Then in the space of just a few days—wham! She was expecting and now she was getting married.
But…did she really want to keep this baby? What if it turned out to be a boy who resembled his no-good father? What if, as the Bible says, the sins of the father really are passed down from generation to generation? What if she became an outcast because of this? Could she even raise a baby on her own? Well, the doc and Pauline both promised they would help, but still…she had known women before, in some of the towns where she and her father and brother had lived, who were raising children alone. Very few of them seemed to be happy. Most of them had it very hard.
Besides that, like most girls, she had dreamed of her wedding day, and the images in those dreams had looked nothing like this. She had always dreamed that someday she would find a man who would want to marry her… they would fall in love, and she would settle down, have children with him, keep house, and live a happy life. Would she find a man now who would want her…with a child in tow? A good man, that is…not the kind of man who had married Deputy Tobias’ widowed mother. A small shiver of revulsion rippled down her back. The stories she had heard about him were horrendous…and she wouldn’t even think about the blackguard who had caused her present predicament…
A throat cleared and it snapped her back into the present.
She felt her face heat with a fierce blush when she saw everyone in the room staring expectantly at her.
“I…I’m sorry. What?”
Keith snickered. “Now’s the part where you say your vows to me—I mean, to Dwight, your intended.”
Mary blinked, feeling flustered as she tried to get herself together. “Oh, yes…”
The silver-haired judge smiled down at her, seeming to understand that she was quite a bit rattled by the proceedings. Giving her a nod, he instructed once more, “Repeat after me. I, Mary Amelia Robinson…”
“I, Mary Amelia Robinson.”
“Take you, Dwight Jerome Christiansen, Junior…”
Oh…I really like his name….
“Take you, Dwight Jerome Christiansen, Junior.”
“To be my lawfully wedded husband…”
The vows went on, the same words that hundreds of thousands of people had said down through the centuries. It didn’t seem real at all to Mary, especially because she was holding hands with a man who was most definitely not Dwight Christiansen. Nevertheless, she kept her mind focused on the formalities and before too long Judge Renner was pronouncing her legally married to a man…a man whom she had never even heard the sound of his voice.
It was all so…surreal. Was this happening? Or would she wake up in the morning to find it had all been one long, detailed dream?
Signing her name on the marriage license and then accepting congratulatory hugs from those in attendance only compounded the dreamlike feeling of the entire situation.
As she looked down, amazed at the ring Keith had slipped onto her finger—provided by Doc Reeves, of course—she couldn’t help but wonder what her husband was doing at that moment.
At that moment, Dwight’s situation was anything but pleasant and dreamlike. It teetered more towards the nightmarish and bizarre. Surreal. In point of fact, he was sweating bullets.
“Mr. Harrington, I swear to you, I haven’t laid a finger on that girl!” Dwight insisted. It was taking every ounce of control he had not to shout.
His boss shook his head with a sigh.
This had to be a bad dream. Surely it wasn’t really happening. In a flash, Dwight went over the events of the last three days in his mind.
He had taken Miss Haldeman home from Madame Grunder’s and had endured the girl’s repeated pleas to go inside the mansion with her and wait while she tried on the new dress for him to see. He’d told her quite firmly that it was not his place to see or approve of her attire. He was merely the family’s regular cab driver, until her father decided to hire a chauffeur to replace the one who had left his employ to return home to the family farm and help out while his father recovered from an accident.
Unbelievably, Miss Haldeman had cajoled, begged, pleaded, and cried before stomping her foot and issuing threats if he didn’t do as she asked.
Completely unsettled, Dwight had merely shaken his head as he climbed back up into the cab’s driver box. Without looking back, he drove on thinking he had just dodged a bullet. Now, however, it seemed the bullet had found him anyway. Exactly what he had feared and tried to be careful of—had happened!
Penelope Haldeman had evidently concocted a scheme in order to get what she wanted. Evidently the juvenile was significantly more spoiled and self-centered than he had suspected. She had lied to her father. Not only had she told the man that Dwight had made improper advances toward her—she had incredibly told him that she was, of all things, expecting his child!
Now, his boss was looking at him with rigid disapproval in his eyes.
“Her father is in my office this very minute, demanding that you be made to pay for this indiscretion,” Richard informed, having sent a runner to flag Dwight down should he pass by the company’s place of business. They had met out back in the carriage house. “He’s making noise about having you arrested for defiling a minor. This is serious, Christiansen. If he does that, you could go to prison.”
“Prison? A minor?” Dwight’s head was spinning. He swept his hat off his head and ran a nervous hand through his thick hair.
With an affirmative nod, his boss scratched his head and then his hands swept his jacket back so that they could settle on his hips in disgust. “Yep. Seems
