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“We must go,” Lenny told her softly.
Baffled, Eliza huffed out an angry breath. Okay, so Garret wanted some sham of a wedding. There had been no time to get a preacher or anything, so okay. It wouldn’t be a real marriage. She wouldn’t be bullied into a real one. Not now, and not ever.
Lenny was very comfortable holding her wrist, like she was going to make a run for it. The more Eliza thought about it as she followed Lenny back to the house, the more she thought Lenny was probably smart. Eliza absolutely felt like making a run for it.
Lenny dragged her through the back door of the cabin. Inside, Garret stood with Cookie and three other men she didn’t recognize.
Garret’s angry glare tracked her movement, and like the mature adult she was, Eliza stuck her tongue out at him as Lenny led her back inside his bedroom. On top of Garret’s bed lay her luggage, open and disheveled. Dresses and petticoats spilled over the sides and even her small jar of rose salve had been tossed haphazardly onto the pillow. Someone had retrieved her belongings from Roy’s cabin, and they’d gone through her things.
Garret barged in, tossed his hat on bed, and pointed his finger at the door for Lenny to leave. Rude. From the disconcerting way he stared at Eliza as the door clicked closed behind Lenny, she couldn’t tell if he was going to kiss or kill her. Heartbeat thundering away in her chest, she said, “Well? What do you want?”
“I don’t remember you,” he stated curtly.
“I wish the feeling was mutual,” she muttered. What had offended him now?
He stepped forward until he stood directly in front of her. Raw power seeped from his very being and the brush of it against her skin brought a delicate shiver across the back of her shoulders. He lifted a long curl of her hair and sniffed it. A slight frown took his dark eyebrows and he said it softer. “I really don’t remember you.”
She didn’t know why, but it hurt her feelings. Today, she’d hated him, but she had memories that he clearly didn’t share. He had none of the good, and all of the bad.
“I miss the boy you once were,” she admitted softly.
The anger faded slightly from those bright-blue eyes of his, and he let the lock of her hair fall to her shoulder. “I can tell when you are saying the truth. I can hear it in your tone,” he said in that gritty voice she was beginning to recognize. “You’ll continue to miss him, Eliza. That boy is dead.”
“I don’t want to marry you.”
A small, empty smile crooked his lips. “Truth.” He lifted that impossibly-blue gaze to her. “I don’t want to marry you either.”
It hurt. His words were like lashes against her heart. How could a man be so cold? Her words clearly had no effect on him at all, but his words? Could he see how much he affected her?
Garret pulled away from her, then rounded on the open luggage in two strides and picked up the gaudy cream-colored bombazine dress she had worn from the train station. “This one will do.” In his work-roughened hands, the clean material looked fragile and ridiculous. “It will remind me of exactly what I’m getting myself into.”
As he tossed the dress onto the bed in a billowing heap and headed for the door, she put voice to her confusion. “Garret, I don’t understand what you are talking about most of the time, but today you have been speaking to me in puzzles. If neither one of us want to marry, then why are you doing this?”
He wheeled and faced her. “Because I gave Roy my word. While he is healing up, he is angry with me for a decision I made. I don’t regret that decision, but if someday he sees I obeyed his wishes, then…” Garret shrugged.
“He’ll forgive you?” she guessed.
Garret shrugged. “I’ve never cared about forgiveness until today.”
“Well, how about we wait on it,” she tried to reason with him. “Let’s give it a few days.”
“Can’t. I have to drive the cattle tomorrow, and the preacher has other engagements. This will be our last chance for a while.”
He couldn’t be serious. Marry her right now? Right this second? She barked a laugh.
The determined expression on his face hadn’t changed. Peals of laughter burst from her, and the unamused look in his eyes rivaled the coldest winter. At last, between gasps for breath, she could speak. “You don’t love me, Garret. Bloody hell, you don’t even like me. I’m sure Roy will forgive you if you changed your mind.”
“Do you have any other options?” he asked. “What about family? Do you have someone in the city you can live with? ’Cause if so, we can both get out of this, and I’ll go tether myself to some other half-crazed woman. One who at least stands a chance of sticking around when things get tough.”
But she couldn’t beg her room in Boston back after she’d so merrily left Aunt Elizabeth to come to Rockdale. Even if she did, no way on earth would she be able to endure her aunt’s hellish tongue for a moment longer. She had been too happy to leave in hopes of finding a place to fit in. Go back to her old life and subject herself to begging an allowance off that horrid woman? Never! Her life would have to be in Rockdale to find peace.
“I can’t go back to Boston. I just can’t. I’m sure I can make it just fine on my own though. I’ll…learn how to run Roy’s place until he feels better.” Even the words on her tongue sounded farfetched. She couldn’t cook or back a plow, and even if she were fast to learn, she still needed someone to show her how to do things first.
“Ha!” he barked. “Even if you could somehow manage it, the bank is going to take his farm, and then where will you be? I’m not discussing this any further. Get. Dressed!” He slammed the door behind him.
Oooooh, she hated that man. Hated the way he thought he could talk to her like she was beneath him. She wasn’t!
Lips pursed and a look in her eyes saying she’d heard everything, Lenny entered through the door and joined her by the bed.
