She thought she heard a stirring overhead, but it could have been the rustle of her taffeta petticoat. She started to climb. “I’m considering divorcing you, Remington. I’m also considering shooting you. I might do both.”
Phoebe had to tread carefully. Her gown had substantial weight and her white kid boots were not meant to grip anything like the narrow slats of the ladder. She did not look down, though it occurred to her that once she found Remington, the descent would be considerably trickier than the climb.
When she reached the top and could peer through the narrow opening between the bales, she was no longer so certain that Remington was behind them. She carefully made the transition from ladder to loft, mostly by crawling on her knees and yanking her gown out from under her.
Far from being passed out or in any stage of inebriation, Remington was awake and alert. As soon as Phoebe appeared from between the bales, he grabbed her under her shoulders and hauled her the rest of the way through. His hand covered her mouth before she could squeal, shout, or otherwise protest.
He placed his lips near her ear. “Shh.” He felt her nod but did not entirely trust her. “I mean it, Phoebe. You must be quiet.” She nodded again, this time with more promise behind it, and he removed his hand. “You have to take off that petticoat,” he whispered. “It’s like a scurry of squirrels passing through the underbrush every time you move. Quickly.” It was gratifying that she did not question him, but she still did not move swiftly enough to suit. Remington batted her hands out of the way and reached under her gown for the ribbons that held her petticoat in place. Try as he did to keep it quiet, removing the taffeta was a noisy affair. When he finally got it off, he tossed it as far away from them as he could. Once it landed, blessed silence followed.
It lasted only as long as it took Phoebe to find her voice. “What are we doing?” she whispered.
“Waiting.” He paused a beat and then added, “Quietly.”
She nodded. “For what?”
He sighed. “I’m not sure.”
Phoebe wondered if he thought that was a reasonable answer because she certainly did not. In deference to his command for quiet, she spoke as softly as was possible. “You have to explain that.”
“Ben told me to come up here. There’s something he wants me to hear. He’s arranging it now. I can’t tell you more because I don’t know more, but he was adamant. He said it was something he had to do.”
“Hadto do?”
“Hmm. Or he couldn’t call himself any sort of man.”
Phoebe’s eyes widened. “Ben said that?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure it wasn’t liquor talking? I never saw him without a drink in his hand after the ceremony.”
“Maybe, or maybe drink helped him speak his mind. Now you know what I know. Shh.” Remington released her, but not before planting a kiss on her mouth. As soon as she inched away, he stretched out on his belly exactly as he had been before she began climbing the ladder. A moment later she was lying beside him, mirroring his posture right down to the way he raised himself on his forearms.
Remington’s eyes had had sufficient time to adjust to the dark interior of the barn. He was helped by slivers of moonlight seeping through cracks in the walls and threading through needlelike openings in the roof. He looked sideways at Phoebe and recalled that she had seemed ethereal when she stepped off the porch this afternoon. That was even truer now. “Otherworldly” was a word that came to his mind. The gown that had gleamed in the sunshine was a cool and ghostly silver-blue thanks to the moonlight.
In spite of his insistence on silence, there was something he had to know. “Why are you here?”
As far as Phoebe was concerned, it was the wrongquestion. He should have been asking why she had come looking for him, in which case she would have explained that, as his wife of less than one day, she had the right to expect that he would not wander away like a pup off its leash. It was perhaps a harsh criticism, but then she was not feeling particularly charitable, and although the kiss had been rather nice, she would not be placated so easily.
Still, she answered him because there was obviously more going on than he could properly tell her and curiosity trumped truculence. “I tried the bunkhouse first because Handy saw you being hustled off there. When the men told me you’d left, I thought of where I would go if I desired a few moments alone and was willing to shuck my responsibilities to my guests, my family, and my husband.” She thought he might have winced, but she couldn’t be sure. “And here you are, exactly where I would be. Or rather, where I am.”
“Did I know your tongue was this sharp when I married you?”
“You should have. You kissed me often enough.”
He very nearly gave a shout of laughter. What he did, though, was kiss her, long and deeply, and satisfied himself that he knew the shape of her tongue. He spoke softly, his mouth hardly a hairbreadth from hers. “I’m glad you found me.”
“Are you?”
“Mm. Aside from the obvious benefits of having you this close, one of us missing from the revelry was bound to raise eyebrows, but if both of us are missing... Well, that’s more or less expected.”
Phoebe placed her hands on Remington’s shoulders and pushed him back. She squinted at his shadowed features. “Don’t get any ideas.”
Remington rolled over and took up his previous position. “I don’t know how long we’ll have to wait. Did anyone see you come in here?”
“I imagine so. Maybe you didn’t notice, but I’m the only one wearing white.”
A chuckle rose in his throat and then lodged there as thebarn door swung open on noisy hinges. He looked over at Phoebe to make sure she had also heard it. Her head was up; she was alert. He did not bother putting a finger to his lips.
