After a long moment, a very long moment, he heard the minister cough politely, and he opened his eyes. What had just happened? Why were his eyelids stinging?
The two witnesses descended on them, mopping at their faces with lacy handkerchiefs and saying something. He couldn’t hear the words because of the roaring noise inside his head, but Rita’s face was one big grin and even the sobersides dressmaker was all smiles.
Reverend Pollock shook his hand. “Congratulations, Mr. Burnside,” he said loudly. He released his hand and then shook it again, pecked Marianne’s cheek and shook her hand, too.
Rita advanced and threw her arms around him, then turned to Marianne and smacked a kiss on her cheek. “Now, my dear, we have a little surprise for you. Sarah and Rooney Cloudman are giving you a wedding reception at Rose Cottage. That’s Sarah’s boardinghouse over on Maple Street.”
“Wedding reception!” Marianne gasped. “But we don’t know anyone in town.”
“Well,” Verena Forester announced, “pretty quick you’re gonna know everybody.”
Suddenly Lance stiffened. “Wait! I forgot the ring!”
Marianne blinked. “What ring?”
“The wedding ring I bought for you at the mercantile yesterday.”
Reverend Pollock laughed aloud. “Well, now,” he said with a twinkle in his eyes, “maybe you’d better get this ring on her finger before your wedding reception.”
Lance fumbled inside his vest and drew out an engraved gold band. “Give me your hand, Marianne.”
Shyly, she held out her hand. He lifted it in his and slipped the gold wedding band on to her fourth finger.
Marianne looked down at her hand and the lovely gold ring Lance had placed there. She couldn’t stop staring at it. Tiny roses were engraved all over it, like the roses she still carried in one hand. “Oh, it’s beautiful! It’s p-perfectly beauti—” She burst into tears.
Lance folded her into his arms. “Thank you,” she said against his chest. “Oh, Lance, thank you!”
“You’re welcome, Marianne. I wanted you to have a wedding ring.”
They stood in each other’s arms until he felt a gentle touch at his back.
“Come on, you two,” Rita said. “We’ll walk you over to Rose Cottage.”
* * *
Rose Cottage turned out to be the prettiest house Marianne had yet seen in Smoke River, a three-story structure with a wide front porch and a trellis covered with yellow rambling roses. Townspeople were spilling out the open front door and down the porch steps, calling out their congratulations. Marianne felt Lance check his stride.
“Whoa,” he said under his breath. “This is kinda scary.”
Marianne nodded. “I feel like I used to when Mrs. Schneiderman had a bad day.”
“Well, we lived through that,” he murmured. “I guess we’ll live through this, too.”
The first person to reach them was a plump, attractive older woman in a full-skirted green dress. “Welcome!” she called. “I’m Sarah Cloudman.” She grasped Marianne’s hands in hers and pulled her up the porch steps onto the veranda. “And congratulations.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Cloudman. And thank you for inviting us to your home.”
“You’re welcome, my dear. It isn’t every day a girl gets married, and we all know you’re both new in Smoke River, so we thought you should celebrate with friends.”
A lean, grizzled-looking man with a salt-and-pepper beard slapped out the screen door and shook Lance’s hand. “Every man deserves a good woman,” he boomed. He turned to Marianne and kissed both her cheeks. “Don’t know if I’ve ever seen a prettier bride ’less it was my Sarah, but you sure do come close.”
People swirled onto the front porch, and in no time she and Lance were surrounded by townspeople. Sarah Cloudman took her arm. “Come inside, both of you. We have wedding cake and lemonade waiting.”
“And some whiskey for the gentlemen,” Rooney Cloudman added.
Marianne knew she would never forget this afternoon, even if she lived to be a hundred. She and Lance must have received the good wishes of everyone in town from Carl Ness’s wife, Linda-Lou, and their twin daughters, Edith and Noralee, to tall, tanned sheriff Hawk Rivera, who looked straight into Lance’s face without a flicker of recognition. The two newspaper editors, Cole and Jessamine Sanders, welcomed them and asked all kinds of questions, and then there were the rotund barber Whitey Poletti, the old doctor, Samuel Graham, who lived at Rose Cottage, and the new doctor, Zane Dougherty and his wife Winifred, who lived in the big house at the top of the steepest hill in town. So many townspeople came to offer congratulations, Marianne was sure she would never remember all their names.
She recognized the young Indian boy Sammy Greywolf and met his handsome mother, Rosie Greywolf. Cattle ranchers, wheat farmers, the pretty young schoolteacher, Mrs. Panovsky, even a crusty old sheepherder who camped in the hills all stopped by Rose Cottage to wish them well.
But the highlight of the afternoon for Marianne was her introduction to a grinning Chinese man everyone called Uncle Charlie, the baker who had made the elegant four-tier wedding cake resting on Sarah’s walnut dining table. His wife, Iris, confided that his Chinese name was actually Ming Cha.
Marianne also met Uncle Charlie’s niece, Leah MacAllister, her husband Thad, and their nine-year-old son, Teddy, along with Judge Jericho Silver and his wife, Maddie, and their twin boys. Of all things, Maddie turned out to be a Pinkerton agent! My, the population of Smoke River was certainly interesting. And, Marianne noted with relief, the Pinkerton agent also didn’t give Lance a second look.
All afternoon Marianne couldn’t help wondering which business establishment it was that Uncle Matty had willed to her. It wouldn’t be Sarah Cloudman’s boardinghouse. Or the barbershop. Or the Smoke River Hotel or the restaurant. And she prayed again that it wasn’t the Golden Partridge saloon next to the hotel.
Lance shook so many hands and downed so many shots of Rooney Cloudman’s whiskey that by suppertime he was struggling to focus his thoughts. Marianne had long since disappeared into a chattering circle of women well-wishers. He wondered if she felt half as dizzy as he did. Probably not, unless she was lacing her lemonade with shots of Rooney Cloudman’s whiskey.
What a day! He couldn’t wait for it to be over so he could enjoy a quiet supper with Marianne at the restaurant. He caught her eye across the dining room where she was cutting more slices of Uncle Charlie’s applesauce spice wedding cake, but as he watched she was quickly drawn into another conversation with more chattering ladies.
He escaped to the veranda and sank on to the porch swing to rest a while. After some minutes, Rooney Cloudman joined him.
“Had enough?”
“Of what?” Lance said tiredly.
“Enough of all this fuss and folderol,” the older man said with a grin. “All a man really wants is to get the I-do over with and start the honeymoon.”
Lance suddenly jerked upright. Honeymoon! Oh, God, there was that double bed in Marianne’s hotel room, but he hadn’t really thought about it until this moment. Now he had to seriously consider what a honeymoon would mean.
For the first time he wondered if Marianne was planning to have a marriage of convenience.
Was she?
Well, he sure as hell wasn’t!
“What’s the matter, son? You look like you just swallowed a fishhook the size of a pick-ax.”
“Rooney, how long have you been married?”
The