The Bridegroom by Linda Lael Miller

the kitchen.
    “I didn’t know what else to do,” he finally said. “But if you want to go back to Jacob Fitch—if that’s really what you want—I’ll take you to him myself.”
    It was too late to go back now, though Gideon probably didn’t realize that. Even if Jacob was willing to take the chance that Lydia hadn’t been “compromised,” as he would undoubtedly have put it, his mother wouldn’t be. The look Lydia had seen on the woman’s face before leaving the house with Gideon was burned into her memory—Malverna Fitch was not the sort to forgive such a disgrace.
    Furthermore, without Mr. Fitch to guarantee payment of the family’s many debts, the creditors would close in, possibly as soon as tomorrow morning, since word of the aborted wedding had surely spread from one end of Phoenix to the other within a matter of minutes, like the wildfires that plagued the desert.
    “I haven’t the first idea what I’m going to do, Gideon Yarbro,” Lydia said presently, with what sternness she could muster. “But I most certainly won’t be returning to Phoenix.”
    Gideon, standing so still for so long, finally moved. He crossed to Lydia, crouched beside her chair, the way he’d done in the parlor at home the day before, took her hand, and looked up into her face. “I’m not a rich man,” he told her solemnly, “but I work hard, and I’ve got a little money put by. I can look after you, Lydia, and your aunts, too. Even Helga, if she doesn’t mind earning her keep.”
    Lydia stared at him, dumbfounded—again. She could not think of a single other person who had Gideon’s capacity for surprising her. “Are you proposing to me?” she askedbluntly, because she was simply too spent to arrange her words in any other way.
    “I guess I am proposing,” Gideon said, after swallowing visibly. “Rowdy said it was the least I could do, after today.”
    If Lydia hadn’t wanted so badly to cry, she would have laughed. No wonder Rowdy had squired Lark out of the kitchen so quickly, leaving the two of them alone. He’d probably ordered Gideon to make things right. “That’s why you’re offering for me, Gideon? Because your brother thinks you ought to?”
    Gideon made an obvious attempt to smile, and failed utterly. His expression was one of resignation, not ardor. “He’s right, Lydia,” he said. “It’s the least I can do.”
    “The least you can do,” Lydia echoed. She found herself possessed of an almost incomprehensible urge to touch his face, tell him everything would be all right. At the same time, if she’d had the strength to slap Gideon Yarbro silly, she probably would have done it.
    “I’m getting this all wrong,” Gideon said, and this time he did smile, though sadly. “It won’t be a real marriage, Lydia. I won’t expect you to share my bed, that is. You’ll have a home, and so will the aunts, and Fitch won’t be able to cause you any trouble because you’ll be my wife. That’s not such a bad bargain, is it?”
    It was, in Lydia’s view, a terrible bargain, especially the part about not sharing a bed. Gideon had awakened a formidable hunger in her when he’d kissed her, and now he expected to marry her and still leave that hunger unexplored, unsatisfied?
    On the other hand, he made a good case.
    The aunts would be safe, with food to eat and a roof over their heads, and they obviously trusted Gideon or they wouldn’t have left the house with him, let alone boughtnew hats and dresses and traveled all the way to Stone Creek onboard a train at his behest.
    As for herself, once she’d exchanged vows with Gideon, she would be part of the Yarbro clan. Lonely all her life, she would have sisters, Lark and Sarah, and a brother, as well, in Rowdy. She would have nieces and nephews and, in time, perhaps even friends, people who liked her for herself and not because she was a Fairmont.
    “But what about you, Gideon?” Lydia asked softly, after mulling over all these things. “What could