Excerpt #7

Last spring Chase's sister Millie had married Sam Seifert in the orchard behind his parents' house, then they'd all gone up to the top of the bluffs for a picnic. When his brother Will had spoken vows with Etta Mae Hoffsteader two years ago, they'd done it on the bow of her family's houseboat, and pretty much everybody ended up in the river.

This wedding sure as hell hadn't been the kind the Hardestys were used to. His bride had stood up beside him like a spire of ice. His bride had refused to accept his ring, as if she didn't think it was good enough. Now she was sweeping him down the hall toward her father's study like a truant dragged back to school by his ear.

He supposed she had a right to be mad at him. He had promised her one thing and done something else entirely. But then, he'd tried to explain.

He'd come to Lucas Place three times in the last two days to see if he could make things right with her. He wanted to tell her what it was like to walk the Andromeda's decks, to stand in the wheelhouse and know it was where he belonged. He needed to make her understand what captaining the Andromeda meant to him. But every time he'd come, the housekeeper had told him Ann wasn't seeing callers. Which, he was sure, meant she wasn't seeing him. Of course, she seemed eager enough to see him now—now when he had pressing duties down at the riverfront.

She gestured him into her father's study, the room where all this had begun, and closed the door behind them.

Before she could call him into to account, Chase began to apologize. "When I left here Tuesday morning I swear I had every intention of keeping my word. I honestly did tell your father that I didn't want to marry—"

"I don't care why you broke your word to me," Ann interrupted, gone all stiff and imperious. That you did says all I need to know about the man I married."

Her condemnation of him was so complete, her refusal to consider his side of things was so absolute, there didn't seem room for compromise. But if she was willing to look at the situation logically, there were some real advantages to this marriage, things that would benefit both of them— if she'd just cooperate.

"Now, Ann," he began, doing his best to cajole her. "If you just let me explain—"

"I don't want an explanation," she told him crisply. "I don't want anything from you except the keys to your house."

"To my house?"

"To your house, your rooms. To wherever it is you stay when you're not piloting a riverboat."

Chase considered the riverfront hotel where he and Rue had been bunking for the best part of a week. The place was cheap, but barely habitable. The other boarders weren't the kind of folks Ann Rossiter was used to spending time with.

"I don't keep a place in town," he told her.

"But you must!" she insisted.

He shrugged and shook his head. "I don't need rooms during the shipping season, and I spend the winter upriver with my folks cutting trees for their woodlot."

She stared at him open-mouthed. "But— but where do you expect me to live while you're away?"

"Live?" he asked. "Your father said you could stay on here. I told you that."

"Here," she repeated, something terrible and destructive going on behind her eyes. Something that turned the clear, bright hazel dark and impervious. "I can't stay here."

It was a complication Chase hadn't foreseen. That he'd need to find her someplace to live hadn't once occurred to him. If it had, he'd have done his best to make provision for her, though he didn't have the faintest idea where he might have found her suitable lodgings or how he would have paid for them.

"You're bound to be more comfortable here where there are people to look after you," he offered reasonably. "Besides, there isn't time to find you someplace else. The Andromeda's pulling out this afternoon."

Ann drew herself up straight as a carpenter's rule. "I won't stay here!" she told him, her mouth was tight.

He supposed Ann had her reasons for wanting to leave. If she was angry with him about agreeing to marry her, she was probably even angrier with her father buying a bridegroom. And anyone could see the enmity between Ann and her step-brother.

Chase's duties aboard the steamer gnawed at him. He ought to be down at the levee meeting his passengers, supervising the loading of cargo, checking the Andromeda over one last time.

"Please, Ann," he urged her. "Stay on with your father while I'm gone. We'll find a place of our own when I get back."

With luck, he'd have wages by then and the captain's share of the Andromeda's profits at the end of the trip. According to the agreement he and the commodore had signed just before the ceremony, full title to the steamer would come to him when he completed the last run of the season.

"And when exactly will you be back?" Ann asked him.

She sounded calmer and somewhat resigned. Chase began breathing easier. "I'll be back in July."

The room went silent; it was the hollow roaring kind of silence that followed a clap of thunder.

"July?" she echoed incredulously. "How can a packet run to Sioux City take four months?"

Chase could see for all that she was the commodore's daughter, she didn't understand a thing about the shipping business. "On the first run up the Missouri River in the spring," he explained, "the packets are contracted all the way to Fort Benton."

"In the Montana Territory?"

At least she knew her geography.

"The water isn't deep enough most of the year to accommodate steamers as big as the Andromeda, but we can navigate upstream on the spring flood and come home on the summer snow melt. Even at that it's a long, hard trip."

"If shipping as far as Fort Benton is so difficult," she asked, diverted for the moment, "why on earth do you do it?"

"Money," Chase admitted, weighed down all at once by his new responsibilities. "It's the single most profitable trip any of the boats make all season."

She stood for a moment staring past him, her eyes unfocused and her mouth pursed. Something about her abstraction made him uneasy.

Then, all at once, she smiled. "I guess I'll just need to resign myself."

As soon as he got back from Fort Benton, he promised himself, he'd find her as nice a place to live as he could afford, someplace where they'd be able to start their life together. Someplace big enough to accommodate the baby and maybe a child or two of their own when the time came. It was good to know Ann could bend, that she could see things his way.

He turned his attention to more practical matters. "There's a small account in my name at Boatman's Bank you can draw on if you need money," he told her, beginning to wish he was leaving her better off. "If you need more than what's there, I'm sure your father would be willing to advance you—"

"I'll be fine," she assured him hastily.

Chase nodded; it was time to go. For a moment he stared down into his new wife's soft face, focused on the sweet, rosy fullness of her mouth. Her beauty moved him, filled him with a simmering sensual warmth. He and Ann had just spoken their vows, he reasoned, so what could it hurt if he took her in his arms and kissed her good-bye?

Before he could move, Ann stepped back. "Have a good trip," she said.

It was a chilly dismissal, and any hope Chase might have had of kissing his wife abruptly evaporated. "Take care of yourself and the baby while I'm gone," he offered. "I'll be back—"

"Yes, I know. In July."

"July," he echoed. They certainly weren't parting the way he'd hoped, yet somehow they'd maneuvered through the moras of misunderstandings and expectations and had clear water ahead.

He took his leave, making sure to close the door to the commodore's study behind him. He was three strides down the hall when he heard something fragile, and probably expensive, shatter against the opposite side of the wide wooden panel.

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