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“Wait,” Winifred cried. “I shipped a wedding gift for Sam from St. Louis. Did it arrive?”
“It did. It fits nicely on the new double bed I gave them. Sam’s bed was too narrow for—” He swallowed and Winifred released a bubble of laughter.
“Why, Dr. Dougherty, you’re blushing!”
“I am not blushing,” he insisted.
Winifred choked back a challenge. Perhaps Zane would not appreciate her teasing. She wondered how he had withstood Cissy’s penchant for teasing, something Winifred clearly recalled from their girlhood. But of course Zane had loved Cissy, and she supposed a man in love would put up with a great deal.
Zane left for the barn. Then tall, russet-haired Thad MacAllister arrived to accompany Leah to the church. Sam appeared in a new yellow knee-length tunic embroidered in black, and Yan Li stood shyly at his side in her mother’s red wedding robe and the shimmery red headdress Leah had brought for her to wear.
The young Chinese girl looked so radiant Winifred’s eyes filled with tears. Sam looked at his bride as if he’d been hit over the head with a chunk of firewood. He bowed low before his bride, then took her hand and led her out the front door to the waiting buggy.
“Reminds me of when I married Leah,” Thad MacAllister said to her. “I was struck dumb at the sight of her.” Out of the corner of her eye Winifred saw the tall rancher whisper something to his wife and press his lips to her forehead.
Something leaped in Winifred’s chest. Zane had said something like that about Cissy. She was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen.
Suddenly she felt left out. Something wondrous that other people experienced had passed her by. She had seen admiration in a man’s eyes, but she had never seen the kind of awe she noted on Sam’s face.
Resolutely she put Sam and Yan Li and Zane and Cissy out of her mind, closed the front door and went upstairs to tend to Rosemarie.
* * *
At the church altar, Sam and Yan Li joined hands and faced the shiny-faced pastor, Reverend Pollock, who stood with the Bible spread open in his hands. Leah MacAllister stood at Yan Li’s left, quietly translating the minister’s words.
Zane watched the ceremony with both joy and sadness. He was happy for Sam; at the same time he remembered with a dart of pain reciting those same vows with Celeste just three years before, and his chest ached. He still missed her. He would always miss her.
And her sister, Winifred? He could not bring himself to think of Winifred at this moment.
What God hath joined together, let no man put asunder...
So long as you both shall live.
It was over, and Sam and Yan Li stood hand in hand, accepting congratulations and wishes for long life. Zane shook Sam’s hand and brushed a kiss across Yan Li’s pale cheek.
Tonight would be her wedding night. He decided he would leave the house for a while. He wanted to take Winifred somewhere, anywhere, but he didn’t suppose they could both leave. On a man’s wedding night he shouldn’t hear a baby crying in an upstairs bedroom and he shouldn’t be expected to care for it.
When the newlywed couple had signed the register and slipped away, Zane took off himself on a long walk that ended up at the hospital, where he stayed until past midnight. On his walk back up the hill to the house he noticed it was snowing.
Winifred had wheeled the bassinet into her bedroom and was soothing a fussy Rosemarie with a lullaby when Zane came up the stairs.
“She’s teething,” he said from the open doorway. “Give her something cold to chew on.”
“What ‘something’?”
“An icicle. I’ll bring up a bowlful.”
A few minutes later he presented a china bowl of icicles and pulled a handkerchief from his vest pocket. “Tie some snow in the corner and let her suck on it.”
“Tell me about the wedding,” she asked as she knotted the fabric.
When he didn’t answer, she looked up. “Was the ceremony nice?”
“Yes, it was. You know what a wedding is like—people cry.”
“No, I do not know,” she said carefully. “I have never been to a wedding.”
Zane said nothing for a long moment, just looked at her. “After the ceremony I went to the hospital.”
His eyes looked tired, and his collar was undone. He was a good man. Cissy might have rushed into marriage, but she had been fortunate in her choice. Zane was caring and dedicated. Conscientious.
And extremely handsome, she admitted. Is that what Cissy saw that night when they met? She could not have seen below the surface then, seen beneath his personable good looks to the man underneath. There had not been enough time between the recital at the medical college that night and secretly marrying him. But surely committed love relationships were not built on such ephemeral things as a pink chiffon gown and a handsome face.
