Reborn, I Married the Man He Feared novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Courthouse Steps

Chase grabs Clara's arm on the courthouse steps and Alexander makes his debt due with one sentence. They marry in eleven minutes, and that night a man who does not knock sits down outside her door.

On Friday morning Clara stood on the courthouse steps in a plain white suit with Margery Tilghman on her arm.

The old woman had insisted on a hat, and the hat was enormous.

"If you run, I'll trip you with my cane," Margery said. "I want that on record."

"I'm not running."

"Good. The last one ran at the florist's."

Alexander waited at the top of the steps in a charcoal suit, leaning on his cane.

He watched her climb toward him and did not smile, and Clara felt oddly calm anyway.

"You came," he said.

"I said I would."

"People say things."

They had reached the doors when a voice behind them called her name.

"Clara! Clara, wait!"

Chase came up the steps two at a time, with Daphne half running behind him in a cream dress.

Daphne was still wearing the pearls.

Her mouth was already trembling, and her eyes were wet.

"Please," she said. "Please don't do this. Everyone is so worried."

"Everyone is at work, Daphne. It's Friday."

"I'm worried," Daphne said, and that was true, though not the way she meant it.

Chase took Clara's arm above the elbow.

His fingers dug in hard, and his smile stayed on.

"Come outside with me for two minutes," he said. "Two minutes, and then you can do what you like."

Clara remembered those fingers.

She remembered them on the back of her neck in the other life, steering her through crowded rooms.

She did not pull away.

She looked at the hand, and then at him.

"Take your hand off me," she said.

"Clara, you don't understand what he is."

Alexander had come down one step.

He did not raise his voice.

"Mr. Loomis," he said. "Your family has a payment due to my company on the first of the month. I can make it due today."

Chase's hand came off her arm at once.

"That isn't what this is," he said.

"It is whatever I say it is," Alexander said. "Walk down the steps. Take Miss Althaus's sister with you."

Daphne grabbed Chase's sleeve.

Neither of them said another word.

They went back down the steps together, and Clara watched Chase's shoulders, stiff and square, all the way to the street.

"Well," Margery said. "That is better than the florist."

The ceremony was over in minutes.

A judge with a cold read the vows quickly, and Margery cried openly into a large lace handkerchief.

When the judge asked for the ring, Alexander took a second box from his pocket.

It was a plain gold band, and it fit his hand without being tried on.

Clara slid it on his finger with her left hand, and his fingers closed around hers for exactly as long as the judge needed.

Then he let go.

"You may kiss your bride," the judge said.

Alexander looked at her.

"Your rule," he said, so low that Margery could not hear. "Say the word."

Clara felt her pulse in her throat.

"Not here," she said.

He nodded once and offered her his arm instead.

They walked out in front of the whole courthouse staff, who had gathered at the doors without being asked.

At dinner, Margery drank two glasses of wine and told a long story about Alexander at nine years old, trying to sell lemonade to the harbor pilots.

"He charged them five dollars a cup," she said. "They paid it. They were afraid of him already."

"They were being kind," Alexander said.

"They were not."

Clara laughed.

It came out before she could stop it, and Alexander looked up from his plate.

He looked at her for a long moment, and his hand stopped on his fork.

Then he went back to his dinner.

At ten o'clock, the housekeeper showed Clara to the east wing.

The room had a wide bed, a tall window over the garden, and a door that locked from the inside.

Alexander's rooms were at the opposite end of the house, down a long carpeted hall.

He had said goodnight at the foot of the stairs and had not looked back.

Clara lay on top of the covers in her white suit for a long time.

She had been Chase's wife for sixteen months in the other life, and he had never once said goodnight and meant to leave.

She had thought that was love.

At three in the morning, she woke to a sound in the hall.

It was a slow tapping, a cane on wood, and then it stopped.

She lay still.

A weight settled against the other side of her door, low down, where a man could sit on the floor with his back to it.

She heard a breath, and then no sound at all.

Clara did not open the door.

But she lay awake until dawn, listening to a man who did not knock keep watch outside it.

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