McKettrick's Choice - Linda Lael Miller [2]
Holt started slightly, turned his head to look down into the upturned face of his bride-to-be, resplendent in her lacy finery and gossamer veil. She was a pretty woman, with fair hair and expressive blue eyes, a sent-for wife, imported all the way from Boston. Holt never looked at her without a stab of guilt; Margaret deserved a man who loved her, not one who wanted a mother for his young daughter, a bed companion for himself and not much else.
“I’ve got to go back to Texas,” he said. The words had been shambling along the far borders of his mind for a long while, but this was the first time he’d let them come to the fore, let alone find their way out of his mouth.
Angus cleared his throat, and the whole party started up again, like it was some sort of signal. Reluctantly, Rafe, Kade and Jeb moved off, and Angus handed the rider a five-dollar gold piece, then steered him toward the food table.
One of the ranch hands took care of the exhausted horse.
Margaret’s smile faltered a little as she gazed up at Holt, waiting.
“Maybe when I get back…” he began awkwardly, but then his voice just fell away.
She sighed, shook her head. “I don’t believe I want to wait, Holt,” she said. “If that’s what you’re asking me to do, I mean.”
He touched her face, let his hand fall back to his side. “I’m sorry,” he rasped, and he was, truly, though he doubted it would count for much in the grand scheme of things. At his brothers’ urging, he’d brought this woman out from the east, and now here she was, all got up in a bridal gown, with half the territory in attendance, and there wasn’t going to be a wedding.
“I’ll go ahead and marry you anyhow,” he said, against his every instinct, because he was Angus McKettrick’s son and a deal was a deal. But he couldn’t make himself sound like that was what he wanted, and Margaret was no fool. “I’ve still got to leave, though, either way.”
A tear shimmered on her cheek, but Margaret held her chin high, shook her head again. “No,” she said, with sad pride. “If you really wanted me for a wife, you’d have gone ahead with the ceremony, put a ring on my finger so everybody would know I was taken, maybe even asked me to come along.”
“It’ll be a hard trip,” Holt said. From a verbal standpoint, he felt like a lame cow, turning in fruitless circles, trying to find its way out of a narrow place in the trail. Nonetheless, he kept right on struggling. “Hard things to attend to, too, once I get there.”
She worked up another smile. “Godspeed, Holt McKettrick,” she said. Then, to his profound chagrin, she turned to face the gathering.
All attempts at merriment ceased, and a hush fell.
“There will be no wedding today,” Margaret announced, in a clear voice, while everyone stared back at her in bleak sympathy. Her spine, Holt noted, with admiration, was straight as a new fence post. “But there will be a party. I’m going upstairs right now and change out of this silly dress, and when I come back down again, I expect to find every last one of you making merry.”
With that, Margaret started for the house. Holt’s sisters-in-law, Emmeline, Mandy and Chloe, all flung poisonous glances in his direction and hurried after his retreating almost-bride.
Only Lizzie, Holt’s twelve-year-old daughter, had the temerity to approach him, and her cheeks glowed pink with indignation.
“Papa,” she demanded, coming to a stop directly in front of him, “how could you?”
Holt loved his child, though he hadn’t known she’d existed until last year, and except for Margaret herself, Lizzie was the hardest person in the crowd to face just then. “I’ve got business in Texas,” he said, because that was the stark truth and he had nothing else to offer. “It can’t wait.”
Lizzie stiffened, blinked her large hazel eyes, and bit her lower lip. “You’re leaving?”
He reached out to lay a hand on her shoulder, but she shrank from him.
“Lizzie,” he whispered.
She turned on her heel, fled to her grandfather. Angus put an arm around the child and glowered at Holt. The old man looked like Zeus himself, shooting thunderbolts from his eyes.
“Hell,