Resurrection Read Free Page B

coming back when I did.” He touched her lips, still swollen and sensitive from the most thorough and compelling of kisses, with the tip of an index finger. “Mind, I didn’t say I was sorry for spoiling your wedding.”
    Emmeline blinked, still too confused to speak. She loved Gil Hartwell as much as she ever had, but she was going to let him walk away, let him return to his homestead without her, because he was right about one thing: She needed time to ponder, to work out whether she believed him or not.
    If Gil was lying to her, she’d know it, somehow, and no amount of love would make her set up housekeeping with a man who had betrayed her. Emmeline was a proud woman, and she’d been taught to put a high value on herself. She could not reconcile her hopes to anything less than complete loyalty.
    Gil stood, his hand cupped beneath her chin, and their fingers, interlocked until then, loosened, separated, fell away.
    “I love you, Emmeline,” he said. And with that he turned and walked out of the parlor without looking back.
    Emmeline sat rigid until she heard the front door close smartly, then covered her face with both hands and let out a wail fit to break a banshee’s heart.
    Izannah, who had been hovering outside the parlor for some time, burst into the room and hurried over to sit beside Emmeline and put an arm around her. Mrs. Dunlap, their nearest neighbor, was close on Izannah’s heels, clucking and wringing her hands and muttering “Lord have mercy” over and over again.
    “What did that rascal say to you?” Izannah demanded.
    Emmeline snuffled inelegantly. “He said he loved me,” she confessed, and promptly began to sob again. Even now, after all the humiliation she’d suffered, all the tears she’d shed and all the prayers she’d prayed, she wanted to chase after Gil Hartwell and ask him to take her home with him.
    “The brute,” Izannah said, furiously sympathetic.
    “Lord have mercy,” said Mrs. Dunlap.
    Emmeline drew a great, shuddering breath. “Did you—send Ezra—around town with the news?” she managed between watery gasps. “About the wedding being called off, I mean?” She couldn’t have borne it if guests had begun to arrive, full of merriment and the expectation of a ceremony.
    Izannah was patting her hand—the same hand that bore an invisible tattoo of Gil’s. “Yes, dear, of course I did. Don’t worry. By now, everyone in town knows that Gil Hartwell has come back. It’s very romantic, don’t you think? Even though he should be shot—Gil, I mean.”
    “Do stop prattling,” Emmeline pleaded. She’d developed a headache, and her wretched sobs had turned to hiccups. “Brandy,” she cried. “Get me some of Grandfather’s brandy, please, and quickly!”
    Izannah hastened to comply, for she was fond of drama, being young and quite sheltered, and probably reasoned that brandy could only make the situation more interesting.
    Mrs. Dunlap offered a few lame protests, and actually winced when Emmeline downed one dose of liquor in adecidedly unladylike gulp, then held out the snifter for another.
    •  •  •
    Gil had arrived in Plentiful aboard the afternoon stagecoach and gone straight to Emmeline’s grandfather’s house, having learned from one of his fellow passengers that she’d taken up residence there several years before. Now, with the first confrontation behind him, he bought a horse at the livery stable and rode right through the center of town. His aim was to let folks know he was back, and that he wouldn’t be taking to the back roads like a man with some cause for shame.
    His cabin and the hundred and sixty acres he’d proved up on before marrying Emmeline lay two miles south of town, and it took him half an hour to make the ride. If his wife were there, waiting for him, the way he’d dreamed she would be, he’d have had good reason to hurry. As it was, he could take his time.
    Gil’s heart, already bruised, sank to his boots when he saw the