A Lawman's Christmas_ A McKettricks of Texas Novel - Linda Lael Miller [43]
Once again, Clay tamped down his temper. He wanted to pin that old biddy’s ears back, verbally, anyhow—he’d never struck a woman, a child or an animal, and never intended to, though he’d landed plenty of punches in the faces of his boy cousins growing up—but today was neither the time nor the place to hold forth on what he thought of nasty-natured gossips.
For one thing, he didn’t want to spoil the day for Edrina and Harriet. They were clearly overjoyed at the prospect of a wedding, though with Edrina, it was partly about being allowed to miss a few hours of school.
“I’ll bet your mama does look pretty,” Clay agreed, in belated reply to Edrina’s statement. “Almost as pretty as the pair of you, maybe.”
That got them both giggling again, and Clay smiled as he set them on their feet.
And then nearly tripped over them when Dara Rose appeared, wearing an ivory silk gown with puffed-out sleeves and lace trim at the cuffs. Her cheeks were pink, her eyes bright with a combination of nervousness and hope, her hair done up in a soft knot at her nape and billowing cloudlike around her face.
The sight of her knocked the wind out of Clay as surely as if he’d been thrown from a horse and landed spread-eagle on hard ground.
Ponder cleared his throat again, and the wedding party assembled itself, with surprising grace, in the middle of that cramped front room.
Dara Rose’s trim shoulder bumped Clay’s arm as she took her place beside him, and he felt a jolt of sweet fire at her touch.
Ponder opened the book, and then his mouth, but before he could get a word said, a ruckus erupted out in the road.
Looking down at Dara Rose, Clay saw her shut her eyes, felt her stiffen next to him.
Outside, a mule brayed, and a drunken voice bellowed.
Clay took Dara Rose’s hand and squeezed it lightly before turning to head for the doorway.
Edrina and Harriet were already there, staring out.
“Mama’s not going to marry you, Ezra Maddox!” Edrina shouted to the stumbling man trying to free his feet from the deep mud. “She’s taken, so you’d better just get your sorry self out of here before there’s trouble!”
Clay had to choke back a laugh. He rested one hand on the top of Edrina’s head and one on Harriet’s, and said quietly, “Go stand with your mama. I’ll handle this.”
Maddox was a big man, broad-shouldered and clad in work clothes, and his hair and beard were grizzled, wiry. Once he’d gotten loose from the mud, he practically tore the gate off its rusty hinges, getting it open, and stormed in Clay’s direction like a locomotive.
Clay stepped out onto the porch, waited.
Behind him, Ponder said, “Now, Ezra, don’t be a sore loser. You’re out of the running where Dara Rose is concerned, and making a damn fool of yourself won’t change that.”
Ezra came to a shambling stop in the middle of the path, not because he’d taken Mayor Ponder’s sage ad vice to heart, Clay reckoned, but because he was used to folks clearing the way between him and whatever it was he aimed to have.
Clay didn’t move.
The two men studied each other, at a distance of a dozen yards or so, and Maddox swayed slightly, ran the back of one arm across his mouth. His gaze narrowed.
“Did you get to the part where the justice of the peace inquires as to whether or not anybody has reason to object to this marriage?” Maddox ranted. “Because that’s when I mean to say my piece.”
“Let’s hear it,” Clay said, in an affable drawl. He hoped the situation wouldn’t disintegrate into a howling brawl in the mud, with him and Maddox rolling back and forth with their hands on each other’s throats, because he didn’t want that to be what Dara Rose, Edrina and Harriet remembered when they looked back on this day.
Another part of him relished the idea of a knockdown-drag-out fisticuff.
Maddox straightened, swayed again and spoke with alacrity. “I have already offered for you, Dara Rose Nolan, and you belong to me,” he said, as she stepped up beside Clay and put her hand on his arm.
A thrill of something rushed through Clay, though he’d hoped Dara Rose would stay inside, out