LITMIR.BIZ

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but it was a genuine partnership, bound by a spirit of cooperation. To turn away from the kiss would end the ceremony on a sour note. Hannah understood this. So, she sensed, did Judd.

      Giving him the barest nod, she tilted her face upward. Her breath stopped as his hand braced the small of her back. She had never kissed any boy except Quint. Maybe if she shut her eyes and pretended…

      His lips closed on hers, smooth and cool and gentle. For an instant Hannah froze. Then she found herself stretching on tiptoe, leaning into the kiss, prolonging it by milliseconds. Something fluttered in her chest. Then Judd released her and stepped aside.

      She had just kissed her husband. And it hadn’t been the least bit like kissing Quint.

      Little by little Hannah began to breathe again. Her mother came forward to hug her, swiftly followed by Annie. Soren pumped Judd’s hand. It was all for show. Every adult, even Annie, knew what was happening and why.

      Edna Seavers did not join in the congratulations. While Gretel hurried off to fetch lemonade and dainty apricot tarts, Edna sat in her wheelchair as if she were carved from granite.

      Let her be, Hannah thought. But Judd, it seemed, was determined to have things his way. Seizing her elbow in an iron grip, he steered her toward his mother’s chair. “Aren’t you going to welcome Hannah into the family, Mother?” he demanded.

      Edna’s gaze remained fixed on her hands.

      “Mother?”

      She sighed. “I’m getting one of my headaches, Judd. Please take me to my room.”

      Judd’s eyes flickered toward Hannah. “It’s all right,” she murmured. “Go on.”

      She stood watching as he opened the front door and eased the chair over the threshold. This, Hannah sensed, was just a small taste of things to come. How could she face living in this house with a woman who hated her so?

      Come back, Quint, she pleaded silently. Come back and take me away from here.

      Judd wheeled his mother to her room at the rear of the house’s main floor. The door opened to whitewashed walls hung with black velvet draperies that blocked the light from the tall windows. After the brightness of afternoon sunlight, Judd could barely see the narrow bed with its black canopy and coverlet and the photograph of his father that sat on the nightstand in a blackedged frame. The room was like a crypt for the living.

      It was the gloom of existence in this house, as much as Daniel’s urging, that had driven him to enlist in Roosevelt’s Rough Riders. He’d returned carrying burdens of his own. Now, after three months, it was as if he belonged here, one more shadow in a house full of shadows.

      His mother’s bones were weightless, like a bird’s. Judd lifted her in his arms and lowered her to the bed. She lay propped on the pillows, waiting for him to cover her legs with the merino shawl she kept folded on a nearby chair.

      In her younger days, Edna Seavers had been a beauty, with chestnut hair and laughing dark eyes. But grief over her husband’s death had transformed her into a husk of her former self. Judd couldn’t imagine what it must have been like, loving someone that much. Seeing what it had done to his mother had taught Judd an early lesson. Love walked hand in hand with devastating loss.

      “You’ve always prided yourself on your fine manners, Mother,” he chided her. “You had no call to be rude to Hannah and her family.”

      Edna made a little sniffing sound. Her jaw remained stubbornly set.

      “Hannah’s your daughter-in-law. She’s a fine girl from an honest, hardworking family. Since she’ll be living under this roof, the sooner you accept her, the easier it’ll be for all of us, including you.”

      Edna glared up at him. “A fine girl, is she? Then why is she strutting around with one man’s ring on her finger and another man’s child in her belly?”

      “Mother, that’s enough—”

      “I won’t abide her, Judd. She took Quint away from me. Now she’s taken you, as well!”

      “I need to get back to our guests. I’ll have Gretel bring you some tea.” Judd turned and walked out of the room. He loved his mother and did his best to be a respectful son. But sometimes the only way to deal with her was to leave.

      Quint was their father’s son—handsome, charming, impulsive and generous. Maybe that was why Edna loved him so much. But Judd had come to realize that it was mostly Edna’s nature he’d inherited—brooding, melancholy and as stubborn as tempered steel. When the two of them clashed they could remain at odds for weeks, even months.

      Now he’d unleashed the devil, marrying Hannah and bringing her home. But it was done and Judd wasn’t backing down. For the sake of Quint’s child, this was one battle he was determined to win.

      He could only hope Hannah was up to the challenge.

      Forcing his face into a cheerful expression, he stepped out onto the porch. The festivities had moved to the grassy lawn, where the younger Gustavsons were enjoying a spirited game of tag. Hannah stood with her parents and the old man who’d performed the ceremony. The ivory satin gown was too large for her, but it draped her slim curves with a softness that Judd found oddly becoming. With her flowing corn silk hair crowned by its wreath of flowers, she looked like a creature from another age, a pagan nymph poised at the edge of a meadow.

      “Come and play with us, Hannah!” A little boy tugged at her skirt. “It’s more fun with you! You can be ‘it.’”

      She glanced down at her wedding dress. “I’m sorry, Ben, but I really don’t think…”

      “Please!” His eyes would have melted granite. “Just for a minute!”

      She hesitated, then laughed as she set her glass on the porch step. “Why not? Here I come!”

      Kicking off her slippers, she lifted her skirts clear of the ground and charged into the mob of children. They scattered, shrieking and giggling as she darted after them.

      Watching the play of sunbeams on her hair, Judd felt an ache rise in his throat. Hannah was so vibrant, so full of life and light. How would she survive in this house?

      Watching her with Quint, in her pigtails and faded cottons, he’d wondered idly what his brother saw in the girl. Now he knew. Hannah had a glow about her, a simple, happy warmth that kindled deep inside and emerged on the surface as beauty, like sunlight through a stained-glass window. Judd couldn’t get enough of looking at her.

      She was his bride, and the mother of Quint’s child.

      Lord Almighty, what had he done?

      

      Hannah stood under the porch’s broad eave, watching the twilight shadows steal across the lawn. The refreshment table had been cleared away. Her mother’s wedding gown had been wrapped in an old muslin sheet and boxed away to await the next Gustavson bride. Her family had kissed her and gone home. The ordeal of her wedding day was coming to its blessed end.

      She’d taken her time unpacking the meager possessions that her family had brought over from their house. They’d crammed her clothes, her meager toiletries, and a few precious books—everything she owned—into a single gunny sack. It had struck Hannah as ludicrous, putting her pitiful things into the cavernous dresser drawers and huge cedar-lined wardrobe. The scent of the wood, however, had enthralled her. She had thrust her head deep into the wardrobe and inhaled, filling her senses with the spicy cedar fragrance.

      Judd had insisted that she take the large upstairs bedroom where his parents had once slept. She would need the space when Quint came home, as well as for the baby.

      Giving Hannah no chance to argue, he had moved his things back to his old room next door. Quint’s room, farther down the hall, remained much as he’d left it. Edna and Gretel’s rooms were directly below, on the first floor.

      Closing her eyes, Hannah pushed back her hair and let the breeze

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