked into a whirlpool of caring, and that was an indulgence she couldn’t afford. Whatever the words on her marriage license, she was not a McKettrick, and could have no real part in the drama.
    The school was small, a one-room affair, perhaps twenty-by-twenty, with log walls and a sturdy shingle roof. The windows were new, and there were two swings affixed to the limbs of a giant oak tree in the grassy yard. The fence was picketed, and freshly whitewashed.
    Chloe walked around the perimeter once, noting the raw-lumber privy and the small shed where horses could be stabled during the schoolday. There was also a tiny cottage, covered in white clapboard, and someone had planted rosebushes on either side of the small porch. A few valiant, bright red blooms still clung to the stems.
    Leave Indian Rock, Chloe warned herself. Go back to Sacramento.
    But she couldn’t do it.
    She tried the cottage door and found it unlatched. Inside were a gleaming brass bedstead, a potbellied stove with a supply of mesquite wood laid in beside it, a wash-stand, boasting a pretty pitcher and bowl and damask towels. There was a bookshelf, too, bare and waiting, it seemed, for her treasured volumes, and a hooked rug graced the floor. The furnishings were completed by a sturdy table, so new that it still smelled of pine sap.
    The people of Indian Rock might not have snared themselves a teacher, just yet, but they obviously intended to do so, and they expected to make him or her welcome.
    Chloe ached to live there, to unpack her treasures and settle in. She glanced at the bed, imagined herself there, with Jeb, and looked away quickly.
    Fool, she thought. He doesn’t trust you. He doesn’t want you. Put him out of your mind, or you’ll go insane.
    She let herself out of the cottage, closing the door almost reverently, and proceeded across the yard to the front of the schoolhouse itself. Since she’d already trespassed, she might as well go the whole way.
    The main building, like the cottage, was open to anyone who might choose to step inside, and Chloe’s heart raced when she saw the interior. There were two blackboards, three long tables with benches for the students, a whole stack of textbooks, unused, their spines gleaming with newness. A globe stood beside the teacher’s desk, promising worlds to explore, and the supply cabinet was stocked with drawing paper, pencils, bottles of India ink and nibbed pens, chalk and slates. If Chloe had been enamored of the cottage, she was transported now.
    She sat down in the chair behind the desk, reached out to give the globe a spin. Don’t get your hopes up, insisted a voice in her head, even as she dreamed of conducting lively classes in this cozy space, opening little minds to the vast vistas of the written word, of mathematics and science. Perhaps she might send to Sacramento for her telescope, gathering dust in the attic of her stepfather’s home.
    Her doubts brought her up short. You were involved in a scandal. Besides, this is McKettrick territory. If there are sides to be taken, and there always are, the townspeople will line up behind Jeb.
    With a sigh, Chloe stood and smoothed her skirts. Maybe she would be hired, and maybe she wouldn’t. All